you can throw me if you want

[truthwright]

It turns out that there was really not much point to making a schedule. Kas and Helen visit the witch clan whenever Helen feels like it, and stay as long as she wants, and go when she wants to be somewhere else, and it all adds up to plenty more time spent with the clan than away.

After the aquarium jaunt with Ranata, it's a little more than a month before they visit the clan again.

Comments

[alicornucopia]

Ranata always answers her - "I love you too." With the number of miles yet to go.

[carillons]

Eventually the number of miles becomes small, and Helen says, "Can you see the building yet?"

She remembers the approach with Petaal; she can say what it looks like from the air.

[alicornucopia]

"Not yet, I need to get my bearings - I'm coming up the street now."

[carillons]

"Okay."

She hugs Kalavar.

[alicornucopia]

"I'm going to go show the front desk people Castarilan and then he'll come find your window."

A minute later, there is a hummingbird at the window.

[carillons]

Helen goes to it and opens it, and Kalavar buzzes up to Castarilan as a fuzzy bumblebee.

[alicornucopia]

In comes Castarilan, and presently there's a knock at the door.

[carillons]

She hears it with a funny echo, because it's where Ranata is and where she is.

She stops extra-listening and runs to the door and opens it and hugs Ranata the huggiest hug of all hugs that have ever hugged.

[alicornucopia]

Ranata hugs her back hard, and says, "Let's get Kas tied to the cloudpine, and go home."

[carillons]

"Okay," she says, looking dubiously at Kas and Petaal where they are snuggled up and glazed over. Petaal is coiled around Kas as a constricting snake of some kind; the species is hard to tell under the ice.

Helen cannot imagine how they are going to get Kas tied to a cloudpine branch.

[alicornucopia]

It's pretty difficult, and on one occasion Ranata asks Kalavar to turn into something big so they can roll him over onto the rope Ranata brought when the easiest way to do this involves touching Petaal, but eventually she has them coiled up in rope, secured to the cloudpine, and does not dislodge them in an experimental low circuit around the room.

"Okay," she says. "Do you need to pack anything?"

[carillons]

She picks up Kas's backpack off the floor and puts it on, and picks up her own backpack and holds it, and looks at Petaal's cloudpine branch leaning against the wall by the door.

[alicornucopia]

Ranata considers the cloudpine, then picks it up and wedges it in under one of the rope knots. "Okay, up you get, she says, helping Helen onto the cloudpine.

She flies them into the elevator, descends with it, and then goes out the lobby and into the sky, cursed spinach still hanging where he's tied.

[carillons]

Kalavar turns into an albatross and flies along beside them.

Helen holds onto the branch and hugs her backpack and is uncharacteristically quiet.

[alicornucopia]

"It'll be okay," says Ranata.

[carillons]

"Are you sure?" says Helen.

[alicornucopia]

"You'll always be taken care of. And the clan can protect you from the bad witches."

[carillons]

"I want my spinach, though," she says unhappily.

[alicornucopia]

"I know, sweetie." Ranata is out of the cityscape now and doesn't need both hands to steer; she strokes Helen's hair.

[carillons]

Helen sighs.

"I love you, Granatee."

[alicornucopia]

"I love you too."

And on they fly.

It's a long trip. They land in the clan grounds, and Ranata cuts the ropes to detach Kas from her cloudpine rather than go through the complicated rigmarole of avoiding Petaal again.

"I need to speak to the queen, and then start asking the best cursebreakers what they can do," Ranata says. "Do you want to come with me or do you want me to bring you to Charlie's house to wait?"

[carillons]

"I want to come with you," she says, with a sad glance at frozen Kas.

[alicornucopia]

"Okay."

Queen Narida Memma is not in her house, but she's not too hard to find once that's ruled out; she's with her sister.

Ranata goes up to her. "Helen and I need to speak to you alone," she says.

The queen looks between grandmother and grandchild, then makes her excuses to her sister and goes aside with them.

"Can you tell her everything that happened?" Ranata asks Helen gently.

[carillons]

Kalavar turns into a fluffy bunny. Helen hugs her.

"I was in the park and I went to look for Kas across the street and he wasn't there," she says, "and some witches were there and they asked if I was lost, and I said no, I was just looking for my daddy, and they said they'd help me find him, and I looked in the bathrooms first but he wasn't there so I went out and asked the witches their names and they said Kana Setira and Loviisa Lerandi, and I asked if they could find him with a spell and they said yes, so they took me to their little house far away from things and did a spell but I didn't understand the verse because it was in Svaaric, and they gave me books and tea and snacks and told me to wait, and then Petaal came in the window and they looked really surprised and kind of started whispering at each other and didn't say anything while Petaal took me out to fly me back to the hotel."

She takes a deep breath.

"And on the way back the cloudpine fell a little bit and I looked at Petaal and she was fire, and then she wasn't and she was a witch again and she made the cloudpine work, and I asked her what happened and she said somebody tried to kill her, and that's why those witches were so weird, they were kidnapping me only I didn't even know until I was almost back at the hotel! And when we got back I cried a lot and Kas called Ranata and I went to sleep and when I woke up Kas and Petaal were all frozen! I think the scary witches cursed them again! I tried to melt them but it didn't work so I called Ranata with some magic and she came and got me. And I'm scared and I want my mommydaddyspinach. He is not a mommydaddyicecube."

[alicornucopia]

"How did you try to melt them?" asks the queen.