Fiction: The Adventures of Princess Sarah, Part 2!

Filling out another week while it's still the weekend, didn't have anything better to work with than a second chapter of the adventure of Princess Sarah, the spin-off to my retro gaming parody novel (which I just dumped on a free platform I probably should have been using all along). This has what's already my best gag, and as a bonus, I worked in the original owlbears!

Sarah’s first sensation was falling. The next was landing on her face. She skinned her knees in gravel, and one of her teeth came out against the rock. She started to cry, before she remembered she was a big girl now. She raised her head, and found Prince Robert looking down at her, his frog pack on his back and his beloved toy Frog Frog in hand.

“Sarah fall down,” he said. “Sarah ow ow?”

“Oh,” said a distant, murmuring voice, “look at them!”

“Oh, don’t talk like a baby,” Sarah said. She scrambled to her feet, briefly looking left and right. There was another murmur, as if one voice pressed another to be silent. They were in what was clearly a streambed, empty but still damp. Her River Cow bag had landed in a murky puddle beside her. She snatched it up and absentmindedly used her skirt to wipe it off. “Oh, poor Missus Cow… I mean, I hope it’s not wet.” She reached into an outer pouch and pulled out a jar of salve. Robert helped rub it on her knees.

“Ooh,” came the distant voice. “Look, the little one’s helping the big one!” The other voice rumbled louder than before.

“Well,” Sarah said, “we must have opened a magic door. Father said that was how he met Mother.” She smiled at Robert. “It will be an adventure, just like in the Guidebook! Ooh! I hope it didn’t get wet!”

She pulled out the book, and sighed in relief to find it dry. Indeed, she could feel no dampness at all on the inside of the bag. That was because it was, in fact, lined with real Water Cow hide, something Mother and Father had so far neglected to explain. She half-spoke the table of contents: Cartography, Topography, Geology, Botany, Zoology, Ethnography, Diplomacy, Polity. She flipped to the second chapter, then the third.

“`In your surroundings, you can see the past, present and future,`” she read. “`If there is a clamshell in desert sand, then it must once have been an ocean. If there is a tree or the cornerstone of a house still rooted in a riverbank, it must once have been dry ground. If there are stones that look round and smooth, then they must have been worn down by slow and gentle currents water or other elements. If there is gravel and large stones with sharp edges, then stronger forces may be in effect…’”

She looked up and down the channel. There were indeed a number of angular rocks. Then, half-buried in the gravel, there was the keel of a capsized boat. “Oh, dear,” she said. “`…If you see evidence of floods or falls of rock, vacate to higher ground as quickly as possible.’”

“Frog,” Robert said. He pointed to a purple toad with oddly long legs. It was struggling to climb up the steep edge of the bank, without appreciable success.

They quickly scrambled up the streambed. “Aren’t they adorable?” said the distant voice. “I just want to hold them! Those packs! Aww, look at the little boots! Really, can’t we help them?”

“Now, now,” came the lower voice. “We can’t interfere. Besides, if they have our smell, their parents may not take them back…”

 

They reached a hilltop where a tree grew from an outcropping. Sarah declared they would have lunch. She poured them each a glass out of Dink. She took out a safety knife and cut up the roll. She tried spreading the pomegranate jelly on a small piece, but she spat it out as soon as she tasted it with the hard and sour bread. Instead, she cut up the cheese and half of the sausage and served them on the bread. “`A lady in the wilderness should encourage the gentlemen with food prepared well and served with aesthetics and good cheer,’” she recited from memory. She offered the stacked slices to Robert.

“Frog,” he said. He opened Frog Frog, and the purple toad hopped out.

“Robert, Mummy and Mother told you, you can’t take anything real for your collection,” Sara said. The Prince offered a crumb of the bread to the creature, which showed no interest.

“Help frog,” he said. He tried again with a sliver of sausage, which the toad swallowed.

“Oh, he is kind!” cooed the voice. “And so brave!”

As the Princess and Prince ate, the sky grew overcast. Before they had finished, it began to rain. Robert opened the umbrella to deflect what the branches of the tree did not. The toad hopped about on the dry ground, which it evidently preferred to the rain. Sarah flipped open Dink’s top and leaned out, collecting a smattering of rainwater. When she looked downhill, she saw that the streambed was already half full. She again took out the Guide, and opened it to the fourth part.

“`To travel and survive in an unfamiliar land, the first priority must be to identify and harvest edible plants,’” she read. “`There is no better preparation than learning the flora of the known realms, yet this is but the first step. It is essential above all not to let familiar appearances lead to false conclusions. Even the most learned and experienced have perished because they took a deadly plant for an edible one, or disregarded a source of valuable nutrition because it resembled a noxious weed…’”

She flipped through a series of illustrations that filled a good part of the guide, pausing occasionally to consider the plants around them. None of them looked familiar or welcoming in the first place, and several that had looked at least vaguely similar to ones in the book proved to be among the strangest of them all. She reached out and pulled down one of the very branches overhead. The leaves, on examination, were strings of separate fronds. What looked like a single flower was similarly a cluster of tiny blossoms. She examined one of number of white globes that she had taken for fruit. Its surface proved papery and translucent. She found that it had no stem, but bulged directly from the branch. At a gentle poke, it split, revealing a pallid worm that hissed at her. She squealed and let go of the branch. As it snapped upward, the grub went flying.

“Let’s go,” Sarah said as soon as the rain cleared. “We need to find a safe place.” Robert shrugged and shouldered his pack. The long-legged toad clung to one strap. His sister read as they walked from an earlier chapter. “`When possible, follow waterways. They will lead to centers of agriculture, population and even government…’” When they reached the streambed, now full of coursing, muddy water, she turned upstream.

“Oh, no,” said the distant voice. “We can’t let them go that way…”

“Now, dear,” rumbled the answering voice, already grudgingly, “it’s going to be a bother…”

 

Sarah tramped along the bank, Robert following behind her. Something almost but not quite like reeds grew along the edges, sometimes well back and sometimes so far forward they had to push through it. Ahead was a stand of trees like the one they had sat under. She read aloud from the fifth part of the Explorer’s Guide, on zoology. “`The next and most vital step in understanding an unknown land is to catalog its animal life,’” she said. “`Consider the size, shape and habits of each creature. Does it consume plants, meat or a combination of both? Is it alone, or does it gather and travel in groups? Are its colors and mode of life a match for its surroundings, or could it be a traveler from elsewhere like yourself?” As she spoke, she took a closer look at the strange toad. They were mere Cubits from the edge of the trees when the creature stepped into their path.

It was three Cubits high and utterly massive. It had scales on its belly and limbs, and long, fibrous quills on its back. It seemed to have no neck, only a massive head that protruded from between its hunchbacked shoulders. Its face was dominated by a long, stout beak, a helmet-like carapace and two red eyes.

“Please,” she said, carefully enunciating, “you must go back. I will show you…”

Sarah froze and stared. Robert huddled behind her. The squawking cries hurt her ears. It was like the roar of one of the engines Father’s craftsmen wouldn’t stop tinkering with, drawing out every note with prolonged reverberations. But what she found most disconcerting was that its cries sounded almost like words. She hastily consulted the Guide.

“`If intelligence is unknown, treat a creature as you would a strange dog or a menagerie beast outside its cage,’” she quavered. “`Maintain an upright posture, firm eye contact, and an authoritative voice. If possible, withdraw deferentially, without haste or any sign of panic…’”

As she edged deeper into the almost-reeds, she straightened and called out, “Leave us alone, we don’t want trouble!” She added, “I’m a princess, not a little girl! I’m six, almost six and a half!”

Suddenly, a second and even larger creature burst out of the trees, as tall as the armoire. “No, no!” he bellowed. “Stay away, see!”

Sarah and Robert both shrieked, and immediately turned and ran. The girl took her brother’s hands, though within moments, it was he who pulled her forward. As they disappeared, the larger creature embraced his mate. He groomed her mane as she shook with honking sobs. “Ohh,” she said, “did we have to do that?”

“There, there, he said. “I’m sure they’ll be all right…” He gave a honk that made the children run faster still.