I couldn't tell what they were doing. What sort of technique did you even need for polo, didn't the horses do all the work? I guess they had to grip their sticks properly and all that but I didn't see why that would be so hard for them. I seemed to walk forever and ever without getting anywhere. What if practice finished and they all came stomping over the top of me. The ground was so hard, I'd be squished like a bug. I picked up my pace and eventually put a fair distance between myself and the bleachers.
Then a whistle sounded. The whole lot of them, the entire polo team, came thundering toward me. I stood, stunned, watching them. There was nowhere for me to run, nowhere to hide. I couldn't escape my fate of being trampled to death by a herd of wild polo players.
Panic gripped me and I began to run. I didn't know where, which direction, anything, just that I had to get away from them. They got closer and closer, so quickly it was unimaginable. I couldn't outrun them. I looked over my shoulder and they were right there, almost upon me. I was so busy watching them, waiting for a giant foot to finally come down on my head, that I didn't look where I was going. The whistle sounded again and the polo players stopped running for me and changed direction. I turned around and noticed a mountain right in front of me, but I'd got up too much momentum and didn't have time to stop. I ran splat, right into that mountain and fell backward onto my butt.
Right away, the smell told me that it was no normal mountain I'd run into. It was a mountain of horse manure. A pony poo pile. And I was covered in it, head to toe.
I groaned as I got to my feet. This was the worst. The actual worst.
The smell was unbearable. Chunks of it were in my hair, it was embedded under my fingernails. I tried wiping myself off on some grass, but the poo was sticky and just smeared around all over my skin. My uniform was ruined for sure. Tennyson Wilde was never going to let me live this down. He was probably also never going to let me in his pocket. Still, I had to keep going, I was more than halfway there and I didn't want to be left stranded if they finished practice.
I broke into a bit of a jog as I headed for Tennyson Wilde. It kept me warm and I was hoping if I started sweating, maybe the poo would come off. Whenever I'd tried to wear make-up before, it had sweated straight off in minutes, so I hoped poo would be the same.
It wasn't.
I reached Tennyson Wilde after what felt like running a marathon. Maybe it was, I was too exhausted to try to do the math. He was so busy bossing around the polo guys, making them run sprints, that he didn't notice me at first, no matter how much I jumped up and down on his shoe. Then he wrinkled his nose, his eyes went huge and he looked down at me.
He gave his whistle one last long blow.
"Hit the showers," he told them.
Even from there, I could hear the polo guys grumbling, and I bet Tennyson could pick out every word. Still, that was not my problem.
"Why are you here?" he asked when everyone was in the locker room. "Why do you smell like that? You couldn't stay out of trouble for one hour?"
"Somebody knocked me out of your coat," I said. "And then I fell in poo. I need a shower and some new clothes. And to get unshrunk. We need to find whoever did this and then drop them in poo and see how they like it."
"I am not touching you," he told me. "Stay on my shoe and try not to get any of that stuff on me."
I grabbed hold of his shoelaces, holding tight as he walked. It wasn't the worst way to travel, but I made sure to smear as much poo over his shiny shoes as I could. I knew it wasn't his fault, but still, I figured you could be a bit vindictive when you were covered in poo.
And it was nothing to what I would do to the spellcaster when I finally found them.
Chapter 10
"I can still smell you," said Nikolai, hiding his nose inside his sweater.
I sat in the middle of the table, freshly washed and dressed in a handkerchief, which was wrapped around me like a toga. I'd bathed in Althea's sink, with all her fancy toiletries, and I thought I smelled pretty darn good. Like fruits and flowers. Really expensive fruits and flowers. Nikolai was obviously just being dramatic. The four of them stared down at me with unreadable expressions. Well, they might not have been that unreadable, it was hard to look at the whole of someone's face when you could fit inside their nostril.
"That's creepy," I told Nikolai. "And I smell awesome so shut up."
"I think that two things about this situation are becoming apparent," said Althea. "The first is that none of you are capable of keeping a tiny human safe -"
"Hey!" said Nikolai. "Nothing bad happened when she was with me!"
"Your ugly hat says otherwise," said Althea.
"And you can hardly blame me for someone else's poor decisions." Tennyson Wilde humphed and folded his arms across his chest.
"And secondly," Althea said, ignoring him. "This isn't a situation that is sustainable in the long-term. We need to find a solution, as soon as possible."
"I agree," said Sam. "Do you think she's getting smaller?"
The four of them tipped their heads back and squinted down at me, as if that would help them judge my size.
"Maybe?" said Nikolai. "I've never really looked at her much to tell."
"We need to know," said Althea. "It will help determine what type of spell it is."
"You're researching?" Tennyson asked, sounding surprised. "But we have people to do that."
"Inept people," she said. "How do you even know they're really working for us? Somebody on the inside must have helped steal that orb, I don't think we can assume the loyalty of anyone outside of this room."
I was kind of sleepy after my bath, and the four of them seemed to forget I was there and kept on with their conversation. I wondered what would happen if I kept shrinking. Would I vanish completely? Would I just get smaller and smaller until I was tinier than an atom? The world would be completely unrecognizable to me if that happened. It was strange enough now. Well, let's be real, it was strange enough when I was at full height. But if I was just a speck - as spick on the back of a speck - I wouldn't be able to communicate with anyone, wouldn't be able to function in the same way, use things the same way. I'd have to relearn everything in my whole life.
When they finished talking, Althea moved to pick me up, but Tennyson Wilde stopped her.
"Did you not look at the schedule?" he asked her. "I didn't just make it for fun."
"Is this because Mother wouldn't let you have a Barbie doll?" she asked, but withdrew her hand.
Tennyson blinked at her. "Mother subscribes to some very arbitrary notions about gender," he said, sounding more stern and dignified than ever. "And she didn't just not let me have a Barbie doll. She took my Wedding Stylist Barbie and burned her at the stake. She had a career, you know. And dreams. She deserved better."
"Maybe we should ask Lucy what she prefers?" Sam said, cutting off what looked to be a lengthy monologue from Tennyson Wilde. "We're home now, it's not as if we have to cover her class schedule now."
I really would've preferred to go with Althea or Sam, but something in Tennyson Wilde's voice when he talked about his Barbie really got to me. He was trying to sound so formal and cold, but he wasn't fooling anyone and I knew what it was like to lose something important to you and pretend as if you hadn't. It was about more than just the Barbie.
Wow, I never in my life expected to sympathize with Tennyson Wilde. Maybe it was because my brain was now the size of a pea.
Still, I couldn't say outright that I picked Tennyson Wilde. That would just be too weird for everyone.
"I'm not a doll," I told them. "And I'm definitely not a wedding stylist. And I don't need babysitting. I can just stay on that big comfortable cushion over there."
Sam raised his eyebrows and turned away. It made my heart sink a bit but I couldn't have chosen him, not when I kept putting my foot in it and messing with his wolfy calm or whatever. I didn't exactly want to get munched on in my sleep and I had no defenses against him. I wanted to spend time with him, all my time, but I didn't know how to make that something possible.
Althea just shrugged. "Okay, but if you change your mind, just yell out."
The four of them settled in to do their homework, but I had no way to study. I couldn't read books or type or use a touch screen. My future looked grim and full of boredom. Maybe I could rig something up so I could use a laptop at least, but I'd need all my equipment, and that was in my room. I'd need help.
Sam was engrossed in a book. When I looked more closely, I realized it was the book from my bag, the one written by our parents. He was so absorbed in it, his face all crinkled up in concentration, that I didn't want to disturb him. And he was probably a bit too volatile for this kind of high-stress mission anyway. There was no way I was asking Tennyson Wilde for help and I didn't want Althea to get into trouble if she got caught. That only left one person.