CHAPTER FIVE

  IT WAS MUCH, MUCH LATER, getting on toward evening, when the Snailboat ran aground with a thump! on a log submerged in the middle of the river. The thump woke Nurk up immediately, and he jumped to his feet, which is never a wise thing to do in a boat. The Snailboat rocked dangerously, and he barely missed hitting his head on a branch, so he sat down and grabbed his tail in his paws and twisted it.

  "This isn't good," he said. "This isn't good at all."

  He was caught up in the middle of the river. The log was a great tangle of branches, both under and over the water, so it was rather like running aground on a large waterlogged hedgehog. Everywhere he looked were spiky twigs and branches, including one that ran right over the opening in the Snailboat, so he had to keep ducking. He didn't know how he was going to get free, and it was nearly dark out, and to make matters worse, he had a crick in his neck from sleeping without his pillow.

  Nurk put his paws on the edge of the shell and peered into the gloom. The rolling fields had been replaced by a dark and desperate forest. He could hear an owl calling somewhere in the distance, and that worried him, because owls are very large and very quiet and very, very hungry, and his family did not have a good history with them.

  Surka's diary was sitting by his foot. He picked it up, for it was rapidly growing too dark to read.

  He consulted it, the same way as before, by picking a passage at random. With his eyes closed, he flipped it open and poked a finger at the page.

  When he opened his eyes, the line he was pointing to read:

  This did not seem helpful.

  "What am I going to do?" he wondered aloud, his small knuckles going white where he gripped the rim of the snail shell.

  "You could let me on board," somebody answered from directly below the boat.

  "Yeeerrriip!" squeaked Nurk, jumping backward. The Snailboat rocked.

  "And stop doing that," said the voice. "You're splashing me."

  The voice was scratchy and raspy and metallic, like sand poured into a copper kettle. Nurk had never heard a voice like it. It might have been a perfectly nice voice in broad daylight, but in the twilight, when Nurk was far from home, hung up on logs, and worried about owls, the voice was very scary.

  "Stay back!" he cried. "I have—um—socks!"

  There was a pause while the voice considered this threat.

  "Dirty or clean?" it asked.

  "Clean," Nurk was forced to admit.

  "Then I'm afraid I'm not very scared of your socks," said the voice. "Dirty socks, maybe. Clean socks, however, are just not scary."

  "You have a point," said Nurk.

  "Do you suppose I could come aboard?" asked the voice. "I'm extremely cold and wet, and I've been clinging to this log for quite a long time."

  Nurk thought about how he'd feel if he had been clinging to a log for a long time and decided he might not be nearly so calm as the voice was being. If it was a monster, it was a very polite one. "Okay," he said, "but slowly." He grabbed one of the oars, just in case it turned into a severed-head sort of situation.

  Two delicate green hands closed on the rim of the Snailboat. Nurk examined them closely. They were smaller than Nurk's paws, and the nails were neatly trimmed and painted purple. That particular shade of purple was admittedly rather monstrous, but Nurk figured he'd better give the owner the benefit of the doubt.

  And then, rather alarmingly, another set of identical hands settled on the rail, one on either side of the first set.

  "How many hands do you have?" asked Nurk worriedly.

  "The usual number. Four," said the voice. "Why, how many do you have?"

  "Two."

  "Weird."

  Then the hands pulled their owner up, and Nurk found himself face-to-face with a dragonfly.

  The dragonfly was no bigger than he was, a little reptilian creature with four arms and two legs, enormous orange eyes, and a dusting of tiny metallic scales. She was mostly sea-foam green, but there were black markings down the backs of her arms, and her hair looked like it was probably bright red and yellow when it wasn't soaking wet and hanging in limp tangles.

  Even Aunt Wilhelmina and her fruit hats—which she wore with enormous, brightly colored gowns in a cacophony of colors—could not compare with the vividness of the dragonfly.

  Her wings were soaking wet and hung from her shoulders like soggy, crumpled paper. She frowned over her shoulder at them, then turned back to Nurk.

  "You're a shrew!" she said.

  "My name is Nurk," said Nurk. "I'm trying to have an adventure."

  "I am the Princess of Dragonflies," she said, squeezing water out of her hair.

  "Um." Nurk wasn't quite sure what you said after somebody announced they were a princess. ("Neat!" didn't seem to quite cover it.) "Hi." He cast around for something else to say and came up with "Nice nail polish."

  "Thanks!" she said. "It's Gorgeous Grape."

  Nurk privately thought that it looked more like Ghastly Grape or Grotesque Grape, maybe even Gag-Inducing Grape, but figured he should keep that to himself. He'd never met a dragonfly before; maybe they all liked weird nail polish. He found his towel and handed it to her.

  "Thank you." She began drying her feet, which had two large toes each, also with purple nails. "People usually call me Scatterwings."

  "It's nice to meet you."

  "So how did you get stuck?" Scatterwings asked.

  "I fell asleep in the Snailboat," he admitted. "I've never been sailing before."

  "You're lucky all you did was get stuck," she said.

  "I suppose. But I don't know how to get loose—the tangle just goes on and on, and even if I get unstuck from this bit here, I'm afraid I'll just get stuck on the next one."

  "Hmm," said Scatterwings. "There's not much point in getting unstuck tonight, even if we could—we couldn't see where we were going. But if I can sleep on top of your Snailboat and spread my wings out on the shell so they dry, tomorrow I can fly to my father's palace and get help."

  "That sounds great!" said Nurk.

  So the two agreed to the plan and had a late dinner of cheese sandwiches, and then Nurk helped Scatterwings crawl up the round dome of the Snailboat. She stretched out her wings to either side—they were very large when she spread them, almost as big as the sail of the Snailboat—and set them to dry. Nurk gave her his pillow, since the shell of the Snailboat couldn't be very comfortable, and even though neither one was quite as cozy as they could have been, they both fell asleep almost at once.

  NURK WOKE UP in a bad mood. Sleeping without a pillow can make anyone grumpy, and it was colder out on the water than he had expected. To make matters worse, Scatterwings snored, a piercing, groggling, echoing snore like someone yodeling down a drainpipe.

  Nurk had never met a princess before, and most of what he knew about princesses involved fairy tales about delicate creatures who slept on feather beds and danced all night in silk slippers. He did not recall any of the fairy tales mentioning a snore that could have penetrated concrete. Obviously Scatterwings was just not that sort of princess.

  "Travel broadens the mind," he muttered, pulling the blanket over his head. "How wonderful."

  By the time Nurk finally gave up on sleep and got up, it was barely dawn and the air was dim and damp and cold.

  He wrapped his blanket around his shoulders and sat in the prow of the Snailboat, nibbling on a sandwich. This did not improve his mood. Cheese sandwiches are a good thing, like clean socks, but neither one is very good for breakfast, particularly when they're cold and starting to get stale. Unfortunately, there was no place to build a fire to cook oatmeal in the middle of the river, and starting a fire on the Snailboat did not seem like a particularly good idea.

  He wondered how long it would take to find the owner of the letter. What if he went without breakfast for days? What if he had to eat cheese sandwiches for weeks?

  Nurk sat and felt rather sorry for himself. In the background, Scatterwings continued to snore.

  He consulted Surka's diary again, but the passage was a long complaint about the quality of the food in some place called the Outer Hebrides, and the drawings all featured a shrew, presumably Surka, making horrible faces.

  As Nurk sat sulking, the sun came up, a little at a time, and cast pale gold and pink flecks on the silvery surface of the river. Mist was curling and curving over the water, moving in little skittering puffs with the breeze. It was really very pretty, but Nurk was in no mood to appreciate it.

  And then—

  "HNAAAAGH!"

  The sound was so loud and booming and unexpected that Nurk fell over on his tail. The blanket got tangled up in his ears and whiskers, and it took a minute before he managed to poke his long nose out of the blankets and, very carefully, over the rim of the Snailboat.

  "HNAAAGH!" came again (Nurk squeaked in surprise) and then "hnaagh, hnaagh, HNAAGH!" came back from all over the river, a whole chorus of deep, gurgling voices.

  Nurk, still with the blanket mostly over his head, peered around the river. It took him three tries to see the source of the noises, because they were the color of the water and the mud and the stones. When he finally saw them, he felt silly for having been so startled.

  "Frogs!" cried Nurk.

  "Hnaaaagh!" bellowed the frogs.

  .. snoooorrrrrghgghraaghghe ...," snored Scatterwings from the roof.

  As Nurk watched, the frogs gathered together a few yards downriver. The biggest frogs sat down in the water, and smaller frogs perched on the bank of the river, on the submerged branches, and occasionally on top of the other frogs. The tiniest frog was as bright green as a new leaf, and it perched high on a twig sticking out from the pile of submerged logs.

  All together, in a great gurgling harmony, the frogs began to sing.

  "Hnaagh!"

  "Hnaagh!"

  "Hnaaaagh-a-raaaagh!"

  "Hnaagh!"

  "Hnaaaaaaagh!"

  "HNAAAGH!"

  The littlest frog had a peeping voice like a tiny flute, and it sang, "Hnagh-hnagh-hnagh!" overhead.

  Nurk was enchanted. He knew he'd never have seen anything like this on his island, and his bad mood dried up and blew away like a leaf in the wind. "Travel really does broaden the mind!" he said to himself, and wondered if someday he would be telling young shrews about his adventure on the river, while wearing a hat with plastic fruit on it.

  The frogs ended their song with one great "Hhhnaaaagggggghhh!" all together, like an amphibian pipe organ, and then, one by one, they hopped into the water—splish splash sploosh!—and swam away. Only the littlest frog remained, clinging to his twig with his eyes closed tightly, humming happily to himself.

  Overhead, Scatterwings snored on.

  CHAPTER SIX

  By the time the dragonfly woke up, the sun was high in the sky and her wings were no more than damp. But the full daylight had revealed just how hung up the little Snailboat was. Branches crossed the sky like prison bars around them. Nurk didn't see how they could ever get loose.

  "Not to worry!" said Scatterwings, who had woken up very cheerful. Nurk tried not to hold this against her. "My wings are almost dry, see?" She flexed one. It looked like beautifully patterned tissue paper. "I'll be ready to fly in just a few minutes. Then I'll go see my dad, the king, and he'll get this all sorted out."

  "How did you end up in the river in the first place?" asked Nurk curiously.

  "The wind blew me right into the water." Scatterwings crossed both pairs of arms across her chest, looking defensive. "It's true."

  The funny thing was if she hadn't said, "It's true," Nurk would have believed her. But when somebody feels obligated to say, "It's true," it makes you wonder why.

  She was probably doing something she wasn't supposed to do, he thought, and she's embarrassed to admit it.

  Whether this was true or not, the next few minutes passed in rather awkward silence. Scatterwings poked around the cabin. Nurk stood at the front of the boat and tried to figure out how the Snailboat could be pried loose.

  It didn't look good. There were twigs jammed in on all sides, including a few behind them that had apparently drifted in during the night. The Snailboat looked as if it were encased in a basket woven by someone with more enthusiasm than skill.

  "Hmm," Nurk said, peering over the edge, "I wonder if—"

  Whatever he might have been wondering was lost as Scatterwings yelped from inside the cabin.

  Nurk whirled around. "Are you okay?"

  "Okay? Okay?" The dragonfly princess advanced on him, flushing the color of old bronze. "This is my letter!" She waved the envelope furiously at him. "How did you get my letter? Oh, I knew I shouldn't have trusted that hummingbird!"

  "This is your letter?" Nurk practically squealed with delight. "That's wonderful! I opened it by mistake, and I wanted to find whoever sent it to return it, and I didn't know where to find them, but if it's your letter—"

  "No! You don't understand! This is horrible! This is the worst possible thing that could happen!" The dragonfly sat down in the bottom of the boat and wrapped her wings around her head.

  Faced with a sudden wall of iridescent silence, Nurk said, "Errr."

  This was awful. Nurk suspected that she might be crying. He had thought that someone might yell at him for opening the letter, but never in his worst nightmares had he thought someone might cry at him.

  After a minute, when it became obvious that Scatterwings wasn't coming out, Nurk located something that looked like her shoulder and patted it. "Um. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to open your letter. It looked like it was addressed to me..."

  "You're not Surka," she said, her voice muffled with wings and tears. "She's not coming to help us."

  "Surka's my grandmother."

  There was a long pause, and then the wings folded back. Scatterwings sniffled and blotted her eyes on the back of both left wrists. "She is?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you know where she is?"

  "Um." Nurk rubbed the back of his neck. "Um. Um." This was getting worse and worse. "I ... think she's ... um ... dead."

  Scatterwings stared at him in disbelief. "Don't be stupid."

  "Well, nobody's seen her in forever, so we just assumed—"

  The dragonfly brushed this aside with a wave of multiple hands. "So you don't know where she is."

  "No, like I said, we think she's—"

  "Yes, yes, I heard." Scatterwings propped her chin on her palm, obviously thinking.

  Nurk felt a little put out. The princess was not behaving like someone who had just learned that an old family friend had died; she was acting like he was an idiot. Nurk did not particularly appreciate that.

  Scatterwings dropped her hand and looked him over from nose to tail tip. She did not seem particularly pleased with what she saw. Nurk felt his ears grow hot.

  "Have you ever done anything heroic?" She didn't sound hopeful.

  Nurk rubbed the back of his neck. "Well ... not really."

  "But you are Surka's grandson." She frowned. "Well ... maybe that'll count for something. It's not like anybody else is doing anything."

  "Is doing anything about what?"

  Scatterwings waved a hand. "We'll talk about it later. First we have to get this boat unstuck."

  "But—"

  She beat her wings a few times and pronounced herself ready to go aloft.

  "But—"

  Nurk realized, as she began clambering up the mast, that he wasn't going to get any more information out of her.

  "Good luck!" he called, as the dragonfly princess climbed up the mast. She bounced on the tips of her purple-painted toes and nodded down at him.

  "I'll be fine. You just sit tight, and I'll be back with help in no time."

  And with that, she launched herself into the air. Her wings beat so rapidly, they were a blur of bright color behind her. She shot upward, turning to a dark speck, and then was gone.

  NURK SAT AND waited.

  He sat and waited some more.

  He continued to wait.

  After about an hour of this, he started to get worried. Scatterwings had been very nice but possibly a little scatterbrained, and she had been very disappointed that Surka wasn't coming. He scanned the sky for the hundredth time, but the sky was blue and empty of anything but clouds.

  "I hope she doesn't get distracted by any shiny objects," he muttered to himself, and felt immediately unkind for doing so.

  He tried to amuse himself by carving a small bit of wood into a dragon, but all he had to carve with were his scissors, so the dragon came out looking a bit like a seal. He tossed it overboard after a few minutes. It bobbed away.

  The sky continued to be empty.

  He got out the diary. With much patience and using a bit of scratch paper, he managed to translate three-quarters of an epic battle between Surka and a troll named Lumpy Frogsnuggler. Unfortunately, just as his grandmother had climbed on the troll's head and was clinging to its horns while it bucked wildly, her pen had begun to leak ink. The next few pages were even harder to read than usual, interspersed with large black blobs, and by the time Surka had bought a new pen, she was on a pirate ship headed for the Barbary Coast.

  "I suppose she must have won," Nurk said aloud, "since the trolls made her their chief at some point."

  He scanned the sky again. It was still empty—no, wait, there was a tiny black dot far in the distance. A bird? Another dragonfly? An inexplicably airborne turnip?

  It was Scatterwings. She spiraled downward like a leaf and landed on the top of the Snailboat. The back draft from her wings made the sail billow, and the Snailboat creaked against the log.

  "They'll be here any minute!" she reported happily.

  Nurk searched the sky, looking for more black specks, but none were apparent. "Errr ... who'll be here?" he asked, after a few minutes had crept by.

  "The dragonfly nymphs," said Scatterwings, as if surprised he had to ask.

 

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