Princesses Are Never Lost Read online

  Twenty-six beady black eyes stared their way, and as one the three princesses gulped hard. That was when Flora noticed that the little mushroom people were all armed with wicked-looking black knives.

  "SHROOMF!" came the battle cry, high-pitched and squeaky.

  Princess Cassandrella was lost for a moment. What to do, what to do? The question ran through her head over and over. To either side, Flora and Bianca readied their magic, but just what could a moon princess do? Few of her spells could do damage, and those that could... she shuddered at the thought of deliberately hitting something with a face. The ants, those had been different, but these... whatever they were, they could look her in the eyes when she fought them.

  The ground before them erupted into a jungle of grass and vines, all grasping and clawing at the Shroomfs. The wicked little knives went snicker-snack as they cut their way through, but the Shroomfs had definitely slowed down their advance.

  Then Bianca darted forward, her hands limned with bright orange flames. The tiny witch swiped at the patch of overgrown weeds, which caught fire with surprising ease. Even this was not enough to turn back the strange little men, however, as their muttered -shroomf- could be heard not only through the burning thicket, but also to the sides. And they were getting louder.

  "We need to get out of here!" Cassandrella urged the others.

  "Aww, but we've got them on the run!" Bianca shouted.

  "Running towards us," she corrected the witch. Several cries of "Shroomf!" punctuated her words. "We need to get out of here!" she repeated.

  The magic broom could skim over obstacles like grass and brush, and Flora seemed to have no trouble with either, but for Cassandrella it was a different story. She couldn't run as fast as her long legs could manage, because she had to be careful not to trip on things. And all the while, she could hear the nasty, evil calls of the Shroomfs behind her, closer and closer.

  Evil... evil... The temple elders had gone on and on at great length about the nature of evil, though they'd never seemed to agree on much. But one thing they did say was this: evil feared the light. Sunlight, moonlight; it didn't matter as long as it was bright and pure.

  Cassandrella stopped in her tracks, swinging her holy scepter of office around to face the approaching Shroomfs. There weren't quite so many of them now, after the gripping grass and fearsome flames. Blue body paint had gotten singed away, leaving tracks of dark purple and black all over their pale skin. Beady eyes followed the motion of her scepter, caught by the glittery red crystal set into the golden crescent at its tip.

  The Moon shone from the heart and from the soul, she'd been taught. Cassandrella let that light shine forth now through her holy symbol. The full of the moon might not be so bright by day, but here in the shadows of the forest, it was more than enough.

  Squealing and screeching, the Shroomfs all hid their eyes from the light. One by one, they slipped back the way they came.

  Cassandrella watched them go, then quickly ran after the other princesses. The last thing she wanted was to get even more lost in this crazy place!

  But her fears were for nothing, thank the Moon. Flora and Bianca were stopped a few yards beyond, in a little clearing by a stream. The girls' squirrel and cat were up a tree, keeping watch while their mistresses prepared for further attacks.

  "They're gone," the moon princess announced as she ran up to them. "I scared away the last of them."

  "What, they thought your face was that hideous?" asked Bianca.

  "Huh? No, I..."

  "Or was it the smell of your breath?"

  "Bianca!" Flora cried. "Will you please stop it? We wouldn't even have been in that mess if it wasn't for you. What were you thinking?"

  "Seriously," Cynthia said to her best friend, sitting beside her at the gaming table. "What was up with that?"

  Katelyn shook her head and mumbled something. Her voice was so soft that no one could catch a single word of it, but her fingers had the tablecloth in a death pinch. Hair should not have been able to shake from nerves the way hers did.

  "It's all okay," Claire said sunnily. "We made it out alive, right?"

  "No," the pony-tailed girl corrected. "It's not okay. Katie, you've been actin' weird all afternoon. Dumpin' Claire off the side -- yes, you did! -- sayin' even less than usual, and gettin' our girls in trouble whenever possible. Do you even care about what happens?"

  By now, Katelyn was practically vibrating, and tears were leaking out from behind her bangs. Uncle had no idea what the heck was going on here, though that wasn't all that unusual a circumstance.

  Back behind the girls, Max caught his attention, and he nodded back to her. The tall blonde proprietor of the shop had a better head for this than he did, and if she thought they could use an early break, well... He considered the tableau before him, with two best friends in a one-sided argument about another girl, who herself looked as confused as he felt. Yeah, a break would be in order.

  "It's okay, really!" the big-eyed little peacemaker kept insisting. The pink kitty ears in her headband somehow managed to wiggle in agreement. "We all have bad days. No big whup. So let's have a nice, big hug to sort it out, and then we can have our pizza, and --"

  "WILL YOU SHUT UP ALREADY?"

  Uncle didn't recognize that voice, though he should have. The volume made a big difference, because he'd never heard it at that level before. Neither had anyone else, he figured. All of the girls were staring at Katelyn like she was a mouse that had just roared for the first time.

  Katelyn turned bright red and, releasing her clutch from the tablecloth, ran off sobbing. The door on the ladies' restroom slammed hard behind her.

  "Was it something I said?" Claire asked, puzzled.

  Five minutes later, the cavalry arrived in the form of Max's special cheesy bread sticks with marinara sauce. That was more than enough for four growing girls, but the fifth was harder to entice out of her powder-room seclusion. The one time those brown bangs had found their way through the door, the eyes behind them had glared at Claire for a long moment, and then the door had slammed shut again.

  For her part, the little anime fan still couldn't quite grok what was going on. She'd taken up a station by the bathroom door with a plate full of cheesy bread, and just stared quizzically.

  Uncle leaned up against the doorframe and just listened for a moment. A light shuffle told his ears that Katelyn was probably right on the other side. Experience told him that the girl was probably scared out of her wits right now, too.

  "So..." he began, pitching his words through the closed door. "Wanna talk?" There was another light shuffle of feet, but no answer, so he continued. "We've got time, though I can't guarantee you any cheesy sticks; at least, not for much longer. Shelby's really hoovering them up."

  "Hey!" shouted the curly-haired girl from the other side of the room.

  "Anyhoo, I get that you're upset and scared and all, but why not tell us what about? Couldn't hurt, might help," he finished.

  A moment passed, and the door creaked a bit from the weight of a pre-teen leaning on it from the other side. "She knows what she did..." The words barely made it through the thin wooden paneling.

  If "she" was supposed to mean Claire, then that certainly was not the case, because the girl in question had the look of someone desperately looking for a place to buy a clue. He put a finger to his lips to shush her before she could say anything.

  It took a while to coax all the pertinent details out of the girl, and they weren't helped by the way the door muffled Katelyn's already timid vocalizations. Apparently, it all came down to last week's trip to the mall.

  From Katelyn's point of view, things were simple. Three days ago, she walked out of a store at the mall, one of those little temporary places that existed only to provide ridiculously cute paraphernalia to easily excited tween girls for only a moderate mark-up. There'd been an adorable little black kitten stuffie in the bargain bin, and she was riding high on the happy vibes.

  She'd spotted
Claire and her cousin, who was another girl in their class, from across the way, on the other end of the bridge connecting the two sides of second-floor walking space. Katelyn had waved at them, wanting to show off her new little plush treasure.

  But Claire's cousin had just pointed, right towards Katelyn, and laughed. And Claire had laughed with her.

  "Wait, you were there?" Claire shouted. "Natalie was..."

  The bathroom door slammed open. "Yes! I was right there!" Katelyn screamed back. "Right smack dab in the middle of the store entrance! I... I..." She coughed, deflating as she used up a whole day's worth of verbal bandwidth in one quick burst. "You... you didn't..."

  Claire knelt down on the slightly greasy carpet. "I didn't even see you there, honest. Natalie and I were checking out the anime costumes, yanno? The ones in the window on the right, only they got all the wrong color wigs matched to the wrong costumes, and really, it's like they never even watched the show, but --"

  Uncle cleared his throat. "If I may impugn your character some more, moon princess? You've got the worst poker face I have ever seen, and that includes mine. Your heart sits atop your head like neon pink kitty ears. What do you think, Katelyn? The two of you are classmates. Has Claire ever been able to hide her excitement over anything, no matter how small or insignificant or completely outside everyone else's sphere of interest?"

  "...no."

  "So what are the odds that she could successfully bluff her way through this conversation without it being really, really obvious that she was lying?" Uncle didn't wait for the girl to reply; Katelyn was about on the verge of tears again. "For what it's worth, think of this as a real-life spot check. You rolled high on yours and noticed Claire. She rolled low, and spotted only the biggest, brightest, shiniest, most colorful, distracting thing that her kitten-like attention span could latch onto."

  "Hey! I resemble that remark!" Claire sputtered in mock-protest, which brought the ghost of a grin to Katelyn's face.

  "I told you I'd be impugning you some more, kiddo. The fact remains that this is what happens when you flop your dice rolls in real life. Katelyn, did you do anything else to get Claire's attention? Wave some more, call out, jump up and down?"

  The quiet girl just shook her head.

  The noisy girl hugged Katelyn tight and shook them both up from head to toe. "Wah! I'm so very very very very very very very very very very..."

  "Claire, I think we get the point," said Uncle.

  "SORRY!" The force of the apology actually knocked the kitty ears off of Claire's head. The two girls sat there on the floor sniffling for a moment. "Um... I saved you some cheesy bread?" she finished with a squeak.

  "...thank you..." This was followed by a sniffle and a loud crunch.

  Uncle walked the two of them back to the table. The pink kitty ears had changed heads, and when Claire hopped onto her seat, it was over on the opposite side from where she'd been before. He helpfully passed the girl's bag and dice over to her.

  "So, shall we move on to what Gwen and Selvi are up to now?" he asked.

  Cynthia's hand shot up. "Um, skyooz me, but I think we got some business to finish up here." She passed some scribbled notes over to Claire and Katelyn. "That work for you two?"

  "...yes."

  "Right-o-rooney!"

  "Seriously! What were you thinking?" Princess Flora shouted. It was the third time she'd had to repeat the question, and it had only gotten louder in the process.

  "I... I..." Bianca stuttered a bit, her eyes nervously darting left and right. To one side, there was Flora, who was looking stern and all too much like Gran'Mama before a lecture. On the other side, there was Cassie, who just looked... sad? disappointed? Whatever. It wasn't like she really cared what the little moonbat thought about her.

  Her most pressing issue of the moment was Jinkies, because he wouldn't get his fuzzy butt off of her back. He'd pounced, planted both front paws on her shoulders, and forced her to the ground before she could even react. Bianca had sent him tons of quiet, thinky thoughts, which she knew he'd heard. The little black cat had sent a mischievous chuckle the first time she'd demanded he stop squishing her, but nothing since.

  "Is something wrong?" asked the moonbat. "Did we do something to make you upset?"

  "Yes! Er, no? Um..." To be honest, she wasn't sure what she was feeling that day, only that it felt like it was the whole world piling up on her, and not just a little black cat.

  The fuzzbutt flicked his tail back and forth across her face, sending fur up her nose and knocking her hat loose. The floppy cone of fabric fell off completely as she sneezed.

  "Um, what's that?" Flora asked.

  "What's what?" she demanded back. Seriously, the druid could've been speaking squirrel for all she was getting out of this conversation.

  "That." The druid reached down and poked the side of Bianca's head. Bianca felt a sharp tug that pulled deep into her skin, and she yipped in pain. "Yeah, that's really stuck in there."

  "What is it? What is it?" Fear hit Bianca in one icy blast, washing away all the mean and nasty things she'd wanted to say. The pain was centered on her left temple, right above the ear.

  "It's... a flower?" Flora poked it again, sounding uncertain.

  Bianca was definitely certain that it hurt, and shot off a few good witchy curses that should've wilted the nearby grass and turned fuzzbutt's fur white. Neither thing happened, unfortunately. Aunt Milvy would've been so disappointed in her.

  "Did you pick any flowers, earlier?" Cassie asked her.

  "Yeah, right when we started walking through this stupid forest." The witch cursed again as the druid poked. "Put a pretty white one in my hair, too. What of it?"

  "Well, now it's rooted in your skin, and it's bright red. I doubt that's good... Ow!" Flora yelled, yanking her hand back. "It, it bit me!"

  The moon princess grabbed the druid's hand and examined it. "Yeah, that's a nasty nip. I'll have to bandage that up soon."

  "What about me?" Bianca whined.

  "Um..." Flora sucked on her finger and thought for a moment. "I know a spell to remove disease. That might work, but then again it might not. This thing's already well rooted, and the skin's going green around it."

  "I can add some holy moon healing magic!"

  Bianca was sobbing. "Please, do something!"

  The druid was pulling bits of bric-a-brac from her pocket: moss and twigs and nuts. There was no eye of newt or wart of frog in there, but then again, that was supposed to be more her thing, wasn't it? Bianca could almost chuckle at that without it hurting.

  In a few minutes, they had some sort of special mud and moss packed up around her ear. The stuff covered over the flower completely, so Flora could put her hand over the spot and not get bit. The druid was droning on in that funny holy-talk of hers that no one else could understand. Bianca tried to focus on those fluid syllables and force them into some sort of sense, but they just dribbled through her mental fingers.

  "O! Holy and Totally Bodacious Moon, grant unto me..." Cassie's words were no easier to understand, in spite of being in a common tongue.

  There was a twinge, then a shot of bright black pain that was quickly drowned out by the light from Princess Cassandrella's holy scepter. Bianca had the most unpleasant of sensation of something moving under the skin on that side of her head, and the only positive part was that it was moving out.

  A moment later, Flora pulled the entire clump of mud and moss away from her head, along with a long, string-like root that dangled limp and red. The sight of it turned Bianca's stomach, and it felt like she might--

  She did. Jinkies barely got out of the way in time before she ralphed up that morning's fruit selection.

  "And for good measure, you bury the bloody little flower under a big rock," Uncle concluded. "Bianca's headache quickly disappears, and she's very, very sorry for causing so much trouble, right?" Katelyn nodded. "Good, now Cynthia... you haven't been sneaking peeks at monster concepts online, have you?"

  "No..
." the girl sang. "Been readin' a lotta horror novels recently."

  He shrugged. "Nothing wrong with that."

  There was a knock on the counter behind them. Max leaned over Uncle's shoulder and picked up the now-empty plate of cheesy bread. "So, everybody okay now?" she asked, ruffling Uncle's hair into an even bigger mess.

  "Yeah." "Yes, indeedy-do!" "...yes."

  "Good to hear. Anyone need more snacks?"

  "We're fine, thanks," Uncle said as he passed her a ten-spot. "Could we get some pies in about an hour, though?"

  Max had a hand cocked to her blonde head in a sarcastic mock salute. "Can do! Happy adventuring, y'all."

  The girls all waved her goodbye, then Helen and Shelby pulled out three pages of notes and spread them out upon the table. "We're ready for our big argument now," his niece announced."

  "With all that, I'd hope so." Uncle had his own notes ready on the other side of his game master's screen, complete with evil grin. "But first, you need to get yourselves out of the immediate situation."

  "This is all your fault." The barbarian's tone was as blunt as a troll's club. She was brushing twigs out of her hair and grunting with each tangle.

  "I fail to see how," Gwenevrael countered. "It was not my idea to ride a giant, animated hulk of shrubbery."

  Selvi snorted. "Didn't take you long to follow my lead though, did it? And it was your map-readin' that got us stuck here in the first place."

  "Not this again..." The half-elf shook her head. "We should find the others first, and then argue later."

  "How?" Selvi demanded, waving her arms at the surrounding greenery. It was unbroken in most every direction. A monster half the size of one of her father's war elephants had crashed through just a few minutes before, but hadn't left any sign of its passage. Well, aside from its two former passengers, that was.