The soldier had never seen this trick of Midnight’s. He did not believe Abdullah. “Run faster,” he said. “We’ll have to circle back and collect her.”
They rushed forward, crunching bluebells, suffused with the strange wild scent of them. Abdullah could have believed, but for the gray, pouring rain and the shouts of the constables, that he was running over the floor of heaven. He was rapidly back in his daydream. When he made his garden for the cottage he would share with Flower-in-the-Night, he would have bluebells in it by the thousand, like these. But this did not blind him to the fact that they were leaving a trampled trail of broken white stems and snapped-off flowers as they ran. Nor did it deafen him to the cracking of twigs as the constables shoved their horses into the wood behind them.
“This is hopeless!” said the soldier. “Get that genie of yours to make the constables lose us.”
“Point out… sapphire of soldiers… no wish… day after tomorrow,” Abdullah panted.
“He can give you one in advance again,” said the soldier.
Blue steam fluttered angrily from the bottle in Abdullah’s hand. “I gave you your last wish only on condition you left me alone,” said the genie. “All I ask is to be left to sorrow alone in my bottle. And do you let me? No. At the first sign of trouble, you start wailing for extra wishes. Doesn’t anyone consider me around here?”
“Emergency… O hyacinth… bluebell among bottled spirits,” Abdullah puffed. “Transport us… far off—”
“Oh, no, you don’t!” said the soldier. “You don’t wish us far off without Midnight. Have him make us invisible until we find her.”
“Blue jade of genies—” gasped Abdullah.
“If there’s one thing I hate,” interrupted the genie, bellying forth in a lavender cloud, “more than this rain and being pestered for wishes in advance all the time, it’s being coaxed for wishes in flowery language. If you want a wish, talk straight.”
“Take us to Kingsbury,” puffed Abdullah.
“Make those fellows lose us,” the soldier said at the same moment.
They glared at each other as they ran.
“Make up your minds,” said the genie. He folded his arms and streamed contemptuously out behind them. “It’s all one to me what you choose to waste another wish on. Just let me remind you that it will be your last one for two days.”
“I’m not leaving Midnight,” said the soldier.
“If we are… waste a wish,” panted Abdullah, “then should… usefully… foolish fortune hunter… forward our… quest… Kingsbury.”
“Then you can go without me,” said the soldier.
“The horsemen are only fifty feet away,” remarked the genie.
They looked over their shoulders and discovered this was quite true. Abdullah hurriedly gave in. “Then make them unable to see us,” he panted.
“Have us unseen until Midnight finds us,” added the soldier. “I know she will. She’s that clever.”
Abdullah had a glimpse of an evil grin spreading on the genie’s smoky face and of smoky arms making certain gestures.
There followed a wet and gluey strangeness. The world suddenly distorted around Abdullah and grew vast and blue and green and out of focus. He crawled, in a slow and toilsome crouch, among what seemed to be giant bluebells, placing each huge and warty hand with extreme care because, for some reason, he could not look downward— only up and across. It was such hard work that he wanted to stop and crouch where he was, but the ground was shaking most terribly. He could feel some gigantic creatures galloping toward him, so he crawled on frantically. Even so, he barely got out of their way in time. A huge hoof, as big as a round tower, with metal underneath it, came smashing down just beside him as he crawled. Abdullah was so frightened by it that he froze and could not move. He could tell that the enormous creatures had stopped, too, quite close. There were loud, annoyed sounds that he could not hear properly. These went on for some time. Then the smashing of hooves began again, and went on for some time, too, trampling this way and that, always rather near, until, after what seemed most of the day, the creatures seemed to give up looking for him and went crashing and squelching away.
Chapter 13
In which Abdullah challenges Fate.
Abdullah crouched for a while longer, but when the creatures did not come back, he began crawling again, in a vague, vain way, hoping to discover what had happened to him. He knew something had happened, but he did not seem to have much of a brain to think with.
While he crawled, the rain stopped. He was rather sad about that, since it was wonderfully refreshing to the skin. On the other hand— A fly circled in a shaft of sunlight and came to sit on a bluebell leaf nearby. Abdullah promptly shot out a long tongue, whipped up that fly, and swallowed it. Very nice! he thought. Then he thought: But flies are unclean! More troubled than ever, he crawled around another bluebell clump.
And there was another one just like himself.
It was brown and squat and warty, and its yellow eyes were at the top of its head. As soon as it saw him, it opened its wide, lipless mouth in a bray of horror and began to swell up. Abdullah did not wait to see more. He turned and crawled off as fast as his distorted legs could take him. He knew what he was now. He was a toad. The malicious genie had fixed things so that he would be a toad until Midnight found him. When she did, he was fairly sure she would eat him.
He crawled under the nearest overarching bluebell leaves and hid…