Mearsies Heili Bounces Back Read Online Free

used to it, and the like,
but what he gave us was boiled grain with honey and milk, and biscuits with a
hunk of cheese and some tasty greenstuff put into each. We gobbled the food
down, drank the milk he left in a big bowl—we shared, a sip apiece until it was
gone—and then we all jumped up onto the bed, and in the middle of trying to figure
out where we were and what was going to happen, we fell asleep.”
    When the little kids woke up, the man let them out. Rosey’s
house was indeed a small house built high on a cliff. It overlooked a vast
distance, a quilt of farms and forests, all embroidered by the twinkling blue
of rivers, streams and a couple of small lakes.
    He was a big, stout man in a black robe, with a bristly
black beard and unkempt hair. The house was comprised of the main room, which
had walls solid with books, and upstairs of a kind of loft with two small
bedrooms, one of which the kids had been put in.
    Rosey claimed they were his prisoners, and he would ransom
them because King Shnit of the Chwahir wanted to get his hands on them to make
them statues, or make them scrub all the floors in his giant castle, and as
soon as they were done to start again, never pausing to eat. All scary things
to five-year-olds. Puddlenose knew the king was far worse, and for a time he
teased the girls by making even more dire threats—he was a little jealous of
their easy life.
    But a little bit of conversation ended that pretty fast,
when he found out why Jennet was living with Clair, and why Clair had so much
free time. He was able to put together the clues about Clair’s mom better than
the girls at the time, so he soon started making up stories to get them to
laugh, and promising that as soon as the black-beard fellow put them to work or
threatened them, he’d show them how to run away.
    The growly-voiced villain left them alone for a time, and
they explored outside—discovering soon that the mountainside was far too steep
to get away on foot. Obviously the fellow came and went by magic.
    Next time Blackbeard showed up, Clair asked his name. The
deep, rumbling voice mumbled something that sounded like ‘Mount Rose’ or
Mondros, which soon became Rosey to the kids. At first they didn’t use it to
his face, but when he heard it, he laughed and said that that was close enough
to his name, and he liked it right fine.
    The thing was, after putting a good scare into them about
the Chwahir, and about kids who didn’t learn their transport magic before using
it, and such-like, he left one of his books open after a day or two—and right
there on the page was the transport spell. It took several subsequent
kidnappings for Clair to realize that it was the white magic spell, not the
faster, but far more dangerous black spell—but Rosey explained his having a
white magic book by saying that one ought to always know one’s enemy.
    Clair took that as a lesson, as she did the one about magic.
When they got home, she applied herself earnestly to her studies, and at first,
the other two played happily enough. But Puddlenose soon got restless, as he
always was going to do. And since there was only a five-year-old girl to play
with, he took to wandering farther and farther, just to explore, he’d explain.
He’d be gone longer and longer. Clair and Jennet missed him, but as Clair’s mom
didn’t seem to notice him whether he was right there at the dinner table or
gone, there was no one to stop him—and then came the day that stretched into
two, then three, then a week, and then a year. And longer.
    Clair set her cup down, and sat back.
    Everyone tried to guess whether Rosey was a villain or not,
and why he might kidnap Mearsieans just to let them easily escape. “I think
it’s because he’s Kwenz’s old friend, and hates Shnit,” Clair said at the time.
    We know a lot more now, of course.
    But there’s more about Rosey way, way further along in the
records, so I’ll stop the rewrite of this one just where it ended when I