Chapter 11 – The Rebellion
“Are you completely INSANE?!” Philipia asked as we hurried back to the castle, pushing through the muddy streets. A fine mist was falling and slowly re-soaking our clothes. We halted several dozen yards away from the castle gates to avoid eavesdropping from the guards.
“Do you have ANY idea as to what you’ve just done?!” she demanded, clenching and unclenching her fists. Alye’s eyes flickered back and forth between Philipia and me, probably bracing herself to pull Philipia back if she decided to get violent.
“I gave a speech. What’s the harm in that?”
“My god!” the shapeshifter hissed. “You’re completely screwing up history! If we HAVE gone back in time (and it sure looks like it), then you’re introducing something that shouldn’t be here! Don’t you get it? You could be wrecking history even as we speak with your little ‘free and independent’ pep talk!”
“Philipia, will you get a grip?” Alye sighed, rolling her eyes. “I think it’s awesome. I’ve always wanted to revolt against society. At least this time, I didn’t start it.”
“You are NOT helping!” Philipia exclaimed. “Forget it! If you two want to ruin history, I for one am not going to help.” She turned and started trotting down the road, but the two of us followed her.
“Philipia, stop for just a second,” I said impatiently. “We’ve already screwed up history, as you put it, just by being here in the first place. We CAN’T avoid altering history here. We don’t know the culture, the customs, or even the speech patterns. And we may be stuck here for the rest of our lives! If we can’t leave, then we might as well help the people here instead of hiding in the forest and pretending we don’t exist. That last option, by the way, is impossible. Remember when they tried to burn us? Remember that harvest we JUST helped with? The villagers know us. We’ve aided them already. If you didn’t want to screw up history in the first place, then maybe we shouldn’t have gone through the library door!”
Her blue eyes narrowed and she glared at me with venom I’d rarely seen. But when she spoke again, her voice was perfectly calm.
“So you’re willing to lead a group of villagers armed with pitchforks against a lord guy who has who-knows-how-many professional, TRAINED soldiers?”
“Whoever said anything about leading?” I demanded. “I’m only 14! I can’t lead anyone!”
“You just may have to,” she retorted, “with that stunt you’ve pulled.” She turned toward the castle. “We’d better go inside. Lunae won’t mind if I’m not at the hut tonight.”
The next morning, by an unspoken agreement, we avoided talking about the previous night. But there was no way of escaping it. As the three of us headed back to the library, a familiar voice called to us. Redmond came dashing up, a hard glint in his eyes. He pulled the three of us into an unused room (judging by all the dust).
“Were you serious about last night?” he asked quietly.
“You mean about the whole ‘free and independent’ thing?” I answered. “Very.”
“So you’re asking the peasants to rise up against Lord Delroy?”
“You know perfectly well, Redmond, that they need it,” I replied, a layer of anger creeping into my voice.
“And I think it’s a bloody brilliant idea,” Alye interjected. “Delroy sounds like a tyrannical idiot.”
Philipia stared at her friend. “Will you keep your voice down?!” she demanded.
And to my surprise, Redmond smiled. “Then I’m your first recruit. And I can be very valuable. As Lord Aubrey’s jester, he tells me everything since he thinks I’m too much of a mental deficient to understand what he’s up to. This goes no farther than this company,” he continued in an even lower voice, “but Aubrey appears to be the one running things around here, not his father. Certainly, Lord Delroy gives his proclamations and ruins the village life, but Aubrey is responsible for the soldiers’ training and the collection of the yearly tribute.”
“Perfect, Redmond,” Alye grinned. “Let’s go to the Candlebar Inn tonight and start enlisting villagers who want to join the rebellion.”
“Can’t we come up with a better name than ‘The Rebellion’?” I asked. “It’s been done to death in every movie and book I can think of.”
“Movie?” the jester inquired, puzzled.
“A special kind of book,” I hurriedly answered.
The rest of the day passed quietly. Philipia and I read in the library while Alye busied herself polishing various weapons from the armory. The librarian kept casting dirty looks in her direction because of the constant scraping noise. Finally, the three of us retreated to the courtyard to prevent the librarian from trying to murder Alye. And in the safety of the flower-laden yard, we talked in whispers.
“First, we’d better get some kind of back room for people to go into,” Alye said quietly as she fiddled with one of her swords.
“Good idea. And we should have some kind of password so that soldiers don’t walk in and stuff,” I muttered as I absentmindedly flipped through the pages of my book.
“Like what?” Philipia asked.
“Um…how about…ginger ale?” Alye answered, a glint of rarely-seen brilliance lighting up her eyes. “The villager-in-question asks for ginger ale, Clance says something about how the only stores of it are in the back room, and that’s where we have our recruiting desk.”
“Good one,” Philipia grudgingly acknowledged. I could tell that she still had major doubts about this whole thing.
It worked perfectly. Since no one except Redmond really drank any of that ginger ale-like stuff, there wasn’t any danger of someone accidentally walking in. So the three of us, on permission from Clance, who had gladly offered the use of the storage room that no one ever went into but himself, set up a desk, rummaged up some paper and ink, and started enlisting people.
“Name?”
“Matthew.”
I looked up. It was the same guy who’d spoken up in our defense when we’d offered to help harvest. He shifted a bit nervously from foot to foot but held our gaze steadily.
“Do you have any kind of special skills?” Philipia asked.
“Um…I have a strong stomach. And I’m pretty good at distracting people.”
“I can believe that,” I snorted good-naturedly. “Okay then, Matthew, you’re in. Thanks for joining.”
“Yes…” he replied absently. “And I think you three are doing a really great thing with this.”
Alye raised her eyebrows at the sudden show of support but grinned. “Next!” she whispered to Clance when he appeared at the door to show Matthew out.
The next person who came in was a girl who seemed vaguely familiar. I could swear I’d seen her face somewhere before…
“Hey,” Philipia exclaimed, “you’re that girl that we rescued from the soldiers!”
She nodded. Her spiky black hair was kept in a ponytail and she had prominent freckles, unusual given how dark her skin was. She gave a smile.
“Yes, and I never got the chance to really thank you. I’m Elspeth.”
“So do you have any special skills?” I asked.
Her huge grin surprised me. “Oh yes. Watch.” And before we knew it, a black cat with startling blue eyes was sitting on the floor in front of our desk. Philipia, not quite as shocked as Alye and me, still stared.
“You’re a shapeshifter like me!” she exclaimed.
Elspeth the cat quickly became Elspeth the human again. “Not quite. I can only turn into cats.” And to our surprise, she changed again, but this time only her hands and eyes transformed. The nails on each finger lengthened and sharpened to a point while the rest of the hand grew fur and paw pads. Her eyes changed from their dark brown to a brilliant gold with catlike slits for pupils. She quickly changed back but not before we were gaping in astonishment.
“Lucky!” Philipia cried. “I haven’t figured out yet how to do a partial shapeshift!”
“It came with several years of practice,” Elspeth laughed, “and I have a limited number of forms, so I could practice on the ones I had rather than having to learn new ones.”
“Why didn’t you use your skills when the soldiers were attacking you?” I demanded.
She arched her eyebrows. “You’re asking that after what happened to you three? If the villagers had known I could shapeshift, I would be burned at the stake before you could snap your fingers. But since this is part of the rebellion, I guess my secret will have to come out.”
“I doubt anyone’s going to try and burn you if you’re using your abilities to help us fight Delroy,” Alye laughed. “You’re in!”
“Alright people!” I shouted over the din in the inn (nice rhyme). “We’ve got everyone’s name down and that means that every single one of you who signed up is now part of the revolt against Delroy. But we can’t have a proper revolt without some kind of action. What should we do first?”
“Protect our harvest of course!” a man by the name of Jarod replied. A chorus of assent sounded across the room.
“But how?” an older guy named Mark asked. “We don’t have the numbers to stand up against the soldiers that usually come to take it. And if we try to fight them off, we’ll only get ourselves killed.”
“I have an idea,” Philipia announced. “Hide it. When are Delroy’s guys coming to take the food?”
A brief period of mutterings and then someone replied, “Two weeks.”
“Then that’s plenty of time to dig a basement and hide the crops,” Philipia continued. “With the help of everyone here, we can have a decent underground storage room dug out within that time. Then when the guys come to take it, you’ll have most of it hidden away and you can present as little as possible without arousing suspicion.”
“That’s an excellent idea,” Redmond stated as he stood against the doorway, “but where are we going to have this marvelous basement?”
I watched as Philipia’s face dissolved into a cheeky grin. “Underneath the inn.”
It’s insane how well that plan worked out. For several days straight, we carved a trapdoor in the floor of one of the inn’s several first-story rooms and dug busily through the packed mud and dirt. Not a day went by that didn’t end up with us all being covered in grime, but since it was the harvest and it rained constantly, the layers of muck on our clothes weren’t that noticeable. My magic came in great handy when lifting out particularly thick clumps of mud that the villagers’ shovels couldn’t budge, and Philipia used a variety of tunneling animals to dig further. After a week and a half, we had a decently roomy underground room in which to hide the precious crops. Another day of hauling filled the basement with various grains and vegetables. Nearly the entire year’s crop could be hid into this cellar, which was rather pathetic but couldn’t be helped. The villagers sighed in relief as the last stalk of grain was placed in the pile of golden wheat.
“Now to see if the soldiers will figure it out,” Alye muttered.
Three days later, the test came.
We organized a limited amount of food to be set out. If we didn’t put out any food, the people coming to take the tribute would be VERY suspicious, but we couldn’t afford to strain the resources of the villager’s supply. So the bare minimum was put out, and hopefully no one would notice the fact that the samples chosen for the tribute were the worst of the lot.
In the center of the village, right across where the burning stakes stood, a couple wheelbarrows’ equivalent of vegetables and grain was dumped onto a hastily-constructed platform. The whinnying of several horses made us all jump, but when four disgruntled soldiers came riding up, the crowd of villagers faced them with nary a flinch or shifty eye.
As one of the men dismounted, Alye, Philipia, and I recognized him. He was one of the four that had harassed us before. I could tell he had definitely not volunteered for this assignment. Sweat beaded on his brow and he kept his right hand close to his sword handle. We three had to stop ourselves from grinning cheekily at him.
“Is this all?” another guy demanded, a note of incredulity creeping into his voice.
“This is all,” a villager by the name of Bennett replied with just the right note of despair.
A girl named Danya spoke up, “The weather this year has been all wrong. Even giving away this much, we’re probably going to starve.”
“That is not Lord Delroy’s concern,” our soldier acquaintance retorted. “You should be grateful he is taking so little. If this pattern repeats, he will be forced to increase the tribute.”
A scattered outcry rippled through the group but by the sound of it, they were too discouraged to put up much of a fight. With a few gestures and frowns, the soldiers heaved the meager food onto their horses’ saddles and were off, disappearing down the muddy road quickly. We stood watching, and when the silence had dragged off for several minutes, someone started giggling. Within seconds, the entire group was laughing at their victory. Just because you had a big shiny sword and barked orders around didn’t mean you couldn’t be fooled by a trick like this.
“Villagers: 1, Delroy: 0!” Alye snorted, her green and hazel eyes sparking with amusement.
“If this is what it’s like to rebel against oppressive authorities…” I trailed off, frowning slightly, and then a massive grin leapt onto my face, “…then I love it.”
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