They heard horses outside. This was not unusual. Most people in Ingary traveled on horseback if they could. Nor was it surprising that the riders seemed to be stopping at the inn. They must be wet, too. Abdullah was just thinking that he should firmly have asked the genie to provide horses instead of milk and salmon yesterday when he heard the horsemen shouting at the innkeeper outside the parlor window.
“Two men—a Strangian soldier and a dark chap in a fancy suit— wanted for assault and robbery—have you seen them?”
Before the riders had finished shouting, the soldier was over by the parlor window, with his back to the wall so that he could look sideways through the window without being seen, and somehow he had his pack in one hand and his hat in the other.
“Four of them,” he said. “They’re constables, by the uniform.”
All Abdullah could think to do was stand gaping in dismay, thinking that this was what came of fussing for cat baskets and bath-water and giving innkeepers reason to remember you. And demanding private parlors, he thought, as he heard the voice of this innkeeper in the distance saying smarmily that yes, indeed, both fellows were here, in the small parlor.
The soldier held out his hat to Abdullah. “Put Whippersnapper in here. Then pick up Midnight and be ready to get out of the window as soon as they come into the inn.”
Whippersnapper had chosen that moment to go exploring under an oak settle. Abdullah dived after him. As he backed out on his knees with the kitten squirming in his hand, he could hear distant boots clumping into the taproom. The soldier was undoing the latch on the window. Abdullah dropped Whippersnapper into his outstretched hat and turned around for Midnight. And saw the genie bottle warming on the hearth. Midnight was up on a high shelf across the room. This was hopeless. The boots were now much nearer, tramping toward the parlor door. The soldier was banging at the window, which seemed to be stuck.
Abdullah snatched up the genie bottle, “Come here, Midnight!” he said, and ran toward the window, where he collided with the soldier backing away.
“Stand clear,” said the soldier. “Thing’s stuck. Have to kick it.”
As Abdullah staggered aside, the parlor door was flung open and three large men in uniform plunged into the room. At the same instant the soldier’s boot met the window frame with a bang. The casement burst open, and the soldier went scrambling out over the sill. The three men shouted. Two made for the window, and one dived for Abdullah. Abdullah overturned the oak settle in front of all of them and then sprinted for the window, where he hurdled the sill out into the drenching rain without pausing to think.
Then he remembered Midnight. He turned back.
She was huge again, larger than he had ever seen her, looming like a great black shadow in the space below the window, with her immense white fangs bared at the three men. They were falling over one another to get away backward through the door. Abdullah turned and ran after the soldier, gratefully. He was pelting toward the far corner of the inn. The fourth constable, who was outside holding the horses, started to run after them, then realized that this was stupid and ran back to the horses, which scattered away from him as he ran at them. As Abdullah bounded after the soldier through a sopping kitchen garden, he could hear the shouting of all four constables as they tried to catch their horses.
The soldier was an expert at escapes. He found a way from the vegetable garden into an orchard and from there a gate into a wide field, all without wasting an instant. A wood stood across the field in the distance like a promise of safety, veiled in rain.
“Did you get Midnight?” gasped the soldier as they trotted through the soaking grass of the field.
“No,” said Abdullah. He had no breath to explain.
“What?” exclaimed the soldier. He stopped and swung around.
At that moment the four horses, each with a constable in the saddle, came jumping over the orchard hedge into the field. The soldier swore violently. He and Abdullah both sprinted for the wood. By the time they reached its bushy outskirts, the horsemen were well over halfway across the field. Abdullah and the soldier crashed through the bushes and leaped onward into open woodland, where, to Abdullah’s amazement, the ground was thick with thousands upon thousands of bright blue flowers, growing like a carpet into far blue distance.
“What… these flowers?” he panted.
“Bluebells,” said the soldier. “If you’ve lost Midnight, I’ll kill you.”
“I haven’t. She’ll find us. She grew. Told you. Magic,” Abdullah gasped.
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.