Princess Pampers's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

By midnight the cottage no longer felt safe. Princess Pampers pressed her ear to the round door and heard it: a hound, still far off, but working a scent line down the marsh road. Her scent line. She had cut through the reeds that afternoon to fetch water, and now a tracker's dog had her trail by the tail and was hauling him toward Swillcreek. If she stayed, the hound would bay at this pink door before dawn. She could not fight a hound. She could only lie to its nose. She had one night to break the trail, or she would lose the roof she had just won. She stuffed her satchel with the loudest, silliest things she had: a rubber frog in a tiny diaper, a fistful of bright plastic blossoms on green stems, a heel of bread. She kissed the big bear's ear and left it wedged against the door. Then she slipped out the back window into wet grass. She walked on grass only, the way she had taught herself, quiet as a moth. At the first fence post she rubbed the rubber frog hard against the wood, then dragged it along the rail. At the next post, again. She was painting her smell across the village in a crooked pink line that led nowhere near her cottage. At the creek she stopped. Water killed scent. She waded in up to her knees, gasped at the cold, and walked downstream over slick stones. Her diaper swelled heavy against her thighs. She kept the frog clenched in her teeth so she would not drop it. Where the creek bent by an old barn, she climbed out on the far bank and pushed the toy flowers into the mud in a bright, obvious trail. Anyone with a lantern would see them first. Anyone with a nose would follow the frog. Both roads led away from the pink cottage, toward the empty hills. She was crouched, planting the last blossom, when a voice behind her said, "You're doing it wrong." Princess Pampers spun. A short woman stood at the barn corner in a pastel-striped apron, a baby bottle in one hand. Her own diaper showed under the apron's hem. She looked tired the way mothers look tired. "Hounds cast in circles," the stranger said. "One line won't hold. I'm Kira. Give me half those flowers." Pampers stared. Then she split the bundle. Kira ran the other bank, jabbing blossoms in a wide loop back toward the marsh. Together they laid two false trails where there had been one. The hound bayed once, closer, then confused, then farther. By the time the sky went gray, the baying was a mile off, chasing a rubber frog through someone else's field. Pampers waded home shivering. The pink door was still dark. The bear was still against it. She had bought another day. She had also been seen.