Princess Pampers's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Pampers slept until noon and woke with a plan she did not yet know how to work. The hound was gone. The cottage was hers for another day. But her clearing sat empty behind the barn, blanket fort half-strung, tire swings still coiled in rope, mud slide only a wet streak down the bank. A haven needed people. Grown-ups like her. Grown-ups who wore what she wore under their clothes and had run from the same kind of dinner. She did not know how to call them without also calling the trackers. She sat on the cottage step and chewed the problem. A sign on the road would bring the wrong eyes. A shout would carry to the wrong ears. She needed a signal only the right person would read. She thought of Kira at the barn. Kira had seen the rubber frog in its tiny diaper and had not laughed. Kira had split the flowers and run the far bank without being asked. Kira had known. So the signal already existed. She only had to plant it. Pampers gathered what she had left. The pink frog. Six toy blossoms on green stems. She walked the village on grass, quiet as a moth, and set the frog on a fence post at the edge of the square where anyone passing would see it grinning in its little diaper. Around its feet she pushed the toy flowers into the dirt in a ring. A person who understood would understand. A tracker would see junk. Then she waited in the reeds across the lane. An hour passed. A cart rolled by. A boy kicked a stone and did not look up. A woman with a basket glanced at the frog, frowned, walked on. At dusk Kira came down the lane in her striped apron, baby bottle knocking against her hip. She stopped at the fence post. She picked up the frog. She looked at the ring of flowers. She looked at the reeds. "You're the worst spy I've ever met," Kira said to the reeds. Pampers stood up. "Did anyone else stop?" "A woman almost did." Kira tucked the frog under her arm. "She works at the pastel house up the lane. She wears what we wear. She was afraid to touch it." Pampers' chest went tight. "You know her." "I know where she sleeps." Kira held out the frog. "Put this on her step tonight. She'll follow it in the morning if no one's watching her." Pampers took the frog. Her hands shook. The signal worked. There were others. There had always been others. She walked to the pastel house at moonrise and set the frog on the bottom step, flowers in a ring around it. She was back in the reeds before the door creaked. Someone inside was crying. Not the woman. A child. Pampers had not planned for a child.