Arabella's entrance

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ARABELLA

The rope snaps as Magellan’s teeth clamp down, and the raft is free. The river’s rapid current doesn’t hesitate to make its claim, and the little craft moves along so quickly that even if the rats had noticed, they couldn’t have caught it. Magellan is elated! I did it, he crows inwardly. I’m free! The river banks rush by swiftly as he bobs and weaves over stones and leaves, smiling for the first time in goodness knows how long.

He is still tied to the board, of course, and he doesn’t know how his wing is doing, pinned into its makeshift split, but the river’s energy is contagious. If he can bite through the rope that tied him to shore, the equus decides, he can bite through the ones holding him fast to the board, too.

If he can reach them.

Magellan is bending over to see if he can get the rope near his fetlock into his mouth when the raft stops abruptly, caught in a tangle of leaves and twigs caused by a low-hanging branch. Magellan’s splinted wing dips into into the water before the board rights itself again. Wet leaves close in on him from behind as his raft pushes against more leaves and sticks. He is trapped again. He shudders.

A gentle melody is winding its way through the wetness, but Magellan doesn’t notice.

“Yuchh!” he cries aloud, very cold and miserable.

The music stops.

“What is it? Are you okay?” a voice calls from above him.

Magellan looks up. He can see that someone is perched in the branches, a human. No, it can’t be a human. Humans are impossibly large in this world. This person is the right size.

“No!” he answers. “Not at all! I am most certainly not okay! You can see for yourself that I’m tied down with ropes!”

The fairy, for that’s what Arabella is, hangs her fiddle over a leaf, hitches up her skirt, and scrambles to the end of her branch. “Oh! I can see that now!” she cries. “Gracious, how did that happen to you? I’ll be right down!”

And then she is gone. Magellan can’t tell if she skittered down the tree or just vanished into the air.

But before he can finish wondering, Arabella is back, leaping from branch to branch in her feathery shoes, her leaf pinafore billowing around her. She crouches beside the equus and looks at him curiously. Pushing her spiky rust-colored hair from her eyes and cocking her head, she says, “What are you? I’ve never met anyone anything like you before! Do you have a name?”

“Of course I have a name! Don’t you? Is this a place where creatures don’t have names?”

“Oh my, you are a stranger! Everyone has a name here. Mine is Arabella Acorn. And what is yours?” She is talking as she works at undoing the knots in the rope. One is undone quickly and then the next, and Magellan can move both his forelegs.

“Magellan, my name is Magellan. You may have heard of a mortal with the same name, but it was mine first, and, of course, I have flown around the world too many...” but he doesn’t finish, because the ropes on his rear legs are already undone.

Arabella puts her hand on his flank. “Don’t try to get up yet!” she says. “The raft will tip!” So he lies still on the board, and begins his story from the moment he found himself in Ivan’s backpack, while the fairy finishes untying the ropes and then gives his limbs a much-needed rub.

He is only up to the part about the rats when she interrupts. “I’ve secured the ropes to the big branch now. Try to get up carefully. Take my hand in your teeth if you like.”

Magellan looks at the delicate tawny brown hand she is offering and neighs "no, thanks."

Very slowly, he begins to shift his weight. He lifts one leg and wonders where he can put it to bear weight.

Then, splash! The raft tips sideways, and Magellan is in the water, his leg and both wings caught in the leaves and branches.

Arabella calls out, “Oh, Magellan!” so loudly that her whole family, who’d been gathering berries and mushrooms just up the river bank, come running.