The Micki Adventures

                                            By Linda Bindner

                                      Chapter 11: The Plan, Part II

        The minutes ticked silently by as Micki and Al stared out the open window at the trees in the distance.  There was nothing to see.  There weren’t even any birds in the forest.  Birds probably didn’t dare roost there for fear of being captured.

Alice sat carefully on one of the beds, wrinkling her nose.  “I bet there have been millions of prisoners stuck up here, with a King like that.  This mattress has probably never been fumigated.”  She suddenly jumped back up, a look of revulsion on her face.  “I think it has bugs!”

Al turned away from the window and crossed her arms, eyeing the three other beds.  “They’re probably all infested.”  She heaved a sigh and grumbled, “Great.  On top of being prisoners, we get to itch bug bites for the next month.”  She turned to Micki still standing at the window.  “Let’s hope the Tutor finds your note saying where we are and comes to save us really soon.”  Paying no attention to the following silence, Al cynically added, “But if he does, what with Feston as King, the Tutor will probably be joining us.  So maybe he shouldn’t come.”  Another moment later, she softly continued, “So I guess that means we’re on our own.”

Alice grumpily yelled at her sister, “Stop depressing me!”

A minute later, Al pointed out, “Well, on the brighter side, at least it’s summer right now and it’s warm out.  We don’t have to worry about freezing to death.”

“Of course we don’t,” Alice scornfully said.  “We’ll die of boredom first.”

“You’re probably right.”  Al heaved another melancholy sigh.  “I had no idea it was so depressing to be a prisoner.”

Alice gave a grunt lacking in humor.  “We’ve been here all of ten minutes and I’m already as depressed as I can possibly get.”  She plopped down on the nearest bed, but jumped off almost immediately.  “I forgot about the bugs.”  She slid down the nearest wall to land in a dispirited heap.  “This is terrible.”

Micki stood unmoving while Al and her sister continued to add up all the charms of their cell.  “This door is really solid,” Al announced as she energetically shook the door back and forth.  It barely rattled on its hinges.  “See?  Nothing will open this.”  She contemplated the solid door.  “It’s not like we can break through this thing with our bare hands.”

“And it’s not like we have explosives hidden under our dresses, either,” Alice said.

Al added, “So we probably shouldn’t try to blow it up.”

“They’d capture us again right away, anyhow.”  Alice heaved an irritated sigh.  “It’s not like we could quietly blow up a door.”

“And only a bird can fly out that window, and we’re not birds,” Al said.  “If we jumped, we’d hit the ground with a big splat.”

“Yeah,” Alice said, sounding even more depressed.  “And that’s that.  The end.  No do-overs.”  Her sigh was resigned this time as she threw her arm over her eyes.   “So much for escape.”

Alice lay unmoving on the floor for the next hour.  At last she fell into an uneasy sleep.  Al tentatively sat on the beds, testing each mattress by bouncing on it.  The only one that bounced even a little was the one Alice had discovered was full of bugs.  “We’ll use the three other beds to sleep on and use this one to block the window if it rains,” she decided.  “What do you think, Micki?”

But Micki was so absorbed in what she was seeing out the window that she completely missed Al’s question.

“Micki?” Al said again, and turned to her.

Micki continued to stare out the window at the empty ground between the palace and the trees, at everything she could possibly see.

Al approached her friend, puzzled.  “What are you staring at?”

Micki looked up with a start.  “Oh, nothing,” she said, and went back to staring.

Al stared intently out the window, too.  “No, really, what are you staring at?” she asked once more, her voice low.

Micki whispered back, “I’m waiting to see if any guards show up out there.”  Her head bobbed in the direction of the large open area of ground.

“Have you seen any?”

“Not yet.  But we’ve only been in here a few minutes.”

Al gave an impolite snort.  “We’ve been in here for at least an hour.  Alice even had time to fall asleep.”

“Umph.”  A purposefully helpless look on her face, Micki stepped away from the window, Al following with crossed arms.  When Micki was sure no one could see her through the window, she crossed to the door to stare intently at the wood.

She stared in silence for several minutes until Al leaned in next to her.  “What are you looking for?”

“Shh!” Micki hissed, “I’m looking for any slits in the wood that someone can use to spy on us.”  But the door was the most solid piece of wood she had ever seen, specifically made to keep people in.  A satisfied smile slowly crept across her face.  “Good.”

Al stared at the door too.  “I still don’t get it,” she whispered again.  “What’s good?”

Micki dashed back to the window for one last peek at the grounds.  “Empty.  Good.”

“Micki!” Al hissed in exasperation.

Micki quickly explained, “I don’t want anyone to see me do this.”  She stepped back to the middle of the room where she was out of sight, then whipped her dress over her head.

“What are you doing?” Al squawked.

“Sh!” Micki cautioned, and thrust her dress at Al.  “Here, hold this.”

Bewildered, Al pulled the material into her arms.  “What..?”

But Micki already had her white underskirt hiked up to her waist, fishing for something at her left hip.

Al goggled.  “You’re wearing pants under your skirt!” she breathed.  “Black pants!”

“Yes,” Micki whispered.  “Just like --”

“Queen Madge!”

Micki grinned.  “Ever since she showed us her pants, I couldn’t get it out of my mind that it’s a good idea to always be prepared.”  She triumphantly held up what she had been fishing for… a small pocket knife.  “There’s this tiny little pocket over here that you’d miss if you didn’t know where it was.  That’s where I keep my knife, but it’s hard to get out.  I made the pocket too small.”

Al fingered the pocket appreciatively anyway.  “Where did you get the pants?”

Micki had already started to cut the skirt off her dress with the knife.  “These are my dancing tights.  Only they never fit right.  They’re not tight at all.”

Al stared at Micki’s feet.  “Whose boots are those?”

Micki flicked her foot to make her brown boot flash in the sun.  “I don’t have tall boots like Mom does.  I only have these ankle boots.  But they work just fine.  They’re much better for walking than those slippers I used to wear.”

She carefully used the edge of the tiny knife to rip her dress into strips of material, then handed the knife to Al.  “Here.  Use this to cut off my underskirt.  But leave the top part alone.  I need to wear it.”

Al sliced through the soft white material of Micki’s underskirt, asking in a low voice, “What are you planning?”

“Just cut,” Micki ordered.  “I’ll show you when you’re done.”

A minute later, Al was done cutting and the skirt pooled at Micki’s feet.  She hopped out of the circle of material, grabbed it up, and ruthlessly began ripping it into long shreds.  She tilted her chin towards the pile of rags that used to be her dress.  “Tie those strips together until you have one long rope.”

Her fingers moving deftly to form knots, Al whispered  at the same time.  “You aren’t planning to cut up my skirt too, are you?”  She giggled.  “I’d hate to be naked if a guard comes to check on us or something.”

“We’re going to toss the end of this material rope out the window and escape by sliding down to the ground, so you don’t have to worry about any guards.”  Micki’s industrious tearing had supplied twenty strips several inches wide each which Al then tied together.  “Make sure those knots are tight.”

Al nodded.  “It would be terrible if it all comes apart when someone is only halfway to the ground.”

“Especially if that someone is you.”  Micki grinned knowingly.

Al grinned back, but pulled the knots she’d made just a little bit tighter.

“Now pull up your skirt so I can add your underskirt to the rope,” commanded Micki.

Al rose to hike up her skirt, but stopped to roll her eyes and admit, “Oh, you’re right.  It’s better to be safe than sorry.”   She pulled her own dress over her head and handed the knife to Micki.  “Here.  I’m wearing pants, too.”  She shrugged at Micki’s surprised appreciation.  “I couldn’t get over how ready the Queen is for anything, so I started wearing a pair of Tank’s old trousers that don’t fit him anymore.”

Micki quietly laughed.  “That makes us the secret pants wearing duo.”

“There’s three of us counting the Queen,” Al corrected.

Micki bobbed her head in agreement.  “Three.  Okay, I’ll cut up your dress and underskirt while you wake up Alice.”  She stopped Al before she left.  “Keep her quiet!”

Micki soon had Alice’s underskirt, too, and added many new strips to the growing pile of material on the floor.  When she was done, she joined Alice and Al in tying the strips together to make one long rope.

Micki rose to her feet and approached the window, dragging the rope behind her.  “I hope this works.”

“It would be horrible if it’s still too short.”

“If it is, you can cut up my dress,” Alice said stoutly.  “I’d rather be naked than stay a prisoner in here for even one day.”

Understanding, Micki nodded, then dragged one of the bed frames right up to the window, tied one end of the rope to the foot of the bed, tied a small chunk of stone to the last piece of material to give the rope some weight, then tossed the entire rope out the window.  The material wafted gently in the breeze for a moment, then settled against the outside of the Tower, where it rested serenely against the worn stone. The weighted end clunked lightly on the ground.

“Excellent!”  Mick beamed.  “Okay.  I’ll go first.  That way, if any of the knots aren’t tight enough, I’ll be the one who falls and not either of you.”

Surprisingly, Al scowled.  “You’re too important, Princess.  I’ll go first.”

Micki glared even if she did secretly agree with Al.  “Fine.  But be careful!”

Al laughed nervously as she climbed onto the window sill.  “You don’t have to tell me twice.”  She carefully wriggled around until she faced the Tower room, her butt hanging over empty air.  She looked at the ground, her face paling.  “This didn’t look so high a minute ago.”

Micki and Alice grabbed her under the arms while Al finally managed to dangle her feet out the window.  “Just a little more.”  Her legs slipped through the window, and she rested on her stomach against the sill.  “I don’t know how the last one of us will ever manage to do this.”

“I’ll go last,” Mick volunteered.  “I’ve been practicing climbing out the window in my bedroom.”

“Wait till the Queen finds out about that,” Al warned, huffing now for breath.  “She’ll put bars on all your windows.”

Micki didn’t respond as Al finally lowered her entire weight onto the rope.

“Curl your feet around the knots as you go down,” Micki helpfully instructed on a whisper.  “That will slow your descent.”

Al nodded, but said nothing, every ounce of her concentration on the rope curled in her fingers and the ground far beneath her.  Slowly, inch by inch, she slid down and down and down.  What seemed like hours crawled by as Micki and Alice watched, each holding their breath.  A minute later, Al safely reached the ground.  Micki was so relieved, she felt faint.

Al looked up at the two girls high above her.  “Okay!” she whisper-yelled, tugging the rope.   “It’s not so bad!”

  Al flattened herself against the outside Tower wall as Alice wriggled out to begin her own agonizingly slow descent.

“Whew!” she whispered once she was down.  She looked up at Micki.  “Now you!”

Micki felt Alice’s tug on the rope, so she squeezed her fingers around the material, gathered her courage, then climbed onto the window sill.  “I hope this holds one last time,” she whispered to herself, and heaved herself out the window.  Without stopping to look down, without even giving herself time to think, she shimmied as fast as she dared from one knot to another.

The rope lurched when she was half way down.  She paused for a second, holding her breath, but the knots held, so she started down again at an even faster pace.

        Micki was still one length of material away from the ground when the rope completely gave way, sliding out the window with a soft phft.  She slammed into the ground on her back at Al and Alice’s feet, the fall knocking the breath out of her as the rope coiled on top of her.  Her lungs inflated again a moment later and she gasped, surprised to feel so sore, like every muscle in her body had been torn free.  “Let’s not do that again.”

        Al and Alice heaved her to her feet.  “What now?” Alice whispered.

        Micki fought to draw a deep breath, determined not to look anything but perfectly healthy, even if she was in pain.  Now was not the time to show anything but complete confidence.  So she furtively looked around.  The sunny area remained empty.  “You two run to the border as fast as you can,” she ordered.  “I’ll try to convince King Feston one more time to help us.”

        “What?” Alice breathed, angry.  “You can’t go back in there!  He’ll kill you.  He’ll kill all of us!”

        “No he won’t,” Micki declared, hoping what she said was true.  “Anyway, I have to try.  It’s what we came here to do.”

        “You don’t have to try alone,” Al said, determined.   “I’ll go with you.”

        Alice looked from one to the other, frowning mightily.  “You’re both crazy!  He’ll kill you if he doesn’t eat you first!”

        “I’m not asking either of you to stay, but I have to,” Micki said.  “Ruralusia is counting on me.”

        “And me,” Al stubbornly said.  “Stop trying to be the hero.”

        Micki gave a nervous laugh.  “I’m not trying to be the hero.  At least, not anymore.  I’ll just be happy to live through the next half hour.”

        “Okay,” Alice reluctantly agreed.  “I’ll head back to the vehicle, and use the long range intercom to find the Queen.  At least I know where you two are going to be.”  She picked up an end of the rope and started twisting it around her upright arm.  “Here, take this.  You might need it.”

        Al accepted the rope, brushing off her pants as she did.  “At least these fit well.”

        “And they’re comfortable,” Micki added.

        Al smirked.  “I told ya you’d like them.”

        “Oh, don’t gloat.”  Micki glanced from one direction to the other.  “I think we have to go this way.”  She pointed off to the right.  “And you go that way,” she said to Alice.  “Run as fast as you can.  Good luck.”

        “You too.  Bye.”  Alice hurried away to the left.

        “I hope that’s the right way,” Micki murmured.  “I might be completely turned around.”

        “She’ll be all right... I think,” Al declared, looping the rope over her head and shoulder.  “Now for us.  All we have to do is find King Feston and get him to listen.  Easy.”

        Micki started off in the opposite direction from where Alice had disappeared.

        Al and Micki left the Tower behind to carefully sneak around the corner.  Two guards almost caught sight of them as they retreated into the palace, but Al ducked back around the corner the instant she saw them, pulling Micki back as well.

        “Follow the guards,” Micki hissed into her ear.

        Heeding her friend’s advice, Al darted around the corner, keeping the guards in sight but staying hidden as much as possible.  Micki followed.  The guards vanished through a door in the palace wall.

        Micki and Al crept after the guards.  The door wasn’t locked.  Micki pulled it open and the two darted through.  Al carefully closed it behind them.

        They found themselves in a plain corridor with many closed doors in it.  It looked just like one of the corridors when they’d first been captured

        “I know where we are,” Micki whispered in Al’s ear.  “We came through here before.  This way.”  She crept down the corridor, Al following, doing her best not to make any noise with her boot soles on the stone floor.

        That corridor led to the large empty room that Micki remembered from before where their footsteps had echoed so loudly.  She crossed it with confidence, sure now that they were going in the right direction.  A corridor later, and they were once again in the room with all the people bending over maps.

        All the people weren’t men, Micki realized as she and Al walked into the room.  At least half of them were women wearing pants.  But they were all so tall!  They made her feel small and insignificant.  Micki swallowed, her belly fluttering with nerves.  But she knew she couldn’t show how afraid she was.  If she looked frightened, it would be that much easier for King Feston to ignore her.  Resolved, she walked forward as if she owned the palace itself.

        When she and Al were quite close to all of them, she cleared her throat to get their attention.  “Like I said before, I’m here to see King Feston.”

        Heads popped up.  Thirty adult faces stared at her in astonishment.

        “How did you get out?” one of them demanded.

        “I --” began Micki.

        King Feston didn’t even bother to look up, but continued to study the map spread on the table before him.  “Throw them into the dungeon this time,” he ordered with another arrogant wave of his hand,

        “But --”  Fingers wrapped around Micki’s arms.  Two guards nearly yanked her off her feet.  “But we need your help!” she cried.

        Her cry went unheeded as she and Al were quickly dragged from the room.  She refused to go quietly this time, but wriggled and writhed in the guards’ sudden death grip, yelling the entire way.

“Let me go!  We’re citizens of Ruralusia!  You can’t treat us like this!”

        In response, one of the guards ruthlessly shook her until she shut up for fear she’d bite through her tongue.  “You’re coming with us,” he breathed in her face.  “Resist, and I’ll club you.”

        The guards pulled Al and Micki out of the room, through the echoing chamber, and back down the corridor full of doors.  One of those doors opened to a staircase leading down into a musty blackness.  The guards hauled them quickly down the stairs, through a narrow corridor lined with more doors made of stone.  The guard in front pulled open one of these doors, and his fellow guards shoved Micki and Al so hard from behind that they fell forward onto a stone floor.

        Pain shot up Micki’s legs when she landed on her knees, and she couldn’t quite stop herself from softly grunting.

        One of the guards lit a short candle in a sconce on the wall while another laughed at them.  “Try and get out of this one!” the guard sneered as the door closed with a bang.  A second later, a lock clicked into place.

        Slowly climbing to their feet, Micki and Al looked around.

        The one lone candle lit up the four stone walls that surrounded them.  There was a stone ceiling a few feet above their heads, and a stone floor under their boots.

        “Well.”  Al struggled to keep her voice calm, fingering the low ceiling.  “Good thing we’re not any taller, or we wouldn’t be able to stand up.”

        “Yeah, good thing,” Micki said, trying to sound more hopeful than she was.  “Only problem is that the room with the low ceiling is in the dungeon.”

“And we’re locked in.”

“And no one knows where we are.”

        “And there’s no convenient window to climb out of this time.”

        “And that single candle isn’t going to last very long.”

        “And then we’ll be left all alone... in the dark.”

Micki and Al looked at each other as they each realized the true horror of their situation.

Micki bleakly stated, “We really did it this time.”