Chapter 22
"Starshade," said Ripred. "You found it."
"You found it?" Gregor started to jump up, forgetting Boots was asleep on his lap. He set her on the ground and hurried to Hamnet. "You found the cure?"
"It fits your description," said Hamnet. He settled Hazard on Frill's back and slid down the lizard's tail. They all gathered around him.
"What do you think, boy? Does it look like the picture in the book?" Ripred asked Gregor.
"Exactly!" said Gregor excitedly. They had found the cure! Finally, something was going right! He plucked a leaf from the plant and took a deep sniff. The clean, refreshing scent made his nose tingle. "Mmm, smells like lemons. This must be it. It smells...like it could heal you. Where is it? Can we go get it now? And then get back to Regalia and —"
"Slow down, Gregor. I know we are all eager to obtain the cure. But first things first. We must sleep. Frill will keep watch. And then we will begin," said Hamnet.
Gregor lay down next to Boots. He was tired, but keyed up, too. He held the starshade leaf in his palm and let the light dance over it. In his hand was life for his mom, for Ares, for all of the Underland. He pressed the leaf against his nose, and comforted by its lemony essence, closed his eyes.
The next thing he knew, Hamnet was shaking him awake. They ate some leftover fish and a few plums. But when they started to get in their previous formation, Hamnet stopped them. "I did not tell any of you save Ripred this last night because I did not want to disturb your slumber, but this final leg of the journey will be treacherous. The field is nearby, but to reach it we must traverse a very dangerous path. As a group, we will need to move with all possible speed."
"I've designed a formation that should give us the highest rate of survival," said Ripred. "Hamnet will show you. Do exactly as he says." Hamnet left Frill at the front of the line with the two bats and Hazard on her back. He instructed Temp to crawl beneath Frill's back legs. Flanking the lizard to the right was Ripred, with Boots and Gregor riding on his back. Luxa was to travel on Lapblood on the left. Hamnet was to run at the back.
"I can travel fast enough on my own two legs," said Luxa. She clearly didn't want to ride Lapblood.
"No, Luxa, you cannot," said Hamnet. "And trust me when I say you will be grateful for Lapblood's speed."
Luxa reluctantly settled herself on Lapblood and reached up to stroke Aurora's fur. Gregor placed Boots up by Ripred's shoulder blades and sat behind her. He had to keep his knees slightly bent so his feet wouldn't scrape the ground.
"We ride on here?" Boots asked him, puzzled.
"Just for a little way, Boots. Then you can go back on Temp," said Gregor.
Boots crawled up on Ripred's neck and poked him on the top of the head with one finger. " R is for rat," she said.
"Yes, and B is for bite," said Ripred in a singsong voice. "Be careful the rat doesn't bite your fingers!" He snapped his teeth together for emphasis.
"Oh!" Boots quickly scooted back against Gregor and held her hands close to her chest.
"Was that really necessary?" said Gregor.
"Absolutely. You want her going up and trying to pet rats? Not in this day and age," said Ripred.
Ripred, as usual, had a point. In general, Gregor did not want Boots petting rats. Most of them would kill her in a second. But then...if the humans and rats taught their babies from birth to fear each other...how was anything ever going to get better? He had a feeling this was a much bigger question to answer than he had time for at the moment, so he just wrapped his arms around Boots and said nothing.
Everyone was in place. "We will only travel a short while when I will give the command to run. At that point, do not stop until you have reached the field of starshade," Hamnet said. "Let us go."
This path was narrower although similar-looking to the one that had brought them this far. But as they turned a corner, Gregor saw a long corridor that was so lovely it looked unreal. The vines were covered with a million tiny silvery-white blossoms that seemed to sparkle in the lantern light. There was a soft, tinkling sound of bells. It was like entering the pathway to some magical fairyland. And the smell...oh, the smell of the flowers made him dizzy with happiness.
"Run!" he heard Hamnet shout.
Ripred sprang forward with such power that Gregor almost lost his seat and had to fling himself forward across Boots and grab hold of the rat's ears to hang on. Boots gave a squeal of protest, since she was pretty much flattened into Ripred's neck, but Gregor didn't dare let go.
The scent of the flowers was making it hard to hold on, though. He could feel his mind beginning to get cloudy and for no apparent reason, he started grinning.
"Hang on, Overlander!" Ripred snarled.
It was the funniest thing Gregor had ever heard, and now he was laughing. He saw the bewitching vines begin to shoot out at them, and he wanted to reach out his hands to meet them. Just then, Frill caught his attention by rearing up on her hind legs and breaking into a sprint. The sight of the big lizard bicycling along on those big legs made him laugh so hard that tears began to stream down his face.
Then Gregor could see a green field....That must be the starshade....What a dumb name for a plant since there were no stars down here or shade, either, since there was no sun. Which was a star. Since the star was a sun...No, the sun was starshade....No..."Maybe they should call it 'Never-seen-a-star-shade!'" Gregor yelled. The idea was so hilarious that he lost his grip on Ripred's back and fell off onto the path. The plants...the pretty plants...wove around his arms and fingers....He had never seen anything so amazing in his life!
Something yanked him from behind and he was being pulled back and forth because his new friends, the silvery-flowered vines, did not want him to leave so soon. They bit deeply into his arms before they finally snapped. "Bye!" Gregor called as he was dragged away. "Nice knowing you!"
Then he was lying in a cool, green, lemony world, still chuckling about the "Never-seen-a-star-shade" joke when he realized there was nothing funny about it. Alarm shot through him and he sat up quickly. The group was strung out along a large rectangular field covered in starshade. Boots was curled up in the leaves next to him giggling about her thumbs. Nike was hiccuping, which had Luxa and Hazard in stitches. Aurora, who apparently could fly again, was making lazy loops in the air. Most of his other fellow travelers seemed disoriented, too. Ripred and Hamnet were both taking deep breaths of the starshade, so Gregor did the same. His head began to clear almost immediately.
"What happened back there?" he asked.
"Those flowers put out a scent that gives a feeling of great happiness and well-being," said Hamnet. "And then, my guess is, they drag you into the Vineyard and dismember you."
"Whoa! You might have given us a heads-up on that one!" said Gregor.
"We were afraid you would try to fight them," said Hamnet. "That would have guaranteed your destruction."
"We could have fought them," said Luxa, but then Nike hiccuped again and she fell over, laughing.
"Oh, please," said Ripred rolling his eyes. "As it was, Hamnet and I had to drag half of you out of there, or don't you remember that part, Your Highness?"
Gregor could see the confusion on Luxa's face and guessed that part of the ride was as much a blur for her as it was for him.
"It affects the smallest the fastest," said Hamnet. "Luckily, Frill and I had Hazard with us last night. He began to babble almost as soon as we encountered the silver flowers. It warned us what we were up against." He wrapped his arm around Hazard and gave him a squeeze.
"Are we going to pick the leaves now?" asked Hazard. "Can I help?"
"Yes, we can all help," said Hamnet. "The sooner we can harvest these plants the better."
But before they started, Hamnet insisted that everyone eat a handful of the starshade leaves.
"Why do we need it?" asked Gregor. "None of us has the plague."
"But we are all no doubt being exposed to it. 'In the cradle lies the cure,'" said Hamnet. "That means the plague breeds here in the Vineyard. I do not know exactly where or how. All of us have scrapes and wounds. Your feet, Gregor. These cuts from the vines." Hamnet turned Gregor's arm around and revealed a crisscrossing pattern of marks where the vines had ensnared his arms. "If the plague germ floats in the air or grows on the plants or sleeps dormant in this earth where we stand, be sure it will make its way into your blood as well."
"Boots!" said Gregor. "Come on, we have to eat this stuff!" He stuffed a wad of leaves in his mouth and chewed. They weren't bad, actually. Sort of like lemon and mint and tea all in one. Boots resisted eating the leaves, since she was not big on greens, until Hamnet made it into a game of who could eat a leaf the fastest. Hazard and Temp played with her and had the sense to let her win almost every time, so she soon had a fair number of leaves inside her.
The starshade was easy to pull from the thin layer of soil in which it grew, but no one could think of the best way to package it for the trip home. The plants were only about eighteen inches tall, so they were not long enough for tying around bundles of the stuff. Then Gregor remembered the duct tape and took it from his pack. "Here, this will work!" He pulled out a strip of the tape to show them. By cutting the wide tape into thin strips, they could secure a really big haul.
"This is most excellent," said Hamnet. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me, thank Mareth," said Gregor, and then caught himself. Now that they all knew about the Garden of the Hesperides and Mareth saving Hamnet, somehow he felt awkward mentioning the name. "Sorry," he mumbled.
"Why?" asked Hamnet. "Mareth is one of the few people I do not mind being in debt to."