Chapter Two – The Village Troublemaker

“Nos Iter Simul – We March Together!”

-Motto of Nebyllin

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2.

The Village Troublemaker

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Dear diary,

It’s me again. Writing in books that weren’t made for that feels wrong, but here I am.

The house is bright and loud again, and dad’s in a bad mood. I think he found my report for maths, so I’m hiding under the bed right now with a torch and a pen. They’ll go to sleep in a bit, and then I’ll feed it to the neighbour’s cat. The good news is mum and dad are taking a work trip to another city, so tomorrow it’s just going to be me on my own. And the day after. And the weekend.

You wouldn’t know, because I’ve only written in you once, but this happens a lot. I think they like working too much. As for me, I’m looking forward to the quiet, and being able to do whatever I want while they’re gone. They’re leaving money for pizza, but I’m going to buy chinese instead.

The homeroom teacher asked if I was going to the start of summer break party with the rest of the school. My parents won’t be home to force me. They wouldn’t need to know. I told him I didn’t know, but… I don’t. The library just got a new book in, and it’s one I’ve been waiting forever to come out. I think books make better friends than people do, anyway. I’ve written in more books than I’ve talked to people at school, and I don’t like writing in books.

Just between you and me, I think I’m not going. I’m going to stuff my hair in a baseball hat at school and pretend I cut it short, check out all the books I want to get that take at least three days to read, and go walk around on the roof at night. I’ll have a really nice holiday all on my own. And all I need around me is books and the TV.

I’m feeling quite tired, so I’m going to go to bed soon. I have to get up early for some assembly event at school tomorrow anyway. Good night.

~Sincerely, #-*- – –

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“Oh! You’re up now. Good.”

Espurr’s blurry eyes sliced through her fuzzy dreams and gave way to bright sunshine, gleaming through a window, making her shut them again. She was in a straw bed that rustled softly, settled in a large, airy room with rustic, apricot-covered walls and dark brown floorboards. A wide-brimmed, floral hat hung from a hook in the wall, above a couple brown bags crumpled against the floor. She remembered that bag, how the rough brown surface had felt against her fur…

Her fur. Suddenly she felt it again, suffocating her! Her heart dropped, everything flooding back to her in an instant. Her holiday! She had to get back home!

She tried moving off the bed, to get somewhere, anywhere! But her left arm just wasn’t cooperating; it felt dull and stiff, and when she tried to move it, a sharp red pain rang out and made her gasp.

“Oh! Don’t do that please.” Someone jotted over, the floorboards creaking under them, and she felt unfamiliar paws grab her and settle her back into bed. “You still need rest!”

The voice and sudden jostling jarred Espurr from her panic, and she looked up. Helping her back on the bed was the strange creature from before, who was pink and yellow from head to foot and stood on two legs. She stared Espurr down with her brilliant blue eyes, making sure she was settled properly.

“Alright now?”

Espurr just nodded, shell-shocked.

“Let me know if you need anything else, okay?” She stood up, towering over Espurr, and returned to the cabinet she was rifling through—it was ornate, the white paint peeling, and full of all sorts of strong-smelling things—and pulled something leaflike out of it.

“Where are we?” Espurr dared to ask, biting down the consistent thrum of pain from her arm. She really hoped it wasn’t far away…

“None other than Serenity Village,” said the pink creature with her back to Espurr, folding something on the counter. “You collapsed the moment we arrived–half delirious, I suspect. Just before our end-of-week shopping trip, too. You’re lucky Kecleon’s stays open late Saturday nights. Not that I’d buy from him on a good day, but…”

Another dull throb from Espurr’s arm. It wasn’t a wonder she was delirious. Serenity Village wasn’t anywhere on the map—at least, not anywhere Espurr knew about.

“Where’s that?” she asked, trying to keep the quiver out of her voice. Even her location was completely unknown – maybe it was just a town she hadn’t heard of? Surrounded by… a lot of things she hadn’t heard of.

The pink creature looked back from whatever she was doing on the counter and gave her an odd look.

“Serenity Village?” she asked. Espurr nodded.

The pink creature thought for a second, like she was trying to figure out what to say. Espurr could glean that from the edges of her speech, an unsure, wavering pink. That was strange…

“I’ll see if I can get a map from the principal’s office later,” she decided on, “but it’s in the south. You know where that is, right?”

A confused shake. Espurr was sure she looked silly.

That made the pink creature really think.

“Well, I’m sure it’s not too far from home,” she finally said, trying to sound reassuring. “Do you know where you came from?”

A second shake. Espurr only remembered foggy details about her home right now, addled and shaken, but she was growing more and more certain that it wasn’t anywhere near here.

“Nothing?” the creature asked. “A name, some houses, who you live with?”

A third shake.

“I don’t remember right now,” she said, wilting at how exhausted she sounded. Her voice barely carried across the room.

The pink creature ‘hmm’d, pulled out a sheet of paper, and turned her back to Espurr as she started writing on it. Espurr could just about make out the words “possibly abandoned”, and “send out notice to surrounding villages” in whispers to herself as the creature wrote, and bit down some queasiness. She felt her heart slowly dropping into her stomach, filling her chest with dread.

Finished writing, the pink creature set down her pen, closed the cupboard, and looked again towards the open doorway.

“What are you still waiting out there for? You need treatment!” she called loudly to an unseen person who seemed to be waiting outside the round doorway. Espurr could feel their presence now, fuzzing peach hues around the edges of her mind.

Had she always been able to see colours like that? No, she hadn’t, but concentrating hard and trying to shut it off felt like plugging her nose.

“Sorry, Ms. Audino,” a high-pitched, childlike voice muttered from outside. “I don’t like the school clinic…”

“Well, you wouldn’t have to spend time in the school clinic if you didn’t go jumping out of trees,” Audino said, pouring something into a pair of leaf-made pouches. “Now come in and sit on the bed so I can treat you.”

Jumping out of trees… Well, that made two of them, Espurr guessed. At least she wasn’t the craziest one around anymore.

“Not to worry,” Ms. Audino continued. “You’ll have company.”

“Really?!”

The voice perked up with the excitement of a toddler at a candy stall, and a bright yellow fox with fiery ear fluff and blue, ghostlike whisps curling near her tail dragged herself in on one paw and flopped down on another straw bed. She looked at Espurr with wide red eyes, almost like she was plotting murder.

Audino supplied her with a few of the leafy green bags, setting them over the fox’s paws.

“IF you rest, you’ll be better in a few hours,” she said, then got up.

“Doing alright?” Audino asked Espurr, walking by.

Espurr was very much not doing alright and could only nod unsurely that yes, she was. Then she grabbed her bag and walked briskly towards the door.

“I’ll be back shortly; I’ve scheduled another appointment for today. I don’t want either of you to move a muscle while I’m gone, do you understand me?” Audino directed the last sentence squarely at the fox.

“Yes ma’am! Absolutely understood!” the fox chirped in a tone that Espurr gathered meant it was not understood at all. Audino kept her wary eyes on her for a few seconds longer.

“I expect to see you both sitting on those beds when I return,” she said, and then she walked out the door without another word.

A thousand questions flew across Espurr’s mind the second it swung shut and they were left alone:

How far away was this from a town? Could she phone home? Were there phones here? Where could she go to find one? What was her mum’s number again? What could she do about… a look down at her purplish fur, which wasn’t looking any more human than it did yesterday… she didn’t really want to look at that. Nevermind that. Phone. She was stirring from her bed again, ignoring the complaining of her arm. She needed to find a ph—

“Soooo-o-o-o-o-o-o…” began the fox loudly, crashing a train through Espurr’s thoughts and causing her to freeze where she was.

Espurr looked over, wide-eyed, at the creature who shared the room with her. The fox drew her single word out until she was out of breath, then gasped for more.

“What are you in for?” asked the fox, sputtering.

“Wait, you’re new here,” she piped up just a second late when Espurr was about to respond, leaping onto the side of the bed. Words tumbled out of her mouth like water from a waterfall.

“Are you…

“Hah! There’s no way you’re miss Audino’s kid, are you?

“…Wait. Are you?

“Huh? Are you? Pleeeaaase tell me!

“Hey, what’re you in for? Wait, I feel like I asked that one already…”

“Do you want your questions answered?”

The fox, mid-prattle, froze and went silent as a board. She stared at Espurr in confusion.

“Well, duh,” she said.

“Then, can you ask them a bit slower, please?” said Espurr tiredly, who was extremely not ready for this and felt more than a little befuddled by the constant onslaught of everything so soon after she’d woken up.

“Oh.” The fox didn’t seem very phased. She settled back in the bed. “Okay, what are you in for?”

“I fell out of a tree,” answered Espurr plainly, rubbing her eyes with her good paw.

That left the energetic fox’s mouth hanging wide open.

“Woah,” she mouthed in amazement, her eyes brightening. “Well guess what? I’m in here for the same thing! Twisted my tail, sprained three of my paws, and my ear hurts” – she wiggled her left ear and nearly wilted in pain – “but it was all for a noble cause!”

“What… noble cause?”

“I couldn’t let a fellow child suffer in the clutches of the evil Nurse Audino for a whole week!” the fox moaned dramatically, clutching a paw to her swooning head before groaning in pain and quickly collapsing backwards onto the bed.

“I’m Fennekin Tricky, by the way,” she chirped, popping back up. “My actual name’s a secret but I chose this one and that’s what everymon else calls me. Do you have a name?”

Espurr huddled a little closer, studying the floorboards like varnished wood had suddenly become wildly interesting. Wouldn’t it be nice if she could remember it?

“Just Espurr,” she said.

“Aww,” said Tricky. Her ears drooped. “I thought you were one of the cool ‘mon.”

“What does that mean?”

“Like…” Tricky trailed off, searching for the words. “Like, the ‘mon with names! From up north!”

“‘Mon aren’t cool if they’re not from up north?” asked Espurr, curiosity overtaking her for a second.

“Well duh!” exclaimed Tricky, like this was obvious. “Here they’re all boring and think that names should be for like, old people or something. I’m from up north. My mum and dad were born there. Where are you from?”

The big question. Espurr felt positively unsafe spilling her secrets to someone who looked like they gossiped with the whole town.

“I don’t remember right now,” she settled for. If her city’s name wasn’t coming back to her just yet, did it count as a lie?

“Boooring.” Tricky yawned, blowing out an orange wisp of flame that danced dangerously close to the ceiling. She stretched in the bed with her paws under the ice. Pausing for just a second and snapping her jaw shut, she pulled her paw out from under the leaves and twisted it just to be sure.

“Oh wow! I’m healed! I’m finally healed!” she screeched.

Excitedly, she pranced out of the bed and did a few victory twirls. Espurr cringed as she watched Tricky’s tail painfully cramp up, sending the fox crashing to the floor headfirst.

Thump.

“Ow…” she muttered from the floor. “Work in progress.”

And then she was back up again, walking stiffly to avoid wagging her tail.

“Hey, wanna go do a village tour?”

“Didn’t Nurse Audino tell us to stay here?” Espurr pointed out. “Besides,” she said, tilting her head. “I don’t think you can go many places with that tail.”

“Eh,” Tricky dismissed it with a flick of her ears and a paw-wave. “It’ll heal in a few minutes. Besides, if you listen to the adults your whole life, life stays boring! C’mon, have some fun!”

“But can’t we have fun right h–”

Not that she had a choice. Tricky quickly sprung from her spot, pranced behind her, and nudged her off the bed completely with a shove.

“Hey!” Espurr yelped, taken aback. But the yellow fox had already chomped down on her good arm and was tugging her along towards the door. “I didn’t say–”

“Dif’ way!” she yipped excitedly, hopping towards the door with Espurr like a dog toy, and pulling her through it.

The building was located on a steep, grassy hill. Tricky impatiently pulled Espurr down the steps, tugging her by her good arm. Espurr protested, but not wanting to lose a second arm, followed along where she was pulled. Tricky led her down the stone steps and towards a flat, downhill clearing with several wooden stump-desks and a blackboard hanging from the branch of a low tree.

“That’s the school – school’s out today – ” Tricky said in between breaths as they passed.

“Tricky!”

Both Espurr and Tricky’s heads whipped around, where what looked like a very angry weasel wearing a safety vest was marching towards them.

“Berry crackers…” Tricky mumbled through Espurr’s arm. “Bye Watchog! See you tomorrow!”

“Is this another one of your shenanigans?” Watchog angrily asked as he continued marching towards the pair. “Put that poor student back where you found them right now!”

But Tricky was already shoving Espurr off.

“No can do, Watchog! Audino’s orders! Espurr needs me to show her around town!”

“No I don’t–”

“That’s VICE PRINCIPAL Watchog to you!” Watchog yelled after Tricky, drowning out Espurr’s meek response entirely. Already, she didn’t like him. “And those don’t sound like Audino’s orders!”

“They are! Trust me!” Tricky yelled as they continued down the downwards path, Watchog and the classroom getting further and further away.

“Trust… you?” Espurr could hear Watchog’s stupefied sputtering in the distance. It wasn’t hard to see why.

“C’mon!” Tricky said, once they’d reached the base of the hill. Ahead of them was a winding path overshadowed by a forest of tall pine trees.

“The town’s this way. Coming?” she looked back at Espurr with large, scarlet, expectant eyes.

Espurr could have gone back to the clinic right then. She was sure Watchog, as huffy and puffy as he was, would’ve taken her. But the thought had already evaporated, barely worth the half-second it would have taken to think. Gears were turning in her head—a town? If she wanted to figure out where she was, and maybe find a way to get home, this was the perfect opportunity to do it. And if Tricky was so eager to roll out the red carpet for her…

“Sure,” she said, putting on a cheery front and taking a few bold steps forward, until she was under the shade of the pine tree path. “If it’s a short trip. Do you think we could be back before Nurse Audino?”

Tricky’s ears perked up mischievously.

“Yup!” she said. “You’re really coming?”

Espurr nodded.

The fox suddenly looked very excited and like she was going to say something else, but thought better of it and instead made to prance down the path, beckoning Espurr on with her tail. “Follow me!”

Ignoring the dull ache in her bandaged arm, Espurr began to hurry after Tricky on unsteady feet, doing her best to keep up.

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“This is the village square!” Tricky announced loudly.

Espurr, exiting after her, took a look around: The pine tree path had let out after a few minutes, and as the trees gave way they’d entered a large, round plaza with colourfully-roofed houses and tents set up on all sides. The transition from dirt to cobblestone felt odd against her feet. The houses all had domed, acorn roofs, and the paved stones of the square were arranged in colours like a spiral mosaic, trailing in spirals from green into purple into orange. Long, black poles extended above the square, topped with bluish glassy orbs that caught the light. A few pedestrians were going about their business, doing what Espurr had to assume was pointedly avoiding Tricky from the large berth they were given.

The shock made her dizzy where she stood. It all looked so… so different… she felt like crumpling to the ground. This was nothing like home. She was far away from home. Too far.

She was never going home.

Desperate gears started turning in her head, trying to find some straw to grasp: there seemed to be streetlights, so was there a phone box around anywhere? She couldn’t see one. What about that big, two-story building with the lights? Lights had to mean power, so–

“That’s the Café Connection,” said Tricky helpfully, seeing where she was staring. Café… Espurr’s eyes lit up. A familiar word!

“Does it ha—” she began hopefully.

“The village is larger,” Tricky prattled on obliviously, cutting Espurr off. “But this is where everything happens! You’ve got your Café Connection, your perfume tent—no-mon talks about the perfume tent—and your Kecleon’s stall!” She excitedly pointed them out as she mentioned them; the large, two-storey building with a sloped roof, a striking red teepee-like tent that resembled a bird in decoration, and a green-and-white tent with enough crates and shade behind it that it might as well have been a building on its own.

“Don’t steal from Kecleon,” Tricky added in a hush, leaning too close to Espurr’s ears for comfort. Espurr leaned back a bit. “Trust me.”

“And so, you see…”

Stray voices slipped into her ear, momentarily drawing her attention away towards the other side of the square, where what looked like a pink deer and something in a metal shell were arguing. Espurr couldn’t help it; once she picked up on a conversation in the background, she was listening in and that was that.

“He’s nine! We both know he wouldn’t walk into one of those places like that! Not unless somemon prompted him first…”

“Well, I’m getting to that…”

“What’s so interesting?” Tricky’s head curiously slid over to the side of Espurr’s. Upon seeing them, her eyes lit up, and suddenly Espurr was being pushed against her will towards the pair by the world’s most energetic fox.

“Deerling! Shelmet! Guysguysguysguysguys—”

Deerling, the elder one, looked up in annoyance, her face twisting into tiredness as Tricky pushed the hapless Espurr towards her.

“Um… hi?” Deerling raised a hoof in perplexed greeting. “Tricky, what are you up to now?” she asked with a much sterner tone. “I thought you were still in Nurse Audino’s office for jumping out of that tree.”

Espurr was suddenly dumped backwards onto the ground. She fell with a yelp. It hurt! Tricky pranced in front of her stiffly. “Guys—you are never gonna believe this—I found Nurse Audino’s kid! Really! See?”

“Loser alert…” Shelmet, the younger one, rolled his eyes.

“Tricky…” Deerling whacked her hoof against her face, then shook her head. She was clearly annoyed now. “Nurse Audino doesn’t have kids. Plus, she isn’t married, and she isn’t a psychic-type. How could this be her kid?” she stuck an irked hoof in Espurr’s direction.

“Well…” Tricky’s tail drooped. She bit back the pain. “She’s… adopted! Nurse Audino saved her life last night!” She nodded very quickly, like the speed would prove her point more. Then she looked at Espurr. “Right?”

Espurr was still uncrumpling herself from the ground, feeling quite nettled—from a broken arm to this?—but she figured out almost immediately that Tricky had just come up with the perfect cover story for her.

“Um, that’s right,” Espurr added, nodding.

The words felt like putty on her mouth, tumbling onto the ground in ways she couldn’t control. Ugh, talking to people just didn’t agree with her. Deerling looked surprised; Espurr figured she wasn’t very used to being wrong. She quickly stuck out her one good paw, trying to move along. “Hi. I’m Espurr.”

Her paw wasn’t taken. Deerling looked somewhat confused at the gesture. Espurr, wilting inside, retracted it. Looking down at Deerling’s hooves, maybe she should have realised that wasn’t normal here. Extremely smart of her.

Deerling shook off the confusion, and then she was all business again.

“Great,” she said, bowing her head quickly towards Espurr. “Deerling. See you in class tomorrow.” She ignored Tricky, who scowled and then turned her nose up with a ‘hmmph’, fixing her piercing glare on Shelmet again.

“And you…”

Shelmet, who had been trying to inch away, froze in terrified silence.

“Show me exactly where Goomy went in,” Deerling growled. “We need to get him out of there before his parents come looking!”

Without another word, a hopping Shelmet led Deerling off towards the large town archways ahead of them. In the distance, a path forking off towards dark-looking woods lay ahead.

“So-o-o-o-o….” came Tricky’s voice, making Espurr’s heart skip. “Are we following them, or are we following them?”

Espurr did not want to follow them.

“I wanted to look around the town a bit more,” said Espurr. She’d come here to get her bearings, not to take a detour. “Besides, I thought we were getting back quickly? Going after them would take a while…”

“Yeah, but…” Tricky’s tail swished between her legs. “C”mon, it’ll be fun!”

“Well, you can follow them,” Espurr offered. “I can look around a bit until you get back.”

And splitting here would give her an opportunity to explore the place and get back before they wound up in trouble.

“But I thought…” Tricky trailed off, disappointment ringing clear in her voice. “I thought you were gonna…”

“I don’t want to get into trouble,” Espurr admitted. Nor do I want all this to be for nothing.

“Hah!” Tricky laughed. It sounded fake. “I laugh in the face of trouble!”

She forced out a few laughs to make it sound more real. Espurr wasn’t buying it.

“You sound constipated,” she said.

“Pbht.” Tricky blew a raspberry. “Rude.”

“Don’t you worry about what Nurse Audino would say if she came back and we weren’t there?” Espurr said, a bit more assertively. “You promised it would be a quick trip.”

Tricky deflated. Even she couldn’t refute that was true. Assuming she’d made her point, Espurr turned around and started searching around the square, her pace quickening as she went. She just wanted to find a phone box. Maybe the Café Connection had one…

“Wait, c’mon!” Tricky cried dejectedly, running back and forth and orbiting Espurr as she walked away from the square. “It won’t even take that long! It’ll just be in and out! It’s probably nothing anyway!”

“Tricky, don’t you have other friends to play with?” Espurr pleaded tiredly. “Why can’t you go help those two who went ahead? Why do you need me?”

She was injured anyway. It wasn’t like she’d be much help at all.

“Because…” Tricky trailed off, her tail swooshing erratically. It cramped up and she shuddered in pain. “They don’t… you don’t… just, c’mon! Pleeeaaase?”

Espurr did her best to march forward and ignore her. Phone box. Just keep calm… Yesterday was beginning to flash through her head again—her harrowing trip through the woods, the strange pokemon that had chased her… She couldn’t go back into another spooky forest. She just couldn’t. What if it was the forest? What if they were still out there, looking for her? What if they… What if they found Deerling and Shelmet? And Goomy, whoever they were?

Espurr hadn’t realised she’d stopped walking until Tricky stopped too, her head tilting in confusion.

“…Does this mean you changed your mind?” she asked hopefully.

Espurr’s eyes widened with a gasp, and she suddenly tugged Tricky by her ear-fluff into a narrow alleyway without warning.

“Hide!”

“Hey, what gives—” Tricky started to fuss, but Espurr quickly put her good paw up against Tricky’s snout in a shushing motion.

“Shh,” she said. “Look. Nurse Audino’s coming back!”

Sure enough, the pink-and-yellow pokemon was leisurely hiking into the woods towards the school, unaware that the two kids she’d left at the school were watching her at this very moment. Espurr’s tail sunk a bit, curling around her. Oh, they were so done for. Could they even get back before Audino did?

“No biggie!” Tricky, unexpectedly, leapt up with new life. “We’ll just take the loooong way around. If we’re quick, she won’t even know we were missing! Follow me!”

She began to dash down the thin alleyway, stopping and turning back some twelve feet away from Espurr.

“C’mon, slowpoke! She yelled back from across the alley. “At this rate, taking the long way around won’t be a shortcut!”

Espurr just couldn’t move as fast as Tricky could, and that was a fact. She kept stumbling over her still-unsteady legs and needing to lean against the wall for balance every several strides. How was she even going to keep up, at this rate?

Audino had been right. She did need rest.

~\({O})/~

Music of the Week!

There’s Something Wrong – Yuki Kajiura