Capsicum Capture

Each von Hedwig rode mounted behind a soldier. Claire wanted Bettina to ride with one of the other children, but she insisted she was brave enough and big enough to be on her own.

“Not afraid of firecracker man,” she said.

“More of a pepper, I should think,” Adolphus said. He was cheerful. Being arrested was much more exciting than hoeing a field. It had taken him forever to mount; he thoroughly examined the equine plant creature, walking around it six times before the red soldier tossed him over the back.

“Cayenne, maybe,” Mirabelle said.

Adolphus tried to engage anyone in a discussion on how soldiers are always soldiers, whatever nation, even if they’re vegetables, but Gerhardt was too consumed with worry to participate, and the girls were riding too far away. He wiled the rest of the morning trying to converse with the soldier in front of him.

They followed paths leading away from the river, but still roughly south, the direction they had been traveling before. They passed many small farms like Ifan’s, then larger homesteads with more extensive fields.

They stopped at a farm for lunch. It was a larger operation than Ifan and Gwen’s, with large, barn-sized clumps of shrubbery, and herds of yellow and green creatures grazing in the fields. (“Or possibly flocks,” Claire said, “depending on if they’re more cow-like or sheep-like.” She was a stickler for that sort of detail.)

A soldier shouted outside the shrub house, and a woman came out. She had a deep red face and short frills of purple petals on her head, where hair would be if she were a mammal instead of a plant. Like Ifan, she kept her eyes down, and ran back into the house after only a moment. Soldiers and children dismounted, and formed concentric circles on the lawn, soldiers surrounding children.

“They’re called Capsicum Guards,” Adolphus told his siblings. “They each carry a baton-truncheon sort of thing and bow and arrow. No metal, no gunpowder.”

“How do you know what they’re called?” Mirabelle demanded.

“Look, if you’re going to be a renown explorer, you can’t let a little thing like language get in your way.”

Annabelle questioned the fellow closest to her and got the same answer. “Capsicum Guards,” she confirmed. “They work for the Queen.”

“There’s a queen?” Gerhardt did not appear eased by this revelation.

Two green-faced, purple-frilled girls came out of the house with cups of water. They served the soldiers first and ran back inside. Food for the guards followed, and eventually water and food for the children. The serving girls moved quickly and kept their eyes down.

“They’re dressed nicer than Gwen and Ifan,” Annabelle observed. “Do you think they’re servants, or is this their house?”

“They’re afraid,” Mirabelle said.

“So was Ifan,” Annabelle agreed.

“We would be, too,” Claire said firmly, “if we weren’t von Hedwigs.”

They remounted after lunch and rode. Soon after their break, open fields closed into forest. The forest path was wide and kept clear of seeking vines and undesirable undergrowth. The children found the woodland view monotonous, as they rode several hours though forest. At last the path opened again into another valley. A much larger river, wide and brown, carried boats and barges between docks and settlements stretching into the distance, as far as the children could see.

“Look at all the shrubberies!” Adolphus exclaimed. “I mean, buildings, of course.”

“There’s something odd about this,” Claire said.

“You mean, the way the houses are grown rather than built, and all the people are vegetables?” Annabelle asked.

“There’s something else,” Claire said. “I just can’t put my finger on it.”

Mirabelle’s captor spoke, pointing down into the valley.

“He says we’re nearly to the palace,” she said. “And we shall bow before the Queen and learn her pleasure. And he doesn’t make it sound very pleasurable.”

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Photo credit by Perplexing