Chapter Twenty-Nine - North Hill

Dreamer waggled from side to side as the carriage rode up and down the hilly countryside. It was more fun to waggle than to sit still, and if the mortals across from her told her to stop, she could just ignore them because they didn’t matter.

“Almost there,” Charlotte said.

“Really?” Dreamer asked between one waggle and the next.

... When did a waggle begin? Was each tilt to the side a single waggle, or was a waggle a full back-and-forth? Maybe a waggle was the entire act of waggling, regardless of how much or how little there was. After all, going for ‘a run’ didn’t really imply any sort of distance necessary for it to be considered a run.

“Yep, I can see the town already. Not a very big place,” Charlotte said.

“Six Hills isn’t that impressive from afar,” One of the mortals who didn’t matter said. “But the town’s spread out over a wide area. It’s nearly as big as Five Peaks, but without nearly as much density.”

Dreamer didn’t understand how a town could be thick, but she had other things to think about. Maybe she could ask Abigail about her waggle conundrum? Abigail was smart. But that would have to wait for eight or so months.

“Um,” Charlotte said. It was a very concerning sort of um.

“What is it?” Dreamer asked.

“I think I saw something when we crested that hill. There’s a group blocking the road ahead.”

The others in the carriage all tensed except for the old lady. “Bandits?” The one with the armour and the weapons asked. “So close to the town?”

“I don’t think so,” Charlotte asked. She had her face pressed up against the glass, but Dreamer imagined she couldn’t see all that well.

“Let me see,” the man said. He opened the door and stood up, most of him sticking out of the carriage to see the road ahead. “It’s the Inquisition,” he said when he swung back in.

“Oh, them,” Dreamer said. For some reason that got the old lady to laugh.

The carriage rumbled onwards, and Charlotte shifted next to Dreamer. She had a hand on the hilt of her sword, and her other hand snaked down and grabbed Dreamer’s.

The carriage stopped, and the guy sitting in front of it talked to some people who circled around the carriage. Then the door opened and a young guy with a rather small hat poked his head in, mustaches twitching as he looked everyone over. “Hello citizens,” he said.

“Can we help you, sir?” one of the well-dressed mortals asked.

“Just keeping an eye on things. Would you mind terribly telling me where you’re destined for?”

The people in the cart rattled off some places that Dreamer didn’t care about until it came to Dreamer’s turn. “The place with the plushies,” she said.

The inquisition guy’s smile grew a little strained. “Ah, that’s on North Hill. That area’s quarantined for now.”

“It is?” Charlotte asked. “What for?”

“Inquisition business, ma’am,” he said with another lame smile.

Dreamer sniffed. “If you told us, it’d be our business too,” Dreamer said.

“It’s fine,” Charlotte said. “We’re heading over to the, uh, East Hill. I have family there. But I promised her we’d go see the plushie place. Um, some other time, maybe,” she said.

“Mmhmm,” the guy said. “Well, thanks for your time everyone, have a safe ride, and welcome to Six Hills.” He backed up and closed the door, then the carriage started riding again.

The old lady sniffed. “There’s no East Hill here. Two of the hills are to the east. No one could agree on which one should be called the East hill, so neither are. At least, that’s the local legend from back when I was about this brat’s age.”

“Oh,” Charlotte said.

“It’s fine. You don’t owe it to anyone to tell them what you’re up to,” the old lady said.

The carriage stopped at a place in town with a bunch of horses and stables and stuff, and everyone got out in a hurry. Charlotte and Dreamer didn’t really bring anything with them, so they took off hand-in-hand and crossed a busy street.

There were plenty of people around, but not nearly as many of them as there were in Five Peaks. It also smelled a lot less like bathrooms outside, and there was more room between the homes. The town might have been as big as Five Peaks, but a lot of it was trees and gardens and little barns with chickens and other tasty animals in pens.

There were six hills though, which pleased Dreamer because if there were only five or if there were seven it would have been a very silly place.

“That’s the North Hill,” Charlotte said. She pointed to one of the hills. There were factories to the east (Abigail had taught Dreamer her directions in a few months) and to the west were some nice homes atop some of the hills that way. The hill to the south had a little castle on it.

“That’s where the plushie person is,” Dreamer said.

“Apparently,” Charlotte agreed. “But that Inquisition officer said that it was quarantined.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Dreamer said.

Charlotte hummed. “That’s when you block an area off to stop people from going there. Usually because there’s something dangerous.”

“Oh,” Dreamer said. “Well, I’m more dangerous, so we can go there no problem.”

Charlotte reached down and ruffled Dreamer’s head. “A few problems, actually. We want to be sneaky, right?”

“Do we?” Dreamer asked.

“We do,” Charlotte said. “We don’t just want to reach the shop, we want to get a commission. Which means that we need to talk to the artisan that makes those plushies. Then they’ll need to make your gift.”

“Oh, right,” Dreamer said.

“That’ll take some time. If we get into a big fight with the Inquisition, they’ll be all over the hill, and you can bet that it’ll be a lot harder to convince the artisan to make anything.”

Dreamer pinched her lips together. Why did things always need to be so complicated? Back when she just floated through the void doing nothing for millenia, she never had to think so much. “Okay, fine,” she said.

Charlotte nodded. “It’s getting on in the day. We’ll try to sneak over, see if we can get that commission of yours, and then figure things out from there. Get ready to fight if we need to. But, ah, try not to kill anyone.”

“Okay,” Dreamer agreed. It was easy to agree to that. She was trying not to kill anyone already, so technically she’d succeeded already.

Charlotte gave Dreamer her hand again. “Alright, let’s get sneaking!”

***