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Andie’s Adventures: The Boots and the Lion

  By Kaelan Cessna

  Copyright 2014 Kaelan Cessna

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  Cover Photo Credit:

  Ben Salter-https://www.flickr.com/photos/ben_salter

  “Cat” -taken November 13, 2006

  Used under Creative Commons Attribution License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0

  Modified with Waterlogue

  Table of Contents

  Andie’s Adventures: The Boots and the Lion

  About the Author

  Andie’s Adventures: The Boots and the Lion

  Andie crept along the castle wall, or tried to creep. The boots may have been too small for Rupert, but they were a bit too big for Andie and they clopped loudly on the cobblestones despite her best efforts. She reached the corner of the wall and peeped around it. The gate was just where Rupert had said it would be. She dipped her hand into the pouch at her side and wrapped her fingers around the key.

  “It’s magic,” Rupert had said as he’d given it to her. “It will open any lock.” That sounded too good to be true, but the boots had worked when she’d tried them, so why wouldn’t the key? One way or the other, she was about to find out.

  Stepping around the corner, Andie clomped toward the little gate, forcing herself to walk with confidence just like Molly always told her: shoulders back, head up, arms at her sides. It might have worked better if the boots hadn’t made her feel like a little girl trying on her mother’s shoes. But she pressed on. She was half way to the gate when she noticed the shadowy figures lounging around across the street. They perked up as she passed, watching her with hungry eyes. Andie walked faster.

  Clop, clop, clop, clop.

  She made it to the gate and plunged her hand into the pouch for the key. But before she could pull it out, a heavy hand gripped her shoulder and spun her around. She let out a frightened squeak and jerked away from the hand, pressing her back against the gate. Three big men stood leering down at her with crooked yellow teeth. Their clothes were tattered and filthy, and they smelled like sweaty socks mixed with week-old garbage. One of them stepped closer.

  “Wot’s a little gorl loike yew doing out on a noight loike this?” he said through his crooked grin. Andie pressed herself harder against the wall and didn’t answer. She was thinking frantically. Rupert hadn’t told her what to do if something like this happened. What could she do? If she tried to open the gate, the nasty men would grab her and do who knows what with her. But she didn’t have anything to fight them off with, and even if she had brought a weapon of some sort, she was nowhere near big and strong enough to stand a chance against them. That’s when the idea hit her: the boots! All she had to do was think of an animal that was bigger and scarier than the big, nasty men. An elephant? Big, but not really scary. She needed something with teeth and claws. A lion!

  Squeezing her eyes tight shut, Andie pictured a lion in her mind: big, golden body, wide mouth with big sharp teeth, big paws with wicked claws. She felt the tingle pass through her as her body transformed, then she opened her eyes. Somehow the nasty men had gotten three times bigger and she had to crane her neck back to see past their knees. They were looking down at her with confused scowls that broke into wide grins. One of them guffawed.

  “Ooh, look at the widdle kitty!” The others broke into harsh, rasping laughter.

  Kitty? Andie thought. She looked down at herself. The golden fur was right, and she had paws. But why were they so little? A cat? No, no, no! I’m supposed to be a lion!

  A chunky hand snagged the skin on the back of Andie’s neck and lifted her off her feet. She dangled helplessly in the air as he raised her up in front of his face.

  “Wot’cha going to do now, kitty?” he said, shaking her roughly. Andie felt paralyzed. She could hardly breathe and her whole body was trembling. He leaned in close to her face, showing his mangled teeth in a foul grin, and raised his other hand toward her. Something inside Andie snapped, and with an earsplitting shriek she lashed out at the ugly face in front of her. The man screamed and dropped her like she was red hot, clutching at four bloody scratches across his nose. Andie hit the ground on all four feet and stood frozen in place for a moment. The men stared at their wounded comrade with their mouths hanging open. Then, still holding his nose, he pointed at Andie and howled.

  “Arghhhhh! Don’t just stand there, idjits! Kill that cat!” The other two snarled in response and dove at Andie. Without thinking, she dodged their hands, striking at them with her claws. They stumbled and yowled in pain, and Andie jumped from the ground onto the back of one and from there to the top of the castle wall. The men shouted at her from the street below, but she balanced on the wall ledge and reveled in her newfound powers of agility. That is, until she slipped and fell over the other side into the castle grounds.

  A tree branch broke her fall and she latched on to it with her claws. But her back feet didn’t catch the bark and she slipped again, landing on the soft grass on all fours. Someone gasped, and Andie looked up. A woman was sitting in the grass not far away, an open book in her lap. She had sky blue eyes and cherry red lips, and her long wavy hair was the color of polished gold and made Andie think of her own flat, mouse-brown hair with disgust. Laying the book on the ground, the woman stood up gracefully, her gown swirling around her in the breeze.

  It’s her, Andie thought. The princess. The woman took a few steps toward her, then paused and tilted her head like a curious puppy. A little smile touched her lips and crinkled the corners of her eyes.

  “Well, well,” she said. Her voice was clear and melodic, just like a princess’s voice should be. “I seldom have visitors in my garden, but never have I been visited by a cat wearing boots. This is a rare treat, indeed.”

  Andie blinked. Cat. I’m still a cat, she thought. Wait, what does she mean, ‘wearing boots’? She looked down at her back feet. Sure enough, though all her other clothes had been replaced by tawny fur, the boots were still there. They’d shrunk to her new size and changed shape to fit her feline feet. Even stranger was the fact that they fit better now than they had when she’d been human still. Rupert didn’t tell me the boots would do this, she thought, then stiffened suddenly. Oh! The princess! Rupert’s message! Andie pushed herself up to stand on her back feet, tottering only for a moment before finding her balance. Then she bowed deeply to the princess.

  “Your highness,” she said in the most important sounding voice she could muster. It came out much higher than she’d expected, and a little bit furrier. She cleared her throat and tried again, reaching for the letter that was in her pouch. “Your highness, I bring you a message from—” She stopped. The pouch was gone. Rupert’s pouch with the magic key and his letter to the princess in it had disappeared like the rest of her clothes. Andie patted her fur and looked around frantically, but neither the pouch nor its contents were anywhere to be found. “No, no, no!” she cried. “It can’t be gone!”

  “What’s gone, Kitty?” the princess asked, her perfect eyebrows going up. Andie ignored her. It was the boots. They’d made her clothes disappear when she turned into a cat, so they must have made the pouch disappear, too. All she had to do was turn back. She closed her eyes tight shut and thought hard about being human again. But when she opened her eyes, nothing had changed. She tried again, but still nothing
happened. She sat down on the grass, her throat tightening as she fought back a sob.

  “What’s gone?” the princess said again, more gently this time.

  “The message,” Andie said, using her front paw to wipe a tear that trickled down through her whiskers. “It’s the whole reason I came here, but I don’t have it. And now I’m stuck like this, too.” The princess rushed forward and knelt down in front of Andie, reaching with her long white fingers to stroke the soft fur on Andie’s ears. It’s no wonder Rupert loves her, Andie thought. She’s perfect.

  “Oh, don’t cry, Kitty,” the princess said kindly, her blue eyes soft and sympathetic. “Perhaps you can tell me what the message said?”

  Andie shook her head.

  “He wouldn’t let me read it. He told me just to give it to you.”

  The princess cocked her head again.

  “Who?”

  Andie opened her mouth to answer, but suddenly all the hair along the back of her neck stood up on end and another voice broke in on their conversation.

  “Dear princess, whomever are you talking to?” it said. It was thin and nasally, and it belonged to the thin and hook-nosed man who came around the bend in the path at that moment. With him came another man who had a big beard and bigger belly, dressed in purple and scarlet with a big gold crown on his head.

  The king! Andie thought and jumped to her feet. The princess stood up and swept a curtsy.

  “Why, Father! Lord Callum! You startled me.”

  The king spread his arms toward her and smiled warmly.

  “Gwendolen, my dear, forgive us. We were enjoying the morning sun and thought we heard voices.” He looked around the garden and frowned. “But it would appear that we were mistaken.”

  “Oh, no, Father,” said the princess, shaking her head. “You were not mistaken, for I was talking to this cat just now.”

  The king threw back his head and laughed, but Lord Callum looked down at her boots and his eyes narrowed. Andie felt the hair on her neck creep up again as he stared at her.

  “To the cat?” the king said, still chuckling. “My dear, aren’t you a bit old for make-believe?”

  “Oh, but it’s not make-believe, Father,” the princess protested, her cheeks flushing a delicate shade of pink. She gestured at Andie. “This cat says she comes with a message.” The king turned now to look at Andie. Her heart was fluttering wildly in her chest as she bowed low, and she was glad that they couldn’t see her blush through the fur on her cheeks. The king’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. Lord Callum, though, merely smiled.

  “A message, you say?” he said in his nasally tone. “And what is the nature of this message?”

  The king cleared his throat with a loud Harrumph! and tried to act like a message-bearing cat with boots on was perfectly normal.

  “Yes, indeed,” he said. “And who is it from?”

  “It’s, ah, it’s from, uh…” Andie stammered and trailed off as she tried to figure out what to say. Rupert had specifically said not to deliver the message to anyone but the princess and that things would get very bad if anyone else should find out he was nearby. Besides all that, she did not like or trust Lord Callum one little bit. There was something about him that made her very uncomfortable.

  “Well?” the king prompted. “Or can’t you speak, after all?”

  Panic rose up in Andie’s chest, making it hard to breathe.

  “It’s from, ah, the, ah…the Marquis of Carabas!” she exclaimed triumphantly, throwing her paws out in a grand gesture. The king and Lord Callum looked at each other in confusion, and the princess did the puppy thing with her head again.

  “Who?” they all said in unison.

  “The Marquis of Carabas,” Andie said again. “He’s my, ah, my master—yes! And he sends his greetings to you, great and mighty king.” She made another deep bow as she said this, her mind racing. It was hard to think up a story and tell it at the same time.

  The king puffed his chest out.

  “Your master is a wise and courteous man, then. Is that all the message he sends?”

  Andie shook her head.

  “No, indeed, sire.” She had to figure out how to fix this. She’d lost Rupert’s message and couldn’t get it to the princess. So, what if she brought the princess to him instead? Her ears perked up with the idea. “My master, the Marquis, humbly requests that you and the princess come, ah, come meet him at the river.” Mentally, she winced. That has to be the worst excuse ever.

  Lord Callum scowled.

  “Why on earth would the king take his daughter and go down to the river to meet this scalawag master of yours? It’s some sort of trap, I’ll wager.”

  Andie shook her head frantically.

  “No, no, not a trap at all! The Marquis merely wishes to, um, wishes to…give the king a gift! A gift to honor the king and his daughter.” She looked up at the princess. “The Marquis thinks very highly of them and desires their friendship.” The princess frowned, not understanding at first, but then her eyes widened. She looked up at the king.

  “I think we should go, Father. I think I’m beginning to like this Marquis, aren’t you?”

  The king hesitated, but only for a moment. The word “gift” was too tempting to resist.

  “Oh, very well. Callum, order the carriage brought around, would you?”

  Lord Callum looked at him in shock, but whether it was shock at the king’s rash decision or at being ordered around like a servant Andie couldn’t tell. He glared at Andie, then turned on his heel and stormed back up the path. Andie beamed up at the princess and the princess winked at her.

  “Thank you, sire,” Andie said to the king, bowing again. “I’d better go ahead of you to let my master know that you are coming.”