In short, I refused to go anywhere until my period was over. I mean, doing anything during that time of the month is bad enough, isn’t it? Let alone travelling in the most primitive circumstances.
We found a nice little spot for our tent, somewhere a bit off the road, though still close enough to not get lost. Some gnarled old trees stood guard for us, stretching their old and windy boughs over us like soldiers raising their swords. I liked them.

Our food was scarce but we managed. One of the few positive things about travelling during the autumn season is that there are plenty wild apples, nuts and some late berries. It was a diet excellent for losing weight, but at least we were not starving.
Millie quickly began referring to our temporary immobile encampment as Camp Bleedin’, which at first I thought was a little vulgar, though I quickly began copying her.

No, I’m not going to tell you how I made it through without toilet paper or any other sanitary facilities. Let me just say that it wasn’t a pleasure.
This outdoor holiday did have a bright side, however. Longer stays in towns like Devilswood or Claywold had been more like a necessary evil - well, strictly speaking, this was a necessity too, but not particularly evil. I found that I enjoyed the open-air living. It tasted like freedom, more so than Low-of-the-Road had been. Back home, I had my sheep to tend to, as well as my orchard and all the other small chores that needed doing, and Gran was too old for most of them. All in all, there was only one thing that I really, sorely missed at this moment: a steaming, sweet scenting cup of tea.

Millie went out quite a bit. Officially to gather nuts and anything else that we found edible, but I knew she lingered longer than was necessary. When I asked her what she did then, she briefly showed me the sketch block that we had used to win the spelling competition. I saw a glimpse of trees and plants, but she wouldn’t show me the whole thing, saying that she was no great artist.

This time-out lasted for almost a week. By the end of it, I was feeling much better again, and also rather proud that I had made it through without tea and cookies.
I had already snuggled in a pair of blankets, intending to have an early night, when Millie came dashing in the tent, looking jumpy and anxious.
‘Something’s out there!’ she said breathlessly.
I sat straight up again. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I just saw…something - behind the trees.’
‘Well, that’s not something to worry about. It could have been a deer or something.’
She frantically shook her head. ‘It was nothing like that. It was tall and straight and...it looked like a human.’
‘Oh…well…’ I said, trying to remain rational. ‘We are close to a road after all. Other people can wander around here. Maybe it was a huntsman or a lumberjack or someone collection forest fruits, just like you.’
‘I don’t think that was it,’ Millie said in a sort of low voice. She sat down, crossed-legged. ‘This…thing, it wasn’t wearing any normal clothes. It seemed completely covered, like wearing a shroud or something. And I saw a glimpse of its face, too. It was all white.’
‘You mean to say this person was pale?’
‘No. I mean, the face was completely white. No eyes, no mouth. Just blank, like a piece of paper.’
Goosebumps raised on my arms. ‘Are you sure about this?’
‘Yeah. And when it noticed that I was looking, it turned around and left.’
We stared at each other for a while.
Finally, I said: ‘It may just have been a person. Maybe you saw it wrong.’
Millie drew a blanket up to her chin. ‘And if I didn’t?’
‘ Err…’

Apart from the dancing lights at night, there seemed to be nothing eerie or otherworldly about this forest. And if there was, it kept away from us. Certainly during day time.
‘Even so, you said it had left, right? So it’s gone now.’
‘I guess…but what if it comes back? Oh, what if it is this thing that makes the little lights?’
‘I think they’re just will-o-the-wisps,’ I said, braver than I felt. ‘And anyway, they receded when we approached, didn’t they? I don’t think they are harmful.’
Nevertheless, we kept our lantern burning that night, and the following night.
It was three days after that incident that we packed our things and moved on. We travelled on the road, but the heavy rainfall had made the path muddy and slippery. It didn’t take long for our clothes to become specked by mud, and our hair got tangled and dull. 

Dusk came earlier almost every day. It was a rainy sort of afternoon. The sky had been nothing but a grey, unwavering canopy all day long and now darkness fell upon the lands once more. I think we had almost reached the edge of the forest, because the trees were getting sparser, allowing more light to leak through the branches down to the mossy ground. Here and there, whenever we climbed a hill, I could see cropland in the distance.
We set up our tent in a small clearing and I told Millie to help me gather firewood. Blankets would no longer suffice against the chill, I reckoned.
It was hard getting a bonfire started what with all the wet wood. I had very little survival experience, but Brandon - who, when not drunk, was a rather skilful scout - had once told me how to do it, in a just-in-case scenario. So I placed a layer of stones on the bottom of our fire-pit so that the damp soil would not hinder the flames.
Millie watched as I trial-and-errored myself through the task, finally achieving a satisfactory fire to keep us warm. 
‘Do we still have those apples?’ I asked.
Millie nodded and retrieved them from our rucksack.
‘I reckon we can bake them now that we have some fire going.’

We were just having a cosy evening, wondering aloud why we hadn’t thought of making a campfire way earlier, when Millie suddenly dropped the baked apple she was about to put in her mouth, and grabbed my shoulder.
‘Look, Daffodil!’
I swallowed a bite, looking around in the twilight.
In a little distance from us, where the trees began to rise from the earth, the dancing lights had appeared. I cocked my head, trying to see if there was something particular about them this time. They seemed to stay well out of the fire’s range, bopping up and down between the trees as if they were performing a dance we had no idea of. Narrowing my eyes, and aided by the firelight, I could once more catch a glimpse of dusky little figures moving beneath them.
‘What’s the -’ I began, wanting to ask why she had been so jumpy about this, when I became aware of a shadowy figure, standing even further behind in the gloom.
‘Is that him?’ I asked huskily, trying to get a better look. ‘Is that the person you saw earlier?’
She nodded, staring in the same direction. ‘I don’t think it’s a person though.’ Her voice had moved up in pitch.

I got up, holding up the lantern as I went.
‘Excuse me?’ I called. Millie began making hushing noises next to me, but I stepped past her, holding the lantern above my head. ‘Excuse me, sir…err, or madam? Can I help you?’
As I drew closer, I glimpsed a chalk white face, featureless.
‘Okay, I guess you’re not just a person after all,’ I said hastily, receding. ‘Never mind. I’ll just…err, leave you to your business then.’
When I returned to the bonfire, he had disappeared. I trembled as I sat down again, glad that the fire was between me and the tree’s edge once more.
‘I guess you are right, after all.’
Part of me refused to believe it, but the dominant other part of me was shaking like a scared little creature. ‘He looked like a ghost or something.’
‘Oh, don’t say that,’ Millie squeaked.
For comfort, I took a large bite out of a baked apple. The taste of it seemed to bring me back to my senses a little. ‘I’m sure that we’re safe as long as we just leave them alone.’
‘You think so? It feels more like it followed us.’
‘Why would it follow us?’ I said, giving a high little laugh. ‘Let’s just pay no attention to it. Three days, maybe less, and then we’ll be out of these woods.’
When I checked the place the ghost had been the following morning, there was no trace that anyone (or anything) had ever stood there. No bent twig, no trampled ferns - absolutely zilch that suggested anything otherworldly.
It reminded me of the disappearing trail that had caused us to get lost.
When I told Millie this, she said: ‘But didn’t you say that he had caused that? With this network thingy?’
I did not have to guess whom she meant with he.
‘Well, he said so,’ I answered. ‘I mean, he never actually literally admitted it, but it was perfectly clear that he…and besides, the river crossing!’
‘I know,’ Millie said. ‘But he also said that this forest was bewitched, didn’t he?’
‘I guess he was right there,’ I muttered, displeased to give him the credits.  

We moved on - what else could we do? Though we thought we heard stuff outside our tent the following night, we refused to come and to look for it. Instead, we pretended as if nothing was happening and in the morning, the place was completely deserted.
This way, we made it out of the forest. We were still al long shot away from a town or village, however. The hills were higher than back in Low-of-the-Road, forcing us to exhaust ourselves more with climbing. On the other hand, the view was sometimes quite spectacular.
With the forest, I thought we had left the ghost behind us as well. We slept soundly again, even extinguishing the beeswax candle. This candle was no more than a stump by now, so we only used it when we really had to. Luckily, with the trees mostly gone, we had a clear view of the sky again. If it wasn’t raining or clouded, we had a pale autumn moon to guard us.

One day, late in the afternoon, we emerged from a steep hill when a sea of soft whites and greys suddenly spread out before us. I heard a sharp whistle, and then saw two dogs dashing around the flock of sheep. For me, it was a sign that we had entered the living world again.
The shepherd was a gentle, elderly man with high leather boots and a green coat. He invited us to stay for dinner, which we gladly accepted. After days living on whatever the forest happened to provide us, it was wonderful to fill our bellies with a warm, good stew.
‘You girls went all the way from Devilswood through the forest?’ the shepherd asked, after we told him of our experiences.
‘Well, I’m impressed. Most folks take their time for a detour, even though the wood’s got a road through it. They say the place is full of Fairy.’
‘So we’ve heard,’ I said through a mouthful of food.
‘But you two had no problems?’
‘Well, we did see some stuff…’ I swallowed. ‘But it mostly left us alone. Isn’t that right, Millie?’
‘Yeah,’ she agreed, looking over her shoulder. ‘At least, I think they did.’
‘She is still scared that the thing we saw out there is following us,’ I explained. ‘It was like a man, only with a white blot for a face. He never spoke, but appeared a couple of times in different places.’
‘A faceless man?’ the shepherd said, chewing slowly. ‘I haven’t heard of that. But there are countless tales about dwelling lights. Folk sometimes call them Ghost Lights or Corpse Candles.’
‘We saw those!’ Millie said. ‘A lot of them. But Daffodil said they were Will-o-the-Wisps.’
‘Well, whatever you call them… It is said that they lure travellers into following them. And once you do, you’ll be led all the way to some sinister place, until they suddenly extinguish and you find yourself all alone in a dark and unfamiliar site. That’s what’s said.’
‘I didn’t think they were doing much luring,’ I said, giving myself a second helping. ‘I thought they were mostly minding their own business, just like we.’
‘Hmm,’ mumbled the shepherd. ‘Well, as for me - I’ll make sure I don’t wander in too deep. Friendly lights or no friendly lights.’
Millie and I exchanged a glance. I knew what we were both thinking: even if the dancing, glowing dots had been Corpse Candles or hostile things, the pale faced creature, the ghost, had seemed far more threatening to us.



Chapter Seven
The Cult of Charming Men

Our next stop was Pines Mark; a rather insignificant rural community much like my own Low-of-the-Road, only bigger. It was a cross point to several bigger and notoriously more significant places and so, being the road to everywhere, it had become the centre of nothing.
We were just walking down Main Street, and I was wondering if I should find myself a job to cover the tavern expenses, when we came upon a small crowd, gathered around something I couldn’t quite see.
‘What do you think that is?’ Millie asked curiously. She got on tiptoes, craning her neck. ‘There’s some kind of stage up there.’
‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘Not another tournament. Wait, where’s your sword?’
Millie giggled. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got it right here. It seems more like a puppet play or something.’
I sighed. ‘We have no time for puppet plays. We need to find a place to stay and it better be cheap. Maybe if we offer to help with the dishes, we can -’
But Millie wasn’t listening. She elbowed her way through the people before us, leaving me behind. I rolled my eyes. What was so special about a puppet play anyway? Wasn’t that more for little kids? Then again, she sometimes did behave like a little girl, what with all this “I wanna be a princess!” stuff.
I followed her.

‘Excuse me,’ one guy said looking down on me with an annoyed expression. ‘We’re tryin’ to watch too, you know. There’s no need to go all pushy.’
‘Oh, go jump the queue for all I care,’ I retorted. ‘Where did she go, that twit?’
As it turned out, she had made her way all the way up to the front row.
I looked up at the platform. Someone had raised three barrels on it, decorating a few planks over it. It mostly resembled a primitive counter in a shop, but I noticed how hand dolls were hopping over it. The performers had hidden themselves behind the barrels.
‘Skeet does not glow in the dark!’ one of the dolls was calling out now, with a shockingly low voice that didn’t suit its look at all: it was a prince-like doll, all dressed up with a mantle of velvet and lace, and a gold glittery circlet on its angelic head.
‘How would you know?’ bellowed a second doll. This voice was more raw than deep, but still rather offending, seeing as this was a girl doll. ‘It could be!’
‘If your semen is phosphorescent, you need medical help!’
The public roared with laughter. So did Millie. I raised my eyebrows.
‘Anyway!’ the low voiced prince said, ‘let us not linger over these trivial matters! Let us go forward into the kingdom to complete our quest!’
‘Right,’ the girl - I suppose she must be some sort of royal lady - said. ‘We shall find the fiendish Merope and finish her…forever!’
Around me, people began to applaud and to cheer. I changed from raised eyebrows to a frown.

The dolls momentarily disappeared to make place for different scenery: a pair of hands quickly set up a plate of painted wood, depicting a dark castle.
I recognized what must be a corridor, lit by torches. 
Another doll was brought up. It had wavy black hair and was dressed in a hideous gown, all lacy and shocking pink.
‘Who wields the magical artefact that is able to bring me down?’ the puppet shrieked.
It made me want to cover my ears.
‘Oh, goodness me! They are entering my feebly guarded castle gates! I shall quickly hide in the dungeons. Surely not even they will seek me there!’
Two hands popped up again, replacing the current castle décor with one that seemed like an entrance hall. The heroes appeared again.
‘Now where is that fiendish excuse of a princess?’ boomed the delicate-looking prince. ‘Where hides she?’
‘Yes!’ exclaimed the princess. ‘Because I am here to put an end to her tyrannical reign!’
‘She’s down in the dungeons!’ a person in the public yelled. My eyebrows went up once more and I was beginning to think that this whole show had been developed by someone who had thought that people should exercise more eyebrow gymnastics.
‘Then down the dungeons we go!’
The pair of hands switched scenery once more, and we watched as the two heroes approached the Merope doll.
‘Oh drats,’ it said. ‘You’ve found me. Well, never mind. AHA! So here are the brave souls that dare to penetrate my kingdom!’
‘Aha!’ cried the princess doll on her turn. ‘So you are the wicked, foul person that dares to call herself princess of Archeon!’
‘Indeed I am! Ha-ha! You have come to slay me, but you have not counted on my troops of highly trained trolls!’ The Merope doll shrieked with laughter. This time, I really did put my hands to my ears.
‘Can we go now?’ I asked Millie.
She fluttered a hand. ‘Nooo. I wanna watch this!’
‘Fine,’ I snapped. ‘I’ll go on without you then.’
I turned, preparing to leave, when I noticed the sign that was hung up above the platform.

The Cult Of Charming Men
Presents
Merope’s Fall
A play written and performed by
The Cult of Charming Men
Street performers & puppeteers

‘The cult of nutters, more like,’ I muttered, before leaving the crowd.
It took some time before Millie joined me again. She was all flushed and her eyes shone.
‘That was the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while!’ she declared.
‘You have an interesting taste.’
‘Oh, and guess what!’
‘What?’
‘I asked someone about these guys, and it turns out we’ve actually heard of them before. Can you guess?’
‘No,’ I said wearily. ‘Amaze me.’
‘He said that the Cult of Charming Men was more commonly referred to as the Rough Rebels! Do you remember how they came up in Claywold? In the Common Barrel Bar?’
‘I think I recall something like that…So?’
‘So! This could be awfully important for us, Daff!’
I raised my eyebrows - I was beginning to get real good at this. ‘Daff?’
She did not hear me. She had taken the rucksack from me and was practically dancing ahead of me, babbling: ‘…I mean, this can’t be a coincidence, can it? It’s just too lucky! I really think we should find them later, Daffodil, we really can help each other out, I think…Daffodil?’
‘Yeah, that’s a fine plan,’ I said, unable to restrain myself from heaving a desperate sigh. ‘We’ve already seen what amazing strategists they are. And if we still don’t know which way to go, we’ll just ask the public. No problem!’
‘Oh, don’t be like that - you know as well as I do that this was just a spoof. I mean, it’s all about raising awareness, isn’t it?’
‘Absolutely,’ I answered. ‘And now that you mention it; are you aware that we still lack a room for the night and the money to pay for it?’


Chapter Eight
Identities: mine, hers, theirs and hers again

In the end, we found an inn-keeper prepared to give us shelter in exchange for chores.
I had never imagined the dishes of such a place would be so greasy and generally dirty.
Millie had ceased talking only when I forced her to eat her meal before we got to our work, but as soon as we stood in the kitchen, our sleeves rolled up high, she was already back to the chatting.  As I had been pretending to be deaf for a while now, it was the inn-keeper that fell victim of this.
‘…I mean, generally speaking, would you say you feel oppressed by the current monarchy? At all?’
‘Oh, I dunno,’ the poor man stuttered. ‘I mean, the taxes are a bit high, but say for yourself, when aren’t they, eh? Eheheh.’
‘Well, you put on a brave face,’ Millie pushed on, pulling her face in a sort of compassionate look, ‘but my guess is that a lot of people have actually no real means of living beside the absolute necessities. What I’ve seen so far, Archeon is not very prosperous, is it?’
‘Err -’ the man said.
‘And tell me honestly! Do you not think that supreme executive power should be derived from a mandate from the masses and not inherited by the family that happens to have most of your money?’
‘I -’ began the man.
‘But I see that this is a very sensitive topic. Still, the first step to overcome a tyranny is to DARE speak up, you know? A wise man once said: you can fool the people once, you can fool them twice, but you can’t fool them a third time!’
‘Millie,’ I said, feeling that I was obliged to help the bewildered looking man, ‘you went a bit overboard just now.’
‘Oh,’ she said, sounding embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just…after seeing that show today, I find it so hard to contain myself!’
‘If you’re talking about the Cult of Charming Men,’ the inn-keeper said, while rummaging in one of the kitchen cupboards, ‘you shouldn’t take them too seriously, lass. My guess is, if they were a real threat to her majesty princess Merope, they’d been locked up long before now.’
Millie gave him a disappointed look. ‘They seemed so convinced of their task.’
‘Well, you have to admit they were pretty unsubtle,’ I said.
‘Oh, I think they are serious about all this, alright,’ the inn-keeper said, clearing away some plates. ‘But does Merope think they can harm her? Hah! As if. No one has ever seen her; no one even knows what she looks like. Even if they got themselves into the castle, who’d they have to attack, huh? It’s no use.’
‘Well, they can always start by looking in the dungeons,’ I snorted.
But Millie asked: ‘Do you know these people, sir?’
‘Do I?’ The man shrugged. ‘We all know ‘em and yet we don’t. That’s what they’re like. They wanted to sleep here for the night. Turned them down, though. Too risky.’
‘But you just said yourself that princess Merope doesn’t regard them as threat.’
He waved his hands dismissively. ‘Better safe than sorry, I say. I’ve heard rumours about this war she’s plotting. Merope is, I mean. Course, they can be just rumours. Still…what with all that brooding, I’d rather keep my inn clean.’

The war thing was new. I suppose that coming from Low-of-the-Road did not help with keeping up to date with the entire buzz.
‘You do know where they went then, sir?’ Millie asked.
‘Yeah - I sent them to The Crying Prince’s Inn. It’s not too far from here.’ He glanced sideways to her. ‘I have a gut feeling you’re wanting to speak with them, lass?’
‘Well…’
‘Let me give you a warning then.’ He shot a glance at me and I folded my arms. ‘They’re witty guys, sure. Have a couple of daring ideas. Not afraid of showing them either. But they keep to themselves an awful lot too. If the new hype wasn’t that of princess Merope being our big bad leader, I wouldn’t be so eager to declare these folks were part of the good guys.’

Later, when we had retreated to our room, Millie asked: ‘You will come with me to see them, won’t you?’
‘Sure,’ I said, lying on my back, relishing the sensation of an actual, soft mattress after all these days of sleeping on the ground. ‘Your call. I’m just the clever sidekick after all.’

So, the next day we wandered over to The Crying Prince’s Inn. I had asked Millie what it was that she wanted of these Charming Men, but she did not seem to have a real answer for this. I figured she just wanted to mobilise them, or else have them take her all the way to princess Merope’s fortress, preferably doing all the dirty work for her while she settled herself nice and cosily on the throne. And maybe I might arrange a pillow or two.
With the inn-keepers warning words still freshly in our memories, we lingered outside the other inn for a bit.

‘So, what now?’ asked Millie.
Something about her face told me she was completely confident that I had the solution at hand.
‘Well,’ I said merrily, ‘we can’t exactly barge in and tell them that you’re the princess, can we?’
‘Why not?’ She had turned to look at her reflection in the greasy pub window. With one hand she was flattening her hair as it curled very unroyally to all sides.
‘They’d kill you,’ I said impatiently. ‘They hate you, remember? They’re rebels.’
‘How can they hate me?’ Millie asked, apparently giving up on her hair for the time being. ‘They have never met me.’
‘How does that matter?’
‘So, what if we told them I’m on their side?’
I grinned at her sheepishly. ‘If we told them the princess they’re planning to murder is on their side, this whole mission would fall apart. And we wouldn’t want that, now would we?’
‘Well, I don’t want to be mistaken for the one they’re going to kill…’
‘Exactly,’ I said, thinking that, if they were to mistake her for the real princess, at least I could return home. ‘So you shut up about being a princess, even though maybe you are -’ my eyes wandered over her freckled face and bushy hair, ‘which I highly doubt, honestly. Still! We don’t want them to think that you have anything to do with princess Merope, let alone that you are Merope in disguise.’
‘Well, how could they ever think that?’ she asked, her tone full of genuine surprise.

I had to admit that it was a rather farfetched idea. Personally, I couldn’t see the bully of Archeon wearing freckles and a pink dress. In that, at least, the Cult of Charming Men had shown little sensitivity.
‘Nobody’s seen the princess, like I’ve told you a gazillion times before,’ I sighed. ‘So you could be her. As a matter of fact…are you?
She looked as though I had just slapped her. In a highly dignified voice, tossing her hair over her shoulders, she said: ‘No! And anyway, he’s a guy.’
‘Who is?’
‘That Merope person. He’s a guy.’
Momentarily forgetting my own annoyance, I stared at her. ‘You are insane…Wait. That was a joke, right?’
‘A joke?’
‘An attempt at being funny?’
As I watched her face fall, I realized that she was not, in fact, joking. ‘Okay. That’s the strangest conspiracy theory I’ve ever heard.’
‘Well, he likes plotting war, doesn’t he?’
‘That doesn’t mean that Merope’s a guy!’ I had raised my arms in sheer desperation.
‘But nobody’s ever seen the princess, right?’ Millie pressed on. ‘Isn’t that a bit funny?’
‘Well,’ I spluttered, ‘I - look, can’t she just have been locked up in a tower, like normal princesses?!’
Her triumphant smile faltered. ‘Why, that is an option, of course…’
She sounded disappointed.
‘Anyway!’ I said, lowering my arms because people on the street began to stare. ‘That still leaves us with the problem of a bunch of funny men and no excuse to talk to them.’
‘What if we told them the truth then?’ said Millie. ‘I can say that I’m the other princess and that I’m on their side!’
‘The other princess? Like, Merope’s secret sister or something?’
‘Couldn’t I be?’
I raised my eyebrows. Man, this eyebrow gymnastics began to get on my nerves. ‘Well…’
‘It is possible, isn’t it? I mean, nobody’s seen Merope, so why would anyone see the sister?’
‘And this sister,’ I said sceptically, ‘is on the side of the rebellions, is she?’
I tried to put as much scepticism in my voice as possible, hoping she would pick it up.
‘Yes,’ Millie said defiantly. ‘Yes, she is!”
And then suddenly it dawned to me. ‘Yes, you are!’ I agreed with her, though slowly. I couldn’t believe how silly I had been! ‘You are on their side!’
‘That’s great! So I am, then?’
‘You are!’ I had grabbed Millie’s arms and was squeezing them excitedly. ‘We will tell them we want to join their mission and that we have exclusive information from the court!’
She beamed at me. ‘Like that princess Merope’s really a guy?’
‘No! Look, will you please not risk our credibility? Don’t go around saying that you’re a princess from far away to overthrow Archeons tyrant either...What now?’
Because she had just started to grin in a I’ve-Just-Caught-You sort of way.
‘You just said it,’ she let out a very girlish giggle. ‘Tyrant! Doesn’t that prove that Merope’s a guy?
I looked at her bewildered. ‘Why would that prove anything?’
‘Shouldn’t it be…tyrantess or something?’
‘Well -’ I began, ‘I just -’ I spluttered, ‘oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t push it!’
‘Alright, alright. I won’t go saying that she’s a tyrantess.’
‘Good,’ said I.

Millie glanced through one of the pub windows again. ‘So what secret information do we have for
them?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘We don’t have anything, so we’ve got to make something up.’
‘But what if we get these men to follow us and we get face to face to Merope and they’ll discover that our exclusive information was a fib?’
I had just been wondering about that, although, I suspected, not in the same way as she had.
‘In that case, we’re far from worrying what any of those men could do to us, aren’t we?’ I answered. ‘Whatever grudge they’d feel, Merope can do it to us in threefold.’
I rose from the bench, walking up and down, trying to think of how to first introduce ourselves. Probably, I thought, it was best to act as though we had only heard of them by means of secret information, and we didn’t want to spill our beans. Yeah, that’d work. I guessed there were a bunch of people not eager to have their names attached to an underground movement.
‘Yes, he’s quite ruthless, isn’t he?’
‘Who?’ I asked, distractedly.
‘Princess Merope.’
‘Oh. Yes. I’ve heard stories... Well, come on then.’
I entered the pub before her, faintly thinking that I didn’t quite want to introduce myself as “Daffodil” to that lot.

Although the Cult of Charming Men, AKA the Rough Rebels had been hidden behind barrels, it was not hard to point out who they were once we got to the taproom.
They were sitting in a corner, the strangest bunch of men I’d ever seen.
Millie and I exchanged glances.
‘Well, go on then,’ I whispered. ‘I’m right behind you.’
‘Can’t you be right in front of me instead?’
‘Me? Why me? They’re your victims!’
‘But you’re much cleverer than me!’ she hissed.
I rolled my eyes. ‘You owe me such a big, BIG favour.’
‘I know, I know.’ She pushed me in front of her.

I walked up to them, trying to look as cool and relaxed as I could muster. In truth, I hardly knew where to leave me arms. ‘Well, good evening gentlemen!’
They looked up. I saw a wary look in their eyes, but one of them nodded and said: ‘Good evening to you too.’ I recognized the raw voice that had belonged to the lady doll.
‘Mind if we sit down with you for a bit?’
The man that had spoken threw some glances about the room. It was nearly empty.
‘Err - yeah,’ I said, spotting the problem. ‘You see, the thing is…’ I grabbed Millie’s arm and pulled her in front of me. One of the guys whistled. ‘She’s a big fan of yours. Only she is too shy to actually come up and tell you.’
I smiled.
‘Ah,’ said one of the men, grinning and leaning back into his chair. ‘If that is the case…come and sit with us.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, drawing up two chairs.
Millie sat down too, a blush over her face.
‘Would you care for something to drink?’ the first man asked. I looked at him closely: he was lanky, though not unhandsome. His hair stuck about, falling just over his shoulders. Two braids decorated each side of his head. Most remarkable, however, were the two long, diagonal scars that crossed his face, and the eye patch, covering his right eye.
‘No thanks,’ Millie said.
‘Well, I’d like something,’ I said boldly.
The man flashed a grin at me, then beckoned a warily-looking barman. ‘A port for me, please, and one for the lady.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The man turned to us. ‘So you’ve seen our show then?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was charming.’
‘More than charming,’ Millie said, quickly taking advantage of the subject. ‘It really inspired me…I mean, us. Isn’t that right?’ she added, looking my way.
‘Definitely,’ I said, feeling giggly. ‘We feel great sympathy for your ideals…So much, in fact, that my friend and I were already joking of joining you.’
We all laughed, but I made sure my gaze crossed that of the men.

The barman arrived once more, carrying our drinks.
The man - their leader, I assumed - handed one to me. ‘Cheers.’
‘Cheers,’ I echoed, bringing the glass to my lips. It was the strongest stuff I’d ever tasted. 
‘My name’s Cuckoo,’ he then said. He seemed quite at ease. ‘And these are Ladybug, Bluebell, Rose and Daisy. And you are?’
I stared at the men around the table. None of them seemed to make the slightest twitch as their names were mentioned.
‘I am,’ I said, ‘Err - Daffodil. And this,’ I gestured to Millie, ‘ah - you can call her Princess.’
Millie beamed.