The next morning, before I opened my eyes, I fully expected to feel my own bed underneath me and to know that this was all just a crazy dream, that I hadn’t really been whisked away into another realm made by a delusional person by her equally delusional cousin. His crazy half-brother wasn’t attempting to kill me, my entire pack, and wipe out the council of mages. No, I’d open my eyes and be back in my bed at Grandma’s house.
Bonus points if Grandma was still alive.
Extra bonus points if I’d never actually met Starla, too.
But while my eyes were still closed, I felt the grass beneath my fingers and knew that I was still there, that I hadn’t been taken home, and that I’d never left this strange world.
I sighed and ro
There wasn't a lot to do there in Fionna’s fictitious world. I mostly sat around, ate chocolate fruit, and drank out of the river. I noticed that it was green whenever Sam was there with me. Whenever he started to fade away, it changed color again, mostly to red. I didn’t know where he went when he left, and he didn’t know either. It was all so strange and surreal. I walked around some and tried to figure out if there was a secret door somewhere. Sam had said he didn’t think that was the case, but he’s just a brain. What does he know?At one point, late in the afternoon of that first full day that I was there, I noticed the river changing colors again. It turned an odd smokey blue color for a while. I looked around me to see if I could figure out the source of the change, but I didn’t see anything else different. So then, I went back to wandering aimlessly, and Sam
Have you ever seen the movie “The Hours?” At the beginning of that movie, Nichole Kidman reenactes the suicide of Virginia Woolf, who killed herself in 1941 by filling her pockets with rocks and walking into a river. I can’t imagine what that must be like, to weigh yourself down so much that you can’t possibly float back up again. Of course, I suppose a person could empty their pockets quickly, but she was clearly resolved to end a life she didn’t quite understand.You could probably say the same about Holly Hunter’s character in “The Piano” when she tries to let that instrument suck her down into the water when it’s tossed overboard.I didn’t have any rock or a piano to weigh me down when I dove into the river looking for my own sanity, looking for a way back home, but I did have resolve.
Opening my eyes again, I wasn’t sure what I was going to find, but I was glad to see that Ben was still with me. We were underneath a tree in the forest, and my head was on his lap.“Be careful, Harlow,” he said, his voice full of concern. “Don’t sit up too fast or anything.”“How long was I out?” I asked him, my head feeling woozy.“Which time?” he asked. “This last time, a couple of hours.”I couldn’t remember waking up before that, but I would have to take his word for it. I was dry now. That was something. I brushed my hair back and looked around. It was dark, and I couldn’t see anyone else. “Where is everyone?”
Riding on Sam’s back through the woods was cathartic in a way, even though I was worried about everything that had happened, and everything that was about to happen. Not only did they have Sean and Starla, but they had other mages, too. I could only assume that Starla was being tortured. I wished Cody had never told his cousin she was me. I would’ve rather he told him I disappeared or that he didn’t know where I was.I wondered if I could use my magic from there to break Cody’s spell so that Starla looked like herself, but then, there was a chance Jason would get really mad when he saw that it wasn’t me and kill her. If she wasn’t dead already. Poor Starla. She just couldn’t catch a break.I had no idea if Sam and Ben actually knew where they were going or were just wandering aimlessly, but about an hour after we left o
Going to our house was a risk. Not only was the dragon constantly flying over the forest looking for us, the other members of Jason’s clan were out searching for us, too. It was a wonder none of them had found us yet, but then, they didn’t have any wolves to smell us out the way that we could smell them coming. It seemed like we had to move every couple of hours just to keep from getting spotted.Yet, here I was determining that we needed to walk back to our house because I wanted my staff.I didn’t intend to walk all the way to the house, but I did need to get close enough so that I can make sure that it comes to me when I call it.Ben, Sam and I carefully picked our way through the woods, both of them in their wolf forms so that their noses would be at their most sensitive. I walked between
Jason was shocked to see a dragon even larger than him flying at him from out of nowhere. He hadn’t seen me down there before since I had been using my invisibility technique to hide myself. Now, here I was, flying right toward him. I also sprayed the tops of the trees with water so that the forest could be spared. I felt a lot more powerful at the moment than I had before. My staff had been incorporated into my dragon body as a jewel in the top of my head, so he probably knew it was me. Considering that he thought that I was in his cabin, he had to be confused.I let those mixed emotions keep him from focusing and hit him with another blast of not only fire but electricity. I aimed for his wings instead of his vitals and did my best to burn them off of him so that he would fall. His left wing burst into flames, and Jason started to spiral out of control, nose diving for the tops of the trees.
“What in the world are you doing, Harlow Nightingale!” Mage Jaye didn’t even say hello before she started berating me. “Did you lose your mind somewhere between here and your home? I told you not to go over there, yet, you not only went, you started a huge fight and transformed yourself into a dragon. A dragon! What if an airplane would have flown by with passengers who do not know about the existence of magic? What if people from the city could’ve seen you?”I stood there with my hands on my hips, waiting for her to be done. She never seemed to stop, though, so I finally interrupted. “Listen, Mage Jaye, I didn’t intend to have to engage them, but when Jason started burning the forest down, I had no choice. Besides, he hasn’t seemed to be too concerned about people flying over and seeing one dragon. What difference does it make if there were two?”
I wasn’t waiting for anyone anymore. Perhaps a more intelligent person would have. But I was mad. I was mad at Jason for coming into my life and ruining the school. I was mad at Cody for sending me to another realm. I was mad at Mage Jaye for lying to me and trying to get my sympathy while she was stalling, and I figured she probably wasn’t even actually crying in the first place. So I transformed myself into an eagle and took off for Cody’s cabin, sun up and everything, ready to kick some evil mage ass.While I was flying a few other birds joined in alongside me. I wasn’t sure who they all were or how they’d gotten there, except for one. The pink flamingo was having trouble keeping up, but I was glad she was there. I’d much rather have Fionna Flamingo on my side than against me.It took about a half an hour for