I didn’t think I’d sleep that night. I was exhausted, but then I usually am. I figured I’d stay awake thinking about what the pack was finding out on their trip to the forest over by the river. Would they be able to figure out what was going on with the pink trees without me, or would this require my mage powers to solve?
I only spent a few minutes staring at the ceiling before I fell into a deep sleep. I knew I was either dreaming or had fallen into another realm because I was in a forest where all of the colors were messed up, much like the one Fionna and Cody had made, but this one was different. The trees weren’t brown and green like they were supposed to be, but the trunks weren’t pink either. They were all different colors. It was like a rainbow forest. And it was beautiful.I wandered aro
“Damn it, Brice! Just tell me who it is!” I shouted, throwing myself out of bed. I started to pull clothes out of my drawer like I was a normal person who needed to change clothes before I went to help, but then I remembered I’d have to change my shape to get there quickly anyway, and once I landed I could just change my clothes into anything I wanted to wear--like a long silver ball gown. “It’s Mel,” he said. “It was crazy! It all happened so fast.” “Wait--Melanie fell into a portal in the pink tree? By herself?” He nodded. “We were going to go after her, but we couldn’t. Not all of us, of course, but Alec and me. And Ben. But the tree wouldn’t open up for us. So we are hoping with your magic you might be able to get it to cooperate. Maybe you can get her back without anyone having to go in there after her.”
I had no idea what to do about Melanie’s disappearance or the new revelation that there are apparently such a thing as wood nymphs, which I thought perhaps someone should’ve told me about prior to me being introduced to one. Standing there in the middle of the forest, in the middle of the night, on a school night, mind you, I was growing more and more frustrated by the second.I finally decided I needed help with this, so I materialized a cell phone and called Maggie. She was the only person I could think of who might be able to help me, and I figured it was the middle of the day in France so at least I wouldn’t be waking her up.She answered pretty quickly, probably recognizing that it had to be urgent for me to be calling her at that time. “Hi, Harlow. What’s going on?” she asked, a tinge of nervousness in her voice.
“Harlow, please be careful,” Sam said. “You are all emotionally worked up, and I am afraid you’re going to end up getting sucked into that tree the same way Mel did, and then what are we going to do?”I stepped away from him, rolling my eyes as I went. I just needed some space. “It’s fine, Sam. It’ll be fine. Maggie gave me some things to try, so I’m going to try them.”He shook his head but left me alone. I surveyed the rest of my pack. They were all patiently waiting, in their human forms, which told me that they were in support of me doing what I could to try and open this portal back up.I had never tried to change the color of something this way before. I figured it couldn’t be too difficult if Francis could do it, so I concentrated on the trunk
The portal was closed, but I didn’t know for how long. Part of me wanted the monster to just come right on through now so that I could deal with him and have it over with. But I knew I wasn’t anywhere near full strength at the moment, so I wouldn’t be able to defeat him that easily, and there was no one else around with the power to help stop him. Except for Francis and the hell if I was ever going to ask her to help me with anything ever again.“Melanie, how are you?” Joshua was asking as he sat on the ground with her, his arms around her.“I’m okay,” she said. “Just scared. And my leg is sore.” She was shaking, her hair messy, and sweat at her hairline. She was also covered in some sort of a light dusting of green powder. The green was the same pukish color as the wood nymph.
Keeping my eyes open at school the next day was almost as impossible as it had been to keep them open while Sam was taking me home. I was guzzling coffee by the gallon, and going to the bathroom every half an hour or so, which was annoying. At least none of my teachers refused to let me go.During Ms. Piper’s drama class, Brice and I struggled to work on our reenactment of the dragon fight and the rescuing of our friends from the evil mages. Brice wasn’t tired like me. Wolf shifters could survive on just a couple of hours a night. I was envious of him for that at the moment. But he was distracted. I’m pretty sure Brice should’ve been diagnosed with ADHD a long time ago. Maybe he wouldn’t still be in school a year after he should’ve graduated if he’d gotten some help focusing when he was younger. He’s super smart, but when he’s in a mood like this,
When people are angry, we say that they “march.” As in, “I was so angry, I marched right over to Francis Flamingo’s house and gave her what for!” Whatever that means. Well, I didn’t march over to her house, but I did change myself into a falcon and fly over there as fast as I could. This woman kept tampering with my life, and if she didn’t knock it off, I was going to make some permanent changes to hers. I wasn’t sure why she was even still here. Her daughter was gone. She didn’t need me anymore. Why didn’t she just move along? I transformed back into a human and pounded on the door. When she opened it, she didn’t look surprised at all to see that it was me. “Harlow. Delighted to see you as always. What brings me the pleasure?” She stood there with her arms folded, leaning against the door jamb like m
I was fuming after my conversation with Francis. I flew back home, but I tried to take my time and calm down before I had to face my pack. They didn’t deserve to face my wrath, but they also didn’t need to know just how angry I was. I’ve had teachers who have bad things happen at home and bring that to class with them, and it’s never pleasant. I didn’t want to be like that.After I was pretty sure I was calm enough to pretend to be completely calm, I headed home and walked into the house with a smile on my face.A fake smile, but a smile nonetheless.I headed straight downstairs to talk to Melanie. I needed to know more about this realm. It certainly looked like the one I had seen in that dream right before I was awoken to find out that Melanie had been sucked into a portal, so I wanted
I was a high school student by day and a wood nymph guardian at night. While I wasn’t actively hunting this bastard, I was guarding against him. Looking for him at every turn. For the next few weeks, my wolves and I spent hours at night checking to see if there was any indication that Harold had left the forest that Francis was in the process of claiming and spreading out either in the town or into our forest.I had a feeling I was going to need to do more to combat this monster than what I was doing, though. I mean, Francis had essentially told me to stay out of “her” woods, but it didn’t belong to her. It wasn’t her ancestral lands or anything. If that forest could give her energy and powers the way that mine could me, I didn’t think it was a good idea for her to be so powerful, but then, there wasn't a lot I could do to stop her and also focus on school.
There’s a comfy chair right next to the fireplace in the main living area of Brookstone. It has become my favorite place to sit. I can sit there for hours and do absolutely nothing but stare out the window at the beautiful forest and sparkling lake. It’s amazing to me to think how far I’ve come in just a year and a few months. I don’t just sit around and do nothing, though. I haven’t had to use my magic to fight off any other mages or shifters since we destroyed Grimly Grouse and his evil minions, but I do use my magic sometimes for other things, like producing presents for my friends or making mythical creatures to entertain us. Brookstone is as beautiful on the inside as it is on the outside. Part of that is the fact that we modernized it and redecorated a lot of the rooms. We wanted all of the modern conveniences we were used to, but we didn’t ruin the amb
My plan had been pretty simple. I’d bust into Brookstone, make the other mages and any shifters that were there think that the house was on fire, and I’d run them out to where my pack mates were waiting to take them down.I had no idea one of my pack members had her own idea of what should happen then. I guess I should have. It isn’t as if she hasn’t shocked me enough times in the past for me to expect Fionna to do something… unexpected.The mages in Grimley’s pack came streaming out of the house. Most of them went out the front door because I’d started the alleged fire in the kitchen, which was in the back of the house, on the east side. Fionna, being the tricky mage that she is, had opened a portal right on the other side of the front door so that every single one of the mages who ran out that exit sprinted right int
I didn’t bother to get a ride back to Brookstone the next day. It was clear that no one wanted to drive out there anyway, and it wasn’t as if it was a necessity. We had other ways of getting there, after all.I volunteered to change my wolves into birds so they could fly with us, but all of them passed on that. They said they weren’t used to flying and were afraid they’d fall out of the sky or something. Like I’d let that happen. I’d rolled my eyes, but since most of the area around where we’d stayed the night before was woodsy and rural, we decided it would be okay for them to walk out into the woods and shift there. The rest of us would fly over.My wolves weren’t going to be entering the property until after I knew the situation in the house. Once I knew whether we were on the defensive or the offensive, I woul
It was difficult to get rooms with enough beds for all of us, but my wolves decided they could always shift into their wolf forms and sleep on the floor, and since most of them didn’t sleep much anyway, we went with that. I was definitely going to be sleeping that night, though. I was so tired, I could barely keep my eyes open to discuss the plan for the next day. Fighting mages is hard work--apparently.“So what is our plan for tomorrow?” Kaylee asked. We were gathered in the room she and I were sharing, all of us sitting on the beds, the floor, and the small sitting area. “I take it we’re going right back there since you wanted to stay so close, Harlow.”“Yeah, we need to go right back over there and take care of things once and for all,” I said. “We just need a plan that will get rid of Grimly Grouse as s
With the ground shaking beneath our feet, the mages lifted themselves up into the air. I pulled up my wolves, too, but that didn’t help save my house. The thought of Grimly Grouse destroying my family home was enough to make me want to set his hair on fire.The ground was cracking beneath us now, some of them were at least a foot across. The idea of one of my people dropping inside of one of them was enough to make me want to fly everyone out of there and back to our rental right away.“Kaylee,” I shouted, wanting to try to fix the problem beneath us and keep my wolves out of danger. “Can you take over for me?”“You mean… float them?” she asked. “All of them?”“We can all help,” Liam said from the o
Looking around at my mages, I tried to determine who I needed to help and who was okay on their own. Liam was taking on a large male mage with a nose ring and the appearance of horns coming out of his bald head. I assumed those were placed there by magic, and he didn’t really have horns growing out of his head, but it was difficult to know for sure. “Give it up, Harlow!” I heard Grimly shout from far behind the line of advance. “I have more reserves. You cannot win.” It was difficult for me to keep my eye on this brute that was about to knock Liam out and respond to the maniac in the back. I decided to ignore Grouse and concentrate on Liam’s predicament. I was fairly far away from the fight, and there were other engagements going on between me and Liam, but I couldn’t let that stop me. The devil guy with the horn
The mages from Brookstone were slowly walking toward us, their long cloaks in a rainbow of colors not even moving from the wind they made, their steps were so even and slow. I stared at them for a long moment, trying to determine what the best thing to do was. A quick estimate told me that there were probably about thirty of them, which meant my team was outnumbered about five to one as mages went. The wolves would be able to help a little, but not much. They were mostly there to fight off any wolves that came our way, and Grimly Grouse had stopped using those, pulling out the big guns instead.We really only had two choices. We could stand there and fight and probably get annihilated because we were outnumbered so badly, or we could run away, regroup, and figure out when and how we should come back. I was really starting to lean toward Plan B, but when I looked at the faces of my packmates, I could tell t
I took advantage of the fearful flicker I’d seen in Grimley Grouse’s eyes and hit him with a bolt of power before he had much time to expect it. He got his hands up, but it wasn’t enough to completely deflect it. I ended up hitting him hard enough to knock him backward almost to the edge of the stream. The other mages around him took a few seconds to stare in shock before they remembered they had powers and could possibly do something to help him.They weren’t going to be able to help him, though. My mages were all ready, so before any of the red cloaked mages could hit me with their powers, mine had their hands up, shooting rays of light to counteract the ones directed at me. I watched the magic around me bend and shift, redirecting back the way it was coming. A few of the red mages were knocked off balance, but none of them went flying the way that Grouse did, probably because mos
I heard the first sounds of battle coming from my left, to the southwest of the house, but I couldn’t tell who it was that was caught up first by the wolves coming from Brookstone. I thought that Raven and Tony had been the furthest to the south, but I wasn’t certain. I decided I should fly over there and have a look. Of course, by the time I got over there, there was a good chance the rest of my wolves would be under attack as well since we’d seen the wolves shooting through the forest at an incredible rate spread out in a line. As I landed, I heard the sounds of battle echoing across the forest as Grimly Grouse’s wolves collided with mine. This wasn’t going to be pretty. I changed back into my mage form as soon as my feet touched the ground and immediately fired a