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
The blast from Cody was direct, but it wasn’t meant to kill me, I soon realized. He was trying to move me again. Whether he wanted me to go back to the realm I’d left the day before, the one he and Fionna had made, or someplace else, I couldn’t say. What I did know was that I wasn’t going to let him send me away again, not if there was anything at all that I could do about it.“Cody!” I shouted as I held up my staff to deflect the blow. “What are you doing?”“You shouldn’t be here, Harlow! It’s too dangerous!” he said.“Then stop trying to kill me!” I countered.“I’m not trying to kill you! I’m trying to save you!”
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