Chapter 27
“What was THAT?!” Sophie asked Daniel. “Is this some kind of a new skill? Why didn’t you tell the rest of us?”
“Oh, yeah,” Daniel said, “I’m going to walk into the middle of camp and say, ‘Hey, look, I can run on air!’ And there’s a lot of stuff that you don’t know about me. Did you think you had me figured out?”
“Truthfully, yes,” Sophie said. “But I suppose I’ll just have to keep a closer watch on you.” She grinned, and Daniel’s blood ran cold. Sophie had that effect on a lot of people.
Daniel decided to just shut up when they heard someone yelling nearby.
“That’s odd,” Sophie said, “I thought nobody else bothered going into the forest.”
“I don’t think they’re here intentionally if they make noise like that,” Daniel said.
They exchanged a look, then headed to the source of the noise.
“Well, someone likes fairytales,” Sophie said.
“Maybe it’s normal here,” Daniel responded.
There were two figures in the old stone tower, but only one looked like the typical damsel in distress. The two in the tower had heard Daniel and Sophie talking, and when Daniel looked up, he saw the flash of red hair as one of the figures leaned over the parapet and pulled back, chattering excitedly. She was talking too fast to hear, but then another voice spoke and Daniel could hear another, more impatient voice berating the first one:
“Cat, you’re seeing things again. You’ve done that twice this week. Tsk. You should know that no one ever comes through here! It’s ridiculous. Get over it. Rescue’s not going to happen. Hmph!”
Sophie rolled her eyes.
“I concur,” said Daniel.
“But, Korrie!”
“My name is NOT Korrie! It’s Khorabelle!”
“Ah-hem! Are you going to ignore us completely? Even if you’re wrong about hearing us, there’s still nobody else around to notice!” Sophie yelled.
Both the redheaded girl and another, blonde-haired girl leaned over the parapet.
“See, see, I told you, there’s someone down there!” the redhead shrieked.
The blonde pouted, “All right, they may be down there, but who says they’re going to rescue us? Unless it benefits them. Although it can be beneficial to have someone like me around.” Daniel and Sophie could both clearly see the exaggerated hair toss in the sunlight.
“Er,” Daniel said.
“Do we want to? She may have skills, or she may be just bragging,” Sophie said. “Or she could be an annoying little brat who’ll torture us for the rest of our trip.”
“I heard that!” shrieked a voice from above.
“If you have skills like you say you do,” pouted the other voice, “then why haven’t you gotten us down yet?”
“You fool! They may not rescue us if they are mislead like that!”
“Oh, just get them down already. We’re going to end up doing it anyway,” Daniel said.
“Oh, fine,” Sophie said. “But I think listening to these two argue is better than most comedy shows. If only we had popcorn.”
Sophie used the reality-change to get the two down. It became obvious who the spell was meant for and who got in the way by accident.
The blonde head addressed as Khorabelle was exactly the stereotypical blonde princess with a bad attitude. The other girl, Cat, was like nothing Daniel had ever seen before. She had reddish-auburn hair, and she looked sort of like a cat. Then the ginger ears came out, perked, and Daniel noticed she flicked her tail in annoyance whenever Khorabelle spoke. Cat immediately felt sorry for the boy she saw, because she knew that Khorabelle attached herself to the first boy she saw after her previous crush had become unavailable. Besides, the guy was kind of cute but obviously taken by the dark-haired girl standing next to him, scowling. Something told her that this girl was not to be messed with, or there might be the world’s first frog princess story. Obviously, she and her partner could both use magic, by the staff the boy carried and the wand near-hidden under the girl’s nondescript cloak. She sighed. How did she get roped into these crazy fairytale curses, anyway?
Khorabelle raised an eyebrow, as if she’d just succeeded in finding her next victim.
Sophie interrupted her self-pleasure. “So, what’s your little skill anyway?”
“I can…” Cat started, but Khorabelle said, “I can control people with my voice. I have enchanting powers.”
Sophie, as an enchantress, didn’t take well to being compared to this kid. “I see. And you? Before you were interrupted?” She narrowed her eyes.
Cat shrugged. “I’m a cat. Part cat. And I can do some magic. Weird stuff.” Cat spoke in short sentences, in case she got interrupted again. The truth was, she did know more than she was telling. She wasn’t going to say any more around Khorabelle.
“And… you can’t get down a tree?”
“Well, I knew how to get down, but Khorabelle refused, saying it was much too weird and would never work. And she also said that if I went away, she’d enchant me into killing myself. Which… never mind.”
Which I almost did, Sophie read between the lines. She had a theory. Poor girl.
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