Part 3: Untitled Novel, Day 19 - Words to Go: 8,664

Part III

As they lounged by the spring of water, Goldie leaned against a tree and began to nod off. She closed her eyes for a bit but was startled out of sleep when she couldn't hear the comforting sound of the spring gurgling anymore. She opened her eyes, but remained very still. A wall of darkness had risen up on her left side. She couldn't see what it was and she also couldn't see Floyd. She turned her head to look at what was beside her. Large gray flowers had grown up beside the spring. The spring was not running anymore. Something had stopped it from flowing. The flowers looked like especially large sunflowers, only very dark and not colorful at all. Their stems were dark gray and the petals were lighter gray. Inside the petals was a jewel encrusted disc where a normal sunflower would grow sunflower seeds. Goldie moved closer the the flowers and stood on her tiptoes to look into their jewel covered faces. They were beautiful, like diamonds, kind of like Kiffen's teeth.
Goldie wondered if the flowers had no color because they never received any sunshine. But the flowers hadn't been here before. She'd been watching the scenery change and flowers had not been one of the things she'd noticed as they'd been walking. That meant the flowers had grown up between when she closed her eyes and when she opened them again. Plus the spring wasn't running anymore. Had the flowers taken the spring water in order to grow so big so fast? Where in the world was Floyd. He wouldn't leave her behind to go scout out the area, would he? It was just supposed to be a quick stop, not nap time. Goldie hadn't meant to fall asleep.
Goldie walked around the flowers. Four flowers total, all of them growing from one root ball at their base. The root ball was not underground which was interesting to Goldie. She thought flower roots always grew underground.
Unless, maybe they had found something to grow around and get nutrients from that wasn't underground?

"Oh, gosh!" Goldie yelped. She got down on her hands and knees and crawled toward the root ball. Maybe Floyd had laid down to rest as well and the flowers took that opportunity to steal him for themselves. "Floyd!" she called as she pulled at the roots of the flowers. They were barely budging. In fact, the root ball seemed to tighten up more the more she dug at it. She could see cat fur sticking out here and there from the ball. Poor Floyd was in there dying. She pulled at one of the sections of root until it snapped in half. She had pulled so hard on it that it had cut her hand. She'd had grass cuts before, but this was ten times worse!

"Owch," she said.

She stared at the palm of her hand as the wound began to bleed.
There was something wrong. Did her fairy curse not work this far into the forest. That made no sense, though. From what she knew of it, it should grow more powerful as found their way into scarier places because it would grow more protective of her. It should be protecting her.
She touched her jeans pocket that housed the compact.
It wasn't there.

"What? What?" Goldie said to herself as she searched frantically around feeling all over the ground for where she might have lost it. She crawled back over to where she'd taken her nap, it wasn't there. It could have fallen out of her pocket anywhere. She hadn't needed its protection in a while and she hadn't thought it might fall out of her pocket. Where could it be? She thought about retracing her steps out of the forest, but she doubted that Floyd had that much time before the flowers sucked the life out of him, if they hadn't already. She'd sworn to him that she would protect him. What a horrible friend she'd been. She crawled over the spring and her knee sunk down into the muddy ground. She'd left her fruits on this side of the spring while she drank and then she'd jumped over the top of the spring to the other side for fun. It was no where to be found. Her throat burned and her chest felt tight. She couldn't hear herself breathe. She wondered if she was breathing. She had to save Floyd.
She turned and rushed back across the spring toward the ball of roots and started pulling at her again, when in the back of her mind, she remembered seeing something. She let go of the roots and looked in the spring bed. Inside her knee print, a tiny bit of silver was peeking out. She made a throaty gasping sound and dug her fingers into the mud and came out successful! It was the compact! She shoved it, mud and all, back into her pocket where it belonged and fell on her knees at the roots of the flowers where were already wilting. She pulled the roots away from Floyd and Floyd began to claw the ground, fighting his way out of the root ball. He pulled himself toward the spring of water, and then collapsed. He was breathing hard. He was breathing. That was all that mattered.
Goldie collapsed beside him. The stream had begun to run again.

"I'm so sorry," she said and began to cry.

"It's not your fault," he replied. His breath came in short gasps. "There are dark fairy curses all over the forest floor," Floyd's face looked unconcerned because he was cat, but the mental distress she felt eminating from him convinced her that his face would never tell the whole story until he was back to being a regular light sprite. Not that she knew what one of those looked like, but she assumed they had faces that actually showed more emotion than a cat's face. Even the little sylphs had expressive faces. "I thought I'd be able to recognize them easily. I'll not be so smug next time."

Floyd rested for a while before they started their hike again. He said the flowers were literally stealing his life from him one minute at a time. It reminded Goldie of the death machine in Princess Bride that took one year of Wesley's life at a time. Eventually, Floyd felt like he could continue on. He wasn't hurt, just weak, but he ate some food and drank some more water and felt much more energized, so they continued on their way.
Goldie knew that it was probably not much past noon but the deeper they ventured into the forest the darker it grew. The trees started to twist together at the tops creating a canopy high in air. Further in, the branches began to wind together and even further, the roots rose to the surface intertwining together so fully that the created a rough, but consistent floor on the surface of the earth.
She kept following after the cat. Eventually, they reached the point where there was barely room to crawl through the space between the trees and the ground.
Floyd explained it was because the dark fairies had cursed the forest to grow together into an extremely thick wall of trees with nearly no space between them. The tunnel they were traveling through was found by a fairy explorer who had gone too deep into the forest and barely made it back out alive. This part of the forest was where the dark fairies lived. They had several secret entrances into their city, all guarded by evil creatures. These ways were mostly used by evil creatures who lived outside of the dark city and went there to buy evil wares and spells.
The dark fairies only entered through the roof of the forest. Anyone else who entered that way would be captured on sight and thrown into the dungeon. There was a huge castle made of trees and roots and molded curse by curse. It was in this castle where Kiffen resided. Kiffen's people collection was not enormous because he only went people hunting when he was out of other horrendous things to do, but what there was of his collection was also housed in that castle.