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.

Part 2: Untitled Novel, Day 19 - Words to Go: 10,085

Part II

Floyd stopped straightening up his fur and looked at Goldie intently. "You have to speak so I can hear you, but I need to talk to you first. You're not safe here. The only reason Kiffen hasn't killed you already is because of the fairy blessing you have on your person."

Goldie was about to stand up and dust off her pants. She'd gotten them pretty dirty, but she froze, stooped over to dust her knees, she looked at Floyd. "What?" she said, knowing full well she'd heard exactly what he'd said.

"You're holding a fairy blessing that is protecting you from harm."

"No. I know that. Why would Kiffen want to kill me?"

To any outsider, she was just a little girl, having an intense, one-sided, imaginary conversation with a small gray cat.
Suddenly, Goldie's brain was inundated with the knowledge of what was really happening inside of this world and what had been happening since she'd arrived in this place... the first time? Visions flashed before Goldie's eyes.
She saw herself enter the secret room, crawl on the desk, and look out the window. She knew now that Floyd had hopped into the window because he saw what was happening behind Goldie. Kiffen was setting up his very own fairy ring to capture her because Kiffen was a dark fairy. He wasn't a wyvern. He wasn't a snake. He was a fairy. An evil fairy. The bad fairy in Sleeping Beauty was probably based on a fairy like Kiffen. Kiffen set up his trap and it was Floyd's reaction to that that caused her to fall into the trap in the first place.
When Goldie hit the ground, she landed in the center of Kiffen's dark fairy circle, pulling her completely into the halfway world. As Goldie struggled to breathe, Kiffen's huge form came into focus. He really was used to being big because he was big. That's why he was so graceful.
She hadn't been able to see him before because she didn't enter the halfway world where Kiffen actually was until she was captured by his circle.
As soon as she saw him, she took off for the cupboard as fast as she could, she was moaning in fright both in the possibility that she was going to die by dragon and that she was dying because of knocking the air out of herself. Of course, at that point, she didn't know she'd just winded herself. She thought maybe she had broken her neck. She opened the outside doors of the cupboard and dived through to the inside doors. She expected them to swing wide as easily as the first set of doors had, but she slammed into them. They wouldn't budge. It was as if they were locked from the outside. Goldie found a staple in the carpet and started scratching on the cupboard wall.
Falling into the fairy ring meant that Goldie was bound to Kiffen for forever, or until someone could rescue her from his hold.

In the present, Floyd led Goldie into the forest as latent memories continued to well up before her eyes. It was flashes, like from a dream, but she knew it was real. She could feel the feelings that that Goldie felt, and yet, she wasn't the same Goldie. The Goldie from her visions was Goldie from another reality. That Goldie had not met Floyd until he jumped up into the window to try and save her from Kiffen. She had not played with him out in the yard. She had not seen him sunning himself on the roof. She'd found the secret room because she was bored and wanted to find a book to read and thought maybe there would be something better than the Encyclopedia Britannica in the cupboard doors below the bookshelf.
Goldie was able to focus on Floyd and on the memories at the same time. She knew the reason she was here now. She wasn't on a fairy hunt, she'd already encountered a lot of fairies. She was on a hunt for herself. Floyd had been a fairy once, but he'd done many bad things in the past and was cursed to be a cat for a thousand years before he was would be released from his punishment, but that didn't keep him from trying to fight against the actual evil fairies of this fairy world. Floyd followed Kiffen into the fairy world and knew where he was keeping Goldie. Floyd couldn't save her on his own, he no longer had his fairy magic, but he knew some people who would help if he asked. He had his fairy friends bless an object from Goldie's world, the jewel encrusted compact mirror, and send it and him into the past so he could keep Goldie from entering the room until later. Either way, the original Goldie was stuck in fairy world, it was the way the fairy world worked, but in Goldie's world, she'd never even entered fairy world until now.
Goldie was the only one who could save herself. Kiffen had cursed her dungeon cell so that only she could open it from the outside, since she was inside, it seemed like the perfect and most evil curse, and yet hilarious, because she would always be on the inside.
Goldie shuddered when she heard Kiffen growl. She knew it was only in her visions, but it scared her all the same. The prisoner Goldie had the same feeling when he'd growled through the bars of her dungeon cell.

"Welcome to my collection," he'd said and he laughed a scary, evil laugh. After Kiffen had told her that she would never escape because she was the only one who could open the cell and guess what? she was in the cell. He'd laughed another evil laugh and strode gracefully out of the dark place.

Across the hall of Kiffen's dungeon was another cell.

"Is someone there?" Captured Goldie had whispered.

She heard clanking from the other and an old toothless man had appeared at the barred door. Goldie screamed and hid in a corner. Was this what she was to become? Would she be here so long that her teeth would fall out of her head? She'd cried herself to sleep in the dank cell that night.

Kiffen had the sneaking suspicion that someone was trying to help Goldie and so he'd gone back to the room in the hopes of capturing whoever it was. The thing that dark fairies could not do, and this kept them from being too outrageously powerful, was set up their evil fairy rings in the same place twice, no matter what. So, in the room, all Kiffen could do was wait and see what came in through the door. Floyd had made friends with Kiffen and told him all about being kicked out of fairy life. He'd convinced Kiffen they were on the same side. When Goldie had come back into the room the second time... well, technically, the third time, since the first Goldie had entered once and the second Goldie had entered twice. Both Goldies fell off of the desk and were winded, but only one Goldie made it out of the room.
Kiffen made himself small to convince Goldie that he was no threat to her. He'd brought along a Lady Killer Butterfly in order to kill whoever was coming in after the Goldie he'd captured. Its poison was supposed to cause death within five minutes however Kiffen didn't know that Goldie had a fairy blessing.
The fairy blessing was not nearly as potent in the halfway world as it was in fairy world, but it still protected Goldie from the most harmful effects of the poison when she was bitten. The place where the fairy blessing was commixed with an object was the place where that object was the most powerful. Floyd needed Goldie's blessing to be the most powerful in fairy world, therefore it was weak in the halfway world, and had no power at all in the human world. The gift was full of surprises, though. She'd realized it was protecting her, but hadn't realized she'd be able to understand Floyd's language when she found him again.

Goldie was pretty sure she had most of the facts, now. She knew that nothing could hurt her with the fairy blessing in her pocket, but what about Floyd? She felt betrayed by both Floyd and Kiffen. By Floyd because he'd allowed her to again to be brought into the fairy world without knowing what she was getting into and by Kiffen because he'd convinced her he was a friend.

"What happens if Kiffen finds out you've been helping me the entire time?" asked Goldie as they trudged through the forest in the exact opposite direction that Kiffen had gone to look for Floyd in.

Floyd's answer was exactly what Goldie feared. "I guess he'll probably kill me," he said in a noncommital tone, if a thought could be uncaring, it was exactly what this one felt like.

"He can't do that. Plus, I can't let you do that for me, Floyd."

Floyd didn't respond.

"I'll do my best to protect you. You've done so much for me, it's the least I could do," she stated as she followed him along.

They'd been walking a couple of hours when Goldie and Floyd encountered another spring like the one that Kiffen had shown to Goldie earlier. Floyd tested the water and it was not bitter, so he and Goldie drank from it. Goldie had brought a few of the fruits that the fairies had given her earlier and she shared one those with Floyd, who was very grateful the food. When he'd been missing, he'd actually been tossed out of the esoteric door not very far from Kiffen, but he'd high tailed it away from him to try and find Goldie before he did.
Esoteric doors and halfway worlds were almost always made by dark fairies. The light sprites, of which Floyd was one, would never bring a human back into their world. The only way to get a human into fairy world was to create a fairy world inside of the human world, called a halfway world, and bring the human through in phases. Entering the halfway world was done through a fairy ring. Entering the fairy world was then successfully completed by stepping through an esoteric door. Esoteric doors were volatile and irregular, they were easily effected by the weather, by the number of objects coming through the door, and the amount of magic used to get through. Kiffen counted himself and Floyd as magical creatures, but he hadn't counted on Goldie's compact mirror. If Goldie hadn't had her fairy blessing with her, all three of them may have stepped into the fairy world in roughly the same place. The fairy blessing had caused more disturbance than Kiffen had calculated when he created it. Which caused the esoteric door to throw them all out miles and miles apart from each other. Kiffen had gone to find the fairies. He knew they'd be the only way that he would find her and Kiffen without seaching the entire land. He spoke to the sylphs who flew out as soon as they'd heard. The first sylph who encountered Goldie and the dark fairy, Kiffen, flew directly back to where Floyd was waiting for news.
Once he had a trajectory, with the sylphs help, Floyd was able to catch up with them before too long and follow them along to the campsite where they'd spent the night. From there, he watched until he was able to get to Goldie alone. Kiffen did not need to know he was close by.

Click here for Part III

Part 1: Untitled Novel, Day 19 - Words to Go: 12,109

Part I

Kiffen made folded cups out of the same leaves that he'd wrapped the fish in. The leaves held together nicely when folded, quite resilient. Goldie was surprised. Kiffen led her to a spring which flowed out from under a tree just a little ways into the forest. The water was cool and sweet. She sat by the stream and drank her fill.
"Alright. I've showed you where to get water and the Sylphs brought you plenty of fruit to eat. It'll last you quite a while. I could be gone several hours depending on how far I fly before I find Floyd. Got it?" Kiffen asked, pointedly.

Goldie nodded.

"You know how to get back to the campsite from here?"

Goldie nodded, again, but less confidently as her eyes darted back and forth between the spring and where she thought she'd entered the forest.

"OK. Well, show me the way back to the campsite and I'll be satified that you're not going to get lost while I'm gone." Kiffen growled. He didn't give her any indication of where to go, but she was pretty sure they'd entered the forest from behind the tree that the spring was under. They'd had to skirt the tree to see the spring. She led the way back around the tree and tried to keep track of her steps as she made her way out of the forest. She skipped up to the top of the hill and walked straight to the campfire. It wasn't much a fire at the moment, more like glowing embers. Kiffen's dragon breath had eaten away all of the wood in the fire till the rock was sitting by itself in the middle of ash and a few stray sticks, which were mostly charcoal by now. A few wisps of smoke still rose from the glowing spots.
She wished she could at least call her Mom on the phone, to tell her she was OK, so she wouldn't be worried.

"Kiffen? Is there any way to call Floyd? Like, at home we have phones to call people."

Kiffen growled. "Out here, the only way to send a message would be by Sylph."

"Why haven't we done that then?" Goldie cried with her eyes wide. "We should do that right now. How can I get a sylph to come here?"

"Sylphs aren't actually good messengers. They like to alter stories to make them more exciting. They tell untruths."

"Oh," said Goldie. Her shoulders drooped. Well, at least Kiffen was going to look for Floyd. He could fly pretty fast. He could probably fly around the whole land in seconds! That would be awesome. Goldie wished she had wings. She could go with him.

"I'll get some more kindling and relight the fire, so you have that in case it gets dark." Kiffen left and returned with a lot more wood than Goldie had expected. "If the fire starts to get low, pile some more of this on it, but don't put too much on or you'll smother it before it lights. I'll be back eventually." And with that, he spread out his wings and lifted off the ground as he flapped them. Goldie guarded her eyes as he took off. The wind from his wings had kicked up a lot of dust. She watched as he dove into the river valley and then followed the river north. He disappeared behind a group of trees before long.

Goldie crossed her arms over her chest and turned around in circles. She wished she had a blanket, just for the sake of feeling comfortable, like she could be warmer if she wanted to, especially after waking up cold this morning. She eyed the forest, then the river, then the little patch of flowers. When she was satified nothing was coming out of the forest to get her now that the big, scary wyvern wasn't around to protect her, she laid down to look at the sky for a moment. The suns were just cresting the sky and shadows were long. The spot were she was at was a bare spot in the middle of a lot of trees. So, she was surrounded by trees on this side of the river. She sat up again because the sky was too bright to look at, plus it wasn't that interesting during the day. The only thing it had going for it was the second sun. That was what made it interesting. The hot white light did add a sort of dream-like quality to this place.
She couldn't really tell what was on the other side of the river because the hill on that side was taller than the one on Goldie's side. Plus, it was much steeper and muddier than her side. The path to the river was just really grassy, but it seemed pretty easily accessible. If she wanted to go down there. She didn't, really, though she did wonder if the fairy curse would protect her from drowning.
She didn't know how to swim.
She was intensely listening to everything about her. A breeze blew across the long grass. It waved and bowed and stood again, tall and quivering. The sound it made when the wind blew across it was a drawn out, "shhh." The wind was blowing through the trees behind her and actually making quite a ruckus. The trees cracked and swayed. The rushing water in the river. She imagined she could hear the gurgling of the little spring in the woods, but she knew she couldn't. She recognized another noise in the midst of the symphony of nature and turned to look at the forest once more.
"Shuh, shuh, shhh, shhh. Shuh, shuh, shhh, shhh." The pattern repeated and the noise got closer with each repetition. She searched the grass for movement and finally found the source of the noise, something was snaking its way through the grass toward the campfire. Without taking her eyes off the tell-tale grass, Goldie stood slowly to her feet and walked carefully to the opposite side of the fire, so there was something between her and whatever was coming toward her.
She knew she wouldn't get hurt by whatever it was because of the fairy curse, but that didn't keep her from shuddering in suspense of what might pop out into the open in a few seconds.
She gritted her teeth as the thing got closer and closer. The good news is it was a small thing. At first, she thought maybe it was a huge snake since it was so low to the ground, but then she realized that the grass would be parting in a much bigger area because snakes are so long, the grass would take forever to return to its original grassy position. The grass was very flexible, making way for people and/or things to walk through and then going back to their old ways when the person or thing had passed. Agreeable grass.
She couldn't help but scream when the grass-disturber finally made its appearence in the open area of her campsite. And, she couldn't help but scream again when she realized who it was. She squealed with delight and burst into tears all at the same time, so on the outside, it sounded a lot like she was drowning a pool of her own tears and was happy about it. Gurgling and sniffling and laughing all at the same time as she ran over and dropped to her knees in front of the stray cat. She grabbed him and snuggled him close as he struggled to get away from her.

"Kiffen just flew out to look for you! Oh, I'm so excited you found me, we thought you were lost forever. We didn't know how to find you. Kiffen said that you could have popped out of the exoderrick door at any place in this world! Oh, I'm so happy." Goldie was practically yelling her words as she squeezed the cat close.

"OK, OK. Put me down, now! We have some things to talk about."

Goldie released the cat from her arms and stared at him in shock. He sat down not far from her and started fussing over his messed up fur. She hadn't exactly heard a voice but she knew that Floyd was speaking to her. It was like Floyd had passed a thought into her mind, but there wasn't a voice. It was like she was reading his mind, but only when he wanted her to. Could it be that she could understand him now? Had she been blessed with the gift of understanding cat language? If so, when?

"Do I have to talk out loud to you?" she asked him. "Or, can you understand what I'm thinking?"

Floyd twitched his ears back and forth, like he was listening to something in the distance for a moment. Kiffen had said that you had to read the signals that the cat was giving in order to understand him, but this was purely mental. It had nothing to do with his movements. Maybe Kiffen and Goldie had different gifts, somehow?

Click Here for Part II