I grimace. I also remember it. Why does it seem so long ago?
Hamish squawks and scurries over to Charming.Please eat him.Hamish drops onto her butt and stares at Charming in disbelief.
“So the drink makes us smaller,” Hart mutters as he stares at the table. “What do you think the cake does?”
“There’s cake?” I ask, turning to check out the snacks. Ooh, nice. Little pretty fancies of various pastel colors cover a plate. The label on these says ‘eat me.’
I pluck one up. Don’t mind if I do.
Theo knocks it out of my hand, and I stare in horror at the discarded treat. There’s a half a tempo rule, right? Pick it up within that time, and we are good to go. “Think, Daphne,” Theo says.
I huff. “I’m hungry. It’s hard to think.”
“If the drink makes people shrink, then the cake makes people...”
“Heat?” Hot cakes. Yum.
“Grow,” Gwyneth says.
“That does not rhyme.”
Hart shakes his head as he snatches another of the bottles and downs the contents. We wait for a tempo, and then he too is a tiny pocket version of himself.
He waves his hand. “Come on. We don’t have all annus.”
I grab a bottle and give a little to Hamish and Eugene. They too shrink, although not as much as Charming. They are like capon horses. Next, I swipe some on Sir Sweeps-A-Lot.
The rest of us follow. Theo hiccups as he gets smaller and emits a puff of smoke.
I stomp over to the door and twist the key some helpful soul left for us. I push it open and step through into another world.
Bright, beautiful colors streak across the sky. Giant flowers of every color and shape outline a path into a woodland.
“Wow,” I breathe as I spin in a circle.
The genie makes a show of squeezing himself through the door with a huff. He’s being dramatic for a being that lives in a lamp.
Theo sneezes, and a little fire erupts from his nose.
I stare wide eyed. “Is that normal?”
He blinks. “No.”
So we are in a strange new world, on a dangerous, destiny-altering quest, and my dragon is having performance issues. What can possibly go wrong?
Here lies Daphne Stone. She believed in miracles and was the master of wishful thinking, which was ultimately her downfall.
Chapter
Thirteen
Awhite fluffy tail disappears into the landscape of giant flowers. Our guide is apparently done now that he lured us down to his domain. Wow, that was dramatic. Poor guy has been trying to persuade us down here for many, many turns. He’s likely hungry. I can relate.
“Why isn’t this world part of ours?” Charming asks as he takes a step closer to one of the flowers. He tilts his head, and the flower tilts with him. Cute.
“This isn’t just a single narrative,” Gwyneth supplies. “It’s an entire realm of complex narratives, too much to be contained in ours.”
“I think I must come from another land,” Genie laments as he hovers next to us. “I’m too big to share with all those fairy folks and sidekicks.”
