More story.

Continued from the last post at the bottom

 Andie, not even bothering to wonder how the goat got there in the first place cut him off, yelling " why are inanimate objects all talking to me today? THIS IS NOT NORMAL! why the heck is a goat talking to me, why the heck is a letter talking to me? Shut up and leave! I'm going anywhere to be some stupid warrior princess!" She stomped away to her room and slammed the door.

There was an awkward silence.

  "Ahem." Lilly said to the goat. Or the letter. "I think I'll go talk to her." She began to edge down the hall.

 "Tell her talking goats aren't different from normal goats, except the awesomeness factor."

  

  In Andie's room, Lilly said, "I'm going to play psychologist now." Andie was pondering the sky out the window, her back turned. Lilly began to talk when she received a fraction of a nod from Andie.  "I think you are scared. You don't like that you have new, strange occourances in your life. You have read enough books to know that these mark change. You don't want change to happen. Wether you like it or not, things are going to change and you aren't doing yourself any good yelling at and running away from it. You are being a wimp. We need to march back out there and listen to what Mr. Pythagoras has to say."

   Andie stole a sidelong glance at her friend. "That was well put. and most defiantly rehearsed. How often do you think about making me see sense? Im not that mentally unstable, right?" And then as an after thought added, "I hate it when you're right." 

  Back in the kitchen, Pythagoras was explaining the ins and outs of Makisk Jord- a world seperate from our own  inhabited by all sorts of magical beings. "The beings from Majisk Jord used to live in harmony with the humans, in the first plane of existence. When things went south, all the magical beings and half of the animals, most of the trees, and most of the nature- respecting humans retreated to Majisk Jord on the second plane.

Here Andie and Lilly exchanged looks, picking up on the subject of planes.

"Like the Bartemaeus trilogy!"

"Or the Kane chronicles,"

"I have not read either of those, but I am sure both are incorrect." Pythagoras said.

 "Anyway, Plante Trær is a territory in Majisk Jord, inhabited by the people of the forest. There are many others with varying cultures, but we aren't concerned with them, we won't be traveling through them. Av vann is located by the river Diger river, the big one that goes all the way through Majisk Jord." He gestured with his hoof to a relatively large area on the map, wich the letter had so thoughtfully provided.  "Ond took that one over first and it's in the worst condition. Plante Trær was next, in the forest. Ond is an evil spirit who's goal it is to rule the whole of Majisk Jord. He rose to power when a minor earthquake broke a hole in the weak ground. He came from what we call the Ekkel. In some cultures of your world it is referred to as hell. Your mother, Andie, was the ruler of Plante Trær. Ond killed her publicly and gruesomely. She was giving a speech and Ond came up and told her to abdicate. She said no, so he had his demons tear her limb from limb, right up on stage." 

Pythagoras stopped talking at the horrified look on Andie's face. He cleared his throat.

"Ond then assumed dictatorship by killing any official who opposed him. Now he starves and beats the citizens into submission. His favorite form is a cat that stalks through the streets clawing those who disobey him. Our job is to take back the territories and kill Ond berfore his evil can spread. Already the environment is polluted by his presence." He began to reach for the map with his teeth.

 "Wait" Andie interjected. "Why do you expect me to handle Ond and how am I supposed to take him down?"

  "It is your duty as the heir to Plante Trær. As I recall, your birthday is in one week and that is when Ond's army of demons from the Ekkel plan to take full control of Plante Trær. He also intend to kill you, a formidable obstacle in his plot."

Andie interrupted him "he knows I'm coming and wants to kill me and obviously has no problem killing people he doesn't like. AND he can shape shift! This seems like a suicide mission to me."

"Not if you win," the goat replied. "To answer the second Question, you have your mother's blood, both magic and royal. You have significant  powers at your disposal. I'll teach you to use them and then you will use them against Ond."

  "Oh." Said Andie, still feeling scared and confused, but at the mention of magic powers, the tiniest glimmer of a smile crept onto her face. "Does everyone have powers?"

  The goat continued to speak. "Yeah, but you've got the most. I'll explain more along the way, and we better get going. You can start packing."

    "What about dad? He's still at work. Will he know where I've gone if  I leave?"

    "Yes. He knows of your heritage. We'll leave the letter to tell him and there will be no problem. Lillian may come too if she pleases. She may be a valuble asset, being an optimist and a beliver."

    "Aw YEAH!" Lilly shouted.

The goat went with Lilly to her house to help her pack and take care of the usual "leaving this world" business. If anyone had a connection with Andie, it was snipped, their memories modified never to remember a tall bookworm with hazel eyes and freckles. Her father, of course, was let alone. Andie was easy, her fate was decided. She would either beat Ond and rule her country or die trying in Majisk Jord. Lilly was a bit trickier. It was unclear wether she would stay in Majisk Jord or return to our world. Pythagoras eventually preformed a spell where everyone would forget about her for a week and all her possessions were covered with a mist. The mist was similar to an invisibility cloak for some things and an image changer for others. Few people know of this trick originating from Majisk Jord, excepting a man by the name of Rick Riordan : ). Either way, the connections were taken care of and the goat could now help Lilly pack.

Andie was alone in her room sitting on her bed. Her stomach was tying itself in knots and he her brain was short circuiting. How could she possibly go from being a quiet, unnoticeable schoolgirl to a warrior elf princess sort of thing? "My mom died," she tried to tell herself, "of cancer, not of foul play in an alternate reality" but what if Pythagoras's words were true? She wanted to believe she had magical powers over nature. She wanted to believe there was a place called Majisk Jord where all sorts of fantastical creatures lived. She wanted to believe- but for someone else, someone in a story. The main character never dies, no matter the hardship, she knew, and there's always an end. Sometimes bittersweet, sometimes happy, but never in a book she had read was there a horrible ending. Horrible endings made her ponder gruesome deaths. What if she died fighting Ond? Would she be killed by his demons? (Here it occurred to her that bond's demons must not be nearly so nice as Bartemaeus) or maybe a bug could sting her and she could die of an allergic reaction. What the heck. Maybe Ond would be feeling big and turn into an elephant and squash her. How would Lilly feel, to see her best friend's dead body and the quest failed. Andie was not afraid of death in itself, but of who was left when she was gone.

She buried her face sadly in the soft blanket on her bed. She smelled school from when her backpack had lain there on the first day of break, crasins from after school snacks, a billion good books, her own sweat, laundry soap, lavender, mint. All those smells streamed up her nose in a great shuddering breath. She silently resolved to bring the blanket, just to remind herself of home. 

Return home. A thought struck her short circuiting brain. She would never return! She curled into a ball and began to sob.

Lilly was all packed and joyous as ever. 

"Let's go get Andie!" She called excitedly to Pythagoras, who was snuffling around in the trash can.

On the way down the street to Andie's house, her footsteps were light, though her backpack was heavy with clothes, food, flashlights and The Golem's eye.

They entered the house, wich was fairly quiet. There was a small whimpering noise that stopped when the door squeaked shut.

Lilly rushed into Andie's room. 

"Oh Andie," she said softly, patting her back. "Oh Andie,"she said again "buck up!" The pat turned into a poke.

Andie sighed heavily, pushed her depressing thoughts aside and sat up.

Her pack was soon full of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, easy to move in clothes, flashlights, batteries, a sleeping bag and her blanket.

"Just think. Djinn, foliats, dwarves, elves, hobbits, unicorns, crumple horned snorkaks, gruffalos, dragons, mermaids, faeries, gremlins, you name it! We'll meet them all!" Lilly remarked confidently.

They wandered through the streets to the park. They kept walking past the edge of the neatly trimmed grass and through the small trees and shrubs until they came to a chain link fence.

"This is the place," stated Pythagoras. "Just climb over and we're through to Majisk Jord."

"Really?" Lilly asked skeptically "how come so many other people haven't come through? How do we know people don't just hop the fence and flit back and forth between worlds? Or set up a toll booth?"

"Well for one thing, the forest spirits would never approve of tool booths or busy doorways. For another, people do come through. Ones who respect nature or need a better place- you know, if the forest spirits like them. You see those two cedars? Two entities reside in them and are the guardians of the gateway. They decide who gets through and who doesn't. They'll let us through. They know we're coming and that Princess Andrea is with us."

Andie then asked "so can they feel my presence or did you tell them?"

"Both." The goat replied "there's a band of former officials and citizens who made the plan to bring you back. It was the obvious choice, after all, you have the power to destroy Ond. And as the heir to the throne you would have to come here eventually, so they decided to bring you here early to help out. Ok let's go! Over the fence with you! Oh and it may feel...different... When you go through."

So Lilly scrambled up and over and Andie came after. Pythagoras found a hole and squeezed himself through. Instead of coming down on the other side of the fence, however Andie found herself falling through space. There was a great rushing in her ears and stars were whizzing by. She sensed Lilly in front of her and Pythagoras behind. She began to grin uncontrollably. 

The world turned green. Thud. The trio landed in a clump of grass amid thick growing, tall trees. The sky was gray and the air moist. New, bright green life was sprouting all over the place.

Andie gasped, both at the beauty of the forest and at the new feeling in her. The best way to describe it would be blowing boogers out of your nose. An unclogged, cleansed feeling, perhaps? 

"Woah...that is different!" She mused, referring to the goat's earlier comment on the feeling.

Pythagoras was pleased she liked it, saying that some people who came through felt naked or vulnerable, no longer with the "protection" of their stuff on the other side, be it their culture, technology, or lack of dense trees.

"It's really no surprise, though," he said as they began to walk in a north-easterly direction, "you belong here." And then in a thoughtful tone added, "did you notice, in the human world, that you were different?"

"I suppose so." The sun was poking out from the clouds now. "Maybe? I don't remember."

"I do" Lilly said. "When you ran barefoot across the grass in the summer It was softer and greener where you stepped. Or when we climbed trees I noticed extra moss where your hands had been."

"Oh. Well there you go then" Andie placed her hand experimentally on a tree trunk. She tried to remember how she felt while climbing a tree. ...When she removed her hand she saw moss spreading from the point where it had been. Lilly grinned.

"Yup, just like that" she said.

"How come you never told me?"

Lilly shrugged. "I keep a lot of things to myself."

The party walked on.

Later, in the campsite Pythagoras had deemed safe, three out of a multitude of sandwiches had been devoured. Lilly had gone with the goat to learn about the helpful plants of Plante Trær. Andie was reading a book on magic that Pythagoras brought. She flipped through the pages, looking for an easy spell to try. The moss one had come easily, like most growing magic, since her mother had been a nature spirit. Right now she had a clump of dirt in her hand, trying to make a fern grow. She consulted the book once more, muttered some incantation, and watched in awe and pride as a tiny green stem poked out of the dirt, it's tip curled in the shape of the head of a fiddle. It continued to grow, unfurling it's fiddlehead and stretching out its leaves. The stem  stiffened and turned brown at the bottom. And very very slowly, the fern stopped growing. Andie stared at it for a while, then dug a small hole in the ground and placed the fern gently inside, disentangling the roots from her fingers. She smiled.

Lilly and Pythagoras  returned at dusk with an armload of plants and herbs to be eaten or turned into medicine.

"I'm going to make a fire" announced lilly, "so we can boil those roots tonight and they'll be ready by the time we have to leave" 

Pythagoras nodded in agreement.

"I didn't know you could make a fire" Andie said.

"Come here and I'll show you". Lilly patted the ground next to her.

So Andie learned about choping wood and kindling and the tepee of sticks and of Lilly going camping with her dad on spring break a year ago, wich is where she learned her fire skills.

Pythagoras had been sitting, listening, eyes half closed when Lilly reached for the box of matches. "Wait. I bet Andie can do this part. There's a spell to conjure fire in your fingers. Take a look in your book."

Andie looked, with Lilly peering eagerly over her shoulder.

Let's see.... She skipped a few explanatory lines and found the incantation. She turned back to the fire pit, put her hands close to the newspaper and lint and snapped her fingers. "Brann"

There was a few brief seconds of a warm tingling, but it quickly turned into a searing burn. She yelped with surprise and pain. Her concentration broke and the fire went out. Lilly, upon hearing the cry , quickly selected a few of the leaves Pythagoras had said were good for burns and began to chew them to a mush. 

"Sorry this is gross," she apologized quickly. And spat the impromptu salve into Andie's fingers. The pain of the burn lessened, but remained quite palpable.

Pythagoras bowed his head. "I forgot to tell you about fire proofing your hand first"

Andie, holding up her green slime covered fingers mused "it seems like I should have thought of that. Maybe I thought the fact that I have powers over nature would protect me."

"You're kind of right. Your magic would have let you heal much faster than if Lilly  had gotten that burn. And good thinking with those kalde brenne leaves." Pythagoras told Lilly.

Now that the day's crisis had been solved, the fire was got going properly and there were various leaves and herbs cooking to make remedies better than ones with Lilly spit. By the firelight they took turns reading The Golem's Eye out loud, and then crawled into their sleeping bags.

In the morning the sun had just barely come up over the horizon when the mini camp began to bustle. Lilly was scraping the concoctions out of the small dishes and into jars and skins, all carefully labeled. Pythagoras was snuffling around in the dirt for something, then stuck his nose into one of the backpacks. Lilly wondered vaguely what he was doing, but almost mixed up some of the potions, so she thought nothing more of it. Andie had gone down to the  nearby creek to wash the now dried salve off her hand (the burn was now almost completely gone) and the dishes. The water they brought was solely for drinking and creek water was to be used whenever possible. 

"We'll pass through some dangerous bits today" Pythagoras announced as they started their hike.

At this vague and discomforting remark Andie and Lilly walked in uneasy silence for the next few miles.

  "Some of Ond's demons like to roam through here and kill things. Mmmm-like that" he noted to an unsettling deer carcass in the foliage beside the trail. "I think he keeps 'em hungry on purpose."

Lilly squeaked.

Andie frowned. "Have we any means of fighting them?"

"I suppose so. You have your powers, which you'll have to trust. I can move exceptionally fast when I want to. Lilly, I put a very nice blade into your backpack before we left camp."

"Waaaaaaaaait a minute! How on earth am I supposed to fight Ond's monsters if I don't even know how to use my powers?!?!?"

"Something will come to you. You can do more than grow ferns and you don't need magic words all the time. You're powerful enough I think." Pythagoras paused a minute, called for a lunch break, and declared it time for Lilly to learn to use her dagger.

You can expect more, I think, if you're not bored.
Gwen