Loren kicked her feet. Berangere was pulling off her covers, then her eyelids, and sand poured from her eyes, then washed in, stinging. Though her outspread hair swayed, she felt neither hair-raising terror nor unnerving electricity, but a gentle current sweeping over her face. When she smiled, sighed, and bolted down the cool, invading swallow of salt water, she belched, thrashed, then rolled to her hands and knees--and the sloshing sand gave way, so she rolled again.
Loren slopped to her feet, drooling another salty mouthful, then spat, and squinted through the hot trickle of mingled tears and salt water. When she heaved, she moaned,
feeling waist-deep in death after nearly drowning in the ocean shallows.
The ocean. Despite her nausea and horror, she marveled at where she was.
The crashing, misty waves seemed less real than Dream Berangere turning her not only out of bed, but out of the dream, and the roar of the surf seemed a ghost whisper to Dream Berangere's roar to "wake up!" which still echoed.
In every direction she turned, there was ocean as far as she could see. That didn't seem right. That didn't seem fair. While there should be land near such shallow water, there was only ankle-deep surf and squishy sand, lots of it, under her toes.
When she slumped, then crashed to the ground under the crushing weight of her waterlogged vestments, she lifted them over her head and wrung them into the rushing currents squirting between her toes, around her ankles and shins, and then up to her knees.
Not only the waters were turbulent, but the skies above, for the scudding shadows of the hurtling clouds barely greyed the water before tipping over the horizon.
Having twisted her vestments as tight as she cloud, she flung the damp fabric over her shoulder, then waded the gurgling tide.
When a flock of gulls landed, marched through the surf, and cracked clams until the faint tearing sounds tugged something deep inside, her scream sought out the horizon, not to echo, but to dwindle and die. This time, she screamed "Vieno!", then screamed it again, then howled it a minute straight.
Loren wept until her eyes were raw from the constant gush of tears, salt water, and sand, and in this dry vision born of desperation, she finally saw shore not more than a dozen yards away, where its rocky edge churned a white mist that dovetailed with the frothy surf, a near invisible coastline that until that dry-eyed moment was dissolved by her pained tears.
As she stepped on the sandy shore holding her balled-up vestments, her undergarments drizzled into the surf sloshing under her to fill depressions in the shifting sand, including a dissolving trail of footprints. While the footprints were wide at first, they later narrowed, and sprouted the faint impression of toes, as if they had tossed their shoes into the ocean, then gone ahead barefoot.
When the dark wet sand transitioned to light, dryer sand, the footprints became tiny crunched-in holes, then disappeared altogether over the grass.
Or had they disappeared? Loren wondered if she could scrutinize the minute details better with a fox's eyes, which might distinguish each crushed blade of grass.Though she was only a fox in dreams, or at Vieno's command, the knowledge that she could do it was emboldening.
Whether she screwed up her forehead, wrinkled her nose, or grimaced around gritted teeth, nothing happened, and she exhaled a hot puff of frustration, then told herself she was shaken up by nearly drowning, and the nagging discomfort of sucking down salt water had not only made her eyes raw, but clawed her throat sore, and made it too hard to work magic. Although she thought of testing this theory by scrying through her hands, a magical gift developed when she was very small, she let them hang limp at her sides, fearing to discover that Vieno had more power than she did over her own body.
Without tracks to follow, Loren cast her eyes around the grassy clearing, which led to a treeline cluttered with nuts and clumped with silvery, but otherwise banana-like fruit. When hunger slithered and revolved, she was so faint that her mind couldn't leap from the tantalizing recognition of food to the thought of eating, and so light-headed that she couldn't feel the motion of her feet, but seemed to drift like a dream statue across the grass, until her hand held a silvery fruit, and the laugh washing through her almost washed her into unconsciousness. When she peeled and swallowed the green fruit that tasted faintly of buttered asparagus, her blurry vision shook out its ripples like a sheet laid flat.
Leaning against the bole of the strange tree with a pile of silver peels at her feet,
Loren saw her surroundings as if for the first time. The rolling surf, which had seemed a deranged assault on the mad turn her life had taken, now clawed the sand with a rocking, soothing regularity. She could watch it all day. When this thought translated into action, she relaxed against the tree trunk.
Although she had an idea where she was, believing it would mean a world might stand between her and Berangere. Moreover, it meant she was alone in Wherever-land with the owner of the feet—not child feet, but adult feet that discarded human legs as easy as boots, to continue on fox feet. While she would not mind assistance from a knowledgeable adult, and might tolerate a grown-up fool to bounce ideas off of, this heartless adult had left Loren to drown in the rising tide.
Loren rubbed her eyes. Was it a symptom of drinking too much salt water, or a mirage from the hunger she had not yet satisfied? Something so useful could not be bad luck,
she told herself, when she laid eyes on its jarring existence. While it was nailed together from old planks only a shade lighter than its concealing bushes, there were no holes in the rowboat, and
she laughed at her change in fortunes--until that delight curled up into terror when she saw who laid in it.
Though Loren wanted to run, she was frozen by the marvel of Vieno, who had fallen asleep at the twilight point between human and fox, with vestments discolored to gray by salt water, bare feet dusted by glinting sand, her face wrinkled around a shuddering snore, and streaming fur wagging over the boat, having found a restful nook in the oarlock. If most of her was the Vieno who had rocked her in the Mansion, the brown, bushy tail stirring in the oarlock was new.
She took in the Elderlich so intently that she noticed neither Vieno's eyes opening, nor the sleepy, half-lidded stare that swept over the girl.
"Hello, Loren."
Loren backpedaled. "Stay away."
"I could never leave you, Loren."
"You left me in the ocean!"
"Was that where you were? When I arrived, I was so submerged in waves that I couldn't see, and almost drowned."
Though this matched Loren's experience precisely, she wasn't mollified, having been changed into an animal unwillingly at the Elderlich's touch.
"Just stay away! Don't come near me."
"What would I do, Loren?"
"You'll turn me into an animal!"
Vieno's eyes swelled and glimmered with tears. "I never turned you into an animal, Loren, although I understand your point of view."
"My point of view? You touched me, and I was a fox!"
"Loren, I touched you to turn you into a baby girl."
Loren's head started swimming all over again. She was drowning in the idea. "That makes no sense. I am a girl!"
"No, Loren. While you've lived the life of an Earth girl, you're a fox. An Alsantian fox."
"You're lying!"
"I'll admit that hits home, as I lie all the time, but I'm not lying now, Loren. While on Earth we had reason to live the lie, on Alsantia, we will bear the truth."
"I'm not a fox!"
"Doesn't it make sense of things, Loren? Maybe your strange dreams?"
"How would you know about that?"
"A mother knows, Loren."
Loren screamed, pulled her hair, and ran for the trees, and felt, in the heat of her grief,
the lie in all these things, for if she was a fox, it was not her scream, her hands or hair to pull,
or her feet to run. She hoped the trees were real, but prayed Alsantia was a lie.
Vieno called out with a resigned sigh. "Don't be sad, Loren. Some spend half their lives finding themselves, and anyone would google spoilers if they could."
"I'm not a fox!"
"You already said that. Instead of shouting at me, Loren, can't we talk this over?"
"Stay away from me."
"Now we're back at the beginning. Should I get back in the boat?"
Loren could only cry. She crouched and clasped her hands around her middle, as if she had been stabbed, and howled.
"Are you hungry? Why don't we find food? Then we can talk."
When Loren only keened higher, Vieno changed. It was like a waterfall of flesh and fabric, plunging straight down to bubble up into orange and white fur.
The fox scampered deeper into the woods, but before she vanished in the bramble, she turned and spoke in a voice several octaves higher than Vieno's: "don't move, Loren. Not that you have anywhere to go, but if you try to escape, you'll only miss breakfast. Or lunch--I'm not sure which meal we're at. While I despised the Mansion, I'll miss regular meals."
After the ginger head ducked into the overgrowth, Loren dried her eyes and cheeks. While she had dropped her vestments in the grass, where they clung to dry leaves, twigs, dirt, and stray sand, they were already torn and frayed from her harrowing adventure, and she let them lay in their damp heap. They would be not only too hot, but hamper her stride when she ran.
Should she chance it? Though she had passed ravenous to the faint side of hunger, and could barely walk, let alone run, she might flee on four legs, or regain her strength by foraging for the measly bites which would fill a fox's much smaller stomach. That is, escape would be easier by cracking the puzzle of who and what she was. If she was a fox, boxed in a girl's skin, opening the box could not be difficult, as things had a tendency to spring back to their true nature. Even unnatural manmade things, like rubber bands, reverted to their original shape, so whether magical spells were organic or manufactured, she should be able to trick her true shape free.
When she had the ridiculous thought that her Loren-shape was only twisted together like a balloon animal, she couldn't help laughing. Then she sobbed, wondering whether Berangere could still be friends with a talking fox.
Whether or not she chose to flee, it would be good to be able to do it, she told herself, so she tried—and oh, how she tried! She furrowed her brow, relaxed her brow, held her breath, breathed long and gentle breaths, closed her eyes, opened them as wide as garage doors, stood, squatted, crawled on all fours, and ended by rolling on her back with her calves and forearms waggling in the air like paws.
"Tht lks wndrfl!" Vieno growled around the dangling bird in her mouth, leaped from the tangle to Loren's feet, where she dropped the gory fowl, then spurted upwards in a fountain of flesh and fabric to her true form—no, that's not right, Loren told herself; though this austere, cruel-eyed lady was the Vieno she knew, this was the false Vieno.
"Could you change back to a fox?" Loren averted her eyes.
"It's easier to clean a bird with hands. And a knife." Vieno produced a bone-handled knife and commenced ripping and snapping the dove.
"I've never eaten meat before."
"It's not meat—it's poultry. And we'll each only get a mouthful, anyway. You can manage a mouthful, I think."
"Why didn't we eat meat in the Mansion?"
"We weren't all on the same side, Loren. While they thought I believed their unnatural creed, I gave that lip service to blend in. Not that living as a vegetarian wasn't so bad when I was human. I almost enjoyed the Gluten Free Granola Bars."
"Is that a talking animal?"
Vieno hesitated in her gory work, then looked Loren brazenly in the face. "One—it's a dove. Two—don't know, don't care. Three—doesn't matter. Not since Queen Suvani's edicts."
"I changed my mind. I'm not hungry."
"Yes you are, Loren. I can smell your hunger."
"I'd rather be hungry than eat that poor bird."
"There's nothing poor about it, Loren. Nor is it suffering—in fact, it isn't anything anymore. The only adjective that describes this bird now is dead." She snickered. "And maybe delicious."
"So I should kill you, then, and eat you." Loren's scowl faded and her lip trembled at Vieno's cruel smile.
"Let's hope we get a taste for dove before we fall to each other, Loren, because you're not more than a mouthful yourself."
As Vieno smacked her lips eating the dove, Loren quailed to think that the possibly talking bird may have yesterday peeped an Alsantian fable to its chicks. However, feeding her morals was unpleasant on an empty stomach, and her nauseating craving for its flesh felt just as contemptible as eating it.
"There must be something else to eat." Loren sulked as she trudged into the darkening woods.
"You're getting warmer," called Vieno. "If you keep heading in that direction, you'll find mushrooms under a fallen tree."
"Mushrooms?" Loren frowned.
"In another half mile there's a berry bush, but you'd better move if you expect to get there by sunset."
"Berries!" Loren's stomach grumbled. "If you show me how to become a fox, I could get there faster."
"Despite your backwards way of looking at it, I could—though you may no longer want what you crave."
While this seemed unnecessarily cryptic, Loren did not care. Of course she did not want to be a fox, but it sounded useful so long as she limited herself to a few minutes here and there. Given her spellbinding dreams of being a fox, Loren suspected that she should not often surrender to the temptation, or she would learn to like it better.
As Loren's excitement grew, Vieno added, "and if you escaped, we both might end up in a ditch, as we're not only dog-tired but neither of us know this place by night. Will you promise to return?"
When Loren decided, a wave of goosebumps rose on her neck. As for the promise, a promise to Vieno didn't count. "Fine. I promise. Show me."
"It's easy, Loren. You must only imagine yourself as a mirror."
"I can't see into myself."
"You can. Even when you're looking into the world, you're looking into yourself.
Everything you see here, even me, is an image you formed in your mind, and a part of you. The secret to wizardry is that the object world is also a reflection from a greater mind. While reality is usually an agreement of your imagery with that Creatrix, right now, the universe accepts this image into that agreed-upon reality."
"You're saying I can change shape by changing my mind. That's nonsense."
"But nonsense is so much easier than logic, Loren. Take the human magicians, who in their effort to duplicate the effortless skin changes of talking animal wizards, alter their form by shifting every atom and cell. I'd call that the hard way, wouldn't you? The easy way is simply to project a new image into the consensus reality."
"That can't be right. I have hands, feet, and a heartbeat. I'm no illusion."
"Life is illusion, Loren. The diversity you see is only spinning atoms, and we are nothing but our images."
"You're saying I'm a hologram."
"Bright girl, Loren. Or should I say, 'bright girl, Berangere.'"
"I learned about them on my own when I wanted to make sense of my dreams."
"Having more control over your form may make your dreams more dangerous, Loren. Falling asleep a girl, you might wake up a fox to find your animal instincts had overruled your unconscious mind, and dragged you into the woods after the scent of succulent rabbits."
"When will I learn then? I'm already eleven. Who knows how old that is in fox years."
Vieno laughed, but her scowling eyes did not relax. "You will be happy to know that talking animals live as long as humans, and you will live much longer if you master the change."
"I might be happy if my life wasn't out of control."
"Then look into the mirror."
Loren sighed. "Is this mumbo jumbo the only way?"
"Look inside, Loren. I'll guide you."
Loren sat on the grass and closed her eyes.
"In the center of your being is a fox. Neither a dreaming fox nor a sleeping fox,
but a wide awake fox lost in the rules of the human game. Though she's traveled to Alsantia, her mind still dwells on Earth and the friends she made there. Imagine that Earth is a game board, and your friends the wooden pieces on its squares. Whether you scatter the pieces or place them neatly in the box, you must flip the game board, Loren. Now. The other side is a borderless land of woods, mountains, streams, lakes and deserts. That's Alsantia as we animals know it. Move yourself to the starting square. Only you are on that starting square, Loren. Do you understand?"
"Yes." Despite the crystal clear vision Vieno shared, Loren was overpowered by her craving for the dove. Though Loren last saw it as a pile of cleaned bones, her mind clothed them with raw meat, hanging succulently on the bone.
"Now look closely at that starting square. What do you see?
"A fox."
"Open your eyes, Loren."
At the prompting, Loren opened her eyes and her salivating mouth, then darted forward to grasp the dove's breastbones in her orange paws, which she worked in her jaws until grains of marrow leaked.
"I'm so hungry," she tried to say, but only yapped.
"Slow down, Loren. I don't understand."
Loren tried to speak slowly, but fox words bubbled out. It was like remembering in one rush a forgotten dream. "I'm hungry."
"I told you where the food is, Loren. Go and get it." Vieno's smile was crueller than usual, as if she held back the punchline of a nasty joke.
The food! Loren's heart quickened, and as if action preceeded thought or word in foxes, she scampered halfway to the mushrooms before she knew what she was doing, at which point she slowed to a trot, and dwelt on the unsavoriness of mushrooms. As Loren had always liked mushrooms raw or cooked, this was an alien chain of thought. Not only was the thought of mushrooms now nauseating, but the dove bones kept pressing into her craving mind. Loren's head was swimming with strange cravings, not thoughts, but sentient greed desiring, demanding, expecting, as if her mouth and stomach were an eye scheming to be full.
When she reached the fallen tree, she nosed the mushrooms and turned her head. Somehow, the smell was even more disgusting than remembering their taste. While it was fun to paw the mushrooms into pieces, when she brought a chunk to her mouth, and her throat convulsed—she froze, mid-retch, and gazed on her hands in fascination. Should foxes have hands? She was not a raccoon, after all. When she dropped to all fours, the hands relaxed into paws. Standing on her hind legs again, Loren nearly stood erect. She realized that talking foxes were very different from Earth foxes.
There was always the fruit, Loren told herself, but not before she had already zipped further into the woods, rustling shrubs and scurrying under and over the raised roots of gnarled trees in pursuit of the shiny branches of the berry bushes. While she eyed the berries with interest, when she picked one to suck in her mouth, her desire was sated. One was enough. If she ate all the berries on the bush, she would still crave flesh, and one berry tasted the same as forestful. The berries would never fill her up, and if she tried, she might vomit up the sweetness. A berry wasn't food, her fox brain reasoned, but only a novelty.
Having slunk back through the woods, Loren stared accusingly at Vieno, who returned a smug smile. "I half-expected mushroom breath and berry-stained paws, Loren, since you're more stubborn than nature." From under her crossed legs, Vieno produced a wet gobbet of dove. "I really wanted to eat this, but it's better that you learn while you still can."
"Was it a talking animal?"
"I told you, Loren—I don't know."
"You're lying. Talking animals are different." Loren raised her paw in a dexterous wave.
"Would it make a difference, Loren?"
"Of course it would!"
"I don't think so," said Vieno, with a knowing lilt to her voice. Though the fleshy tatter was specked with dirt and a blade of grass, when it plopped in front of Loren, she snapped it up and gobbled it down. No sooner had she swallowed than Vieno crowed, "did it taste like talking meat, Loren?"
"You're horrible!" shouted Loren, though she jetted a sigh of pleasure and smacked her lips at the deliciousness of the bloody chunk.
"You don't want the other piece?" leered Vieno.
"Where!" Loren howled.
"Now I am sorry. Really and truly sorry, Loren. There isn't another piece."
"You're a monster."
"No, I'm an animal. Something you need to understand for yourself."
"Understand what?"
"Your true nature."
"This might be nature, but it isn't true." Loren settled on her haunches, closed her eyes, and thought of her own hands, her own face, and her own eyes.
"What are you doing?" asked Vieno.
Loren opened her eyes. She was still a fox. "You broke my concentration."
"Forgive me." Vieno's smile was patronizing.
Though she tried several times, until her thoughts transformed first into desperation and then into longing, Loren could not shift shape. "Why can't I change back?"
"Back? You are back, Loren. I only taught you how to go back. Learning how to change shape, especially into such a dainty shape as a human girl—that's very difficult. Usually we start with easier shapes, Loren—like toads or mice." She laughed. "Your friends are a mousy bunch. You'll fit right in."
Loren's fox heart quickened until it thrummed. Her self-consciousness of the tiny organ heightened to a chaotic brink, so that if her heart didn't explode, she felt that her brain would spill its contents to mingle with this insane nonsense. "You're lying! Walk me through it like before!"
"While you fell back into your natural shape easily enough, I can't walk, run, or even tiptoe you into another shape. As I said, there is a trick. And that's for another night. I'm much too tired."
At Vieno's drawn-out, theatrical yawn, Loren snapped her teeth, then scampered around the Elderlich, even climbing up her leg and down her shoulder, as her anxiety and desperation to recover her missing self had overcome her fear of the Elderlich. "I can't sleep like this! I can barely breathe like this! My heart is going to shoot out of my mouth!"
"Calm down, Loren. If you stop moving, you'll fall asleep."
"I swear I won't! I'll run myself to death!" As if to underscore this point, Loren dashed up a trunk, ran along a branch to an entirely different tree, then bounded onto Vieno's head.
"You might do that just to spite me," said Vieno. She sighed. "Although your natural shape is more useful in Alsantia, and you have much to learn, I will change you back—on one condition."
"Anything!"
"Promise not to run away."
"If I wanted to escape, I could have done that already. Running is easier on four legs than two."
"No, Loren. You would never run away in that shape."
As Vieno's human mouth aped and shaped arcane growls and roars, Loren strove to pick out the words of the Alsantian spell, and her hackles rose when she could distinguish, but not comprehend the sounds. As her limbs lengthened and smoothed, and her fur rippled into hair and Animalyte vestments, she had another, odder, feeling: although she felt the sudden spurt into her girl skin as an intense relief, when she was shaped, she no longer felt like herself, but hollow and covered. She sobbed as she beat the grass with hands that no longer felt the thud like real flesh, but muffled the impact like mittens. It felt like there was an invisible sleeve between her and the world.
"You'll get over it," said Vieno. "Even if you don't, you'll feel better about it in the morning, when you wake in those rags—and I don't mean your Earth clothes. We'll sleep in the coracle."
Although Loren didn't like the idea of sleeping on the ground, the incommodious boat barely fit Vieno's tall and rangy human disguise, let alone the Elderlich's bushy tail.
Loren shook her head. Whether or not this was her natural born mother, she never wanted to be that close again. "I'll sleep here. Like you said, I'm not used to nature."
"Suit yourself." No sooner had Vieno laid her head on the boat's old wooden seat than she began snoring. Loren rolled her eyes. No one fell asleep that quickly. The witch pretended to sleep and hoped to catch her in escape.
Although she had her own hands and her own face—not your own hands and never your real face, came a foxy snicker curled in her mind—how could she escape?
She didn't know where she was. Even if a QwiKafe was at the end of this row of trees,
she had led such a sheltered life on Earth that she was barely able to navigate a convenience store, let alone a magic continent of talking animals that had developed an acquired taste for thinking flesh.
Although Loren was exhausted, her spinning mind would not stop whirling through thoughts she dared not examine any deeper than the surface terrors they summoned to mind. As night crawled on in spite of her bloodshot sleeplessness, Vieno's snores labored so thick and coarse that they must be in earnest. Moreover, the enormous, saw-bladed noise roared so loud that Loren would have been more likely to fall asleep in a hurricane.
When another buzzing swelled in the woods, Loren rolled on her belly, and from there to all fours, before realizing her unnatural stance. Although she only inhabited her fox skin a few minutes at a time, looking out at the world from this position felt so natural that she was at first unwilling to stand. Lumbering to her feet, she felt not only exposed, but out of place in two layers, as if this animal world had spied her bipedal body and marked it for prey, whether for being a human girl standing in the deep, dark woods, or a two-legged fox in a four-legged world.
While she feared she might never again feel belongingness, what was even more alien was the buzzing, which escalated to a high-pitched drone that shook the tree tops and billowed the sand in small puffs to cascade yards away. Although some sand rained down on the boat, Vieno did not stir, and Loren gingerly creeped towards the beach, where the moonlit sand was as hot as a summer afternoon, and Loren hopped between grassy patches until she could walk where the waves had left trails of wet sand.
It was such a shadowy night that she almost walked into it. Although metallic, the interlocking brass bubbles were lusterless, and only the golden surfaces of its wings reflected the moonlight. Backpedaling away from the gleaming dragonfly, Loren was about to holler for Vieno and run for the boat when she glimpsed the wheels at the end of its stiff forelegs.
"Loren!" Before the lowering ramp touched the ground, Loren clambered on, then scampered inside to throw herself on Berangere.
Although Loren wanted to say a dozen different things, what won out over "is it really you," "I'm so glad to see you," "how did you find me," and other heartfelt expressions was the only exclamation that accomodated the depths of her desperation: "leave! Now, Berangere!"
"What?"
"Leave! Vieno's here! She can change you into foxes, mice, toads--anything she wants!" Dashing past Berangere inside the craft, Loren held in her scream as she repeated herself: "Leave. Now!"
"I take no orders from you, your grace," said an oddly accented young woman seated at a wooden dashboard with coppery hexagonal knobs and a brass wheel. "Not only are you not my princess, you are not Efremian. You may not even be human, judging by the tales her highness tells."
Although Loren was still struck with fear, this struck deeper, at the anxieties concerning her identity, and she turned on Berangere. "Does everybody in Alsantia know?"
Berangere frowned, but looked over her friend's shoulder to the pilot. "Do as she says." Berangere then led Loren to a seat and strapped her in.
When the scowling pilot fiddled with the controls, the strange vehicle sealed itself, rattled, then ascended into the night. "Though I am sworn to obey your highness,
remember your age and my dignity. A please would be nice."
"I'm sorry, Kiera. Please."
"Won't you introduce your friend, your highness?"
"You already know this is Loren."
"Just because I shared in the strategy, your highness, doesn't mean the niceties shouldn't be observed."
"Kiera, this is Loren. Loren, this is Kiera."
"I am pleased to meet your grace."
"You can call me Loren."
"You will forgive me if I do not presume to call the princess's friend by name, your grace."
"I'm not feeling any grace tonight, Kiera."
"You are honored by her highness's choice. Find your grace in that—your grace."
Through the porthole, dark clouds scudded over the moonlit land. The moonlight was eerily textured by the twin moons of Alsantia, as the layers of illumination crossed, creating a patchwork of shadows and some hashmarks that pooled light as bright as day. "Can she follow us, Berangere?"
"No," scoffed Berangere. "Not unless she turns into a bullet train."
"I can't believe she's finally gone. How did you find me, Berangere?"
"I can't take the credit. Kiera used that communication device with a faraway look, then brought me here." Berangere indicated what looked like a basin of volcanic glass inset into the dashboard.
"In Efremia, a machine tracks the gateways between our worlds," said Kiera. "As we were advised the princess was en route, we were already looking for gateways. In fact, if I had not found her in the capital, this would have been my second stop. But in the end, you should credit her highness, who insisted on retrieving you and persuaded me against my better judgment."
"I said I would jump out the door."
"And she believed you," laughed Loren. "She doesn't know you're the reasonable one."
Berangere held her finger to her lips with a groan, then said, "I wasn't then. Not only was I in Alsantia, dripping from my trip through a fountain, chased by axe-wielding policemen, and escorted by a talking cat to a high roof, but I had to choose between being hauled off by a rioting mob or boarding this giant dragonfly. I may have actually been crazy for a moment."
While she still didn't feel put together, as if Vieno's spell skipped bones or organs here and there, Loren was so glad to see Berangere that she felt like anything but crazy. When her two day journey over and between worlds suddenly hit her, she collapsed, half on the seat, and half on her best friend. "I'm ready for the last chapter of The Scarlet Pimpernel."
"I don't have the book, Loren."
Loren's eyes batted half-open, though they drooped instantly as she was caressed by a luxurious yawn.
"Did you just purr, Loren?"
Loren froze. "Maybe. I'm very tired. How could you leave it, Bear? How will I find out how it ends?"
"I can tell you how it ends."
Loren's eyes darted open. "You DID read it without me."
"Maybe I skimmed it. I was mad at you. Do you want to know what happens?"
"No spoilers..." yawned Loren, then fell fast asleep.