Chapter 6 - Return

 
 
   “Whoof!” Lirael sat on the ground and gave herself a hard pinch. “Did we just do that?”
   “Yes,” Rana said. “I can still hear Ceres. Look at the destruction we made!”
   Then Alanis moaned.
   “Oh no[/i]. Lirael…look.”
   Lirael looked, and she almost died right then and there.
   Her mother’s sapphire brooch was scattered around in five larger pieces and several smaller ones.
   “I’m dead[/i],” Lirael said fatalistically.
   “You’re not,” Rana said. “Not yet.”
   “How aren’t I?!” Lirael demanded, her voice rising hysterically. “Unless we find an exact replacement in half an hour, Mom’s gonna realize it’s gone and ask me where it’s gone! You know she uses truthspells to get the truth whenever she asks me a question!”
   “Shield yourself from the truthspell!” Alanis suggested.
   “We could put a pin on a rock and magic it to look like the brooch,” Rana said.
   Lirael started. “That’s right, I could use magic to get out of this! I wonder…could we put the brooch back together with magic?”
   “Let’s try,” Rana said. “Ceres says it should work, if the three of us boost each other and they back us up.”
   Lirael considered. How could she talk to Erian Pyr Umbra? She looked inside of herself, as if she was looking for her magic, and immediately felt her there.
   What is it?[/i]
   My mother’s brooch. It broke. We want to use magic to fix it. Is that a good idea?
   Probably. I don’t think anything bad can happen with something that small, but if it does, call for me and I’ll take over.[/i]
   All right.
   Lirael withdrew herself. “Erian says to go ahead.”
   “So does Myre,” Alanis said. “How do we do this?”
   Rana pushed Alanis to one side and Lirael to another, then stationed herself at another side. “Let’s hold hands,” she suggested. “It might help our magic combine.”
   They took each other’s hands and closed their eyes.
   “Imagine something being repaired, and drop it into your magic like we did before,” Rana ordered.
   Lirael thought of two shadows melting seamlessly back into each other. Rana imagined a sapling growing from the stump of an old tree. Alanis thought about wind, flowing around a rock and then flowing back together again. They instinctively knew to use only images related to their magics. Who knew what would happen if Lirael tried to create light or if Rana tried to set something on fire? Their magic would probably rebel, and that[/i] probably wouldn’t be good.
   The pieces of the brooch shone, then slowly moved back together and jumped back into the brooch. The pieces glowed again, and fused into each other.
   The magic stopped. Lirael opened her eyes and saw the brooch, once again whole and perfect. She almost melted with relief. “I’m saved! Thanks, you guys!”
   “We’d better go home,” Rana said practically. “Our parents will be wondering where we are.”
   Alanis stared doubtfully at the goblets and the long streaks of bare ground the rose petal essence had left behind. “Where did that come from?”
   Rana looked at the destruction as well and pursued her lips. “We’ll have to use magic to clean this up,” she decided. “It looks like the crystal dust made the rose petal essence acidic.”
   Lirael and Alanis looked at Rana in surprise.
   “What?”
   “You’ve never said anything quite like that before,” Lirael said. “You sounded a lot older. Than usual, I mean.”
   Rana looked surprised as well. “I suppose I did. I wonder why?”
   She concentrated for a moment. “Ceres says it’s her influence. She says that our Spirits will influence our personalities, and we’ll influence theirs. That’s way people can ‘control’ them eventually; because their personalities merge and they think the same.”
   “NOOOO!!” Alanis shrieked.
   Lirael and Rana jumped. “What?! What?!”
   “The goblets!” Alanis wailed, holding one up. “The inside’s all gone!”
   Lirael looked cautiously inside. It seemed that the essence had eaten away the goblet. It was a mere shell of silver. The others were in the same state.
   “I’ll handle the goblets,” Lirael said hurriedly, because Alanis seemed on the verge of tears. “Rana, grow the grass back.”
   Lirael took the goblet from Alanis’ limp fingers and thought of silver mines, and goblets being carved out of huge chunks of silver. Her magic looked at the image doubtfully, then took it and flowed into the cup. Dark, shadowy liquid filled the cup, and then evaporated. When it had vanished, the cup was as good as new.
   Alanis burst into tears of gratitude as Lirael started on the next one.
   By the time the goblets had been repaired, Rana had regrown the grass and cleared up any signs of their having been there. Then she yanked at the book Legerdemain and Prestidigitation. “Let’s take this back to the library. We’ll say your mom finished the scarecrow spell.”
   “Not this thing again,” Lirael groaned, picking up the other side.
   Alanis looked hard at the book. It seemed a little different, but she couldn’t figure out why. Then it dawned on her. “Hey, guys.”
   Lirael and Rana paused.
   “Doesn’t the book look a little…I don’t know…aged? And dirty? And just…different?”
   Lirael stared at the gold silk. It was faded and dusty, and the silver writing was a bit more tarnished than before as well.
   “Clean it up while we haul it,” Rana said.
   Alanis brushed the cover off, and a huge cloud of dust rose up, making Rana and Lirael cough.
   “But we were just gone for ten minutes or so!” Lirael protested through a hacking cough.
   Rana was looking worried. “The library has cleaning spells…let’s just take it back. I have a bad feeling about this.”
 
      *  *  *
 
   “So you’re back!” Mrs. Lyan said. “I was almost worried you’d run off with it.”
   “Why?” Alanis asked, puzzled.
   “Well, it’s due tomorrow,” Mrs. Lyan explained. “You said you only needed it for one spell, but I suppose you found lots of extra uses for it?”
   “It’s due…tomorrow?” Rana asked faintly.
   “Yes,” Mrs. Lyan said, realizing something was wrong. “Did you mistake the day?”
   Books were due a month (forty-two days) after they had been checked out from the library.
   Feeling faint, Lirael and Rana returned the book to Mrs. Lyan. Alanis had gone very pale.
   They walked out of the library on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
   “We’ve been gone for a whole month?[/i]” Lirael whispered.
   “What are we gonna tell our parents?!” Alanis whisper-screamed.
   “The truth, I think,” Rana said, looking sick. “How else will we explain being gone for a month?”
   “But we didn’t stay[/i] there for a month!” Lirael argued. “We didn’t fight for a day, let alone a month[/i]!”
   “Ceres says time must run differently in the Throne,” Rana said.
   Then she realized what she had just said. Her stomach gave a nasty jolt.
   “We were…inside of the Throne of Yord?![/i]”
   “YOU WERE WHAT?!?!?!?![/b]”
   The shout almost stopped the three girls’ hearts.
   “Hi Mom,” Lirael said weakly.
   “Hi, Miss Lena,” Rana added.
   Alanis fainted dead away.
 
      *  *  *
 
   The house shook with the yells of three infuriated mothers.
   “OUT OF OUR MINDS WITH WORRY…ALL GONE, NO NOTE…NOBODY HAD SEEN YOU FOR WEEKS…DID YOU CARE? NEVER DID WE EXPECT…NEVER LEAVING THIS HOUSE AGAIN…YOU COULD HAVE DIED, YOU COULD HAVE BEEN KIDNAPPED, WE MIGHT NEVER HAVE SEEN YOU AGAIN…ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTED…HOW COULD YOU…”
   It seemed to go on forever. Lirael sat there with her face redder than Erian’s hair. Rana was whiter than paper and seemed twice as fragile. Alanis’ face was buried in her hands.
   And it wasn’t just their mothers. Miss Lena was sitting in a chair with a very serious look on her face. Miss Tiara was pacing back and forth behind her. A dark man was brooding in the corner. A small furry animal was staring at them with great reproach. Another man stood by the door, his silver hair glinting in the sun.
   “…SO, WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO SAY FOR YOURSELVES?!?!?!”
   There was a ringing silence. Lirael looked at Rana, who was trembling like a leaf in the wind. She looked at Alanis, who seemed ready to go into a coma. It seemed to be up to her. She gulped and tried to speak, but no words came out. She was shaking as well. She dove within herself and said to Erian, Help me be braver, please?
   Erian stirred within her. Then a warm, comforting heat spread through her body. Calm down, take a deep breath, and tell the truth[/i], her Spirit advised. Be direct. Darkness never gets anywhere by sneaking around behind lies and deception. That route is only for evil and idiots.[/i]
   Lirael felt her tongue ease, and her heart rate began to return to normal. She still felt ready to throw up, but could talk now. Thank you SOOO much.
   “We saw…Sarah,” she said jerkily.
   Miss Tiara froze. The furry animal’s tail stood straight up. The man by the door lunged forward, and suddenly Lirael realized who he must be. This was Mr. Kagetsu, Sarah’s brother.
   “What[/i]?!”
   “We were…er…” Lirael realized she was about to get in a LOT of trouble, but trusted to her Spirit and dived on. “We were curious about Sarah, and we saw her when we let the banners fly. And we tried to talk to Miss Lena, but—”
   Lirael’s mother threw up her hands. “What a fabrication! Tell us the truth, young lady!”
   Mr. Kagetsu put his hand on her shoulder. “What about my sister?!”
   “We tried to tell Miss Lena, but she’d left on a mission,” Lirael said, gulping again. “So we tried to figure out how to find her to talk to Sarah, because we wanted to ask her a lot of things.”
   “Why didn’t you ask us?” Rana’s mother demanded.
   “You never told us anything!” Rana suddenly spoke up, still shaking, but suddenly determined. “Nobody would! We’re too young[/i], we’re too little[/i], you’ll tell us when we’re older[/i]…”
   “We asked everybody,” Alanis added, taking her face out of her hands and sniffing. “Lirael tried to ask the Princesses and the Neutralizers, but they just snubbed her. And I asked other people, but they wouldn’t talk to me. And Rana looked in books, but couldn’t find anything.”
   “Curiosity killed the cat,” Alanis’ mother said, glaring at her daughter.
   “But we couldn’t find anything,” Lirael continued. “So we…um…well…we wanted to try to get into the Plateau of Ribbons, so…”
   “YOU WHAT?!?!”
   “Sarah talked to us,” Rana said, glowering. “She talked to us at the festival, and she talked to Lirael that night, so we thought she would talk to us again.”
   “She did WHAT?” Kagetsu was almost screaming now.
   “Calm down, Kagetsu,” Miss Tiara said, taking his arm firmly.
   “She came to me in the middle of the night,” Lirael said, remembering. “And she told me a lot about magic that nobody’s ever told me before. And we got onto the Plateau during the Festival of Wind, but Sarah made us leave. She told us to come back another day.” She didn’t want to say what Sarah had REALLY said. “So we went to the library to get a book to help us disguise ourselves.”
   “But how would a…” Then a horrible look spread across Lirael’s mother’s face. “YOU TRIED TO USE MAGIC?!?!?![/i]”
   “More than tried,” Rana said. “We DID. The spell didn’t work, but we brought our Spirits here, and Sarah had to step in to save us.”
   After a moment, the dark man in the corner said, “Words fail me…”
   Lirael plunged on. “Sarah took us into the Throne of Yord, and we had to fight our Spirits. Sarah tried to stop them, but she couldn’t, so she gave us a few hints about how to use magic, and we beat them.”
   “Vait a meenite.”
   Alanis stared at the furry animal in fascination. “It talks!”
   “Ov courze,” the animal said. “Ah’m Japolo, Tiara’s parrrtner.” He had a very heavy accent. “Do u mean to sah tat you tree garls difeeted yorr Speerits aht tis age?”
   “We most certainly did,” Rana said. “We can show you.”
   “I’m not sure I believe this,” Alanis’ mother said.
   “We’ll prove it,” Lirael said. “What did Ceres say?”
   “She said we could bring them whenever we wanted if we called for them,” Rana said. “Shall we?”
   “Should we hold hands again?” Alanis suggested.
   “Let’s,” Rana said. “Okay. Here we go.”
   “Erian Pyr Umbra!”
   “Ceres Hi Kirame!”
   “Myre Baara Kaze!”
   BLAAAAAST. FLAAAAASH. SHIIIING.[/i]
   There was a blast of fire, wind, and petals.
   Dark lightning crackled over Lirael, and exploded into a globe of darkness, shimmering with all the colors of the rainbow. Rose vines wrapped up around Rana, and she was enveloped in a flower bud. Alanis was surrounded in a cone of frozen air, which solidified into a crystalline icicle. Then the dark bubble burst, the bud bloomed into a white flower, the icicle shattered—and Alanis’ mother screamed.
   The little girls had been replaced by beautiful women.
   “Now do you believe us?” Lirael/ Erian demanded.
   The dark man in the corner looked interested for the first time. “It seems that they were not lying after all.”
 
      *  *  *
 
   Things had whirled by until Lirael’s head spun. They had abruptly become the three youngest Princesses ever, younger even than Miss Tiara had been. Lesson choices, lesson times, weapon choices, exclamations, classes, questions, and tests were thrust on them in a matter of hours. Only the combined might of three mothers, three fathers, Miss Tiara, Miss Lena, Japolo, Leon, and Mr. Kagetsu managed to get rid of all the curious visitors, and then Lirael, Rana, and Alanis had to sit through dinner while all eleven of the above belabored them with still more questions.
   Finally Lirael managed to plead a headache from all the excitement and the three girls escaped to Lirael’s room. Rana flopped onto Lirael’s bed with a sigh.
   “I really do[/i] have a headache from all of that.”
   “So do I,” Lirael said from the floor.
   “Me three,” Alanis said, sitting on Lirael’s chair and spinning herself around. “And tomorrow will be even worse. We’ll be mobbed in the middle of our lessons.”
   “Lessons, shmessons,” Rana said disdainfully. “Magic seems like a trial-and-error thing to me. The ways of using it are very simple. You just think of what you want and let your magic grab it.”
   Ceres laughed equally disdainfully inside of Rana. You have [/i]that right. Magic is a wondrous thing that is limited only by your imagination. There’s nothing they can teach you that you don’t already know.[/i]
   Rana repeated this to the other two. Alanis was barely listening. She was playing around with some of the brushes and mirrors and barrettes on Lirael’s vanity table. Then she pulled a long white ribbon from beneath a mirror—and dropped it with a yelp.
   “What?!” Lirael jumped up. Rana snapped her head up, startled.
   “That ribbon!” Alanis screamed.
   Lirael looked at it. It lay innocently on the floor. But it was far from innocent. Black drops were welling up on it.
   “IT’S ONE OF SARAH’S RIBBONS!!!” all three girls shrieked.
 
   Black magic exploded up from the ribbon and snatched at them, forming long tentacles of black power. All three girls screamed again and tried to get to the door, but the tentacles snatched them effortlessly and dragged them inexorably towards the ribbon, which began to glow a bloody red.
   “HELP!!” Alanis screamed, throwing her magic at the door. It shuddered, and creaked loudly as Rana threw hers at it as well.
   “LIRAEL!!!” Rana sobbed as she was yanked towards the ribbon.
   Lirael grabbed her panic, threw it into the pool of her magic, and let out a huge blast of fiery power which blew the door off its hinges.
   Miss Lena and Miss Tiara were in the doorway. For a moment they stood there, speechless, and then with twin screams they leapt forward. Tendrils of green and blue magic jumped from their hands and wrapped around the three girls.
   Japolo appeared around Miss Tiara’s neck like a furry wrap and a silver blast of power burst from his collar to snatch Alanis. Leon was suddenly behind Lena, and white power wrapped around Rana. Mr. Kagetsu was there as well, throwing his hands at the black tentacles, draining their power as only a Neutralizer could. Their mothers and fathers were also there, and magenta-and-purple fires flashed from them to snatch their daughters.
   The Throne of Yord recoiled from this onslaught, then pressed back with a vengeance. The tentacles turned to grasping black hands which pulled twice as powerfully as the tentacles, then to pure black ribbons, mirror images of Sarah’s, which slashed upwards, severing the hold the three girls’ parents had created while still dragging the girls inexorably backwards. Alanis was almost at the original ribbon now, which had wriggled into a circle and formed a blood-red portal. Alanis’ foot disappeared into it…then her other foot…then her waist…then…
   Alanis disappeared inside of the portal of the Throne, and abruptly it gave a tremendous pull—and with a long, terrible scream, Alanis, Lirael, Rana, Tiara, Lena, and Japolo were yanked into the portal of magic. They were falling down a tunnel of bloody magic, pulsing with fury and vengeance, draped with horrible white ribbons, huge black eyes staring mockingly at them. Falling, falling, falling…and then they landed with a smack, and all was still.
 

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