You've Got Another Thing Coming

Cherokee let one leg dangle over the edge of the cupboard. He glowered at me with something that looked like a mixture of relief and annoyance.
With a swift jump Rose landed in front of me in a cloud of soot and ashes.

“Callie!” she exclaimed and embraced me tightly. She glanced up at my face, her pointed chin resting lightly on my chest, and spoke softly: “I’ve missed you.”

She pulled me away from the doorway and into the kitchen, thereafter pushing me down on a chair, putting her index finger in front of my face in a ‘don’t you dare move’-type way.

I decided this was a good time to repeat my original question:
“Where the hell have you been?”

Rose was just about to answer when Cherokee, being the graceful creature he is, hopped down with the leap of a gazelle. Advancing quickly, he soon stood towering over my seated self with a furious gleam in his eyes.

“We’ve been roaming around this entire godforsaken forest looking for you!” he hissed trough clenched, pearly white teeth.
I could almost see my reflection staring back at me with a bored expression on its face as Cherokee raked me across the coals.

Tuning out his nag, I began examining the two siblings’ appearance. They were covered in grey powder that I guessed came from them falling down the chimney, and when I glanced over at the open fire place I saw nothing but dust-covered objects. Cherokee’s formerly white sweater was now grey with black splotches, his white-blonde hair an unattractive grey shade and his jeans were...well, they were still the same. They’d been grey from the very beginning.

Strangely enough, this only made his seem more attractive to me, as long as I could ignore his ranting. It was getting on my nerves.

“Look!” I said, putting up one hand in the air in order to slow the steady stream of insults. “It’s actually I who has been looking all over for you!” I corrected.
“You just disappeared out of the cave, and then I had to get help from a talking lamp post in order to find you! And if that’s not enough, you decide to skip the entire ‘nice-path’ deal and barge through the forest so that you could find the creepiest, most revolting selection of trees I have ever seen; then I stumble over a manic-depressive wizard with gender confusion, who – by the way – looks exactly like one of my friends back home; and he attacks me with a staff, tells me there are two fairies in his house that are looking for me, pulls me through a freaking hallucination-hole and tells me to get in his gingerbread-cookie home!
And when I finally find you, you have the nerve to yell at me?”

I was practically seething with rage. With a hint of common weirdness I wondered to myself whether or not I was frothing at the mouth.

Cherokee and Rose were gaping very unintelligently at me, turning to each other before commenting one another’s current appearance and then snapping their mouths shut instantaneously.
Cherokee stared dejectedly at me before muttering an unwilling apology from the corner of his lips. Rose, however, threw herself around my neck, rubbing off even more soot on my shirt.

“I’m sorry, Callie!” she squealed and clenched me tighter. I stood there, awkward as a live turkey on Thanksgiving, when there was a terrible howl coming from the doorway.

I spun around, Rose still dangling off my neck, and bewilderedly examined Aberton Olav Pears, who stared dismayfully at his grey-coated kitchen.

“Have you no decency?” he squeaked in falsetto, aiming his question – or was it statement? – at Rose and Cherokee.

The fairies guiltily hung their heads, and Rose released my neck in order to stand next to her brother, like two scolded children.

“Sorry, Mr. Pears,” they said in unison and shuffled their feet anxiously at the wizard’s reaction.

It was rather fun for me to watch the dynamic duo so reduced. It also hit me then, that if Cherokee could master his lousy temper and Rose could suppress her ADHD-like personality just because of this guy – then Aberton Olav Pears was a really dangerous wizard.
I snorted to myself. Yeah, he just might bore you to death!

Aberton Olav Pears looked to be on the verge of tears as he swung his staff back and forth, yodelling.
The dust, soot and ashes disappeared in an instant, wiping everything in the kitchen clean of dirt, including the people.
The wizard heaved a great sigh of relief when everything was spotless and shiny again. He then turned to me.

“You seem to be the most reasonable one out of your threesome,” he concluded. “Not that that says much. Take your comrades and get out of my house before I blow you into smithereens!”

The staff threateningly poked out from behind his back as if to underline his words, and I grabbed a strong hold of both Rose and Cherokee before rushing for our lives out of the gingerbread house.

Aberton Olav Pears stood in the door, waving his fist in the air.

“And don’t come back!” he squealed menacingly before tossing something at us and then slamming the door shut.

Carefully, I crept closer to the object that he had thrown on the ground. It was a glass vial full of some sort of pink fluid.
I hesitantly picked it up and held it up against the sun, so that I could see the rays sneak through the strange formula. It was very pretty, even though I have always felt a strong aversion towards that specific colour.

There was a little note on the bottom with something scribbled hastily across it.

“Drink me, Callie,” I read out loud. I glanced shortly at the gingerbread-house, but not even the curtains made out of woven cotton candy moved.
It was deafly silent.

I walked over to Rose and Cherokee, studying the vial intently as I strode.

“What is it?” Cherokee tentatively asked.

“It doesn’t say,” I told him truthfully. “It just says that I should drink it.”

Rose gasped with horror. “Don’t do it, Cal!” she urged me. “He didn’t like us at all; maybe it’s poison!”

I snorted, but was a tad bit worried myself. “He didn’t like you because you messed up his kitchen,” I corrected her.
I shook the vial and the pink fluid danced. There was a little pause.

“I think you should do it,” Cherokee told me, looking me directly in the eye. “If he wanted to kill either one of us off, then he could have done it inside with a swoop of that staff.”

I saw the reason in his statement, but Rose had to respond:

“The guy’s obviously a pedant. Maybe he just didn’t want to make a mess?”

“That’s infantile,” grimaced Cherokee.

“You didn’t notice that the man’s not exactly what you’d call normal?” Rose retorted.

Cherokee huffed, and silenced. Yet, his eyes urged me to drink the pink fluid.
I contemplated the different aspects, the pros and cons, before coming to a conclusion.

With a twist and a pull I uncorked the glass vial and tipped its contents in my mouth.
It tasted like strawberry and whipped cream, and I marvelled at the pleasantness before chugging it down.

The blonde fairies stared at me wide-eyed. Rose looked to be on the verge of screaming, but no sounds escaped from her throat. Cherokee suddenly looked doubtful, frightened even, and was soon by my side.

“Are you okay?” he enquired, shaking me lightly by the shoulders.

A slight tingling in the pit of my stomach kept me from answering him. It felt as if a bell was ringing softly in my tummy, spreading like ripples on water through my insides.

The liquid spread like a fire in my veins, leaking through the membranes of every cell of my being. It was hot, but it didn’t hurt as the fire crept along, defining and enlightening me with knowledge of my body that you normally take for granted.
The world donned a slight pinkish hue that amazed me, and I could see and hear and feel each atom that was a brick stone in my being.

Cherokee was now shaking me harshly, calling my name loudly and panicky. I couldn’t answer him; I was mesmerised by the revolution that took place in my own flesh and blood. I felt my skin contract, the bones soften and shrink and my muscles lessen in size.
My hair flowed down in my face, my hips widened and my feet shrunk. Everything about my corpus shrunk; except for my hips, my chest and my behind which expanded in more rounded versions.

Cherokee had let go of my shoulders and was now desperately holding me up by the waist, supporting my decreasing weight and generally keeping me off the ground. His voice was panic-struck and horrified, and Rose’s penetrating yells cut through the wonderful pinkish hue.

I fought a harsh war with the pinkness in my body, and soon I felt myself sink from the extreme consciousness to a more normal state. My eyelids fluttered and I stared up at Cherokee, who was now completely pink-less, except for the light colouring of his cheeks.

“Whoa!” I proclaimed. “That was the best trip ever!”

“Callie!” Rose shouted and was by my side in an instant. Or, rather, by Cherokee’s side as he was still holding me up.

“You can put me down now,” I told him and patted his arm lightly. He let me linger a bit in his arms before reluctantly placing me on my feet.

I swayed slightly before falling flat on my arse. I grunted at the impact, but felt a slight relief that my bottom was now a bit more padded, so it didn’t hurt as much as it had before.
That was when it hit me:

“Rose?” I asked slowly. “Am I a girl?”

The blonde fairy girl crouched beside me and touched my forehead lightly. She let one finger trail along my nose and pushed slightly at its tip. I fell backwards on the grass, lying like a starfish on the beach.

“Callie?” she said slowly – joy evident in her voice. “You’re a girl.”

I instantly pushed myself up into sitting position and rejoiced by squeezing various body parts that had previously been missing.

“I’m a girl!” I yelled out in pure astonishment. Over from the gingerbread house there was a slight rustling as someone unhitched the safety-chain and peered out the door.

I got on my feet and rushed over to Aberton Olav Pears and, with the largest and happiest grin ever known to mankind; I hugged him tight to my chest.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I said to the fabric of his cloak. He shrugged me off and pushed me away at arm’s length. “I owe you so much!”

The wizard scowled at me. “Don’t mention it,” he grunted through lips as thin as a thread. “Ever.”

I nodded enthusiastically and reached out my hand for him to shake.
He glared at it, touched it quickly and dropped it as if it had been on fire. He then retreated back into the house, but was back in an instant with a manila package with a note attached.

“You said you owed me,” he stated and held out the package. “Then, you wouldn’t mind doing me a favour, would you?”

Getting the package thrust at my face with the gloominess of a very powerful wizard made me think that I actually did owe him a favour, so I nodded in agreement.

“Then I want you to deliver this package to Samantha Tarivole,” he ordered me and dropped said thing in my outstretched arms. “That was the girl I spoke about some chapters ago.”

I once again nodded in understanding, and saluted him. “Yes sir!”

Aberton Olav Pears simply grimaced at my excitement and withdrew to his beloved kitchen, slamming the door in my face.

I returned to the fairies, of which both were staring at me intently.

“I’m supposed to deliver this package to someone called Samantha Tarivole,” I told them and waved said package in the air. The siblings gasped in unison.

“Samantha Tarivole?” Rose asked, affrightened, with a tiny voice.

“Yeah?” I responded. “Is there something wrong with her?”

“Something wrong?” Rose choked at her own words. “Samantha Tarivole is the Queen.”

I choked on my breath. “The Queen? The King’s Queen?!”

There was a stunned silence before Cherokee decided to verbalise our feelings:

“Oh, hell!”