You've Got Another Thing Coming

As I stepped out in to the open space I took a deep breath and then exhaled with relief. The walk through the corridors had been rough on my mental stability, but Tilda had herded me through all the madness with a secure grip on my hand and a surprisingly large amount of ear catchy, personal insults flung my way in order to maintain my attention.

Now, Tilda let me go with a gentle squeeze and pushed me forward towards my companions in this fictitious-like world. This caused me to catch my comrades’ attention, as I stumbled on my ridiculously large feet and landed in a neat heap by their feet.

“’Morning, sunshine,” I grumbled at the floorboards – though aimed at the people standing above me, and I felt the heat that is ever-present when you make a complete fool of yourself start to climb my face like an up-streaming river of embarrassment.

Rose giggled, obviously back to her charming old self.
“Cal, you prankster!” she gushed and tapped her foot in pure delight. “So alike you to try and lighten the mood.”

I heard a low grunt come from the other side of my head, and a hand shot down in front of my face. I grabbed it, and Cherokee hauled me to my feet in one swift motion.

“Thanks,” I muttered, and quickly stole a glance upwards. He wasn’t even looking at me.

“You ready?” he asked, thoroughly ignoring whatever my answer would be, nodded and strode out of the bar without as much as a look at any of us.

My hand acted on its own accord, reaching out to stop him, but I mastered it before it got too far and roughly pushed it down by my side.

“Are we going to follow him?” questioned Rose, her green eyes surveying her brother’s back.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “Let’s all follow Mr. Grumpy.”

We turned, but a gentle cough from behind us caught our attention.
There stood Chrissy, her arm stretched out and her fingers wiggling as she shot us a pointed look.

“I’m sorry,” she said, but didn’t look like such at all, “but there is a small matter of payment which has not yet been solved.”

Rose looked at me, startled at first but then her expression changed into desperation.
“Callie?” she whispered from the corner of her mouth, too low for anyone else to hear. “You got cash?”

Rose interpreted my non-existent reply as a solid, panic-struck, plangent “NO!” which was exactly what it was.
She seemed to think for a bit, and I could see the wheels turning beneath her thick set of hair. I could even see the conclusion take place in her eyes, and therefore it came as no surprise to me when she suddenly said:
“Callie, go see if you can catch up with Cher. I’ll take care of this.”

The ‘I’ll take care of this’-phrase left me with no option. The way she said it made it sound dangerous, and anything dangerous was in the top five of my ‘Ten Things Not To Do Before I Die’- list.
Except Sephan from A Vampire’s Prisoner. I’d do him anytime.

Shaking my head, I pushed all naughty thoughts aside and nodded goodbye to the witch and prayed she wouldn’t deform Rose far too much whenever she figured out what said fairy was up to.

I hurried out the door and lunged myself out onto the street. Looking both left and right I decided that the fresh, large pair of foot prints in the sand could only belong to Cherokee, and rushed straight after them off the street and along a field of carrots and ice berg salad, on to the path that led in to the woods.

There were small signs scattered along my way that read the word ‘hulleon’ in at least five different languages, with at least fifteen different spellings. I kept running, my long legs pushing me faster than I was used to.
The signs all pointed towards large tear in the ground, which grew as I came closer to it and took on the form of a gorge. The path ran along the top of it, and I stopped for a few seconds to take it all in.

There was something familiar about the place; I had a strong feeling of déjà vu as I looked at the gentle river that ran lazily in the exact middle of the gorge, and when I took in the tiny, soft sandbank I felt like I knew the place but that there was something wrong.
It was as if I was watching it all through a mirror.

Shivers ran down my spine as I picked up the pace again and rushed along the path. Soon enough I was loosing height, descending as the path carried my down towards the bottom of the gorge. Soon enough my feet touched flat ground and I immediately went to stand with the wall of earth against my back, leaning on it to support my own weight.

“I knew I should have picked up running again,” I wheezed, thinking grimly of all those times I had told myself enough was enough; it’s now time to get a healthier lifestyle!

I finished panting as soon as my heart stopped trying to beat its way through my chest and out into the open. Raising my head and flinging my sweaty hair away from my eyes, I proceeded with taking a good look around at the surroundings.

It looked like a gorge.
Big surprise.
Annoyed gasp and angry grunt accounted for.

There was another sign, left to where I was standing now. It read ‘HULLEON’ in big, nice letters, and underneath it stood something in thin, twisted handwriting which I could just barely decipher into ‘so long, sucker’.

“Took you long enough,” a grim voice stated somewhere from behind me. Cherokee appeared out of nowhere, holding his bag with one hand and casually leaning against the dirt wall with the other. “Where’s Rose?”

I blinked slowly. Mind whirling, I tried to recap what had happened in the inn.

“Callie?” asked Cherokee, waving his large hand in front of my eyes. “Answer, please. Where is my sister?”

My brain focused onto the specific memory with the ridiculously annoying languid automatic zoom of a Sony Ericsson K770i mobile phone camera.
“Rose – I suspect –,” I responded, keeping an eye out for unwanted outbursts of rage, “is currently running away from a mob of witches.”

Cherokee started, his eyes widening slightly. “What?”

“I said,” I began, “that I suspect Rose is trying to outrun a bunch of ticked off women with magical powers.”

Cherokee eyed me suspiciously, but he did not argue. He seemed to be in thought for a moment – I could tell from the slight dazed look that shrouded his face – but then nodded.
“Okay. Fine.”

“What is fine?” I asked, following him as he began walking towards the sign that read ‘HULLEON’ in big, nice letters.

“Rose is,” he told me, and leaned over the pleasant board with letters on it. “She’s on her way.”

“And with her comes certain death,” I concluded, recalling of one of the bartenders and her display of bad temper. “How do you know she’s fine?”

One perfectly arched, dark blonde eyebrow shot up Cherokee’s forehead. “We’re fairies,” he told me in a ‘duh’ kind of voice.

“You’re mind readers? Immortal? Lucky? Immoral? Too pretty to kill?” I wondered sarcastically, my own eyebrow nicely arched as well to match his.

This time I received a ‘duh’ kind of look.
“We can manipulate plants,” he told me, as if speaking to an extremely slow person. In this case it might actually not have been much uncalled for, though.

My other brow rose expectantly, and Cherokee sighed.
“And she’s running through the forest…?”

The light bulb in my head lit up like 60W had switched on, and a very silly smile broke out across my face along with the matching red colour which indicates total embarrassment.

“I see,” I mumbled through closed lips.

Cherokee watched me with an amused look and was just about to say something when a heavy flying object crash landed right in the space between us.

“They’re...” Pause. “After…” Pause. “ME!” panted Rose, her wild eyes frantically searching her surroundings. They landed upon me, and a smile broke out across her face.

“Cal! You made it!” She sounded almost insultingly impressed. She then carried on to looking at her brother and her smile became slightly warmer, but then a thought appeared in her mind.

“Oh, Cherokee! I’m so sorry!” she gushed, her hands groping for his, “I think I’ve completely wrecked any possibilities of you carrying on your friendship with that family. I’m really, really sorry!”

Cherokee simply patted her hand. “It’s okay, Rose. Those are some weird people, anyways.”

Her eyes scanned him thoroughly and decided that he may be honest enough to be able to move on to the next subject.
“So; this is where we part,” she stated solemnly. This caused Cherokee’s and my attention to quickly refocus on the matter at hand.

“What the hell?” Cherokee exclaimed, and I filled in with a gracious “Are you completely off your trolley?”

Rose’s face puckered at our contradictions to her suggestion. Her plump lips jutted out in annoyance as she made a tremendous effort of looking like a small child about to cry.

“Aw, Rose!” Cherokee whined, and began tossing his arms around himself, twisting and jerking uncomfortably like a small child about to throw a tantrum. “Don’t dooo that!”

They began staring each other down, measuring the other’s ability to be the greatest baby in the vicinity.

I decided to break the settling silence.
“If you two are going to have a fight out here, you’re going to have to go away.”

The siblings turned to stare at me, two pairs of vicious eyes burning great big holes through my already tattered self-esteem.

“Okay, okay,” I quickly covered up, putting my hands protectively in front of me. “Go ahead, fight as much as you like!”

And so, the Great Fight of Wills had begun. My shoulders slumped as I watched the two blonde fairies go at each other, verbally abusing everything known to man in a ridiculously loud voice in order to deafen the opponent into submission.

It didn’t work.

The roars of sibling rivalry and years of pent-up anger went pouring out into one great, humongous fight, and neither party seemed to take any notion of what the other party had to say.

This went on for about ten minutes before I thought it appropriate to enlighten them about a little matter that was kind of bothering me.

“Excuse me?” I said tentatively, earning no attention what so ever. So then: “EXCUSE ME!”

And they actually turned towards me! I did a little happy dance on the inside.

“You two are aware of the fact that a mob of homicidal witches are advancing on us as we speak?” I wondered politely, using my best ‘this-is-really-not-the-time-to-stand-around-and-bitch-about-crap-because-there-are-a-bunch-of-murderous-lunatics-at-our-heels’ look.

Both of them came up with ‘oh-shit’ looks on their faces.

“We have to split up,” Rose stated, fanning her hot face with a leaf conjured from a tree top and snapped up by her during the fight, for reasons unknown to anyone but herself. As Cherokee was about to protest she put up a hand to silence him.

It didn’t work.

“You’re an absolute moron if you think I’m going to let you two girls prance around the country all alone!” He was practically seething, and I could just picture the smoke coming out of his nostrils.

His sister managed to keep her temper, but her cheeks were flaming red.
“I’m not going to prance around,” she told him vehemently, “and I’m going to not prance around on my own!”

I felt my jaw slacken as realisation hit me. I stared at Rose, too surprised to even become properly angry.
“You’re leaving me alone with him?” I asked her, full of disbelief, pointing at Cherokee.

He himself, though, thought it proper to answer her with a darling: “The hell you are!” topped off with a delightful snort.

Rose glared at us both; which actually made her seem a bit walleyed.
“Look, idiots,” she addressed us both. “The witches are looking for me. I’m the one who screwed them over, and it’s me who they’re probably tracking by magic right now after the pollen I tossed at them. If we split up then you two can go ahead and deliver that goddamned package that Aberton Olav Pears gave you.”

Another staring contest was issued. Rose won. Cherokee sighed deeply, retrieved his backpack and slung it over his shoulder.
“Fine,” he growled at her, not even so much as glancing at me. “We’ll do it your way.”

Rose smiled so big I was afraid her lips were going to fall off her face.

Cherokee held up a finger in front of her. “But I swear to Gods, if you get hurt or sick or even get so much as a splinter in the finger,” he waved his own finger threateningly, “I am personally going to kill you. Is that understood?”

She nodded, suddenly completely serious. “I understand.”

“Good,” he muttered. He gave her a one-armed hug and kissed her forehead. “Take care, idiot.”

She grinned. “Don’t get yourself killed, stupid.”

“Won’t.” He stated, and –lo and behold! - let the side of his lip curve into a half-smile.

Rose turned to me and tossed herself around my neck, practically squeezing the air out of me.
“Be safe, Callie!” she sniffed into my shirt.

Releasing myself from her, I told her the same. We then watched her as she picked up her packing, waved a pretty little goodbye and threw herself into the air. The winds picked her up like a leaf fallen from a tree, and a couple of seconds later she floated over the tree tops, out of sight.

Cherokee stared worriedly after his sister. As she disappeared among the trees he turned to me.
“Get your bags,” he ordered. “We’ve got a long journey ahead of us.”