Epithet Erased, page 12
“Alright . . .” she crossed her arms. “So, what’s this test?”
“Ah, yes! The assignment!” Giovanni put away his notebook. “Drrrum roll, please~!” Lori gave a lazy wave of the hand and an invisible drummer began non-diegetically rat-a-tat-tatting. Giovanni threw out his arms and posed with each syllable:
“Your MISSION! . . . IS! . . . to MAKE!!! . . . Some cookies!”
Lorelai blinked. “Cookies?”
“Yep.”
“For real?”
“For really real.”
“. . . Okay.” Lorelai snapped her fingers and a plate of hot steaming cookies twinkled into existence, evenly spaced on a spic-and-span baking sheet. Steam wafted off of them with a chocolatey scent so heavenly it could’ve lifted a cartoon character and carried them through an open window. “All done. Mission complete.”
“No, no, no!” Giovanni waved. “Ya gotta make REAL cookies. From the HEART!”
Lori blinked twice. She snapped her fingers and her own cartoon heart popped out of her chest, leaving a heart-shaped hole. It sprouted little rubber hose arms and legs and produced an identical plate of cookies from hammerspace, honkey-tonking across the table and doing a little jazz hands.
“Ta-da~!” it said, with razzle-dazzle flair.
“No! Terrifying. But no! Let’s put that thing back.” He grabbed her heart and it fluttered. “Whoa. Careful there, little fella.” Lori flushed. She took the heart back from him, plugging it into her chest like a cork in a bottleneck. “Haha, your powers are so weird.” He smiled at her in a warm, lopsided, genuine way. She was glad he’d taken his helmet off. His eyes were sharp, but there was a strange softness to them. Like they were fully focused on what you had to say and they wanted to hear you say it. She wasn’t used to people looking at her like that.
Her heart fluttered again.
She flipped away from him so he wouldn’t see it literally banging against her chest, a prisoner desperate for human contact.
“W-What do you mean by ‘from the heart?’, exactly?”
“Y’know! Something that only you can make! It doesn’t have to be good, per say. But it has to be YOU! You have to mean it, y’know?”
She didn’t.
He tapped his foot and tried to find the right words.
“Like . . . Okay! If you sing your ‘Heart Song’, that means it's coming from deep inside. Like, even if it SUCKS you gotta sing it! It doesn’t matter what other people think, but it’s gotta come out because you’re in the flow and it’s YOOUUUUUUU~!” He sang the last part. It sucked out loud. But she couldn’t help but like it and let out a little laugh.
“Okay . . . so . . . how do I do that with cookies?”
“Well, first you take a good recipe, which I just so happen to have.” He ripped the page he had been scribbling on out of his notebook. It was a recipe for a batch of three dozen chocolate chip cookies. He handed it to her. “And now all YOU need to do is put your own twist on it!” He gestured to the oven. “You have one hour!”
“Aaaaaand begin!”
5
Love Spell
The Neo Trio—plus one purple lizard—made their way down the path closer and closer to Lorelai’s hovel.
It had taken them a bit of time, but without too much difficulty they’d made it back to the summery forest where Lorelai had first ambushed them. The woods were beautiful to look at, but Molly couldn’t help but feel exposed. The slender white trunks of the trees were too thin to provide any cover and the eye-shaped knotholes on the aspen bark gave her the feeling that they were being watched. She could’ve sworn she saw one of them blink . . .
Crash!!!
Her heart spiked through her chest. There was a loud shattering noise just ahead of them in the forest. She looked around for the source of the sound and saw Trixie fluttering towards them. She was carrying a small armful of candy rocks.
“Broke the mirror,” she saluted.
Oh . . . right . . . there was a mirror on one of the trees here, wasn’t there?
Trixie had been flying in and out of sight, flitting back and forth and collecting different pieces of candy. She was too small to carry them herself now, so once she found an armful of good ones she would return to basecamp (Molly) and toss them into storage (Molly’s hoodie). Candy apples, candy corn, and something called a chocolate truffle that Phoenica identified as being very valuable. It was like a mushroom or something? Molly had never seen one before.
She was worried that Trixie might get attacked while she was out on her own. She was worried about a lot of things. What if one of her companions got hurt? What if she messed up again when she found Lorelai? What if—
A strange sensation cut through her anxiety.
Rick was scuttling through her afro and walking across the top of her head with his little alien karate chop hands. Grabby grabby plungers gripping and upgripping her skin. The feeling was so completely weird that it actually snapped her back from her worries, like biting into a lemon in the middle of a panic attack.
She took a deep breath . . . in for five seconds . . . and out.
Another.
In . . . and out.
Hahh . . .
This was another trick that Naven had taught her. It wasn’t a speech lesson, just a life tip. He said he used it when he was feeling overwhelmed (which he admitted was often). It worked pretty well!
The air was sweet and vanilla. The breeze was soft. This world was nice. She didn’t have time to play, but . . .
. . . This could be real, for now.
The path cookie-crunched beneath their feet as birds sang overhead. Trixie kept a sharp, singular eye out for both candy and any mirrors that Lorelai might be able to use as a portal. There were none in this part of the woods, but she did notice a faint buzzing sound. Beehives in greater and greater numbers on the branches overhead. As the group wandered deeper into the forest the hives grew larger and more intricate, stretching and twisting into strange shapes across the trees like archways for them to walk under.
Tiny multicolored flowers grew across the forest floor like confetti, sprouting up from patches of sunlight and only in patches of sunlight. The flowers swayed with the dapple, stopping hard when they met the shadow’s edge. Honeybees danced to and fro, kissing the petals before flying away.
“Look!” Feenie pointed up into the trees. “That beehive looks like a big letter M!” Indeed, up just ahead of them was a trio of aspen trees all linked together by a pair of two large honeycomb archways. The group passed underneath it, gazing up in wonder. All of the hives here looked a bit like letters, come to think of it. There was a “J”. And over there was a “Q”!
Ahead of them was the most massive hive of all: An enormous wall of interlocking, honeycomb cells that rose up fifteen feet tall and cut the forest clean in two with a large gate. The gate was at the far edge of a large clearing. Sunlight shone openly and unafraid through the trees and flowers exploded from the ground anywhere they could find the room. Molly pushed softly through the flowers, being sure to brush them aside with her feet instead of stepping on any of them. The bees working nearby politely scooted out of their way.
Most of the kids in their class were terrified of bees, but not the Neo Trio.
Trixie thought that bees (and most bugs) were cute. Bumblebees were fluffy, which was the only requirement that Phoenica needed to fall in love with an animal. Molly had been taught by a certain someone that bees were hard workers and they should be respected. Rick didn’t know what a bee was, but given the lack of reaction from the others he assumed they were harmless—though his new lizard instincts were also telling him that they might be delicious.
“My goodness!” Feenie spun in midair, jingling pixie dust behind her. “This place almost looks like some kind of apiary!”
An odd, warbling voice spoke up from somewhere.
“Apiary,” it said. “A-P-I-A-R-Y.” The girls looked for the source of the voice. “Over here,” it called, somewhat impatiently.
There was a creature sitting in front of the gate, lounging on a banana-shaped hive like an ornate drinking room sofa. The voice came from a large, elongated bee-like insect with a glinting monocle
and mortarboard cap atop its head. It had a long, teardrop-shaped nose and droopy, condescending eyes that made it look rather like a disappointed puppet.
“Hello!” Feenie waved. The creature stuck its nose up at her.
“Hmmmmm. You are not supposed to bee here.”
Molly sighed with a weary expression.
“You work for my sister then?”
She had trudged through Lori’s worlds a million times now and this sort of thing happened in basically every single one of them. Lori loved her little minibosses. Molly thought they were annoying.
“Of course I work for the Hare-idan,” the Bee said. “Everybody who’s anybody does! She gives us life! And she has given us specific instructions not to let you go any further!” The bug curled its long abdomen in front of itself and grabbed the tip of its stinger, holding it out and extending it into a long, sharp line like a schoolmarm with a chalkboard pointer.
“I am a Spelling Bee. And the only way to pass through this door . . .” it tapped on the gate with its stinger. “. . . Is to prove your knowledge. This is the Hexicon. A magic door containing all words known to man and several known to bees. That’s Hexicon. H-E-X-I-C-O-N.” The door was made up of interlocking honeycomb tiles. Each tile had a black center, but as the bee spelled out the door’s name they began to light up, one letter in each space, like the set of a gameshow introducing itself.
“Oh, I get it!” Feenie hopped, “Hexicon! Like ‘lexicon’, but with a hex! As in ‘hexagonal’, because the honeycombs have six sides!”
The bee tapped the pointer in its hand. “Oh . . . I see. You must be the little know-it-all the Hare-idan warned us about. Yes, she was quite cross with you for mocking her title.”
“I simply pointed out the definition of the word. . . .”
“We are not concerned with the definitions of words here, only their spellings! Now! If you want to pass you will have to spell one . . . two . . . no, three words of my choosing! Only then will the gate open!” Every tile on the gate flashed in a pattern between yellow, black, and orange. A musical jingle played from somewhere and the letters R-O-U-N-D O-N-E-! appeared at the top.
“This is stupid. I’m just gonna destroy it.” Molly covered her arm in ☆Dumb☆ energy and walked over to the door to blow the entire thing up.
“No! No, no no no no no no!!!” The Spelling Bee hopped up and scooted backward so fast that it almost fell off its seat. In the real world Molly’s epithet was harmless, but here she was a walking bulldozer that could destroy anything she touched. “Stop! Stop! That is ABSOLUTELY against the rules!”
“So what? You can’t do anything to me.” Molly rolled up her sleeve and closed the distance.
“We may not be able to do anything to you, you gollumpus! But your friends there are quite stingable!” Every single bee buzzing around the clearing whirled in place and brandished their stingers in unison. The stingers were heavier and longer than the bees themselves, as if each of them had been hiding a switchblade in their soft fuzzy bodies like a claw in a kitten paw. “Try anything funny, and that’s our cue to attack!” Molly lowered her arm. The other bees slowly went back to their business but they were side-eying Molly like bouncers in a casino.
She frowned. This was exactly the type of thing she was expecting when she asked Feenie and Trixie not to come. If they were here then they could be threatened, and that meant she couldn’t do her job of stopping her sister because she had to do her OTHER job of keeping them safe. Sigh . . .
“That’s alright, Molly!” Feenie said, sensing her friend’s distress. “I actually want to play! This seems like fun!”
“Hmph. We shall see,” said the bee, regaining its smug composure. “And remember! No cheating. Or else!”
Rick popped out of Molly’s afro like a friendly neighbor leaning out a window. “Would arcane knowledge from beyond the pale count as cheating?”
“Yes.”
“Darn! I have been explicitly told that I am not allowed to be a cheater of the pumpkin-eater variety. Well, good luck, Phoenica!”
“Proud of you, Rick!” she smiled. “Okay! How do I play?”
“I will give you a word. You will spell it, letter by letter. If you succeed, then you may pass.” The bee’s expression darkened. It stopped putting the emphasis on the letters. “. . . But if you fail, then you will be booted out of the Ambleglow Bramble . . . permanently.”
“Okay, sounds fun!” she smiled. “What’s the first word?”
“Your first word is . . . ‘Onomatopoeia’. As in—”
“O-N-O-M-A-T-O-P-O-E-I-A!” She rattled off letters like a machine gun and they appeared rapidly across the panels of the Hexicon, glowing green when assembled together. The letters flickered away and “C-O-R-R-E-C-T-!” appeared in their place, flashing happily as applause played from somewhere unseen.
The bee was speechless. It didn’t think she’d be able to spell the word at all, let alone so quickly! Why, even the Hare-idan herself had trouble spelling that word! The Spelling Bee had been instructed to start with the hardest word she knew . . . and this little fairy had blown right through it! Its puppety mouth hung agape.
“H-how did you do that?”
“With my mouth!” she said. “And my brain!”
“Not physically!”
“Oh! I use a nemembo.”
“A what?”
The Spelling Bee turned back to look at the Hexicon for help but it simply responded with a giant “?” Clearly that word wasn’t in its database.
“Oh, I’m sorry! I meant a mnemonic device! Like a little rhyme to help me remember things! Trixie and I call them ‘nemembos’.”
“‘Cause they help you re-membo.” Trixie clarified. This was a word Trixie came up with when she and Feenie did homework together because she could never re-membo the word mnemonic. Mnemonic was a stupid word anyways. Why was there an M at the front of it? Did the letter get lost? Or rather, mlost?
The bee blinked. “Wh . . . What is your nemembo for onomatopoeia?”
“Oh, that’s easy!” Feenie cleared her throat.
“Onomato-Poe-Ayy-Eye-Uh
No tomato, wouldn’t buy ya.
Poe’s our friend to start the day
Then we end with I and A”
The bee blinked again.
“How does that help?”
“Well . . . the tomato is because of the M-A-T-O. You don’t buy the tomato because it’s missing a T-O at the start, so it’s a bad tomato! Poe is there because Poe is ‘P-O-E’, and then you end with ‘I’ and ‘A’! And the rest rhymes! Easy!” The bee looked at her, flabbergasted.
“You’re out of your league, bee,” Trixie sighed, “She’s got a nemembo for everything and they never make any sense.”
“They make sense!” Phoenica pouted.
“Name the animal science names,” Trixie demanded.
“Do you mean taxonomic rank?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. Why?”
“And what’s your nemembo for that?”
“In the Main hall sat the Kingly principal. In science Class, when Ordered to do an experiment, a Family of Geniuses will always produce the best Specimen.”
“I think you missed one?”
“Oh, Phylum isn’t in the nemembo. I just remember Phylum. That one’s easy.”
Trixie gestured at Phoenica like she was a sideshow circus act. Phoenica smiled a dopey, open-mouthed grin. Yay! She was impressing her friends! Good job Phoenica!
When it came to deductive reasoning Phoenica was an absolute dope, no question about it. But in terms of academic knowledge? She was unmatched. Feenie absorbed every book she could get her hands on like a sponge and the girl had a photographic memory. Most importantly of all, Phoenica had a sincere, unmitigated love of learning. She collected knowledge the way other kids collected trading cards. Phoenica’s idea of a fun Friday night was tucking into a pillow fort in her pajamas with a reading lamp and a farmer’s almanac. Oh boy! Facts!
Feenie spun in the air and fluttered her lace wings in triumph, then lowered herself onto a nearby beehive box like it was a game show podium. Her eyes sparkled.
“So! What’s the second word?”
The bee stared at her, terrified.
“Aren’t you twelve?”
“And a half,” Phoenica added. This was a very big deal to Phoenica. Molly and Trixie rolled their eyes. Molly was actually older than Phoenica but Molly never said “and a half”. “And a half” was an amount that only mattered to little kids. Kind of like how if you ask someone their height and they bother to clarify “and a half” after the inch count, it’s a guarantee that they’re short.
The Spelling Bee was also coming up short.
It had already played its ace in the hole and she had torn through it like tissue paper! What else could the bee throw at this marshmallow monster in front of it!?
. . . Oh.
Perhaps . . . a word with multiple spellings! Yes, that could work! No matter which one the girl chose, the bee would be able to claim the other spelling was the correct one and that she was wrong! Perfect! The creature cleared its throat.
“A-hem hem hemmmmm . . . Your next word. Is . . . doughnut.”
“Donut!” Feenie peeped. “D-O-N-U-T!”
Hah! It had her now! The bitter bee raised one of its six hands to smash the button next to him, ending the game and ridding these invaders from his mistress’s world once and for—!
“—also spelled: “D-O-U-G-H-N-U-T! Doughnut!” The bee’s tarsus froze just above the eject button. Poppycock!
“B-B-But . . . which of the two spellings is correct?” it leaned forward, desperately.
“Both are correct!” she said. “Language is an ever-changing tool meant to help us communicate with each other! If a word changes over time, either in its spelling or its meaning, we should embrace it! Because the goal of language is ease of communication!”
