Wellspring of Magic, page 8
“Why didn’t the Guarded Forest keep you out of here?” Aly said. “How did you get past the protective magic?”
“We were tiny spiders,” the leader said, laughing again. “Why would the trees or the guardians notice such tiny sparks of magic?”
“That’s what I thought,” Aly said quietly and she closed her eyes.
Rachel grinned, realizing what Aly had in mind. “Of course, you’re not so tiny anymore—you’re probably pretty hard to miss now.”
The lead spider shrieked. “Stop the Earth Princess!” The spiders surged toward Aly, but Kaida and Rissa jumped in front of the quiet girl and slapped at the spider’s hairy legs with their sticks. The spiders reared up and used their long front legs to sweep Kaida and Rissa aside.
Rachel jumped onto the back of the lead spider and began hammering at its head with one fist. “Leave my sister alone!” The spider bucked and shook to throw the girl off, but Rachel hung on tightly.
In the battle to protect Aly, neither the spiders nor the girls noticed the vine walls around the clearing unraveling. Soon thick vines raced across the ground toward the group. Then, just as two spiders converged to grab Aly, the vines whipped around the spiders’ legs. The spiders slashed at the vines with their fangs, slicing away some, but new vines grabbed at them.
Shaylee and Marisol pulled Aly away from the fight and back toward the forest edge.
Rachel realized she was stuck on the back of the largest spider. Though vines lashed at it, they couldn’t completely subdue the huge thrashing creature and Rachel dared not jump off where she might be in reach of the spider’s fangs. So she threw back her head and yelled as loudly as she could, “FLEET!”
With the vine walls unwoven, a clear passage lay between the clearing and the woods. With an answering roar, Fleet limped into the clearing, followed by Honeyglow. Though clearly exhausted already from the lack of Wellspring magic, the bears never hesitated. They charged the lead spider. Honeyglow grabbed Rachel’s thick cloak in her teeth and pulled the girl from the spider’s back at the same time that Fleet began hammering the evil creature with clawed paws. Rachel heard Fleet’s voice, sounding thin in her head. “Restore the magic, now!”
“We have to restore the magic before the Guardians weaken any more,” Rachel shouted. The girls dashed around the struggling spiders and ran across the Wellspring pool. Kaida and Rissa slashed at the magic webs, ripping them away easily with their thick sticks.
The spout of frozen water at the top of the Wellspring burst into motion. Marisol held out her hands and the water flew over the girl’s heads to splash across the struggling spiders. The spiders screamed as the water struck them, and they immediately began to shrink.
Rachel spotted one scuttling toward the forest’s edge. “They’re getting away!”
“Not important,” Fleet panted, collapsing to the ground. “The Wellspring.”
The girls turned back to the fountain. No water gushed forth. ”It’s not fixed yet,” Marisol moaned. “I feel the water; but it’s trapped somehow.”
“We need a plumber!” Kaida complained. “Or at least some kind of instructions.”
The girls looked around the piled rock base of the fountain itself and Rissa suddenly yelled, “I think I found the instruction book.” Strange symbols were carved into the biggest stone.
“Wish we knew what that said,” Kaida complained. “Even instruction manuals can’t be easy in this place!”
“I can read it,” Rissa said with a grin. “Part of me sees it like gibberish, but I still can read it. Weird!”
“Must be part of your spellcraft power,” Rachel asked. “Does it seem to be a spell?”
“I’m not sure. It says, ‘Bring forth light. Bring forth water. Bring forth magic and restore.’”
“Light?” Rachel said. “Fire’s like light. Maybe you’re supposed to make a fire, Kaida.”
Kaida shook her head. “I think I know what I’m supposed to do. It came to me as Rissa was reading.”
“Me, too,” Marisol said.
The two girls joined hands and closed their eyes while the others watched anxiously. Suddenly light as bright as a summer day poured down into the clearing. As it struck the center of the Wellspring, the whole fountain began to glow. Then rain fell from the cloudless sky, splashing into the pool around their feet.
“Now we dance,” Rissa shouted over the sound of the falling rain. “We’re supposed to dance in the spaces between the statues!”
The girls spread out, each taking up a spot between two statues ... filling in the spaces to make a solid ring around the Wellspring’s center. “Say the words while we dance, Rissa,” Shaylee said as she started her movements and the others followed.
“Bring forth light,” Rissa called as they girls stepped forward and spun.
“Bring forth water.” They stepped back and spun.
“Bring forth magic and restore.” They held their arms high in the air and spun faster and faster, feeling giddy with sudden joy.
At that moment, the rain and glowing sunlight stopped, and instead, water burst forth from the fountain, spouting high in the air. As it fell back into the stone pool, they could see it wasn’t ordinary water. It glowed silver, like moonlight in a shadowy clearing. As each drop struck the pool, the light separated from the water and poured out over the low stone wall and flowed across the clearing.
When the light touched each of the girls, they changed. Rachel looked down, laughing, to see her ragged filthy shred of a gown restored to its richly ornamented purple. Sleeves flowed down her arms like water, sheer and light as the finest silk. The fitted bodice was decorated with fine silver embroidery of bears and other animals. Rachel looked up at the other girls.
Shaylee’s pink gown was shorter, only slightly below her knees, and everything about it looked light and airy. Marisol wore a gown of deep royal blue with a bodice covered in sequins sewn to look like fish scales. Her hair was braided with strings of pearls. Kaida’s gown was burnished gold, matching her eyes and making her coffee-colored skin glow. Rissa’s gown was fiery red and embroidered all over with the same strange alphabet as the words carved into the fountain.
Then Rachel looked at her sister. Aly now wore a deep emerald gown embroidered with glistening ivy that trailed down her arms. Aly pointed toward the edge of the woods. “Look!” she cried.
The vines that had formed the walls to the clearing and taken part in the battle against the spiders had reformed into animal topiaries filled with flowers. Nothing stood between the clearing and the forest. The rest of the Guardians lumbered into the clearing and bowed toward the girls. They looked even bigger and stronger than ever.
Laughing, the girls waded out of the fountain’s pool to meet them. As soon as the girls stepped into the clearing, the magic water fell away from their clothes and they were dry. “Cool trick,” Rissa said. “I wish I could do that in my shower!”
Rachel ran to Fleet and threw her arms as far around his thick neck as she could reach. “I’m so glad you’re OK!”
Fleet’s voice sounded in her head. “I always knew we would be.” He gently pulled away from Rachel and took his place with the other Guardians. Then the bears rose up onto their hind legs and stretched their front paws high, and as they did, they changed. Their thick fur grew transparent, then dissolved altogether to reveal that they were young people with tousled golden hair. They wore long, brown, close-fitting tunics and leggings.
Fleet looked only a few years older than Rachel, though he was nearly a foot taller. He stepped forward and bowed again. “You have met your task,” Fleet said in a clear voice. “Thank you, Princesses.”
“You’re not a bear!” Rachel blurted out. Instantly she felt silly for saying something so obvious and a little embarrassed about the hug.
“I am a Guardian. I take whatever form is needed,” he said, smiling. “Part of the magic of the Guarded Forest is that few things are completely as they seem. When the magic was drained, we could no longer change. You have given all of us our forms back. Thank you.”
“I wondered why it seemed like bears could talk to Rachel, and river dragons couldn’t really talk to me at all,” Marisol said. “I don’t suppose my dragon friend is really a cute guy in disguise?”
“No,” Fleet said, smiling slightly. “But I expect he is a better swimmer than any ‘cute guy.’”
“But the spiders all talked,” Rachel said.
“They were Spellmasters who had taken the form of spiders,” Fleet explained.
“Spellmasters?” Rissa echoed. “But wouldn’t I be their Princess since I’m Princess Spells-a-lot.”
“You can only lead those who will follow.”
“That’s really deep,” Shaylee said, pulling on Rissa’s arm. “But can we just go home now?”
“You have restored the magic,” Fleet said. “You can come and go as you like.”
“Come and go as we like?” Rachel repeated as she heard the other girls gasp.
“We can come back?” Rissa asked.
Fleet nodded. “Use the keys. They will always open the door from your world to ours.”
“I hate to be a party pooper,” Kaida said. “But once we get home, our parents aren’t going to let us out of their sight for years. We’ve been gone for days, and now we’re going home in weird clothes with a crazy explanation for where we’ve been and how we’re dressed. Can you say ‘grounded for life’?”
Fleet laughed. “You may return home to the place and the moment you left, and you may wear whatever clothes you like.”
“We can get our regular clothes back?” Rachel asked.
“And no one will even know we left?” Kaida added.
“You are Princesses. Simply wish it,” Then Fleet smiled at Rachel. “Though I think your gown suits you well.”
Rachel blushed at the compliment. But she closed her eyes and pictured her comfy jeans and all the clothes that made her feel totally normal. When she opened her eyes again, she grinned. She and the other girls were dressed in their usual clothes—even Rissa’s hair was back to its crazy colors. Now, however, Rachel laughed out loud at how normal rainbow hair could look after everything else they’d seen on their adventure.
“Oh, no!” Shaylee gasped. She quickly pushed up her pant leg and then smiled. The leather thong with the sunrise-colored bead was still on her ankle. “I didn’t want to lose that.”
“You need not lose anything,” Fleet said. “This is your home now too. Come and go as you like. You will always be our Princesses.”
Shaylee narrowed her eyes. “If we come back, will we have more scary adventures?”
Fleet shrugged. “I can’t see the future.”
“I hope we come back,” Kaida said.
Shaylee pointed at her friend. “No more gross stuff. I hate being dirty and wet and cold and hungry.”
Rachel smiled. She was glad they’d be able to come back, but she thought she might be ready for some normal life again. “How do we get home now?”
“Join hands and picture where you want to be,” Fleet said. “Your magic will open the door.” He turned to Rachel and touched her hand. “I hope you will come again, Princess of the Guardians.”
“I will,” Rachel said. “Maybe not right away—but I will.”
Her friends were already holding hands when Rachel walked over to join them. She clasped hands with Aly and Rissa. They all closed their eyes and pictured their familiar clubhouse in their minds.
The grassy circle in front of them changed to slightly worn gray carpet, and the girls were standing beside the table, hands clasped.
“That was the coolest thing ever!” Rissa breathed.
“Are we going back?” Aly asked.
“Not today,” Shaylee said firmly.
“Not today,” Kaida agreed, “but someday.”
“Someday soon,” Marisol added. “I still would like to meet the mermaids.”
The girls walked over to the table where their magical keys lay scattered, no longer stuck together or to the wood. Each girl picked up her key, the images of which were now both more meaningful and more mysterious.
“I’m glad there’s a dragon on mine,” Marisol said. “It will remind me of my new friends.”
“So will mine.” Rachel folded her hand over the image of the bear.
“Hey, we never saw the creature on my key except for that statue at the top of the Wellspring,” Kaida said. “I hope it’s real. Flying unicorns would be so cool.”
Shaylee shivered. “I’m in no hurry. I’m not that wild about heights.”
Rachel ran her thumb gently over the bear on her key. “You know, we never found out where these keys came from. I can’t really picture a post office nestled in the Guarded Forest.”
“Maybe you can ask Fleet the next time we go,” Rissa said. “I’m sure you want to see Fleet again!”
Rachel blushed and gave Rissa a gentle push. Rissa giggled. “Well, you’ve gotta admit—our summer just got a lot more interesting!”
The girls laughed and hugged before heading for the clubhouse door and home.
The End
Jan Fields, Wellspring of Magic
