Suddenly, Charlotte gasped.
“Owlbert!” she cried, “I forgot that we were to meet him in Ottawa! I’m not sure he’ll find us, now!”
But then there was a great crashing from above, and the snapping of tree limbs, and the shouts of Owlbert could be heard through the thicket. “Watch where you’re going!” thundered the trees as Owlbert splintered every twig in his path on his way to the forest floor.
Owlbert shouted back “Prune yourselves, you mammoths!” and then there was a smack as a giant tree branch cracked against Owlbert’s vast backside. He skidded to a stop in front of the wide-eyed group.
“I looked for you at the station, but you’d already gone! I figured I’d find you here.” Owlbert shook leaves and stray bits of greenery from his feathers.
“The bears arrived last night – they can run as fast as I can fly!”
Everybody nodded appreciatively, and Owlbert continued.
“Come on, they’re waiting by the Rushing River.” He turned around and raced back into the forest.
“Good riddance,” said the giant tree that had let them in, shaking his leaves at the departing Owlbert. But when they turned to go he reached out a slender branch towards Ava, and the leaves whispered to her,
“She’s waiting for you.”
It was a warning.
Chapter Thirteen
T
he forest was indeed enchanted. As they made their way to the Rushing River, Ava noticed that the moss underneath their feet rose up before them as they walked, creating a cushioned path that lead their group through the dense trees. Whenever any one of them strayed but just a little, a kind bush would gently push them back onto the path of moss, and the trees sang songs as they walked, old songs, songs in a language not spoken by any man or woman left on this earth.
“What are you singing about?” Ava asked a large pine tree when they had stopped to let Anja and Robbie have a break from walking. The children were sitting on the moss which grew about her roots.
“Ahh,” said the tree, waving her branches around their heads and dropping needles as she danced, “we are an ancient forest. We were here when the world began, and we have seen things you have never seen. Our roots grow deep into the earth, and we drink from streams that are older than the hills. Our songs are full of secrets, but you must speak our language to understand them.” She continued to sway and sing, and the children rested at her feet.
Professor Ronald crept up beside Ava, his paws stepping lightly on the forest floor. “It’s a song of welcome and blessing,” he said to the children. “Your experience in this forest depends on who you are. If you are a friend, the trees welcome you and the air feels warm and smells sweet, and the trees are soft and kind, and the forest invites you in further. If you are an enemy, the air feels damp and cold, and the branches are rough and biting, and the forest becomes a maze from which you feel you must escape. The enchanted forest is a projection of your heart.”
Anja laughed, a sound which seemed to sparkle.
“This is the loveliest place,” she said. Then she raised her eyebrow mischievously and sat up straight. “Watch this!” she said, and then she closed her eyes.
The space around her began to glow, and the trees above her moved their branches so that sunbeams fell down around her. Tiny specks in the rays of sun glimmered, and the forest floor shone. The trees changed their song, one by one their melody drifted into something softer, a song more beautiful than anything the children had ever heard.
Ava smiled, and reached out and ran her hand through a sunbeam, trying to catch a golden speck, but the tiny sparkles leapt and flickered through the air, and she could not hold one. “It’s like a dream,” she said aloud.
Suddenly there was a tugging at her elbow.
“Look, Ava!” Robbie exclaimed, pointing to something behind her. Anja opened her eyes, and all three children turned to find a crowd of twigs, who were shyly carrying flower crowns towards the children.
“These are for you,” said a twig in a high, bashful voice. The other twigs nodded and gave the children timid smiles.
Robbie lay down and placed his head on his crossed hands. “Hello, tiny friends!” he said, smiling at each one of the twigs. The twigs erupted into cheers.
Anja and Ava followed his example, and soon all three children were laying face down on the forest floor, while a collection of happy twigs scrambled to place flower crowns upon their heads.
Tempo and Charlotte came to watch, and when the twigs were finished crowning the children, Tempo bowed low to them and said, “We must continue on, now.”
The children got up, and the twigs hopped around, shouting “farewell!” “good luck!” and “we hope to see you again” in their tiny voices as the children smiled and waved goodbye.
“We will see you sometime soon!” said Robbie, straightening his flower crown, which was made of deep blue flowers which he had never seen before.
They resumed their walk through the forest, and with each step the children felt their hearts fill with joy. The sunbeams followed Anja, and the trees continued their song, and it seemed only a short while before they came to a wide river that ran through the forest.
The water in the river was clear and blue, but it was moving very fast, and white foam capped the waves that rolled in the center of the river.
“We aren’t crossing,” Charlotte said, noticing the children’s worried looks. “We’re following the bank of the river, down to a clearing. That’s where we’ll find Owlbert and the polar bears!”
“We should go single-file,” suggested Tempo, “the path along the Rushing River is narrow, and believe me when I say, none of us want to take an accidental swim in that river!” Tempo shuddered, as if he was remembering a time when he had fallen in himself.
“Let’s carry the children, to be safe,” said Charlotte, “I can carry Robbie, if you take Anja on your shoulders.”
“I’m not carrying Ava,” Professor Ronald said.
Ava laughed. “No, but I can carry you!” she said, scooping up the Professor.
Tempo gave Professor Ronald an amused grin, and then motioned for Anja to climb up onto his back. Charlotte secured her purse with one hand and held Robbie tightly to her with the other, and they set off in the noon-day sun along the riverbank.
They heard the polar bears before they saw them. As they approached the clearing where the polar bears were waiting, the sounds of great belly laughs could be heard. Polar bears are loud, even when they are on dangerous missions, because they fear no-one and they have a tendency towards telling awful jokes, which they laugh at with roaring guffaws.
When Ava, still carrying the Professor and following Charlotte and Robbie, stepped into the clearing, she saw six giant polar bears sitting in a circle, roaring with laughter, and in the middle of the circle was Owlbert.
Owlbert happened to know quite a few ridiculously bad jokes, and he was telling one now, in his loud, booming voice.
“Which dinosaur has the biggest vocabulary?” Owlbert hollered, turning around in a circle as he spoke.
“You’ve told this one before!” shouted a polar bear with a yellow scarf.
“Aye, but you’ll still laugh!” called a polar bear with a blue scarf.
“Let’s have the answer!” rumbled a good-natured polar bear with a brown scarf.
Owlbert spread his wings and cried, “A THESAURUS!”
All the polar bears rolled onto their backs and howled with laughter, and Owlbert grinned and raised a wing as if to tip an invisible hat. Then he spotted Charlotte.
“You’re here!” he cried, parting the rolling polar bears with his giant wings and rushing to her side. She put Robbie down on the ground and adjusted her hair, whipping out a pencil as she did so.
“Yes, and not a moment too soon. I’m famished.” Charlotte pointed with her pencil to where Owlbert had been standing, in the center of the circle, and there appeared a picnic table complete with a table cloth and plates and cu
ps and every sort of snack you could imagine.
Ava and Robbie gasped.
“You can be a bit more liberal with magic here,” Charlotte said, smiling at them.
Tempo came up behind her and placed Anja on the ground.
“Lunch!” he cried, rushing to the table.
“Wash your hands first,” said Charlotte to the children. Then she held out her pencil and water poured from the end, like a tap.
The children washed up, and headed towards the picnic table, walking through the group of polar bears to get there. They walked slowly, looking up at the giant bears as they passed by them. The bears stopped laughing and tried to sit still. They walked past a bear with a green scarf, a yellow scarf, a blue scarf, a brown scarf, and a grey scarf, and then, finally, they came to the biggest polar bear of all, a bear with a black scarf. It was Old Ours Noir.
Old Noir wasn’t laughing at all. He leaned towards the children and sniffed, putting his black nose so close to their faces that they could feel his breath. The bear placed an enormous paw on the ground, separating Ava from her sister and brother.
“Go eat,” he said to Robbie and Anja. Then he turned to Ava.
“You smell different,” he said in a deep voice, crouching as low as his massive body could.
Charlotte left Owlbert and came to stand behind Ava, placing her hands on Ava’s shoulders. She didn’t say anything, but Ava knew that no matter what happened next, Charlotte would be on her side.
“I am different,” Ava said to Old Noir. Without meaning to, she placed a hand around the key, hanging on a chain over her heart. “But I am not afraid of you, and you shouldn’t be afraid of me.”
“I am not afraid of anyone,” said Old Noir, “but perhaps you should feel fear. You smell like a Magical, yes, but only a little. You smell like a Logical also. Are you a shape-shifter? Can you transfigure? Tell me, what do you turn into?”
“I don’t turn into anything,” said Ava, putting her hands on her hips. “I’m a girl. All I’ll turn into is an adult.”
“Hah!” laughed Ours Bleu, the polar bear with the blue scarf. But Old Noir looked at him and he swallowed his laugh and looked away, pretending to see something on the ground.
“Time will tell if we shall be friends,” said Old Noir to Ava, “or not,” he added.
Old Noir moved so that Ava could pass by him. She looked at the table, where Robbie, Anja, the Professor, and her Uncle Tempo were cheerfully eating lunch.
“I’m not hungry after all,” she said with a sigh. She didn’t like how Old Noir had treated her, just because she was Logical. Ava knew that she could prove to the polar bears that she was a good friend. But now they would have to prove the same to her.
Charlotte stirred behind her. Ava turned and found Charlotte, as usual, rummaging through her purse.
“If you don’t want to have lunch, that is certainly your decision,” Charlotte was saying, “but you can’t turn down a nice up of tea.” Charlotte poked her head up and smiled. “But today, perhaps, you’d like to have your tea inside?”
“Inside where?” Ava asked.
“Inside here!” Charlotte said, placing her open purse on the ground and then stepping into it. She kicked a few things out of her way and then descended into her bag.
Ava peered over the edge and into the purse, where she saw a carpeted staircase with dark walnut railings. She shrugged, took a step inside, then another, and then followed Charlotte down the hole.
Ava found Charlotte’s purse to be quite comfortable. There was a nice kitchen, with not one but two tea kettles, a library full of interesting-looking books, a cozy bedroom and a large wall of shelves laden with what appeared to be rows and rows of potions. Tucked in behind the potion shelves were her and Anja’s suitcases.
“Is this where you’ve been sleeping?” Ava asked, looking around.
“Of course! You don’t think I’d sleep in those awful tin train beds when I could have my own bedroom, do you?” Charlotte said, surprised that Ava had to ask.
Charlotte pointed her pencil wand in the direction of the kitchen, and the tea kettle began to arrange itself, and soon two steaming cup of sweet, milky tea made their way to the kitchen table.
“Come sit!” Charlotte said, taking a seat herself. She took a sip of her tea. “Tell me what’s on your mind, Ava.”
Ava put her hand in her pocket and felt her little collection of notes. She pulled them out and set them on the table before Charlotte, and then sat down opposite her on the other chair, and picked up her teacup while Charlotte read.
Charlotte moved the pieces of paper together so that they formed one long page, and arranged them into a list.
Here is what the three small pieces of paper had written on them:
What made the Logicals and Magicals enemies?
Why does Wraithlana want the key?
What does it mean to be the gatekeeper?
Charlotte looked at Ava and said, “I can answer the first two questions, because they really have the same explanation. But the answer to the third question you must find somewhere else.”
“Please, tell me anything you can,” Ava said, and now she drank her tea while Charlotte talked.
“I’m sure your Professor told you that many years ago there was a war. It was a terrible war. Some say it began over land, some say it was over power, but really, it was over fear. You see, the Magicals and the Logicals are both very old races of human beings. Nobody knows who came first. Even the trees do not know.
But over time, the Magicals became mostly concerned with the mystical. They appreciated diversity and were ever creating new things. But while the Magicals were creating, the Logicals were overtaking. We did not notice that the world had changed, until it was too late. The Logicals had become so concerned with order that they sought to have each living thing in its place. They feared that which was different, because it was harder to understand. The Logicals wanted everything to be the same, and the Magicals could not live in a world like that, because they could not conform.
Some of them tried, they willed themselves to fit into the world the Logicals had created, and they cut themselves off from their Magical peoples and tried to live without magic. But while they may have fooled their Logical neighbours, their own hearts could not be tricked, and soon they became sick, and many died.
The Logicals loved their ordered world, and they came to see themselves as better than the Magicals because of it. The Magicals retreated farther and farther into their own communities, practicing magic in secret and forming hidden societies. But, by hiding, the Magicals only made the Logicals want to hunt them down. It was then that the witch hunts began. The Logicals threatened those who allied themselves with Magicals, and made the practice of magic illegal. When a witch or wizard was caught, they were burned at the stake.
Wraithlana saw her own mother burned alive. She was just a little girl, and hadn’t come into her own power yet, and so she ran from her village and hid in the woods, surviving solely on the friendship and guidance of the wolves.
The Magicals eventually decided to escape, and those of us that remained retreated far into the wood and made our own world, which our Elders covered with a protection spell. Wraithlana was found, and she was brought into the Magical world, but by then the damage had been done. Hate had taken root in her heart, and spread into her like poison. When she discovered the extent of her magical power, she tried to start a rebellion, to break free from the Magical world and take her revenge on the Logical world. She was banished, but now there is only one thing on her mind.”
Charlotte stopped and took a sip of her tea, which was now cold. She made a disgusted face and ordered the teacup to dump itself immediately.
“What is the one thing on her mind?” asked Ava, leaning towards Charlotte, completely enthralled by the story.
Charlotte sighed. “It’s simple,” she said, “Wraithlana wants revenge.”
“Revenge on the Logicals?” asked Ava.
&nbs
p; “Yes, but if you ask me, I think she wants revenge on the Magicals, too. It’s not fun being banished. You are all alone on this side of the barrier, unprotected, and cut off from those you can trust. If I had to guess, I’d say she believes that her Magical followers are waiting for her, waiting for the day she returns to overthrow the Queen and then…to destroy the Logical world completely.”
Ava shuddered. Charlotte slid the third piece of paper over to her.
“Put that back into your pocket, dear,” she said kindly. “There is only one who can answer this question.”
“Who?” asked Ava, folding the paper once more and putting it in her pocket beside the compass.
“You,” said Charlotte.
Chapter Fourteen
W
hile Ava and Charlotte had been in the purse discussing Wraithlana, two of the old witch’s wolves had been creeping closer and closer to the clearing. By the time the dishes had finished cleaning themselves, the wolves had arrived, and before Ava and Charlotte had climbed to the top of the purse’s stairs, shouts could be heard from above the bag’s opening.
“I’ll not take orders from a snarling, overgrown weasel!” bellowed a polar bear.
“Did you hear that? He called him a weasel!” snorted another polar bear, and the ground shook as the other polar bears began to laugh.
Their amusement was interrupted by a growling pair of voices.
“The invitation wasn’t for you,” snapped one wolf. “It’s not a polar bear she wants to speak with.”
“Your jokes are as bad as your breath,” hissed the second wolf, gnashing his teeth.
Ava stepped out of the purse and looked around.
Anja and Robbie were standing on the picnic table, and Professor Ronald was in a nearby tree. Tempo had planted himself between the wolves and the children, his wand out and his face grim, ready to defend the children and his lunch if the wolves made any sudden moves.
The Adventures of Ava Smith: The Secret of the Enchanted Forest Page 10