by Dani Swanson
The incident ended as quickly as it had started. Izzie fainted after the last of the silvery strands left her hands. Xander dropped his bow and caught her mid-fall. "Whoa. Iz, are you okay?" He lightly slapped her face, trying to get her to wake up. "Bro, grab that bow. Let's go!"
Each of the remaining boggles on the wall was now retreating to parts unknown. The conscious laying outside of the castle's walls were trying their best to turn invisible again but seemed to be stuck in their natural form. They, too, retreated into the woods.
"Why are you headed toward the gate? We need to go!" Nathan urged as he scooped up the bow and started to tug on Xander's arm.
"She just knocked all of them out, and she wants to go inside. Do you want to deal with her?" Xander said as he carried Izzie toward the gate. "Because if she knew we had an opportunity to enter this place and didn't take it, she is going to be running her mouth about it forever. I promised her that we would get her to Zyon, and that's what we're doing. Now, hurry up."
Nathan followed Xander through the gate, though his gut was telling them that they should flee.
"I don't blame you for not wanting to hear my mouth. That thing can be ridiculous." Izzie had come to and was rubbing her temple as she motioned for Xander to put her down.
"Are you okay?" Xander said as he helped her get steady on her feet once they were inside the gate.
"Yeah, are you guys okay? What happened?"
"Seriously? Hurricane Isabella just ran through the army of boggles!" He grabbed her by the shoulders and showed her the mess she had caused on the outside.
"You really are a witch, aren't you?" Xander's face looked nervous as he was searching for his own feelings on the matter.
"I guess I am. I'm sort of learning this as I go." Izzie was nervous about what Xander was thinking and knew that they didn't have the luxury of standing there trying to figure everything out. "We gotta keep moving." She added with a nod to the other end of the village.
The group made their way through town with apprehension. The houses here weren't bright and cheery like those of the shadows. The houses were painted dark purples and greens. Their flower boxes had black flowers in them with long spiked thorns and jagged leaves. She could definitely see the difference between the two kingdoms. They saw the boggles hiding in their houses peeking through the windows; none of them greeted her as the shadows had.
The door to the main castle flung open the second that they reached it. Inside they could see Zyon, standing there waiting for them to enter.
"Iz! I'm so glad you are all right! I swear to you I didn't tell them to charge you. That was a rogue guard acting out by themselves! Please, come in." He came forward and tried to hug her. She allowed him to touch her, but Izzie didn't return the hug. She limply stood there until the embrace was done.
"Don't touch my sister!" Nathan growled as he started to raise his weapon.
"You stay out of this human! I told you before I don't have a problem getting rid of YOU!" The boggle was the same size as Izzie in this world and was looking over her shoulder.
"BOTH OF YOU STOP!" Her voice had power behind it that echoed through the hall, bouncing off the stone walls.
"What's wrong, Iz? I told you that you should have stayed in. I couldn’t protect you from the shadows when you had me locked in a box."
"Did you kidnap me from my birth family?"
"Izzie, you have to understand what..."
"Dude, answer her question! Did you kidnap her?!" Xander wasn't able to contain his anger for seeing his girlfriend so upset.
"Zyon, please answer me. No stories, just the truth." Izzie had softened her voice as she was looking Zyon directly in the eye.
"I'm not lying when I say I am not the one that took you from your home Izzie. But I was put in charge of you from the creature that did." He lowered his head in shame as he told her. He couldn't bear to see the hurt in her eyes.
"Why have you never told me? You told me some story about having to protect me from Phantasma? Was that a lie?"
"THAT WASN'T A LIE! You couldn't stay here. You're a witch! It would have been dangerous for you to stay here. You're larger than most of the boggles, and who knows what powers you have."
"I bet her parents would know about her powers!" Nathan yelled at Zyon, moving closer to his sister. "Or possibly anyone else from this world!"
"Why did you take me then? Why didn't you tell me the truth about who I am? I thought I was crazy! You led me to believe that I was crazy! You told me the shadows were trying to kidnap me! Why?" Tears were streaming down her face and soaking the top of her shirt.
"They were trying to kidnap you! They were trying to take you back here where it's not safe for you!"
"Not safe? They didn't hurt me at all! From what they told me; you were going to give me to Phantasma. Is that true?" Her words barely made sense as they were coming through as sobs. Xander was at her side with his arm wrapped around her. "You always told me you were protecting me, and here it was that you are the one I needed protecting from." She turned to Nathan and smirked, "I guess you were right about him all along."
"Sir?" A small boggle interrupted the conversation in a meek voice.
"Not now!" Zyon bellowed back.
"Sir, it's important!" The boggle's voice was more forceful.
"What?!" Zyon turned to face him.
"She's back. Phantasma is headed this way!"
A look of sheer horror fell over his face as he turned back to face Izzie. "I'm so sorry, Iz. You three need to leave now!" Zyon pushed on Nathan's arm and was trying to herd them to a side room. Nathan started to protest and push back.
"I thought that's what you wanted! You were hanging onto me for her!" Izzie could feel the pain starting again in her stomach.
"NO, YOU SILLY LITTLE GIRL! Leave! Now! She forced me to do all of this! Do you understand? SHE HAS MY FAMILY! I can't let her hurt you; you need to get out of here! I love you too much to let her hurt you! Now go! Sid will take you out the back."
Izzie was frozen as she couldn't comprehend what was happening around her. She felt Xander pick her up in his ample arms and tossed her over his shoulder as he started to run after the boggle that Zyon had referred to. She could see Zyon's face smeared with tears, something she never saw before.
"Just go! Go to Mother and find the answers because I don't have them to give to you." He waved good-bye to her as he helplessly watched her be carried off.
She cried out for him until they had disappeared down a secret passage, and Nathan was blocking her view. They went out through a passageway that looked like an ordinary wall. There was a pathway leading away from the castle. Sid didn't say a word to them as he quickly slammed the door shut the moment Nathan's food cleared the threshold.
"What do we do now?!" Xander's voice was panicked as he wiped tears off Izzie's face.
"We need to run." She calmly said she took them both by a hand and started to pull them down the path. "Run!"
20: Phantasma
There was life before this story started. There were people and creatures, magic, and mischief, before Isabella was even a thought in her mother’s head. Her mother and father both had their own stories. As did Phantasma, before she knew her path would cross with Izzie’s.
Phantasma was not always a specter. She used to be beautiful. A statuesque woman with long flowing raven hair and bright green eyes. She even painted her lips scarlet, which stood out against her porcelain skin. Now her face barely had any shape to the grey mass that showed through the edges of her cloaks' hood. Indentations where her eyes should be and a red smear where her lipstick should have stained her lips – now just a ghostly void of a memory from long ago.
The creatures and witches of the forest hid from her as she gently floated through the trees, moaning, crying, searching for something lost. Her voice stuck in her throat as she had no mouth, but her moans would echo in the night air. The saddest yearning cry would resonate, causing those who heard it start to weep, intern
ally feeling her pain. Her tale would travel from village to village, the fairies, elves, brownies, and boggles would watch her from their homes and pass word about her whereabouts the next town.
For years she searched the Winding Woods, until one night, she disappeared. The creatures all assumed that she found what she was searching for and that she was now at peace. Little did they know that what she was searching for would set off a chain of events that would affect the entire Winding Woods without any warning.
Phantasma had one thing and one thing only that she was searching for: her lost magic. No one knows how she started to regain her lost power, but now she had grown stronger – Phantasma was now able to telekinetically speak to those around her; her voice would play inside of their head, making the person who could hear her think they were going mad.
She made her way through the forest until she found a small cabin in the middle of a clearing where there was a little girl, no older than five years old, out playing amongst the butterflies. That was the last that the little girl saw her parents.
The little girl was wrapped within the billowing fabric of Phantasma’s cloak – it felt like moments for her, however she had been gone from her family for weeks. When she was brought out from under the shroud, she was in a room of a castle. The walls were cold to the touch; she pressed her body against the wall as she hugged her little stuffed cat, trying to hide her face behind it.
"This is her? She's still so small…..this is what you're afraid of?" A little green man gestured to the small girl as he spoke to the floating witch. “Kill her now. Your problem is over.”
Phantasma had no lips to speak but her voice echoed through the heads of the girl and the little man: "She is the key to all the magic in the Winding Woods. Her mother put all her magic within HER. Her grandmother gave her powers too." The arm of her cloak floated out in the direction of the little girl. The girl balled up and sank to the floor. She was trembling, sobbing into the soft fur of her cat, and begging to go home. “It’s not ready to be harvested from her.”
"Okay, what do I have to do with her? Just keep her safe? For how long?" The man sat down on a chair and set his elbows on his knees, which made him about the same size as the girl. "Don't worry Princess, no one here is going to hurt you." The little man had no intentions of doing Phantasma’s bidding.
"When she turns twenty-one, I'll be able to extract the magic from her. At least that's what The Mother said before I put her to sleep."
"What did you do to my mommy?! I want my mommy!" The girl shrieked at Phantasma. She stared at her wide-eyed, not blinking.
Before the child could take in a breath to scream again, Phantasma raced across the room in a graceful swoop and was an inch away from the child's face. She pulled down her hood, showing the void that used to be her face. Patches of matted grey hair fell loosely around her face. "We'll have none of that, Isabella. I will not take such an annoyance from a little brat." The girl held her breath not wanting to inhale the rotting stench of Phantasma; the witch floated away from her in the same swift motion. "Your mother is fine. She's just sleeping…..along with the rest of the woods. They wouldn't give me what I want, what I deserve, and now they'll sleep until it's time."
"Time for what?" The man made his way back to his feet. "What is the end game to all of this? You have her parents trapped. You have my entire kingdom trapped. What's next?"
"What's next is for me to get my limbs back – to get my face back! To get MY magic back!" Her voice bouncing around inside of the man's head was giving him a headache. He held his temples for a moment as he tried to focus on her words.
"What does all of this have to do with me? Why did you choose my people?"
"The boggles will be the center of all that is to come. Do you see that everyone else sleeps, but your people are still moving? The boggle is the center of what nightmares are made of – they will dance in their heads, showing them what is to come for not cooperating with me. You are the only one that can keep her safe. If you want me to return your parents to you, you'll need to keep her alive. I'll be back to collect her on her twenty-first birthday. No sooner. Keep her safe, and keep her alive, or else I will wipe out every single boggle throughout the woods, including your brother, and your parents will never come back to the Winding Woods. The entire Boggle race rests on your shoulders!" Phantasma twisted and glided out a window and disappeared into the darkness of the moonless night.
The boggle sighed as he watched the witch leave. He looked out, seeing the lights on in the small village below. His people. His followers. The people that depended on his family to protect them from the outside and to keep them safe. His thoughts were interrupted, a loud gasp of air coming from the mouth of the little girl whom, now that the witch had left, started to bawl again.
"You don't need to do that, Princess. What did she say your name is? Isabella? My name is Zyon. You're in my home, and I will not allow anything to happen to you." He held out a hand to help the girl up. Zyon smiled at her, but without showing his teeth as he didn't want to scare her with their jagged points. "The scary lady is gone; it will be okay."
The little girl wiped her nose on her sleeve and stood by herself without reaching out a hand. "Why are you green?" She held her stuffed animal tight and cautiously watched him as she inched away from him.
"I eat a lot of veggies." He said with a smile. "Can I show you something?" She nervously nodded. He motioned for her to follow him down a hallway, giving her the space that he could tell she needed. They walked to a great room that held the thrones of the king and queen. On one of the walls was a great painting of his parents, they too were green, which made the little girl smile. His father had a very distinct brow and was looking down to his shorter wife. She wore her brassy red hair in curls and the portrait showed an emerald pendant around her neck that was as green as her skin. "These are my parents. Phantasma took my parents away from me too, and I don't know where they are. But I know that if I do a good job of protecting you, I'll get to see them again. She didn't lie to you either, your mommy and daddy are just asleep right now, and when I bring you back to them, they'll wake up like you were never gone. Do you understand what I'm telling you, Isabella?"
"Izzie."
"Huh?"
"I only get called Isabella when I'm in trouble. My name is Izzie."
The boggle let out a sigh of relief as he smiled at her. "Okay, I can handle that, Izzie. Should we find you a room to sleep in tonight? I'm sure it is way past your bedtime."
The girl got a look full of sadness on her face. "Will you stay with me?" He could see the tears start to well up in the corner of her eyes.
"Only if you stop crying. We both have to put our brave faces on."
Once again, Zyon offered Izzie his hand. The little green man shrunk down so he wasn’t much larger than the five-year-old; their hands fit perfectly together as he led her to a room. “The best part of you being five is that you will fit within this castle without a problem.” The castle would feel a bit snug with the furniture if the human were fully grown as boggles typically were around five feet tall as adults.
He held a door open for her and did a silly bow to make her giggle. He saw his brother coming down the hall and waved him away as he got the girl into the room. He didn’t want to get her excited about more boggles being there. He tucked the girl into bed, took a washcloth, and wiped the dried tears from her cheeks.
“There now, you and kitty are all tucked in, and I will sleep right over here.” He pointed to an overstuffed chair by the window.
“Fig.”
“Huh?”
“His name is Fig, like my mommy’s cat.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Princess. Now you and Fig are all tucked in for the night.” He tucked the blankets around her tight, softly pushed the hair from her face, and tucked it behind her ear.
He waited until he could hear her softly snoring before he snuck out of the room and met his brother, waiting for him on a bench down the hall. “Wh
at are you doing with that witch’s child?! You know she is going to set the whole kingdom ablaze when she finds out you have her! He was pacing back and forth as he spoke with his hands, making huge gestures as if something were blowing up.
“Relax, Rory. Her mother is asleep.”
“She’ll wake up and realize her daughter is gone! The sun will be up soon!”
“No, the Winding Woods has had a spell cast upon it. Everything but the boggles are asleep. We’re all that are left. At least that is what Phantasma told me.”
“What?” Rory ran to the window and looked into the darkness. There were no lights in the trees past their kingdom. The fairies’ trees were dark; the moon was gone. The night was all that was there.
“The keepers of the nightmares are the only ones that aren’t affected.”
The brothers sat side by side with their shoulders touching, as they stared ahead, their breathing synchronized. “What do we have to do now? She’s going to get bigger….and she’s going to have powers like her mother. Then what? What do you know about raising a witch?”
Zyon looked his brother in the eye and took a deep breath before he started to speak. “I have no idea. But if we weren’t affected by the spell, there have to be others that weren’t either. Phantasma has some power now, but not as strong as she once was. I’m sure others are hiding in the shadows of the woods. If the witch wants the girl, I’m sure others want her too.”
“So let them have her!” Rory was excited by that idea of getting the girl as far away from the kingdom as they could.
“It’s not that simple little brother.” Zyon shook his head as he stared down at his shoes.
“Why not?”
“She has our parents. I have no idea what she’s done with them, but she has our parents. This little girl is the key to something….and if Phantasma wants her, it has to be something big.”