The Destiny Detour

Detour

Lillya

"Hey. Princess."

Lillya jumped when two fingers snapped in front of her face. Her eyes focused in on Aunt Issabeth standing in front of her with a puzzled expression. Lillya tried to stand, but she had been right in the middle of pulling on a pair of leggings before her daydream distraction, and she nearly fell on her face instead. Daydream was not the right word, since she was replaying the clandestine drama of last night. Was there such a thing as a daymare?

"What?" she asked, recovering her balance.

"You're on dish duty," Issabeth repeated.

Lillya bobbed her head in understanding.

Issabeth put a hand on one hip and stared her down. "Are you sure you're ok after yesterday?"

Lillya's wide purple eyes were too stunned to blink. How did Aunt Issabeth know about her dream?

"Lil?" Issabeth tried again.

She meant Lillya's river disaster. The realization broke on her much like the cold water yesterday. She bobbed her head once more. "Fine," she insisted, forcing out words. "Still have all my toes and everything."

Of course, she also had a book full of gibberish mystery writing, but that was not a discussion that needed to be had. First thing that morning, she had peeked inside her book, half hoping she had dreamed the whole night—some sort of hypothermia induced dream of a dream. But the writing was still there, still cryptic and indecipherable.

Issabeth's green eyes continued to stare her down. Lillya's behavior was too out of sorts, even for her. Maybe she should just tell her aunt what was going on. Except what was going on?

A yelp sounded by the campfire. Three girls jumped away from a ball of flame that flared and shot straight into the air.

"Who is using fire powder?" Issabeth barked, stomping away. The culprit was probably Pippa. She was an expert at mixing up powders and potions. On second thought, seeing as how this fire was threatening to burn down half of camp, maybe this was not Pippa's doing.

Lillya breathed an actual sigh of relief over the welcome catastrophe. While everyone else was distracted pounding out flames with blankets and hollering about bring buckets of water from the river, Lillya wrapped her book securely in her blanket and stowed it in her pack. She would find out what was going on at home. They were headed back to Crystal Palace today. Everything was going to be fine. Well, except for breakfast, because oatmeal with berries had just turned into a flaming bucket of charred substance unidentifiable as food.

The girls' panic was hardly warranted. Issabeth rolled her eyes and pulled out her special weapon, the pearl. Once, Tansy had gotten the bright idea she could use the pearl to turn the castle bright orange, but the instant she touched the innocent-looking orb, it threw her back with a jolt so powerful, she skidded three lengths and her hair stood on end. Tansy's response was to giggle and proclaim, "Taurin, try this," but they all got a lecture on how powerful the pearl was before Tansy could talk anybody into her shenanigans. Aunt Issabeth could do just about anything with that milky white sphere.

Right now, she held the white ball forward. A focused, spiraling wind swept up the fire, pushing the unnaturally red flames in on themselves until the struggling red tails extinguished in a puff. "If you're going to cheat," Issabeth scolded the girls, "at least do it correctly."

They were all a little hungry when they set off from camp, but that was to be expected after the pitiful breakfast the girls had been able to salvage from the food remnants they had left. Even Pepper abandoned them to find his own food. Aunt Issabeth told them it served them right and if they had really been out on their own in the wilderness, they would have been in bad shape right about now. She also veered off course just a little, which was going to send them right through an old orchard on the edge of an abandoned Naxturaen town.