"The problem with zombies is they're walking cadavers of rotted flesh, which honestly makes it hard to attract a boyfriend. And if you do attract a boyfriend, it's probably not likely one you'd take home to meet the parents."
I was back inside my body. Normally I preferred it that way, but at the moment, said body was lying in cold, sticky mud beneath a blanket of even colder fog. I wanted to get up and de-mud, but my head was spinning, and my limbs were locked in place.
Something wriggled in my pocket. "Rowen! Are you alive?" Vermeil said, his voice cracking. "You better be alive or else! I told you not to trust those gossipy trees."
"Hey! Rat!" the trees said. "No disparaging us!"
"What have you done to her?" Vermeil said, crawling up my stomach. I wanted to shake him off, but I was still frozen. "Why isn't she moving? Did you kill her?"
"No, rat. She is suffering from Post-Holographic Movie Syndrome. It's very common. Only kills one out of every seven witches. And even those don't completely die. They become undead creatures, shambling around, eating brains."
"What?!?!?!" Vermeil yelled.
"It'll probably be fine. Give her a good ten minutes before you run. Just a heads up that she may eat rat brains if she can't find any humans."
"Rowen!" Vermeil called inside my head. "Please tell me you're not a zombie."
"Grrgglllee," I telepathically replied. Something was wrong with my brain. Was I turning into a zombie? No, no, no! That. Was. Not. In. My. Plan! It was the opposite of my plan. How could I take charge of my fate as a zombie? Brains! My brain demanded, and my stomach followed up with a violent rumble. Stop it, brain and stomach! I don't want brains! I mean other people's brains! With a great deal of effort, I pushed down the desire for brain eating and could think straight once again. If I didn't turn into a zombie, I was going to have to have a serious discussion with the trees about full disclosure! If I did turn into a zombie (or even if I didn't), I hoped I could wield an axe!
"Does that mean you're okay or not okay?" Vermeil said.
"Grg." My brain turned full zombie again. I forced it down. This was exhausting. I had other things to do! I had people to (punish) save, places to (destroy) go, fathers to (lecture) rescue.
Vermeil crawled up to my head and scritch scritch scritch, nested in my hair. Blurgh! "I sense brain activity!" he cheered. Sure, he was a little ball of warmth on my otherwise freezing body, but having a rat in your hair would've made me hyperventilate if I could've hyperventilated. "You're a little tense." Vermeil sent calming waves into my mind, enabling me to think clearly. "I think I reversed the zombie process!"
Dear, dear Vermeil. I could feel my neural pathways firing with electric zaps of energy! I would've cheered myself, but I still couldn't move. So, I did what any potential evil queen would do in my situation. I plotted.
The trees had shown me so much, I had to use this new information wisely.
Apparently, I had a ... sister? Cauldron mate? Twin? I gulped. This was hard to wrap my head around being an only child for almost sixteen years. So many times, I'd longed for a sibling. Someone as strange looking as I was. A built-in friend. Someone to blame when I did something wrong.
Just kidding!
Maybe?
And if I'm being honest, at some level I've always felt like a part of me was missing from my life. Maybe it was the suppressed magic. Or maybe it was my cauldron-mate, as she shall henceforth be known. (This is what fairy tale life does to you! You end up speaking like a medieval minstrel.)
Minstrel-voice begone!
Argh!
Who could she be? Did she still live at Brittlebane? Did I know her? The baby I saw had blonde hair, but hair does change colors when people get older. And there were countless denizens of the castle with blonde hair.
Most notably ...
... Tyra!
Please, no! My heart pounded. She would be the worst sister ever. A twin who didn't even have the decency to be strange looking. But Tyra had magic, so it couldn't be her, right? Plus, she was a full fairy with the wings and the porcelain skin and the bad attitude, not a witch.
Cal was there that night. Maybe he could tell me.
Cal!
An annoying, book-thieving cat who I now knew was also a minion!
A minion who kidnapped me as a newborn infant and flew me to Coffin Ridge.
A cat who I told everything!
All my innermost secrets.
For years!
I hoped, nay prayed, (stop it minstrel voice!!!) that he couldn't understand me when he was in cat form, because otherwise I was pretty sure I'd die from mortification. He knew the other kids ostracized me. About the crush I had on Miles. How often I complained about my dads. My deepest hacking secrets. Even when I got my period! My face heated.
Calm down, Rowen. You can't unsay what you said. Unshare what you shared. Maybe he didn't understand because he was a cat at the time.
If he understood, I had to end him. No one got to know my innermost secrets and survive!
Wow, I sounded super evil queenlike. Luckily, Vermeil couldn't hear my thoughts. But in my defense, I was in shock, recovering from Post-Holographic Movie Syndrome, and barely avoided turning into a putrid-smelling, flesh-decomposing, brain-starved zombie.
And come on! Cal stole my book from the attic! When I found him, he would have to tell me what he did with it and why he took it from me. I would use all methods of (torture) persuasion. Sadly, since during the magical "movie," I was inside Cal in his human form, I did not know what he looked like other than he had beautiful hands.
Okay, I know you think I ought to be thankful to Calvin for saving me from a life with Petronella, giving me a loving family, watching over me like my personal cat-shaped guardian angel. But look where I ended up. With my powers suppressed for my whole life. Being blackmailed by an evil queen. Having dads who lied to me and got themselves turned into toads. Being chased by giant spiders, nearly swallowed by a sea serpent, taking stupid Evil Queen lessons for a job I don't even want. And now, lying in a muddy grove of gossiping trees in the middle of the Forbidden Forest (complaining about) contemplating my life choices.
The question was, what to do now?
After (punishing) thanking Cal.
Yeah, I'd have to hold off on the punishing for later because ...
Cal had flown to Coffin Ridge from Brittlebane the day I was born. Which meant he knew the way!
AND
He had been both a cat and a man, so he knew how to transmogrify. He knew the spell!
SO
I had to be nice to Cal.
For now!
Mwhaha!
How to proceed?
Time for another one of Rowen's famous lists! (Maybe they weren't famous yet, but someday!)
Rowen's Next Steps to Save her Fathers and Avoid her Evil Fate:
1. Reacquire use of limbs.
2. Exit the Forbidden Forest, possibly using magic.
3. Persuade sea monster to toss me a fish from the moat.
4. Return to castle bedroom without being caught.
5. Shower.
6. Burn clothes in fireplace.
7. Dress in clean apparel.
8. Find Cal. Bribe him with fish. Interrogate.
9. Locate dads.
10. Fly back to Brittlebane on an operational broomstick.
11. Change dads back to humans.
12. Set up powerful wards around the house to keep out pesky witches.
13. Live my life the way I want.
Excellent plan!
(But what about Lubris and Blade and Cal and Ash and Vermeil and Doryu and King Triton and the thousands of innocent and semi-innocent prisoners being held in the dungeon? All the good people in the castle? You'd leave them to be ruled by the evil queen rule for another five-hundred years. How could you not care about them?)
Answer: I did, but I cared about me and my dads more.
But what about Olivia? A little voice in my head harangued.
OLIVIA!
Blonde Olivia.
Magic-less Olivia.
I forced my aching body out of the muck like a swamp creature from a horror film. Mud squelched and sucked at my body, battling to keep me in place. I fought against the suction, and when I finally stood, the mud dripped off me, plop plop plop back into the muck.
Vermeil climbed down my head, to my shoulder and raced down my arm. I held him in my muddy palm. "I am so relieved you aren't a zombie," he said.
"Me too." I spun on the trees, pointing at each one of them. "No, thanks to you! Next time, warn a person before you nearly turn her into a zombie!"
"Where would be the fun in that?" the trees chuckled. "Look, when you're a tree, it's not like you can go to the theatre or take up juggling. We must find entertainment where we can."
"Let's see how entertained you are when I conjure a sharp axe!" I said.
The trees hung their branches a little lower. "Sorry?"
"That didn't sound very remorseful," I said. "Ut mihi securim!" I shouted the Latin for 'get me an axe.' Fortunately, my dads forced me to learn Latin. Now I knew why. It was the language of spells. Maybe they had planned on telling me about my powers someday.
The trees shivered as I slipped Vermeil back into my pocket, and held out my hand, ready to clasp the handle of the axe, like Thor awaiting Mjölnir.
There was a whistle of wind between the shaking trees. My heart rose! It was working! My magic was totally working!
But it wasn't an axe that appeared.
"Hey," Olivia said, making her way through the trees into the grove, her white gown fluttering in the breeze. "I see you've found this place. Does it mean you know our secret?"
My heart swelled with love. "It's true then," I said. I walked toward her, the mud trying to suck me back with each step. "We're sisters?" Finally, I got to her, and was about to give her the biggest hug ever when I realized I was covered in muck, and she was perfectly clean.
"It's okay, sis," she said, holding out her arms. "Come on. I don't mind a little mud."
We enfolded one another into a tight embrace, and for the first time in my life, I didn't feel alone.
Okay, everyone who figured out that Olivia was Rowen's sister, raise your hand! Congratulations, you smarties! I'm not sure I've talked about this before, but this is what's called a reaction chapter. When you have a big action scene, the POV character will need to process what happened. That's what we do in real life too. So the minute things calm down, and we're stuck in the mud (sometimes literally), we process and recalibrate. That's what Ro is doing here.
Hey, guys, I just realized that all my crossed-out words didn't show up as crossed-out here on Wattpad so it must've been confusing to read. I am so sorry. I just put the words in parentheses. I hope that makes it clearer that she is thinking an evil word and then replacing it with a non-evil word.
I hope you had fun reading this chapter. What do you think will happen next? More to come soon! Vote and comment and all that good stuff! Hugs!