The Hidden World

Chapter Nine

As they made their way along a road Hobbit had led their steeds too Kendra noticed her brother was rather subdued. She supposed Ed had told him something or said something that had his mind turning over. She too had had a quick talk with Hobbit and, although she didn't know it, her talk had been about the same thing.

They went through the  the countryside this time, avoiding big cities. There were farmers in some places but mostly wild animals. Kendra had never seen a bigger gathering of dragons in her life (though she had only ever seen one dragon).

"Hobbit," Kendra said, "when we arrived the unicorns sort of bowed to us. There were a couple hundred. Are there more?" Hobbit laughed.

"Yes, Kendra," she said, "there are definitely. But it's pretty hard to catch a big gathering of them. There like shadows, they only come when needed. They're very wise creatures. Most can't understand them and it takes years of magic training to speak their language."

"How many magical creatures are out there?" Brendan asked.

"Well," Hobbit said, "there are too many to count. Alicorns, unicorns, pegasus, trolls, goblins, elves, dwarfs, and of course imps. But there are a lot of other creatures out there that you probably don't know about. The most difficult thing for most of us is telling the difference between an ordinary creature and a magical one. Some argue constantly about it. We can't quite agree on that. L.B and P.R are talking animals but are they magical creatures? We don't know." Kendra opened her mouth to ask something else but stopped and stared.

They had reached the first corner. The city they were about to pass through was huge. Even bigger than the one they had passed through before. The city was majestic to say the least. Some buildings were higher then the puffy clouds that hung low over the city, though less like pollution and more like specail effect from a movie. The skinniest buildings were braided into each other or bent into interesting shapes, like the wire exhibit at the art museum. There seemed to be a lot of magic folk here appose to the second corner city. Or maybe people were just showing it more. There were several men and women flying around and a few that were doing various things at the same time. A man was reading a newspaper that was hovering right in front of him and a woman was walking a dog but some how holding on to a coffee mug and a book at the same time without looping the leash around her wrist. This seemed like normal activity to everybody else, as well as the other strange happenings.

Right in the center of the city was a humongous gold palace. The door was made of silver. As they approached it the twins could make out a piece of writing on the door.

A man should be happy without gold as long as there are people for him.

"Say the people who live in a golden palace," Brendan muttered. "Taxes must have seriously been peaked for at least fifty years to build this." Hobbit chuckled.

"I agree," she said, "faries, especially this years council, have never been my kind of people."

The inside of the castle was even more impressive than the outside. The walls had handsome tapestries to all sorts of scenes. The tapestries had been weaved in such a way that their pictures seemed to be popping out of the frames. There were floating balls of light of various pastel colors lighting the walls. There were more flying people inside. Borealis and Maverick had refused to come inside for that very reason, even though there were plenty of other animals inside, both big and small.

Hobbit led them to a small door studded with rinestones.

"A person should be happy without gold but with rhinestones. I get it now," Brendan murmured. There were two trolls lining the side of the door. They were standing back from the door in shadow, which made it impossible to see their faces but Kendra could see their spears clearly and decided to let Hobbit do the talking.