Eyes of White

Chapter 7: Cat's Cradle

Mel tugged Penelope along. Their footsteps echoed through the crystal entry-hall, Mel's soft and quiet, Penelope's a bit louder. A door Zania hadn't shown the twins slid silently open and Mel slunk in, and with a hissed, "Come on!" Penelope followed.

The only light in the room was Mel's white tail just in front of Penelope, so she followed the tail. Suddenly lights flickered on, beautiful warm lights that glowed pink. Penelope could see that they were in a library and that there were rows and rows of books lined up neatly on shelves but not in any order. Mel was sitting on top of a bookcase and she tapped a book with her paw. "This one."

Penelope couldn't reach it, as this particular shelf was twice her size and Mel was sitting on top of it. She looked around for an idea, and she couldn't find one until Mel said softly, "Use your Gift, troubletwister."

Penelope had absolutely no idea of what a Gift was, but she shut her eyes and imagined a summer storm wrapping around her, until she felt slightly weird. She opened her eyes and looked at herself. She wanted to gasp but thought she might inhale herself. She wasn't wrapped in a storm, she was a storm cloud! She stepped forward nervously and felt herself lift up slightly. She lifted her foot and found a step in midair. She did this until she met Mel, who tapped the book again. "This one."

The spine was pink with gold shimmers. The silver writing read, 'Storms of The Evil'. There was no author. Penelope reached out to tug it off the shelf, but her hand evaporated. She pulled it back, surprised, and watched her hand reform.

"Think, troubletwister," Mel whispered.

Penelope shut her eyes and imagined the book becoming a storm, dark and moving. When she opened her eyes again, the book was a swirling torrent of cumulonimbus clouds. Penelope reached out and the book was absorbed into her chest. She gasped and felt herself solidify as she reached her right hand out and clutched on to the bookshelf, her left hand clinging onto the book. "Mel!" she screamed, looking up at the cat. "Help!"

The cat calmly looked down. A white curl was swirling in her eyes.

++We're sorry, troubletwister. We don't help.++

Then Mel shook her head and the white left her eyes. "Oh, Penelope!" She reached out a paw and, replacing the book on its shelf, she grabbed it. Mel struggled a little, but eventually she pulled Penelope up onto the ledge. "I'm so sorry. Can you get the book now?"

Penelope reached down and plucked the book out of its home between the encyclopedia and the cookbook. She smiled and opened it. Suddenly she remembered Persephone. "Seph! We gotta go!" She began to run across the shelves, leaping around from time to time until she reached the ground. She sprinted out of the room and reached the kitchen, where there was no smell, but Persephone was drinking her icedo drink and Zania was standing over to the side, watching. Persephone looked up at Penelope. "Where'd you go again?" she asked.

"The library."

"There's a library?"

"Umm..."

"Is that where you got that book?" Persephone pointed at Storms of The Evil.

"Yeah."

"Oh, okay."

Penelope slid into her seat and Mel slunk back onto the table. "Do you want to play, Mel?" Zania asked, picking up her cards.

"I'd like that." Mel licked her paw and used it to clean her face.

"Persephone, deal Mel in too."

Persephone looked confused, then she saw her cards, in front of her, face down. "Oh!... Mel?"

"Yes. Do you need your hearing checked?"

"Oh, no." Persephone quickly dealt five of the golden cards to Mel, who put her paw on top of the cards regally.

"So here's how this game works. You look at your cards and I have to guess what they are. We then all get a go at guessing Mel's cards. Simple. Okay, Persephone, Penelope, look at your cards." Zania looked expectantly at the twins.

Penelope was the first to act. She picked up all five of her cards at once and looked at them. One of them was a grey cloud with a white fork of lightning coming from the top, going up, not down. The next one she looked at was a hand sweeping away hair from an oversized ear. She glanced at the next one and did a double take. It was a tornado that seemed to be coming right at her. The background of the card was black, fading to grey in the middle, then darkening to black again at the bottom. There was curly white writing at the top that read, 'Beware the eyes'. While noticing the details, Penelope noticed that the tornado was definitely bigger, and soon, when she next blinked, it was gone.

The next one was just plain gold, but the one after that was a green card. Completely green, with no pattern or picture. But as Penelope watched, the card lightened in shades until it reached white.

Persephone's cards were also quite strange. She had a tsunami, like the famous Japanese painting, a calm beach, a mouth whispering into an ear, a plain gold card and a card that was completely blue, but unlike her sister's colour card, it stayed blue. Sometimes a curl of white would swirl in the middle, but every time she blinked, the white was gone, leaving her to believe that she'd imagined it.

"You girls done yet?" Zania asked as they stared at the strange cards.

"Yes." Both twins spoke at the same time, though Penelope was distracted by the alluring colour card that kept changing.

"All right. You first, Penelope. You have a plain gold card, a... an unchanging green card, a tornado on a dark background and... a hand sweeping hair from an ear and a cloud with upside down lightning. Am I right?"

"Kinda..." Penelope mused. "I have the hand, upside down cloud and plain gold card. The dark card used to have a tornado on it but then it disappeared. As for the green card, it changes white after a little while, then it goes back to green."

"Oh." Zania put out a hand to Penelope, then retracted it quickly. For a moment, Zania wore an expression of true pain. But then it was gone, and she turned to Persephone. "Your turn, dear. You have a plain gold card, an unchanging blue card, a mouth whispering into an ear and... a tsunami and a... a beach with a slight surf."

"Beach with no surf," Persephone corrected. "But that's all of the flaws with your guess. Oh, sometimes there's a faint swirl of white in the blue."

"Okay. Okay." Zania seemed more confident with Persephone's cards. "Now, Mel's got five cards, so I'll have one guess, then you may have two each. I'll go first: a dead rat in a puddle of brown liquid. Penelope?"

"Oh, um... Can Persephone go next?" Penelope asked as she racked her brain, trying to find something, anything, that might be in the deck. She looked at her cards and realised: her colour card was the colour of her eyes. So was Persephone's. So maybe Mel had a card like that...

"A... a moon and a nose." Persephone looked confused as she said this. "That's my guess."

"I'll go... a plain gold card with a faint swirl of white," Penelope remembered the white she'd seen in Mel's eyes in the library, "and a... saucer of milk."

"Let's have a look," Zania said. She turned over a card and Penelope could plainly see the dead rat in brown liquid.

"Ah, I thought so. Now, the next one..."

The next two cards were: a flying bird and a sloth with moss weighing it down.

"Sorry, Persephone."

The next card was plain gold. "Maybe this is the one you described, Penelope." As they watched, a slow swirl of white came into view, then disappeared.

Zania watched Penelope carefully, then tuned in on Mel, changing to a look of disbelief. "N-next one." She flipped the final one over and there it was: a black saucer with a white puddle of milk in it.

~~Nice guess! Please vote!~~