ONE POINT FIVE (1.5 in the Amnesia Archives)

Chapter 27

Sarphi's POV

I kept Prin in the dark the entire way back to the bakery, even though I was so tempted to burst into laughter whenever I thought of what I had heard the farmer's wife say to the gardener. My shoulders were somewhat relaxed, which they hadn't done all day. I knew that she had an idea of what was happening, but she wasn't allowing herself to be happy until the words left my mouth.

It wasn't until Ka was hiding behind our screen, shrugging at her feet and legs did we actually have time to talk about what was going on. Ka didn't seem too pleased that she'd be getting cleaned up, but we had reminded her that the cake was going to be closer if she washed quickly.

"What is it?" Prin all but hissed to me when we stood in the kitchen, the two of us examining Ka's dress and taking turns scrubbing and picking off bits of dirt. I felt like we could've just used magic for this, but Prin had insisted that we at least tried to get it out by fair means.

"I don't think that the farmer's wife is good at keeping secrets," I told her with a wide grin on my face. "I really think that Queenie should get another minion to work for her, that is if she wants to stay ruling the village."

"Sarphi," Prin whined. "You're not actually telling me what happened. What did you hear?" I noticed that the more dirt was leaving the dress the more irritated she got. I wasn't cruel enough to keep it dangling over her head for much longer.

"She basically told him that she had the cake. She literally told him that she had the cake." At least, I was pretty sure. If she was willing to say something so close to the truth, then it wouldn't be long before she spilled.

"She what?" Prin asked with disbelief, her hands stopping their movements.

I nodded and put my hand on the back of hers, using her hand to scrub the dress for her. "Yeah," I replied, still grinning. "I'm pretty sure that she really just told him that the cake was inside her house."

"But what about the cake at the hall?" Prin questioned quickly. "What about Niko and Cade? Why were they forced to leave due to a spiking if the farmer's wife was such a-" She stopped talking, probably a little too shy to say anything bad about the woman.

"Because they've been friends forever," Ka's voice said from just behind us. She was dripping wet in the middle of the doorway, getting footprints on the floor. "Do you have a towel? Or a piece of cloth please?"

I nodded and quickly took my hand away from Prin's, rushing back into our room and getting a spare towel. "I told you to shout to us," I scolded softly as I wrapped the towel around her legs. Crouching down. "You scrub really quickly." I gave a small smile, trying to pretend like we weren't talking about too much whilst she wasn't there, but she seemed to know what was going on.

"The missing cake was real, right?" Ka asked quietly. "It was fun to play, but it's not that fun when it's real. I like cake." I couldn't agree more.

"Yes, it was real," Prin informed quietly as she finished cleaning out most of the dirt from the front of the dress, turning it over to address the back. "Though, I don't even know if it's been resolved. If the farmer's wife told your father that she had the cake, then surely, we're home-free?"

"We're already at home," I pointed out, but I got ignored.

"I don't know if my father is smart enough to put the pieces together. You know, the part about you guys taking me to play games and stuff. But I also don't know if he'd recognise the fact that the cake she's talking about is the one for my birthday." Ka was talking a lot more now, and she was making much more sense than she was before. It was like I was looking at a different person, which made me feel rather uneasy.