Zoe stood up, dusted herself off, walked up to Rob, and in one fluid movement slapped him across the face.
"What was that for?!", demanded Rob, rubbing his red cheek.
"It's your fault we're in this mess! If you would have listened to me in the first place and not have touched that thing, we wouldn't be here! But noooo, you had to be all like: 'I'm so cool at finding clues! I'm a detective and I have to butt my big, brainy head into other people's business!'"
"Well, it was your idea that we should-" While I was usually able to tolerate their constant bickering, we were now facing bigger problems than simply pointing the finger of blame. Therefore, I decided to cut in.
"Come on guys, fighting isn't going to help us. We wanted to find out where they went, so here's our answer. We'll get this all sorted out soon enough. Just, chill!" A small grey puff appeared in the air above the two, and a single snowflake floated down between them. Zoe stared at it as it landed on the ground and slowly melted away.
"Well, that was awkward." she finally said, looking up at Rob, her face still a bit pink from her inflated temper.
"Danny's right. We need to start looking around."
She turned to me and gasped. Her expression if horror lead me to thinking that I hade a platter-sized tarantula crawling on my head. My hand flew up to my hair just to make sure there wasn't. Nope, there wasn't. Thank God.
"What is it? Is something wrong?" I gave her a quizzical look.
"Danny, your eyes! They're...blue!"
"What?!"
Rob looked into my eyes and shook his head in amazement. "They are! That's just...creepy. And yet...", he trailed off from his sentence, loosing his train of thought.
Zoe scowled at him. "I think it looks nice! Blue has always been Danny's color." She turned to me.
"Here, have a look!" She pulled a mirror out her purse. I hadn't even noticed that she'd brought it along with her. I grabbed the mirror with shaky hands and glanced at my reflection. It took all of my courage not to scream. This was not normal. And yet it was. My electric-blue eyes looked perfectly natural, even better than my green eyes had been. It was so wrong, but it was so right. All I could say was 'wow'. We waited for a moment and thought about our current situation.
"Right. Well, we can't stay here." Rob started walking on the path towards the forest. Zoe and I looked at each other and shrugged. We started to walk after him, ready to face the unknown.
ƒX‚
We walked for probably half an hour, although it was extremely hard to tell, our brains still trying to process what the strange orb in the janitor's locker had done to us. Then we came to a clearing. Rob stepped into the middle of the clearing and studied a wooden post that was planted into the hard-packed ground.
"Well, that's original." I came up and looked. In squiggly letters was carved the words 'The Clearing'. As if we hadn't noticed that already. On the bottom of the sign strange, curling runes were carved in an unfamiliar language that I had never before seen. Or at least I thought so at first. But then I remembered the day that I first met Adam, and I began to recall that many if the symbols on his bow had looked just like this. But suddenly a feeling of terror seized my heart. I looked around, feeling that we were being watched. I froze as the voices began.
"Yes...very original. Wouldn't you agree, Abigail?" said a raspy voice, somewhere off in the trees. I slowly backed up to where Zoe and Rob were, and we formed a circle with our backs turned to each other as we looked around for the source of the voice. I began to get goose bumps at the second voice, which was very similar to the first one.
YOU ARE READING
Crown of Daelin
Fantasi"I wished that things were different. That I could make a greater impact. That I could be someone stronger, someone important. But what could I do here, in this small town, that was already civilized and happy? I wanted a challenge, and I had no clu...
