The Puppeteer

Chapter 5

Camden stared at the map in disgust. “Who drew this thing and whatever happened to their dominant hand?”

Luca snorted. She was right, of course. The map was utterly confusing and inaccurate, as if it were written for the occupants of another forest entirely. Absolutely nothing led to the place it claimed to; they had found a large river rushing through the path the map had said to take.

After a couple more hours of that Camden simply ripped the thing to pieces and tossed it into the trees. “I don’t know where we’re going, and I don’t know where we are. To be honest, I don’t know how we would go about returning to the place from which we came. This supposed “wise man” couldn’t possibly be more than just an imbecilic, harebrained, idiotic, moronic, absolutely stupid hoax which some freaking idiot thought was funny! Ugh!”

And with that she proceeded to punch a nearby tree until her fists were bleeding.

“Hey, hey, calm down,” Luca said in a soothing tone, though he was rather frightened of her outburst. She was usually so composed.

“Here,” he said softly, ripping a piece of fabric to use as a bandage from one of the bags tied to the horse.  “Now, we are completely broke,” he reminded her. “And that farmer sold us the horse for a ridiculous price. But we needed it, and we have her now, though we don’t have much else. One horse, two elves, a little food and some fancy dresses aren’t exactly the things one might want when building a future for oneself, hmm?

“But, even if this whole thing was a dumb old hoax, we have hope. Hope isn’t something you can live off of alone, though, and we don’t want to destroy the few material objects that could keep us alive. So, we aren’t going to use any more of my cloth because no one's going to get hurt again. Okay?”

Camden hadn’t quite cooled off, but her brother was helpful. She had needed to be reminded about what they were doing.

“We have no goal, nor a particular destination, so I suppose the best bet we have is to simply wander,” she said after a few moments silence.

“Then we shall wander.”

Wandering didn’t get them anywhere in particular, as is generally the case with wandering, and they gave up on that two hours and one epiphany later.

“Why on earth didn’t I think of that before?” Cam cried out, “of course!”

Luca was confused, and asked, “What didn’t you figure out before?”

“Fairies! Remember the jester? He said fairies are intelligent and helpful!”

“Everything,” Luca reminded her, “which we learned from that joker has brought us nothing but misery. Do you really want to use his information?”

“Do we have anything better to do?”

“Good point.”

“Fairies? Are you out there? We have something for you if you would lend us a hand!” Camden called out to anyone who happened to listen.

There was an extensive silence, and, Cam had to finally give up. She realized then that she had had no way of knowing how to communicate with the fairies.

As they began to walk away, however, the two heard a rustling behind them. Spinning around, they saw dozens of fairies, who looked like miniature elves with wings.

“Whoa..” whispered Luca in awe.

Camden was more businesslike.

“Hello, ladies and gentlemen. We would like to request assistance in exchange for... a negotiable fee.”