The Elementals - The Ice Princess

Chapter 35

I don't have a chance to say hello as the voice on the other end immediately begins. "Alexander! Thank goodness, you answered! They found me, I can't keep them out of here much longer. You need to tell Eira to go to the place where dreams are made. She'll know what that means."

"Dad?" I finally say.

I can hear the surprise in my dad's voice when he realizes that I am on the other end and not who he expected.

"Gweneira? Babe, you have to run, you have to hide. Don't come find m..." I hear what sounds like an explosion and then screaming. My dad screaming and then the phone disconnects.

I try to flip through the phone looking for a redial or a recall button but I can't find anything. I am frantic. I feel like I can't catch my breath and that everything is moving really quickly. My head starts to spin and I feel dizzy and nauseated. All I can think about is the last seconds of the conversation when the explosion happened and the terrible scream that my dad made before the phone cut us off.

I can feel the tears streaming down my face and I look at Jared who offers me a look of sincere sympathy. I feel like I was just punched in the gut and have had the wind knocked out of me. It all becomes too much for me to bear and the world begins to close in on me, suffocating the fresh air from my lungs. They burn as I struggle to get air back in them. I try to fight the feeling, but it's too strong for me. I can feel myself falling to my knees but Jared reaches out and pulls me into an embrace and that is when I completely lose it. For a few minutes, sitting on the floor, being held in Jared's arms, I cry.

Jared continues to hold me and rubs my head, trying to offer me words of comfort but it doesn't help. I am beyond words of comfort as thoughts of what happened enter my mind, making it even more difficult to get myself under control.

I am not sure how much time passes, but to me it feels like forever. I am finally able to feel like I can cry no more and Jared loosens his hold on me and I sit up.

"So what are we going to do?" he finally asks handing me a tissue.

"I...I don't know. I need time to think and sort this out. My dad could need help."

"Eira, you can't be serious. Did you not just hear the..."

Suddenly the phone beeps. It stops Jared in mid-sentence and we both look at it. Without hesitation, I run and grab the phone off the floor where it fell after I almost fainted. The screen reads that there is a new message. I hit the accept button and the screen changes.

I read the message, twice.

"What does it say?" Jared asks.

"It says to come back to Snowspell School. Or my dad will die. I have two days to make it." I look up at Jared, "It looks like I know what I am going to do."

Jared immediately is on his feet and his voice sounds panicked. "We can't go rescue him! It's obviously a trap! And we're seriously outnumbered. Laney and Alexander aren't back yet and how will they know where we're going? And let's not forget..."

My mind's made up. Jared can go on and on about how bad of an idea this is. And he's right, but my mind seems to wander to the phone call I just had. I can't just let my dad die because I didn't try something. I would never forgive myself. He would do, no, he has done everything he could have to keep me safe and now I have to do the same thing for him.

I begin to formulate a plan in my head about how to best get to the school with drawing the least amount of attention and with Jared continuing to drone on and on, it's becoming increasingly more difficult to think about what to do.

"Eira!" Jared finally shouts at me snapping me out of train of thought. "You didn't listen to a word I just said, did you?

"Oh I heard the first part about this being a bad idea..." I say dismissively with a wave of my hand. "My mind's made up though, Jared. I am doing this, with, or without you."

He takes a moment to compose himself, thinking of how to approach this and then with a slight slump of shoulder, concedes. "Ok, you win. When do we leave?"

"I am giving Laney and Alexander, one more hour to get back. If they don't, I want to leave a note on the table, outlining where we are going to be."

"Where exactly are we going?"

"My dad said that I needed to go where dreams are made..."

"I don't follow."

"When I was little, my dad used to tell me that my dreams were made in the stars. He said, late at night, one star would collect all the kid's bad dreams and shoot them across the sky so they wouldn't find us anymore. I used to have terrible nightmares when I was younger." Not unlike the nightmares I have now. I think to myself.

"So we need to get you to the stars. Perfect," Jared says sounding slightly sarcastic.

"No. When I was about 12 or 13, just after we moved to Snowspell, my dad took me hiking on this trail just out of town, in the Nicolet National Forest, that led to a giant rock cliff. It wasn't very high up, certainly not like hiking up a mountain but it was a good walk and the city lights were completely non existent. When we got to where we needed to be, it opened up to nothing but sky. We sat and had a snack and when the sun finally set, the entire sky was filled with stars. Millions of them it seemed. My dad spent hours pointing out constellations to me and drawing them out for me. My favourite was Perseus, protector of Andromeda. His favorite was Scutum, which in Latin means shield. It's a small constellation, and the stars were not visible if you were standing in city light. He told me that the brightest star in the constellation, Alpha Scuti was the dream star. He said that this star shielded all kids from their bad dreams. Now, that I am thinking about it. I think there was another meaning in him telling me that. I think that's where my dad wants me to go."

Jared looks confused. "Well that's a great story and let's assume that is what your dad wants, but what do we do when we get there?"

"I don't know, we've got a 9 hour car ride to try and figure that out. I want to leave in the next hour. So start packing."