Get ready to jump. We’re about as close as I can get with that storm, Stella said. Didn’t you want me to deliver a message, George?
George sat up straighter in Emma’s pocket. He curled his little claws into the nylon lining as he felt the elf shuffling things around with her pack and her parachute. Is this private?
“Thank you, Stella. You can tune me out now.”
Now it’s private.
Okay, I need you to get a message to Wendy. She’s a fairy godmother. Tell her I may not make our date tomorrow, and if not, I’ll be in contact with her as soon as possible. Do not tell her I’m a mouse, or anything else. Just that.
Got it.
“Alright, here we go. Thank you again, Stella. And Vega, of course. George, hold on tight!”
And he’d thought landing in a plane was bad. That was nothing.
The parachute slowed their descent until they hit gale-force winds. Then, those winds buffeted them about like a sheet of paper, whipped in one direction, thrown in another. Emma’s pocket was warm, but bits of ice came through the opening, and George couldn’t risk loosening his grip to reach over and hold the pocket’s mouth shut. He thought Emma said something at one point, but even his keen hearing couldn’t pick up her words. Maybe it was the howling wind.
If he was mortal now, he could die, couldn’t he?
The realization chilled him to the bone.
He thought he heard an explosion quite nearby, but he wasn’t sure. Then he heard another, and another, very close, and he realized it had to be something Emma was doing, some invention her husband had put into the suit, parachute, or pack—or something else entirely. Pipaluk could squeeze an invention into a paperclip.
All George could do was hold on.
And then, an eternity later, they landed.
“We’re here!” Emma exclaimed.
“‘We’?” another female voice asked.
George released the pocket lining. His toes were cramping from holding on so tight for so long. He poked his head out of Emma’s pocket, and although the wind still blew and the snow and ice still flew through the air, it was calmer here than up in the sky. Much calmer than he expected.
So calm, in fact, that Crystal was sitting on a recliner.
“Is that a mouse?”
The ice floe was about 20 feet in diameter, and it had an entire living room setup. Aside from the ice recliner, there was a lamp, a coffee table, a sofa—and on that sofa lay the eye of the storm, motionless.
“His name is George,” Emma said as she hurried to Lily’s side. “Is she…?”
“She’s just unconscious,” Crystal said. “She brought that potion Pipaluk made for her, but I don’t dare give it to her. There’s still a ton of her free magic floating around for me to channel out of the storm. I don’t even have to touch my own magic. What should I make next? A cage for that mouse?”
“I don’t think he’d like that.” Emma brushed Lily’s black hair out of her face. “Oh, Lily. What have you done this time?”
“A fireplace. Why not? Nothing else makes sense here.”
George almost jumped out of Emma’s pocket. Almost. And then he remembered he couldn’t use his own magic to keep himself from freezing solid if he did so, and, not fancying frostbitten toes, he stayed put. There would be an opportunity to catch Emma’s attention about the book later. They would be here for a while.
“Why don’t you use some of that magic to propel us home?” Emma asked Crystal.
“Already doing it. Like I said, there’s a ton of magic here.”
The blonde lounging in the hard blue and white ice recliner flicked her wrist, and the wind changed directions, converging on a single point across the coffee table from Lily. Snowflakes and bits of ice coalesced into a massive fireplace, complete with ice wood in the hearth and a set of ice pokers off to the side.
“Lily's magic prefers to take shapes like this.” Crystal sighed and propped her chin in her hand. “Now what?”
Emma lifted Lily’s head and eased herself beneath the girl. George had to do some quick shuffling to avoid being crushed, but when Emma finished, she was sitting on the sofa, Lily’s head was in her lap, and George had a close-up view of Wendy’s favorite problem child.
She had a fair complexion, but she looked even paler than usual, just a shade or two away from pure white. Frost tipped her black eyelashes and freckled her cheeks. Her thin lips were blue.
“Honestly. What am I going to do with you?” Emma asked, stroking Lily’s hair.
George had to duck back into the pocket to warm up. He sneezed tiny icicles from his nose.
The book. He had to get the book and destroy it.
But how?
Crystal and Emma chatted back and forth as the storm raged on, and George nibbled at the granola bar as he thought. It sounded like Crystal was recreating Lily’s living room, the one from her house in Nebraska. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t know Crystal had ever been there, but she theorized it could be a comfort to Lily when she regained consciousness. Emma, however, worried it would freak her out. The last time she’d been in that house, the North Pole police force had arrived to arrest her for the attempted murder of her coworker Boris, after all.
Not that Lily would wake up soon. She’d used such a massive amount of magic, it was a wonder she was still alive. She probably wouldn’t awaken until after they’d been back at the North Pole for a few days.
Unless someone fed her that potion.
The potion.
His little round ears perked up. His whiskers quivered.
Wendy had given Pipaluk samples of her hair, scales, and dust to make that potion.
Would a sip fix him?
If nothing else, it would give him tons of energy until the effect wore off. That was the intended use: rejuvenate Lily by restoring the magic she’d expended.
Where was the potion?
“Where is the potion?” Emma asked.
For a moment, George thought she’d heard his thoughts somehow.
“We can’t give it to her now. She needs time to calm down,” Crystal said.
“Yes, but I’d still like to know where it is.”
“It's in here with the book. I got so bored, I read that book at least a dozen times. I probably have the thing memorized by now.”
George poked his head out of Emma’s pocket in time to see Crystal toss a pack across the ice living room, a pack identical in appearance to Emma’s. His tiny heart leaped. The book and the potion, all in one place?
He looked up at Emma. Almond-shaped chocolate eyes met his. She winked.
He blinked.
Was she hearing his thoughts?
“There it is. And the book, too. Well, I’m glad you have this memorized, Crystal, because it needs to go.”
And then Emma threw the brown leather-bound book as hard as she could over the living room scene and into the ocean. She had a pretty good arm.
“What did you do that for?” Crystal shrieked.
“I don’t take kindly to strangers giving my children gifts, and I don’t want them to think it was okay to do it this time, since the book turned out to be safe.”
Crystal stared at Emma, sky-blue eyes wide open. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“It does to me, and I’m their mother, so my word goes. Speaking of which, how serious is your mother about that pilot?”
Emma set the open pack in the space between the back of the sofa, her waist, Lily’s head, and Lily’s shoulder, with the opening nearly touching her pocket. George couldn’t believe his luck. He darted into the pack, and there it was. The potion. A simple glass vial filled with clear liquid and bearing the label ‘The Cure.’
Hm. How to remove the stopper and drink only a single drop? Two drops had turned Pipaluk into an Energizer bunny, and George was sure his own little mouse heart couldn’t take that kind of stress.
A hand reached into the pack as Crystal and Emma continued chatting. A large hand to George, but a small hand by normal standards. Emma gripped the vial with her palm and fingers and used her thumb to push the stopper off the top. Then she retracted her hand.
Well. That was one problem solved.
There were several items in the pack. George pushed and pulled everything in such a way as to make the vial lean on its side with the liquid almost reaching the lip, and then he clambered toward the opening and reached his little tongue inside. Nope, too short. He reached a paw inside instead, felt the wetness on his skin, pulled his paw out, and took a lick.
Nothing.
He licked again, sitting back on his haunches to clean his paw and then his whiskers. He didn’t know why he was cleaning his whiskers. The sudden urge naturally followed paw-cleaning, and he had to do it. Clean whiskers meant happy whiskers, and happy whiskers meant—
Oh, dear Jack Frost. Was he becoming more mouse-like the longer he remained in this form?
He picked the stopper up and lifted it with some difficulty, carrying it back to the vial and sliding it into the lip. Emma’s hand returned to the pack to push it into place. Then he sat next to the potion, slumped against the glass, miserably wondering why it hadn’t worked for him.
No energy. No magic. Just whisker-cleaning.
He sighed.
Hours passed. Crystal ran out of furniture options and added four walls and a roof, which meant George could now leave Emma’s pocket to explore the ice house without risk of freezing solid. He still had to return to Emma’s warmth frequently, of course, but at least he could stretch his little legs this way. And as Crystal expanded the ice floe and the house, he had even more room to roam.
He stopped in the bedroom. He’d met Lily here. Properly met her for the first time after twenty-one years of watching from a distance.
Mentoring her had been a lot of fun. It had only lasted a couple of days, but he’d come to enjoy his time as a raccoon in a way he hadn’t thought possible when he’d decided to do Wendy that favor.
He’d given Lily everything she needed to unscramble that riddle. Now, if she could just put the pieces together…
“Hello, everybody!”
His little round ears perked up and rotated backwards. It couldn’t be.
“Who are you?” he heard Crystal ask.
George had already done an about-face and was scurrying as fast as he could toward the living room. Wendy was here!
“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll forget me in a few minutes, anyway. Oh—oh, George…”
He skidded to a stop. She had her hand over her mouth, trying to hide her smile, but she was laughing at him.
If a mouse could have blushed, George would have.
“Would somebody please explain what’s going on here?” Crystal complained.
“Hm.” Emma tapped a finger to her lips, looking from the tall fairy godmother in shades of gray to the tiny mouse. “I’m not sure it matters, does it?”
“Not at all,” Wendy said. “George, come here. The sooner we leave, the less I’ll have to wipe from their memories.”
He was torn. He wanted to be with Wendy, but he didn’t want her to see him this way, and he especially didn’t want her to see him in his true form.
What choice did he have now that she was here?
Whiskers drooping, he crossed the icy floor toward her. She squatted and held out her hand, palm up. He climbed into it.
“Nice seeing you two again, but I promise, this is the last time,” Wendy said to Emma and Crystal.
She stood and waved her free hand. George watched the two mortals’ eyes glaze over, and then he blinked, and he was on the immortal plane. Wendy’s neighborhood, to be precise. Bright golden light, fluffy white clouds…
And he was still a mouse.
This was bad.33Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHL3mbkPO1I
and then Add to home screen.