Chapter 28
Cameras and Drones
"No, no, no, no, no." Lily looked at the face of her roommate, permanently frozen in stone. "What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? Oh, wait! The bracelet!"
That's right, she thought. The magic bracelet will sort everything out, just like it has done before.
With renewed hope, Lily pulled her sleeve back to expose the bracelet, held her hand out and gave the order. "Bracelet, turn everyone back to normal!"
A curtain of light flashed from the bracelet and draped over the statues. But nothing about the statues changed after the light faded away.
"Bracelet, turn everyone back to normal!"
Again, there was a ray of light. But again, nothing changed.
"Bracelet, make them not statues anymore!"
It was just a repeat of history.
Again and again, Lily commanded the bracelet to cure her friends of their petrification. She tried wording her orders differently, but it always resulted in the same way: complete failure. And with each failed attempt, her frustration mounted until they reached a breaking point, and she just started screaming at the piece of jewelry around her wrist.
"Turn them back to normal! Turn them back to normal! TURN THEM BACK TO NORMAL!"
She dropped to her knees on the grass, hands grasping Viv's cold stone shoulders.
"Turn them back to normal!" She let out one final whimper as her head hung down.
Tanja stood back a few feet away and watched, mind racing but unable to muster up a word to say. Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud flutter of wings, and she turned to see a great, big blue parrot behind her. An eye-popping big blue parrot taller than her dad who was often mistaken for a pro-basketball league player.
"The bracelet will not work," it said. Its voice sounded like a chorus of men and women speaking at the same time. You are still too weak to break curses of this level."
Without turning, Lily softly spoke. "What do you want?"
The parrot sniffed and said, "Didn't anyone tell you it's rude to speak without looking at who you're talking to?"
Lily whirled around and snapped, "Happy now?"
As soon as it saw Lily's face, the parrot's eyes flew wide for a moment as if surprised. But then it cleared its throat and looked away. "Ahem! There is a way for you to break the curse and turn everyone petrified in stone back to normal."
Lily leaped to her feet in a fit of feverish excitement. "Really? How?"
The parrot nodded its head and replied, "Look behind you."
Lily turned. Floating around her friends like stringless balloons were the tiger dolls. Bright blue light flashed from the bubble ball charms on their collars and in the blink of an eye, the tigers went from cute plush toys to huge, living beasts that let out a chorus of fierce roars.
"Eek!"
Startled, Lily shrieked and fell backward.
The parrot sniffed and mocked Lily. "Hmph! You're not going to save anyone like that, Lady Sapphire."
Lily turned and glared at the parrot. "What is that supposed to mean?"
The parrot nodded to the tigers again and said, "The charms on those tigers are the keys to turn your friends back to normal. You need to collect them all in order to break the curse. But I wonder if you can. Word on the grapevine is you have a problem with tigers."
Lily threw another hateful gaze at the bird. "You ARE doing this tiger stuff on purpose after all!"
"Of course," said the parrot. "We're the bad guys of this story, remember? What bad guy would not take advantage of their enemy's fears or weaknesses?"
"Have you been spying on me?"
The parrot snorted. "You really like asking questions with super obvious answers, don't you? Anyway, that's not important right now. What is, is that you don't have a lot of time. If you are unable to collect all the charms before sunrise, then your friends will be stuck in stone forever."
"What? No!" Lily cried in dismay. "You can't let that happen!"
Coldly, the parrot looked at her and fired back, "No, Lady Sapphire. YOU cannot let that happen. Whether or not your friends will be saved hinges entirely on you. Their fate is in your hands. Now, the only question is will you meet their expectations as a hero and save them or fail and doom them to spend eternity as lifeless pieces of rock?"
Lily rubbed her eyes dry with the sleeve of her blazer. And then with another angry glare at the bird, she said, "That's not going to happen."
The parrot sarcastically stated, "That's some confidence you have there, child. But even with the power of that magic bracelet, don't think it will be easy. In order to get those charms, you have to fight a whole bunch of full-grown tigers."
"It doesn't matter," said Lily. "I'll do whatever it takes to save everyone!"
"Then show me you can!" shouted the parrot. "Tigers! Prepare for battle!"
The tigers answered with another round of fierce roars. They all faced the lone girl with glowing, blue bracelet and crouched down low, ready to pounce on her. Lily glared back just as fiercely.
She was, of course, still afraid of the tigers. But that fear was pushed aside by an even stronger feeling: the determination to save her friends. And with that determination, she took a brave step forward towards the tigers. More growls rumbled out of the tigers and then they . . .
. . . turned and ran away as fast as they could until they disappeared into the bushes.
"Huh?"
Lily blinked and stared baffled at their receding tails.
The parrot was equally surprised and yelled, "What the hay-hay?"
Clearly, he expected the tigers to do something else.
But there should really be no surprise the tigers would cowardly flee. After all, just a few minutes ago, while the tigers were just plush toys, this happened:
Erin had said, "Do we need to gut these tigers open?"
Melody had said, "Want me to go get my sewing shears to disembowel them?"
And finally, Lily had said, "I think a nail filer would be enough to tear open their stomachs."
Not exactly the sort of thing you'd forget when someone's talking about their plans for you.
"Hey! Come back here!"
Lily took off running after the tigers, diving into the bushes. She was followed closely behind by Tanja, leaving the parrot alone in the jungle.
The big, blue bird blinked and then quipped, "Not part of the plan, but I guess it'll do."
After diving into the bushes, the girls found themselves flung out of the painting and back onto the platform between staircases in the Blue World version of the Castle in a tangled heap.
After pulling herself free from Tanja's limbs, Lily stood up and turned her head right and left, up and down. But she couldn't see the tigers anywhere and swore. "Where'd they go?"
"Look!" cried Tanja, pointing at the floor. "Those scratch marks look like they came from claws. And they're leading downstairs!"
"Nice catch!" said Lily. "You go find someplace safe to hide!"
And then she rushed down the stairs with her feet pounding loud banging noises. She jumped over the last five steps down onto the lobby floor and followed the trail of scratch marks outside where they split into different directions and faded into the night.
Frustrated, Lily groaned and stomped her right foot down hard.
"Great! Just great!"
She glanced at her smartphone to check the time. Seeing that there was not much before dawn, she conjured a broomstick from her bracelet and was about to set off flying to search the whole school for the scattered tigers. But she stopped when she heard a set of rapid footsteps thundering towards her and someone call out to her to wait.
Lily turned to see an out-of-breath Tanja.
Annoyed, Lily asked, "Didn't I just tell you to find someplace safe to hide?"
Tanja didn't reply right away. She took in a few deep breaths and then wheezed out a reply. "I . . . can . . . help!"
Lily gave a sharp, "No thanks. I'll take care of this on my own."
Tanja took in a few more deep breaths and argued, "You won't find them all in time."
"I can track them with the magic bracelet," said Lily.
Tanja pointed out, "It'll take too long to do that and go after them by yourself."
"I don't see what difference one more person, especially someone with no magic whatsoever, will make."
"I don't need magic," Tanja said smugly. "Don't worry. I'll keep out of trouble. If this Blue World really is an exact copy of the real one, then I just need you to get me back to my room and I can handle the rest from there."
"And just how will you do that?" asked Lily.
"No time to explain," Tanja said. "You'll just have to trust me I'll get the job done."
Her own dorm room would be a good place to stay safe in, Lily supposed. "Okay, fine!"
She turned the broomstick to a floating magic carpet.
"Hop on!"
Tanja obliged and climbed onto the magic carpet. Lily had the carpet fly straight to the dorms. After climbing into her room through the window, Tanja quickly booted up all of her computers and a couple of drones she pulled out from beneath her bed. Her fingers danced over the keyboard as she leaned over it, putting her face close to the computer screens on her desk.
(Note from the author: That's bad for your eyes, so don't do it.)
"Found them!" she excitedly announced as Lily hopped into the room.
Lily blinked. "Really? That fast?"
"Take a look, if you don't believe me," said Tanja. She scooted aside to give Lily some room.
Lily came closer and was instantly blown away by what she saw. She could see every inch of the school at every conceivable angle.
"Is this the school's camera system? You have access to that?"
"Yep," Tanja said proudly. "And that's not all."
She hit a button on the keyboard and the drones she set aside took flight.
"Whatever the cameras can't see, the drones will."
"How-?"
Tanja cut Lily off and pointed out, "I'll explain everything later. We got more important things to worry about, don't we?"
Lily checked the time again and then nodded. "You're right. It looks like there's a tiger close to the dorms, so I'll start with that one."
She climbed back onto the magic carpet that was left floating out the window. But before taking off, she froze for a second and then stuck her head back into the room and said, "Hey, Tanja?"
"Yeah, Lily?"
"Thanks. For the other times too."
Tanja's fingers stopped for a second. And then she turned. But Lily was already gone.
No comments:
Post a Comment