The fire of Catherine’s underground sanctuary roared particularly loudly as Daniel crept back into the room, watching his mistress point toward the blaze.  She chanted a few words, then held her harm steadily in the air as a stream of light blue sparks fell from her fingers, followed by a thicker stream, rippling in the air and barely able to contain itself with energy.  Catherine planted her feet on the ground for a better leverage point, and continued holding firm as she fired the light into fire, still with no response.  Grumbling in irritation, Catherine released her hand and stepped back, catching her breath.

                “Any… luck, m’lady?” asked Daniel cautiously.

                “NO, Daniel, nothing yet, in case you couldn’t tell by looking upon the flames with your own eyes.  No, I’m afraid I am incapable of conjuring such information alone.”

                “M-my apologies, m’lady.”

                “Whatever you say, Daniel.  It is not of importance, very soon it won’t matter whether or not I can successfully pull off that particular charm.”

                “Why… not?”

                Catherine cocked her head at him, her hand grabbing for a long ladle.  Daniel did a double take, afraid she was going to throw it at him or worse, but she simply began furiously stirring at one of the hall’s numerous bubbling cauldrons.  Still, her eyes narrowed, not breaking contact with Daniel’s.

                “It seems you haven’t been listening at all while I’ve been discussing this with you, Daniel.  I’m not entirely certain it is even worth my time trying to get it back through your thick skull, but I’ll make the attempt anyway,” she sneered.  “As soon as we have access to the second half, the item itself will be able to tell us the answers we seek.”

                Daniel’s eyes shifted curiously over to the table, where the small purple crystal shard still laid in the leather pouch, and he raised an eyebrow.  “It will… tell us, m’lady?”

                “YES, Daniel, that is precisely what I am saying.  Bring both pieces together, and you can find where they belong.  Like a key to the keyhole.  It’s quite simple, really, I’m surprised even your feeble mind couldn’t have grasped this on its own.”

                Daniel coughed, pacing around the room a bit.  “Sorry…”

                “Don’t be sorry, just cease your incessant questioning.  Believe me Daniel, everything I have been promising will come to fruition very soon.  We WILL have that wretched land for ourselves, and we will remake it, in our image!  Everything we’ve dreamed of…” she said.  Mentally, Daniel knew perfectly well that she meant “I” when she said “we,” but he was accepting of this fact.  Any chance to get out of the Otherlands would be an improvement in his opinion, so he never tried to complain about it because of this fact.  That, and the fact that he was pretty sure Catherine could fry him on the spot with a simple flick of her finger if she disliked his comments enough.  It was almost silent for a few minutes, save for the crackle of the now-calmer fire and the uneasy bubbling of Catherine’s liquid concoction in the pot.

                “Well… m’lady, I’ve… brought news of… IT,” said Daniel sheepishly, scratching at his bald head nervously.  Catherine’s hand stopped stirring and she looked over at him, annoyed.

                “Why have you waited so long to inform me, then, Daniel?  Do these matter never cease to slip your mind?”

                “I…”

                “No matter about that, just tell me what you found now.”

                Daniel gulped, bracing himself.  “Well… err, m’lady, you see…”

                “Spit it out, please, and stop wasting my valuable time.  I have work to attend to!”

                “Right, yes, of course… apologies.  Well, we received word just minutes ago.  The smaller did, indeed, find its way into the palace.  It was attracted to the concoction, just as you said it would be.”

                Catherine smiled smugly.  “Of course it did, Daniel, of course it did.  VERY few beings are aware of the exact specifications required to make that mixture work.  Done wrong, it can be… quite disastrous.  Not that wasn’t, anyway…” she said, realizing the irony of her words and she cackled.  Feeling it was appropriate to join in, Daniel began to guffaw heartily, clutching his stomach, but Catherine silenced him almost immediately.

                “No time for this, Daniel, what happened next?”

                “Well… this is, perhaps, where it doesn’t go quite as we may have liked, m’lady.  It did, indeed, manage to tear through the guards, I heard it had killed over a dozen of them and wounded quite a few more…”

                Catherine clasped her hands together, pleased.  “Very good, Daniel.  Well, what happened next?  Go on.”

                Daniel swallowed again, grinning optimistically in hopes of softening the blow of the next part.  “Yes… RIGHT, m’lady, next.  Well… it seems that after it reached the royal family, just as you knew it would...”

                “Right.”

                “Yes, well, it reached the royal family, almost killed the king, actually… but, it seems… the princess stopped it.”

                “What?”

                “The… princess… STOPPED it, m’lady, it seems,” said Daniel, bracing himself for the inevitable repercussions of having to deliver such news.  Catherine tapped at her lips, biting them, as she began to pace back and forth.  Finally, Daniel her a soft sound emanating from her.  He drew back for a moment, assuming it was an enraged growl, but it turned into laughter an instant later.  “Are you… all right?” he asked shyly, wondering if this was a good time to enquire on such things.

                “Oh, this is PERFECT, Daniel, much better than I could possibly have expected or hoped for…”

                “Errm… why might that be, m’lady?”

                “Daniel, are you truly this naďve?  Truly this… stupid?”

                “N-n-no, no, I’m simply confused about…”

                “There’s nothing to be confused about, Daniel.  This was precisely what we needed to happen all along.  To be honest, I was apprehensive at first that this little scheme of mine wouldn’t work properly if… it… simply tore through the palace, leaving none left, before returning home, but THIS…”

                “Pardon me, m’lady, but should we not be more alarmed by the fact that a single… girl… was able to stop it?”

                Catherine looked at him puzzled for a moment.  “Oh.  I suppose your scout wasn’t able to tell you WHY she was able to fell the beast with such ease?” she said.

                “I suppose not, m’lady…” said Daniel, getting curious.

                “The curse I placed on her, Daniel, it’s quite simple.  A growing spell.  She’s been becoming larger and larger each night.  I would suspect she is quite large indeed at this point, easily larger than IT.  I would even go as far to say it was nothing more than a small dog to her when she subdued it,” said Catherine thoughtfully, pleased with herself.  Daniel was taken aback, his eyes bugging at this idea, thoroughly confused now.

                “L-larger, m’lady?”

                “Yes, Daniel, larger.  She’s a rather BIG girl now, I suppose we might say,” she said with a sly grin.  “Don’t look so strangely at me, Daniel.  Every part of her grew proportionately, she’s not some freak of nature like you are in her strength or power.  I highly doubt she’s even much of an impressive physical specimen naturally, being a LADY and everything in the court of dear, dear, Richard,” she sneered.  “So, really, it makes a great deal of sense.  MY only worry was that the girl wouldn’t attempt to fight back, but I had a feeling from what I’ve heard that she wouldn’t just sit there like a sap while she watched her family become ravaged…” she said, steepling her fingers together and drumming them in rhythm as if thinking further.  Daniel swallowed hard, digesting all of this.

                “I see, m’lady.  I’m afraid, though, that I still am at a loss for the exact benefits of the princess being capable of defeating… it… in combat.”

                “Oh, Daniel, it seems I truly MUST spell out everything with stunning clarity so that you may begin to comprehend it.  Let me put it this way: A mother’s child has gone missing.  What does the mother do?”

                “She… goes in search of it?”

                “Precisely.  And what, pray tell, might said mother DO when she discovers her child has not only been lost in one of the most dangerous of places, but was physically harmed, AND captured.”

                “She will… become angrier?  Try to, perhaps, take vengeance?”

                Catherine nodded.  “You’re getting it now, Daniel.  Try to think about that little fact.  I’m sure the truth of my brilliant plan will occur to you if you stand there long enough, no matter how small that mind of yours is.”

                Caroline wiped a hand across her sweating brow from the gathering heat.  The sun hadn’t even risen yet, but it was already becoming irritatingly warm outside.  She had been wandering through the sea of trees that didn’t even reach her chest in height for several hours now.  She knew that, with the distance of three or four miles of walking distance (to her) to cross what was, technically, well over a dozen miles, should have been accomplished already, if not for one wrinkle she had been unsuspecting of.  Having finally breaking through the sea of trees and walking along the fields, which steadily became less and less populated with vegetation as she walked, she had a better view of the mountains, still reasonably far off.  However, as she came nearer, she found herself face-to-face with a deep gorge, extending an impressive distance outward.  She guessed that the gorge was easily quadruple as wide as she was tall, and this was quite an accomplishment in her mind.  There was a rope bridge extending all the way across that she had a feeling Luke and the scouts had used the previous day.  It looked like a well-built bridge considering the precarious location, and looked sturdy enough. 

Sturdy enough, that is, for people comparatively less than a foot tall to Caroline.  She had a feeling that if she set a single toe on the walkway, it would snap like a leaf.  She peered over the edge.  Despite her size, the drop still looked like it would be (to her) a two-story drop, and that could easily injure her very badly.  She swallowed hard, shaking her head as she pulled back the bits of her yellow hair that had become matted to her damp forehead and licked her dry lips.  Her eyes shifted to the distance across the gorge rather than the distance down.  It was a long shot, and she had serious doubts she would be able to jump it safely.  She had a feeling it was possible, but in her increasingly tightened clothes, and with the prospect of such a sharp drop below, Caroline just couldn’t quite wrap her head around it.  If she was going to be able to save Luke, she would be no good to him with broken legs, slumped at the bottom of the gorge, her massive body damming up the creek below.  No, she would have to walk around, and she knew it.  Shrugging, she set off with a new resolve, following the gorge and waiting for it to become thin enough to manually climb over.

While it didn’t seem to be getting any narrower, with satisfaction, the princess realized that the gorge was becoming shallower.  If she went far enough, she had a feeling she could simply climb into it, walk across, and climb back out on the other side.  From there, she would have seemingly no other distractions before reaching the Black Mountains.  She had turned around several times, but she now realized she had entered the thick haze of fog that coated much of the area between the palace and the mountains themselves.  Her home was no longer visible, all she could see behind her was a wall of rolling, cloudy silver.

Caroline sighed deeply, raising her hand and gripping the fabric draped around her neck like a scarf to warm her chilly fingers.  She murmured pleasurably, her digits already feeling warmed, but she nearly jumped into the air in shock when she felt the scarf move.  She stopped in her tracks, unlooping the scarf from her neck and holding it out.  She peered into the spaces between the tied tassles of the pouch-like drapes, and found her brother lying inside.  She quickly bunched up both ends of the drapes into one massive hand, leaving her other one free.  She pocked her pointer finger through the openings between the tassles to get a better view of the small boy inside her makeshift scarf.

“PHILLIP!” she said in surprise, opening her hand up and reaching all of her massive fingers into the scarf.  She gently touched him with her fingertips inside his warm pocket of the drapes, then retracted them to get a better view of him.  Mixing in with her shock that he was in her scarf was the fact that she finally had a better comparison with a person.  From the looks of it, Phillip couldn’t have been much taller than seven or eight inches to her.  His weight was so slight and barely noticeable, she hadn’t even felt the extra pressure as she had wrapped the scarf around her neck.  “How did YOU…” she said worriedly, blinking a few times.

“Please, Caroline, I’m so sorry, I just wanted to… well, I saw you leaving, I couldn’t just…”

“What were you THINKING?” said Caroline, not yelling but becoming rather stern with her (very) little sibling.  “It is NOT safe for you out here!” she scolded.  “You might have been hurt coming along with me; I have something very important I must do.”

At these words, Phillip burst into tears, bunching the thick fabric of the drape around his face to wipe off.  Caroline suddenly felt a little guilty at the harshness of her words.  Despite how she had tried not to yell, the fact that her humongous face was dealing out such irritated words to her young sibling was probably enough to do the job.

“Phillip…” she cooed more gently, extending her fingers back through the drape tassles as if they were cage bars.  “It’ll be all right, don’t cry…” she said, stroking him gently with her soft fingertips.  Phillip grabbed onto her pointer finger, hugging it to himself, which Caroline calmly allowed while she waited for him to catch his breath.  “Don’t cry…”

“I’m SORRY…” he moaned through choked sobs.  “I had to make sure you didn’t get hurt all by yourself.  I thought… you might want someone to be with you.  I know if I was by myself out here, I’d be really, really scared!” he stated mater-of-factly.

After this, Caroline couldn’t possibly condone herself with being upset with her brother’s choice to tag along.  She pressed her fingers deeper into the tassle pouch, wrapping them across the top of her brother’s small body.  “Thank you, Phillip.  I know I can always count on you to protect me…” she said, giggling happily, finding it funny and sweet at the same time that her brother felt the need to help protect his 35-foot-tall sister.  “But you know that nothing can hurt me now, don’t you?”

“Really?” he said, hugging himself to her soothing, soft fingers.  She nodded.

“Of course not.”

“Not anything?  Not even the… big hairy… MONSTER th-thing?” he said, sounding frightened at the mere suggestion of the beast.  Caroline squeezed her fingers around Phillip’s side to quell his slight shivering, nodding again.

“NOTHING.  Not a single thing.”

“Then… what am I supposed to protect you from?” he said questioningly, legitimately confused by this apparently newfound conundrum.  Caroline retracted her fingers from the pouch, bringing her hand underneath the drape and wiggling her fingers underneath, tickling her brother’s small form inside of it.  He convulsed a little, snickering, as she tickled him, Caroline’s face widening into a smile.

“I’m not certain, Phillip.  Maybe you can just be here to keep me company.  I think I’d like that.”

“All I get to do is keep you company!  I wanna HELP!” said Phillip, sounding frustrated as Caroline’s gentle tickling ceased.  “I wanna stop the bad people.”

“And you will, someday, Phillip.  But for now, I don’t need some knight in silver armor.”

“But that’s what’s in the stories…” offered Phillip, confused.

“I know it.  But sometimes you don’t need someone like that to help you.  You don’t need armies, or brave warriors with swords and shields, or magical men with wands and potions,” she said.

“Who do you need, then?”

She grinned, then puckered her lips ever so slightly and blew him a soft kiss in midair, which made him snicker again.  He did a double take simultaneously, a little bit surprised, as he hadn’t ever heard a kiss’s sound of suction quite so loud, because on Caroline’s massive, plush lips, even such a small gesture was loud.  He quickly recovered, though, sticking his tongue out at her playfully.

“I need you, Phillip.”

“Me?” he said, sounding a little shocked.

“Yes, you.  I need someone to help me find the way there, and I’ll bet you know all kinds of things about the wild, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes!” he said, proudly, crawling closer to the tassle ties and sticking his clementine-sized head through the opening to see her better, his eyes squinting a little at the light as the sun began to rise, filtered through the fog.  “A lot!  I can help, I promise, I know all kinds of…”

Caroline raised a hand up to his face, placing a massive fingertip inches away from his mouth to help calm him down.  He instantly stopped speaking, but didn’t look at all intimidated.  “I’m sure you can.  So let’s continue our journey.  And this time, I can protect YOU,” she said, her fingers reaching at the tassles and beginning to undo the ties.  Phillip felt the drape rocking a bit, but Caroline kept it at a steady angle so that he wouldn’t fall out.  After she had opened three of the tassles, leaving space enough for Phillip to crawl out of the drape pouch, she cupped her right hand, palm side up, directly underneath the pouch.  “Come, Phillip,” she said, her fingertips tapping at the fabric directly in front of him.  “Don’t be afraid.  Trust me.”

Without a second thought, Phillip lowered his feet into his sister’s massive, two-foot wide palm, slipping his entire body in and sitting cross-legged to avoid falling.  Caroline’s hand bobbed ever so slightly downward as it adjusted to the new weight filling it, but she adjusted almost immediately, raising her hand up closer to her face.   Her brother was roughly the size of a pigeon to her, his body filling out her hand pretty fully.  Still, it was a stark contrast to when she very recently had to use both hands to lift him up safely by his sides.  She curled her finger against his back so he could lean again them, and laid her thumb across his lap, putting down the slightest amount of pressure to help keep him down.  Her soft finger flesh was soothing and gentle against his legs, and Phillip took hold of her thumb as if her hand had become a carriage for him to ride.  He beamed up at her, and Caroline, gratitude flooding her body for how quickly he had been willing to do that, smiled back. Her baby blues reflected sunlight as they absolutely glowed down in joy at the little boy in her hand.

“Are you ready?” she said, rocking her hand side to side gently, Phillip’s face tickled by the breeze from so high in the air.  Phillip bounced up and down a little in his sitting position, nodding vigorously to make sure he was seen.

“Yes!  Let’s go!” he said excitedly as Caroline looped the drape scarf back around her neck, pulling her long blond hair out from underneath it.

“Then let’s get moving,” she said firmly, resuming her trek along the side of the cliff, her brother nestled comfortably and safely in her warm palm.