Jump to: Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine | Chapter Ten | Chapter Eleven | Chapter Twelve | Chapter Thirteen | Chapter Fourteen | Chapter Fifteen | Chapter Sixteen | Chapter Seventeen | Chapter Eighteen | Chapter Nineteen | Chapter Twenty | Chapter Twenty One | Chapter Twenty Two | Chapter Twenty Three | Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter 1
Chapter One: Once Upon a Rhyme…
“Oh you are here!”
He said as a matter of fact, sneaking his neck through the low door frame, to see her standing on her toe tips over the wooden stool – hand outstretched all painty and drenched.
He watched her hand swing and dance over the wall, the brush having a life of its own, unclear of what was hand and what her brush was.
“And all the world is a treasure of blue, stars of gold will wait…sing with me my rhyme nine times…and whiff…”
“Papa! How many times do I have to ask you to not come in here, at least not till I am done.”
She had her favourite song interrupted – the usual. It got her a little upset, enough to smirk at him – more than usual.
She held her waist between her arms, clumsily forgetting all about her dripping paint brush – most usual.
“Okay, Okay. But you are not skipping dinner tonight darling.”
He shut the door behind him, only to reveal to her that beam in the room once again, dying, retrieving -always the same way.
She had come to terms with the neon in her room all the while growing up, but it still made her forget her song for a jiffy, and gurgled her stomach in a magnetic pull.
Ginger.
She had never had another name. The name never really meant anything.
She was found, and what a discovery she was!
She was found and adopted one night, while her mother’s body had given up in the fight between her own hunger and Ginger’s.
She was found quarterly grown up, at an age of colour blocks and nursery rhymes.
All she had ever heard was her mother’s song, and what she ever saw was the blue beaming lights pulsating through the crevices of the walls, overshadowed by her mother’s loving face, looking over her as she slipped every night into lullabying sleep.
“The world is a treasure, and you, my darling, are priceless.” She would kiss her eyelids shut, and continue with her embroidery all night long.
And the words still echoed.
Years later, Ginger would everyday arrest in her room, live to paint and sing to live the melodies of her mother. All that she remembered was the song.
Her foster father was old enough when he brought her, but Ginger was a resuscitating life for him.
And then, Once upon a time happened…
Once upon a time, when Ginger was still up till late painting her walls into fantasy and creations, she dropped her paint mug to the floor, spilling and reeling all over.
“Uh oh!” She stepped a foot down the stool trying to grasp through her toes, but the stubborn thing rolled back, and slid beneath her old wooden bed, that singly stood against the wall.
“Ugh!” Much to her dismay, she had to duck her head in the darkness with her small extended hand and prancing grasp, while she continued to hum her song on repeat.
She touched it, but it wasn’t the mug. It was a slimy, wet, liquid. She stretched more, and she was rushed and pulled by a grasping hand into a blue-rayed portal.
*
*
*
*
*
Vanished.
Chapter 2
Chapter Two: Blue
It was all too much blue. So much that the eyes felt fooled sometimes.
She looked at her hand, wet with bluey gel. She looked at the strange big welcoming eyes looking at her. The eyes were set in midst of a curvey gel plop, and the plop walked on tiny bow-shaped legs.
“You’re so pretty.” He said with wide wondrous eyes. ”It took you so long!”
“Come here.“ It jumped and plumped holding her hand, ”We’ve been waiting for you. See…”
And she saw the spread out land that adorned things quite familiar to her, things that seemed to have come back from her childhood, and every thing that she had painted on walls of her attic and white washed them all those years. They were there. Living, breathing, dressed and decorated all over the horizon.
The greenscapes that shone with tinges of neon blue, the huge tree sized flowers, and their over-hanging petals, the numerous rivers and hilltops, huge tree trunks covered with spiralling flowery creepers. The creepers that looked engraved, embroidered.
That’s where it all started.
She stood awestruck.
When she gathered herself back, she turned to the plop, in questioning expressions.
“Im Wobbly, you created me.” He said with a simple smile.
Chapter 3
Chapter Three: Do you know how to make it rain?
“Whoa…That’s rain! Rain!!!” She squeaked springing and unapologetically loud.
She loved rain.
She loved embracing it in her arms, and then throwing it off around herself with her hands like white sparkle. But she didn’t get to see rain much where she lived.
Wobbly was the first talking creature she met in this new land; just like he was her first imaginary friend who she had painted grossly at first and then finely across her attic walls.
The only difference being he was as real as any slimy gel could be, and as warm as her long lost childhood friend.
Ginger and her new found companion stood stuck in the midst of tall closely knit woods that covered them overhead with their webbing branches and leaves, as their venture and exploration took a halt.
“Hey! What…why am I not able to drench?” She asked Wobbly sadly and discerned, looking at herself standing in the middle of the blue-green forresta.
“Sing.” He uttered just one word.
She looked at him baffled, unsure if Wobbly got the question wrong or if she got the answer right.
“Sing, Ginger…”
He repeated, a whisper this time, completely lost and only looking in space at the now aqua-green horizon, at every piece of wilderness that held the poured water just on its surfaces in layers.
“All the world’s a treasure of blue, stars of gold will wait…”
She sang nervously for the first time, fumbling at words, wary of what it might make happen this time, and soon she felt wetness absorbing over her cheek.
“Sing the rhyme with me nine times, and whiff the woes, aw..way…”
She completed her song looking around at the wizardry.
The droplets and dew danced around her and drenched her warm blushed skin to cold and pale, and wetted her yellow dress, her golden brown hair and dripped across the lashes of her emerald eyes.
Her eyes.
They reflected the exact colour of her world. Emerald.
They were small round fish eyes, with a transparency as good and pure as an untinged glinting glass. Her eyes could have been a painter’s muse, or a source of de-hypnosis. One of those things that help you find yourself when you’re lost; a lot more than a mirror.
The eyes now dripped of cold rain water, oodles of curiosity and a pinch of tiredness.
Dusk set in, with all shades of violet rust sky. And soon it was clouded with Aurora lights, flowing and merging like two rivers in love. Embedded in them were shining dots that started to glow, and finally the stars hung down with sparkling gold reflecting on ‘the Land’.
They hung so low that they could be touched by climbing on a staircase and plucked.
‘Stars of Gold’.
This reminded her, of Her.
Chapter 4
Chapter Four: ‘H’ for Happiness
“Is my mother here too?”, Ginger asked Wobbly, snapping out.
“Ah well, did you see the purple river that flows and grows bubbleflies at its banks?”, Wobbly asked nervously. “Or…or the flower buds in the foothills that taste like fruitjelly?”
“Is my mother here; do you know her?” She repeated filtering out everything that Wobbly had muttered.
There was something else that interrupted Ginger’s questions too. A pitter patter that was heard in the background every time Ginger put that question, until the flapping grew so loud that she stopped and looked around searching for the bird who was overhearing them.
“Who is it? Come forward and answer my question. So much for the interruption.” She was visibly upset.
A twinkle, and a crash landing of something that looked like a malnourished fur ball with owl feathers came to stand in front of them. The bird walked limply towards Ginger with glassy eyes as she looked at her – baffled and scared.
“You want answers? See this.” She forwarded her right wing-arm that bore splattered feathers and a creak-shaped scar like something had blasted on them.
It was impossible for Ginger to comprehend what was happening. “Pristlebear! What happened to you?”
Ginger asked the creature as she recollected her faint memories of this odd toy she had found herself in her innocent most years.
The bird walked past Ginger looking in the dark space with an air of sadness.
“It took you long, Ginger.”
She now turned around at Ginger to answer a more answerable question for now. She made Ginger sit on a lapis lazuli like rock, that looked like it had gobbled hundreds of stars, and never puked them out.
“You were little.” Pristly said as Wobbly drew close standing by her in exact imitation of her. “You painted many features, distinctively. But you could never make a face, an ensemble of your mother’s.”
This was followed by a painful silence.
“But you…” Pristly looked at Wobbly for salvage.
Tears trickled down Ginger’s face, and these weren’t blue in color.
“You made us! You created a whole new universe of ours, and you created Haa…”
Wobbly said interrupting… “Happiness. Doesn’t that make you glad?”
Pristly changed subjects to things like whirling wonders and flowing skies, as Ginger lay chickened beneath the mother of lapis rocks that encaved her like cupping her beneath its palms. Her new found friends slept across her and across the fire as it tried to burn and light up the dark memories.
Chapter 5
Chapter Five: The Mystery Mail
Sun shone, bathing the greens with orange gold. It only made Wobbly glow like a lava lamp. Wobbly and Pristlebear woke up only to find Ginger’s woody pillow lying empty and alone.
Wobbly stepped in front of her, blocking her way, as soon as he found her…
“No, no, no. You don’t go there.” He held his hands in obstruction, still groggy and disoriented with night’s sleep.
“But I made all of this, right?” She folded her hands to her chest.
“This part is from your bad dreams.” He halted for a second to think.
“The times you starved to sleep, times you missed your mother’s voice, and some things are such that we could never comprehend.” He said carefully.
“They have grown bigger with your growing thoughts. The Batlions and Frogosauruses, your darkest creations, thorns forming huge walls, miles of thick black fog that runs amidst like snakes, and the worst of it all – you don’t want to know.”
Ginger said nothing, but pouted with a girly frown.
She turned away from him angry and started walking – upset, when she heard a cling, and she saw the paint brush clutched in her hand slip and slide through a Mail slot making a clinging sound.
“A Mail box!” She was surprised.
“Ginger?” The Mail box asked back, in a boyish husky voice.
“Whh…at…, whoaa…you’re not real!” She stepped back, taken aback. “I never even created you! You are a delusion.”
“Ginger, I am as real or unreal as everyone else here.” The box affirmed.
“What are you? Stop calling me Ginger.” She frowned interrogatively at the voice.
Two eyes blinked from the mail slot of the box that stood right in front of her, the source of the low pitch voice, and a small door creek opened at its foot, “Enter, and you will have your answers.”
Chapter 6
Chapter Six: A World beneath a world
“When your mother created me, she did that to make you laugh or probably to give you a sense of wonder; but she never knew I was a ‘watch-over’ for you from the second she drew me, and pulled those threads building me.” A four-feet tall boy with small puppy eyes answered her infinite questions in one go.
“I am Haanz. I am the only one here who has come from your mother’s embroideries. I always looked over you. Your mother unknowingly gave me a window”, he said pointing at the mail slot.
She sat there holding her folded knees, in the compact box looking at him still more amused than all the other things put together. He looked at her dearly with a kind of affection he couldn’t himself understand.
“Why didn’t you ever call me or pull me here?” Ginger asked him resentful.
“I had a window. The doors were for you to open, Ginger.”
“Now come, let me show you something destiny and you have long waited for.” He crawled ahead of her in the congestion, and she followed him like it was a usual and most obvious thing for her to do.
For a moment there, they looked like two ordinary children moving in mud, thudding tunnels and holding on innocent trust. “Here.” He crouched and stood up, patting the mud off of him.
At first, she was too busy looking at the inconvenient pretty tunnel, and the mud she was bathed in. Then she finally saw. Another world beneath a world. She sure was dreaming, floating, imagining more realistically, or was it unrealistically?
She forgot to blink for a long while.
It was a cave with muddy roof and stony floor, there were painted glowworms which glowed in varied colors, there were walls with infinite embedded embroidery designs, there were small purple pools that seemed to have come from the same purple river with bubbleflies and there was ‘the wide mouthed Grail’.
The grail was filled with intertwining fluid paints put in all together, spiralling discreetly in the vessel with no other dilutor whatsoever, and she stared at it hypnotised.
“I always knew you would love this the most”, Haanz said with a delighted smile.
Chapter 7
Chapter Seven: Memorabilia
She dipped her palms in the Grail first hesitantly, but then excitedly. It was color paints after all.
Once she felt the feeling of them, once she merged with them, she went all in, up till her elbows and the paints enveloped her arms like swirling gloves.
This made her close her eyes and softly smile like being kissed.
“Ha Ha! Take them out now, will you?” He giggled.
She took her painted arms out, and observed them. “I always dreamt of doing this, why did I never do it?”
“Well, now you did.” he said and stepped inside the walk-in Memorabilia wardrobe welcoming her to an unusual library of envelopes.
“Pick any, and don’t worry the colors won’t soil them, it’s their key.” He sensed her question before she could ask. This made her anxious. Her eyes kept saccading between him and the envelopes. She had wanted this all her living life. She had it in front of her eyes.
She picked a random one and opened it with care.
“Another thing, you can’t have these memories stolen, you can not use them to recreate. Okay?” He warned her hand midway, just as she was about to pull one.
When she did, rustling wind swooshed and whirl-pooled around her as she closed her eyes tight.
She was transported again, this time just inside her head.
*
*
*
She had the most beautiful chuckle in the world. At least that’s what Irena thought. She sat as tripod with a crayon held between her fingers.
“Show me what you’re making baby.” Irena asked her daughter lovingly.
She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know.”
Irena bent over to see a Zebra like creature drawn on the floor, with multi colors scribbled in and outside the lines.
“I think it’s stupid.” The little one said disappointed.
“It’s cute and unusual, just like you darling.” Irena smiled.
Baby Ginger looked at her mother saying that with utmost surity, and softness in her petal shaped eyes.
….
…
“I saw her! I saw my mother!!!” Ginger couldn’t contain her excitement and tears welled up her eyes to flow into rivers unleashed by a long held dam.
She picked another envelope like this was just a beginning.
*
*
*
Chapter 8
Chapter Eight: Colors
“I dreamt of a mermaid, Ma. I dreamt that she’s taking me to her purple ocean and everybody knew me there, and they said they loved me, and loved what I did with my colors.”
A 6 year old Ginger took her tiny hurried steps, with her little finger tucked to her mother’s, on the narrow streets that smelled of wet sand and rain kissed lavenders, which were sometimes enveloped with fragrances of cornflowers and pink daisies, and a new born moist breeze that would soon leave when this short lived rainy day would have its silent death.
“But that’s the truth. Everybody will love you. Why do you make yourself surprised?” Ma looked down at her with a side smile.
“Because I don’t like people. I only like to draw and color, and draw…more and more.” She was looking at her hands entangling and twisting her own fingers.
—
“Listen. Enough. There’s something else I need to tell you.” Haanz held her hand stopping her from pulling out another memory.
She looked at him like he had soaked up all the gushing blood in her veins and left them dry in a split second.
She was somewhere between a helpless cry and a silent revolt when she haphazardly kept trying to pull one more envelope. Just one more.
“Its about your mother Ginger. Trust me! ” Haanz shook her with his voice, that managed to stay as calm as before but assertive.
“I want to tell you about the Secret of Happiness.”
Chapter 9
Chapter Nine: Snow
When they finally stepped out of the mail world, she once again realised what stupendous beauty she stood in. There was a growling of sorts and both of them looked around. Ginger looked down at her tummy and grinned. Haanz smiled at her and hinted Wobbly to take care of that.
Wobbly tipple-toppled towards Ginger as she hung her head in a bit of sadness. “Aei, what happened love?”, he asked like one child to another.
“I miss papa. He was waiting for me over supper”, she said saddened.
Everyone looked at each other.
“Do you want to tell more?”, Haanz responded.
“Yes. I remember once…
One day we were cleaning my room on my birthday and I kept asking him why was there no snow when it was so cold where we lived.”
“But we have sand, beautifull golden brown sand. Dont you like it?” He would ask.
“But papa, I want it to be white. Clear and perfect, and then I will take it in my hand and hide it under my bed.” I told him happy with the possibility.
He chuckled, “Why hide it, Ginger?”
“So that I don’t lose it.” I said shrugging obviously. The day went by as we celebrated it out in the market eating dates and buying paint colors. I slept early that day when papa was still up with his lit lamp glowing across my room window.
I woke up with a knock on my door from papa. I saw him standing with his hands hidden behind and smiling bright. “Morning birthday girl; birthday not over yet.”, he said confusing me completely.
He stretched out his hand and opened his fists. There they were…
With circling Reindeer horns, blunted tips and beautifull petals coming out. Tiny little pieces of ice, carved to snow.
“Do you want to hide them now?”, he asked.
Chapter 10
Chapter Ten: Aura
“Listen carefully Ginger. It’s only you who can do that; you who has the key. The key and the solution to this locked catastrophe which has been here since as long as I’ve breathed here. Listen carefully and you will know.” Haanz insisted.
“But how, to what?” She was as baffled as a rattling snake-tail.
“Just pay attention to what you are, and think of what makes you want to paint.”
“I only know that you will hear…things. Try”, he said insistent, as if more than own, his loved ones’ lives depended on it.
She closed her eyes with a quiet like that of an early morning wave of a lake. She saw black first, followed by rays of orange and white, and then she heard.
‘Sashayy sahay…marissashayy…’
She jolt opened her lids with a streak of electric current running thoughout her bones and an audible gasp of fear.
“I…I heard…there were…whis…” She was out of breath to speak. Haanz caressed her to sit, and palmed her head to soothe.
“There were whispers from a lady.” She finally said.
“The whispers, I didn’t understand any of it.”
She looked at Haanz as if her eyes called him out from a quicksand.
“Do you recognize the voice? Have you ever heard it before?” He was more indulged in the fact that she had heard the Auras.
“No. I don’t know. They were breathed voices, hushed whispers. But they sounded like coming from the end of a deep tunnel, and speaking right close to my ear at the same time.”
“Can you try that again please?” He asked, quite sure of a ‘NO.’
“I can try”, Ginger said.
Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven: Nightmare
“Listen carefully, Haanz. Listen.” Ginger shushed him and insisted.
Both of them froze to the ground, as they heard a barely audible but a frightening enough sound.
It was his turn to hear now.
CLINK CLUNK it resonated. CLANK CLUNK and a few heavy thuds.
The air called for them to turn around, and warned them in the same moment.
“You shouldn’t have!” A heavy low pitch voice gurgled angrily from a yet unseen face, but what was to be seen first was a pair of huge hairy legs partly covered with withered pants and accompanied with two clinking metal sticks.
This creature emerged from the direction of the land most dreaded and forbidden, especially from Ginger. The one Wobbly had dutifully warned her of.
“GINGER..” The creature blurted with a tilted neck and the falsest tone of adoration. “Welcome to my world!”, he announced almost laughing like a lion already proud of his kill.
Haanz, Ginger, Wobbly and Pristly, everyone looked as the huge creature four times their size appeared in front of them, with square rugged heavy browed face, half a metre spiralling fingernails, and the sticks they held that clunked unnecessarily.
The sticks did not seem to make any sense either, his legs were anything but limp.
But only Ginger recognised, for the first time in her life, as the air cleared off her foggy memory. She was breathing heavy, eyes wide open, unable to blink, to think, or feel. She felt a fear so strong it consumed her and left her insides to ashes. There was no voice left in her to speak, no thought in her brain to think.
Nothing but Haanz. “You do not belong here. This is not your world!” Haanz screamed, that smelt largely of fear, but bluntly of protection.
“You prick! You found a way to your dreams!”
The creature said aimed at Ginger. “BAD DREAMS!!” He clarified bending to tease her.
“Ginger, Ginger run!” Everyone seemed to scream this in chorus to a still, statued Ginger staring at him.
“Ginger!!” They had to shake her to wake her up.
“He’s my father.” A voiceless voice spoke.
“My real father.” She finally said.
Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve: Jack of the Box
There was a hard clung on the cement floor and a fountain of water splattered across, jumping inside the door and scattering around her. Enough to wake up Ginger from her stance. She jolted and blinked, cleared her haze. A scene that looked like happening in a cloud looked glassier now.
“What do you think you are? Huh? A business woman?” He stood trembling with fury holding Irena by her arm as if trying to shake something out of her.
“Don’t you dare try to show me those filthy eyes, you prick!” He grappled her and hurled her away in an attempt of abandonment .
Turning back, he saw her.
The little one standing inside, a silhouette in the dark room, with hands closed to her chest, like praying.
“Oh, miss little prick is scared I see.”
He said moving towards her like his prey.
“Please!” Irena screamed. “It’s her birthday, not today please!”
It wasn’t normal for him to listen, especially to pleads. It wasn’t normal for him to see Ginger always cling to Irena and looking at him like looking at a nightmare.
It wasn’t normal for him to like finding the threads, fabrics, embroidered designs and his crippled esteem spread on the floor everyday.
It wasn’t easy for him to not think that Irena and Ginger’s laughter is a teasing mirror to him and his failure.
It wasn’t normal for him to be normal, not with them.
He stepped inside the door frame looking at the miniature with red eyes who stood like a timid rabbit in front of him. The rabbit whose eyes were pink with fear and shock.
“See what we got here. A gift!” He snatched the box from her tight grip fixed to her chest and tore it open. And with the torn paper, the crackles of her eyes tore open to burning tears.
He pulled his hand back and forth to throw it to a place where the mother of the gift laid sprawled, and Ginger ran behind it with the same momentum.
“Yes, go away you too! This is my house! First go and learn to respect the Man of the house. Go!” He threw his words like he would throw spit on the road and closed the door shut.
Ginger and her mother sat on the ground, unmoving and blank. The box rested alone beside them, looking at them hopeful. Ginger picked it up to open it with trembling hands, and gasped loudly.
A clown sprung out with a wide red smile and bright eyes laughing out loud swinging in front of her.
Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen: The Wishing Well
Chaos.
The chaos was alive.
Alive inside her, and now alive in front of her, as she ran now with her friends.
The friends who had soon become integral to her life, and her life’s jigsaw pieces. Friends who shielded her without asking, held her before she would fall, and loved her like a childhood possession. The friends now seemed to have dispersed in the run, leading Ginger to run alone in a clearance with long dry grasses, where she bumped to a moss covered yellow-green wall.
It was another first.The moist and grassy touch, the rough edges, the damp fragrance. She had always read and seen pictures of a water-well, and wondered who put the water so deep down in them, and if they had to pull it back, why did they put it there in the first place?
This was no water-well though. And not an ordinary one either.
She looked behind and around, to find no one and nothing, just the faint threatening roars, making bend over her waist on the edge to look down. ‘Would it have purple water too?’, she thought subconsciously.
‘Come here…and you will have everything you have ever wanted…’
Multiple voices answered her unspoken question and ropy creepers reached out from within the deep moss crawling out of the mouth of that well. The air seemed to have changed coming out of that well to a thicker and darker one making her delusional, and before she could see a clearer picture she was grinning in trance like someone had set an musical opera in her head and she jumped. The jump was less an accident and more a fall.
A thud!
It took her more than a few minutes to gain her consciousness back, before which her hands drowsily gained senses and felt everything around like a blind. They felt anything but water or liquid. It was solid, familiar, crevical and patterned. It smelt familiar to her too. When she opened her eyes, she did that alongwith crinkling and sniffing her nose like a dog.
‘I love this smell, always.’
She looked around to see and feel her spine against spines of books. Millions of them stacked together to make a tight uncomfortable bed of them. So tight it was impossible to pull one out, and crawled over intermittently by creepers, green ones, yellow ones, over them and through them.
It seemed to her that she had dropped in to a little unexplored and unbelievable hidden library. She inhaled a deep breath but could not swallow. They were laid down like fields starting from around her body and feet to as long as she could see, even though this landscape was horizonless, lightless.
She was on her fours to see and feel them now, but the thuds. Yes the thuds changed things. Each thud made the letters break off from the edges of their foster pages like dusting off and rose up to fly like grey clouds of uninvited rain. In and out of sync with sentences and exclamations, leaving their formations and stories behind. The letters looked like twittering flies and sounded like jargon, but they smelt of old crisp literature. That awesome smell!
Ginger was only partly out of her trance and was pulled into another one as much as she inhaled the books in to slip into a hypnosis. The opera was back in place, and her cerebrums were even happier. She stood up to walk on the paperback floor with half shut eyes believing herself to be the writer of all those books, a pianist and a painter at the same time. Her ambitions, her fears, and the stories she had just dusted off had jumbled themselves up to make a sweet hallucination out of them.
The wishing well!!!
It blurred her mind. How does she wake up from that?
Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen: Daze & Giggles
“Woo…wooh…oooo” She walked and strolled, happiest, dazed, eyes open, eyes closed. Swinging along and bumping with the stony walls. Hypnotized.
The walls ran along branching out from the well, into tunnels of darkness and unknown. But it hardly bothered her. The white cloud and the dancing letters seemed to trail behind and around her, and she walked like their pied-piper.
“Wooh…ouch!” She bumped and fell embracing a thick bed of jelly. Someone she knows now, but doesn’t recognise today.
“Ginger!” “Oh Ginger!” Wobbly gasped, relieved to have found her in his own lost way, and held her up making her stand.
“Talk to me Love, what happened to you?”, he asked looking at her quiet smiling lips and half shut eyes.
“You don’t know me? I am the famous…I wrote all these!”, she giggled and boasted. “And one day, Mom and me will go far far away, and…I will paint my own…” She blabbered along as Wobbly dragged her and strolled with her out of the tunnel towards the block of spotlight where she was in the first place. He laid her down to rest and looked around at this wonder he had never-seen-before.
‘This is complicated, we need to get out.’, he thought staring at the mouth of well bathed in sunlight that seemed to tease.
He started trying to squeeze his fingers inside a crevice to slip a book out. The gel did little to help. Stubbing his fingers he finally started removing and sliding them out one by one. Placing them one upon another, trying to stack them irrespective of the length and breadth.
“Aayy…Jenga, I want to play too!!!”, Ginger exclaimed suddenly appearing beside him and looking at the stack of books.
“Ginger, please move aside and sit, I want to get you out.”, he said worried. He held her by her shoulders and carried her towards the wall, ‘Just how do I make you okay?!’
He looked at her and made her sit by the wall holding through her waist.
“Ehee…” She giggled. He looked at his jelly fingers over her stomach and looked at her face surprised. He now smiled. He squiggle wiggled his fingers over her stomach with amusement and joy. And she laughed! The most beautiful chuckle in the world. He thought. Her laughter echoed and spread across all the tunnels around and the air happily absorbed it. The sunlight seemed to have spread wider and the creepers in and around seemed to lengthen in attempt to raise their ears to listen.
The white cloud cleared around her to make way for her and she opened her eyes clear and bright like getting up from one of her best sleep.
“Wobbly!”
Like she saw her favourite person, she sprung to him to hug him tight, so much that his jelly plopped out from places below grips.
“Ah haha…you little devil friend of mine!” He was in a happy space now.
She hugged him and held him when over his shoulder a glint struck her eyes. Shining and sparkling metal exposing itself from some place hidden deep. She stood up and walked to the golden glow that threw out light from within a crevice between two books. She bent down and digged her fingers deep. “Yes.” She opened her palm looking at Wobbly for a kind of reassurance, He nodded, and she looked down.
A key.
“A key?”, he said, “But,to what?”
She held it head side up between her fingers to let some more light over and noticed something as she saw its shadow fall on the floor.
She traced her forefinger to the edges of the blade and its bits. “It’s a face”, she whispered.
“There’s a carved out face on the blade of this key!” She exclaimed to Wobbly who stood dumbstruck.
“It’s…It’s my Mum’s face!”, she fell to her knees, looking at it holding it between her fingers and now tightest to her chest.
“There is something really complex going on here Ginger.” He said in a serious tone as both of them placed the books one-by-one to make a tall tower. And then climbed up one-by-one, one giving hand to the other and standing up till they could peep out of the wall.
“We need to find others.”, she said, and jumped.
Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen: Hide & Seek
“I’m tired. Tired…” She trotted and slurred, slumped and strolled, and Wobbly plopped ahead of her, still tip-tapping with impatience and curiosity. It had been a few hours since they escaped out of the well and since then the search and the hide had been on – in the forest, through the mystic lake, around the grasslands – for their two missing friends.
“I wonder, just wonder…you know Ginger…”, Wobbly looked behind to see Ginger sitting panting and tired.
“Did you find a memory of your mother around the thought of the ‘Secret of happiness?”, he asked her with narrow keen eyes.
‘Memory…Memorabilia…’ The words brought a momentary joy and the following sadness back to her.
“Come on love, don’t be sad. Please tell me, it’s important.” He insisted.
“Why does everyone want to know about something that doesn’t even exist!” She finally blurted. “I have never seen, heard or felt it. All I know is that there’s happiness that runs through my fingers when I hold my paint brushes and it sticks and sways on the walls…” She told him.
Wobbly listened to her with patience. “All I know is that I could’ve had this ‘Happiness’ if my mother had never left me, and if I had had a father who was like everyone else’s father, one who I could call Papa.” She said, and her eyes quietly rolled out fresh tears.
“Ginger, look at me. The moment you cry, our world, the entire Azura halts to weep…And the glowworms that you so love, do you want them to stop glowing their light?“ His one of the efforts to make her smile.
“You do have your Papa, Ginger. Don’t you?” He reminded her of the best part.
And she finally looked at him with a hint of smile and moist eyes. “I miss him.” She said with a feeling of having warm caramel on her tongue and once it has passed, the memory of it.
“Do you know what is the ‘Secret of Happiness’? Do know why you father here has been so brutally after all of us even before you came here?”
Wobbly now asked her interrogatively, but not for an answer.
“It has been the pull and push for everyone who exists here in this land. It has been a mystery that has now begun to feel like a myth.” Pristly’s voice came from a distance before she could be seen.
“It’s not a myth!” Wobbly’s voice banged on the floor in full thrust.
“Oh thank god Pristly, we’ve been looking for you.” Ginger hugged her tight and Pristly made her sit back.
“It’s something that your father has been looking for, something your mother hid deep and beyond. At least that’s what the stories say…” Pristly shrugged and said to her, disbelief prominent in her tone.
“And they think you’re the one who will do the find…”, she told her in a husky voice.
Ginger was staring at the ground, grappling with what she just heard; baffled, upset about something she couldn’t herself understand.
“Let’s go back to Memorabilia.” She said. “But…Haanz…”
“Yes, Haanz…I wish we knew where he is.” He said, disappointed in himself.
“Wait, what about this key?” Ginger suddenly asked producing the key from her pocket to both of them surprised at her forgetfullness.
“Where did you find this?” Pristly asked immediately taking it from her hand to examine it. “You found this?” She rephrased.
“Who found whaaat??” A loud shriek echoed around them coming from far and high, and two now familiar metal sticks clanked.
They needed no introduction to this voice, nor a reason to see the face of it, but they did, and saw him standing hovering over them like a black cloak and showing off his teeth.
“Gotcha!!”, he said, and barked out a horrid laugh.
Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen: One Direction
“You bone-heads! You have given me so much time to think and plan…
Do you know what I have in store for you?” Father asked all the miniatures in front of him with a tad bit more hatred for Wobbly.
“I will take you in my hand, hold you by your neck and wring you till there’s no air left in you to run or scream…” He laughed out loud and his belly swung up and down with joy, as he imitated the imaginative act with his thumb and forefinger.
Everyone looked at him horrified to the tail of their spine.
“But before that…”, he bent over to Ginger and said, “this lady here will give me what she has found.” And he spread out his huge palm in front of her.
Her eyes stared at him with wide pupils and un-batted lids, the mist in them covering for fear.
“I have found nothing, and I will give you nothing!” She declared, as the eyes turned to a strong blue now.
“Ah! She has a voice, and one that is audible.” He raised his eyebrow in surprise and dark humour.
“Do you remember what I did to your mother, baby Ginger?” He pouted his lips to tease her with an annoying baby-voice.
“My mother died because of you! You demon!!! We did nothing wrong to you!” She said as if even with the efforts her voice screamed to cry.
“You, both of you…”, he panted with the memories.
“You stunted me, you…you giggled and scribbled and all those paints!”, he said with distorted face of disgust and acting out his fingers like they were wiggling in mud.
“Do you know how you looked at your mother, every time, every single time she sung that head-numbing song to you, every single time she held you in her arms? Do you know?”
“You never saw me like that. Why?”
“Because I was some good-for-nothing sack of grain lying in a corner of your mother’s house?”
“It was our house! It was ours!!! Only if you ever did something to make it one.”
She screamed and then mellowed, staring at the ground now, crying.
“Give me the key or I break their heads!” He warned her, pointing to her friends.
“No!” Ginger screamed with her heavy throat. And it took him not even a second to drop his metal stick to raise his hand for a slap.
A boy ran rushing to Ginger in a blink’s time, and she was swiftly displaced from where she stood.
“How dare you!”, Haanz exclaimed to the Father staring furiously at him, as Ginger stared at Haanz in disbelief and amusement.
“Where…” Ginger started to speak but was interrupted by him.
“You do not touch my friends or Ginger”, Haanz warned the demon.
Father genuinely giggled now, “Or what You will strangle me with your toy hands?”, he asked with curiosity.
“Run!” Haanz ordered everyone still staring sharp in his eyes.
“But…but…”, Wobbly wanted to ask – but where?
“Just run, I have a plan.” He answered.
They ran. This time together. This time not escaped but followed. This time in a direction, with a direction.
“This way!” Haanz steered them around a huge tree trunk and halted them in the middle of nowhere.
“Now one by one, jump.”, he ordered everyone looking at Ginger.
They would have thought he was playing a prank with asking them to jump into a flat grass ground. But they couldn’t afford to think so.
Loud thuds and cliking metal sticks were audible behind them. And in the next breath, they jumped.
*
*
*
“I can’t see, Ginger, Pristley?”, Wobbly asked trembling with fear, searching for them in darkness with his floppy hands.
“Look ahead, Wobbly. Look at the rim of light covered with the rock, follow it. We are all right besides you…”, Haanz told him.
“It’s a tunnel..”, Wobbly affirmed, with dilated pupils and wide searching eyes.
Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen: The Intermediate
“Ginger, where are you, are you okay? Do you mind holding my hand as you walk?”, Wobbly said fumbling out nervous words.
Ginger chuckled. “Yes of course, I don’t want you getting lost”, she smiled.
“Lost? Me? No. I want you to be safe with me.” He grinned a toothless smile in the dark.
“Where are we going, eh?” He asked as if everyone except him knew.
“We are going to get the exact right memory of Ginger’s mother, we need to solve this now. We are going to the Memorabilia”, Haanz told him, and others, with clarity.
Wobbly’s eyes opened wide in surprise and curiosity, so wide they could be seen like two headlights in the tunnel.
“But, wasn’t it through…?” He couldn’t complete.
“Yes, the mailbox is an entry where I reside. This, you can say, is a backdoor”, Haanz winked.
They walked for a very long time, and by this time the eyes had accommodated themselves with the dark and the hands had befriended the stony walls.
But the eyes couldn’t see what lay ahead.
Their hopes and efforts took a wrong turn when they reached a dead end. An end with a heavy door locked and shut closed. Light emanated from around its entire periphery.
“What now!” Ginger asked banging softly at the door and turning to Haanz. “Use the key!”, he said, clearly confused.
She pulled it out of her pocket blindly and tried to palpate a keyhole; only to find nothing. She then started finding any hole, any inlet – whatsoever, moving her hands over the surface to find something. “We’re stuck”, she finally said. “I don’t know about this.” Haanz gave an unasked explanation.
“How about we go back?” Wobbly asked all of them after a long silence.
“You are always one to run from problems, aren’t you?” Pristly nagged Wobbly unnecessarily.
“Hey, people, Stop!” Haanz raised his hands.
“We can’t go back, Wobbly. We will have to go back to where we started, and chances are, we will further get lost, or worst still, get caught”, he said disappointed.
“The only way is to get to the other side of this door. As it is, it might just be an in-and-out tunnel to hide, a wrong tunnel I chose”, he kept inspecting the door.
A few hours went by, waiting, thinking and sitting at the door, when Ginger started looking around on the floor for a stone, a rock, a stick, anything, when she found some stones that she used to rub against the door in impatient and futile efforts.
“Give it to me.” Haanz took them from Ginger making her sit, and sparked up a fire crackling them together.
“A blue door.” Ginger now said with amusement as the space lit up with fire. “Is this possible..?” She now started feeling it. “A door back to where i came from?” She looked at Haanz for answers now.
“What if we can go back to my home?”
“And do what?” Pristly asked her in the coldest tone. “Have dinner with your Papa?”, she said shrugging.
“Well, maybe we could bring him here.” Wobbly spoke now slightly happy with the possibility.
Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen: Memories Beyond Memorabilia
“Call him here? What rubbish! He needs to know the song, and anyway, why? What will you explain to him?”, Pristly asked, clearly annoyed.
“He knows the song. Maybe he can help us in some way. He has always been my life-line.” Ginger told everyone, reminiscing about him.
“Ginger, I understand you miss him. But there’s no way we can communicate and get him here.” Haanz told her.
Ginger lowered her head still thinking of possibilities and probabilities, looking at the blue door.
‘All the world’s a treasure of blue…hmm. hmm. hmm…’, she hummed the song thinking about her Papa, missing him more now.
*
* the memory *
*
“Ginger, come outside; come, we have a little guest today!” Papa called her outside with a smile audible in his tone. “I am painting Papa”, she told him in a regular tone.
“For once Darling, can you put your brushes aside and just come and see? You will like it, I promise”, he said. “You need to get out of that room of yours.”
She stepped out in the courtyard, preoccupied with her brushes and the faults in her painting, when she saw Papa sitting crouched and coo-cooing sweetly. She bent across to look.
“Aww…a bird.” She smiled looking at the bird that was pecking at the spread out nuts on the floor. “How did she get here Papa, all alone?” She kept admiring her.
“It’s a Woodpecker. Do you know what a woodpecker is?” He looked up at her smiling. She raised her eyebrows in surprise and curiosity.
“He’s peckin’ it all day long, he pecks a few holes in a tree to see…”, he stood up singing now and doing a cute jig. “If a Redwood’s really red, to peck a few holes in your head…Ho-ho-ho-ho!”, he tapped on her head teasing her.
Ginger chuckled looking at him in awe and joined him in the dance, as he held her arms in his hands and waltzed her around the woodpecker.
“Yeah that’s a Woody woodpecker’s song!” He sung and chuckled.
“Papa!” She giggled, and the woodpecker stood looking blandly at the crazy lot, unaffected and not bothered, drilling his nuts, as the courtyard resonated with joy.
*
*
*
“Mm…hmm…Woody woodpecker’s song…” Ginger hummed of the little she remembered as her dull fingers now tapped on the ground and her folded knees now knocked on the locked door in rhythm.
“What is that?” Wobbly asked her happily. “It’s…It’s just a song my papa sung…I want to go back.” Her eyes rolled down fresh tears.
“A Woody woodpecker’s song? Let’s sing it together.” Wobbly held her up and shook her to dance. “Come on”, he said.
“Though he can’t sing a note, his voice comes from the frog’s throat…Mm…hmm…hmm!” She sung and they danced with everyone joining her in chorus.
Haanz stood against the door tapping his fingers when everyone came to a standstill as they heard a squeaky screech and enormous light.
“The door…”, Wobbly whispered, frozen at his spot, staring at it, making everyone look at the door.
The door was now, Open.
Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen: Faces of Emotions
Blue and white, blue and white.
And some purple inside.
Everyone stood un-moving, awestruck, frozen to the ground. The fluid moved and danced in front of them at the shape of that door, but never entered inside the walls.
This was amusing beyond belief. She touched it to assure it wasn’t a dream, and it soaked her with all its might. Wet, blue, vast sea in front of them; withheld at the gate and luring them to enter and immerse.
They walked slowly, one after another, hand in hand. Ginger held Wobbly and Pristley held Haanz. This time it took Pristley by awe too.
Ginger was the first one to enter and what happened next was something none of them had anticipated.
They entered and the wetness drenched them inside out, as they floated with paddling legs and swimming like fishes; they couldn’t breathe but they could.
“How’s that possible!”, Haanz’s muffled voice and wide eyes asked Ginger.
“I’ve never seen something like this here”, Pristley continued.
“Ginger, you made this?” Wobbly finally added.
“I…I don’t know. I made some rivers, I don’t know.” She answered as clueless as the others.
They floated ahead and beyond, along the fishes and corals and above the creeks, swimming and trying to see what lay ahead. It was all too beautiful to not be distracted. All too beautiful to be just that, as they swam, unaware. There were fishes but there were mermaids too.
The mermaids who had sensed and seen them now. Their shoulders hung black capes as they swam with dark bodies and purple tails. The mermaids who saw them as prey and meat, and eyed them sitting behind the rocks, as they went along. They talked to each other in hushed voices and giggled like happy witches. There were five of them; five odd faces.
Rage with distorted cheeks and bloodshot eyes, and Envy who followed her tail to tail.
Woe walked slowly behind with frizzy unkempt hair, and carried an aura of unknown sadness along. Deceit had a fat face with one fish eye, and Fear with an unnerving smile wore the crown of horns.
“Darlings, I see you here for the first time.” Deceit initiated with the prettiest smile, as all the pretty dark mermaids encircled them, bringing them to a halt.
“Well, we can be friends though.” Envy sailed ahead to the center taking a good look at everyone who held on to each other.
Ginger and her friends looked at them to understand what stood before them, and Ginger replied politely, “Thank you, we already have us. But can you tell us which is the way outside?” She was somehow intuitively intimidated and not amazed.
“So, you don’t like us, eh?” Fear raised her eyebrow and asked, observing her head to toe, thinking of what felt different about her.
Ginger sailed without responding, from between their cover, with a dull pulsating fear in her heart now, hinting everyone to dodge them and carry on.
Soon as she sailed, Woe nudged Fear and both noticed one same thing.
The silhouette that sat quietly until now, hung out prominent from the her frock-pocket, something that unfortunately weighed down with gravity, something hidden that was not to be seen or shown.
The key.
Now, all five tailed-ones tunneled their eyes at her flowing frock from behind.
“She has the key.” Rage said.
Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty: The Scale of Life
They sailed faster now, like the other fishes, and realised that this place was not just a wonderland, not just a marvel to wonder at.
There was much more to Azura.
More than the rain, the Mail world, the Memorabilia, the folks turned friends, and the magical sea.
This alter-world was a creation by a woman who never lived but always wanted to. One who, if nothing, wanted to leave behind something only for her daughter to find, and deserve – The Secret of Happiness.
“This way, I think.” Haanz told everyone. “Or I think, we are just running in circles.”
“Or not.” Ginger said, and pointed above to show them a sharp illuminiscence bathing the sea and penetrating its surface, filtered.
“Only if we can reach there.”
“No. No, no. Not another light. We’re not following a light again.” Pristley warned.
“Oh come on Pristlebear, we still found a way, din’t we?”, Ginger said.
“Yea with some very friendly strangers on our way, who might still be behind us, and we know nothing of where we are.”
“But, look at it. What if we’re closer to something we have been looking for?”
“I think we should try to find out how we can reach there.” Haanz said now, “It shouldn’t be that difficult.”
“And once we’re there, the Mermaids will lose us too!” Wobbly said delighted.
The sea stood breathing in front of them, with open arms full of possibilities, which could change their lives in either ways.
“Can’t we just swim up?” Ginger asked Haanz.
“Too high. We’re too new.” He told her.
“Where to?” The female voice asked and stood blocking Ginger from front.
“Run!” Ginger said, and everyone looked in her direction to find a mermaid standing in front of her with a threat.
“Ginger!” Pristley called.
“No. Just go, I will follow.”
They swam and kept looking back, worried, till they reached a rock and hid behind it. Three things were left behind: the block of light, the destination and a best friend.
They could still see her from far, small and hazy, as they saw some quarrel and then some running.
Wobbly stepped outside and ahead of the rock as if he could save her, crying now.
And he did.
There was a jolt in the earth that stopped her running feet and it started trembling. The earth moved, in a chunk around where she now stood.
The earth moved in a cut section where Wobbly stood too.
Ginger’s earth lifted up, and Wobbly’s down.
Everyone looked, unmoved.
The mermaids encircled her earth looking at it in disbelief, and she stood at it vigilant, looking at her friends now.
“Go, Ginger. Go!”
Wobbly whispered.
Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty One: The Home Coming
Numbness flew, and darkness replaced the light.
Nothingness existed, and stillness prevailed.
She laid loose on the rock that now stood solid on the surface of sea, semi-conscious, which felt like sweet slumber.
It was the crackling and flutter of gull wings, and breaking of sea waves over the rock, that finally woke her up back to the world of sensations and feelings. The moist air perspired at her skin and the wind rustled through her frock now.
She cleared her wet fringelets off her face to begin to see the now unfolded mystery before her eyes.
The rock felt like a plain uninterrupted floor that directed to even more continuous land of rocks.
She took her first step, like a one-year old baby, discovering the synergy of her feet, with the floor below, with the cool of the rock-surface calming her.
A distracting light radiated from around her; she found out it was the small frock pocket that was glowing now.
‘The key.’ She thought.
She pulled it out and stared at it in her palms as it glared at her.
It shone like it had suddenly come alive, and was breathing with every pulse of golden light.
She looked ahead and through that light, to find hidden sister light peeping a few meters ahead of her.
She walked curiously as ever, as the shells, the fallen stars, the swaying purple weeds that were spread all through the surface looked at her in reciprocation.
When she did reach closer to the light, she saw something she had not half expected.
A wall stood erect facing her, a wall that looked like her home wall. But a wall with a difference, that difference had her awestruck.
She swiftly moved the entangling creepers on the wall aside to have a clearer look, and there it was.
The complementing half, the carving that imitated the design of that key.
It glowed in the same rhythm as the key, glinting without a single freckle, and as if calling out to her, pulling her closer.
Her mother’s face.
“Ma.” She let out a breather, placing both her hands over the wall helplessly.
Before she realised, the wind around her was swirling, with all the creepers, weeds, and the clouds above spreading apart, as if to make way. It was all one now – the face, the key, and Ginger’s mother.
Soon, the wall lit up, and crack opened.
Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty Two: Dawn
The treasure.
It was shoved and safeguarded in the farthest land of rocks, with the demonic father and horn-clad mermaids always looking for it.
It was in front of Ginger’s eyes, and she held it in her hand as if she held a huge part of her beating heart, and carefully uncurled the anemone leaves wrapped all around it.
The weight of the piece she now held in her hands reflected her thoughts and mind.
Then she saw it.
It was embedded beautifully with pebbles and sea shells, encircling pearls and ringlets.
It was so beautiful that it would have made the mermaids cry.
The mermaids who had now reached a point where they could no longer chase Ginger’s friends, helplessly hung at the edges snarling at them as they ran. The rocks would not let them sail their tails behind them, nor would thet take the fury.
The friends now ran on the rocks, out of breath, and aimless.
Ginger was amazed beyond belief. Her eyes opened wide to gulp the truth that lay before them and her breath held itself inside so it didn’t freckle the beauty of it.
The treasure had Ginger’s reflection all over it and it glinted like her mother’s smile.
‘You are the treasure.’
The words resonated in the ear-numbing fluid silence.
Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty Three: Inside Us
“So you ain’t as useless as I thought!”, the familiar voice spoke from behind Ginger’s back. Her feet froze to the ground.
“You prick, you found the treasure; now give it to Papa.” Ginger’s father said, and clunk his metal rods as if wagging his tail in joy and pride.
Ginger did not turn, she did not move an inch, so much that she stood lifeless, devoid of any pulsation or breath.
“Oh you want me to come and do the effort now?”, he asked her, again.
Ginger held the new-found treasure tightly in her hands, and once again admired the beauty that she held, and in it, the reflection of her face…her eyes.
Just about then, she realized.
*
*
*
By now the mermaids had lost patience, and with the lights emanating out of the forest, they had started to take the chance of pulling themselves up the rocks and crawling up and over, in vain.
They hissed like snakes and crept like lizards, as they saw the lights were only getting brighter and stronger, hinting the treasure had probably been acquired.
The friends were running towards the light too.
With everyone moving towards it, suddenly the light seemed to have become the gravity of that universe, and the treasure its cradled star.
Ginger turned, gathering all the best memories she had of her family, and closed ones. She turned a changed person with a better understanding heart. She turned, he pranced.
He halted, as she looked up. “Here.” She said, and extended her hands towards him with a plain face, like giving away her new-born child.
“Take it, you need it more.”
He looked baffled, dumbstruck and taken aback, failing to react.
He snatched it nonetheless, and pointed a finger at her. “You”, he said, clenching his teeth, “you..”, and the treasure in his hands glowed, calling out to him.
Turning around to hide and secure from Ginger and everyone else, he held it in his hands to finally look at it.
It was a plain flat glistening mirror.
Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty Four: The Secret of Happiness
It was embedded beautifully with pebbles and sea shells, encircling pearls and ringlets.
The mirror was so beautiful that it would have made the mermaids cry.
He impatiently removed the anemone leaves wrapped curled all around it, turned it front and back, up and down.
“A mirror?” He finally scowled, and turned around.
“You think this is a joke? You have clearly underestimated my power!”
“No!” She said, and threw her hands in the air.
When he was about to throw and smash it, the mirror gave him a last glance, and the reflection struck him. The reflection of a face that was so old yet felt so new to him, something he hadn’t seen in years.
Worn out, cold, and bruised with open edges and deep ridges, just like an old tree trunk’s bark.
Ginger looked at him with glassy eyes as he stood there frozen, same as Ginger was some time ago.
“No..”, he said, walking with it slowly to find ground to his feet. “No…” He exhaled, and fell to the ground on his knees.
He stared at the powerful piece in his hand and then stared in space.
One by one, the mermaids: Rage, Fear and Deceit evaporated like mist in air. Envy followed them.
The friends reached the key bearing wall, and they could now see Ginger from a distance.
“I always knew you were different. She was too.” He finally murmured, his back still turned to her.
“Both of you were like this mirror to me, too kind, too beautiful inside, made me hate myself.”
“But..”, his voice broke.
“Father.” A hand touched his shoulder with small delicate fingers, “Let’s go home”, she said.
The only mermaid that was left behind, Woe, evaporated.
theglowwormconnection 