Ellanor and the Curse on the Nine-Tailed Fox

by K T Durham

  Greymore rumbled. Ellanor, it is safe to transform. Everyone is asleep in this household. Might I remind you, the red balloon is no longer needed for the transformation.

  That’s right; Mrs Silverwinkle had taught her the enchantment for transforming to human proportions. Elly had taken herself by surprise when she promptly got the hang of the enchantment. “I must be closely affiliated with humans; that’s why it’s so easy for me to transform,” she joked. Mrs Silverwinkle smiled faintly but didn’t say anything.

  “Humas, tor,” she said softly in Yahana, then took in a deep breath, pinched her nose, and breathed out slowly through her mouth, as though she were blowing out a gentle breeze. This was followed by a soft popping sound, and she felt herself get stretched out every which way like rubber, and seconds later she had transformed to human size.

  She walked around the house, noting that much of the furniture looked different, and everything seemed so new. For one panicked moment, she wondered if she was at the wrong house. Had Miriam and Horace moved? Then at the mantelpiece above the fireplace she saw a framed photo of a grinning Horace and Miriam at the beach – Was that taken in the Dominican Republic? – and she smiled with relief. As she walked past Horace’s dark workshop, she caught the distinct scent of leather and thought about the two rogue elves who had once helped out the poor, starving shoemaker and his wife - Horace’s grandparents.

  To this day, Elly still had no idea who the two rogue elves were. When she had asked Grandpapa, he laughed and said, “One day, my dear, you will find out. But those two rogues signed a non-disclosure agreement with the High Council, so unless they volunteer to tell, nobody will find out who they are.”

  Elly’s jaw dropped. “You mean, they’re still around? But why must their identities be kept a secret?”

  Grandpapa chuckled at her persistence. “I am not at liberty to say more, my dear.” She had stalked away in a huff, burning with curiosity. One day, she would find out …

  Elly gave a shudder as a cold draft wafted through an open window in the Cobbles’ living room. She walked into the hallway, intending to find her way to the master bedroom. Her feather-light boots made not a sound on the plush carpet. Now, if she could just quietly wake Horace and Miriam without frightening them too much—

  Crash!

  She stifled a groan. What in the world did she knock over? She was clumsier than most elves, but she’d hoped all that intensive training would’ve eliminated her accident-proneness. Apparently not. Looking down, she saw that a pile of books had toppled over. They must have been perched on the narrow cabinet against the wall, and she had bumped into them. Horace and Miriam still had a bad habit of leaving tall piles of things lying around.

  Then her heart jumped to her throat when she heard the turn of a door handle followed by a pattering of frantic footsteps. She groaned. This was not the smooth sequence of events she had ingeniously planned.

  “Who’s there!” a hoarse voice cried, and then Horace in striped blue pyjamas appeared in the dark corridor brandishing a cane, and Miriam in her pink nightgown followed close behind, her eyes wide with fear. Snowy, rotund as ever, slinked behind the old couple and hissed. Then she stopped in her tracks as her big yellow eyes recognized Elly. Horace quickly switched on the hallway light, and Elly blinked against the sudden glare.

  The Cobbles froze and stood gaping at the girl standing before them.

  “Elly!” they both cried in unison.

  Elly beamed and clapped her hands. “Oh, oh! I’ve missed you both so—”

  Horace put a finger to his lips. “Shhh!” He grabbed Elly and yanked her towards the master bedroom. Miriam snatched Snowy up into her arms and scurried behind them, and once they were all inside the bedroom, she closed the door and locked it with a soft click.

  Elly frowned and crossed her arms. “Well! That wasn’t the greeting I was hoping for!” she sputtered.

  Miriam put a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my dear! Do let us explain. You have no idea how happy we are to see you again!” She wrapped her arms around Elly as Horace grunted and dropped his cane on the bed.

  “Well, don’t just dish out the blame! You did appear like a thief in the night! I thought it was a blasted burglar!” Then he grinned and embraced Elly, too. The three of them burst out laughing.

  “Shhh, we have to keep it down!” Miriam whispered again. Snowy encircled them and purred.

  They crowded together on the comfortable couch at the foot of their king-sized bed. Once again, Elly noticed everything looked very new. But when she turned her eyes back to Horace and Miriam, she was pleased to see that they looked very much the same, apart from a few more wrinkles on their smiling faces.

  Miriam spoke in a whisper. “We didn’t mean to be rude, my dear. You see, our son Charlie and his little boy are sleeping in the guest bedroom upstairs. It’s the Christmas holidays here, you know. They’re spending Christmas here with us for the first time in many years! We couldn’t be happier!” She was gushing, and Elly couldn’t help but smile. She knew the Cobbles had a grown son named Charlie whose childhood bedroom she’d occupied when she was stranded in Gaya a year ago. She had gotten the impression that Charlie had not seen much of his parents ever since he moved to Surrey and started a family.

  “Anyway, we didn’t want to wake Charlie and Alex, and it would’ve been awkward trying to explain why you suddenly appeared in the middle of the night,” she went on to explain. “Poor Alex is recovering from the flu. He misses his mother.”

  Horace snorted. “It would’ve been better if Sue arrived with them yesterday. At this rate, we’re not even sure if she can make it for the Christmas Eve dinner, not with a snow storm approaching.”

  Miriam turned to Elly. “Sue is Charlie’s wife, our daughter-in-law. She’s a nurse back in Surrey, and a very good one, I might add. Sue used to work with Charlie; he’s a surgeon. I suppose he really misses her; he’s constantly texting her, glued to that wretched Blueberry—”

  “Blackberry,” Horace corrected. When Elly frowned, he clarified, “Blackberries are these small mobile phones people use for contacting others.”

  “Blueberry, Blackberry, whatever,” Miriam snapped. “Sue should be coming up to London tomorrow, late afternoon. Anyway, you should meet Alex; he is just the sweetest little boy, Elly. He’s an only child, so he gets a little lonely—”

  “But Charlie and Sue want a little brother or sister for Alex,” Horace cut in.

  Miriam glowered at him. “Stop interrupting me!”

  “I can say whatever I want. It’s a free country!”

  Amused, Elly grinned as husband and wife bickered with each other on either side of her. How she had missed them!

  Suddenly, Snowy arched her back and gave a low growl, advancing towards Elly. “What do you have in your pocket?” the cat hissed, her feline eyes taking on a hungry look. Miriam scowled and put out an arm to block off her cat. “Snowy! You remember Elly! Stop your hissing and be nice!” she scolded. Elly knew that Miriam was thinking about the time Snowy had tried to attack her a year ago, before she transformed into human proportions.

  Then to the utter surprise of the Cobbles and their cat, a furry little head popped out from Elly’s coat pocket. Miriam gasped, Horace jumped up, and Snowy snarled menacingly.

  But the hamster did not cower or run away. In fact, it hardly looked like a hamster at all, for the creature wore such an indignant expression never before seen on such cute furry creatures. Elly giggled and gently scooped up the glowering hamster. “This is Marlow.” She went on to quickly explain as Marlow clambered up to her shoulder. Horace and Miriam gaped at the small furball that was glaring at them with its tiny arms crossed.

  “You mean … this hamster isn’t really a hamster? It’s some sort of magical creature?” Miriam asked meekly.

  “A griffin,” Elly clarified.

  Horace was staring at Marlow
. “Golly,” he muttered. When Elly described what a griffin was, he turned pale. A giant creature with the head of an eagle, and the body, claws, and tail of a lion? “And you actually ride on them?” he gawped. Marlow the hamster stayed perched on Elly’s shoulder, proud and stoic, while Snowy skulked between Miriam’s slippered feet. Miriam laughed and put an arm around Elly. “Nothing ever gets dull with you around, my dear. We have missed you so much! There is so much we want to tell you!”

  Horace cleared his throat. “But you came back for a reason. Tell us – is there anything we can do to help?” he asked, pragmatic as always. Elly retrieved something from her other coat pocket. It was a gold, antiquated-looking compass, covered in strange runes and symbols they did not recognize.

  “This is Nebulane,” she said, caressing the smooth round surface.

  “You name your compasses?” Horace asked, eyebrows raised. He and his wife edged closer and peered at the compass and saw the two blinking dots – one red, one blue. They watched silently as Elly’s eyes widened and stared at the blinking red dot.

  “Seems like the next destination has finally been revealed after all,” she said quietly. Horace scowled and glanced at Miriam, who cocked her head, wondering what Elly was talking about.

  Elly noticed the Cobbles staring. She pointed to the blue dot. “This indicates where I am. And over here …” She moved her finger to the blinking red dot about two inches away. “This is where I’m supposed to go. According to Nebulane, I’m very far from my destination.”

  Miriam and Horace leaned forward and squinted. They had never used a compass before, not to mention one that was out of this world. “Where do you need to go, dear?” Miriam asked.

  To their surprise, when Elly shifted the tip of her finger and touched the red dot, something sprung up in a glittering spray. Miriam and Horace jumped and yelped. Then they realized it resembled a word, but it wasn’t in any language they could understand. Elly murmured something in her own language and then translated for them.

  “I have to go somewhere in East Asia … to a place called Seoul. In South Korea.”

  The rest of the night went by in a blur. The Cobbles stayed up talking through the night with Elly in their bedroom, which looked increasingly different from how she remembered it as the dark night gave way to the light. The peeling mud-coloured wallpaper had been replaced by spotless, ivory-white paint; instead of shabby and faded floral curtains, lovely champagne-coloured curtains with a layer of chiffon now graced the large French windows.

  Elly fingered the plush carpet beneath her. In the light of dawn, she could make out the lovely lilac-grey colour. “I see you’ve made some changes here!” she said with a smile.

  Horace chuckled. “Yes. Thanks to you, Cobble Concept has been doing really well, and we made enough money to renovate the house half a year ago—”

  “After thirty years!” Miriam piped up with a grin. She had just quietly come back into the room after making chamomile tea in the kitchen. Elly breathed in the sweet, soothing fragrance as she cupped her mug.

  “Miriam’s Sweet Secrets has done so well that I’ve been approached by entrepreneurs asking me to start up a franchise,” Miriam said proudly. “But I prefer to keep it small.”

  Elly’s mouth watered at the thought of Miriam’s blueberry cheesecake and pumpkin pies. “I can’t wait to see how much the place has changed since I left!”

  Horace cleared his throat. “So, let’s get back on track. From what you’ve told us, you need to retrieve several important … relics, is that right?”

  She gave the smallest of nods and wished she could tell them the whole truth. But she had sworn on the Oath of Silence. How she wished she could tell them everything. They had no idea how much danger she would be in, how much she had been through in the past year to prepare for this mission they construed as a harmless, academic trip.

  Suddenly, she felt very alone.

  She stifled a sigh. “Yes, that’s right. As part of my apprenticeship, I need to find those relics. The first one that I need to recover appears to be located in South Korea, in this city called Seoul. But I have to get there first to determine whether it’s just a pit stop …”

  Horace grunted as he stretched his cracking joints. “I’ve never been to Asia. I once knew an American soldier who fought in that awful Korean War. He was here in London with his family for leisure, and his face had been real messed up by one of them bombs. The shrapnel really tore into him. That war really did a number on that country. Fancy being split in two …” He shuddered at the thought of Great Britain split into two factions. Like Germany, before the Berlin Wall fell and the country finally reunited.

  Elly cocked her head in question. “Split in two? What do you mean?”

  Horace frowned. “Well, I’m not an expert on Korean history. All I know is that Korea used to be one nation, but since the Korean War in the 1950s, it has been split as two separate nations, South and North Korea. They signed a ceasefire treaty, but if you watch the news, you’ll see that things are still quite tense between them. Technically, both remain at war.”

  Elly furrowed her brow. She’d only come across snippets of Korea in her previous readings of the human realm, and Grandpapa had informed her of the basic facts. Apparently, China had had an enormous influence on the Koreans in the ancient days. Grandpapa had explored much of China and Japan but had only superficial dealings with the Korean people. “The best thing about being an explorer is that there is always something more to explore. The world is a big, wondrous place that is constantly changing, with new things to be discovered over time,” Grandpapa had once said.

  Miriam was looking at Horace thoughtfully. “Do you think Sue might be able to give Elly any advice about Korea?”

  Horace grunted. “Sue is Chinese, isn’t she? Charlie mentioned how Sue worked as a nurse in a village in China before some relative brought her over to London.” He shrugged. “I doubt she’ll be able to help much anyhow, on account of the fact she isn’t even here, and she might not be able to meet Elly before she goes off adventuring again,” he muttered.

  Miriam sighed. “I wish we had gotten to know Sue better. I guess we’ll have a chance now that Charlie’s come back into our lives. Anyway …” She stroked a purring Snowy splayed out on her lap. “Elly, you’re saying that these four relics are scattered all over the globe?”

  Elly recalled the four different-coloured dots on the silver-lined map of Gaya that the Vierran had once conjured for her in the Blue Room. Red, blue, green, white. Seaul, Lorne, Cephrin, Graille. The dots were the approximate locations of where the Four Guardians might be dwelling in the present day. Later on, she had studied the world map of Gaya meticulously. The white dot had been in the East Asian region; the blue dot had been somewhere very south of Gaya; the green dot had been somewhere in Northern Europe; and the red dot had been somewhere in the South American continent. But the High Council had no way of ascertaining whether the locations had remained the same over the past year.

  The Guardian in the East Asian region should be Graille, the Guardian of Light, the one she was presently seeking out.

  Elly nodded at Miriam. “Yes. We’re trying to figure out where the other relics might be.”

  Then she felt the sliver of light on her face before she actually saw it. The sun had risen, peeking through the gap in the curtains. Miriam clucked her tongue and proceeded to bustle off to the bathroom. “All right, dear. It’s Christmas Eve, and we would really like you to at least have breakfast with us before you trek off on your expedition.”

  Elly was hesitant. “Oh, but I’m not sure I should stay much longer—”

  Greymore broke into her thoughts. Ellanor, you can stay for a little while. Remember, you need to attain a firmer grasp of the destination to which you intend to teleport. Teleporting back home in Evergreen City was easy, because you know your home inside out. But you are not familiar w
ith Gaya at all. Familiarity breeds accuracy. Teleporting to this place called Seoul in South Korea will take some familiarizing. It helps if you know people from Seoul, or come into physical contact with things that come from that city. Once you have been to that place once, it will be much easier to teleport there next time.

  Mrs Silverwinkle’s words echoed in her mind. Teleporting is not an exact science, as with all magic. It takes experience and much trial and error to get right. Good magic requires honing of our instincts, Elly.

  A light flared up in her mind. Lily’s family had immigrated from Hong Kong, which was in East Asia, the region that housed Korea. Maybe Lily knew something about Korea.

  Elly nodded at Miriam. “All right, I can stay for a bit.” She smiled. “I’d be happy to.”

  Miriam beamed. “Splendid! But first, we have some explaining to do for Charlie. He’ll be wondering why a guest suddenly appeared overnight.”

  Horace scowled. “It would look more convincing if we set her up in Charlie’s old bedroom. It wouldn’t look right if she came trundling out of our bedroom first thing in the morning!”

  So they proceeded to act out the charade. Quietly, they crept out of the master bedroom together. In the hallway, Elly shivered as she felt the cold seep into her. She had almost forgotten about the bone-chilling damp of London. Thank goodness she was dressed properly for the weather this time. How in the world did she survive in this freezing cold when she was first stranded in Gaya in only her flimsy purple frock, if only for a few hours?

  The hallway was still very dark. Miriam and Horace walked ahead of her. Then –

  “Arrgh, who’s there!”

  They had collided into a small boy hugging a teddy bear, staring up at them. Elly saw that he was very fair with round, rosy cheeks. His small, single-lidded eyes became crescent moons when he smiled up at them, revealing a gap where his two front teeth should be. “Oh, Nana and Pop! You gave me a fright!” he squeaked. His eyes swivelled to Elly questioningly.