Enchanted Bubbles, Black Beds, Bleeding, Magic Bats

At first, it was just a game, but it became much more than that. My cousin was over for the afternoon. Her mom was at work at the hospital. Her dad taught Spanish and coached the high school cross country team. My mom watched other people’s kids. I hated it most of the time. The other kids were annoying and mom always paid more attention to them than she ever did to me, but I didn’t mind as much when my mom got to watch my cousin, Chantelle.
“I’m the princess.” Chantelle said, proclaiming the imaginary game’s beginning.
“I’m the evil witch!” Cynthia shouted quickly before I could claim her part. I didn’t mind too terribly, though. I knew the only part left was the prince. It was kind of weird playing a man every time we did make-believe games, but I was getting used to it. The three of us sat under the stairs in the basement of my house. The ceiling above us was graffitied with pictures and writing from our many hours entertaining ourselves in that little room. Inside the room under the stairs was the secret to all our success as make-believe game producers. It was a chest full to over-flowing with costumes of every kind. As soon as our parts were decided upon, the three of us attacked the chest in search of suitable attire.
“Wear this” Chantelle told me. She held out a black mask, cape, and a hat. Even though none of us had actually seen the movie Zorro, we were all obsessed with the masked character. Chantelle always wanted to marry him, and I always wanted to be like him. He wore black and saved the day. To a six year old, that’s as admirable as anyone needs to be.
Cynthia found a black robe to put on over her green flowery dress. Cynthia was my sister and she was two years younger. She always wore dresses. Mom could never get her to wear pants. It didn’t matter to me, but you would never catch me wearing a dress unless I was going to church or a funeral. Of course, Chantelle, the princess, had to wear a ballerina two-two. I don’t know how that made any sense, but Chantelle found every excuse to wear that frilly thing.
Once we were all properly clothed the imagining began.
***
Once upon a time, you know all magical make-believe stories have to start that way, there was a princess who was bored. She hated living in a castle and hated everyone treating her like she was better than them. It made it quite impossible for her to make friends and even more impossible for her to fall in love since all the local boys were afraid that her father, the king, would give them F’s on their Spanish exams and make them run 10 miles if they tried to court her.
To appease her boredom, the princess frequently ran away from her palace home. It was on just one such expedition that she noticed a stranger in the nearby village. He was different from the local boys, braver, stronger, and certainly more handsome. I’m not sure how she knew he was handsome because he kept a black mask covering his face, perhaps it was woman’s intuition. Still, this man stood out quite dramatically among the locals, so much so that the princess felt inclined to follow him when he left the village at sundown.
The stranger led the princess east through the outlying farms and past the great lake. The princess knew, because she had looked out many days from her high tower chambers over the kingdom, that the dark forest was all that lay beyond the lake. She feared to venture into unknown dangers, but the intrigue of the stranger when compared with the boredom awaiting her if she returned home quieted her fears and motivated her to continue onward.
The trees of the forest were not as bad as the princess had expected. They were tall, but far apart so she could see the stars and the moon through their branches. The further she walked among them the more she noticed a strange feeling inside her she could not name. She felt connected, somehow, to the forest. The night breezes made the trees sway and the princess’s hair swayed along with the branches. The princess, without realizing it, had stopped following the man in black. She stopped to listen to the trees. She felt that, if she was still, they would not speak to her, but they seemed to welcome her to dance with them. The more she swayed with the wind the closer she felt to the trees, the more she could understand their language. Gradually, her swaying grew to a wild dance. She wove in and out of the trees. Her elegant dress was torn and stained by the branches twisting and flowing around her, but this only added to her beauty making her more wild and natural than she had been before in the world’s finery.
The dance of the trees guided the princess through the forest into the oldest parts where the trees were fat with age and their bark rippled like wrinkled skin. For the first time since the dance began, the princess felt fear. Something was different here. The darkness made further investigation not only difficult, but dangerous since the ground had turned from the softly crunching leaves found near the tamer edge of the forest to rocky and uneven.
The princess had decided to turn and try to find her way back to the lake and the village or at least to someplace less dark and imposing to rest until daylight would show her the way home, but as she turned to find her way back she realized that all directions looked the same. She could no longer see the stars, and the moon had set so she didn’t even have its dim light to guide her.
Conveniently, though she wasn’t aware at the time how convenient it was, the trees knew where she need to go and they had been guiding her dance with purpose. Just as her nerves were on the brink of crumbling, a black arm shot out of the shadows and a hand gripped the princess’s wrist.
“Come with me.” the man in black said, “Quickly.” The princess hesitated, but the man didn’t loosen his grip on her wrist so that when he turned and began to walk briskly through the darkness, she was forced to follow. He was quick and strong. She stumbled several times. Once, she even fell, grazing her knee on a sharp rock. The man in black said nothing, but pulled her to her feet. She could feel a trickle down her leg telling her that her knee was bleeding, but the man in black just urged her onward. By the time they stopped, her shoulder was sore from being pulled, yanked, and half dragged. She could see nothing of her surroundings, but she could feel soft cushions and the air had changed, becoming warmer, and the sounds of the night creatures had disappeared entirely.
***
“Girls! Come upstairs please!” Mom yelled down the stairs at us. We all groaned and trudged up the stairs to see what she wanted.
“What Mom?” I yelled from half-way up the stairs.
“It’s nap-time, girls.” Mom said, “Chantelle, you can sleep on the green couch in the living room. There are blankets and pillows in the corner by the TV.” Chantelle made pouty face.
“Mom, can’t she sleep in our room?” I whined.
“Not this time.” Mom said, “I want you to actually sleep today.” I mimicked Chantelle’s pouty face and went with Cynthia into our bedroom down the hall.
***
“Sleep,” said the man in black. The princess wondered if she could trust this stranger, or if she would have been better off lost in the woods. Before she could become too frantic, her body overcame her mind and she slept.
***
An hour later, which is forever to a six year old, we were allowed to wake up. Chantelle was still sleeping, so Cynthia and I tried our best to be quiet as we sat on the couch next to her and waited oh so patiently for her to wake up so we could resume our game. As you have probably noticed, when someone sits on the couch or bed on which you are sleeping, it is quite difficult to stay asleep much longer, especially when the sitters are young children.
“I have an idea.” I said as Chantelle stretched and started to sit up. “Let’s play in the garage so my mom can’t find us again.” The other two agreed to this scheme and we took off down the stairs and through the door to the garage.
***
The princess awoke in darkness. She felt her surroundings as best she could. She felt the soft cushions and heavy blankets that had kept her warm all night. She felt a wooden headboard intricately carved, though she couldn’t figure out what the carvings were supposed to be. She slid off the bed and felt cold, slightly damp stone under her feet.
A door creaked somewhere off to the princess’s left and footsteps entered.
“Brace yourself. I’m lighting the lamp.” A few seconds later a light flickered to life and the princess could see the man in black standing next to a carved wooden table on which the lamp sat. Other than the table and the bed, nothing else was in the room. The walls were rounded and stone, like the floor. The princess wondered on this for a moment, then concluded that she must be inside a cave of some sort.
“What were you doing alone in the middle of the forest like that in the dead of the night? Don’t you know people die in these woods?” the man in black asked. He did not seem angry, though. The princess thought he sounded almost impressed.
“I was…” the princess’s mind raced to find a reason other than “I was following you,” which sounded quite strange. She decided on, “looking for something.”
“Like what?” the man asked.
“Why should I tell you? You’re a stranger to me. A stranger who forcibly dragged me with him in the dead of night to a place unknown to me and for all I know is planning to keep me here against my will.” the princess exploded in her anxiety.
“Don’t flatter yourself. You could be the princess herself and I wouldn’t bother keeping you hostage. Mostly, I keep out of other peoples’ business, but you looked lost and I thought I’d help you out. If I’d known you’d react like that I’d have left you out in the woods for the witch to find.” the man said. He turned away from the princess and opened the door. “Since you obviously don’t appreciate my hospitality, you may be on your way.”
The princess didn’t move. “I’m sorry.” she whispered. “I don’t really want to go. I was just, well…” The man sighed and actually smiled a little.
“Well, how about we eat breakfast on the road?” he said. The princess stroked the blankets, which were elegant green and black, then got up and followed the man out the door.
As the princess had guessed, her room was a side-cavern inside a majestic cave. The man in black carried a torch which had been burning outside the room. The princess could see only a few feet beyond the man, but the echoing of their footsteps told her that the cavern was quite large.
“Shh” the man suddenly put his arm out to stop the princess. She held as still as she could and tried to understand what worried the man. A gentle breeze rustled the princess’s skirt and hair. She did not find this as unusual as she probably should have since she did not know that they were still quite a ways from the cave opening and a breeze could not have possibly made it down that far into the cave. The breeze smelled, too. It smelled of soap, clean and wet, and almost sweet.
Into the firelight, something floated, slowly. It was round and mostly transparent. Another one followed, and another until there were at least a dozen. The princess recognized them as bubbles. They were beautiful reflecting the firelight and casting strange half-shadows on the cavern floor and walls. The princess was drawn to them, but the man in black held her back.
“They’re enchanted.” said the man in black so quietly the princess could barely hear.
“How do you know?” the princess asked, not so quietly.
“Shh!” the man said.
As the bubbles floated around them, the princess began to realize how peculiar these bubbles really were. For a start, no natural bubbles would come so near a fire without popping, and even without the fire these bubbles had already lasted an unnaturally long time. Besides that, the princess noticed shapes, mere shadows and reflections, in the bubbles that didn’t seem quite natural. It was as if the bubbles were windows into another place, another place that the princess was not anxious to visit, for, as the images became clearer she could see dark creatures with many legs. As soon as she thought the word spiders the bubbles began to pop.
The man in black yelped and started pulling the princess back down the cavern away from the bubbles. As each bubble popped the very spiders the princess had seen in their reflections materialized from the remains of the bubble and began crawling toward the two of them. They were shiny and deep black. The princess, having been raised in an ancient castle, did not fear the spiders as much as the man in black seemed to. She remembered many times when her serving maids were all girlishly frightened of the large brown spiders that frequented her bed chambers she had taken it upon herself to rescue the poor creatures before the maids cruelly smashed them. She thought they were kind of beautiful in their own way, but the man just ran, his whole body tense and his eyes full of terror. It seemed, the princess thought, that she would have to rescue him from the spiders despite how beautiful they were and how childish he was behaving.
***
“Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!” I shouted as the creepy black spider made another jump and landed far closer to me than I was comfortable with. Cynthia sat back and giggled. She always liked spiders. She liked to put them in jars and keep them. Mostly, she didn’t feed them well enough and they would die in a few days anyway, but still, her collection of jars was always freaky and I avoided it as much as I could.
Chantelle wasn’t afraid either. “You’re being such a baby.” she told me.
“I don’t care. I hate spiders.” I said, “Kill it!”
“Why don’t you kill it yourself?” Chantelle said, “You’re closest to it and it was your idea to play in the garage anyway.”
I shuddered and scooted back, away from the spider. My movement made the spider jump again. Lucky for me, its jump carried it away from me and closer to Chantelle. She sighed and brought her foot down quickly on the monster.
“Thank you.” I said.
“Alright can you quit whining and get back to the game?” Chantelle said.
***
“Spiders are afraid of fire you know.” The princess said as she ran behind the man in black. “I mean, they probably won’t come much closer to your torch anyway.”
“I’d rather not risk it.” said the man, “Besides, those are enchanted spiders. They are the work of the witch.”
Suddenly, loud, high pitched laughter echoed around the cavern.
“Oh you caught me.” a voice cackled, “How do you like my beauties Mr. I’m-not-afraid-of-anything.” For the first time, the man in black stopped moving and turned to face the spiders.
“Trying to be brave for your girlfriend, are you?” the voice said and burst into another fit of cackling. “It’s alright. You won’t live long enough to be too humiliated.” This time, the witch was close enough for the princess to see. She was not very tall and she was kind of happy looking, like she took much joy from her work. Her skin was a peculiar green color that, the princess realized, was glowing slightly like the glow-in-the-dark stars people hung above their beds.
“Here, take this.” the man in black said as he shoved the torch into the princess’s hands. She held it with both hands and, as the spiders approached she began to wave it at them, keeping them away only momentarily, for, as soon as she focused the torch on one group of spiders, the others would advance. When she focused on the others, the first would advance. There were simply too many to defend against with only one small torch.
The princess, by this point, was quite certain the man in black had cracked. He was behaving quite strangely, picking up rocks and throwing them as hard as he could into the darkness. If he was trying to hit the witch, his aim was quite atrocious. After a minute or two, the princess decided that the witch was not his target at all. This conclusion was confirmed when the sound of one of his rocks was met with a screeching response and a sudden roar of hundreds of wings.
An army of bats swooped frantically into the cavern. Seeing the giant mass of spiders, the bats started to dive picking off one spider, then another, and another until the spiders were in full retreat.
“Ugh,” the witch exclaimed, “How did I not see that coming?” She pointed a green glowing finger at the man in black. “You always foil my best schemes.”
“I wouldn’t have to if you would stop trying to kill me, and this time, you got this poor girl involved. What did you have to go and do that for?” the man in black replied.
“How was I supposed to know you had company?” the witch complained, “You’ve always been alone before. You should tell me next time you’re going to bring a friend home and maybe I’ll send spider-filled cookies instead of bubbles.” The man in black laughed.
Thoroughly confused the princess asked, “You two sound far friendlier than mortal enemies ought to be.” The man in black laughed again and took the torch out of the princess’s hand.
“I don’t remember ever saying we were mortal enemies.” the man said, “My friend here just helps me with my daily training. She likes to make it all dramatic and say she’s trying to kill me just to make it feel more real, though the spiders were kind of a low blow. You know I hate spiders.”
“I just had to get you back for not being here yesterday when I tried to pull a zombie-apocalypse on you. It was so awesome, but when the zombies broke down your door,” the witch said with a fake pouty face, “you were nowhere to be found.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.” the man said, though, by the way he laughed, he didn’t seem sorry at all. “I’d better get this girl back to the village, though. I bet her family’s worried sick by now.”
***
“Where on earth have you been?” Mom said quite angrily as the three of us climbed up the stairs, “I’ve been yelling all over the house for you. Chantelle, you’re parents are here. They’re waiting out in the car. Hurry and clean up your mess.” We ran back down to the room under the stairs.
With the costumes back in the trunk, Chantelle and I hugged goodbye, yet the magic did not leave with her. It followed me to bed that night, and to school the morning after. Day by day, year after year, a new beginning, a new adventure, always starts not long after the old one ends.