Rose and Deshica

  Chapter Seven

  Gonder disappeared as soon as he learned that Deshica's cocoon had cracked. He couldn't feel her presence in the house so he figured that she had already left the house so he was trying to play catch up at this point. Without Gonder there to help them find Deshica, the Guardians were now playing catch up on trying to find Deshica. To make matters worse, Rose was missing as well. It could only be assumed that Rose had gone missing along with Deshica since it happened around the same time. Chris had actually received confirmation of this from Kefmak, who said that he saw Rose talking to Deshica until they both vanished into thin air.

  Before doing anything, Chris tried getting in touch with Dice, Eve with Gail and Rick called home to wake Vanessa. If they were going to go anywhere to look for Deshica and Rose then the group would have better odds of finding the two and overcoming any obstacles in their way if they were all together instead of only three of them trying to accomplish this. Once everyone was contacted they agreed to meet at Dice's because he had to do some research before the group took any action.

  Once everyone had arrived at Dice's house he explained that there was a good chance that Deshica had simply awakened and Rose was the first person that she encountered. Rose, being the person that she is, would have obviously posed no threat to Deshica so the Fairy would have no hesitation befriending her. Once Deshica learned of Rose's cancer the Fairy probably took Rose with her to the land of Faerie. It would be possible for the team to make it to Faerie without a Fairy escorting them but it wouldn't be easy. There's a reason why the old tales of people stumbling into Faerie centered around drunkards. Certain paths had to be traveled in a specific manner, sometimes seeming to double up on themselves or spin in circles. Tracing one of these paths would not be easy, especially since the path didn't take into account any building that had since been built up around it.

  For the purpose of tracing one of the paths to Faerie Dice had laid three maps on his kitchen table. The first map was one that everyone recognized since it was of Kirbyville and the surrounding areas. Dice grabbed the edges of this map and pulled – enlarging the map and allowing greater detail to be shown within. Dice's second map was of magical origin and it traced the leylines of whatever map it was placed over. This was Dice's opportunity to test a theory of his that a path to Faerie would actually follow the leylines but the third map actually proved him wrong. The third map showed known paths to Faerie and other hiding places of the Nations. Fairies weren't the only ones with their own land that they could escape to whenever they wanted, it was something that all creatures had and allowed them to not worry about encroaching urban sprawl. Dice couldn't help but think of what the planet would be like if all nature had the same opportunity afforded to the Nations but that was a thought for another time.

  Dice held up the map of Kirbyville and the map of the known Faerie paths. Whispering a few words to himself allowed Dice to let the maps levitate with the map of the paths becoming slightly transparent so it would overlay the map of Kirbyville. After explaining what he had done and what they were looking at the obvious problems came forth immediately. The biggest obstacle that anybody could see was that they would have to actually go through somebody's house in order to get to Faerie. Dice stopped the conversation before it could go any further, “The best way to do this is magically. Not only do we have to worry about where we are stepping but we also have to worry about how we step and how quickly we do it. There is a time limit for a Faerie path and that's one reason why you can do it one day but not recreate those same results the next. Let me take the lead and I'll take care of the door to that house and if we run into the people that live there I'll do what I can to keep them from remembering what happened to them.”

  Rick raised his hand but Dice waved him off, “No, we can't stick around to see if there's somebody there or to make sure that they live a better life afterward. We might not even have time to shut the door ourselves at that point. We'll have to find out when we get started. I am going to superimpose the path before us so that only we can see it. I'll have to use my judgment to make sure that we are moving at the correct speed throughout the path. That means no bathroom breaks, no questions and no stopping for anything. I know we'll be crossing a few streets so let's hope that the traffic doesn't present a problem.”

  Rick got a squeamish look but Chris was the first to respond, “Don't worry. I'll take care of them. Steel and aluminum come from the earth so I can just get the cars to go over our heads and that solves that problem. See? Nothing to worry about.”

  Dice shook his head, “You know what? I think it might be better if I just made all of us ethereal for the trip so we don't have to worry about running into anything along the way and that also solves the problem of the door and how much time we would need to open it.”

  Chris was baffled, “Ethe-what?”

  Eve rolled her eyes, “Like ghosts so we can move through stuff.”

  Chris nodded, finally getting the point. With that problem out of the way Chris decided it was time to attack another one, “Can you make us invisible too so we can just go ahead in costume? You know, since we're going into Faerie and all that? I don't think they'll treat us any better as humans but at least they know that Guardians won't be there to wage war on them or something.”