Cinder Ellie (Faraway Castle) by Stengl J.M

Author:Stengl, J.M. [Stengl, J.M.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Rooglewood Press
Published: 2018-01-31T05:00:00+00:00

Ellie felt as gray and doleful as the morning sky. Other staff members had already cleaned up the scene of the fire when she arrived after her extra duties inside the castle, which was filled to capacity with wedding guests. But she hoped to take a closer look at the melted cinder sprite and maybe gain some clue into what she had done wrong while mixing that potion.

But when she walked toward the cottage, keeping her eyes on the side of the path where the fireball had dissolved, she found nothing. “Chuck?” she called to the dwarf still raking up blackened shingles. “Did you or anyone else find a blackened thing . . . like a pool of melted tar here by the path?”

Chuck hurried toward her, his boots crunching on the gravel. “I haven’t seen anything like that . . .” He sounded hesitant and curious. “The cinder sprite?”

Giving a quick nod, Ellie again scoured the area. “I was standing right here, I’m positive. And I sprayed . . .” She squatted, and Chuck went down on one knee beside her.

“Right here,” he said. “This looks like sprite footprints leading toward the road.” He stood up but remained bent over, following a trail that was invisible to Ellie’s straining eyes. She followed him. He lost the tracks on the gravel road but picked them up again in the soft dirt on the far side.

“I had planned to see what was left of the embered sprite and maybe bury it,” she explained. “Do you think another sprite might have come to carry it away?”

Chuck looked up long enough to give her a wry grin. “If you had ever seen a sprite, you’d know the answer: impossible.”

“Then . . . what do you think we’re following?”

“My guess is that your spray worked and the sprite recovered.”

Ellie stopped in her tracks, her mind whirling. Then she trotted to catch up with Chuck. “But it dissolved into goo. Seriously. There was nothing left but slimy-looking muck.”

“So it reformed in the night and walked away. Ellie, you need to start believing in yourself. You’re no hembez like you seem to think. You figured out a way to save a cinder sprite gone ember, an extraordinary magical feat!”

Chuck followed the tiny tracks, and Ellie followed Chuck, through an ornate wrought-iron gate into the castle gardens. There he finally lost the trail when the creature’s tracks led to a broad lawn. “I think we can safely say that the cinder sprite is in reasonably good health, since it ran this far at a good clip with no sign of a limp or of pauses to catch its breath.”

Ellie could hardly breathe. Had she really done it? On her very first try, she’d concocted a formula that brought back cinder sprites from the brink of death! What would Arabella say? Would she be proud?

Oh, how Ellie wanted to jump in circles and tell her friends! Jeralee would celebrate with her, but she suspected Ben and Kerry Jo would react with faint smiles and patently insincere comments such as “That’s really cool.

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