Seven Wherewithal Way by Samantha-Ellen Bound

Author:Samantha-Ellen Bound
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Published by Affirm Press in 2021
Published: 2021-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

Night Visitors

‘Is there anything in this stupid world that isn’t trees?’

Celeste sighed on the inside and shifted so her dead leg got a bit of jiggle space. She, for one, found the trees fascinating.

‘Celeste? Did you hear me?’

Trees, in enough shades of green to make a frog jealous, and rolling hills, and sweeping cliffs of swirly rock, and strange shrubbery formations, and inky-blue lakes, and—

‘Celeste!’

‘Yes!’ Celeste sighed, on the outside this time, and turned around. ‘I heard you. What did I say when I told you that you could come?’

Esme pouted.

‘What did I say?’ said Celeste, trying to make her eyes burn a hole in her little sister.

Esme crossed her arms.

‘What was it?’ Celeste persisted.

‘No complaining,’ said Esme.

‘Right,’ said Celeste. ‘And what are you doing right now?’

‘Complaining,’ said Esme, in a very small voice.

‘Do you see the problem, then?’ Celeste turned to look back out the window, wiping the fog her breath had made.

‘But it is kind of boring,’ said Esme. ‘More boring than you. Not even a giant rat among all those trees. I just thought there would be something.’

‘Go up and sit with Ferd,’ Celeste said, peering down at a lake the colour of sapphires, patterned with an eddying maze of grass. It was how she spent most of her time on the bus: with her nose squished against the windowpanes, desperately wanting to earn her place on the rescue mission and be the one who spotted the Leshy first.

‘Fine,’ Esme huffed, and made a big show of stomping up the bus to the driver’s seat.

‘Good riddance,’ muttered Celeste. They’d only been travelling for a few days but Esme’s ‘I’m bored’ tally was well into double digits, and Celeste was counting. She’d told her sister if it got up to one hundred she’d be thrown out the window.

From over the little makeshift stove that popped out once the lid of the breadbin was rolled up, Logan grabbed the kettle and poured tea into two mugs. He glanced sympathetically at Celeste. ‘Never mind her.’

‘Well, she’s never satisfied,’ snapped Celeste. ‘The adventure of a lifetime, into another world, on a magic flying bus, and what’s she got to say? “I’m bored.” Typical. And then I sound like a naggy old horse for pulling her up on it.’

Logan passed one of the mugs to Celeste. She smiled her thanks and then almost spilled it in her frantic search to deposit it somewhere so the porcelain didn’t burn her hands.

‘Ouch,’ she said. ‘Hot.’ A little tray table shoved itself up from between two pillows on the day bed.

‘Whoops,’ said Logan. ‘Sorry.’ He put his mug down on the table. ‘I should have said. I was just trying to be tough.’

Celeste blew on her fingers. ‘You don’t really need to prove that. Battled against giant rats, remember? Got us through a forest haunted by the Striga?’

Logan grinned and tried to arrange his lanky legs comfortably on the bed. ‘Two ticks against ten crosses,’ he said. ‘Not bad.’

There was silence then, slightly awkward, as they both looked out the bus window at the plateau below.

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