Chapter 3: Crumbs

Edilyn Motley was having a terrible day. Her brunette pigtails—hanging off the side of her head—had sticks, twigs, leaves, and mud stuck in them. Her thick red vest had a few stains; most of them from the mud, and her pleated grey skirt looked horrible, all wrinkled and defeated-looking. Her socks were brown now. Her shoes even more so. It didn't help the fact that she was running away from little imps, the stupid creatures.

She didn't need the milk to see them for what they were. Then again, she didn't need the milk to see any of the magical creatures.

She tried forcing her legs to go faster, but they were going as fast as they could. Pulling a potion out of her leather backpack, she uncorked it, and poured most of the contents down her throat. Immediately her legs didn't feel as heavy, and she could run faster.

So could the imps.

It seemed that they hadn't been trying their hardest to reach her, but when she got faster, it became apparent that there was something interesting about this girl. They ran quickly after her, and she tried to speed up more, weaving through trees, shrubs, bushes, tiny clearings, tight trails, before slamming into an enchantment.

This forest is huge.

She turned and looked back at the imps, who were gaining on her. She pulled her bag off, and pulled out a spell book, flipping through the pages, trying to find the right one. Finally she found it. Casting the Enter spell, the force field threw her inside. The imps shrieked angrily.

She breathed a sigh of relief, and picked up her bag. She made a face at the imps, who shrieked again, and then walked off.

The clouds looked angry, angrier than the imps had. A water droplet hit her face. She wiped it off, and shivered.

I need to look for shelter.

It started raining, harder and harder until it was pouring.

Seeing a dark cave and knowing that there was nowhere else that she would likely find, she stepped into the dank cave, and brushed her hand against the edge until she reached the end.

I hope there aren't any dragons down here.

Hearing a noise, she squeaked, and looked down, squinting hard in the dark. It was just a pile of clothes. Laying herself down on the clothes, she realized it was a boy. Not caring much about the morning next—too tired to think about it—she fell asleep, using the thing as a pillow.

Seth felt something move on his stomach. He put his hand on it, and felt something silky and smooth. Softly feeling the thing, he curled up around it, not wanting to open his eyes. His hand slipped, and he felt the smooth touch of skin against his fingertips. His eyes opened on their own. He stared at the face in front of his.

She had brown hair, and freckles splashed across her pale cheeks. She looked a little sunburned. Her head was on his stomach. Her red vest was crumbled up, like she had thrown it on. Her grey pleated skirt was crumpled and wet, and the thing she was using as a teddy bear was cracking at the edges.

Seth backed away a little bit, and the girl stirred. Seth pushed himself up, and the girl's head connected with the floor. Immediately she woke up. Her eyes flashing a hint of grey, she glared up at Seth. Her face went white when she saw him. She started backing away, trying to get away from him, as if he were some type of monster. Seth's eyebrows met, and he looked at her in confusion.

"Please don't hurt me." She sounded close to tears.

Seth's confused glare softened a smudge. "How did you get here?"

She put one hand on top of the other, and put them next to her head. She was pleading. "Please… don't hurt me…"

Seth held up his hands and took a cautious step towards her. "I'm not going to hurt you…" The girl scooted back when he stepped forward, looking ready to run if needed.

How freaky do I look?

Realizing that she thought that he would hurt her, he knelt down. "What's your name?"

Kendra was having a terrible day. Her brother was missing. Her grandpa was missing. Grandma was hysterical. Dale figured that whoever had taken Grandpa must have Seth, too, and Kendra had had the bright idea to mention Seth's nightmares and her torso hurting, and Grandma had somehow gotten it into her head that Seth had kidnapped the poor man.

That isn't what I meant.

Tanu concocted a potion to make Grandma stop freaking out—and it had worked; the fear hadn't returned yet—and made another one to calm down Kendra.

Vanessa stood in the corner, not sure what to do.

Ever since the end of the Demon Prison episode, no one had really trusted her very much. She had been trustworthy, but there was still that air of… Disdain.

She still helped them try to look for Seth. They searched the surrounding grounds, and Kendra went to the lake to look for him. The grass was green, and the trees and flowers vibrant with every color on the rainbow scale. The lake shimmered brightly in the sunlight. The day looked happy in contrast to Kendra's darkened mood.

She didn't know where Grandpa would be, and Seth definitely wasn't strong enough to lift up Grandpa. She doubted that Seth would be with their grandfather, but it seemed more and more likely. Not willing to set foot into the lake, she walked unhurriedly back to the house. Settling down on the grass in front of the house, she lies down, and spread out her arms. Relaxing a little, she looked at the clouds.

That one looks like an elephant. And that one looks like a disembodied dragon-head hiding behind a castle tower. And that one looks like… a lost boy.

Closing her eyes to avoid the sight all together, and wanting to get her thoughts away from the subject, she thought of Bracken. Bracken, the tall, elegant teenaged boy she'd met while in a dark dungeon a ways beneath the earth. Seth had met him first, but that didn't mean that he was Seth's best friend. That spot was reserved all ready.

She felt the ground near her vibrate. She opened her eyes and looked off to her right. Dale lied there, smiling at her.

"Needed to take a breather, huh?"

Kendra nodded. "Seth's kind of invading my thoughts and I can't think."

Dale stopped smiling. "He can't do that, can he?" He stopped when Kendra gave him a confused look. "I mean, he's a shadow charmer, and you're Fairy-kind. They're two different things." He glanced up at the sky. "Aren't they?"

Kendra glared at him. "Are you implying that Fairy-kind is evil beings that should be destroyed and shadow charmers are great?"

Dale stared at her, looking uneasy. "No. The Sphinx was a shadow charmer, and so was your brother—"

"Let's not talk about either of them for a while, okay?"

Dale nodded, staring uncomfortably at the sky. "Sorry."

Kendra made no comment.

"Are you kids just going to lie there, looking like beached whales or are you going to help?" Grandma scorned. She was irritable.

Probably because her husband has just disappeared.

Dale, a man in his mid-twenties, got up. "Yeah. Coming." He seemed glad to get out of the awkward situation, and made it a bit worse by not looking back at her.

When on earth did you get so selfish, Kendra?

When you started asking questions.

The girl seemed very intent on not telling Seth her name. She stayed resolutely silent, but still whimpering and backing up occasionally, being sure to avoid Seth at all costs. She had barely made it five feet away from him. Seth wasn't sure what to do. Walk towards her and make her freak out more, or back up and let her run away, or try to calm her down. He had barely realized that she was bleeding badly when the girl started whimpering again.

"Are you going to let me go?" Her voice shook.

He hadn't realized that the shadows in the cave had a firm grip on her. That's why she could only move so far. He told his gut to calm down and tensed and untensed it several times before the shadows finally let her go. Her back stopped straightening, and her body went as slack as a dead fish. She coughed several times. Seth finally got up to her.

Patting her back, he waited while she coughed, seeming to do so just because it proved her point. She coughed a little smudge of blood onto her white button-up. Her socks were brown—probably from the night before, since it had been raining—and her socks, he supposed, used to look white. They weren't anymore.

"You are a jerk."

Seth shrugged. "I've been called worse."

She looked up at him, one eye closed, an eye watering. "What can be worse than being called a jerk?"

Oh, you wouldn't understand.

"Um… Uh…" He searched for words. The girl got cocky and smirked.

Slight pull on the gut. Seth vetoed.

"You don't know, do you?"

The words came before he could stop them. "What do you know, Mud-Foot?" It wasn't the best insult, but it was the only one that held any meaning.

The girl looked down at her shoes, the smirk obliterated from her face.

"What do you want, Freaky?"

I'm "Freaky" now? Whatever.

"What your name is."

"What?"

"I want to know what your name is."

"Oh."

Either this girl was slow, or she had broken something inside her brain when it connected with the ground. Or she was still a little freaked out that she was talking to a boy that she had named, "Freaky." He glared at her.

"Name. Now."

"Okay. Okay. No sense in getting worked up about it."

Seth's gut tensed again. "Oh yeah?"

She could tell that she was having some success… but not in stalling the inevitable. "Motley."

Seth continued to glare at her.

"Edilyn Motley."

"Edilyn Motley," Seth repeated. "Sounds Medieval."

Motley shrugged. "I didn't make it."

Seth extended a hand. "Your neighborhood Demon, Freaky."

Motley had been extending her hand to his until he had said the word, "demon." Instantly her had drew away and backed into the wall. Seth smiled, and Edilyn Motley drew away in terror. Seth started laughing, and she pulled down an eyebrow.

"Are you… pulling my leg?"

Seth laughed a bit more, taking pleasure in her immediate reaction. "Yeah. A bit more than pulling it. More like"—more laughter—"ripping it clean off!"

Edilyn Motley looked thoroughly offended, and Seth couldn't help but laugh. His tone got serious when his gut started hurting more than it should have, and clearly the girl thought his behavior close to that of an erratic lunatic.

"Who are you?" she asked, her voice quivering.

Seth frowned. "I asked you that question already. I live here. Who are you?"

It was her turn to frown. "I told you that already—"

Seth shook his head. "You told me your name, not who you are."

The girl looked even more confused then she had not five seconds ago. "What?"

Seth cleared his throat. "Who are you, and how did you get here?"

"I'm Edilyn Mot—"

Seth stopped her. "That's your name. Not who you are."

She shook her head. "No, that's who I am and my name."

Seth folded his arms, and crossed his legs, squinting at her. She didn't squirm, and she didn't back off. His gut still hurt a bit from the laughter, but that was it. She looked ratty and tired, and probably felt like a ton of bricks ready to fall over, but prepared as a gazelle ready to sprint at the first sign of danger. Asleep but alert.

"Oxymoron." He shrugged. "So you have no title. Okay. You aren't a student, or anything?"

This got her attention. "Yes, I'm a student."

"Who teaches you?"

"Miss Maltava."

Seth's eyebrow drifted further down his face.

Edilyn looked around the dank cave, looking like she really didn't want to be there. "She's a witch."

Dale started avoiding her after that. They got in the car and left to go to the private plane strip, and Dale had been forced to sit in the back with them. Ruth had been put in the driver's seat by Tanu, who was driving, and Vanessa sat behind her, trying to keep her dreams away from Grandpa. Warren and Hugo stayed behind to guard Fablehaven.

Dale barely said anything, and the car remained silent. Tanu didn't bother to turn on the radio, and there were no radio towers close enough to make a connection, anyway.

Tanu had suggested that they go down to the Hall of Dread—Seth had talked to ghosts and monsters down there before, why not now?—and there they had found a note about going to Black City Canyon. Vanessa had recognized the area, and offered to take them there. It, oddly, involved taking a private airplane.

Kendra had expected the long trip there and had brought a blanket and a pillow. When she got on the plane, she reclined, and pulled the pillow beneath her head. Covering her body with the warm blanket, she drifted off to sleep…

…And she found herself staring in the face of Bracken. He smiled, and she smiled back. Feeling like she was slipping in an unending non-ground, she saw a bunch of people she knew on rocks that popped up out of the ground. Bracken disappeared the further down she went. It got darker and darker until finally she could see nothing.

A tiny light opened up, and she noticed a figure in the darkness. Her view point zoomed forward, and she looked at the person sitting lonely in the dark.

It was Seth.

Her tour of the darkness ended, and she shot back up towards the light, the dimness of Seth's tiny light obscured by all the light she gave off herself.

When Kendra woke up, she felt like a balloon that had been roughly inflated, and then popped, fixed, inflated again, and then agitatedly deflated again. It was the middle of the night, and Vanessa was still awake. She was helping the pilot—she could hear them talking, at least.

Dale was by Tanu, and only Grandma and Dale where asleep now.

Kendra's spot was at the back, all by herself. Grandma's was in the front, by everyone else's, and Dale's was intentionally near Tanu's. Vanessa's supposed spot was nowhere to be found. Tanu noticed that Kendra was awake.

He smiled that gentle smile, and looked at her questioningly. "Are you all right, Kendra?"

Kendra shook her head. "Not really. I just had a creepy dream."

Tanu's smile faded a little. "Oh really?"

Kendra nodded. "Yeah. Everyone was there, and it was pure white—the background. The first person I saw was Bracken."

"Love interests have a thing for showing up first in dreams."

Kendra lowered her eyes. "And then it was Grandma and Grandpa and my friends—you, Coulter, Dale, Warren, Vanessa, and my school friends. Even Gavin showed up."

Tanu nodded, but didn't say anything.

"All of you were standing on these black rock pillars, and everything was in black and white… it got darker the further I went down, and the person at the very bottom, the one that looked like he was holding the brightest light there… was Seth."

Tanu nodded. "I'm no expert on dreams, but it sounds like you know that Seth is good, no matter how he acts, he always has good intentions."

Kendra looked at the floor. "Sometimes I'm not sure if he has good intentions or not." She paused. "You remember Graulas."

The nod again. "The demon that Seth befriended, and who helped Seth understand his abilities, and the same who destroyed Fablehaven after Seth saved his life with the Sands."

"Yeah."

Tanu smiled. "It's a good thing we got that fixed up, or else we wouldn't have anywhere to sleep."

Kendra smiled back. "Yeah. I just hope Seth is okay."