Another year of school is starting. There are innumerable mixed feelings on my part, as I'm sure there are on the part of each of you as well. I will not be able to post as much as I would like, as much of my free time will now be consumed by the greedy monster known as A.P. I will continue to work on and post chapters as often as I can. The chapter I've been {im}patiently waiting to write is upcoming in the next couple of chapters, so I will most likely crank these others out fairly quickly in order to get to it.

NicoleDaughterOfPoseiden: It's a little of both. I know that's vague, but that's all I feel comfortable revealing right now.

Disclaimer: For the umpteenth time, Brandon Mull owns the rights to Fablehaven.

The Cursed watched the girl, who in turn watched him. They'd been watching each other for a time. Earlier, she had spoken to him in complete jibberish; then again, in jibberish that sounded faintly familiar. After a while, she'd given up on verbal communication, and had handed him a set of clothes from the wardrobe.

The Cursed had forgotten the feel of cloth against skin. He disliked it. Found it restrictive. He no longer understood propriety. He wanted to go without the stiff fabric, but the girl had seemed more comfortable when he had the exotic garments on. For her sake, he suffered through.

The girl appeared to be trying to make up her mind with what to do with him. The Cursed wished for her to trust him, though he could not have said so plainly. In his mind, she thought him a potential threat, and he wished for her to think otherwise. How?

The Cursed had an idea.

Up he jumped from his spot on the floor, where he'd been sitting like a tree frog, startling the girl. As he approached her, surprise turned to wariness. Stopping at the edge of her bed, he reached out his dirty hand. She flinched, her gaze wandering uncertainly around the room. The Cursed thrust his palm closer to her, causing her to draw back.

He nodded at her, showing her it was okay. He would never harm her. He made his eyes go from her hand to his hand, expressing his intention.

A light dawned in her mossy green irises – in such a way that made her look more like his deceased daughter than ever before. The Cursed shivered. Sympathy drew deep creases on the girl's forehead.

Timid as a newly hatched bird, she laid her hand on top of his. He closed his leathery skin around her hand and shook it up and down. He feared she still may not understand him, but he had remember the form of greeting from his old village.

The girl smiled in surprise. The Cursed felt his heart skip a beat at the sight. She understood he was there to help her.

The girl tightened her grip, shaking his hand back with confidence. She laughed, a bubbly joyous sound. It was like the sound of fresh water to a man dying in the desert. Without the Cursed fully knowing it, a piece of his soul retracted back into its right place. He had seen the bird unfurl her wings.

It is prudent to add a note that the Cursed was so used to the wild, so unused to intelligence, that his mind made connections to the former help him understand the latter. From then on he thought of the girl simply as the Bird.

He smiled back at her, shaking her hand with increased fervor. The Bird laughed harder, her free hand flying to her mouth.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Kendra had convinced herself that the Cursed posed no threat. Now what she was to do with him – that was another matter.

"So you're the Cursed," Kendra said thoughtfully. "That's either your name," Kendra hated to think of a mother who would so strongly dislike her child as to name him that, "or you're cursed. If you're cursed, why are you cursed? Who cursed you? What is the curse?" Kendra pondered these things aloud, but did not expect the dwarf to answer her. Apparently the only words he knew were "los malditos".

The dirty dwarf was exploring the cabin. Kendra couldn't help smiling at his childish fascination with the faucet. He looked absolutely ridiculous in his over-sized Hawaiian shirt and baggy khaki cargo shorts. She supposed she should be wary of someone who seemed to refer to themselves as the Cursed, but that was hard when that someone was so affable.

"The Cursed." The dwarf looked up at her, still grinning widely for no apparent reason.

This guy is the personification of cheerfulness. It was times like these that Kendra was sure that Imaginary Seth was her conscience and not her brother communicating with her telepathically. Seth couldn't have identified a literary device if one had jumped off of the page and slapped him across the face.

Needless to say, Kendra didn't find the thought of calling her new friend the Cursed. She needed to call him something.

"How about T.C.?" Kendra asked him. 'T.C.' nodded his consent, like he did with everything Kendra said. Kendra half smiled in amusement. "Well that settles it then. T.C." Kendra pointed at him.

"Los Malditos," he replied good naturedly.

"We'll work on it," Kendra assured him.

T.C. dropped to the floor slowly. He looked under her bed. He made a loud noise, a combination of a gasp and an exclamation. Kendra jumped over to the opposite side.

"What is it?" She leaned over the edge. T.C. popped up, and in his hands Kendra was utterly shocked to see a radio.

Kendra had checked under the bed before, hadn't she? Yes, she was certain she had. The radio had not been there then. Where had it come from? Was it a trick of Gavin's - or was it possibly the work of the wizard? Something Gavin had missed?

Kendra felt a little lighter. Not that a radio was extremely helpful to her situation, yet if the object had indeed slipped Gavin's notice - well, it was not a chink in his armor (in so many words), but it was something.

"Can I see it?" she asked, holding out her hands.

T.C. understood her intention. He carefully placed the radio in her hands, and went back to exploring the room. Kendra inspected the treasure.

It appeared to battery powered, no cord. She wouldn't think it worked except that the digital clock showed her the time. It read half past nine. Kendra had lost sense of time since she'd been held in captivity, and for all she knew it was half past nine. But it didn't show AM or PM.

The radio was medium sized, black, an older model of the C.D. player, which had no plug in for an auxiliary device, and still had a front pocket for cassette tapes. Kendra opened the cassette tape player and C.D. player but could find no medium for music. She looked under her bed, but found no other oddities. Disappointed, she went to tuck the radio back under the bed to find T.C.'s feet were in her way. Kendra looked up.

T.C. was still beaming, but the brightness was a little diffused by the concern in his eyes. Without a word, he lightly took the radio from Kendra's hands. Kendra followed him with her eyes, as he walked over to the counter where the sink was, and put the radio to the left of it.

Kendra sighed. "Okay T.C. you can keep it out. I guess Gavin already knows it's here anyway."

Gavin. What was she going to do about T.C. when Gavin came down to her again?

Kendra sat back up. "What am I going to do with you?" She pondered.

T.C. came over and stood in front of her. Kendra shrugged her shoulders. She needed to communicate with him in some way.

"You," Kendra pointed at him, (here T.C. nodded and said 'los malditos' several times) "need to hide." Kendra made like she was getting under the bed, gesturing to him, making motions like a box, hiding her face with her hands.

T.C. considered her with laughter in his eyes. He failed to indicate that he understood a word she was saying. Kendra gave up with a frustrated huff.

T.C. took a step back. He opened his arms wide. "Los maliditos," he said softly.

Kendra blinked. Her friend was gone.

Where T.C. had stood, there was a pile of clothes on the floor. Above that was a small brown bat hovering in the air. The bat flew up to Kendra's face. Beady black eyes regarded her with a profound ruefulness.

Understanding dawned on Kendra. "Oh, T.C."

She knew he wasn't a traditional vampire (for that matter, she didn't think he was a blix) because earlier he'd eagerly consumed some cold jerky from her mini-fridge. The dwarf was somehow cursed by being able to shape-shift into a bat.

T.C. changed back into himself. He was faster at it than Gavin. Kendra didn't even have time to register how he'd done it.

Kendra politely turned her face away while he put his clothes back on.

If he decides to put them back on, Imaginary Seth laughed lightly. Kendra adamantly hoped he would. Once she had given him ample opportunity to get dressed, she turned back around.

He was once again grinning like a fiend.

"Well that will come in handy." Kendra allowed, deliberating how to react. She closed her eyes to collect her thoughts. "That must be how you came in without him noticing."

The dwarf paid her little heed. He meandered aimlessly about the room, resuming his inspection of the cabin. Kendra contemplated the conundrum her companion posed. T.C.'s ability could help her find a way out of there. She'd need help though.

You would need an army! Maybe there's others like him. He could go rally his army of bats to come rescue you. Maybe you could get carried out of here on the backs of a thousand vampiric dwarves. That would be so awesome!

If there were others like T.C. wouldn't he have tried to speak to Kendra? Well, T.C. didn't speak, but still. It was just that, T.C. didn't strike her as a typically social creature.

No. Kendra suspected that he was her sole resource. It would be up to the two of them to get themselves out of the mess they were in. If only she could connect with him! She could convey the urgency of her situation, and ask for his help.

T.C. fumbled through the cabinets next in the kitchenette.

"Hmph!" she heard him grunt. Kendra watched him procure a dirty sheet of printer paper and a dusty pen. The fire flared in Kendra's soul.

"T.C! You are brilliant!" Kendra ran over to her dwarf friend, took the paper and pen from his hand and used the wall to begin writing.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

The Cursed closely watched the girl scribble on the paper. He had a bout of wariness succumb him. What the girl was doing, mumbling to herself and making a combination of smooth and short strokes, was suspicious in the Cursed's eyes. Only practitioners of enchantment - medicinal men, witches, shamans - were capable of drawing speech. They used these written languages to remember spells.

Surely the girl was not a witch? The Cursed felt his brain getting scrambled. All of these thoughts, reason mixed with memory, sprinkled with the dusty traces of prejudice. His daughter the innocent, his angelic child, morphed into the witch, the vile deviless. He leaned, clutching his sides, struggling to maintain control. Tears pooled in his eyes. A low whine escaped his lips.

The girl stopped writing. She was speaking in low pressing tremors to him; her small hands were rested on his shoulders. He looked into his daughter's eyes.

His breathing deepened. His shoulders fell. A solitary notion raised up clearly out of the fathoms of his mind. Redemption.

His smile returned to his face. Though it was forced, he could see it gave the girl relief. The Cursed had been easily distracted by the odds and ends of her room, forgetting that it was indeed a cage. He would do better from now on.

He would pay attention. He would be useful.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

T.C. had given Kendra quite the scare. She had been putting the finishing touches on her letter, writing her grandparents and her brother's contact information (she'd decided to go with Spanish because T.C. had made her think it might be the common tongue of the area), when T.C. took a turn for the worse. He was sweating, wheezing, moaning, short of breathe, his knobby knees shaking violently. Kendra, alarmed, had thought him ill.

"T.C.? What's wrong? Are you hurt? Is it that curse?" She asked, putting her hands on his shoulders to steady him.

T.C. looked into Kendra's eyes, and her questions died on the tip of her tongue. In one way he looked at her with a sort of pleading. In another way, he looked her with disgust and mistrust. If asked to explain how these two contrasting emotional states could inhabit one being so fiercely all at once, she could not have said. Nonetheless, there was doubt that either set was present in her newly found friend.

T.C. searched Kendra's eyes. She didn't dare speak. Since meeting him, Kendra had felt wary of him, then as though he was harmless. Now, she was somewhat frightened. He was obviously far stronger than she was. She felt if she provoked him he could crush her in an instant.

T.C. did not harm Kendra. In fact, the strange fit was over in instant. He recovered his jovial smile and the radiant glint returned to his eyes. Kendra stared at him for bit, trying to make something of what had happened. T.C. seemed so happy again, it was almost as though she'd imagined the episode.

Maybe he's Bipolar. A vampiric, albino, indian, bipolar dwarf.

There were so many things wrong with that analysis, that Kendra didn't even know where to begin.

Kendra considered if she should truly be placing what may be her one lifeline to the outside world in such volatile hands. What other choice did she have?

None.

"Okay T.C.," Kendra addressed him, though he was still staring at her. "Me." She poked her own chest. "This is me." She held up her thumb, gesturing back and forth several times. T.C. did not nod. He did not smile, so much as he did grimace. But his eyes betrayed a keen interest in her show.

"Trapped." Kendra enclosed her thumb behind her fingers. "Trapped," she repeated.

"You." Kendra pointed at T.C. "Los Malditos." His eyebrows raised. Kendra twisted her fingers on her other hand to look like a bat. She placed it next to the Kendra-thumb in the finger-cage. "You fly away from me." Demonstrated thusly. She repositioned the Kendra cage to a free standing thumb. "Get help." She enacted the bat hand dragging the thumb then made the Kendra in the finger cage reappear.

She repeated this several times, in both English and Spanish, until T.C. began to nod as though he understood. Of course, T.C. nodded almost every time Kendra spoke, so there was a distinct possibility he hadn't the slightest notion of what she was trying to convey. "Here." Kendra folded the paper and tried to hand it to T.C, but he shook his head no, drawing back his hands.

Kendra blinked. T.C. bat version flapped mid-air in front of Kendra's face. Kendra, understanding, rolled the folded note. She looked around for something that she could use to tie the paper with. Seeing nothing, she pulled three strands of her hair out of her head, with a slight yelp. She twisted them together.

Carefully, she tied the paper, as tight as she dared, to one of T.C.'s furry little feet.

"There," she said pulling back. "I'm done." She bit her bottom lip. "I hope you know what you're doing. You may never come back, I suppose. Well, regardless, I'm glad to have met you T.C. You've been good company. I hope we see each other soon." She reached out her pointer finger slowly. T.C. did not flinch as she gently stroked his back. He waited until she was done.

Kendra went up the stairs, clenching her teeth with the cacophony that sounded off as she ascended. She opened the lid using the technique she had discovered previously. Sairon Mirmia's emergency escape.

The entrance to the cabin opened quietly. T.C. darted out with the swiftness of a pint-sized, resolute bird. Kendra closed the lid with a prayer that nothing ill-fated would happen to her messenger. Most of all, she prayed he would fulfill his mission.