Enchantment is a tricky thing, even annoying at times, especially when a fairy wand is jabbing you in the
forehead.
Dwoink!
“Ouch! You’re hurting me!”
Genevieve MacKennon bristled, while keeping her eyes obediently shut.
Plink! Ploink!
Thwink!
“Concentrate, Miss Genevieve. Use your mind to see,
not your eyes. No peeking as I circle around your head.”
“Sir Finnias Glowgold, you are
the best magical tutor a girl could ask for, not to mention a superior Household Light Fairy, but must you keep poking me
with your dogwood twig?”
“I am trying to teach you a very important skill. Wind-sight is hardly
a beginner’s subject. Now, tell me what you see, what you feel, while traveling outside your body. Don’t look
down right away! One fairy apprentice threw up the first time I taught her this lesson, but that was long, long ago and far
away from these blue mountains,” Glowgold trailed off regretfully.
“Oh, ALL RIGHT! But please
stop calling me ‘Miss Genevieve.’ Everyone in Ghost Horse Hollow calls me Panther—except for you
and Black Bottom the Rooster, who hates cats.”
The
girl stood blindly before the window, with her muddy, calf-hugging riding boots planted on the floor. With the stance of an
athlete, she focused on the only sound in the room: the steady thrum, thrum, thrumming of a four-inch pair of wings alongside
her head. Having aced her latest exams with her usual attention to detail, this thirteen-year-old now faced
a very different kind of test … if she possessed the courage to continue. Sir Finnias was stretching her boundaries
beyond the family homestead, and she knew it; but Panther was ready for the future.
