Chapter 5: The Keys

           That night, I woke to Aunt Helena vigorously shaking me.”What!?” I demanded, sitting up. The lights in the room were on and Aunt Helena was sitting on my bed, a horrified look on her face.

            “Where’s your sister? Where’s Sylvia?” She screamed at me.

            Panicking, I looked to see Sylvia’s bed. It was empty. Yesterday’s events came flooding back. Fairy rings, the argument, the empty room when I came back, me falling asleep, assuming Sylvia would come back later. Aunt Helena continued to screech at me, which jarred me out of memory lane. “CALM DOWN!!!” I screamed back my Aunt. She froze.

            “Where’s your sister, Evelyn?” she whispered, now that everything had gotten quiet.

            “I don’t know…assumed she would be back…the book…fairy rings…fight,” I whispered, zooming through all of the details with no particular out of order.

            Aunt Helena seemed to realize that I was panicking. “Shhh,” she said, and then a little louder, “Slow down and tell me what happened.”

            Slowly, I told her about the book and our argument and about the color red and the fairies. I told her everything.

|***|

            Aunt Helena closed her eyes and breathed in and out. She had been doing this for 5 minutes now. “I haven’t been very truthful, have I?” she whispered, finally breaking the silence.

            “I guess not,” I answered, “But what about Sylvia? What happened?”

            “Judging from what you told me about Sylvia and her interest in the fairy rings, she could be in grave danger.” Her face darkened, and she frowned.

            “Danger?” I repeated, “But-I though fairies were nice! Y’know like those fairies in the little girls books…”

            Aunt was slowly shaking her head. “Real fairies are much, much, worse.”

            I opened my mouth to speak, but Aunt Helena put a finger to her lips.

            “It’s almost midnight. If she stands in a fairy ring at 12:00, she will be cursed to dance forever with the fairies…until she dies.”

            “Really?” I asked, this seemed a little extreme.

            “Don’t take me for a fool, if you don’t want to come, then don’t!”

            “I’m coming.”

            We rushed out into the night.

|***|

            I panted heavily. “How do you even know where she is?” I asked, huffing.

            “She should be somewhere!” Aunt yelled back. “Sylvia!” She screamed into the night.

            I checked my watch. It read 11:55 against the glowing green background. “Aunt!” I cried, “The time!”

            Just then we heard a piercing scream. “EVELYN!!!”

            “Sylvia?” I panicked, running towards her voice, not even making sure that Aunt was following me. “SYLVIA!” I picked up my speed, running faster and faster. My foot suddenly caught on a root and I went flying forward. My mouth open, I hurtled into the ground.

            Spitting out a mouthful of dirt, I looked up to see my sister reaching out to me with an outstretched hand. She stood in the center of toadstools, but she wasn’t dancing like Aunt said she would be, she looked frozen.

I reached out to her, my hand trembling, I longed to go over and just pull her out from the circle, but my legs wouldn’t move.  I was frozen too. Frozen. Just like Sylvia.

Frozen in time.

I tried to scream out, but I couldn’t. My eyes couldn’t dart around. Instead, they were glued to Sylvia’s screaming face. Time stretched out like space. It went on for what seemed like forever.

In the space of the moment, three things happened.

The first thing was that five, foot tall colorfully dressed midgets with wings stepped out of nowhere. The second thing was that four of them started to drag Sylvia back into the darkness. Suddenly, she was unfrozen. She screamed out and thrashed about. But the creatures had iron grips on her. Slowly, silently, they backed into the darkness, their bright red eyes like daggers, piercing right through my skin. I couldn’t move.

The third and most frightening thing that happened was that the fifth winged creature, all dressed in gold and silver, walked up to me, and whispered in my ear:

“Your precious twin sister is now ours.” I gasped. Twin sister? Sylvia was nowhere near me in looks or age. How in the world could we be twins?” The person sighed as I snapped back to reality. “Surprised, huh? Guess it deceived even you…” he grinned, “Well, as I was saying, I would take you too, right now, but-“ he sighed, “the master enjoys a good show, so I suppose I’ll send you on a little journey.

Smirking, the person held up five different colored keys. “The keys of Elen,” he pointed to each of the keys, giving them names. “The key of Sadness, Regret, Anger, Revenge, and Pain.”

Weirdly enough, as the winged person read out the keys’ names, I felt a pang of shock as I felt the emotions mentioned whirling through me. My eyelids began to droop, and I felt myself getting dizzy and sleepy. The world went sideways and a voice whispered in my ear:

“Find all five, and we might just give your sister back… just maybe…” The voice snickered, and then everything went black.