AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Okay,” I said. “So then—”
“I really do have to go now,” Belinda said. “Dom knows how to get in touch with me if you need something. That rich idiot makes it hard to hide from him.”
“Tell me about it. Then again,” I said wryly, “you could always give him a potion to make him lost indefinitely. Then he wouldn’t be able to find his own toothbrush.”
Belinda looked a bit sheepish. “I’d apologize for hexing you, but it was for a good cause.”
I didn’t get to ask what the cause was because Belinda had already pulled out a vial of pixie dust and was in the process of fiddling the cap off, presumably to get started on her trek to Egypt.
While she fiddled with the pesky vial full of unstable pixie dust, something caught my eye. An aura, but this one was different. It was a shade of red that felt like an alarm to me. It was tucked under an elephant-ear sized leaf, the aura radiating out beneath it like a gentle glow from one of the more obscure garden beds in Le Jardín.
“Plants don’t have auras, right?” I muttered to Belinda. “So why is there an aura seeping out of the garden bed?”
I knelt, noting that Belinda’s hands stilled on the vial as she watched me. Brushing the massive shiny green leaf aside, I found a small garden gnome statue tipped on its side. It looked old, as if it’d been here awhile, possibly swept under this leaf and forgotten about for years. It was half submerged in the dirt with only its eyes and nose visible.
“That’s weird,” I said, digging the stone statue out and setting him upright on the path. “Do you see what I’m seeing?”
Belinda licked her lips. “Inanimate objects don’t have auras either.”
“I know,” I said, then realizing what that meant, I repeated, “Belinda, could this be an actual gnome?”
“The aura is so faint for me, it’s hard to say. What do you see?”
“Alarm-red is what came to mind,” I said. “I didn’t really decide on that as a color, it just popped into my head.”
Belinda looked unsettled, her hands still holding the pixie dust vial before her as if she’d forgotten about it completely.
“There’s one way to check. The spell you’re looking for is Libertia. If you feel comfortable trying it.”
“Libertia? What does it do?”
“It frees someone who’s been frozen. Cursed,” Belinda said, her voice quiet and uncertain. “You won’t know for sure if it works unless you try it.”
“Can you do it?”
“I can.”
I shivered. “But you think I should do it.”
Belinda inclined her head.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and let instinct take over. I rested a hand gently on the gnome’s head. Then I whispered, “Libertia.”
The only way I could describe the feeling of the spell initiating was like a river of hot chocolate running through my blood. Warm, sweet, familiar. A cozy, welcome sensation, not unlike the feeling of slipping into an old sweater on a crisp autumn day. It brought up good thoughts, good feelings. There was nothing remotely alarming or frightening about the magic this time around.
I opened my eyes, saw my hands glowing—not with the threatening, blinding white light of unbridled magic, but a nice, warm yellow. Gentle, seeping into the garden gnome. The light transferred from my hands to the stone of the statue, causing bright fissures in the rock, like lava draining down the side of a volcano.
Something sparked, and a loud crack echoed as the gnome’s exterior split in two. My heart raced, and I worried I’d gotten things all wrong.
Then the gnome began to grow in size. He grew and grew until he was approximately three and a half feet tall and very round. His cheeks turned ruddy and red, his exterior changing to skin instead of stone. His rock shoes turned into real leather boots. The hat perched on his head turned into a real top hat that blew off in the breeze.
“About damn time,” the gnome muttered, turning to me, his eyes bloodshot.
“Excuse me?” I muttered, stumbling back.
“Been cursed since 1852. What year is it?”
“I’m a little afraid to tell you,” I mumbled back. “Maybe you can just Google it.”
