Wool of the Prince-- Chapter 58

~1,065 words

Jay opened his eyes, dizzy. He was back on the chaise longue. The night sky, stars like diamonds spilled on a midnight blue velvet swath twinkled above him. Next to him, Shep, Fleta, Marc, Gilfred, and Godfrey had all fallen on the ground, their eyes closed. Jay noticed the Enchantress watching him coolly.

“That was pretty fast,” she said, nodding. “Good job.”

Fighting past his vertigo, Jay squeaked out, “What was all that about?”

“I was testing your character. When I first met you, on the train to Trevon, you were a spineless, untrusting weakling.” Jay bristled at these insults, but she went on. “I was seeing if you were still that way. And apparently you’re not. This makes me very happy.” She beamed at the still-bewildered Jay.

“Wait, you met me on the train?” His head was beginning to pound.

“The train conductor who threw you into the ocean? That was me in disguise,” she giggled. “Pretty good huh?”

Jay just stared at the Enchantress in bewilderment, and she stared back at him with her bright green eyes. There was a sound like gasping, and Fleta sat up, flailing her arms around. She blinked a couple times in the faint moonlight, then groaned.

“What happened?” she asked, sounding very unamused.

“I was testing you, dearie,” the Enchantress lilted. Jay expected her to go over everything she thought Fleta had lacked in the beginning, but she didn’t. Nor did she do this for any of the others when they eventually woke up.

Marc was the last one awake. After they had all been chatting for a while with the Enchantress—who was much more pleasant, now that she had tested them all—when Jay wondered aloud when Marc would wake up from his simulation. The Enchantress looked puzzled at this.

“He’s been out of his simulation for quite a while, but instead of getting up and groaning like the rest of you, he promptly fell asleep.” At this, she laughed. “He had quite the difficult simulation. He had many flaws to work through. I daresay he ended up quite exhausted from it.”

“Not to mention it’s really late,” grumbled Godfrey.

The Enchantress glanced at the sky as if she had never entertained the possibility that dawn would soon be breaking and the group before her had been awake for almost an entire day. “Right, right,” she breezed. “You all should get some sleep.” She waved her hand in a complex gesture.

Jay found himself in a small room with a tatty four-poster bed dominating most of the space. He kicked off his shoes which felt crusted to his feet and collapsed into the plushy bed, which received him willingly.

---

It was after noon when Jay woke up. He opened the wooden door, wondering where it would lead. The answer was unimpressive. It opened to a dark stone passage way. He could turn left or right. Seeing nothing down either direction, Jay arbitrarily chose left, wondering if it would lead him to the Enchantress and the rest.

He wandered around what he had determined was a castle, listening to his stomach growl. Eventually he found where he needed to go. Not because he opened the right door, no. Because he stumbled upon a gaping hole in the wall that led out into the courtyard they had been in last night. Fleta, and the Enchantress were already out there. Shep, Marc and the trolls were nowhere to be seen.

“I’ve kept myself busy,” the Enchantress was saying. “There’s always weeding to be done, washing, dusting…”

“Can’t you do those things with magic?” Fleta asked. Jay silently joined the ladies. They were sitting at a low tabled arrayed with bowls full of berries and nuts. There was a teapot filled with a sort of warm kind of fruitwash.

The Enchantress made a sort of grunt. “There’s only so much you should do with magic. If you don’t do simple tasks the normal way, you end up with several problems. First, you get fat and lazy. I have to keep my physique, you know? Secondly, if you do everything with magic, you have so much time left in the day. I wouldn’t know what to do with that time, and I‘d probably end up just magic-ing the extra time away. Then I’d just end up magic-ing through my whole life, and I’d end up doing nothing. Third, there are certain laws and limitations of magic that are too persnickety to get into.” She sniffed.

“But you did simple things with magic before!” Fleta insisted. “I saw you flare your skirts out that one time. You thought no one would notice you were using magic, but I did.”

“Ah, those things are to be dramatic—to make an impression. Impressions are very important, dear.” The Enchantress winked and smiled knowingly at Fleta, who blushed.

Hurriedly changing the subject, Fleta asked, “So Jay, what did you have to do in your simulation? The Enchantress told me it was different for everyone.”

The Enchantress puffed up. “I’d been working on those simulations for quite a while. It’s no small task to make it seamless like you all experienced it.”

Jay briefly explained how he had found himself at home, thought his time in Trevon had been a dream, and then been sucked into a video game where he had had to jump for seemingly hours. Then, at the top, he had met none other than Cabot. The Enchantress grinned at that.

“Yeah, I stuffed Cabot into your simulation for kicks and giggles,” she said, laughing still.

“Ooh, how is that old redcape?” asked Fleta ferociously. “Let me guess, he tried to kill you, or kidnap you or hit your forehead in with a brick.”

“Actually, nothing of the sort. At first, we talked a bit. He’s working for Salim now. Then we had to save each other’s lives. Well, he mostly saved mine,” Jay admitted.

Fleta’s eyebrows arched. “Really? He sounds pretty decent then.”

He nodded. “How about you, Fleta?”

“Well,” she began, but stopped, her eyes widening at something to Jay’s left.

A young man stood, his dirty blond hair mussed from sleep, his smile rakish, and his steely eyes age-old.

“Ato!” Fleta yelped, jumping up to embrace the man.

As the two embraced, Jay grinned at the young man. A young Shep—for that’s who he was—grinned back.