The Girl with a Lion Mane- 1.1

One

            Under the shade of a jiving ash tree in the middle of August, the 15^th to be exact, Millicent dreams of flying. The time is approximately 7:26 in the evening, and although she knows her father will be angry, she stays still and tugs on the parched grass around her, pulling it out chunk by chunk. She closes her eyes and envisions endless blue all around her, feels the crushing force of the air as she zips through, over the gray landscape of Kansas City, into the fields and rolling hills to the west. She dreams of racing geese and diving down toward the ground for the sheer thrill, and for scaring the locals.

            But Millicent, or Mills as she prefers you call her (because Millicent sounds like a great-grandma sort of name), knows that people cannot fly. And even if she were possessed with that sort of power, her father would undoubtedly remind her that such a thing is a waste of time. He’s all about the academics, you see. He’s all about seeing Mills gets straight A’s—which will never happen—and making sure her only distraction is being a normal child. But what’s wrong with a little adventure? That’s what she asks him and he never responds. Poor Mills has never been on a true adventure in her great ten-year-old life, and it troubles her profusely.

            And in two days her glorious summer of abounding possibilities will officially end with no adventure, no excitement other than playing video games with the crusty Perkins kids and sitting through piano lessons with Fergus. That’s an atrocity if you ask me, Art. That’s a waste of a summer, surely it is. A certain someone else agrees with me.

          “You’d like to fly, eh? And what makes you think flying is so marvelous, so hogwashy picky-packy dandy, girl?”

            Mills jumps half a foot in the air and hits her head against the tree, like any person would when a creepy voice like that comes out of a tree. She looks around, nothing. It must be the heat, she thinks, because there’s silence for a second. It is ninety-five degrees out, isn’t it? She lies back down and closes her eyes.

            “Are you deaf? I could hear your thoughts miles away and had to come, but don’t tell me now you’re deaf.”

            “Who are you?” Mills demands, keeping her eyes sealed and pointing a finger at something, whatever it is.

            “You never answered my first question. Until then I will offer up no answers,” sniffed the low, crackly voice.

            “Oh, right. What did you ask again?”

            “I asked what makes you think flying is so marvelous, so…”

            “Right, right.”

            Finally she opens her eyes, because why answer a question to a faceless something? Mills likes to know who she’s talking to when she’s talking.

            “Gah! What are you?” she shrieks.

The thing has floated down to face her, hovering just a bit too close for comfort.

            “No answers! Not until you answer me, girl. My, your ears are far too small, practically gone underneath that awful deluge of curls, no wonder.”

            You see, Mills is quite so disheveled because the thing facing her, floating just two feet above the ground, is what looks like a diseased, pot-bellied fox with a huge crooked tail. His ears, black and occasionally missing patches of fur, are each a foot long, but his body is no more than two-foot-four in all. His eyes are black with tiny yellow irises, his eyebrows thick and long, and his mouth a devilish smirk with one chipped tooth sticking out near the back.

            “Well,” Mills stutters and stumbles over words. “Well why wouldn’t flying be fun, you tell me that? Soaring through the sky without fences or roads, dropping garbage on whoever you’d like, freaking out the birds, messing with people’s heads.”

            “I’d say the birds wouldn’t be so freaked out. And clever, Mills, very clever giving me a question for an answer. Now we are entangled in a mess of queries.”

            “Wait, how do you know my name?”

            “Now, now, you’re going to overwhelm me. Let’s start from the beginning. I am Mr. Hu, and I am a Festerfox sprite. Flying is no fun and ficky charade of tomfoolery; it’s getting bugs up your noses and bird dung in your fur and its four times as exhausting as walking or running.”

            “But I don’t have any fur-,“

            “Let me finish girl! One more answer. I know your name because I know all names and know all faces. It is one of the many great powers of the Festerfox.”

            “Wonderful. And you can read minds too. Now why are you here? I was just minding my own business, not asking to be harassed by some freakish monster-thing. I’m not even sure I believe what’s going on. I still think I’m just hallucinating.”

            And for the first time, Mr. Hu does not answer. He snickers, exposing more chipped, yellowed teeth, and takes Mills’s arm into his grimy cracker-sized paws.

            “You wanted an adventure, let’s go on one.”

            Who knows how he can hold her weight, but he hoists her up into the air and they’re ascending. As they rise, her right wrist starts to burn furiously and she doesn’t know why. Not to mention her feet start to tingle and she smells something like gingerbread and licorice, which certainly doesn’t originate from the lovely Mr. Hu.

            “No!” she yells, squirming in the sprite’s little hands.

            “Where are we off to?”

            “Let me down! You’re going to kill me!”

            “But of course I don’t want that. That’s certainly not what I want at all,” he said with a raspy chortle. “I’d be in a trite bit of trouble if I got you killed.”

            Finally she wrestles herself free and is released. After falling ten feet onto the scratchy field she thinks maybe there was a better way of getting down, and her skull would be a lot less angry if she had. Mr. Hu is looking irate and swoops down toward her.

            “Well suit yourself. I’ve done my part,” he rattles. Mills is about to retort when the thing just evaporates. Just as he’s almost disappeared, he condenses into a tiny speck and SWISH, gone.

            Now mind you, Mills is mighty confused, mighty sore from her fall, and mighty upset at the thing’s pure lack of cordiality. She sits there, under the jiving ash tree for twelve minutes, taking deep breaths to slow her tittering heart, and massaging the knot behind her left ear. The sun’s just getting behind the line of trees and now she really must get home, if not to prevent a reprimand, to share with her father this horrific tale.

            And so Mills stands up, straightens her dirt-covered clothes, and mounts her bike to get back home. It takes a good seventeen minutes, even with her pedaling faster than ever she has, and she’s practically collapsing when she reaches her door. Just as she enters and is about to call out for her dad she sees him straight in front of her, and he’s not alone. He’s talking heatedly to an impish girl with flaming hair. They stop talking. They look at her and for a moment it’s quiet. Then the weird little thing bounds up to Mills with an airless sort of waltz and holds out her hand.

“Millicent, a pleasure to meet you. Biddy Brennan. I will be your new mentor as you make your transition. Welcome to the delightful world of the Qimunu.”

A/N: This is a very very rough work so far. Please let me know what you think! Be brutal. Also, I mentioned last time that this is an illustrated work, in fact reliant on images to carry certain parts of the story. However, I'm a bit hesitant to post my illustrations here, so for now, just text. :)