Crescent Moon Lake in Ghost Horse Hollow

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 fourteen-year-old now faced a very different kind of test, should she possessed the courage to continue. Sir Finnias was stretching her boundaries beyond the family homestead, but Panther was ready for the future.

“I have no idea why the Starlight Fairy Queen assigned you such a ridiculously ferocious totem in her ceremony under the sycamore trees,” Glowgold rattled on. “I certainly would have chosen a more ladylike guardian.”

“I like the nickname Panther, and everyone else does too!” The girl with the dark honey hair opened her hazel eyes and glared at her mentor.

“Don’t look at me like that. You grow more and more like your mother every day, full of independent notions and rebellion. I shall always refer to you as Miss Genevieve.” Glowgold dismissed the girl’s protest by dusting off his gilded waistcoat and adjusting his wavy powdered wig. “As I was saying,” he continued briskly, “Wind-sight requires utmost mental control. Once more, if you please, from the beginning. Close your eyes and tell me what you see!”

Dink! Dink! Zwink!

Sir Finnias Glowg

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