A crinkling sound coming from beside me caught my attention. I sighed as I noticed that a tree branch less than a foot away from me was covered in brown leaves.
Frustrated, I turned the other direction, trying to think of happier things.
The Ackon River flowed down the mountain. It would take about two more days until we arrived, and it'd only been three weeks since we started our move, but it felt like the whole ordeal was years long.
The trees swayed in the cool breeze as if they were dancing to a song. They seemed happy.
My mind spun from subject to subject. My mother, shrinking, Cleo, my father, the move . . . When I'd gotten tired of those subjects, I walked back to my tent and buried myself in a book. Reading was always my number one go-to when it came to escaping the real world.
I'd probably sat there, indulging myself in story, for about half an hour when a flash of white light interrupted me. A groan came from the opposite corner of my tent.
Slowly, I closed my book, placing it on the floor beside me. Part of me knew what had happened, but the other part refused to believe it.
Rubbing my eyes, I looked toward the corner. Not a bone in my body was shocked about the scene. After what had happened the day before, nothing seemed shocking. Instead, I sighed at the sight of the girl in front of me. Lindsay stood in my tent, in Upperlander form.
"EarthWorms . . ." she muttered over and over, turning around in circles and getting louder as she seemed to grasp her situation. She kept looking about the tent as if it were an entirely different universe than the one she'd been in a few minutes before.
I pursed my lips as I got up off the floor, nodding to nothing in particular. First changes in size, then teleportation and changes in size.
"Our lives are never going to go back to normal, are they?" Lindsay whispered, the horror showing in her face.
"Every little event will change your life. Whether it be for better or for worse is for you to decide." I mumbled a quote that one of my private teachers had shared with me.
"You call this little?" She gestured to herself, then to the tent around her. Her voice stayed quiet and steady, but her fear was evident.
A smile spread across my face and, no matter how hard I tried not to, a small laugh escaped my lips. Lindsay shot me a questioning look.
"What's funny?"
"A Minniemon just said little!" I laughed harder. She frowned at my lack of seriousness. It was funny, though! A Minniemon who had just supernaturally changed to an Upperlander size, and she said the word little! I laughed some more.
She stood there, arms crossed until I was done with my outburst.
"My apologies." I took a deep breath. "It was just so funny!"
"Yeah. Funny. Sure." She rolled her eyes. "We have more important things to focus on."
Straightening my posture, I gave her one more half-smile, then dropped the subject altogether. She was right. We did have something more important to focus on.
"Let's look at what we know," I started. "We've both changed to the opposite's size now, first me, then you. We met yesterday under . . . normal circumstances? You somehow just, well, teleported, I guess? over here. And we have no idea what to do." I winced at how hopeless it sounded when I put it that way. Without an idea of what to do, we couldn't really do anything.
Lindsay rubbed her eyes, stifling back a small yawn. This only reminded me of how tired I was. Two nights of horrible sleep taunted at my eye lids. And, if history repeated itself, I was probably going to have another night of bad sleep. We'd be rolling around in our beds again if we couldn’t fix whatever this magic was.
Suddenly, my mind put two and two together, and before I could fully process anything, I was talking.
"You didn't happen to wake up with a fever the other day, right?" I asked slowly, staring at the floor.
"How'd you know?" The shock showed plainly in her voice.
"I knew . . . because I had one too," I whispered and looked up at her. This was some kind of a breakthrough, right?
She raised her eyebrows, muttering something under her breath.
"This didn't start when you saved me. Whatever it is started before we’d ever met."
Another burst of white light flashed in our vision. I clutched my stomach, groaning at the unexpected pain.
Chapter 7
Life or Death?
"OH, COME ON!" LINDSAY threw back her head, running her hand through her thick brown hair. "You've got to be kidding me," she whined as I noticed that we'd shrunk again.
I glanced around the tent that had seemed much smaller just a moment before. Why did this keep happening?
Before I had time to process the whole of it, footsteps caught our attention. Lindsay, having more instinct in Minniemon form than me, immediately started running to the edge of the tent. I stood there for another few seconds, not seeing any danger . . . until Lindsay pointed it out.
"Hide!" she half screamed at me.
That's when I realized that an Upperlander, such as myself, would be a threat when I was in that position. A very major threat. I darted over toward Lindsay just before a man opened the tent flap.
"Mr. Krolav? The chief wishes to see you," he summoned, glancing about the room. Lindsay and I held our breath, pushing ourselves against the side of the tent, and willed him not to look down.
After a moment of searching the room, the hailer left, and I let out my breath in a relieved sigh.
Lindsay muttered something, obviously frustrated. I was about to speak when my father's voice caught my ear.
"What did they say?" he half-whispered gruffly.
"The village doesn't care, sir. Ridding the Minniemons won't affect anything anyway," another voice responded.
"It will provide more space. Besides, we won't need them by the time we have built a home at Ackon. They've helped us survive the last few centuries, but now that we're going to live in a lusher environment, we won't need their plant-whispering," my father said flatly.
"But, sir, with all due respect, I do believe the Minniemons will prove useful to us in the future. What if the river were to run dry? Our crops would die and the people would thirst!" the other man argued.
"Ackon River hasn't run dry in over two hundred years. We won't need their help again. You are excused, Hanley." My father's voice grew cold and stern, and the other man left without a word.
Before I could fully comprehend their conversation, a dreaded flash of white light blinded my vision.
A split second later I sat in the middle of the tent in my normal form. Lindsay stayed the same, though, and seemed more than horrified with this entire situation.
Slowly, I bent down to her and held out my hand. She hesitated a few moments, then reluctantly climbed on. As gently as I could, I walked her out of the tent. Thankfully my father had sat down with some paperwork and other things, so he wasn't a problem on the way out.
Judging by the look in Lindsay's eyes, she had more than enough to say. Unfortunately, she didn't have anyone to talk to. An Upperlander couldn't hear a Minniemon because their mouths were so small. In fact, I had no idea they were so intelligent until the day before, simply because of the lack of communication.
As soon as I'd come to a reasonable distance from Lindsay's camp, I set her on the ground, but she refused to go, so I sat and watched for a moment as she paced, seemingly deep in thought. It became obvious she was having an inner debate as she paced faster and faster. Finally, she stopped dead in her tracks and turned to me. Just as the day before, she placed her tiny hand on my finger, and white light again blocked my vision. I groaned, clutching my stomach.