Freiyon Fables: The Rochester Runes

Sarah nodded carefully and started to try and explain everything as best as she could, with Charles intervening when he needed to, although neither of them seemed to realize that Robert, the entire time, was still convinced that everything that was happening to them and him was a crazy nightmare.

None of them had any idea that while they were doing this, Chief Jay Witt was at the kids’ grandparents’ new home, trying to get information from the grandparents in a calm way.

“Mister Rochester, I am terribly sorry to come to you at a terrible time like this, but I am investigating into the car-bomb your daughter was involved in. I was wondering if I could ask you some questions.”

Grandfather Rochester folded his arms at Chief Witt unhappily. “Our daughter was almost killed, and you think we might have something to do with it?”

“It’s nothing like that, Mister Rochester. I just want to know a few things. Firstly, do you know of anyone that might want to hurt your daughter?”

Grandmother Rochester sniffed. “Oh no, Inspector, Mary was the nicest lady any ever met. I can’t think of anyone who would want to hurt her.”

“With all due respect, Miss Rochester, I know other parents like you who say the same thing about their kids, but it is always worse than they expect.”

“Well not this time.”

Jay nodded, thinking what to ask next. “Understood, Mister Rochester. Now, did your family have any connection with magic business? An angry fortune-teller incident perhaps?”

“Why would you want to know that? No, Mary didn’t believe in that and neither did the rest of our family.”

“Well, that’s not completely true Alice.”

Jay and Grandmother Rochester turned to Grandfather Rochester.

“I have to tell you about the Rochester curse. That might be what’s behind this.”

When Nicole had fully healed Robert’s wound and he was well enough to travel by himself, Nicole informed the children of something that may help. “I have made a map of this world, known as Freiyon, since I found myself here quite by mistake. But I didn’t want anyone evil to find the map and discover the secrets of the land so I buried it near a river. That same river that you first crossed to get to here, in fact. If you find that map, you may be able to explore further along Freiyon a bit easier. But I’m afraid Nathaniel and I can’t go with you to it. We need to stay here and take care of the rest of Nathaniel’s family. You might not hear them, but there’s a whole collection of kid meerkats running around deeper in the cave beneath this bush. We don’t go up above ground much. I think you may see why.” Charles nodded, completely understanding. Robert, Sarah and Charles went to leave the hidden tunnel within the bush that Nicole had called home and Nicole and Nathaniel waved to them. “Take care, you three! I do hope we meet again!” Nathaniel cheered happily.

“Don’t take too many risks unless you ABSOLUTELY have to!” Nicole warned, like a mother would. The kids kept walking, waving back to the two helpful meerkats as they made their way back to the river.

“Alright, now we have to look for where Nicole hid the map and that should help us get to each stone.” Charles explained.

“How can you be so certain?” Sarah asked.

“Don’t you trust those two? They helped us after all! Robert is healed and I’ve got energy now thanks to them!” Charles grumbled. Sarah looked suspicious.

“What if it’s a trap? How do we know that we can trust anything in this world? It could be full of dangers just like that evil sentient tree. In fact, how do we even know if they were not the ones that sent those strange robotic soldiers after us?!”

Sarah pointed out as they came to a stop on the other side of the river. Robert noticed, for the first time than, a small mound of dirt that seemed a bit suspicious at least 3 feet to the west of the bridge, on their side of the river. He pointed that out to Charles, and Charles immediately grabbed a heavy, strong piece of bark and then ran back to the mound and started digging like mad. The piece of bark made a perfect replacement for a shovel and soon Charles heard a thump against something harder. He wiped away the dirt and saw he was looking at a chest.

“This must be it! Good spotting, Robert!” Charles smiled at his brother.

Charles threw the chest out of the hole and Robert and Sarah opened up the chest while Charles filled the hole back up with dirt.

His eyes lit up in excitement again. “It’s the map! I can see words on the top! ‘The World of Freiyon’. Nicole was correct!”

He studied the map carefully and gasped when he noticed something quite fascinating, but good.

He placed the map into his bag and then he turned to his brother and sister and smiled. “I think I know where to find the next stone now. We’re going for a little swim.”

And without another word, he strapped his bag shut, jumped high into the air and dived right into the river.

Sarah and Robert stared at each-other and shrugged.

“For the record, I blame you for this.” Sarah whined, before jumping in after Charles. Robert raised his eyes in surprise, but then shrugged again and jumped in too.

Inside the water, the kids could see quite clearly. Fish swum past, startled to see humans in their river. And most rewarding of it all was the coral and plants they could see. For a river, it sure went down deep!

Charles pointed towards a cave that looked like a dinosaur’s mouth and started swimming towards it. It didn’t take long before Sarah let out a startled water filled scream. Charles and Robert turned to her, wondering what was wrong, and saw she was pointing at Charles’ legs. He looked down at them and yelped.

His legs had become flippers! He was turning into a mer-person!

And by the looks of things, when he pointed at Robert and Sarah in panic too, the same thing was happening!

Sarah tried to speak first, and found she could. “How is this happening?”

Charles shrugged. “Must be something in the water that turns humans into mer-people. I think it’s meant to make it easier for us to find the stone… WATCH OUT!”

Charles swam over quickly and grabbed Sarah and Robert, dragging them down just before a freakish creature gobbled them up in their mouths.

Charles looked back up at the creature and saw there were more of them coming.

“Quick, down to the cave!”

They swam down quickly to the dinosaur-mouthed cave and turned back to the creatures.

“Now what?” Robert asked.

Charles tried to remember what he had seen on the map. These creatures were definitely going to kill the kids if they weren’t quick in getting the stone.

The beasts charged at the cave mouth and the kids swam down into the cave, not daring to turn back.

Charles was ahead of his brother and sister when he suddenly felt his shoulders being pulled to the right rather hard.

Sarah and Robert thought he was turning, so they followed him into a smaller cave that quickly turned into a tunnel that the strange creatures couldn’t fit in.

Robert and Sarah turned around to see this, but they could see Charles was still going, being pulled by ... well ... something, but they didn’t know what.

Catching up to Charles, they were surprised to see that they had come into a third cave with heaps more light then it should have had. The reason for that was the same light that had accompanied the first rune stone was shining from the second rune stone that was positioned right in the middle of the cave, tied to a stake that had a small flower springing above it.

Charles stopped as quickly as he had started and spun around to look at the stone.

Robert went to grab the stone. “There’s too much light coming from it to see what the letter is this time. There’s nothing stopping us getting it though, so let’s ... Hey, watch it Charley…” He started to say.

Charles kept his brother away from the stone with his left hand.

“Something isn’t right about this.” Charles noted, with a warning.

He picked up a bundle of rocks and pushed them (you can’t really throw things in water) so that they could end up landing on the flower and beneath the stake.

He quickly swam back to where he had been before and waited to see what would happen.

It didn’t take long, because the only rock that touched the flower made the flower shudder, and then something shot out from the tip of the stake, cracking through the cave roof. The kids heard one of the creatures that had been chasing them earlier scream shortly and then fall on top of the cave roof.

Charles fixed his glasses back onto his face, trying to figure out what to do.

“That was a killing laser, wasn’t it?” Sarah asked.

Charles nodded, swimming back over to the stone.

“All I need to do is make sure I get the stone off without moving the flower. Robert, you wouldn’t happen to have a Swiss army knife on you, would you?”

Robert flicked one out of his pocket, smiling. “Never go anywhere without it.”

Charles grabbed it and cut the rope keeping the stone to the stake, watching as it floated gently to the floor. Robert went to grab it, but Charles came first again, causing a gush of water to turn the flower just enough so that it faced somewhere else.

Just as Charles grabbed the stone, the laser shot out and cracked another hole in the roof. The kids watched in horror as the two holes created a crack-line that connected to each other.

“I think that’s our exit cue!” Charles cried as rocks tumbled from the roof of the cave.

The kids swam out of the cave just as the roof caved in, allowing the creatures to start chasing the kids again.

In the tunnel, the roof was still falling behind them, following them as it seemed. But in a way this was a good thing, because all the dust from the falling rocks was confusing the pursuing swimming monsters, so once the kids got to the entrance of the cave again and started swimming back to the surface, the creatures had too much dust in their eyes to see where the kids had gone.

The kids made it to the surface safely and Charles jumped out onto the shore, grabbing onto stone to pull himself out properly.

Using the bag straps, he assisted Sarah and Robert out of the water, lying on his stomach to do it.

They coughed from the dust and exhaustion when Sarah noticed they were turning back into normal kids again.

“Oh, bugger! I enjoyed being a mermaid! It’s a pity we couldn’t have stayed longer. Oh, well. At least we got what we wanted.”

Charles nodded and took them into the enclosure of the bridge once they had completely changed back to humans. He pulled out the rune stones he knew were the ones that were magical and they saw that the letter on the stone this time was ‘F’.

“‘F’ for Fish or Fighter, Charles. Have you noticed that the two stones we have collected have had a letter on them that had something to do with the situation we got into? Oh, and you still have my Swiss army knife and I want it back.”

Charles chuckled and pulled the knife out of his pocket.

“Here, you can have it back, Robert. I saw on the map that the next closest stone is a bit far off from here, so, maybe we should find somewhere to rest for a while. I suggest we find a place on our map we have now.”

“Interesting that this place should be called Freiyon, isn’t it?” Robert pointed at a river on the map. “Is that the same river we’re on now?”

“Yeah, I think so. Look, there’s a bridge there, so it has to be. There’s no other rivers marked with a bridge. Although, there mentions nothing about the mirror-door.” Charles pointed at where he thought the mirror-door would be.

" What do we know about this here? ‘Tree clan home’? Could have something to do with that evil Eucalyptus you killed earlier, Charles. Hey check this out! ‘Otter home’. This might be interesting.” Sarah noted carefully.

“Why is that so special, Sarah?” Robert asked, a bit grouchy since he hadn’t worked out much yet to help out.

“Well, look how close the location is to where the bridge is. I wonder if Nicole knew the otters in some way, and they helped her to access this stone we found. It would make sense.”

“Yeah.” Charles was trying to figure out what Sarah was getting at.

“Could be just a coincidence though.” Robert grumbled.

Sarah chuckled and rolled her eyes as she spoke. “Please. Coincidence? I don’t think this world knows the meaning of the word.”

“Actually, it does. But good guessing young missie. Right on the dot.”

The kids twirled around and looked at their new arrival. There was an otter there wearing a quiver-belt around his chest filled with arrows, with a bow in his left hand and a huge a smile on his face.