Freiyon Fables: The Rochester Runes

“Name’s Leopold Lanchester, friends. I have come to take you to safety, but the only way to do that is to make you otters as well.” The otter explained.

The kids were still surprised about a talking otter when Charles finally picked up on what the otter said.

“I’m sorry, but did you say you were going to make US otters? Is that even possible?” Charles asked, and their new arrival gave quite a lively laugh at that.

“Well, sure it is! Anything is possible in this world. Well, ok, nearly anything. Besides, if you were to follow me as ordinary humans, any of the villains could kill you within seconds! It’s that bag of yours, young man. If they recognize the bag, they’ll recognize the holder.”

Charles shrugged. “Well, we’ll just hide the bag.”

“Not that simple. They’ll know you have been warned by now. It’s better to change you into otters and take you to safety.” Leopold pulled something out of the quiver and showed it to the three kids.

“A fish… WHY are you handing us a LIVE fish?!?” Sarah made a disgusted face and turned away.

“I thought humans ate fish.”

“Not when it’s still wriggling and opening its mouth.”

“Well, lucky for you, you don’t have to eat it,”

All three kids sighed with relief.

“You all have to hold it together, at the same time.”

Charles looked blankly at the otter.

“Uh ... and what exactly is THAT going to do?”

Leopold sighed unhappily and placed it in Charles’ hands forcefully and stood back.

“Now we see if it will work.”

Sarah and Robert hesitantly placed their hands on the fish, and immediately found they couldn’t take their hands off it. All three looked at each other and then back at the otter.

“Nothing’s happening,” Robert struggled to get his hand off the fish. “I just feel like a total fool, not an otter. And why can’t I take my hand off the ... hey, don’t pinch me, Sarah!”

“I didn’t touch you, Rob ... hey, that was my foot, Charles!”

Charles felt his nose wobble, and no-one had touched it. It was then that it all clicked.

The fish must be turning them into otters!

Charles looked at Leopold, who was busy trying to cover up the bridge entrances with anything he could find.

Charles could feel an otter’s rudder growing out his bottom, which was slightly uncomfortable.

Finally, after what seemed like hours of painful transformation, but was actually only 2 minutes, they suddenly shrunk down quite quickly to the same size as Leopold and they knew their otter transformation was complete.

Quickly tossing the fish back to Leopold, Sarah looked through at her reflection in the river while Charles helped Leopold clear the entrances.

Robert had the backpack on now, because he thought it would be better for someone else to have it now that it was smaller but still noticeable.

Leopold and Charles came back to the bridge and started talking again.

“We have to be quick. I don’t know how much the trees saw, and we have no idea if anyone else saw us. So as soon as we leave this bridge, we can’t stop until we get to my camp. And when I say to move fast, I mean it. We can’t afford being slow at all, alright?” Leopold admired each kid-turned-otter and then nodded in satisfaction. “Shall we go?”

Following Leopold closely, the three kids quickly discovered what it was like to be otters. They were quicker on all fours, better at sniffing for food, and having an extra body part helped heaps. After they were a fair way into shallower regions of the forest, Leopold disappeared behind some shrubs and left the kids alone.

“Hey. Where’d our new friend go?” Charles stopped and grabbed his back-pack off Robert.

Robert stopped him in his tracks and he looked at Charles, concerned.

“Listen, Charles. How do we know we can trust this otter? Most of the things we’ve met in this place have either tried to kill us or are talking animals. How do we know that he isn’t a wizard or something? He did just turn us all into Otters just now after all! Maybe he’s a wizard in disguise working for the other side.”

“Robert’s right. This otter turned us into his kind for a reason, and even though he says it’s to protect us, there’s something about him that tells me there’s more to it.”

Charles sat down next to a rock, wiped out from all that had happened.

“We already went through this! Look… as far as I’m concerned, we can trust Leopold. I just… I wish I could believe that there were good things in this world. I was sort of hoping this adventure would be a bit… I don’t know... More fun? Hey wait a minute… Look where we are on the map!” He showed the map to Robert and Sarah, and they realized that in the run they had gone through as Otters to follow Leopold, they had gotten closer to the location of one of the stones.

Charles suddenly jumped up and started running west, in the direction Leopold had disappeared, with his brother and sister following close behind. They were close now. Much closer than before.

At that very moment, elsewhere in the Freiyon world, the bear lord known as Lord Libertas was sleeping in his private ‘room’ inside the new head-quarters he and many other frightened Freiyon inhabitants were currently calling home. He was sweating like mad and seemed quite angry and hurt, as his visions in his nightmares were nothing but terrible and dangerous and frightening. Visions of flashing sword blades, nasty pirates killing innocent creatures without thought, and what made it worse and very strange to the Bear Lord was that from his point of view, he seemed to be the one giving the commands to do these awful things. He was the pirate captain! He often had this nightmare and the point of view never changed, and he always wondered why that was. He remembered long ago a boy, possibly, who had started him off with certain things, but he couldn’t remember much else. Even to Lord Libertas, these bizarre visions and nightmares that plagued him were a complete mystery.

He was jolted awake when, in his nightmare, a cannon blast cracked through something hard, and it was at this exact same time that a knock on the cave ‘door’ echoed into his chamber. Lord Libertas looked around in shock and then he noticed his new friend, King Karel, coming into the room quite concerned. He had obviously seen Lord Libertas’ moving around in his nightmare. Libertas and King Karel had been old foes since their first meeting, but that all changed because of a kind squirrel called Micklang who had a great influence on them both. Now they were best friends, giving each other help and advice wherever possible.

It had been Lord Libertas’s idea to move the group to a new hide-out high in the mountains where the cloaked figure and The Grabbers couldn’t find them.

“Lord Libertas, are you alright? Is the sickness you have getting worse?” King Karel asked politely, feeling concerned for his friend.

Lord Libertas rubbed his throat and thought about the strange sickness he had contracted quite out of nowhere. He didn’t know where it came from nor what had caused it, but it had made him completely unable to do much for quite some time. In fact, practically since they moved to the new hide-out they were in now. Lord Libertas struggled up and coughed violently. “It’s not the sickness that concerns me the most, it is these visions I keep having that concern me. Although I feel perhaps it’s just bad thoughts concerning these new attacks from whomever is after those new-comers.”

At the mention of new-comers, King Karel looked very confused.

“New-comers, Lord Libertas? Whatever are you talking about?”

Lord Libertas gave a smirk and then coughed violently again. “Heh you will see. These New-comers will change everything! And it will be up to us to help them be who they really are.”

King Karel grumbled. “Very Well. But I shall go back to the old hide-out to have the final stand with our friends. I will also send the word out to look for any helpers as well. We need as much help as possible.” He replied thoughtfully.

“New-comers, Leopold? Who are they? Are they friend or foe?”

Leopold had led the kids to his clan of otters, hidden within a small, dead log with only bows and arrows as their main weapons. The otters didn’t like new-comers unless they KNEW the new-comers were friends.

The kids felt a little out of place, even though they had been turned into otters.

Obviously these otters knew the difference between real, genuine otters and humans that had been changed into otters.

Leopold sighed and showed the otter that had spoken the map that Charles had found. At once, all the otters fell silent and looked quite stunned.

“Hey, how’d you get that from the bag without me knowing?” Robert asked, quite surprised.

Leopold smiled cheekily at Charles; a tradition which otters often used when they know they have done something they shouldn’t have, and without being noticed.

“Well, you three quiet new-comers, introduce yourselves! Don’t just stand there like you’re at a funeral. After you’ve done that, I suggest we all get some sleep. We’ll need plenty of rest before we can start searching for the next stone. Plus, you three need to learn combat before you even THINK about going out into the rest of this world again.”

When the kids introduced themselves to the otters and vice versa, Leopold took them to an underground system that he had set up with his clan. This was where the otters managed to sneak up on enemies or friends that were above ground, or where they slept and collected food.

Leopold was quite happy for the kids to use their bags as pillows, since they were still getting used to being otters, and so he left them to sleep or chat before going to sleep. Robert turned to Charles and Sarah. “I just realized that most of today has been spent in this world, particularly for you two. What do you think has happened to mum? Would she be ok?”

Charles shrugged. “I don’t know, Robert. I hope so. If she’s gone back to the manor, she probably thinks it was our fault the manor is half destroyed.”

“Well, it sorta is.” Sarah pointed out.

“True, but we did do it for a reason.”

“Yeah. And who, besides Great Grand-Mother Helen, is going to believe us? I’m sure that mum wouldn’t,” Robert thumped his rudder at a bug on the ground. “Anyway, the only way we can keep her safe is by collecting those stones. I know Grand Helen said to stay away from them, but I feel as if...”

“As if we definitely should get them, same here.” Sarah pointed out, interrupting Charles accidentally.

Charles turned silently and tried to get some sleep.

As he slept, a vision of Charles’ mum replaced him, watching over them like a true mother would. He hoped she was safe.

Speaking of the Rochester kids’ mum, at that very moment she had woken up from her paralysed state and was drinking a cup of tea given to her by her father. Chief Jay Witt was still there, having heard the interesting story of the Rochester curse from Mary’s father and waiting for the chance to interview Mary herself. Mary looked at the police chief and smiled weakly.

“I suppose it was you that brought me here, chief? Or was it? I can’t remember much after the explosion.”

Jay shook his head. “No, Miss Rochester. You were brought here by a man that spotted the scene on the highway. But it is my job to find out who would want to do this to you.”

“Oh,” Mary sipped her tea slowly, shivering slightly. “I guess you have told my children about this?”

“Children? I was not aware you had any children.”

Mary looked at her parents in surprise. “You didn’t tell him? I was married for a few years, but divorced because of ... complications. My children are at the manor that belonged to my parents.”

“Ah, yes, The Rochester Manor. Your father was telling me about that. You are aware it has a curse on it?”

Mary chuckled slightly. “Curses, nothing but silly mumbo-jumbo. You believe that stuff about the Rochester curse? I’ve lived in that same manor myself for nineteen years and not once did anything freakish happen to me. Father, you can’t honestly think that this was because of some kind of curse?”

Mary’s father wasn’t sure what to think. He hadn’t been happy about giving the manor to Mary and her kids, but his wife had insisted on it because they both were getting too old to take care of such a huge place. He had never found anything evil or weird in the manor, either, but then again he never really considered looking. It was just common sense, really. If there was a warning to not go somewhere or do something, he wouldn’t.

Jay Witt was about to ask another question when he received a call on his mobile phone. Mary listened carefully, but could only get Jay’s part of the conversation, which was interrupted now and then by whoever was on the phone.

“What have they found, Chief?” Mary’s father asked.

“It seems that it was a time-bomb, but it was placed in the car only ten minutes before the explosion. It is impossible to find hand-prints right after an explosion, so they’re going to take it to the lab later today. The inspector wants you to go back to the sight and answer some questions. Of course, after that I will take you to check on your kids. If they are in any danger, I will do my best to help them. If they are out of the house then we’ll need your help to find out where-else they could have gone. I’m sorry if this is harsh on you, but it is part of the process. You are a victim to an attempted murder, and we must find out who would want you murdered.”

Mary nodded, placing her empty tea cup on the table to her right.

“When do we go?”