Katrina felt like she could sleep for two millennia. Some deities had slept that long, anyway. Katrina forced herself awake. She gasped for air and said, “I think–we–did it,” between depleted breaths.
Her father opened his leather sack, revealing two blue globes nestled in a thick bed of feathers. “Easy Katrina. Don’t try to stand up. I know you’ll recover soon.” Katrina took a deep breath of forest air. She felt a tingling power move through her arms and legs, down to the tips of her fingers and toes. She staggered to her knees. In this unfamiliar environment, her power seemed different somehow. It was like the difference between amber and topaz, subtle, but Katrina felt she knew that she had a much wider range of abilities. She felt more like a witch doctor than a wizard. “The locals must have been doing a lot of summoning,” she said in a perfectly recovered voice. With a new surge of energy, she stood up, as strong as ever before.
She saw a strip of loose bark on a tree. She peeled it back and saw a staff. It was a simple pole, striped black and yellow. Four sharp points held a glowing orb constantly changing color. Katrina picked it up. “Impossible,” she whispered. “The legendary Staff of the Bumblebuzz.”
A bumblebuzz was similar to a bumblebee except for the fact that, when threatened, it would launch its stinger at whomever had startled it. The staff could summon up to six of these creatures, all fiercely loyal to their master. She reached out and grasped the staff. She drew it away from the tree and pointed it straight out in front of her. A “pop” sound seemed to come from the orb on one end. Ripples came down it, originating from the front of the orb. A bumblebuzz had come out of the staff.
It did a loop-to-loop, getting bigger and bigger until it was about the size of the baker’s fist.
“Good find, Katrina. We had better get going if we’re going to find–” he checked his list, “–some leprechaun coins.”
Katrina, with her new link to the magic of the deep forest, opened a portal. It led to nowhere, and none could go through. Katrina rested her hand on it and found the magic of the above world. The blank white space dissolved revealing a meadow of four-leaf clover and fragments of rainbow flying around.
Katrina stepped into the portal, followed by her father, and about an instant later, the two were in the land of leprechaun gold. The fragments of rainbows had leprechauns riding on them. When rainbows were created, the leprechauns set up the gold, then flew a distance away, then fired their rainbow at the gold, making it half invisible to prying eyes. (Though magicians could see it easily.) If you blinked, you missed it. In a puff of pixie dust, it was there.
Suddenly, a band of leprechauns made a rainbow. “Unless the poor fool who guards the gold was the one seen flying on the rainbow, then the gold must be on the left side,” explained the baker.
“Good thinking, Father. To the left side of the rainbow it is.”
All of a sudden, the pair heard a voice, “I jus’ wanta’ know where the gold at!” Katrina and the baker both spun around. A leprechaun was storming through the grass. Katrina quickly plucked up the sour-looking little fellow by the back of his shirt, and with a wave of her hand, two identical copies of his costume peeled off of the squirming leprechaun and landed softly on the thick bed of clover. Katrina deposited the incensed leprechaun on the back of a passing pastry cat and then shrunk herself and her father to about half a shin’s height. They put on the costumes over their original clothes.
“To me, it look like a leprechaun to me,” the baker joked.
Katrina laughed. “I know a couple of creature spells or two, the rainbow piece magic carpet spell happens to be one of those.” Katrina summoned two of them and the disguised baker and his daughter soared toward the left side of the rainbow.
The leprechaun said, “New arrivals, eh? I guess we’ll fin’ some room fer yeh ‘ere.”
Another one piped up, “Hey! I thought these ones were supposed to be workin’ on the decoy!”
“Uh-oh! whispered Katrina to her father. “We must have gone to the wrong side of the rainbow.”
The leader turned toward them. “Eh? What’s that talk? Yer humans,?
“Oh no!” the baker muttered.
“I think you said it all,” said Katrina. “Let’s get back our size edge.” With a pop, the pair instantly grew to full size. Fragments of green fabric fluttered to the ground. The leprechauns started to attack.
“First wwwaaaaaave!” shouted the leader. A group of 8 leps ran forward. Two of them grabbed Katrina’s left foot and held it to the ground. Another two did the same with the right foot. Another four went to the baker and performed the same maneuver.
“Second wwwaaaaaave!”another four leps ran forward. Each one picked one of the duo’s hands and pinned them to the humans’ sides.
“There’ve been more of you tryin’ to outsmart us than there are years in the history of leprechaun-kind. Many have failed, but I’ve had about enough of it. It’s time for us to fight back.” The lead leprechaun seemed to grin. “I’m going to end this feud.”
The leprechauns, grabbing the duo’s feet, carried them toward the rainbow. They put them down on the rainbow near the end. “Dismount team!” the team of leprechauns jumped off. Then they went to the base of the rainbow and started to pull it out of the ground. “Your going to go half way around the world after this and probably hit every living offender of our kind on the way ’round.” The leprechauns pulled their end of the rainbow out of the ground. With a twang, the rainbow shot to an upright position, launching the baker and his daughter into the sky. The lead leprechaun laughed.
Above the clouds, two people were talking. “I really, really hope we land somewhere soft.”
“Me, too,” replied the baker.
As they sailed through the air, they could see everything below, a beautiful sight if you hadn’t just been sent on a course around the world by a makeshift catapult. “Look!” said the baker’s daughter. “There’s one of the glass walls. I’ve been longing to see that sight . . . except maybe not quite this way.”
The two flew and flew. “Oh my!” said the baker. We’re going past the walls! I hope we’re not sighted by any of the dwellers of the Badlands.”
They sailed and sailed. Directly beside their route was a campfire far below them with a tribe gathered around it. They soared over a primitive castle that still had archer holes. “I hope it doesn’t come complete with the archers,” Katrina said.
Just then an arrow whizzed past them, then a couple more. With fast reflexes that mainly came from resisting his own products, the baker caught the arrows and threw them one-by-one back onto the turret. By thousands of tribes, this would be remembered as the day that arrows came back. The pair seemed to be going even faster, and it appeared they were in a region where the trees were much taller. “The trees must grow faster in this region. Either that or . . .we’re falling!” yelled the Baker.
They skimmed the tops of the trees. A giant machine that looked strangely like a bird made of wooden beams and tarp flew past. The two, with no other hope, climbed onto its wings. They soared to the edge of the land, over a vast purple ocean, over an alien-looking temple with many towers that twisted together into a point high above the land. They saw islands on clouds, and glossy deserts that looked as if they were covered with a layer of rippled glass. They flew into the sunset and the dark shadow and shivered until they saw the line of light across the other side of the globe. Land and ocean passed underneath them. Then, eventually, they started to feel glimmers of recognition for the forms below.
“Hey! Do you see that glint of light? The glass wall! Jump!” The two jumped as the flying machine fell to the blast of some sorcerer tasked with defending the empire. They flew and fell and flew and fell. Suddenly, both of them heard a loud “Thunk!” They had come full circle and slammed into the upright rainbow. They slid down into the pot of gold.
“We made it!” they yelled.
A lone leprechaun stormed up to the gold pot. “Get away from that pot!” It shouted.
The duo looked down. There were no coins in the pot, but it was made of gold. As they tried to climb out of the pot, the leprechaun reached into his back pocket, pulled out a dart, and threw it. They barely dodged it. They two ducked down into the pot. Another dart shot into the pot, barely missing the baker’s pinky toe.
Katrina whistled. The bumblebuzz buzzing around their heads flew over towards the leprechaun’s back pocket, launched a stinger with a pop, splitting the pocket and causing all of the darts to spill out. The leprechaun reached into his other back pocket and hurled something else at them. The baker jerked his head to the side to dodge it, and they heard a clank on the side of the pot. They looked down. “A gold coin!” the baker shouted. He grabbed it.
The leprechaun yelled, “They’ve got our gold!” Soon a horde of leprechauns appeared and rushed the pair. With a great effort, the two flipped over the pot, covering themselves. Katrina planted the Staff of Bumblebuzz into the soft ground, and the orb lit their fort.
Deafened by the clanging stones hitting the sides, Katrina shouted “We’ve got the coin! Let’s make a run for it!”.
“We can’t take their gold! We’re not thieves!”
“Father, they launched us around the world! They could have killed us!”
The baker’s face was resolute.
“Fine! They can keep their gold! All we need is the liquid,” Katrina gave in.
Suddenly, a buzzing noise came from inside the pot. “He’s even more loyal than the book said,” Katrina stroked the soft yellow and black fur. She held up the coin and the bumblebuzz unrolled a long, clear proboscis which it inserted into the coin. Rainbow liquid flowed from the coin until the bumblebuzz pulled away dizzily and the flattened coin dropped with a clank. Katrina slid the coin outside under the pot’s edge.
The baker smiled, “And now, Katrina, to the home and habitat of the Devouring Plant, The Forest of Treachery.”
“On it.” Katrina pulled the staff from the ground and four strong pops were followed by four bumblebuzzes rippling out of the orb. Just then, the clanging from the outside attack stopped. In the new silence, Katrina looked wide-eyed at her father. Then the end of a plank appeared under the pot’s edge. They heard a mad scrambling, then a pounding, and the pot was lifted over their crouched bodies.
The baker grabbed his daughter’s hand, and his daughter grabbed the staff. One bumblebuzz hovered over Katrina’s shoulder. The rest fell into formation around them, launching stingers at any attackers who hurled darts or tried to grab a leg. They wove as quickly as they could through the crowd, sometimes jumping over leprechauns in an effort not to step on them. At last they escaped the edges of the mob and broke into a run toward the field of clover.
All but the first bumblebuzz dispersed into the sweet smelling clover. Katrina noticed the remaining bumblebuzz looking furtively around at the millions of white pom-pom flowers. “Right,” she said and stopped to pick a nice few fistfuls.
“No time!” yelled the baker, and Katrina saw the leprechaun horde charging over the edge of the meadow.
Katrina and the baker ran to the center of the meadow but saw no sign of the portal among the thick clover, only abandoned shards of rainbow. They crisscrossed clumsily while the attackers gained. Then Katrina called the bumblebuzz which lit on her open palm. She lofted it high into the air. It made a slow figure eight until it buzzed a high, loud alert. Katrina and her father followed it to a nearby hole in the clover. The bumblebuzz took its place at Katrina’s side. The baker took her hand, and in they jumped.
Story kaBOOM! 