Okay. Deep breath. Back to the post weenie roast and our tag-team on Syl. TimTim and I had kept an eye out for her all day which hadn’t really been necessary because it was way too clear she was watching us. Syl is petite and I don’t mean in comparison to me. She’s a waif, a tad over five feet and slender as a sapling which is not just idle figurative language.

  If she was next to a tree, Syl blended into it, like a branch or seam of bark. And that’s just a sliver of her crazy tree attributes. When the Chanctonbury Witch sent us to spy on the Queen of Shades, she further pissed off Syl by calling her Sylvanya. Trees.

  Woods. Forests. I appreciate word play, even if Syl doesn’t. Her response to me asking about the origin of her name, “I’m not some bitch elf. Grow up.”

  Harsh. Direct. That’s Syl. And it says loads about me that I tended towards seeing her as exotic and refreshing, rather than dangerous and damaged by a past I knew nothing about. Like her being Romani. None of us are innocents. Some of us just lean on their obliviousness more than others.

  Surely, Syl had been watching us try to watch her because when we followed her away from the weenie roast, she led us to one of the empty docks. She sat on an overturned canoe and waited for us.

  I think TimTim tried to flex his ghost arms and Syl laughed. “I like that, TimTim.”

  “The name’s Tim.”

  “Not to me. Names are important. They have to work for this to work.” She raised her arms over her head and TimTim’s ghost arms mimicked them.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  TimTim looked my way as if to ask, “You’re seeing this, right?”

  I nodded.

  “See,” Syl said. “Char gets it. We had our little misunderstanding, but that opened her up to a new understanding. Just like you,TimTim.”

  “What does Charlotte understand now?”

  “Char now knows the dead as well as the living have free will. We all make choices.”

  “I didn’t choose to have crazy ghost arms.”

  “But I chose to give them to you. Aren’t you glad?”

  It looked like TimTim was struggling to skullslap Syl like he’d seen his ghost arms do this morning, but they just shimmered icy blue at his sides.

  As small as Syl was, she never looked bigger than when she genuinely smiled. “There’s always more to understand, my pretties.”

  “So, how’s this hex-a-magical shit work?” I asked, surprising myself. “Do we swear blood oaths, or help you collect eye of newt, or what?”

  “Look, I’m not some orphan who had to live in a boxcar or sleep under a staircase. I’m like you, an angsty teen who got shipped off to summer camp for my own good. I just happen to have a few other skills.”

  She leaned a bit to one side and cut a fart that rang off the aluminum canoe and then lit up like a mini fireworks display, all in ectoplasmic blue.

  “Really, I come in peace.” She tooted neon blue again. “Really.”

  Talk about blowing it out your ass, but who could resist? TimTim and I started to pepper Syl with questions about hexes, imps, auras, ghost arms, ectoplasmic farts until she got into a huff and said we needed to see for ourselves.

  And that’s how we met the Chanctonbury Witch and why Qpid and Hell decided to eat far from safe mushrooms with us.

  Oh my! Wouldn’t that make a great Winnie-the-Pooh chapter title?