A skinny, cute girl, with pink-framed glasses and braided pigtails, showed up, stepping out from another room. She looked about fifteen, and she was holding a heavy vellum book of spells with her small nimble hands.
“Sorry!” Fable raised her voice against the flying objects, sounding overly apologetic as if she’d overcooked a meal with a bad recipe from the internet. “Wrong Spell!” she wiggled her nose then adjusted her glasses, trying to keep her balance as she looked back into the book. Although Loki wanted to escape this madness, he couldn’t escape Fable’s cute attitude. He thought she needed to unbraid her hair and lose the glasses, though. Never had Loki felt so attracted to a girl he wished was his sister.
She is a witch, Loki. Not so different from a demon. When will you ever learn?
Loki noticed that the cover of the book she was holding read:
Magick and Voddoo for Dummies and the Unfortunate
Voddoo was written with two Ds and was missing an O. No wonder her spells had gone bad.
“Just a sec,” Fable raised a forefinger. “If I can get the page turned in the wind; the solution is only one page away, but most of the pages are stuck together with grime, so it’s going to take a minute.”
“Wet your finger with your tongue and flip the page!” Axel yelled, holding onto a tree, five feet up in the air.
Fable wet her finger and flipped through the next large page, which was the color of an old treasure map.
As the muddy roof rumbled louder, Axel hugged the tree tighter with his hands and legs like a monkey on a circus pole.
“I hate this,” Loki announced, his legs fixed to the floor. His arms were stretched as if surfing on angry waters.
Axel’s face looked like it was being sucked by an invisible vacuum cleaner.
“I found it,” Fable cheered finally. “Mumble, jumble, stop your rumble,” she chanted, reading from the book, but nothing happened. “Tumble, crumble, stop your mumble,” she followed.
“What kind of spell is that?” Axel protested. “How many times did I tell you to try out spells before you actually use them?”
“Wait a sec,” Fable flipped more pages. “Here it is. One, twice, thrice and done. Wind of madness, just be gone. I command you from higher ground. Stop it now, no spellbound. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh, and Whoosh,” she tapped her feet with every whoosh.
It was incredible how the room suddenly seized, and relaxed from its grumpy tantrum. The curtains stopped fluttering, nothing fell from the shelves anymore, and whatever seemed to be sucking on Axel’s face was gone.
“Are you guys alright?” Fable let the book fall, thudding against the wooden floor. She looked genuinely worried behind her embarrassed, grey eyes.
“I think so,” Loki said, panting.
“Great. I’m Fable,” she stretched out a hand toward Loki, and he shook it gently. “I’m Axel’s older sister,” she said.
Loki raised an eyebrow because he thought she looked younger than Axel.
“No. No. I’m just messing with you. I’m younger,” Fable laughed with dimpled cheek.
“Fable, such a lovely name,” Loki said.
“It’s short for Fabulous,” she said proudly. “And I’m not messing with you this time. I was named Fabulous.”
“Pretty neat,” Loki said. “And Axel is short for what?”
“Why would Axel be short for anything? I’m Fabulous, he isn’t,” she stuck her tongue out at her brother who was still panting. “I don’t think my parents knew what to call him so they just named him Axel.”
“What kind of logic is that?” Axel protested. “There must be a great guy I’m named after, like Axelus the Great. He was a Greek god.”
“There’s no such thing,” Fable said.
“Maybe I was going to be named Excellent, only our parents didn’t know how to spell it.”
“Whatever,” Fable waved her hand. “Sorry about that madness, Loki. Axel doesn’t usually bring friends back to the house. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have messed around with the spell. Want Pookies? I learned how to bake.”
“Pookies?” Loki said.
“Yeah, cookies made from pigs,” she said. “They’re sweet, pink, and have pig’s noses that make funny sounds when you squeeze them.”
“Cookies made with a recipe from the Voddoo book?” Loki questioned.
“You noticed? It’s misspelled,” she said, shielding her smile with her hands. “That’s why I got it cheaper. Almost for free,” she whispered and nodded her head at Loki as if both of them shared a genuine secret. Although Fable’s beauty wasn’t as obvious as Lucy’s, Loki couldn’t resist her charms.