He barreled in Sophia’s direction. She ran backward, not watching where she was going. Nothing she ran into could be worse than being bowled over by the stone giant.
The giant lowered his shoulders and ran at her. Sophia had no choice but to dart to the side and jump behind another tree trunk. She momentarily disappeared from view but swung around the other side as the giant pursued her. For a moment, the two ran around the large tree like a silly game of cat and mouse, with Sophia the tiny creature trying to escape the towering feline’s claws.
Sophia knew this strategy wouldn’t last long, so she pushed herself to move faster until she caught up with and was directly behind the giant since the low branches again made his pursuits more difficult. With a clear shot at his back, Sophia lifted her hand and pointed at the giant, then shot him with a disintegrating spell.
He froze, threw up his hand with the sword, and knocked the shield hard into the tree. Then, as if he’d never existed at all, he evaporated from view and settled on the ground in a large pile of dust. The metal sword and shield clanged to the dirt as they fell into the giant’s remains, where they suddenly appeared a lot less intimidating lying next to a green patch of grass.
Chapter Eighty-Four
After assessing that no other statues were charging after Sophia or anyone else on the grounds of Happily Ever College, she doubled over and pulled in large gulps of oxygen. Sophia’s adrenaline had spiked when she arrived at the fairy godmother institute, and she hadn’t taken a proper breath since.
With the threats eliminated, she took a moment to rest as her hands shook and her brow dripped with sweat.
“We can’t thank you enough for coming to our rescue,” Willow suddenly said at Sophia’s side. She nearly jumped from the woman’s abrupt presence, still on guard from being attacked by angry statues.
“I didn’t know I was coming to your rescue,” Sophia admitted. “I arrived at Mae Ling’s request.”
“Which I sent right before the attack started,” Mae Ling stated, also unexpectedly right beside Sophia although the dragonrider hadn’t seen her approach. “It all happened so fast.”
Willow nodded, her hair hardly out of place from her recent battle. Her skin glistened with a faint bit of sweat on the bridge of her nose and cheeks. “Yes, we barely had enough time to get the students to safety.”
“What happened here?” Sophia looked around the grounds where statues had been disintegrated, frozen, or broken into large pieces. Thankfully, there didn’t appear to be any more ready to fight them.
“I’m not sure.” Willow looked around too with a perplexed expression on her face. “As you’ve just learned, the attack was sudden, and we’re still reeling from the events.”
“So the statues all over the grounds simply came alive and attacked you all?” Sophia asked.
Mae Ling nodded, seemingly in a daze. “It’s a very uncharacteristic thing to happen here at the college. Everything is almost always so peaceful.”
Sophia knew this was true about the grounds of Happily Ever After College. The weather was always ideal—not too hot or too cool, with a gentle breeze. The students were mostly in good spirits and the food exceptional, consisting only of dessert. It seemed like the happiest place on Earth, which begged the question of why the statues would all come alive and try to murder them.
“Has anything new happened here recently?” Sophia questioned. “New students? Procedures? Magic? Anything that we can correlate to this issue?”
Willow frowned as she thought. “I don’t recall anything. Professor Ling, can you?”
The fairy godmother was still trying to catch her breath. “Not a thing. All is normal here.” She sighed heavily and added, “Well, I had to cancel my monthly trip to the Great Library and therefore wasn’t able to update the curriculum, but that’s such a minor thing. It wouldn’t be related.”
“Oh, yeah. No one can get to the Great Library currently,” Sophia stated. “Not until the location is set once more.”
Willow nodded. “Then our portal will work again.”
Sophia’s eyes widened. “Wait, you have a portal to the Great Library?”
“Well, naturally,” Willow answered. “Fairy Godmother College is one of the few places with one because our curriculum relies on having direct access to the library at all times.”
“This portal,” Sophia nearly stammered. “Where is it?”
“It’s in the garden, of course,” Willow stated, confusion written on her face.
“The garden that used to be filled with statues?” Sophia questioned.
“Yes.” Willow’s muddled look deepened.
“Of course,” Sophia muttered, mostly to herself. “It’s got to be the portal.”
“Can you please explain what’s going on?” Willow’s voice was full of authority.
Sophia hurried toward the garden, having passed it many times on her way to find Mae Ling. The fairy godmothers followed her. “With the Great Library’s location not fixed yet, there’s a problem with the portals.”
“Well, I’d say,” Mae Ling related. “When I tried to make the monthly trip, I opened the portal to find the door suspended in the middle of outer space. There were stars all around and distant planets that I didn’t recognize. I don’t think it was our current galaxy.”
Sophia nodded, thinking that sounded about right. “Yes, and I think that with the portal location bouncing around, some strange magic probably seeped through. That would be enough to curse the statues and make them come alive.”
“Portal magic is very volatile,” Willow offered. She moved surprisingly fast although she wore pink heels that matched her skirt and button-up blouse.
“Yes,” Sophia agreed. “At the Castle, we had strangers come through the portal leading to the Great Library. They went into their closets and it put them at the Castle, so we had a different experience but still very perplexing. It took us a while to figure it out.”
“And to fix the problem?” Mae Ling asked. “What did you do?”
“We had to close the portal.” Sophia was surprised that her all-knowing fairy godmother didn’t already see this about her.
As if she’d read her mind, Mae Ling stated, “I don’t know everything about you, Sophia. Only that which you need my help with and even then, things aren’t automatic and take time for me to see, like your problem with the sheep that you came to me about.”
“Which is why I’m here,” Sophia stated. “However, let me close your portal first because who knows what the magic seeping through into the college could do next if it turned the statues evil and made them come alive.”
The English garden alongside the main building looked quite bare without the usual stone sculptures gracing the space. Many of the rose bushes had been trampled, probably when the statues marched out of the garden and went after the students and professors.
Sophia was going to ask where the portal to the Great Library was, but then noticed an arched lattice arbor in the middle of the space and knew right away that had to be it.
“Are the students allowed access to the portal?” she asked the fairy godmothers.