Free Trixter by Alethea Kontis Page B

ghosts?"
    "I believe in a lot of things," he answered honestly. "Some things exist only because we believe in them."
    "So if I told you that I think I've been seeing the ghost of Papa Gatto now and again since we left the cottage, you would still be my friend?"
    "My birthmother comes to me in my dreams, speaking riddles of the elements. She tells me I need to go see her," said Trix. "Are you still my friend?"
    The whistle and wheeze of their little fire filled the space between sentences with cheerful song. "Of course you are my friend," Lizinia said finally.
    "As you are mine," said Trix. He could almost hear her relief in the darkness.
    “Papa says we need to take the rocky path,” she whispered. “Not the one the deer told you to take.”
    “Okay,” Trix answered sleepily. “I’ll look at it in the morning.”
    By the light of day, however, the ghost cat’s advice seemed positively ridiculous. The path Papa Gatto had suggested wasn’t just “rocky,” it was nigh impassable. Trix and Lizinia would have to scale a cliff wall down to a dry ravine cut deep into stone that looked as if it stretched all the way to the White Mountains. There would be no water, no food, no trees for shelter, and few animals to let them know where exactly they needed to climb out of the ravine and continue on to the Abbey.
    The path the deer had suggested was lush and lined with giant flowers, which meant water sources and food and many other things Trix looked forward to discovering. There was nothing to discover in this ravine, other than how long Lizinia could walk on sharp rocks without her golden feet hurting. Trix didn’t see Papa Gatto magicking him up a pair of golden boots any time soon.
    Lizinia seemed up to the challenge—even excited by it—but Trix glowered. He’d been ordered around his whole life. By Mama and her magical powers of persuasion. By his absent, suddenly-attentive, and incredibly vague birthmother. And now thanks to an insubstantial cat he just so happened to adopt as a result of his own adventuring, he was being forced to endure pointless hardships. Was this another test he had to pass to prove his worthiness as Lizinia’s companion?
    Trix looked down the ravine once more and made a decision. “We’re taking the garden path.”
    “But Papa Gatto—”
    “I have taken Papa Gatto’s advice under consideration. But if the garden path is good enough for the deer, it is good enough for us. We’ll be fine.”
    Lizinia was not so easily convinced. She folded her arms over her chest. “Ask the tooth.”
    Trix rolled his eyes, but complied. He did not trust Papa Gatto as far as he could throw him (not that one could throw a ghost cat anywhere, no matter how hard one might wish it), but Wisdom’s tooth had heretofore provided solid guidance. He pulled the necklace from beneath his shirt and held the tooth up before him.
    “Dear Tooth”—he and Lizinia had decided that this was the best way to address such an important object—“do you think we should go down into the ravine?” Trix pivoted and pointed the tooth in the direction of the dense, green path. “Or should we go this way?”
    The tooth did nothing.
    “Try again,” said Lizinia. “Maybe you’re asking the wrong question.”
    “Or maybe it has no opinion,” said Trix, but he tried again, for trying’s sake. “We need to get to Rose Abbey, dear Tooth, and we’d like to get there soonish, so if you could please…look!” As Trix pointed toward the flower-lined path, the tooth glowed, ever so slightly. It was enough for Trix. “Well, that’s decided. Let’s go!”
    Lizinia harrumphed but followed. Trix walked a little taller. Take that, cat .
    The grass grew thick beneath Trix’s bare feet as they traveled deeper into the lush greenery before them, so thick that the squirrel and chipmunk that accompanied them were nothing but eddies in the sea around them. The flowers, too, seemed to grow larger and more colorful the farther they