For those who haven't finished BK 6, Trumped, and don't want spoilers, don't read this entry!
But to read more, scroll down....
I'm putting a huge space here, trying to prevent you from seeing a spoiler if you don't want to.
However, if you're scrolling down this far, I assume you don't mind. Let's continue!
Millie
Author's Whys: This chapter was one of the later chapters that we decided to chop. We debated, but in the end it had to go, so we could focus on the heart of the tale and this was more of a 'get-to-know the character' near the end of the book. Not a good idea for the average reader.
But it's a good idea for all you who want to know more!
For us, it was fun to get to know Taps' mom and we enjoyed her a lot. There was so much more to Millie! And I really think we've only scratched the surface.
You'll recall when Chapter 32 stated that Millie was thinking of changing the house? Well...
In the book, this chapter would've been inserted between Chapters 32 and 33.
Chapter: Maddening Millie
The
next morning, bright and early, Millicent Persimmons went to the library to
discuss things with Sebastian, the Tapestry’s librarian.
“Sebastian,
I want the floor plans – the originals, if you please,” she said to book that
had once been a man.
“The
originals, I can show you…” He lifted a shaggy eyebrow, “If you want anything
extra, Taps would have to give permission.”
“Understood,”
She glanced at the book, her naturally curious mind honing in on the forbidden
content. “Realm Keeper business and all that it entails.”
Sebastian
gave a curt nod and opened up his back. The pages began to turn at an amazing
speed.
“Thank-you,
Sebastian.” Millie smiled, looking around the library. “I daresay, the library was
once but a quarter of this room.”
“A vast
improvement if you ask me,” the stuffy book huffed.
Millie
ignored his rude comment and mentally decided that for now, she would leave the
library where it was. With that in mind, the remaining rooms needed
rearranging. Her mind would settle down to have them restored to their original
position.
Once
cozy and familiar, her mind could better solve the puzzles the current
situation demanded. Including but not limited to: her daughter and Jeffery (Oh how
she wanted to strangle Geraldine for her
endless rules about social class and barriers!), the cranky Sebastian (the
curse that kept him as a book needed to be removed. He could then be free to
marry the Four Pillars librarian. Twas easy as falling out of bed to see they
had a spark for each other). Then there
was the matter of taking on a new apprentice puzzler (Ronnie seemed to glow
with that kind of potential).
“Ah,
here tis.” Sebastian commented, pulling her back to the present dilemma.
His gold
ribbon touched a small illustration in a section labeled Floor Plans.
3D blueprint
plans appeared and she studied them. She applauded the fact the Tapestry had
three floors now, but the rooms on that floor were displayed as blank. Unlike the other rooms, not even a
description of what they were used for was in place!
“Why
are these rooms outlined in red?” She asked Sebastian, her quizzical mind forging
miles ahead, jumping from possibility to impossibility.
He
looked slightly uncomfortable. “Surely you can understand my position,
Millicent. Taps is a Keeper and has many
secrets that you will not be privy to.”
He gave her a knowing look. “For
security purposes, which I know you
would love to build a bridge over or tunnel under, they will remain blank to all
but Taps’ eyes.”
Tantalizing
Keeper secrets were so difficult for her Three of Hearts mind to ignore! Determined to be faithful to her Realm Keeper
daughter, Millie waved her hand at the third floor, making it disappear and
then magnified parts of the printed plans to see the details.
“It’s
fun that the plans now show furniture. I’ve noticed that she kept some of my
non-magical items around.”
“Taps,”
Sebastian kept his eyes on the plans, his monocle shining brightly, “has kept
everything in tip-top shape.”
“For
which I’m grateful.” Yet, her eyes did not see what she was looking for.
“Sebastian? Do you know were Teresa placed my
old puzzle room?”
“After
Master Orson disappeared,” he said in a disapproving way, “Taps locked it away
so no other innocent would garner the same fate.”
“Sebastian,”
Millie said firmly. “Orson has returned
and I’m the original designer of this house. ‘Tis I that placed these rooms in
such a way that they are a puzzle box with sliders to allow a bright mind to
move them at will. I believe dear Teresa
would allow me my personal depuzzling
room.”
“Mrs.
Persimmons,” His mustache twitched, “I would like to ask you about your days of
yore.”
She smiled,
clasping her hands in front of her, “Certainly.” Noting he’d changed the
subject, no doubt her puzzle room was somewhere on the third floor.
“Specifically,
I’d like to know about the era in which you were referred to as Mad…!” He
stopped and politely coughed. “A thousand pardons, Madam.”
“Maddening
Millie?” She was amused and faintly disappointed that was the reason for the
change of subject. “No doubt you heard that
revolting turn of phrase from Geraldine.”
“Well,
I…”
Her
blue eyes glinted in an annoyed fashion, “Or from those of yesteryear which hit
the figurative hornets’ nest and then complained when they were stung and came
to me; whom they referred to as a “mere three”. Then, expected me to pull up a
miracle cure for their ‘injured appendage’ when it was already beyond fixing.”
His
golden brow rose at her voice tone and volume.
“Sorry,”
she said, forcing herself to calm. “I assure you that dreadful title was not
entirely accurate.” Millie let her hackles fall and unclenched her hands. “I prefer
the more flattering title, which I’m sure you know.”
“Miracle
Millie,” he acknowledged.
“I did earn that title, more than once,”
she said with a smile as she happily returned to the house plans, her heart
humming with anticipation at having her home be home again.
In
truth, the doll house had been her home far longer than this house had been and
the doll house had only reflected the house plans that had been current in the
early 1700’s.
“I
understand what you are saying, Mrs. Persimmons, but your blunders are much
more tantalizing!” His ribbon ruffled excitedly, “What about when you were
making the mind-slot-gursue?”
Millie
rolled her eyes, “I’d rather not visit the problematic past.”
“Nonetheless,
Binda told me all about that one. It was quite the fiasco!” He continued as he rubbed
his monocle with his ribbon, “Now let’s see, was it twelve or eleven…?”
She turned
her attention back to the house plans, listening to the boring book with half
an ear. After he’d waffled on and she’d taken all facts into account for the
better part of half and hour, she shrank the toyshop she’d been studying. She
slid it so it was once again hidden behind the fireplace and de-magnified it so
she could take in the floor plans, including the third floor.
Common
sense dictated she leave alone everything Teresa had added.
The
famous Taps could have the third floor for her Keeper business and her guests
could be ushered up by the new staff she would be required to hire, since
Jeffery would clearly not remain as butler.
But the
two lower floors, the toy shop, and the empty basement (which Larry had made
with his own two hands and all the magic he possessed) were theirs.
Millie’s
smile widened, she could feel her Three’s senses tingling.
“The
sunroom is where I’ll start.” Millie announced.
“…seen
a twizzle-twazzle like the one…,” Sebastian stopped in mid-sentence. “Come
again?”
Millie
widened the floorplan map farther so she could focus on the rooms she would be
moving. “I do love the stained glass windows Teresa added, but I’ll never understand
why she made the house face West instead of East.”
Sebastian’s
monocle dropped from his eye in shock. “You can’t seriously be suggesting…!”
“Everyone knows a sunroom is supposed to
face East to greet the day. Tis the reason I suggested having one in the first
place.”
Decision
made on the first room, she reached out, as did Sebastian, who, for some silly reason,
had a look of panic on his face.
*
In her study, Taps happily finished one
entire to-do list – easy because they were all past social events.
“Not bad for nearly two hundred years’
worth.” She told her double, making a hooked jump shot over the floating waste
basket.
“I’m not sad we missed those invites.
Most were dead-boring Diamond parties.” Her doppelganger pointed at the next
to-do list and it walked over to sit next to them. “Though I wish we’d been
able to attend family funerals and weddings.”
“Too true.” Taps snatched several notes
from the new to-do list, “Though I do prefer weddings over funerals any day. We’ll
send flowers to each grave and a hand-written sympathy note with a fruit basket
as a late…”
She heard a sonic boom overhead and a
bright yellow security artery to the
house zipped by her face, slapping against the wall. She caught it as it sprung back, the notes
she held fluttered to the floor and once touching the ground, they auto-returned
to the to-do list.
It was pulsing in her hand, magic
leaking like a magick teenager’s spark had began to spew like a geyser.
“What in the world…!” was all she got
out before six more in various colors
went zipping through the room.
Her doppelganger leaped for the arteries
at the same time she did – barely managing to catch two others!
“Who broke in?” her ‘twin’ asked
angrily.
“No one, otherwise we’d have been pulled
directly to the room where the breach occurred!” Taps shouted, handing the
arteries to the other Taps. She grabbed
her tapper, heading for the door.
Copey’s head appeared, “Are you tryin’
to kill people’s ear drums? If so, can I ‘elp?”
“No! Look at these Copey!” Taps pointed
her tapper at the pumping arteries.
His eyes widened and his cheeky grin
dropped, “Whose done that? I blow ‘em tah bits with me Neverlasting grell!”
“If we don’t stop this,” Her doppelganger,
“you won’t have to. We’ll all perish with them!”
With another large boom outside, Sebastian
appeared through a portal, tightly hanging onto a blue artery with his gold
ribbon!
“LOOK OUT!” he yelled.
Taps ducked and he zipped by her, his
monocle slapping with against his hard cover with the force of the wind.
“Millie’s on the goooo!” He managed to yell before he disappeared
through another portal that’d opened up.
“Stars and garters!” exclaimed her double
as the magic in the damaged arteries pumped magic like a fire hose. “Mother’s broken the code!”
Her doppelganger quickly brushed her
gloved fingers across the ends in an attempt to sear them shut.
Copey’s cheeky grin was back, “Maybe it
won’t be so bad ‘avin’ your folks ‘ere after all! Ha hah!”
“She has no idea what she’s done!” Taps
felt panic well up inside her.
“I’ll keep searing these lines, you find
mother and stop her before the mansion explodes!” Her double told her.
Taps ran out into the hall, “Copey, keep
the explosions inside the janx hex!”
“Will do, Taps!” He called. She could
hear him pop out of sight.
She found Ronnie crouched in a corner of
the Music Room, holding a red artery in one fist, her book catching the magic draining
from the artery while the poor girl was getting completely saturated with it.
“Taps! I don’t know what this is…!”
Ronnie shouted.
“Here’s a magical clamp!” Taps ran
toward her, a medical-type clamp appearing in her hand, “Don’t let it swell too
large or it will…”
The Tapestry’s silent alarms went off. With
a mute apology, Taps shoved the clamp into Ronnie’s hand and braced herself as
she was auto-pulled to the dinning room.
There, her father sat with her Knights,
who had been showing him mems of recent battles.
“…’pon my word, I’d never have guessed…”
her father was saying.
The group shouted in surprise as she
landed feet-first on the tea table, knocking aside their food and beverages.
“Teresa, what’s going on?” her father
asked as he helped her up.
“The Tapestry Realm’s in peril! If the
security arteries come through here, grab…” she managed just as several passed through the room!
Her father and quick-reflexed Knights
grabbed them as she heard the alarms sound off again.
“HOLD FAST OR WE DIE!” she ordered.
She felt herself being hauled another
place, noting the room she just left was turning upside down.
She thought she could hear her father
shouting, “HOUSE REVERSE! HOUSE REVERSE!” as she was jerked down the hallway
where her sister stood. Liddia was looking at the wall’s pictures and portraits
that held the visage of several of the children she’d helped in the past.
Taps jerked to a halt and rubbed her
neck from the whiplash she’d received, “Oooo. That shouldn’t have happened.
Perhaps the speed artery is kincked…”
“Taps? I wanted to ask…” Liddy turned to
her and paused, her expression quickly turned to concern, “What happened?”
Taps snatched an oncoming bubble-gum-pink
artery as it tried to pass her and stuffed it into her sister’s hands, “Don’t allow
this to reach the music room, no matter the cost!”
Her sister made a ceiling-tall rock
anchor and barely had time to attach the artery to it, before she was yanked
off her feet!
“HOLD IT! SEAR IT!” Taps yelled as another alarm went off!
The last she saw of her sister, the dark
haired Liddy was bracing her feet on the wall. The music room wasn’t more than
a foot away. She was hanging on for all
she was worth with one hand, attached a dragon-clawed grappling hook chain to
it and then sent it down into the mermaid tank.
Taps hoped the mermaids were wise enough
to take it to the deepest sea cave to let Soline’s leviathan hold it. Few knew it, but the pink artery was attached
to Copey. If it bled out, she wouldn’t
be able to resurrect him!
*
Millie looked at the place Sebastian had
been standing, stunned he could move so fast.
“Well, I don’t know where that stuffy
librarian has gone, but, moving on.”
She really should tell Taps what she
thought of the snobby-book’s manners! On the positive side, since she’d began
moving the rooms back to the way she liked them, her mind felt more settled.
Millie gave her million-dollar smile. “My goodness, with the house-a-right, I know exactly how to solve that old book’s
riddle-of-return!” She waved away the mansion holo and it disappeared.
Presumably, it would return to Sebastian, wherever he had flown to! She doubted Taps knew how many shenanigans
were going on beneath her very roof!
“After I take a walk in the gardens, as
a reward for solving Sebastian’s trouble, I will return and tell Taps all, so
she can learn how to handle her servants.”
She looked out the window. “I do
believe the flora needs brightening. I can help with that!”
Millie disappeared.
*
Taps was zooming between walls as the
Tapestry continued to throw her to whatever it considered the most-perilous
spot. Whenever she was between walls, she was zipping through the blueprints of
her home, unseen, as was a Realm Keeper’s right whenever the Tapestry was in
danger. It was part of the strategy to be invisible to any villain that’d
entered and appear when the time was right.
She’d missed being able to do so as a
ghost. It would’ve saved a lot of hassle with that terrible gob, Fungus Amungus
and Vincent.
If only I’d listened to Jeffery…but
that’s behind us now. Back to the task at hand!
Here, not only could she see the lead
summoning strand that was tied around her waist, she could also see all the
security arties floundering about.
Taps’ crystal eyes locked onto the
floor, “Clear my path to the crystal!”
The blue-printed floor beneath her
cleared to reveal the basement. Then the basement cleared and the crystal was
exposed.
Because the arteries had been placed
under the mansion, the lurkers hadn’t been able to get them. Keeper houses
could always be restored in the end due to this wonderful grant of a fist sized
star crystal, via Head Royals.
Instead of the arteries being woven in
and throughout the crystal, the way she’d painstakingly laced them, several had
been snapped! To her horror, there were thousands
of arteries-large and small-that were waving about like unrestrained fire
hoses!
“How
can I sear all of them and reweave them in place before we all-!”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could
see her mother. Millicent was in the library setting something down.
The lead strand began to pull on her
once more. Taps grabbed one of the blueprinted walls to keep from being pulled
anywhere else.
“Mamah?”
Millie disappeared from view. Her spark
appeared in her place and was headed to the garden, following one of the guest
lines to the outside, but what her mother couldn’t see was the pulsing security
knots that were in front of her. It was now large enough to destroy an army!
“Mamah! DON’T!”
Taps thrust her tapper forward, flinging
a fast rebound spell to force her mother back into the guest room. Millie’s spark
was pushed back.
*
Millie reappeared in the best guest
room, “What in the world? Why am I here? I know I mind-pictured the garden.”
The guest room was where her eldest had
needed to move Lawrence and herself until Taps could safely vacate their old
bedroom. Their red-headed daughter had been slowly taking her dangerous wards
down so they could sleep without being killed or maimed. Which they’d both
appreciated, though Millie was, admittedly, a titch annoyed, wanting to move on
with her life.
Larry had reminded her, repeatedly,
Keepers had many enemies and their daughter was no exception. Like the typical double
Club he was, he proudly said, “If anything, she has more, Millie.”
It was true, they’d watched from an agonizing
distance as villain after villain had gone after her.
“Hmm…perhaps it’s a left over gob trap.”
Her eyes brightened, “Well, I married into this family and Persimmons’ are famous
for their persistence! And Heaven knows, I’ll never be trapped inside again!”
Millie declared aloud, “Full boar ahead! Then I can see what trap I’m up
against.”
Millie ran and disappeared, once again
headed for the garden.
*
Taps panted as she strained against the
Tapestry’s pull to go to eight other rooms, she was nearly parallel with the
wall! Trying to calm down from the
terror that she’d nearly lost her mother for good, she swallowed and looked
back at the swelling knot that was gathering tension.
“A half an hour or less to annihilation,”
she panted, biting her lip.
Movement attracted her attention as
Millie’s spark quickly raced toward the swelling net once more.
“STOP MOTHER!”
Taps extended her tapper. Millie was
caught and thrown back with defensive rebound wall jinx followed by a
cushioning enchantment so she would land somewhere safe without being bruised.
Taps blocked the directional portals that
would allow her mother the right to head towards the knot that’d once been the
garden’s entrance. If her mother tried again, she would find herself at the Heart
palace.
Taps let go of the blue print wall, choosing
the direction the Tapestry was to pull her, so she wasn’t torn apart! The next
thing she knew, she was being dragged upward through the solid floor of her
study to the ceiling. She smiled as her eyes landed on President Washington’s
bust statue.
“Your timing has never been better, Mr.
President!”
The wooden floor began to bubble and creak,
the seal that Lord Jaydren had gifted her with began to rumble as more veins
began to fly past the room, spurting magic.
“No! Purple and yellow don’t mix!” She
pointed and the flopping purple vein sealed as the yellow smacked into her desk,
covering it in a waterfall of golden spark mist.
Taps swung up, just as the yellow mist
touched the purple splotches left behind by its vein. Brown vapor exploded into
the room. She grabbed the head of President Washington’s bust. More than happy
she’d enchanted him and his pedestal to stay put, she opened her mouth as a microphone
appeared.
The fumes from the mixed magic began to
rise.
“Alert to Heart (cough) Palace! Send (deep
cough) help!” she coughed just as the Tapestry yanked her from sight.
*
Millie felt herself slung back to the
guest room (and luckily) she’d landed on her husband’s large fireplace chair.
She softly pulled one of her side
ringlets in thought, “Now this is a
puzzle. ‘Twasn’t a gob trap, otherwise I would have been bruised for sure!
Well, I’ll have to tell my little copper that her guiding wards are out of
order. But, there’s more than one way to jump into a garden.”
She quickly went over to her personal
desk. It looked like a plain writing desk, but when she touched it, the piece
unfolded until it nearly took up three quarters of the wall. Many drawers of
all shapes and sizes lined it, some were locked. The different sizes were
needed so she could fit any number of things in them: letters, knick-knacks,
deadly puzzles, plants, and even small animals.
The many-drawered-marvel was a treasure
to her because it’d been carved by non-other than Mr. Haberlie himself (her
friend, Joyce’s, husband). Flowers, butterflies, leaves, and hearts adorned it
in raised relief. He was an expert Magicanik carpenter and her desk was one of
his best works, in Millie’s opinion.
Larry had replaced the magic that’d been
lost to the polished piece (as its magic had been sacrificed to keep her
daughter alive). She’d been excited to reunite with it! If it was one thing that
all threes needed, it was a multi-leveled answer-desk.
Millie touched one of the drawers. It
opened to reveal several herbal books. Her slender finger slid over the leather
worn volumes until it stopped on one that hadn’t worn down. She tapped it and
it slid out, the light blue book floated down to her. It was an original in
every way.
She turned the painted pages that
displayed her own unique garden, “To think you were still alive the last time I
turned these pages. Your art work stuns me even now, Eloise, old friend. How I
wish you could be here for Sarah. She is
such a beautiful girl. Your
granddaughter would’ve loved you.” She stopped on a page that brought her back
to her original purpose, “There we are. This section of the garden. I do hope
the painting still works.”
She propped the book open and touched
the page. Finding her finger sinking through it, she smiled as she allowed
herself to be sucked into the book.
*
-T. Erickson
