Dawn and Dusk vs the Bounty Hunter:Part Three

     Sunday morning. No one should have to be up this early on a Sunday morning. My clock read six-thirty AM. Mina was still asleep. Like she had done yesterday, I got up and dug through our wardrobe for exact matching clothes. Socks weren’t a problem this morning, as Mina and I had hastily gone down to our laundry room and gathered every pair of our socks that had been washed. Today felt like a polka dot day, so I set out our polka dot socks.

      Before bed last night, Mina had brought up the concern that Mordred knew something. I got the feeling too, if I’m being honest. It wasn’t like him to not tell us when something was bothering him. (He told us about every little thing, usually.) We puzzled about this for a good ten minutes, before giggling madly at how clever we were at being able to trick Balthazar.

      After I had collected the notes Mina and I had written out yesterday and the added notes for our after-assignment adventure in fire faerie tracking, I headed down stairs for breakfast. I was the only one up, so I could have anything I wanted without complaint. I settled on Peanut-butter and jelly toast with chocolate milk. By the time I had finished breakfast is was ten after seven. It was still too early to be at Balthazar’s faerie hunting shack. So I went to Mordred’s house. He was coming with me today, after all.

      * * *

      "Hello," Balthazar grinned. "You two ready for today’s lesson?"

      I greeted him and then signed the greeting to Mordred, who waved in turn to greet Balthazar. Mordred had brought his violin with him because his mother was expecting him at rehearsal after the lesson today. Balthazar eyed the instrument and asked me to ask Mordred if he could play it later. I asked Mordred and his face lit up like a New Year festival. There were no words to describe how excited my checkered Gelert buddy was. He nodded his head so hard and so fast; he looked like a bobble head from my sister’s bobble head collection.

      I had noticed Balthazar eyeing me when I had turned to ask Mordred to play his violin for us. It was a quizzical, almost amused look. Almost like the kind of looks people get when they have a secret or a joke only they understand. It made me wonder what I had missed. I pushed the thought aside as soon as Mordred excitedly started nodding his head. So Mordred and I followed Balthazar to his shack and I spilled the beans right then and there about tracking a fire faerie without him yesterday.

      He was a fine mixture of surprised, proud and a bit angry that I would do something so dangerous. I didn’t go into detail about the adventure Mina, Mordred and I had gone on yesterday. I knew I’d have to lie and then I’d be caught. Mordred eyed me warily as I told Balthazar about the fire faerie. He poked me in the shoulder a few times, just to make sure I didn’t go into details that didn’t exist.

      When we got to the shack we learned today’s lesson was going to be about safety when tracking. It seemed a little ironic, to be sure. As I took notes on Balthazar’s lesson, Mordred was doing a math puzzle, or was pretending to do it at least. He seemed far more interested in what I was doing. Every time Balthazar would turn around or walk away from the table I would look over at Mordred and he would snicker. When I glanced back at my paper, I figured out the cause of his amusement. I had accidentally grabbed Mina’s notebook. It’s a good thing we liked matching everything or this would have been awkward. I only hoped that he didn’t notice the writing. We were perfectly ambidextrous, but Mina’s left hand writing was pretty discernable from mine if you looked carefully. Like-wise my right-hand writing was horrible compared to Mina’s.

      This could be the moment when Balthazar discovered our prank, all because I carelessly grabbed the wrong notebook. Just then Balthazar came back to the table and had asked me to get the tea he had made from the counter. He had set out an array of rather pretty cups for me to choose from. So I got up and did as I was asked.

      * * *

      I watched her get up. I saw Balthazar ask Wila to go and get the tea he had made for us from the counter on the other end of the room. While Wila had her back turned Balthazar slid a paper over to me from across the table near his bottling station or study, which ever he preferred to call it. I looked at the note and was shocked, but not surprised by this. I knew exactly how he would discover the twins. I just didn’t know how to tell them that yesterday.

      Balthazar’s note point blank asked which twin was here today. I scribbled down that it was Wila. I also asked him if it was how they signed that lead to their discovery and pushed the note back across the table. He nodded and he grinned. Truth be told, the way Wila and Mina sign to me is the only way I can tell them apart half the time. Mina was loud with a lot of her signs; she didn’t quite understand how to talk quietly. According to Priscilla, (A classmate and friend in the advanced academics for gifted students program with me,) both twins had this problem vocally. Wila on the other hand, had trouble remembering facial expressions or trouble remembering to even make them. (Something I teased her about a lot.)

      I had often wondered what life would be like if they had been part of a set of triplets like their mom and cousins. (If they had, they said their sister would have been Winona Twilight.) I counted a lot of lucky stars that my best friends were twins and not triplets. It was often a subject Priscilla and I discussed at the after school program.

      I watched Balthazar writing on our secret piece of paper and push it back across the table to me. He asked me not to inform the twins that they had been caught until the end. Provided they could make it that long without accidentally revealing themselves before then. I had to admit, that this was incredibly amusing. I promised not to tell either of them that they had been discovered or that Balthazar was going to try and trick the tricksters into revealing their prank. The twins wouldn’t be mad at me for not telling them. In fact, I had warned them they’d fail. None of us had expected Balthazar to have a sense of humour, however.

      I couldn’t help but grin. I had to try not to laugh. This was going to be bizarrely hilarious.

      * * *

      I brought the tea back to the table. Balthazar had made tea for all of us as a nice way to finish up todays lesson for the weekend. I honestly couldn’t wait for next weekend, (Sadly it was also the final weekend, it was a short project.) so we could continue with the assignment and our prank. Mina and I would have all week to plan out more of our prank. I noticed Mordred was grinning. Balthazar had probably asked him to play his violin. As I set the tea down on the table, Mordred did indeed pull out his violin and play a song he had been learning for his lessons. He played very well.

      It had been a good day. Our prank continued on and whatever had been bothering Mordred had seemingly vanished. He left in a better mood than when we had arrived this morning. He also couldn’t stop giggling. When I asked him what was so funny, had to paused and take a deep breath before he tried to sign to me.

      "Nothing," Mordred signed, quickly trying to stifle another chuckle. "Magax told me something, and I asked Balthazar if it was true."

      I didn’t bother asking anything more. Unlike Mina and I, Mordred didn’t have lie-tells. So I had to assume he was telling the truth, even if his giggling seemed a little out of place. We discussed the lesson and what tomorrow’s math assignment would be on our way to the Neovian music hall for Mordred’s violin lesson. Tomorrow’s math class would be all about the wonderful world of multiplication and division. Mina and I were very bad at math, so we’d be doing homework all night tomorrow night. I would rather do an entire book report on the history of Meridell than do math homework. I really didn’t like Monday math class.

      * * *

      It had been awful week. We were up to our ears with math homework, so much so, that even Mordred was too busy with his own to tutor us. So we had to turn to his elder sister to help all three of us. She was going to Brightvale University next year, so she was a good person to ask for help. All we had to do was bring her some of her favourite candy and she’d be happy to help us. It was a fair deal as far as we all were concerned, especially since their parents were super strict about allowing sweets into the house. So we did our homework at our house and had the candy ready.

      The crazy math homework week of doom and gloom hadn’t given Mina and I a lot of time to plan our next move as far as our prank was going. We only had a total of two weekends with our famous citizen. This was the final weekend. I had taken Sunday’s lesson, so Friday had meant Mina would be the one to go. We didn’t exactly know what Balthazar was planning to teach us. He hadn’t even shown us how to bottle faeries yet, though tracking them had been very fun.

      We had an hour before class let out and Mina went to study with Balthazar again. Thankfully our teacher was in a good mood and had given us a ‘Free choice’ activity period. Some students were reading, while others were feverishly trying to finish the math homework they had been assigned for the weekend. I looked over to the other side of the room where Mina and Mordred were sitting, (Done specifically to tell Mina and me apart.) Mina was reviewing everything we had learned last weekend and Mordred was helping Jimmy with his math homework. I sat there quietly thinking to myself about one minor detail that we had overlooked; What if our teacher talked to Balthazar.

      That would end our prank then and there and we would be in so much trouble. Mordred had been the one who had brought this up during final recess. Magax had come by and spoken to our teacher about missing last Sunday and asking for a make-up day for Mordred’s assignment. Mrs. May happily agreed to it. Mina and I had decided that she needed to be quick after class let out to avoid our prank being spoiled or me being seen. We were both wearing pink hoodies, so I could easily put my hood on and walk through the crowd of students who were going about their day.

      It was bound to be interesting to say the least.

      To be continued.