Sophie & The Story Collector

      Why couldn’t they just leave her alone? She was very busy these days. Working on potions… and… things.

      Nevertheless, she hunkered further into her spellbook. Perhaps if she read hard enough, the intruders would go away. Concentrating on the black-inked words of a new potion to rid gardens of Meepits, Sophie thought she’d been successful in deterring the unwanted guests from her swampy stoop.

      At the beginning of the week, she saw villagers approach her hut looking for help.

      “I’m busy!” she had yelled through the door.

      She was not busy. Not in the slightest.

     After harsh whispers amongst themselves, they finally dispersed and Sophie thought that was the end of that.

      Except two days later, another group trekked through the swamp.

      That time when they knocked on her door, she yelled, “Sophie’s not here!”

      She was there, but they really couldn’t catch the hint, could they?

      Thinking that was the last of that, Sophie nearly forgot the villagers of Neovia seemed to want her for something.

      “Miss Sophie? I know you’re in there,” a voice called out from the other side of the door. “It’s—It’s Alabaster Chesterdrawers?”

      The old, red Techo said his name like he wasn’t quite sure if Sophie would remember he had been the one to sell her the new cauldron that was currently bubbling purple goop. It was the last time she trekked into Neovia after she found a crack at the bottom of her old cauldron over two months ago.

      Sophie sighed and forwent the silk ribbon bookmark to place the book upside down on the coffee table. She would be right back anyway after she shooed Alabaster Chesterdrawers from her stoop.

      Alabaster’s deep yellow eyes widened when she opened the door. He wasn’t the only one. A Pteri with oversized glasses stood behind him, and a Gelert in a three-piece suit caught her eye.

      Bruno…

      Sophie squared her shoulders and looked at Alabaster. “Yes?”

      “The annual Founders’ Day Celebration is tomorrow,” Alabaster started.

      A source of tourism and a boost in Neovia’s economy every year, Founders’ Day had the streets filled with Neovian residents and tourists from all over Neopia who watched skits at the theater, ate authentic Neovian treats, and crowded the cobblestone streets of Neovia for the parade all day.

      Nevermind how Sophie knew so much about the yearly festival. Maybe there was or maybe there wasn’t a delicious potion hidden in her closet that disguised her into a Aisha for a day.

      “Is it?” Sophie asked.

      Alabaster nodded. “And you see, we’re afraid tourists will be turned away.”

      There was a weighted pause between Sophie and the villagers as she waited for Alabaster to continue.

      The Pteri behind him sighed and pushed her way forward so Sophie could have a better look at her. “There are strange sounds coming from the woods. Closest to the entrance of town. Horrible moaning, loud bangs in the night, and noises we are convinced will turn the tourists away if they hear them!”

      “It’s the whispers,” Alabaster said, his shoulders shuddered like a chill gripped him. “Calling our names, and asking questions we wouldn’t dare speak aloud. They sound like loved ones long past gone and whispering us to come home.”

      Sophie rose a brow and crossed her arms over her chest. “Whispers and spooky noises coming from the Haunted Woods? Imagine that.”

      The group looked nervously amongst each other. Alabaster red cheeks blossomed to an even darker shade, and the Pteri looked embarrassed she even spoke up. But it was the Gelert’s stony expression that caught Sophie’s attention. Almost like he was… disappointed in her.

      “The Founders’ Day Celebration is a source of pride for us,” he said and the others quieted around him. “It shows others in Neopia that Neovia isn’t a melancholy and mysterious place. We’re as lively as the rest of them.”

      Sophie chewed on the inside of her cheek. She didn’t want to see Neovia fall back into despair. Not after all the hard work she put into breaking the curse over the town.

      But she hated letting the villagers know that she cared.

      “I’m a very busy witch, you know, but if it means you lot will stop pestering me, I can fit it in my schedule tonight,” she said and slammed the door in their faces.

      She waited by the door, listening to them murmur, and she thought she heard Alabaster say, “Thank you, Miss Sophie.”

      Sophie moved over to the stained-glass window. The bodies of the villagers distorted and lengthened as they walked away from her hut and her swamp. Sophie’s mentor that taught her all about magic would call the soft spot she had for Neovians a weakness.

      Note to self: make the pathway to her hut more ominous and dangerous. That should keep them away.

      When she was sure they were long gone and the sun had long set, Sophie grabbed the weathered satchel off the hook from the wall. Since she didn’t know exactly what she was up against, she threw in a host of potions.

      Essence of Wispweed to expose magical glamours.

      Vile Vine for a quick getaway against an enemy.

      Swamp Gas Flask because it worked well against pesky villagers.

      She threw in a few more colorful vials before tossing in ingredients for a quick spell like a sprig of willow and powdered bone dust.

      Sophie pulled a jar of half-eaten candied Spooky Doughnuts and shook it in the light before tossing in the entire jar—she could very well need them for emergency rations.

      One cracked crystal orb and a potion-stained Neovian street map later, Sophie was ready to investigate.

      Putting on her favorite patchwork pointed hat, Sophie left her hut and navigated her way out of the swamp. She pulled out the Neovian street map to ensure she was avoiding all populated paths that would put any villagers in her way. Sometimes, it was hard to look into the faces of villagers that looked at her with both hope for that one time she broke their curse, to the wariness of who and what she was.

      Alabaster and the others said the strange occurrences were happening in the woods closest to the entrance of town. Sophie folded up the map and stuffed it into her satchel.

      The ground beneath her hooves started to pulsate like a heartbeat as she trekked closer to the source, and the Brain Tree came into view. The stiffness of his branches creaked in the gentle breeze as the brain thumped to the same beat as the roots she felt in the ground. The sentient tree was a popular attraction amongst Neopians who sought rewards for helping him gain more knowledge, but today he was alone.

      The sound of bark stretching made her fur stand on end. It wasn’t just the Brain Tree. It was all of them. Ilere had taught her to listen to the trees. Despite the noise, they were silent.

      The Brain Tree fixed his beady red and hollow eyes on her.

      “The house burns. Yet, it is still alive,” he croaked.

     Sophie kept walking. Surely the old tree wasn’t talking to her… despite following her with his eyes as she walked past him. She pulled out the map again, if nothing but to distract her.

     All right, she was nearly to the entrance of town.

     “Sophieeeee…”

     The whisper tickled her neck and she flicked the edge of the map down to peer down the darkened path.

     She was alone.

     “Oh, for crying out loud,” she huffed and marched toward where she heard the whisper. If she found out these were a bunch of teenage Neopets from the Deserted Fairgrounds here to tease the villagers of Neovia ahead of Founders’ Day, she’d see this as a massive waste of her time.

     She pushed her way through low-hanging branches and thick brush as the whispers grew louder.

     “Come to me, Sophieeeee. Tell me your secretssss.”

     “Not a chance,” she whispered under her breath before her skirts became caught and tangled amongst a thorn bush. Grabbing a fistful of the fabric, Sophie tugged and yanked until the skirts came loose…

     …only for her to tumble out of the brush and land with a thud in a clearing.

     “Hope no one saw that,” she said and picked herself up off the ground. She wiped the dirt and dust from her dress, but paused. Was that music?

     A chorded melody haunted its way into her senses. She looked up and gasped.

     An ornate, two-story manor with impressive features stood before her. A large porch sat at the front with carved-paneled columns framing the front entry. Fish scale shingles climbed around the exterior of the manor with precise detail. A wide balcony stretched across the second floor and the circular tower that jutted out the side of the house was lined with windows that Sophie was sure gave a great view of the surrounding Haunted Woods.

     Each window of the manor had a yellow glow as if someone was home. Mesmerized, Sophie stepped forward and she could swear she heard silverware clinking and polite conversation. A dinner party?

     Shadows danced across the windows. Laughter lifted into the night sky. What was this place?

     Shaking herself from the trance, Sophie marched up the front steps. Surely a wealthy Neopet hosting nightly parties couldn’t be what the villagers had been so afraid of.

     Knocking on the door, she thought it would be best to speak with the owner. However, the moment her knuckles touched the mahogany door, all noise coming from inside the house ceased and the yellow-lantern lights that glowed behind the curtained windows disappeared.

     The sour and sometimes sweet taste of magic hung in the air and for a moment, Sophie hesitated to knock again.

     Maybe the villagers weren’t so paranoid after all.

     Wind picked up around her. Like a ghostly hand playing with her hair.

     “Come inside... Sophieeeeee.”

     “Well, if you insist,” Sophie quipped to the voice.

     The heavy door creaked loudly on its hinges as it swung open revealing….

     …an empty and decaying foyer.

     Sophie took a few steps into the manor, her eyes wide as she took in her surroundings. The manor was falling apart. Wallpaper that was once embossed with a gold shine was dull and peeling off the walls. The staircase ahead of her had broken and missing steps. The chandelier above her head swung so precariously, she took several steps to the left so it didn’t fall on her. What stood out most was the smell. Burnt wood and decay. The manor had sustained a lot of fire damage.

     It was the complete opposite to what she saw outside. The manor appeared like a lively place with numerous guests, but in here? The manor had been abandoned for decades.

     The floorboards creaked as she shifted. Something was obviously going on and she needed to figure out what it was.

     She dug into her satchel and pulled out the Essence of Wispweed. The shimmering green mist was the obvious choice to try and figure out what sort of magical glamour was being played on her and Neovia. Uncorking the vial, she threw it out in an arc above her head. The mist shimmered in the darkness. In its wake revealing what she had seen outside.

     The walls shined once more beyond the mist, and picture frames hung straight with portraits of various Neovians.

     Sophie jumped to the side when a ghostly Aisha dressed in a ballgown flitted by her and down the hall toward the music. Another ghostly Zafara descended the staircase wearing a dark suit with a pocket watch hanging from his vest. He stopped for a moment to check the time.

     No one seemed to notice her, but these weren’t real ghosts. Something about their aura wasn’t quite right. As Sophie studied an emerging Bori from another door, she realized they were no more than memories that were tied to the house.

     A haunted manor, Sophie guessed. Ilere once told her, ‘Some houses don’t die—they only forget they aren’t alive.’

     Sophie hated when Ilere was right.

     “Sophie,” a cool whisper brushed her cheek. “What a surprise.”

     She looked to the right where the whisper came from, but nothing was there.

     “Doing Neovia’s bidding again? How sad.”

     Sophie whipped her head to the left at another voice.

     “You know they won’t ever fully accept you. No matter how many times you save them.”

     “You should have run. Just like Bruno.”

     “Out in the swamp. All alone.”

     The whispers burst into mocking laughter that swirled around her. Sophie pressed her lips together as if that would shield her against the whispers’ taunts, but they only continued.

     “Your spells are often failed experiments.”

     “You saved strangers and failed your own brother.”

     “That swamp is the only place you are accepted.”

     “You’re nowhere near the best witch of the Haunted Woods.”

     Sophie slammed her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut, but the whispers continued, feeding on her vulnerabilities one-by-one from her brother, her capabilities as a witch, and all the way to her fear of never belonging somewhere. No, this had to stop.

     From the corner of her vision, she noticed a Lenny look at her before slipping through a door to her left. Strange. The other Neopets she had seen were memories that paid no attention to her. The Lenny, however, that was a ghost.

     Sophie headed toward the door while uncorking the flask at her hip. She took a quick swig and grimaced at the sour, metallic taste of the swamp. Silver flecks swirled like stars across her vision as she pushed through the door and slammed it shut behind her.

     All at once, the whispers stopped.

     Well, more like quieted. They no longer filled her head with an insurmountable pressure. She could concentrate on the task ahead. Where had the Lenny led her?

     Sophie held her wand up and ignited her signature green flames. Flicking her wrist as she walked further into the room, the flames stopped to hover above her, casting a swampy green light over what looked to be… a library?

     A large oak desk at the end of the room, suggested a study. Cobwebs stretched across the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Some spines appeared charred and moldy curtains hung on splintered rods over broken windows. A chill swept over the room and ruffled the pages of a few books that laid open on the desk.

     Intrigued, Sophie approached the desk and picked up the first book, but it wasn’t a book at all. It was a journal. Flipping to the front, a small plaque was stamped at the front.

     From the Mind of the Story Collector.

     Sophie frowned and flipped through the journal. Each page was handwritten with a date and a name. All were different, and as she glossed over the words, Sophie gathered that each page was a story… a confession… a truth… of the person being written about.

     When she flipped to the final page, it was blank. Right as she was about to set the journal down and move on, black ink appeared at the top of the page. Sophie squinted as the ink formed into today’s date.

     S – O – P – H –

     Sophie slammed the journal closed before the journal could finish writing her name.

     “Tell me a truth…” a voice whispered, rising above the soft murmurs the spell suppressed.

     A truth this manor would not get if she had anything to do about it.

     Sophie squared her shoulders and rummaged around the desk. A pen rolled across the surface and stopped at a loose piece of paper.

     From the Desk of Mortimer Veil was typed neatly at the top like it was part of a personalized stationery kit, but what was handwritten below it piqued her curiosity.

     “I only wanted to find the very best stories in Neovia, but now they have turned against me. I fear my time is limited. I can hear them now and see the torchlight through the trees.”

     A chill ran down Sophie’s spine. She looked around the charred remains of the study. Torchlight. A fire.

     Past Neovians—most certainly before the curse—had burned this manor mostly to the ground. They were angry with this Mortimer Veil… the… Story Collector.

      “Should have just stayed out of people’s business,” Sophie huffed, and at that, the house shuddered like it was shaking off years of dust and dirt and memories.

     The floor beneath started to quake and a ghostly blue light shined up between the cracks in the floorboards.

     Time to go, she thought and raced back to the front of the room. Sophie twisted the doorknob of the study, but it wouldn’t budge. Oh, the house wanted to be funny, did it?

     She summoned another green flame, but instead of using it for sight she hurled it at the door. The entire door shuddered, but remained closed. The green magic sank into the wood, creating lightning strikes up the walls and through the ceiling.

     The house simply absorbed her magic.

     “Let me collect your story,” a voice—louder than a whisper—howled at her with enough force that she stumbled backwards.

     The walls quaked and Sophie grabbed onto a nearby bookshelf for balance. She had to figure out how to break the curse that brought this manor alive.

     “Sophie, tell me a truth, and I will let you go.”

     All at once, the house stopped rumbling.

     She gripped the wand at her hip in anticipation for another attack and her eyes roved around the room.

     Through the closed door—her only exit might she add—the Lenny that had lured her in here, appeared. He wore a three-piece suit and a monocle hung from his lapel. He had bushy white hair that stood on end as he hovered closer to her.

     “Let me guess,” she said and crossed her arms. “Mortimer Veil?”

     “Most call me the Story Collector,” Mortimer said, and what sounded like a thousand pages ruffled around her.

     She tightened her grip around her wand. This was it, she suspected. It was between her and the Story Collector. No way in Moltara was she giving Mortimer her truth, so how could she trick him if her magic was absorbed by the manor?

     “Well, I’ve been asked to take care of this…” she paused to wave her free hand around the house, “…whole operation. So, it’s time to pack it up, Mort.”

     Mortimer sneered at her, his ghostly aura brightening for a moment in what she could only assume was irritation and anger.

     “Asked by the same people who are afraid of you? Who will never accept you into their community?” Mortimer questioned.

     A twinge twisted in her stomach at his words. What he said wasn’t entirely true. Not everyone was afraid of her. At least deep down, she hoped so.

     Whatever emotion crossed her face, Mortimer latched onto it.

     “Tell me one truth, Sophie, and I will let you go. You don’t owe the villagers anything. They’ll turn on you eventually. They always do. I would know.”

     Sophie took a step back, hating the feeling like Mortimer was inside her head. There was no way he could know she had wondered the same thing, and had taken precautions around the swamp if that day ever came.

     Books flew off the shelf, falling in front of her and flipping open to random pages. Instead of written words, she saw images of herself and different interactions she had with the villagers of Neovia. From the time she was in town and a mother rushed her young children to the other side of the street so they wouldn’t cross her, to a group of citizens whispering about her behind her back.

     “Tell me your truth,” Mortimer insisted, his voice coming to an eager pitch like a starving Skeith restrained at a buffet feast.

     The whispers broke through her spell and descended on her. She slammed her hands over her ears and doubled over, but she found no relief. Each whisper picked apart her insecurities. It grew too much.

     She was Sophie the Swamp Witch!

     A silly little haunted house would not defeat her, and she refused to give it what it wanted. A curse always had a loophole and she loved to confuse a magical curse.

     Sophie screamed and stood back up, squarely facing Mortimer Veil. The house held its breath in anticipation at what she would say. Would Mortimer collect yet another story and keep the memory forever in this manor?

     “Fine! You want the truth? I didn’t train with Ilere because I admired her. I stayed because I wanted people to fear me the way they fear her!” She exclaimed it so boldly that she almost believed it herself.

     But Sophie didn’t stop. She took another deep breath and continued. “Ilere didn’t teach me mercy. She taught me how not to need anyone. I liked it. I wanted that power. I want people to flinch when they hear my name.”

     The house consumed her “truth” and Mortimer broke into a wide grin. The look of victory was fleeting as he frowned around the room and Sophie knew this was her chance. She thrust her wand up into the air and a burst of emerald flame erupted from the tip and ignited the room, clung to the walls, and raced across the carpet. This time, the house didn’t absorb her magic. It burned around her.

     Across the room, Mortimer howled and raced toward her, but her emerald flames consumed him before he could reach her, and he disappeared before her eyes.

     Around her, the house started disintegrating. She took one look behind her and saw her magic burning away the pages of the Story Collector’s journals. She walked through the house unbothered, and was pleased to see that all the trapped memories—stories—were vanishing around her.

     Once she was back out in the yard, she looked up at the house until the last of her emerald embers winked out.

     Sophie let out a sigh of relief at the manor that now stood in ruins as it should. The curse was broken. She turned her back on the house and dusted ash from her skirts.

     “And that,” she announced to no one in particular, “is why I don’t do house calls.”

     The next day, Sophie squeezed the vial that would temporarily disguise her as an Aisha so she could enjoy the Founders’ Day celebration in the town’s square. After defeating the Story Collector, she told herself she was going to the celebration to see its success. After all, she was the reason it would be crowded with visitors from across Neopia.

      She snapped the long black cloak around her neck and looked at herself one more time in the mirror. Ilere taught her many things. Being feared and helpful were among the long list. Giving the haunted manor and the Story Collector a truth twisted with a lie had done the trick in weakening the curse temporarily, which she took advantage of.

     As she locked up her hut, she noticed a note taped to her door. Sophie frowned, unsure when it was delivered. Opening the letter, she read, Thank you, Sophie. – Alabaster Chesterdrawers.

     Sophie smiled to herself.

     She was about to fold it back up when something caught her eye. She frowned as the words on the letter started rewriting themselves.

     Your stubbornness saved you this time, but the Story Collector is patient.

     The End.