Chapter 4
Queen Crystalia was sitting at the head of the refectory and told the Grade Fives and Tyla to sit down on the only free seats next to her. Thousands of eyes followed the Grade Fives to their seats. After a while the queen stood up and said calmly, "you are all probably wondering who these people are and where they came from?" Everyone nodded or muttered "yes."
"They came from a faraway world that you might not have heard of. The current Ploit-Goblin, Pipi, dropped ploits on seven of them when she was flying over their school. The other fifteen found the ploits just before they expired. I just wanted all the Sparklimmarians to come to this feast so you could get to know them. Let the feast begin!" As she said this, salmon-pink menus with gold embellishments appeared in front of everyone. Sitting on top of each menu was a cupboard-dryad.
"What do you want for starters?" the dryad, sitting on Sarah's menu, squeaked happily. "Oh, um, uh," said Sarah, flipping through her menu "what is… cotton-corn salad?" "Ohm, I love that, very good choice!" and with that, the dryad disappeared. "Wait, but I don't know what cotton - oh never mind." Sarah crossed her arms. Meanwhile, Owen was arguing with the dryad on his menu. "No, I don't want a duiker! I want the friggle-soup, you fool!" Owen repeated. However, the cupboard-dryad kept offering him a duiker. Queen Crystalia, who had heard what was going on, said, "Oh never mind that. The cupboard-dryads are always offering weird things. Just softly whack them and tell them what you want." Owen did as she said, which upset the dryad, but worked.
Mrs. Jackson walked up to the queen half way through the feast and whispered something in her ear. The queen nodded and Mrs. Jackson called out. The Grade Fives looked in her direction. "Ok, I have received permission from Queen Crystalia to take one of you out of the hall each night to talk to your parents on my phone. Who wants to go first?" All the Grade Fives raised their hands. "Dominic." He followed Mrs. Jackson out of the hall. "By the way," the queen said to Carmin, who was sitting next to her, "what is a phone?" Carmin spat out her carrots. "You don't know what a phone is?" "Nope." "Oh, well a phone is something that you can play games on or you can also chat on it with someone that is faraway." "Oh, cool." uttered the queen.
The feast ended with a long ringing speech by Tyla about the flamies getting stronger and more powerful every second of the day. Then all the diners left, except the Grade Fives. The queen wanted to tell them something, "I don't know how long you will be here for, but as soon as our builder-gnome, Emie Pebblemen, has finished repairing the vortex, you can depart Sparklimmar. You will be with your families once more. You may now leave for bed." The Grade Fives left the hall and fell asleep as soon as they cuddled up under their duvets. It started storming outside as the last soul in the castle fell asleep.
Weston woke up with a start the next morning. Something was chewing on his toe. He lifted up the duvet to see a monkey. "Ahhh!" shrieked Weston, "a monkey is eating me!" Raiyaaz woke up and shouted, "FIRE-MONKEY! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" Fire-Monkey leaped off the bed and went to the door. He opened it with his tail and left. Raiyaaz got up and closed the door, muttering to himself about Fire-Monkey being told a million times not to chew toes. Weston swore under his breath. "How do you know that monkey?" asked Weston. "Tyla's pet. When I first came here, he started biting my toe when we were staying in the village. Annoying little thing, he is," answered Raiyaaz.
An hour later, Tyla went around the castle to tell the children to go down for breakfast. When they sat down at the refectory, instead of salmon menus appearing, baby-blue menus appeared. Queen Crystalia and Tyla had large plates of stacked pancakes in front of them. However, neither of them were eating. "Come on Tyla," said the queen quietly "You didn't have to wear your armour." Tyla still had not taken off his mask or armour, "I could have put a menfyi charm on you, but forget that. The flamies have just found a spell that can put the Forest of Living Gums to sleep! They are just trying to learn how to perform it. I read it in the Crystal Ball. It's been glowing more and more red since the flappy-squirrel escaped." "What's the Crystal Ball?" Jemuel asked. "Hey, are you going to eat those? If you aren't, I'll have them." Queen Crystalia clicked her fingers and the pancakes shrank to the size of Nutsy and flew into her mouth. She did the same with Tyla's pancakes. Jemuel's jaw dropped. As everyone finished eating, Queen Crystalia stood up and said, "Ok, can everyone meet me in the library at Quarter to twelve – latest. I have asked one of the domestic worker elves to leave a map of the castle on each of your beds. The library takes up more than three quarters of the third floor. So it will be easy to find on the map.'
The Grade Fives walked up a long thin marble staircase and found themselves in a short corridor. At the end of it was a door with a sign that read: The Millie Judith Library. They walked through it and saw hundreds, if not thousands, of bookshelves, each packed tightly with books. "I'm over here!" the voice of Queen Crystalia echoed through the library. Tyla, who was with the Grade Fives, lead them for what felt like a mile through the maze of books and they stopped in front of a small sitting area. The queen was there, sitting comfortably on an armchair. In front of her was a small footstool with something under a veil, sitting on it.
"Sit down." said the queen calmly. The Grade Fives and Tyla each took a seat on either a chair or the fluffy rug. "Earlier, after breakfast, Tyla suggested that I tell you how we know what the flamies are getting up to. How we are able to find out what they are going to do. How do we always know where their locations are? Well, I agree with her…I mean him. This is how we know all this!" Queen Crystalia lifted up the veil and there sat a small foggy-blue crystal ball. Pictures of horned fiery creatures floated around inside the ball.
"This is my Crystal Orb," said Queen Crystalia. As she said this, a loud siren rang out through the library. It was coming from the orb, which had now turned a vibrant red. A picture of a flamy wearing a fiery crown had now appeared in the ball. She was screaming orders to some other flamies, all of whom looked very frightened. "Now go and learn how to do the somnarbor charm!" The queen flamy was screeching, "I don't want to hear another word from you about it being too difficult! We need to get to Sparklimmar and destroy Queen Crystalia! Now bring me my fire-orb!"
The Grade Fives stared into the orb as though it had grown a mouth and started saying bad words. The other flamies disappeared out the orb and came back in carrying a small orb very much like the one they were in, only it was shades of vermillion and magenta. They gave it to the queen and disappeared again. The queen of the flamies used her horn and levitated the orb. It started spinning and when it stopped, the Grade Fives could see themselves inside the ball.
"Ah," said the flamy queen, "I see Crystalia's got herself some little friends. It looks like she's building an army of… are those… kids? Why would she use kids as her army? Well, I suppose the leader of her army is only fifteen. I still can't believe she made Tyla Weatherbury the leader. He's only fifteen…" Before the flamy could finish, Queen Crystalia put the veil back over the orb. "I think that's enough." she said calmly, "Monarch Flamory gets kinda crazy when she starts talking to herself."
Queen Crystalia put the veil back over the orb and said the Grade Fives could go down to lunch. This time, instead of salmon or blue menus, there were pale green menus.
"What would you like for lunch?" Rana's cupboard-dryad asked her.
"I'll have the macaroodle honey-dribble, please," said Rana. The small dryad disappeared. "Please may I have the cappuccino latté and the chocolate-syrup micro-cakes?' Rhys asked his dryad. The dryad disappeared as Rana's dryad came back and said, "Sorry, we are out of macaroodle honey-dribble. Would you like something else…?" "FOR THE LAST TIME!" Owen screamed, "I DO NOT WANT A DUIKER!" He whacked the dryad so hard this time that it went flying across the room and lay as if it were dead on the floor. Queen Crystalia came in and laughed. The dryad got up and disappeared.