The Eve soon forgotten - Part 1

No.

 

No, no, no!

 

Maya couldn’t have.

 

But she had.

 

Flustered, Eve strode up to the cursed house, by same path Maya had taken earlier, her pulse quickening at every step. The storm, thankfully, had cleared up a few minutes before.

 

This extra fat was not helping, it weighed her down, but this was Eve and she had to remain Eve encase she met someone Eve knew. Eve was also ridiculously small, barely scraping 5’2 and this made her very insecure, especially when she was compared to Maya because her best friend was so beautiful. Eve was always embarrassed by her little brother, who had a crash on Maya, but cared for him greatly...

 

She shook herself.

 

This was not a time to be going over the brief.

 

As she ogled at the magnificence of the house (she had only ever seen it from a distance), she put her hand on the gate to open it, but gasping in pain she shrank back; it was iron. This was going to prove a problem... her obstacle was a couple of inches taller than her and there were no gaps. Yet there had to be somewhere; this house was so old the fence surrounding must have rusted somewhere.

 

She backed up. Yes, there! Big enough to let even Eve the ping-pong ball through.

 

(The bullies at school had often referred to her as a ping-pong ball: small, fat and round, so all in all the Mousing siblings were not the coolest pair.)

 

Apart from the slight burns in her side where the iron bars had brushed her skin, she was unharmed from her first, and hopefully last, trial of the night. Silently she prayed that Maya and Daniel were the same. She may not actually know them as well as they think, but the thought of anything happening to them still upset her. Not only that, but she had the feeling Chief would wring her neck if she messed up on this job; he seemed a lot more interested in this case than any other. Obsessive, kind of interest.

 

One thing at a time; worry about getting the unsighted humans back home, if that proved a failure, then, and only then, worry about possible murder.

 

She smiled as she entered the creepy building. People were so easy for her to understand, which was why she was so good at impersonating them and predicting them. That’s why Chief liked her to go on missions out of the forest and the only one he let out alone; she was impossible to track. Pages and Cocoa were a pair when it came to distant missions, what with their slightly freaky physical likeness. What Chief didn’t realise was that he was exactly same: Predicable. It didn’t mean people didn’t ever surprise her, Maya had proven that.

 

Why now? She thought, going up the stairs subconsciously placing her feet in Maya’s footprints, Why did she have to choose tonight to sneak around my ‘foreseeing powers’. Of course they weren’t powers, it was logic, but Cocoa had insisted that they were another gift; she was forever imagining rubbish. But nobody could blame her, most of Chief’s people probably don’t want to wake up in the morning; they would rather be in their own dreaming happiness than wake up to the slap in the face that was their hellish lives.

 

Maya was a scientific, no nonsense kind of girl, the fact that she was chasing fairies was... erratic, impulsive, something unpredictable. The only reason Eve was going to Bunlock Manor was because Eve had found notes and plans written out by Maya in her diary. Now that she knew this part of Maya it would be so much easier to keep an eye on her, but as she unlatched the rotting door she realised she had lost a job.

 

On the floor of the grand bedroom, was a lump, which, as you came closer, took the form of a scrawny, teenage boy.

 

“Daniel!” Eve was so relieved to see her baby brother alive, “Are you okay? You’re not hurt are you? Oh my God! You’re all bruised and bashed; please say you’re not bleeding.” Eve was so fussy and panicked it was annoying.

 

Daniel’s bottom lip started quivering and he flung himself into Eve’s open arms, “I couldn’t stop him. He took Maya away. He said he was going to marry her. He used me to get her. I’m sorry Eve. I let him take Maya.”

 

“You don’t have to be sorry, Daniel,” Eve said, the poor boy was in a state, he needed comforting. However, if someone had taken Maya then the girls neck wasn’t the only one on the line. Eve needed something to tell Chief so he wouldn’t be so angry, “I just need to know one thing, okay? What was the man’s name?”

 

The young boy was shaking so bad Eve could hardly make out the single word that passed through his trembling lips, “Kel.”

 

An icy jolt went down her spine.  She knew there was a powerful fairy imitating Daniel, but she never, in a million years, would have thought of Kel. At least she had an excuse for failing this mission, how was she supposed to compete with that?

 

“Thank you Daniel,” She continued, as though nothing was wrong, “I’m going to take you back to bed now and you’re going to wake up not remembering any of this, okay?” She took out the red sleeping powder from her hidden pouch, “You were a good little brother; the best one I’ve ever had and believe me: I’ve had some monsters.”

 

The confusion on Daniels face slowly ebbed away as the powder worked it’s magic. She almost envied him; she would love to use this stuff, if only it didn’t wipe your memory. He would wake up never knowing Eve existed and thinking, like everyone else would in a couple of days, that Maya had run away from home. Of course, Maya’s mum would distraught, unable to believe her baby had gone. Sometimes it almost seemed like a good bargain; memory for sleep. Memories were so fragile, but they could hold the greatest fear so it was tempting to get rid of them all together and sleep filled nights were hard to find.

 

Eve stood; taking Daniel home would be so much easier in her real form.

 

Gasping slightly at the pull on her skin, her body stretched upward. Elongating and thinning in the middle. Her blond hair, which was held in a ponytail, shortened, giving the illusion of the hair being pulled back into the skull, and darkened until it was a mousy brown and the band fell to the grimy ground; her hair was too short for it to hold. At least a head taller now, her body took on a boyish athletic figure and her face more attractive: her eyes grew and became a light greyish brown, her nose a lips evening out and she lost that awful two stone of fat. Much nicer to look at and perfectly forgettable, just the way she needed to be. Hideously ugly people were hardly forgettable; she was in the middle, right where she blurred into the crowd.  Her clothes were now ridiculously over sized, but it seemed that, with less going outwards the fabric was long enough to keep her decently covered, she was changing outfits soon anyway.

 

Eve had gone.

 

Blur was back in business.