Mist's Maze, page 1
The Pegasus Princesses series
Mist’s Maze
Aqua’s Splash
The Unicorn Princesses series
Sunbeam’s Shine
Flash’s Dash
Bloom’s Ball
Prism’s Paint
Breeze’s Blast
Moon’s Dance
Firefly’s Glow
Feather’s Flight
The Moonbeams
The Wing Spell
For Phoenix and Lynx
Contents
Pegasus Princesses Mist’s Maze
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
About the Author
Pegasus
Princesses
MIST’S MAZE
In the library of Feather Palace, Princess Mist, a silver pegasus, flew slowly along the top shelf of books. Right behind her, Lucinda, a silver cat with wings, purred and practiced doing somersaults in the air.
“Where could it be?” Mist asked, hovering for a few seconds in front of a shelf and then gliding forward to the next row of books. “This is where we keep the magic cookbooks. But I don’t see it anywhere.”
Lucinda twitched her tail. “How about if we play a guessing game while you’re looking?” she asked. Then she flipped upside down and, with her paws sticking up toward the ceiling, flew in figure eights around Mist’s hooves.
Mist laughed. “I promise I’ll play a guessing game with you after I find this book. I’ve been wanting to host a cloud maze party for my sisters for months. But I can only do it if I know how to make—” Mist’s eyes widened as she read the title Magic Maze Potions on the spine of a thick red book. “Here it is!” Mist exclaimed. “Finally!” With her mouth, she pulled the book off the shelf.
Mist flew in an excited circle around a chandelier. She did a flip in the air. And then she swooped down to the floor and placed the book on a wooden desk next to a wing-shaped reading lamp with a rainbow flame. A second later, Lucinda landed with a thud on the desktop, right next to the book.
“Now can we play a guessing game?” Lucinda asked, looking up at Mist with large green eyes. “Please?”
“I promise we’ll play one,” Mist said. “But let’s look up the recipe first.”
Lucinda frowned with disappointment.
“How about if you help me turn the pages?” Mist asked, smiling at the cat.
Lucinda purred with delight and swished her tail. Then she used her paw to flip the book open to the table of contents. Mist and Lucinda leaned over the page. Mist began to read the names of the maze potions out loud: “Swirling Rainbow Maze Potion, page 3. Yodeling Corn Maze Potion, page 4. Underwater Coral Reef Maze Potion, page 5. Glowing Yarn Maze Potion, page 6. Blooming Flower Maze Potion, page 7. Glitter Garden Maze Potion, page 8.” Then her eyes widened and she grinned. “Giant Floating Cloud Maze Party Potion, page 9,” she read, flapping her wings with excitement so her hooves lifted for a few seconds off the library’s shiny black tile floor.
Lucinda purred and turned pages with her paw until the book lay open to page 9:
Giant Floating Cloud Maze Party Potion
YOU WILL NEED:
1 medium bottle
pollen from 4 ear-flowers
4 seconds of flowing water from a sky stream
1 human girl
DIRECTIONS:
Step One: In the potion bottle, collect the pollen from the ear-flowers.
Step Two: Immediately after completing step one, hold the bottle in a rapidly flowing sky stream for four seconds. Note: Do not put a cap on the bottle.
Step Three: Have a human girl cover the bottle opening with her thumb and shake the bottle four times.
Step Four: Pour out the contents of the bottle in the sky at least 30 feet above the highest treetop.
Step Five: Watch your cloud maze party form right before your eyes.
Mist furrowed her brow. Lucinda twitched her tail and cocked her head to the side.
“I bet the hedgehogs in the Cloud Forest would be happy to gather the ear-flower pollen and the sky stream water for me,” Mist said slowly. “But how are we going to find a human girl? There certainly aren’t any in the Wing Realm.”
“I’ll find one for you, Princess Mist,” Lucinda purred eagerly.
“Really?” Mist asked, eyes widening. “You will?”
“Absolutely,” Lucinda said. “I’d love to help you.”
Mist reared up and whinnied with delight. “Thank you,” she said. “And one other thing. I would love to make friends with the human girl you find, and I bet my sisters would too. Will you try to find one that loves pegasuses?”
Lucinda nodded. “I promise I will,” she said. Then she grinned hopefully. “Now will you play a guessing game with me? Please?”
Mist laughed. “Of course,” she said. “Thank you for waiting so patiently.”
Lucinda grinned. “How about if I guess your favorite letter of the alphabet?”
“Okay,” Mist said. “Don’t forget that I love the sound of my name,” she added with a wink.
Lucinda nodded. “I’ll give myself three guesses,” she said. “Is it A?”
Mist shook her head.
“Rats!” Lucinda said. She sighed and furrowed her brow. “How about X?”
Mist shook her head.
“Double rats!” Lucinda said. “I’m sure I’ll get it this time. How about J?”
Mist shook her head again. “I’m afraid the answer is M. M for Mist.”
“Triple rats!” Lucinda said. She twitched her tail. And then she smiled and shrugged. “I don’t want to be a sore loser. Thanks for playing with me. There is nothing I love more than guessing games.”
“Not even naps?” Mist asked, smiling.
“Well,” Lucinda said, “I admit that maybe I do like naps just a little more than guessing games.” She spread her wings and flew into the air. Hovering in front of Mist, she said, “And now I’ll go find your human girl who loves pegasuses.”
But suddenly Lucinda’s eyelids began to droop. She yawned five times in a row. She dropped back down to the desktop and, swaying back and forth as her eyes closed, she said, “I’ll find your human girl as soon as I take a quick catnap.” Then she curled up in a ball next to the potion book and began to snore.
Clara Griffin was supposed to be cleaning her room. That was what her parents had asked her to do. And when she galloped into her bedroom—whinnying and wearing tin-foil pegasus wings and a pipe-cleaner tiara—she told herself that even pegasuses had to clean their stables sometimes.
She had gotten off to a good start. She made her bed, straightening and tucking in her green pegasus sheets and pulling her matching bedspread up to the giant silver pegasus pillow she had sewn herself. She re-shelved all the books she and her younger sister, Miranda, had arranged in a circle on the floor to make a pegasus race track. She began putting away the clean clothes in the laundry basket on the floor next to her bureau. After she had put all her shirts in her shirt drawer, all her underwear in her underwear drawer, and all her socks in her sock drawer, she picked up her favorite dress—a green one with giant pockets and a picture of a silver pegasus on the front that she had made herself with fabric paints. She skipped over to her closet to hang it up. And that was when she suddenly had an idea. The idea was much more fun and much more interesting than cleaning her room. What Clara wanted to do, right then and there, was make a family of pegasus princesses and build them a magical palace in her closet.
Clara jumped up and down with excitement. She dropped the dress and bounded over to her desk, which was covered in art supplies from her last craft project—making paper bag pegasus puppets with Miranda. Clara collected a handful of Popsicle sticks, two tubes of glitter glue, a roll of masking tape, scissors, a glue stick, craft feathers, and pink yarn. Then, sitting cross-legged on her bedroom floor, she set about making eight pegasus princesses. She pasted together the Popsicle sticks to build pegasus bodies. She taped on the feathers to give each pegasus wings. She tied on yarn to make manes and tails. And then, with glitter glue, she gave each pegasus a tiara. When she finished, she lined them up on the floor to dry.
Next, Clara bounded over to her closet. She gathered up her shoes and put them in a pile behind her. She pulled her dresses, shirts, skirts, and coats off their hangers and left them in a mound on her bed. For a few seconds, Clara surveyed the empty closet. She had plans to make pegasus bunk beds, a pegasus snack bar, and a pegasus bathtub. But what she wanted to build first was something fun for the pegasus princesses to do. She considered a sandbox. Or a swing set. Or even a merry-go-round. Then she had an even better idea. What the pegasus princesses needed was a giant maze to fly through! And what she needed to make the maze were long sticks she could tie together with yarn and hang from the bar that spanned the top of her closet.
Clara bounded over to her bedroom door, ready to head outside to collect sticks. She reached for the doorknob. And then she noticed she was still wearing her pink pegasus pajamas, tin-foil wings, and pipe-cleaner tiara. Clara giggled. She took off her wings, her tiara, and her pajamas. And then she put on the green pegasus dress she had dropped on the floor, a pair of green-and-white-striped tights, and her lime-green canvas sneakers.
Clara burst out of her bedroom. She sprinted down the hall, hopped down the stairs two at a time, and danced into the living room. There her mother sat on the couch reading a novel while her father sat in an armchair do
“I’m going outside to get some sticks,” Clara said, twirling in a circle. “I’ll be right back.”
“Have you already finished cleaning your room?” her mother asked.
“Um,” Clara said. She had completely forgotten about cleaning her room. “I got started. And then—”
“Let me guess,” her father said, his eyes twinkling. “You thought of a creative project while you were cleaning. And you absolutely had to start it right away.”
Clara blushed. “Well,” she said, “yes.”
Her mother smiled. “Can you just promise you’ll finish cleaning your room sometime this weekend?” she asked.
“I promise,” Clara said.
Miranda looked up from her nature journal. “I’ll help you clean your room later,” she said. Miranda loved cleaning and organizing. In her room, all the books were arranged by topic on her shelves and then alphabetized by the author’s last name—just like at the library. Inside her bureau drawers, her clothes were neatly folded and arranged in rainbow order. When she got bored, she did things like clean out the kitchen junk drawer or reorganize all the mittens, hats, and scarves in the closet by their front door.
“Thank you,” Clara said, smiling at her sister.
“No problem,” Miranda said. “I just want to finish drawing this caterpillar first.”
Clara thought to herself that if she tried to draw a caterpillar, it would soon have a dragon tail, a unicorn horn, and a five-story cocoon that doubled as a magic piano.
Clara skipped across the living room, through the kitchen, and out the back door. She hopped on one foot along the slate stones that led to the edge of the woods surrounding her house. She jogged down a trail that cut through a thick grove of tall pine trees, and she began collecting long thin sticks without too much bark.
But as she bent over to pick up a stick, she noticed something shiny ahead of her on the path. She skipped toward it, expecting it to be an interesting rock or a toy she and Miranda had accidentally left in the woods.
But Clara froze when she saw what it was: a shimmering silver feather.
For a moment, Clara stared at the feather. She tried to imagine what creature—maybe a magic silver bird—might have left it there. She took a few more steps toward the feather and kneeled next to it. As she leaned toward it, glittery light raced up and down the feather’s spine, and she heard a soft humming noise. Clara sucked in her breath. And then she reached out her hand and picked it up.
As soon as her fingers touched the feather, glittery light swirled all around her. The humming noise grew louder. And then, right in front of her, there appeared a light-green velvet armchair with two giant silver-feathered wings on its back. Sitting in the middle of the armchair, licking one of her paws and twitching her tail, was a silver cat. And, to Clara’s astonishment, the cat also had wings.
For a few seconds, Clara watched the cat wash its face. And then Clara whispered, “Hello.”
The cat looked up. She blinked her bright green eyes in surprise. And then she grinned. “Hello,” she purred. “Are you, by any chance, a human girl?”
Clara could not believe her ears. The cat could talk! “Yes,” she replied. “I am a human girl.”
“Are you absolutely sure?” the cat asked.
Clara giggled. “Yes,” she said.
“Well, that’s a relief,” the cat said. “I have met one before, but I’m having a little trouble identifying them lately. Yesterday I thought I had finally found a human girl, but she was actually a very large fairy with very small wings. We had to send her back to the Glitter Realm. And the day before that, I thought I had found a human girl, but it turned out she was a mermaid with two tails that I thought were legs. We had to send her back to the Aqua Realm.” The cat shrugged.
Clara laughed. “I’m definitely not a fairy or a mermaid,” she said.
The cat stood up on the chair and stretched. Then she jumped into the air and flew in a slow circle around Clara. “You don’t happen to like pegasuses, do you?”
Clara’s eyes widened. “I don’t just like pegasuses,” she said. “I love pegasuses.”
The cat did an excited somersault. “You are exactly the girl I’ve been looking for,” she purred. “Princess Mist will be very excited.”
Clara raised her eyebrows. “Who is Princess Mist?” she asked.
“Princess Mist is one of the eight pegasus princesses who rule over the Wing Realm,” Lucinda explained. Then, hovering in the air, she puffed out her chest and lifted her chin proudly. “And I am their royal pet cat, Lucinda.”
“It’s wonderful to meet you, Lucinda,” Clara said. “My name is—”
“Wait! Please don’t tell me!” Lucinda exclaimed, eyes wide with excitement. “Let me guess!”
Clara laughed. “Okay,” she said.
“I just need three guesses,” Lucinda purred. She flew up to Clara’s face and touched her silvery-pink nose to Clara’s nose. Clara giggled at the feeling of the cat’s whiskers against her cheeks. “Is it Aballackanacka?” Lucinda asked, with her face still pressed up to Clara’s.
“No,” Clara said.
“Rats!” Lucinda said. She fluttered her wings to fly upward, and then, to Clara’s surprise, she landed right on Clara’s head. “I’ll get it this time. Is it Wallapopolous?”
“No,” Clara said, smiling.
“Double rats!” Lucinda said. She flew down to the ground and sniffed Clara’s lime-green sneakers. “Well, now I’ve got it. Is it Ringoctagon?”
“It’s Clara,” Clara said, laughing.
“Triple rats!” Lucinda said. She flattened her ears and twitched her tail. “Well, that was just bad luck. I would have gotten it on the next guess.”
“Probably,” Clara said politely.
“Thank you for playing with me,” Lucinda said, weaving between Clara’s ankles. “And now I’m wondering if you would be willing to come with me to the Wing Realm. Princess Mist needs a human girl to help her make a cloud maze party potion.”
“A cloud maze party potion?” Clara repeated. She could not think of anything that sounded more exciting than meeting a real pegasus princess—or eight!—and making a cloud maze party potion. “I would love to help,” she said.
Lucinda purred with delight. “Wonderful. Go ahead and take a seat.” She nodded at the green armchair.
Clara skipped over to the armchair. For a moment she looked at its silver-feathered wings, which began to slowly flap. She slipped the silver feather she had found in the woods into her pocket, and, with her heart thundering in her chest, she sat down. Lucinda leaped onto Clara’s lap. For a few seconds, Clara scratched behind Lucinda’s ears and wings while Lucinda purred loudly. Then Lucinda curled up in a ball on Clara’s lap and said, “Please take us to the Wing Realm.”
The chair hopped forward into a bed of brown pine needles. It hopped again, skidding on some pinecones. It jumped onto a tree branch. For a moment it teetered back and forth before it leaped way up into the air and landed on the green tile roof of Clara’s house. Clara gripped the arms of the chair as it spun around faster and faster. Then, still spinning, the chair sailed up into the sky. It climbed higher and higher and Clara, feeling dizzy, closed her eyes. Then all of a sudden the spinning stopped, and Clara felt the chair land.
Clara opened her eyes. She sucked in her breath. She was sitting in the most fantastic room she had ever seen.
The walls were bright magenta. The floors were polished black marble. Painted portraits of pegasuses wearing tiaras covered the walls. Stone statues of pegasuses reared up on pedestals with outstretched wings. Pegasus fountains spouted rainbow water. Chandeliers made of gold feathers held candles that burned rainbow flames. Gauzy curtains billowed in the breeze over tall windows. In the center of the room, arranged in a half-circle, were eight large thrones: a silver throne with a swirl design; a turquoise throne with a water droplet design; a white throne with a snowflake design; a green throne with a scissors, needle, and thread design; a peach throne with a spiral design; a pink throne with a letter design; a black throne with a star design; and a lavender throne with an arrow design. Clara smiled when she also spotted a cat-sized velvet couch with a back shaped like a cat head. Below the triangular ears were two eyes made of green sequins. That one, Clara thought, had to be for Lucinda.
