The Hunt of the Grimalkin (Erresuma Book 1) by Dani Swanson (read aloud books txt) 📕

she looked around her surroundings, trying to soak it all in. She noticed a small painting framed on the shelf; it was of Thea and Robin smiling on a bench. Thea took the picture into her hand and studied it. She smiled.

“Do you believe me now?” Robin asked as she dropped down beside her. Robin fluffed her skirt as she crossed her legs under her. “I’ve known you my whole life, Thea. I can’t believe you don’t know who I am.” She looked into Thea’s eyes with tears filling them. Robin took Thea’s hand and they sat there looking at the picture.

Thea finally felt at ease for the first time since she had met Robin and started to relax a bit. “The shadow thing…” Thea started.

“The Grimalkin?” Robin refined.

“Yeah… I think it’s been following me.”

Robin looked at Thea with a slightly irritating smirk. “Thea, that thing has been terrorizing Erresuma for years.…..except I have never seen it before” Thea had the same confused look on her face that she got whenever she tried to remember anything; the fuzziness that appeared instead of her memory always brought the splitting headache.

“Do you want me to tell you the story of the Grimalkin?” Robin asked. Thea looked at her wide eyed and nodded slowly, as a little child would when asked if they wanted to hear a bedtime story. Robin jumped up to her feet and offered her friend a hand up. She led her over to the couch and went into the kitchen. Robin poured a fizzy drink out of the icebox. “Here you go. Get comfortable.” Thea took a sip of the Dandelion Fizz; it tasted sweet with the syrup that Robin had added, like dandelion tea but with a sparkling bubble that tickled her nose. Robin stood in the middle of the sitting area preparing to put on a production. Robin kicked her slippers off to the side, and cleared her throat.

“’The story of the Grimalkin’ otherwise known as ‘The terror of Lilly Quinn,’” she started with a dramatic flair. “Once upon a time, there was a young girl named Lilly Quinn who was half elf and half human. She grew up in Erresuma’s kingdom of Starling with her mother – as her father was an elf and lived in his rightful kingdom. She was the most beautiful girl, with long ringlets of blonde hair and memorizing, grey eyes. Her ears and her nose had a slight point to them resembling her elvish father. Her mother was accused of being a witch as her mother was before her….and her mother before her. They lived on the outskirts of Starling where they had a small farm that was nearby the kingdom of the elves. Lilly was often alone; her elf family did not accept her because she was not a pure elf and her human family did not accept her because of the elf blood. All she had was her mom.” Robin twisted her face around to make a disgusted look. “Lilly grew up to be quite stunning; people would stare at her in awe when she would go by. Lilly never understood the stares; she’d blush and run and hide; she really did not have any social interactions with anyone besides her mother.

Well, one day, Lilly’s mom died. Just died. No one knows why, but the neighbors found her laying down by the creek like she had been taking a nap, but she was dead.” Robin shrugged her shoulders and she shook her head. “Lilly was only about twelve years old at the time and she went to stay with her human aunts. It was around that time that Lilly started to find that she was different from other people. She had a gift. She could change shapes and become animals. Her cousins could do it as well, although, the people of the kingdom didn’t suspect them of being witches, as they never claimed to be related to Lilly, or her mother.

Lilly was special. She could change to more animals than the others, but, more impressively, she could also manipulate fire.” Robin made a gesture of shooting fireballs from her hands as she danced around the center of the room. Fig watched her dance back and forth from Thea’s lap. “Her aunts were witches, her cousins were witches, the whole family were witches, but Lilly was the most powerful witch. Instead of connecting with her family, she grew vain hearing everyone say how beautiful and powerful she was. Now the rule of shape shifters is that they can change to that animal eight times without a problem but if they do it a ninth time, they become that animal forever. Well, Lilly found a way around that magic, somehow. She fell in love with changing into a cat, but not just any cat – she became the large black cat known as the grimalkin. In that form she had glowing eyes and a white patch on her chest. The story goes that Lilly was still lonely, even after she finally was allowed to join her family; she had never learned how to talk to anyone socially. Her extended family resented her beauty, power, and vanity.” Robin emphasized her story with dramatic gestures and expressions, Thea was enraptured. “When Lilly would get bored, she would change into a cat and watch people in through their windows; she would pretend that she was part of their world. As time went on, Lilly became stronger and more powerful; her family became jealous of her. Her cousins would tell her that her beauty was failing the older she became. They were just down right mean to her.”

“While in town one day with her cousins, they tripped her in the middle of the marketplace and she fell into a pig pen. She was covered in filth! The whole town was laughing at her, telling her that she was ‘ugly as a pig’.”

“Well, Lilly finally