At the treehouse, Astrid had needed a break.
The little joystick fit her gloved hands perfectly, and the screen projected inside her bubble helmet promised a harmless puzzle: WITCH PUZZLE BUBBLE.
Match the colors.
Build a combo.
Win a spell.
“Six in a row,” she whispered, nudging the stick.
The last blue bubble touched its neighbors.
They burst into a tiny constellation.
COMBO X6!
DOUBLE BUBBLE SPELL!
flashed above a cartoon witch.
The star on Astrid’s suit glimmered in answer.
A second later the room seemed to fold like a paper party hat.
The girls, Edgar, and the treehouse all appeared at once in different places and moments.
Astrid glimpsed a camera flash, a dark factory, a mermaid’s tail, and a phoenix bright enough to leave an afterimage on her glasses.
Then the pieces fell into a sequence she could almost follow.
In one stretch of that impossible day, the team crept through a forest after a sound in the undergrowth.
The black-haired witch whispered, “Shh.
I think I hear him.” A branch snapped.
A hairy giant with a bubble around his head sprang from the leaves and shouted, “Gotcha!” Astrid nearly hit the wrong button.
The red-haired witch laughed, raised her wand, and declared that they should bounce before he decided to play hide-and-seek again.
The path deposited them on a moonlit shore.
Jellyfish glowed above the water like misplaced chandeliers.
A mermaid queen lounged on a rock and allowed the “land sisters” to speak their wish.
The red-haired witch complimented her tail with a straight face Astrid could not have managed.
While the queen admired a tiny balloon animal offered by the black-haired witch, Astrid used a handheld device to collect a shimmer of scale-light.
STEALTHSCALE SUBROUTINE, she called it.
The screen approved.
A new color entered the puzzle.
Then came a meadow competition advertised as MISS HORN.
The red-haired witch announced Queen Glimmermane through a megaphone with the seriousness of a royal herald.
A pale centaur sparkled on command.
Astrid collected that radiance too, holding out a humming canister she had labeled SPARKLEVAC.
“We should host a centaur talent show next,” someone suggested as they ran beneath a rainbow.
They had hardly caught their breath when a phoenix crossed the sky.
Fire streamed from its wings.
Astrid aimed at a falling feather; the red-haired witch asked whether they could politely request that the bird molt.
A spell and a well-timed catch put the feather safely into Astrid’s inventory.
“Okay,” Astrid said, examining the smoking rim of her helmet.
“So not fireproof.”
The bubbles on the game screen multiplied.
Each place seemed to supply a piece of some larger pattern: scale, sparkle, feather, thread.
Was the puzzle showing them memories, possible futures, or instructions?
Astrid could not tell.
She only knew the little joystick had stopped behaving like a toy.