Jedi by Knight

This month I’m sharing excerpts from my WIP from previous NaNoWriMos, working title Ash and Team.  It is inspired by the Mi’kmaq-French Cinderella story called Oochigeaskw.

Dramatis Personae:

• Ash (our Cinderella character)

• Team (our “prince,” an invisible spirit)

• Meg (Team’s older sister, the narrator)

“Did she say anything about me?”

I willed myself not to roll my eyes and continued to scrub a bowlful of roots in my spot just outside the wigwam.  “She did.”

“Well?”

“Well, what?” I said without looking up.

“Well, what did she say?”  He was practically buzzing in anticipation.

I gave him a look.  “I am not going to tell you.”

“Come on, Meg!  Was it good? Did she say she likes me?”

“Team, it would be unfair to repeat–”

“Ha ha!  She did!  She absolutely did!  She likes me!” He started dancing around in a circle, arms in the air, hooting and grinning like a maniac.

I have always hated how he can make me smile when I’m trying so hard not to.

“She said nothing of the kind!” I hissed, barely holding in my laughter.  “Would you kindly calm down?  It’s a good thing you’re invisible because, frankly, you’re horribly embarrassing!”

He stopped jumping around at least.  “Can I come with you next week?”  He could undoubtedly see that I was about to refuse, because he continued: “Please, Meg?  I can’t be with her around other people; they’ll think she’s crazy. Just give me a chance to talk to her again.”

“Well, if I understand correctly, Team, you have not told her you are in fact the invisible spirit, whom half the girls in the village want to marry, God only knows why.  Don’t you think she’ll be a little suspicious when you just happen to show up at our lesson?”

“Did you tell her I’m your brother?”

“She knows my brother is the spirit, but not that it’s you.”  I finished cleaning the vegetables and looked up at him.  “If you want to stop all this convoluted nonsense, there is an easy solution: just tell her who you are.  You’ll have to eventually.”

He frowned. “I thought you said I shouldn’t tell her.”

“No, I said you shouldn’t tell her yet.  But now she’s actually met you, and she’s been handling all the spirit powers pretty well.  I mean, it’s going to be hard for your relationship to progress if you are omitting certain key information about yourself.”

His furrowed brow meant he was thinking.  You will understand why this concerned me if you will but recall that one time I saw him wear a similar expression, and subsequently he came up with an idea to get every girl in the village to come to our wigwam, for the purposing of finding one girl he had talked to for a total of two minutes.

A thought occurred to me.  “Team.  You didn’t…throw things at her did you?  Tug on her hair?  Anything like that?”

“Ummm…”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake!  Team, you are a grown man.  There’s no need to flirt like you did when you were fourteen.”

He just shrugged and grinned, his universal answer to anything.  “Well, it worked, didn’t it?”