Arrabella Candellarbra - A.K. Wrox

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anything even remotely this sparkly. And she had to concede that even the infamous Colden Family of blood-suckers that inhabited the fork in the Bellaroadway paled into insignificance when compared to this shimmery bridge.

      Arrabella felt unworthy to tread on a thing of such beauty. She brushed her hands over her silk dress, willing the creases to disappear. If only she had listened to the Reginas and worn something more practical, rather than her spring festival gown.

      Yes indeed, she should have worn her bronze breastplate and bootylicious battle armour; then she would've not only looked like the warrior she was; but one befitting this honour.

      Lord Langley sensed her hesitation and spun her to face him with one outstretched arm. He leaned close to Arrabella, his hot breath brushing her face like a fan in the smouldering furnaces of her desire. She reached toward him expectantly, her cherry red lips parting slightly at his approach.

      Arrabella could barely contain her excitement for this, she knew, was one of those moments. It was a 'the moment' - time for her first real kiss. Her first taste of true love and her first taste of the sublime poutiness of Langley's air-mattress lips.

      Lord Langley, in what seemed like the slowest of slow motion, reached toward her breast that now heaved with wanting and... re-tied her white ribboned bodice bow.

      'There you are, my lady, sublimely exquisite. We couldn't have you meeting your destiny all untied and askew now, could we?'

      'Ah, no, I um, guess not,' Arrabella stammered, her tongue tied and her cheeks aflame. She regained her composure and held her head high. 'Thank you, Lord Langley.'

      Arrabella turned back toward the glittering display that stretched out before her and with a strong and purposeful stride, perfectly designed to hide her embarrassment at the misread signals, she set foot on the bridge.

      With one last look at the moons, now separating and descending once more to their day-time home below the horizon, and a glance at the land she was leaving behind, Arrabella beckoned Gary and Jim and Langley to walk with her; four abreast, hand-in-hand toward the Tri-Towers.

      And together they did; step for step, skip for skip along the golden stone road, over the Lake Loch and away from all that they previously known, toward whatever the future would bring them.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Over the Rainbow

      Arrabella, Langley, Gary and Jim paused before the door at the far end of the gilded golden bridge. Arrabella turned to Lord Langley and with a quirk of one blonde eyebrow, asked the question silently. He shrugged. She turned to Gary with a taut smile, hoping he would have the answer to the question they were all thinking but didn't have the joobaberries to say out loud: What in the name of the Sewerswamp Hens were they supposed to do now?

      Gary cleared his throat. 'I believe, Miss Arrabella, that you may have to knock.'

      Cautiously, Arrabella untangled her fingers from Lord Langley's faithful, if slimy, grip and stretched her fingers to allow a little blood flow.

      With three smart raps, she knocked at the crystalline door that stretched at least thirty feet above them.

      Nothing.

      She rapped again, this time with more urgency and while murmuring under her breath, 'Oh for Harryhighpants sake, let us in will you?' With that, the gigantic door swung slowly open and the four adventurers tentatively wandered in.

      Jim was the first to break their communal awe-inspired silence. 'Ooh, this place is fab-u-lous! My great-great-great-second uncle Freddy used to go on and on about this place. Not that he'd ever seen it, of course, but he liked us young ones to think he had. He heard about it from his own great-great-aunt thrice removed. Apparently, she knew someone who knew someone... but oh my goodness, and I know I'm babbling, we little ones never took any notice. I wish we had - oh wow.' The Little Prince went on... and on.

      The roof of Arrabella's mouth was an arid desert; the moisture sucked to the soles of her perspiring feet, where her toes were now slipping in their dainty white slippers.

      The four had entered a long, deserted corridor; there was no person, no creature, not even a note to guide their way. This time Arrabella wondered if there were any living beings at all within the Towers, or if they'd all taken off for a night at a tavern, waiting for the Towers to destroy the unworthy? Or maybe the Towers themselves were living, breathing entities, with all-seeing eyes and a huge door for a mouth. Were they about to be devoured?

      Some of her questions would soon be answered; in the meantime they passed through an archway at the end of the passage and into a marvellous ballroom. And, once again, it was an utterly fabulistic thing to lay eyes on and like nothing she'd ever imagined.

      The opulence of the golden bridge with its grape-like pearls was nothing compared to this amazing room. Every colour of every rainbow, plus ones that had not even been thought of yet, glittered and glamoured before their eyes. Ropes of entwined rose, white and yellow gold supported chandeliers of empyreal diamonds. Thousands of luminous beams radiated from hundreds of the mammoth light fixtures. The fingers of lamplight bounced around the grand cathedral-shaped room, illuminating the lustre of the mosaics that adorned every one of the enormous columns supporting the sky-high ceiling.

      Arrabella stared in wonder at the gemstones. She'd seen rubies and diamonds before but these stones were beyond her imagining. She was certain they existed nowhere but within these Towers, not even in the books that she'd studied so carefully.

      Gary squinted to better see the colours and textures and dappled, dotted and speckled markings. 'I do believe these to be phentacite, asteria, posterior, porphyry and sardonyx.'

      His eyes widened again and he pointed to a stripy, spotty, blotchy, pink-and-red zig-zagged stone. 'And these could only be absurdinite; the only ones left in existence, if I'm not mistaken. The Breakfast Peoples over-mined them centuries ago, for medicinal use and for porridge.'

      'Perhaps these are what we seek. Could these contain the powers?' Arrabella whispered, aware that every sound she made echoed like a porpoise in heat in this cavernous ballroom.

      'Ooh, you mean they're powerful sparklies? Sparklies are always good; they're just so, so shiny. But powerful sparklies, ooh I want some,' squealed Jim in delight, clapping his hands and clicking his little green heels together to punctuate the point. He danced and skipped toward an intricately-ornate piece of carved lapis lazuli, adorned with star-cut rubelites, amazonites and xenalites.

      'Especially this one; I can see this around my neck. It'd bring out the green so well, don't you think?' His fingertips had barely brushed the precious stone when his body was flung backward across the ballroom as currents of electricity zapped and zinged through his body, making his hair stand on end like a back-flipping kelp-cupie.

      'The magics of the Towers are more powerful that we'd imagined,' said Gary, ever-wisely. 'All that lies within them are protected by the currents and sultanas of magic; I think it wise that we do not touch anything else.'

      'Are you hurt, Prince Jim?' asked Langley. He stood above the fried fairy with his hand outstretched to assist him to his feet, while Jim lay beneath him, flat on the golden floor, his head resting on a pillow of sardonyx sunflowers.

      'Hmm, not when I'm getting an eyeful like that,' Jim answered, as he gazed up the Lord's muscular and somewhat oily legs to the treasure-trove that lay beneath the scanty loincloth.

      The strapping Lord was spared from reply by a booming yet gravelly Voice that crackled through the air. It emanated from every crevice, every orifice, every transcrystalline fracture in the giant ballroom, yet there seemed to be no direct source or speakers.

      'You are all requested to begin a quest at my bequest!' the voice thundered, before breaking into a coughing fit that rattled the great chandeliers and nearly deafened them all. The clearing

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