When Penny woke up Friday morning, her window was still open a crack, but Leander hadn't been back to visit. The pitter patter of a grey drizzle tapped at her window, so she slipped from the bed and slid it closed. The rain did little to settle her worries about the weather for Sunday. But hopefully, if Leander was to be believed, a new ward would solve this problem and Penny's dad wouldn't be run out of town like the last weatherperson.

She wiggled out of the little sleep shorts she now felt so silly for wearing to bed and threw on a pair of shorts and an oversized t-shirt that she tucked into the waist of her jeans. Leander hadn't said when he'd return, but Penny couldn't resist taking the time to make sure she looked at least somewhat presentable. She tied half of her wavy pink hair up into a bun and let the rest hang down to her shoulders. A swipe of mascara and pink chapstick later she deemed herself presentable.

"You look nice this morning," her step-mom said when Penny found her in the kitchen. Anna always made fun of her family for how much time they spent in the kitchen. Between her step-mom, dad, and her, someone was always cooking or scrounging for something in the pantry.

Penny crossed to the fridge and pulled out the orange juice. She took a swig straight from the carton before she realized her grave error. "Blegh," she exclaimed before capping the juice and sticking it back on the refrigerator shelf. "I forgot I already brushed my teeth."

Mrs. Hale looked up from her cereal and the daily edition of the Sugar Falls Gazette. "What? No breakfast? Do you have someplace to be?"

"No," Penny said after she failed to think of an excuse fast enough. She needed to be ready for Leander at a moment's notice, but her mom didn't need to know that. "I just wasn't that hungry."

Instead of breakfast, she went to the counter and poured herself a mug of coffee.

"Good," Mrs. Hale said. "Then you can pick berries from the back hedge for me. I'm baking a pie this afternoon for you to take to the Honey Queen booth."

"Fine," Penny said. "I'll go out once I finish my coffee."
"You might want to check the pixie traps too; something's been getting into the berries so I set them out yesterday evening."

Penny almost laughed as she remembered Leander's berry-stained fingers. "I don't think it's pixies."

"I know it's probably deer, but you can't be too careful when it comes to pixies," Mrs. Hale said, turning back to her paper. "Just set the traps in case."

Outside, the rain had turned to a fine mist. Penny donned a rain jacket and her galoshes before heading out with a pail in hand. Everything smelled earthy in the rain. The grass sparkled even under the dull grey sky. She might have enjoyed the smell, the squelch of her boots in the soft earth if it were not the weekend of the Brambleberry Festival.

The house sat at the bottom of a hill, the brambleberry patch at the top. Hills were good for growing fruit. She passed strawberry vines and blueberry bushes before she reached the raspberries at the very back of the hill.

Penny worked quickly, her hands moving deftly to pluck only the ripe berries from the brambles. It wasn't hard work, but years of practice made her fingers gentle and decisive. Before she knew it, the pail was full.

She picked a few extra handfuls of damaged berries and headed around to the traps. Near the fence that separated her parent's land from Gammy's, Penny found a tall, thin figure standing under a gnarled crabapple tree. The branches, dotted with red-green berries, hug low to the ground. At the sound of her footsteps, the person moved, and Leander's face appeared to smile at her through the leaves.

"I seem to have gotten stuck," he said. A blush crept over his cheeks. "Some assistance would be greatly appreciated."

Penny stifled a laugh as she noticed Leander's fist, closed around the berries, stuck firmly in the metal workings of the pixie trap. She ducked under a branch so she stood in the dappled shade of the tree.

"Here." The trap came loose with a quick flip of a latch.

Leander pulled his arm free and rubbed his wrist like it was sore. "What on earth are you trying to catch with these?"

"Pixies," Penny said with a shrug. "We never catch any though. I think they're pretty much just quirky squirrel feeders but my stepmom is superstitious."

"I should think not," Leander exclaimed, his brows raised. "Pixies are too smart to get caught in something so primitive. And if by chance they did, well I pity whoever shows up to empty that trap."

"Really?" Penny resisted the urge to look over her shoulder to check for pixies. "So they exist?"
"Yes!" Leander said, still massaging his wrist. "And furthermore, I would avoid all encounters with pixies unless you want ten years of bad luck. They are nasty, clever little things and they know how to hold a grudge."

Penny scattered the berries she'd collected for the traps across the grass. "Thanks for the heads up."

They watched each other, Penny's thoughts finding their way back to the familiar feeling of having Leander in her backyard. This summer was supposed to be her epic goodbye to Sugar Falls before she left for college; she hadn't figured Leander into her checklist for a perfect last summer. Instead, she was stirring up eight-year-old pains.

Leander's eyes softened into a sort of wistful look. "Penny..." he started to say.

She cut him off. "Did you figure out how to place a new ward?"

"I did." A smile chased the sadness from his face. He wore a beige long-sleeved shirt that had three buttons open at the neck. Over the shirt he wore a dark grey vest, unbuttoned. He pulled a long stick from the pocket inside. "I had to borrow a wand from my kingdom's library for the spell. We just need something with a bit of permanence to use for our ward."

Penny tried not to freak out too much at his casual use of a magic wand. "C'mon. We can check the garage for something."

Penny's Grandma, her mom's mom, and her namesake, had built onto the existing garage on the property — which had been hers before falling to her daughter and son-in-law. It was now a lot more than just a garage. The front part of the building was aged brick, same as the main house, with two white carriage doors that swung open to allow all the orchard equipment to be rolled in and out. According to her Dad, the garage was actually a carriage house from a time when people needed to keep horses and such things.

Her grandma had added on a large greenhouse to the back of the building where they could propagate flowers and fruit trees year round. The glass addition was modeled after English greenhouses, apparently. Penny liked how the rounded glass walls looked next to the brick, and the fact that the domed roof looked like a glass Hershey's kiss.

Leander followed a step behind as Penny lead him through the side door. The garage smelled of grass clippings and motor oil.

"Something with permanence..." Penny picked her way around stacks of cracked pots, buckets, and walls lined with garden tools.

"Do you have anything that wouldn't look out of place in a cemetery?"

Penny shrugged. "There has to be something. My grandma was overly fond of lawn ornaments. My parents took most of them down when they inherited the house — they have to be here somewhere."

They emerged from the musty garage into the light of the greenhouse. Sure enough, on a high shelf sat dozens of garden figurines.

Penny tried not to think too much about being in that room. It gave her a feeling like it belonged to her mother more than it did to her — like her presence there disturbed something sacred. She tried to tell herself it was silly. The greenhouse was clearly used by her dad and stepmom judging by the neat rows of potted plants and the smell of freshly disturbed soil.

She grabbed a step ladder and was determined to pull down the least garish lawn angel from the shelf when she heard Leander from behind her.

"Do you remember all your mom's dinner parties?"

The question caught her off guard. So did the weight of the angel. "Of course I do." She wobbled a little in the dismount from the ladder.

Leander caught her by the elbow to steady her. "We used to sneak out here and hide, remember?" He scooped the angel out of her arms and propped it up on his shoulder.

"I didn't forget."

"You always used to get in so much trouble for getting your nice dresses dirty." The smile on Leander's face made Penny's stomach clench. It wasn't even noon and she was already feeling more things she hadn't wanted to dig into. Unlike the carnival, Leander was better than the boy in her memories. More familiar than Ferris wheels, he had brought her back to a time when her mother was alive — before her brother had moved away — when they'd still been best friends.

She tried to hide the discomfort. "Shall we get going then?"

Leander nodded, his smile faltering.

Everything felt different today. Maybe it was the endless grey skies and constant mist of rain, but Penny's heart felt heavy in her chest. She wanted to feel glad to see Leander, to feel how people normally feel when they're reunited with an old friend.

But old friends don't usually disappear before your eyes and stay away for eight years.

When they reached the graveyard, everything looked the same, undisturbed except for the previously smashed ward. Leander set the cement angel down while Penny began to wipe away the rubble. They'd taken turns lugging the heavy ornament as they slipped and slid up the hill to the mostly forgotten cemetery.

"What do I need to do?" Penny asked from where she kneeled in the damp grass.

Leander withdrew the wand from his vest. "You just need to place the ward where you want it. I'll do the rest."

"Okay." Penny lifted the angel.

"But your intent needs to be to protect the town too."

She nodded, thinking of the rain and the Honey Parade and most of all her father and his reputation. She needed this ward to work, to fix the town and stop the storms and do whatever it did that chased clouds away when Sugar Falls needed it too. Penny set the angel in place.

Leander stepped up and raised the borrowed wand. He rolled his wrist and the tip swirled through the air. As he did, the wind picked up around them. Penny had to brace herself as a gust threatened to push her back a step. The leaves in the tree overhead danced violently in the sudden gale.

As suddenly as it began, the wind stopped. Penny brushed the hair that had come loose out of her face. "What was that?"

Leander lowered the wand. "That was it. The circle is complete. The wards are up."

Penny looked to the sky, expecting the clouds to clear instantly. They didn't. They seemed to be growing almost darker as they raced overhead. An ominous rumble rolled in from an unknown distance. She looked to Leander, her stomach turning sour as she noticed the worry on his face. "Did we—did we just make things worse?"

Leander shook his head. His lips pressed together into a concerned frown. "This isn't our doing. But it seems that Sugar Falls has become aware of the pebble in its shoe."

"What?" Penny didn't like when the Fairy Prince spoke of things only he seemed to understand. As a result, her reply was barbed with perhaps a bit too much content.

Leander looked at his feet, his features downcast. "My fears have been confirmed. Someone got past the wards."

Penny felt sick with guilt for snapping at Leander. She deliberately paused before speaking to measure her tone. "So what does that mean," she said, gentle this time.

Leander looked up, fear written across his delicate features. "Sugar Falls is under attack."

Thank you for reading. If you've been waiting for an update, then this chapter has been a long time coming. I'm not gonna lie, getting new words on the page has been a pain. It's been a long bout of writer's block in my world, but I'm pushing through word by word, sentence by sentence. If you have enjoyed this chapter, please vote and share this story with others by adding it to a reading list or giving a shoutout on twitter! Also, if you have thoughts or feedback, I'd love to hear from readers in the comments!