Mena blinked and found herself returning to consciousness. Not even realizing where she was, other than she was tucked into a very cozy bed, May leaped on the bed and exclaimed, “Mena! Thank Dula that you’re alive! I’m glad we kept you on Magical Life Support!”

“Magic Life Support?” Janus asked in confusion. “May, she just fainted.”

“Oh right,” May said, blushing bright red and removing herself from the bed.

Mena looked to the left and right and realized she was in the magical infirmary—a room of red and white titled floor, various medical cabinets and supplies alongside the wall and numerous beds all in a row. In front of her bed, stood Janus in her dark robe, Gemini in his dapper purple suit, Stellaris in her vibrant Solborn outfit, and Electra, holding her sunhat like she was grieving. Everyone had a look of concern on their faces, and Gemini and Electra looked particularly tearful. A short doctor with a lollypop badge stood in front of them all.

“So, Ms. Willow?” the doctor asked with a polite and high voice. “How are you feeling after your fall?”

Mena was silent. Confusion loomed in her mind. What had happened between her fall and how she ended up in the infirmary? “Last thing I remember is being saved by Fabias the Famed on his white stallion.”

“Oh, great Dula,” Electra gave a fake sniffle and a wail, “She’s gone crazy. I’m telling you this before you get your law professor in here; I had nothing to do with it!”

“You guys didn’t see Fabias the Famed riding on his Unicornea?” Mena asked, her curiosity truly getting the best of her.

Gemini responded with an earnest expression. “Someone crashed through the window on a horse—through my expensive family heirloom window, I may add—” (which Electra responded with, “Come off it, Gemmy”) “but they had used a magic purple haze to obscure their face. We are searching everywhere for the vandal.”

“I saw his face,” Mena said, “It was Fabias the Famed…or someone who looks like him.”

The doctor put his pen to his mouth. “Hm,” he said to Gemini. “She believes she was saved by a fictional character. Perhaps a bit more bedrest is in order?”

Gemini sighed. “That’s probably for the best. We’ll let you rest, Mena.”

Electra leaned in towards Mena. “Good job, Mena. Before you took that spill and went crazy, you were becoming one of the most graceful students I had ever seen. I hope the doctor will allow you to attend homecoming.”

As everyone left, leaving May and Janus behind, Mena heard the doctor muttering to Gemini, “By the way, did you know that student with the lion mane stopped by? I didn’t let her in because she wasn’t her roommates or her teachers, but she looked really distraught.”

As the overhead torches dimmed, Mena asked May and Janus, “Come on, surely you guys believe that I’m not crazy.”

“I mean, that would be my dream come true!” May gushed. “I would love for Fabias to appear out of my dreams and sweep me off my feet.”

“Janus, is it possible,” Mena asked her reaper friend. “For this castle to grant your dreams in real life?”

“Yes,” Janus said in her pixie-reaper voice, “Well, according to you at least. Isn’t there a golden door that grants your wishes in this castle?”

Mena’s eyes illuminated as everything clicked inside her head. That cinched it. The door was real!

Mena’s enlightenment, however, was interrupted by the appearance of a shadowy void in front of her. Caligari burst through it, causing Mena and May (Janus was oddly amused) to scream.

“Shh,” Caligari said. “Keep your voice down!”

Mena started to sniffle loudly. “It’s not my fault. Gemini took my words out of context. I meant to tell him, but I played coy and he thought I meant Stellaris!”

There was a look of darkness in Caligari’s eyes, and she hid her face as she talked. “About that…”

Mena swallowed hard as Caligari loomed closer and closer, her face still hidden by her jagged bangs. She reached out her hand and Mena screamed.

A voice groaned and everyone looked to the bed next to them. A girl with a backwards foot brace grumbled to them, “Why did I have to fracture my foot right when someone’s about to be killed.”

Mena looked back at Caligari whose face was still covered by her hair. She whimpered, “Please. I’m a terrible person to haunt. I snort while I sleep and…”

Caligari uttered three simple words. “She said no.”

“What?” Mena said, her heart nearly freezing in her chest.

Caligari lifted her head; there was a creepy look of gleeful joy in her wide eyes. Her smile stretched in a painful way like she wasn’t used to smiling. “Stellaris said no. So, it doesn’t matter!”

Mena wiped her head in relief. She laid back in her bed, fearing she might faint again. “Are you going to ask him then?” Janus said, breaking the silence. “No offense to Mena, but she might not be the best messenger.”

“Hey!” Mena snapped, before nodding. “Actually, yeah, I think Janus is right.”

Caligari’s smile disappeared off face faster than she could vanish through a void. A shade of pink tinted her pale cheeks. “Are you really going to let the object desire run off when you’ve got a clean chance?” Mena said with a firm look on her face.

“But what if he says ‘no.’” Caligari said, once in again in a voice befitting of a younger girl.

“Is that really as painful as seeing him court your rival in love right before your eyes?” Mena said, still trying to remain tough. “I mean, you nearly dropped my butt over it!”

Like a shy ghost, Caligari covered her face and squirmed back and forth.

Mena’s voice accosted her loud and clear. “It’s time you womaned up…”

The pinkness faded from Caligari’s face, returning to its usual shade of pale. She opened her bright green eyes with a look of resolve. “You’re right. I never thought I’d be lectured by a student, but it’s clear, in this situation, I’m the student and you’re the teacher.”

“Uh yeah,” Mena said, giving a sheepish brace faced grin and realizing she’d never talked to a real boy before. “Let him know your true feelings.”

Caligari gripped her hand tightly, making a fight. “It’s clear I need to do something. I need to ask Gemini myself, before anyone else does it.”

She bowed her head and vanished into the shadows. Her voice echoed as she disappeared. “Thank you, Mena.”

After a moment of silence, May chimed in, “Wow Mena, I never figured you were the master of L-U-V.”

“Actually,” Mena said, bashfully placing her hand behind her head. “I was just trying to get her to go away.”

***

Mena stayed in the infirmary that night, (though, the doctor promised to release her the next morning if she said she wasn’t saved by Fabias and she hoped the vandal would be caught) but once the doctor turned in and the girl with the reversed foot fell asleep, Mena crept out into the corridors, determined to head back to the scene of the crime. The young witch had a good feeling that if it was indeed a figment of her dreams, perhaps he would leave behind some kind of clue…or maybe not. Regardless, she headed down toward the promenade, and frowned when she saw the stained-glass of Gemini’s beloved sister that had been smashed through.

She snuck into the antechamber of the ballroom, and quietly opened the wooden doors. The moonlight glinted on shards of glass, illuminating them from the broken window.

Mena made sure not to step on the fragments as she crept around looking for clues. An odd bottle caught her eyes, and she walked on her toes over to it. Picking it up, Mena tried to read it, hoping to catch it in the light of a moonbeam.

She heard voices and stopped dead in her tracks. They weren’t just any voices; they belonged to people who were very familiar to her. Shadows loomed in the darker half of ballroom causing Mena to sprint away.

“I must say, Madame Electra, you look absolutely ravishing in the moonlight,” a nasally voice said. It sounded like it belonged to Professor Gaia.

“Flattery, cape boy,” a buxom voice responded. “Will get you nowhere. Besides, you’re much too scrawny. Perhaps once you put some meat on those bones, then we’ll talk. Otherwise, I could snap you in two.”

Mena was almost to the door when a searing pain tore into her foot. She had stepped on a piece of glass. Shaking, she muffled her mouth and dragged herself into the antechamber to listen.

“Well, er, haha,” Gaia said, nervously. “Flattery will get me nowhere, but I believe a certain gemstone will.”

Mena squinted in the darkness, through the window of the antechamber and saw Gaia’s silhouette produce an enormous diamond of light purple.

“Belonging to the lady in waiting herself, Violet, her great royal Magentalane! Raided from the vaults of the castle, of course.”

“Oh…” Electra said, swooning over the dazzling stone. “You really know the way to a woman’s heart, Gaia.”

“Oh, but let’s not get too excited,” Gaia responded back. “First you must tell me about the Great Alignment.”

“The great…?” Electra started.

“Don’t play coy with me, woman,” Gaia rasped. “I’ve heard it happens when the Dream Castle of Aristillilus aligns with the Dream Castle of Autolycus.”

“Ok, ok,” Electra said, fanning herself in the shadows. “It happens on the sixth floor.”

“What.” Gaia stated. “What happens on the sixth? Spit it out!”

“Doors and passages ways that were previously closed and hidden, open when the moonlight of the Dream Castle of Sunbeam Academy filters through the Dream Castle of Autolycus.”

“Bingo!” Gaia said. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

Electra quickly added, in a mysterious rhyme. “Capture the light in your castle’s eyes and spin with the seven planetoids using the fabulous power of dance. Then your pathway will become clear…”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gaia snapped angrily.

“It’s the key to getting into the secret passage, cape boy,” Electra snapped back, before asking feebly. “The Magentalane?”

“Oh, you’ll get your Magentalane, woman, when I find the door! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got preparations for the homecoming to make.”

Gaia left Electra in the darkness and started heading towards the antechamber. Mena quickly limped out into the moonlit promenade and back towards the castle. She could not believe Electra was complicit in helping Gaia, but she did not want to wait around to be caught by either of them. She rushed through the twisting and turning corridors of the castle to the infirmary and jumped in bed. In the dim glow of the overhead candlelight, she saw what she was clutching. A handsome wizard sporting a tremendous shiny grin clutched a bottle that sprayed purple lettering. It read, “Mone Cologne.” She turned it over and read the label, “Made in Wormwood.”

She puzzled her mind what this could possibly be, and why someone as implausibly handsome as Fabias would need sleazy cologne, (perhaps it was Gaia’s, he didn’t have much luck with women aside from the Tessellations’ mother) but she resolved to put it to bed. Grabbing some gauze from the counter and wrapping it around her stocking, she slid underneath the covers. It looked like this would not be any ordinary homecoming; she’d have to get a date, defend the castle and solve the mystery of the golden door, all at the same time.