“Anne.” I almost started to cry. “This was our home!”
“Lindspire.” Anne breathed. “It’s beautiful. Except . . . well, you know.” A sudden memory I never, uh, remembered popped into my mind. I just couldn’t quite see it.

“Anne, I need to see something with the red ring.” I said.

“Did we even bring the red rings?” Anne wondered.
“Yes, we did, you have them in your pocket.” Anne reached into her pocket and pulled out two sparkling red rings and handed one to me.

“What is it?” Anne looked at me.
“Need to . . . .” I put the ring on and Anne quickly followed. We were transferred to the Red Room.
“Kate, what is it?” Anne asked again. I didn’t answer.

“Kate Crimson!” I called out. The Red Room swirled, and I staggered. 

“Kate, what are you doing?” Anne started to look worried.

“I remembered . . . something.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know, that’s why we’re here!” I looked at my recent memories. “It’s not here!” Wait, if I remembered something about Lindspire, it would have to be . . . of course! One of my earliest memories! 

“Let’s, uh, go back to when I was one!” I announced to the room.

“WhaAHGHH!” Anne and I were pulled backwards very far, and as we flew, I could see years of memories flying by. Literally. The Red Room dropped us suddenly, and everything was still again. There weren’t a lot of memories, and I could see a lot of them were fuzzy. I found the one I was looking for right away. 

The memory showed my parents looking down at me and nodding. The memory view rose higher and shook. I guessed I was standing up. My parents clapped.

Someone banged on the door. My dad opened it, and it was a young man, Darius?! I could understand what he was saying, but he looked terrified. My parents turned to me and quickly scooped me up and ran out. 

The memory bounced as I was carried in my parents’ arms. The view looked back at our little hut, and a little hand reached out. I had not wanted to leave. The memory turned fuzzy, but I could see a large castle that we ran into. There were a lot of people, but with the fuzziness of the memory, I didn’t recognize any. 

There was shaking and crashing and a large hand reached through a window. There was screaming as arrows cut through the air towards the monsters, who swatted them away. Just then, a man that looked an awful lot like Unther walked out of a door looking rather proud of himself, then he saw the monsters and his face turned from happy to absolutely horrified. He dropped a small blue thing in his hand.

The memory got so fuzzy I couldn’t see anything. After a few moments, it came back and the memory was once again bouncing, but now facing a forest. There was crying. Screaming. My parents and I looked back at the collapsing castle, and saw a small figure in the monsterous hand. The queen. She screamed, but yelled, Go! To the villagers. My dad ran forward with a spear but was knocked aside. The memory got fuzzy again.

The next time a picture popped up, we were running down a steep hill, which must’ve been a path down the cliff. The image popped and turned off. It started to play again. I looked away. 

Anne was staring with her mouth hanging open. I yanked off the red ring, and was pulled back to reality, Anne quickly following.

We sat in silence for a minute.
“Well, that was . . . not exactly pleasant.” Anne said. I smiled weakly.
“That was worse than when my mom told it.” I groaned. “And she tells pretty, uh, graphic stories. That’s why I had that nightmare when I was seven.”
“Well, you’re taking this pretty well.” Anne stood up. “At least we know what happened.” I stood up too.

“So now we-LOOK OUT!” A crumbling tower decided to fall on us, and it nearly did. Anne and I fell back when we jumped. The rainbow ring flew off my finger when I fell.

“No!” I cried. The tower crumbled to pieces, the ring jumbled up with the chips of the tower.

Anne pulled me back. I ran forward and started searching in the pile of debris.

“Kate!” Anne said. “Kate!” I kept searching.

“Kate!” Anne yelled. “What are you doing?”

“The ring! The rainbow ring!” I wailed. “I lost it! It flew off my finger!”

“Oh, Kate, it’s okay-”

“No!” I shouted. “It’s not! We can’t save the village now! Or get rid of the ogres! It’s all my fault!” 

“Kate-!” I rose off the ground and shot off with the blue ring on my finger. I flew off the cliff, leaving Anne at Linspire. 

I flew to our now-abandoned village and landed on the grass in despair. 

“I’m sorry, Mom!” I cried. “I’m sorry Dad! This is all my fault!” I looked around at the entire village. I used the stones, I attracted the ogres, and I got the village stuck in the vault. I heard a familiar squeal.
I sniffed. “Peony? Is that you?” An adorable pink pig trotted out of my house. Peony came over to me and licked my face.

“Hey, girl.” I said, stroking her sadly. “What am I gonna do?” Peony raised her snout in the air and sniffed, then looked at me.

“Oink!” She squeaked.

“I know, I messed up.” I said. Peony stared at me, then started to trot into the forest.
“Peony?” I called. “Peony!” I chased after her. She ran faster. “Peony!” Peony led me through the forest to the treehouse. Persephone looked out the window.
“Oh, hello, dear!” She said, “I was wondering when you’d get back! Anne is in here!” I picked up Peony and flew up, feeling guilty.

I looked around the small room. Oliver was chatting on the bench with Unther, who had a ‘save me’ look on his face. Anne was sitting cross-legged on the floor, and Persephone was on the corner of the bench. 

“I lost the rainbow stone!” I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Anne told me.” Persephone said. “Is that yours?” She looked at Peony.

“Um, yeah, that’s Peony. I’m really sorry-”

“Ooh, you have a Stone Sniffer!” Persephone said excitedly.

“A what?”

“A Stone Sniffer! After I became queen, I thought about one of my old history classes. My teacher had said when people had access to the stones, they would be hungry for more power and it was basically really crazy. So, since I was queen, I instructed some private helpers to seek out the stones to put them in a vault so no one could use them. To find them, we used trained pigs that could sniff out stones. Stone Sniffers. Your pig must be a descendant of a Stone Sniffer!” I hugged Peony.
“We can save the village!” I smiled.