It wasn’t long before Vivian restored Midor to his rightful size. There was no sense in not doing it, she said, after she had been doing so much other magic. And Midor had to agree.
Catherine was busy teaching Vivian all kinds of healing spells. And with all the goblins wandering around the castle, the healing spells became increasingly useful. Someone or other was always getting in some kind of fight with the goblins. Catherine refused to heal anyone. She would teach Vivian the spell, but she would never perform the healing herself.
Vivian was getting better and better at learning the spells. The first few took her many hours to learn, but after a while, she started to get a feel for the druid language. She was able to memorize the spells quicker, and conjugate the nouns and verbs faster. Catherine was very pleased. “It just goes to show,” she said. “You are my niece. It’s in the blood.”
Talon, however, was getting upset at how quickly Vivian was learning the spells. Spells that took him weeks to learn in his youth he saw Vivian master in a matter of hours. He tried to hide his irritation, but many people remarked that he seemed angrier and angrier lately. He was always in a grumpy mood.
The mystery of the ogre was soon cleared up as well, when the very same ogre that Grace had blinded showed up in Catherine’s courtroom. It turns out that Catherine had summoned the creature to serve in her court. She said something about more ogres being on the way, which made everyone nervous. Goblin’s are one thing, but ogres were much more dangerous and much more vicious. And they had been known to gobble up children. The royal family began to talk seriously again about leaving the castle. Midor said he would recommend it. But at the moment one blind ogre didn’t seem to be much of a threat, so although everyone made preparations to leave, they decided to wait to see if Catherine was serious about bringing more ogres into the castle.
General Graten, on the other hand, was spending more and more time with Catherine. Despite his initial ambivalence, she seemed to be gradually winning him over with gifts of wine and food, and he was slowly recruiting back his old soldiers (who had been dispersed to houses all around the forest, but were beginning to slowly re-assemble into an army again). Catherine herself was growing more and more beautiful by the day. She had already used her magic to revert herself to her youthful form, but now she was using the magic to make herself look more and more beautiful. She had never been an ugly girl, at least not when she was young, but she was slowly transforming into a figure that was more beautiful and voluptuous than she had ever been before.
General Graten knew this beauty was only an illusion, of course, so he tried not to let it tempt him. But after a few glasses of wine, he often became more prone to be tempted. “And, after all,” he would sometimes tell himself. “Isn’t all of beauty an illusion anyway? What does it matter if the beauty is natural or if it is acquired, so long as the lady is beautiful?” In these moods he would allow Catherine to sit next to him, and he tolerated her flirtations a lot more than he would otherwise. He would allow her to playfully touch his arm, or for her finger to slowly caress her face.
Catherine, of course, realized that General Graten was much more likely to tolerate her flirtations after alcohol, and so she kept him well-supplied with alcohol. For Catherine was smart enough to realize that if General Graten was enamored with her beauty, then that was yet another form of control she had over him.
Robert and Henry and Thomas also noticed how beautiful Catherine was becoming. Of course for Robert and Thomas, they always remembered that they were related to Catherine by blood, as she was their great aunt, and incest being frowned upon in this part of the forest, they did not entertain unchaste thoughts regarding her. But Henry, on the other hand, was completely captivated by Catherine’s beauty. He tried to act like he wasn’t, but his sideline glances at her were noticed by Alicia and Amanda. And they were noticed by Catherine, who didn’t say anything, but quietly thought about how she could use him to her advantage.
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