THE SECRET OF MAGIC STONES
PART-2
Back home, our friend sat down at her table and looked at the letters one by one.
You who read this story, why don't you try it too? Try to discover their meaning...
What is the most used letter in French? the girl wondered.
"The E ," she said, as if fifty people were there to listen to her.
The one I see most often written on this document is the H . So maybe the H matches an E .
- EFGH , said Sophia out loud. 1 2 3 . I'm there ! Abigail replaced each letter of the formula with another, located three letters further down the alphabet.
This encryption is called the Caesar code. Julius Caesar, that Roman you've heard of I suppose, wrote to his generals in code, so that the enemies, who might have intercepted the bearer of the message, wouldn't understand his orders. Always three letters above following the alphabet. Instead of writing A , for example, he would write D. For E , he wrote H, and so on.
- But in this case, says our friend aloud, FHDTXRLMHSHQVHDUULYH then becomes:
C E A Q U O I J E P E N S E A R R I V E .
- Hooray! exclaimed Sophia. I understand. I'm trying the formula right away.
She seized the crystal lit by her desk lamp in her left hand, then she said aloud:
- What I think happens...
Just then, a fox yelped not far away in the woods. Our friend's attention was diverted and she thought of the animal.
She immediately became a fox!
She sat in her chair for a moment, flabbergasted.
Then she heard her mom arrive. Frightened, she jumped out of the window when her bedroom door opened. She ran on all fours under the trees of the forest.
What will become? she thought. I don't want to live like a fox the rest of my life...
She stopped by the side of the road and sat down. She pronounced the magic formula, thinking hard of herself, in front of her house. But nothing happened.
She then understood that she must first recover the crystal in order to hold it between her fox paws.
For that, she had to go home, enter her house, go up to her room and find the stone. Not easy for an animal. Especially since her parents were not going to recognize their transformed daughter...
Sophia sat down in the shade of a large beech tree. She was thinking. First, get that crystal back, she told herself.
She approached the door of the house. There she began to cry out, to yelp, like foxes do. She hoped to attract the attention of her parents who would let her in, with a bit of luck.
Missed. Dad opened the door a crack, watched the animal, and closed it again without paying it any further attention.
Our friend ran.
She walked away then stopped for a moment at the edge of the stream which runs not far from her home. She drank water.
- I'm hungry, Sophia murmured in the incomprehensible language of foxes for us. I'm not going to have to steal a chicken from a farm and eat it raw with the bones and feathers... No way... But in a day or two, hungry, I'll probably have to settle for that ...
She felt tears running down her eyes.
But suddenly, an idea came to him. Chachou!
-I will go back to my house and wait for his coming. Every evening he sits on my window sill and we exchange news from the forest. He will advise me.
Full of hope, Sophia-fox sat against the wall of her house and waited.
The shadows lengthened, then night came. The moon appeared behind the high foliage of the tall trees.
She heard a howl. Chachou sat down and looked around him, surprised not to see his friend sitting on his bed, like almost every evening and especially to find his window closed.
- Chachou!
The raptor turned around. He saw the fox, sitting at the foot of the wall.
- I'm Christina! You do not recognize me. I have become an animal. Please help me. I want to find myself, as I was before...
Chachou watched him in silence, still leaning on the window sill.
- Listen. First I have to retrieve the crystal stone, then say the magic spell again, but this time thinking about the girl I was.
- How do you expect me to take this pebble? replied the owl. The window is closed.
- One of my parents will probably open it tomorrow morning.
- Yes, but I sleep during the day. My eyes can't stand sunlight.
TO BE CONITNUED..........