Guardians of Little Wonders, Part 2: Three Breaths Through the Wall

Guardians of Little Wonders, Part 2: Three Breaths Through the Wall

The Story Begins

After lessons, the hallway near the school storeroom was almost empty. Only the leaves outside the open window rustled, and somewhere at the far end of the building, Miss Mila’s key gave a little jingle.

Leo swung his green backpack over one shoulder and stopped by the shelf next to the storeroom. In the morning, there had been six long rulers there. Now there were only two, one green pen, and a strawberry-shaped eraser.

“That’s strange,” he muttered.

Another ruler stood upright by the door, leaning against the wall as if it were just about to walk away.

“Rulers don’t walk,” Sara said behind him.

Leo turned around. The girl with the brown bob held her secret notebook tightly against her chest. A tiny star on her blue cardigan flashed in the light.

“Maybe these do,” he said, pointing at the shelf. “Do you remember that key ring? When it lit up, we knew something wasn’t ordinary. And now things are moving by themselves.”

Sara knelt beside the ruler. She did not pick it up right away. First, she focused on it for a moment, as if listening to a very quiet sound. Then a faint golden glimmer flickered near its edge.

“It isn’t lost,” she said. “But it is… confused.”

Just then, a soft rustling came from behind the storeroom door. It sounded like someone shuffling papers in a box.

Leo smiled. “Then I’ll find out.”

He placed his palm on the cold wall beside the storeroom and narrowed his eyes. For a moment, the wall became a pale picture. Behind it, he could see shelves, boxes, art buckets, and a large box labelled COLORED PENCILS.

One red colored pencil was moving from the box toward the rulers.

An eraser rolled slowly after it.

“I can see them!” Leo blurted out. “They’re playing hide-and-seek! Look, now the blue colored pencils are squeezing between the scissors and—”

The picture wavered. The boy leaned closer, wanting to see even more.

“Leo, enough,” Sara warned.

But he did not want to stop. It was amazing to see through a wall. He wanted to prove to Sara that his power might be even more useful than a shining key ring.

Suddenly, a sharp pain pricked his forehead. The wall became an ordinary wall again.

“Ow,” he said, holding his head.

Sara frowned. “Does it hurt a lot?”

“Just a little. Like someone is tapping inside my head with a pencil.”

Soon Ema came running up in a yellow dress over leggings, with her pencil case swinging dangerously at every step. Toby followed in a striped hoodie.

“Sara said there’s a mystery here,” Ema panted. “I drew a flashlight on my way over. If it gets dark, maybe it will shine for a few minutes.”

“It isn’t dark in the storeroom,” Toby said carefully. “But a flashlight could still be useful.”

Leo straightened up, even though his forehead still ached a little. “I know exactly what is behind the wall.”

“Exactly?” Sara asked calmly.

The boy hesitated for a moment. “Well… almost exactly.”

The girl held up three fingers. “How many breaths did you manage?”

Leo took a breath, then remembered. First breath: the box of colored pencils. Second: the eraser. Third: the colored pencil near the rulers. After that, he had tried to look farther.

“Three,” he admitted.

“Then we have a rule for investigating,” Toby said. “Only three breaths. I’ll keep watch so no one comes by.”

When Things Start to Change

Ema pulled out a clean sheet of paper. “And I’ll draw a map of the storeroom. If we can’t see everything, at least we can think things through.”

Sara opened the storeroom door. It creaked so softly that it sounded like a tired mouse sneezing.

Inside, the room smelled of paper, wood, and a little glue. Shelves of supplies reached almost to the ceiling. One box held notebooks, another paintbrushes, and a third held markers, tape, and plastic letters all mixed together.

“Does it always look like this?” Ema whispered.

Toby adjusted his glasses. “No. Miss Mila put everything away by color yesterday.”

But now the yellow colored pencils were among the rulers. Erasers lay in a box of chalk. Three blue markers were lined up beneath the highest shelf, where small hands could hardly reach.

Ema quickly drew squares and arrows. “This shelf, this box… and here are the scissors, which aren’t supposed to be near the paper towels.”

Meanwhile, Sara touched one green colored pencil. A tiny golden flash appeared beneath her finger, then pointed toward an old box by the back wall.

“That colored pencil doesn’t want to be where it is,” she said. “It’s as if someone put it there on purpose so nobody would find it.”

Leo stepped up to the side wall. “Only three this time,” Toby reminded him.

The boy nodded. He took his first breath.

Behind the wall, in a narrow gap between the storeroom and the stairs, he saw a small pile of supplies. Second breath.

The pile was not random. It held everything used for measuring or marking: rulers, pencils, markers, even notebook labels.

Third breath.

Right on top lay a paper label with an arrow drawn on it. It pointed toward the storeroom door.

Leo stepped back before his head could hurt again. “Someone is sorting things. Just not the way Miss Mila would.”

“Confusing groups,” Ema said. “Things that sort of belong together, but are hidden in the wrong places.”

“So everyone has to search for a long time,” Sara added.

Toby frowned. “That isn’t a nice game.”

Suddenly, a small box of erasers slid off a shelf. Toby caught it before it could land on Ema’s foot. His hands grew strangely warm for a second, but he did not break anything or grip it too hard. He simply placed the box back quietly.

“Thanks,” Ema said, smiling at him.

“I was protecting the map,” Toby said, pointing to her paper. “I mean… you too.”

After they wrote down the arrow, the strange groups, and the place near the stairs, they left the storeroom for a quiet corner by the classroom. Leo sat on a bench and closed his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a while. “I wanted you to see how good I am at looking through walls. But then I saw less than I would have if I’d stopped in time.”

Sara placed the secret notebook between them. On the previous page was a small light beside a drawing of the key ring. Now she opened a fresh, empty page.

“You aren’t bad at looking,” she said. “Your power just needs a plan.”

“Being careful is brave too,” Toby added. “Sometimes stopping is harder than going on.”

Ema drew a small eye in the corner, with three short lines above it. Beneath the drawing, Sara wrote: “We use our power to protect, not to show off.”

Leo read the sentence and nodded. “Okay. Three breaths. Then we all think together.”

When they returned to the storeroom, the hallway suddenly fell quiet. Even the leaves outside the window had stopped rustling. At the far end of the hall, a purple patch spread across the white wall.

An Important Moment

At first, it looked like the shadow of a coat. Then it stretched higher and higher until it resembled a tall, thin figure.

Ema gripped her pencil case. “Do you see that?”

“We do,” Toby whispered, stepping a little in front of her.

Leo automatically raised his hand toward the wall. Then he stopped. He had only three breaths, and he still did not know what he needed them for.

Sara focused on the shadow. She did not sense anger from it, as she would from an angry person. Instead, she sensed a strange, ticklish joy, like when someone mixes up socks in a drawer and waits to see who notices.

“Maybe Mr Shadow,” she said quietly.

The purple shadow leaned forward as if it were listening. Just then, Miss Mila’s voice came from around the corner: “Is someone there?”

The shadow flickered past a locker and disappeared. Nothing was left on the floor except a small purple circle drawn in marker.

The children looked into the storeroom once more. Following Ema’s map, they found more mixed-up things by the back wall: all the small items that helped them mark, measure, or find something. It was not an accident. Someone had been moving them according to a muddled system of their own.

Sara slipped the purple circle into the secret notebook between two clean pages. Leo took the rulers and put them back on the right shelf. Ema added a large question mark to the map, and Toby quietly closed the storeroom door.

The hallway had returned to its ordinary afternoon calm. Only at the corner where the purple shadow had flickered a moment before, a thin strip of color waited on the wall. It looked almost like an arrow pointing onward.