Watching closely, Anne swung the hammer and smashed the sphere. The result exceeded all her expectations. Within seconds, a real drama unfolded before her eyes. From the center of the forest, a small cloud rose, quickly thickened, and began to swirl, gradually transforming into the magical whirlwind she knew so well.
But before it could fully form and gather strength, it was attacked by the much larger money-whirlwind, which grabbed it in a greedy embrace and suffocated it, not allowing it to escape beyond the sphere. Firecurl went pale with fury.
“So that’s what’s going on!” she hissed, clenching her fists. “That’s why the magic doesn’t work. And we’ve been hammering away like idiots. Just wait—you’ll see who’s worth what. We’ve seen worse than you, you know?”
But of course, threatening was a lot easier than actually changing anything. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t come up with a solution and spent the rest of the day clenching her fists in frustration. Only the next day, when she had finally calmed down and began methodically examining the sphere, did a suspicion start forming in her mind.
The thing was, the shiny little coins—though at first glance scattered randomly—seemed to follow some kind of rule in their movement. Or more precisely, they only ever covered certain parts of the miniature forest, stubbornly avoiding one particular corner, as if repelled by some invisible force. Soon, Anne was completely convinced: the area around the ghost house, the swamp, the orchid meadow—all the places she knew—remained untouched, though there was no clear reason why.
