The ground rumbled again. Zinnia turned around slowly, following their gazes. The peak of the mountain, a black triangle against the purple sky, was smoking.
There was another rumble, and the ground shook hard enough to topple every one of the group to their knees. Zinnia reached out both hands to catch herself, and felt the jolt in her wrists. Getting knocked around without her witch powers was as inconvenient as it was painful. She felt helpless, which only stoked her rage. She heard her emotions being echoed by Margaret, who let out an animalistic growl further down the path.
Zinnia picked small pebbles from her palms and stared up, powerless, as the smoke at the peak became bubbling lava. The hot molten rock poured out, incinerating the scant shrubs that grew along the mountainsides.
“KNEEL,” boomed a voice. “KNEEL BEFORE YOUR KING.”
Zinnia heard Gavin muttering, “We’re already kneeling.”
The lava continued to bubble up, and something red, glowing, and person-shaped emerged. The lava was not pouring out of the tip of the mountain so much as it was climbing out. The figure had broad, muscular shoulders and sinewy legs. It was a man, made of red-hot lava. The king.
The lava man strode down the side of the mountain toward them.
“HOW DARE YOU,” he boomed. “HOW DARE YOU LEAVE ME, BETH? AFTER EVERYTHING I’VE DONE FOR YOU. AFTER I’VE CHANGED. AFTER—”
“Enough!” The queen tossed a rock directly at his looming head. The rock soared in a high arc, much higher than a human could have thrown it. Beth had powers? Her rock sunk into the man’s enormous molten head with a tiny hiss.
The bubbling figure’s face smoothed enough to show facial expressions. He appeared to be confused. The sight of the giant lava man frowning and scratching his molten brow with his lava hand struck Zinnia as comically absurd. She heard her sentiments voiced by Margaret, who let out a sharp, “Hah!”
The queen picked up another rock, tossed it in an impossibly powerful arc, and nailed him right between the eyes.
“HOW COULD YOU,” he boomed. “BETH, YOU CAN’T TREAT ME—”
“Stop yelling!” She lobbed another rock. This one sunk into his eye, melting upon contact. “Everyone can hear you!”
The molten-lava king’s posture slumped.
“I’M NOT yelling,” he said, his volume lowering as he spoke. “I’m not. You were the one yelling.”
She yelled back, “I have to yell because you don’t listen!”
His frown became so pronounced that bits of lava splashed out of his forehead wrinkles. “I listen,” he said.
The mountainside was silent except for the hissing of shrubs being incinerated by the lava dripping from the king. He was over twenty feet tall, and radiating heat greater than the biggest bonfire Zinnia had ever felt. Thankfully he had stopped far enough away from them that their clothes weren’t about to burst into flames.
The silence was broken by Gavin commenting, “This is the volcano ending. I told you so.”
Dawna said, “Not now. You don’t know when to shut up, do you?”
Karl said, “Everyone, be quiet. Let the lava man speak.”
Margaret said, “Let the lava man speak? Excuse me? How about we let the woman speak?”
Xavier said, “Uh, has anyone seen Liza? Where’s Liza?”
“She made it out of the cave,” Karl said. “I counted her. Zinnia was the last one out.”
Dawna said, “She was right here a minute ago. Liza?”
Zinnia was about to join her friends to help locate Liza when the queen spoke again to her flaming spouse.
“You’re the one who sent the timewyrms to destroy this place,” Beth said.
With a petulant tone, the giant lava monster replied, “I couldn’t let you leave me. What about our children?”
“We don’t have any children,” the queen shot back. “Remember? You didn’t want any. You said you weren’t ready.”
“I might be ready now.”
She waved at the destroyed mountainside. “Look at this,” she spat out, gesturing wildly. “This is not the work of a man who is ready for children.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Sorry you’re so mad.”
The queen didn’t respond.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated, pouting his molten-lava lower lip. His body shrunk by ten percent, but he was still a giant, still radiating a tremendous amount of heat.
The queen put her hands on her hips and tapped her foot. “You should be sorry.”
Margaret suddenly broke from the group, raced up the path, and placed herself squarely between the queen and the molten-lava king.
“Typical man,” Margaret said, waving her arm at the lava giant, her voice dripping with contempt. “You stomp around, doing whatever you want, and then you think two little words are going to let you off the hook? I’m sorry? Nope. That doesn’t cut it!”
Zinnia ran to Margaret’s side and tugged on her arm. It was to no avail. Margaret’s stout form gave her the advantage of holding her place when she wanted to. She would not budge. Instead of heeding Zinnia’s whispered warnings, or, really, any common sense whatsoever, the gray-haired witch continued to berate the smoldering king.
“You think you can do whatever you please!” Margaret’s hands flapped around like angry birds. “You think the whole world revolves around you! That you’re the only person who matters! You think everyone else will just pick up the pieces!”
The king looked from Margaret to his queen and back to Margaret again. “Who dares speak to the king with such disrespect?” He frowned, and more lava squirted out of his forehead wrinkles.
Margaret yelled up at him, “This witch! That’s who!”
“A witch?” He shriveled visibly and backed away from her by two large steps, setting off a small avalanche that narrowly missed the group. He turned his flaming face toward Susan. “Sister, you did not say the visitors were witches.”
“They’re no threat,” Susan replied, tension making her voice high and squeaky. “Do not bother harming the witches from Earth. They haven’t found the way to access the magic here.” Susan shot Zinnia a quick, meaningful look, eyebrows raised, as if to say there was a way to access the magic, if the witches kept trying.
“I don’t like witches,” the king said. “Too bossy.”
“That’s how people are. They’re imperfect. You can’t eat them all or there won’t be any left.”
“But I don’t like the things that are happening right now,” he said. “The old ways were better.”
“You weren’t happy then, either,” Susan said.
The lava man scratched his head. “I don’t remember.”
While Susan had been trying to talk civility into her giant, fiery brother, Margaret had picked up a big rock. Margaret heaved it back and chucked it at the king. As she whipped her arm to follow through, a stream of sparkling magic shot from her fingertips. The flung rock turned an icy, glowing blue in the air before it struck the king in the shin. There was a crack that reverberated through the desert landscape.
“Ow,” the king said. “She is a witch.”
Margaret turned to Zinnia, her face contorted with delight. “The magic,” she said breathlessly. “It’s everywhere, Zinnia! You don’t have to wrap it around your tongue, because it’s everywhere!” She raised both arms in a triumphant Y shape. “Can’t you feel it? Oh, Zinnia, it’s magnificent! It’s—”
Margaret stopped speaking because she was no longer Margaret. She was a stone statue, frozen with her arms raised in a triumphant Y. Susan was touching her elbow.
“For her own protection,” Susan said hurriedly to Zinnia. “She’s still in there.”
Zinnia nodded slowly. She’d seen living things turned to stone before, and back again. The others from the office, however, had not. Pandemonium ensued. Liza still hadn’t been found, and now Margaret had been turned to stone.
Meanwhile, the queen had started a dialog with her lava-king. They were arguing about which one of them had t
he right to end their relationship, as well as who was to blame for their ongoing conflicts. Despite them being the rulers of a magical world, the words they used and the emotions behind them were no different from the kind that could be heard in the aisles of any home improvement store on a Saturday afternoon.
Zinnia tuned them out, because she was trying to focus on only two things: the magic that apparently hung in the air all around them, and the goddess.
“I know your name,” Zinnia said to Susan, who wasn’t really Susan.
The king’s sister rolled her lovely eyes. “No, you don’t.”
“Oh, no? Come here and I’ll whisper it in your ear.”
She narrowed her eyes but reluctantly came over to where Zinnia stood on the mountain path. She leaned forward. Zinnia turned her bruised and bleeding mouth toward the woman’s ear.
“Diablo,” she said. “Your name is Diablo.”
The goddess reeled backward, sucking in air audibly. “Witch,” she gasped. “You have beaten me, witch.” She began to choke, held her throat, and coughed. She was trying to expel something. After much coughing, a glowing ball of light fell from her mouth. The ball floated, bubble-like, straight to Zinnia.
Zinnia caught the ball, crushed it in her fist, and felt magic flooding through her once again. She could see the magic that hung in the air all around them. Now that she knew where to look, it was so obvious!
Zinnia turned to her coworkers. They were all in such a panic, they hadn’t seen Zinnia get her powers back. But they had found Liza.
Liza was hysterical. “I don’t exist,” Liza cried. “This is my nightmare, and it’s happening. Look! I’m fading away!” She held up one hand. It was even more transparent than it had been in the cave. Liza let out one last wail, shot a pleading, pathetic look at Zinnia, and blinked out of existence.
Zinnia looked around and counted up everything that was wrong. Their only way home lay in ruins. The queen was arguing with the king, who was made of lava and three times her size. Margaret was a statue. Karl was sitting on an overturned log with a blank look on his face. Xavier and Dawna were digging at the sandy ground with their bare hands, calling for Liza. Gavin was staring at Zinnia.
“You have to do something,” Gavin said. “Zinnia, you have to save us.”
She held up one finger, twirling the airborne magic around it. “I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
“Yessss,” said the goddess, whose true name was Diablo. She had turned back into a snake—a sapphire-blue ten-footer this time—and slithered around the edge of the group. “You musssst try harder,” the goddess hissed.
Zinnia looked down at her hands. They were dirty and bleeding, but the magic that was in the air was running through her fingers like water. What could she do with all this strange power?
Chapter 37
What could Zinnia do with the magical realm’s abundant power? Plenty!
Her first task was to clear the corner where the stairs had been.
Not only was her levitation working again, but it was working better than it ever had on Earth. Back home, she’d been limited to levitating objects that weighed no more than what she could lift manually. But here, she was tossing boulders out of the corner as if they were Styrofoam set pieces from an early episode of Star Trek.
The others offered to help, but after a few close calls, they decided the best way of helping was to stay out of Zinnia’s way.
Unfortunately, despite a fantastic effort clearing the corner, no stairs were found, magical or otherwise. Zinnia had suspected as much, so it wasn’t a crushing disappointment.
Next, she got to work fixing the elevator doors and the keyhole.
Using a combination of brute force plus a myriad of spells, including a souped-up steadfast spell, she managed to reassemble what might have, to a casual observer, passed for an elevator entrance.
Zinnia stepped back and admired her handiwork. It was now the dead of night, and most of her coworkers were either asleep or watching quietly. Liza was still missing. Zinnia hoped that once the portal reopened, the young Gilbert would turn up. Margaret was still a statue. The goddess, Diablo, had tried to return Margaret to human form once the king had been distracted away from the loudmouthed witch, but Diablo’s powers hadn’t yet recovered from the transfer that had taken place when Zinnia spoke Diablo’s name. Zinnia tried not to worry too much about Margaret. Her main focus was getting the elevator up and running, so to speak.
She took a deep breath, prepared the key with the chameleon potion, and tried it in the lock.
Nothing happened.
She wiggled the key, like she had before.
Still nothing. She fought the urge to curse under her breath, lest she accidentally jinx the lock even more.
“That cover plate is cracked,” said Gavin.
Zinnia startled. She hadn’t heard the gnome approaching. “I know it’s cracked,” she snapped. “This poor elevator has been ripped to shreds by monsters and then battered in an earthquake. It’s not exactly showroom-fresh.”
Gavin threw both hands in the air defensively. “Excuuuuse me for trying to help,” he said. “I forgot that Ms. Zinnia Riddle is now a department of one person only, top to bottom. Nobody else can work with her because nobody else measures up.”
Zinnia let out an exasperated sigh. “That’s not true. I only sent you away from the stairwell project because you were going to hurt yourselves.”
“We could have been done hours ago if you’d let me and the guys help clear the stones.”
“I did finish that hours ago,” she said. “Haven’t you seen? I’ve been working this whole time on the elevator. Do you know how hard it is to unwrinkle metal?”
He pointed his chin at the cracked panel. “Did you try wiggling the key?”
She resisted the urge to send a magical bite to Gavin’s posterior. With the way her magic was supercharged in this world, the spell was liable to chomp through muscle.
“I wiggled it,” she said.
“The cover plate is cracked,” he said, stating the obvious for a second time. “That’s why it won’t work.”
She gave the key another wiggle, then pulled it out of the hole wearily. She put her back to the wall and slid down until she was sitting. Exhaustion suddenly hit her like, well, a crumbling cave roof.
“Come on, Zinnia,” Gavin said. “You can’t give up now.”
“I’m not giving up,” she lied. “I just need a moment to rest.”
“You can’t stop,” he said. “You’re the witch. I’m just a gnome. The tiny bit of magic I can do is a drop in the bucket compared to what you have access to.”
Dawna, who’d been sitting by the campfire near the mouth of the cave, came over and joined them.
“The cover plate has a crack in it,” Dawna said.
Zinnia said nothing.
“You should do another reading,” Gavin said to Dawna. “Zinnia’s got her powers back. You should, too.”
Dawna gave him a sad look and shook her head. “I keep trying, but I’ve got nothing.”
“You’ve got to try something,” Gavin said. “Zinnia’s broken, and I’m just a gnome.”
“What?” Dawna scrunched her face. “Did you say you were just a gnome? You told me gnomes had amazing powers!”
Gavin hunched his shoulders and stuck his grimy hands into his pockets. His designer trousers were stained and torn in multiple places.
“I’m not amazing after all,” Gavin said sheepishly. “I’m just a gnome. All I can do is sniff out items of value, and escape home, like a coward.”
“That’s it!” Dawna clapped her hands together. “Gavin, you can go home! All you have to do is stamp your foot three times.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said warily. “Teleportation doesn’t work across different worlds, different dimensions.”
“Why not?”
Zinnia got to her feet again, and chimed in, “Why not?”
He freed one hand f
rom his pocket and itched the back of his neck. “Uh, I don’t know.” He looked down and scuffed the floor of the cave with the toe of one shoe. “I could try, but it’s a one-way ticket. What about the rest of you?”
Dawna grabbed his arm. “Good thinking. I don’t want to be stuck here without you.” She quickly added to Zinnia, “No offense.”
Gavin kissed her, then turned to Zinnia, his chin lifted defiantly. “You heard Dawna. I won’t leave her, even if I could.” He shrugged. “We’ll just have to make the best of our lives here on this side. We can keep working on getting the elevator fixed, even if it takes years.”
He continued to talk, trying to make the best out of a bad situation, but Zinnia didn’t hear a word he was saying. She had already decided on a different outcome for their adventure.
Zinnia handed both the key and the remaining chameleon potion to Gavin.
“You were right,” Zinnia said. “I’m not a department of one. I’m part of a team, and so are you.”
He stared stupidly at the key. “You want me to try the key? I’m not going to have any better luck than you, Zinnia.”
“You can, and you will.” She grinned at him as hope bloomed in her heart. “Gavin, Dawna, this is the volcano ending.”
They both blinked.
Gavin spoke hesitantly. “This is the volcano ending?”
Zinnia nodded. She was exhausted, but she could see the loop clearly in her mind. “We’ve already been thrown into the volcano, but it’s a good thing. This is the best outcome from the tarot cards, not the bad one.”
Dawna gasped in understanding. “This is the volcano ending,” she exclaimed. “The lava has come out, and now we go in and through.”
Gavin frowned at the key and potion. “But there’s no use. The cover plate is cracked.”
Zinnia reached out and closed his grimy fingers around the key. He wasn’t catching on as quickly as Dawna, but he’d get there.
Zinnia was almost too excited to say the words. Almost, but not quite. “You teleport home, and you open the portal from the other side.”
He immediately tried to give the key back to Zinnia. “I don’t know,” he said. “Let me think about it. Traveling between dimensions is the kind of thing that gets a gnome turned into a red spray of liquid gnome, if you know what I mean.”
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