The Bewitched Box Set

by W. J. May

  Another elder seated at the table spoke up. “Just what are you thinking the problem is here?”

  Paxton addressed the room, his voice deep and deadly serious. “I’m afraid it’s the Louers.”

  Dead silence. Then absolute chaos erupted.

  Louers? Storey wracked her brain. Nope, the name meant nothing to her. Obviously, it did to everyone else as questions flew at Paxton too fast for him to answer.

  “The Louers. Oh my. I thought they’d been wiped out.”

  “Are they real?”

  “We got rid of them, didn’t we?”

  The questions rose and fell all around her. As she caught the gist of the conversation, the puzzle pieces fell into place. Storey thought she finally understood. “Are you saying this hand belongs to one of those Louers? And that by drawing a doorway, I actually created a door they could open too?”

  “Exactly.” Paxton nodded like she was some favorite student. She’d love to be, except her next question would drop her right down to a failing grade.

  “So who and what are the Louers?”

  * * *

  Chapter 8

  Her history lesson wouldn’t start until later. By that time, Storey expected to be comatose. It didn’t seem to matter which side of the veil she was on. Neither side could get an agreement out of a group of people – decision by committee was a waste of time. The bickering had been going on for hours. At least it felt that way to Storey.

  “We should set up a committee to study the problem. We’ll appoint an overseer who can pick his team and set out steps as to how to proceed.”

  “Oh, not this again.” Storey groaned as the same idea was hashed over and over again.

  “What?” asked a skinny, bald-headed guy dressed similarly to Paxton. “Have you got a better idea?”

  “Hell, yes.” The same hush fell over the room as she once again lost her cool. “Oh, right, I swore again. Well, I’ve got to tell you – it’s a little hard to have any respect for a group of people who are so busy trying to get someone else to make a decision that nothing gets done.” She stood up, ignoring Eric’s restraining hand on her forearm. “I know I don’t understand how things work over here, but maybe someone could answer a couple of questions. Such as, can I draw the door closed? Can I rip up the paper and have it no longer exist? How about I draw a group of people taking these Louers and forcing them back to the other side?”

  “Will someone shut this girl up. She’s wasting our time and has caused us nothing but trouble. Someone get her out of here.” Eric’s father, the arrogant asshole, appeared to be some kind of leader here.

  “Why? Because I’m trying to understand what we can and can’t do. It seems logical that if the stylus opened the door, it could close it, too.” She strove to keep her voice reasonable.

  “I don’t think it works like that,” Eric whispered.

  “That’s the problem. None of you know how this works.” She spread her hands out on the table. “You’re all so used to doing something one way that you can’t see there might be another way to approach the problem.”

  “It’s not that. There are rules on our side. The Louers were our enemies. Since they’ve been gone we’ve had peace.”

  “Yeah? Did you go on secret research missions and steal from them, too?” she scoffed. “You guys need to work on your communication skills.”

  “And you need to stop insulting us.”

  “Why?” she challenged. “What are you going to do?” She stood, reached across the table for her sketchbook, and then walked to the doorway. “You don’t want me here. I’m obviously of no value, so pardon me if I leave.” She strode out, letting her sarcasm fill the room.

  “Don’t let her leave. Eric, stop her,” the Councilman shouted.

  Eric stood up and snorted as Storey walked away. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Well, she can’t just run loose over here. Who knows what kind of damage she could cause?”

  Eric snorted again. “Like we do in her world. It’s not like we registered with her any of her governments and sign in and out on our visits. Neither are we under guard at any time.”

  The Councilman’s icy voice sliced through the room. “Lock her up. She’s the enemy.”

  Storey gasped and spun around. Seeing the vindictive look on his fat face, she headed for the doorway.

  “No, wait.” Eric raced behind her.

  His father called back. “Eric. She’s not one of us. Remember your place.”

  Shooting his father a disgusted look, Eric left the conference room. He caught up with her in the lab. “What are you doing?”

  “Going home. I came here at your request. I can’t help you. Therefore, I’m going home.”

  “You can’t just leave. Don’t you understand? This is a different dimension. You can’t just walk home.” Eric ran his hand through his hair. “I know this is tough, and I’m sorry. I’d forgotten what it’s like when this group gets together.

  “It’s called bureaucracy on my side.”

  “Yeah. Same thing here.”

  “And yes, I can just leave.” Storey waved the stylus and sketchbook at him.

  “What, you’re just going to draw the other side? And expect to walk right into it?”

  “Or something that’s even easier.” She sat down cross-legged on the floor and sketched madly for a couple of minutes while Eric watched over her shoulder.

  “There’s no way that’s going to work,” he scoffed.

  “Maybe and maybe not,” she answered him without raising her gaze from her picture. “Then again, you’re so used to the rules of your world that you don’t even know if the rules can be broken. And sometimes you don’t need to break anything. You need to find a way around things.”

  He squatted down beside her. “True. I’d think you might need to know the rules before you can break them.”

  “Apparently not or we wouldn’t be in this mess now.” She shot him a grin before refocusing. “Wait and see. If it doesn’t work, no problem, then you can use your decoder and take me home.” She finished her drawing, painfully aware of his lack of response. She stood up and waited until he’d straightened and looked at her. “They won’t let you take me home, will they?”

  He grimaced, dropping his gaze to the ground and kicked out as if at an invisible rock. “No.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to if this doesn’t work,” she said coolly. “You brought me here, so it’s up to you to do the right thing and take me home. Especially as you brought me here without my permission in the first place. You said you wanted to show someone my work. You didn’t say I’d be going to another dimension to make that happen. And you didn’t say I wouldn’t be going home.”

  “Let’s hope this works, so I’m not put into that position.”

  Studying her sketch, Storey added, “Seems like parental control, discrimination and assholes are all the same no matter which side of the veil you’re on. Too bad. I was hoping your society was more advanced and my people could learn something from you. Not going to happen, though.”

  “We are more advanced,” he protested.

  She walked over to the wall she’d been staring at. Nodding once, she ripped off the paper and looked around. “Do you oh-so-much-more-superior people have such things as pins or tape?”

  He snorted, walked over to the closest bench and pulled off a piece of something gray. Returning to her side, he said, “It’s neither and won’t cause any damage like those two will.”

  She sniffed disdainfully. “We have sticky stuff like that at home too.” Flipping her hair, she stuck the gray ball onto the back of the sketch and hung it on the wall. Taking a few steps back, she studied the picture in relationship to the rest of the room, grabbed her pencil and drew a couple of quick horizontal and then vertical lines on the wall outside of the picture. She nodded. “Okay. See you around – maybe.”

  She walked purposefully toward the picture that she’d incorporated the wall into.

&
nbsp; “Eric, what are you two doing?” Paxton ran into the room. “We need you back in there. Bring Storey so we can keep track of her.”

  Storey shook her head. Not going to happen. She was going home. With a small wave of her fingers, she walked into the wall – and through her picture.

  “No. Oh, no. She can’t do—”

  Storey grinned as she stood in the middle of her own bedroom.

  Apparently, she could.

  ***

  Eric’s jaw dropped.

  Paxton stood in place, wringing his hands. “Oh dear. Not good. This is not good.”

  Eric blinked, then blinked again. She’d done it. Even after he’d said she couldn’t. How stupid could he be? And not just him. His people were just as guilty. She’d been right. They’d been locked into the surety of knowing what worked and what didn’t. Therefore, they’d never questioned the boundaries of that knowledge.

  Storey hadn’t had the same restrictions. She’d taken the steps to find out just what she could do.

  Unbelievable. Shocking really. He pulled himself out of the dangerous bout of admiration to study the doorway Storey had opened, then backed up several feet. She’d drawn a hallway, as if the picture on the wall was a portion of the wall itself. Using the doorway to her bedroom as the vanishing point in the distance, she’d created a long hallway to her room. A perspective drawing with her room as the single point in the center.

  Brilliant, really.

  Eric turned to face his mentor and received another shock.

  Paxton was terrified.

  He’d never thought to see fear on Paxton’s face. Consternation, even worry, anger, but fear, now that was a new one. One he didn’t like.

  “Oh, dear. What are we going to do?” Paxton held his hands together and stared at the wall.

  “What’s going on here? Where’s the girl?” His father bellowed from the doorway.

  Eric stiffened. Maybe it was Storey’s influence, or maybe, he was just seeing the light for the first time. He pulled the sketch off the wall and folded it.

  “The girl? Storey has gone home.”

  Eric braced for the storm to hit.

  “What? You took her home? How dare you? You will be punished for this.”

  Years of being educated in a strict school, where obedience and respect for his father, their leader, was all that held Eric back from letting the words spill over. He could only stare in disgust at his father, a father who’d been absent from most of his life. “I didn’t take her back.”

  “Not directly, but you let her leave,” Paxton cried out in anguish. “Oh, dear. This is terrible.”

  “She was never a prisoner, Paxton. She came at my request. To show you her picture. Realizing that no one here would listen to her or wanted her help, she decided to go home.”

  “She was supposed to have been your prisoner. It’s your fault,” snapped his father.

  “Why? I was told to retrieve the stylus. Nothing about trying to keep Story captive. Not that I could have,” he added thoughtfully, staring at the wall.

  “You could have used chains and the dungeon. At least they’d have gotten the job done.”

  Cold settled into Eric’s chest. The dungeons were for the worst of the worst. Dark, wet and miles underground where prisoners went insane or, more often than not, died of neglect. Originally built for a different purpose, the only prisoners ever sent there were traitors. People who went against the Council. If they’d planned that for Storey, he was glad she’d escaped. Since when had his people been so harsh, so unforgiving? Being on the inside, he’d never questioned his way of life or those in power. No one did. Everyone had what they needed. At least as far as he knew. Why worry? For the first time in his life he questioned the morality of his government. “Our dungeons have never been for anyone but slaves, when we had them, and the worst criminals in our society. There’s so few of them the dungeons aren’t worth maintaining. I hardly think Storey’s actions warrant such a punishment.”

  “Well, possibly not the dungeons.” His father backed down on that point. “But we can’t just have her running around loose on the other side. Who knows who’d she’ll tell? What damage she’ll do?”

  Eric shook his head in disbelief. “She’s just a kid.”

  “She’s already caused damage.” Paxton came to Eric, as if willing him to understand. “You have to see the truth here. She can’t be left to do as she pleases.”

  Eric cocked his head, fear for Storey and a deep-seated anger slowly building, twisting into a fury he’d never known. “What is it you’re planning to do?”

  “You must bring her back, of course. Even a dimwit like you should be able to see the sense of that.” The sneer on his father’s face sharpened.

  The fury boiling behind his self control was going to kill him. He swallowed hard. “Really. I’m to bring her back so she can be your prisoner? So you can take away her memories, force her to be a lab rat for you to study?”

  Paxton suddenly rose to his full height. “Don’t use that tone with me. Of course she must come back. She still has the stylus.”

  “Which is soulbound to her. They can’t be separated anymore.”

  “We don’t know that. Sarcov has almost recovered. He might be able to bond with it again.”

  “It can only bond with one person at a time.”

  “Right. So now you see how important it is to get it back,” his father snapped.

  Eric stared at the two men, his anger being quietly drowned by fear. “You can’t take it away from her unless she dies or, as in Sarcov’s case, it appears as if death is imminent. Storey is neither of those.”

  “Oh, don’t be naive. She’s dangerous. Of course, she’s going to have to die – eventually.”

  No. No, surely that’s not what he was hearing. Eric shook his head slowly like a bull with a red flag being waved in his face. “You want me to bring her back so you can kill her?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t put it that way.” Paxton tried to smooth the harshness of the conversation over. “We might need her.”

  “Her name is Storey. The least you can do is call her by her proper name.”

  “What are you talking about? She’s one of them.” His father’s outrage boiled over. “They don’t deserve our respect. They’re animals. Mindless in their actions, eating and killing their way through life with no consequence for their future.”

  Eric reared back. “And what’s so different about what you’re suggesting? Didn’t you just tell me to go and get her, so you could kill her?” He sneered. “How dare you put yourself on a pedestal above her and her kind? Is this what you’ve raised me for? To view myself as better than the others just because they live on the other side of the veil?”

  “We are more advanced than they are. Our technology is superior, so are our energy capabilities. We must protect our way of life.” Paxton tried to appease him. “These humans would overrun us with sheer numbers, strip us of our knowledge, our resources. You can see that, right?”

  “We don’t have any information on what they can or cannot do. Storey said something else that’s true. We’ve gone over to her world time and time again, bringing back anything we wanted or needed to develop our technology. That’s the only reason we’ve developed beyond them. We’ve never once shared what we’ve learned, including the new medicines and healing lasers that have wiped out illness here. No. She’s right – we’ve stolen everything from them.”

  “Nonsense. We’re doing what we’ve always done. We’ve lived like this for centuries. How can you start to judge our ways now? That girl is dangerous. Look at how you are speaking to me. You’ve never talked back before.” His father snorted at him.

  Eric frowned at the truth of his father’s words. When his father had said to do something, he’d done it – blindly. Regardless of right or wrong. There’d been a time or two when he’d wondered at the wisdom of the orders, but had followed them regardless.

  How horrible was that? Shame filled him fo
r his past actions, or lack thereof, and for his own treatment of Storey. She deserved better. He’d tricked her into coming over here and hadn’t even taken her home again.

  “Now, I want you to go there and bring her back.” His father drew himself up to his full height which, being more than a foot shorter than Paxton at his side, made him look ridiculous. “And I want you to go now.”

  Eric tilted his head and studied him. Paxton waited, holding his breath. Eric ignored him. “And if I don’t? Then what?”

  His father’s face turned beet red and absolute rage shone from his eyes. He gritted his teeth and stuck his jaw out. “What did you say to me?”

  “I asked you what the penalty would be if I refuse to commit murder.” Eric raised his eyebrows. “That is what you are asking of me, isn’t it? If I bring her back, you will kill her. That makes me an accomplice in the eyes of the law.”

  “No. I am not going to argue about this. This person, this girl, has threatened national security. She doesn’t get a trial and there won’t be any charge of murder. She is a danger to us all.”

  “Says you.”

  His father went seriously quiet. When he spoke again, his voice was flat and dark. “I am going to make myself clear right now and we will never speak of this again.” Steel shone from his eyes. “I am ordering you to go to the other side of the veil, retrieve the girl, and bring her back here. Should you fail to do so, you are guilty of the same crime of which she is accused. And then...” he paused for effect, “a team will go over there and do what you weren’t willing to do yourself – by force if necessary.”

  Paxton closed his eyes and bowed his head as if the worst had happened.

  A chill swept over Eric. This was his father. The father he’d idolized growing up. The father he’d respected all through his brief years. The father he’d done everything to impress was ordering him to bring Storey back to be killed – or be killed himself.

  “Storey? Is that you?” Her mother burst into her bedroom. “There you are. I swear I seem to spend half my time looking for you lately.”