The Prophecy

by Jeffrey M. Poole

  Chapter 4 – Prisoners

  The root cellar stunk of moldy earth. There was several empty burlap sacks scattered throughout their prison, along with a couple of empty, wooden crates. Several rotting bales of straw were strewn against the far, northern wall. What little light there was came through several small chinks in the stones of the foundation of the house.

  Sarah and Steve were standing in the center of the room. The tiny bit of light they had was beginning to fade. Dusk was settling in. Steve was glancing around, trying to take in as much as possible before all the light vanished completely. He held Sarah close as she sobbed quietly into his shoulder.

  “Hey, we’ll be all right.” Steve was speaking softly to her. “We’ll get out of this.”

  “How? There’s no one here to help us.” She sniffed loudly. “We’re lost on some unknown world where no one knows we’re here, about to be sold into slavery. How the hell are we possibly going to be alright?”

  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Mr. Hospitality there specifically said he wouldn’t be back for at least two days. I sure as hell don’t plan on being here when he returns.”

  With that Steve straightened up and started working feverishly on his bonds, trying to wriggle his wrists free. Sarah decided to look around for anything that might help her. While Steve struggled with his ropes Sarah started feeling around the straw strewn about the floor.

  There’s got to be something here that we can use, Sarah thought. A shard of glass, a sharp piece of metal, anything!

  Sadly, the only things she discovered were a decaying lump of cheese, a few scraps of rope, and some shreds of burlap.

  “So what happened?” Steve wondered. “We didn’t wander off the road. How did we end up following some fake path?”

  “He mentioned that he hasn’t seen anyone fall for his ‘path trick’ in quite some time. Does that mean he somehow tricked us to follow a fork on the road?”

  Steve shook his head. “We didn’t come across any forks in the road. We would have remembered.”

  “Illusion. He had to have covered up the real path and projected an image of a different path that led away.” Sarah looked at her husband, who was now trying to chew his way through the ropes. “That’s the only thing I can think of.”

  Steve stopped chewing and smiled sheepishly at his wife. “Hey, we’re newbies here. How were we supposed to know that that type of thing could even be done?”

  “So now that we know he tricked us, how does that help us now?”

  Steve sighed. “It doesn’t. What it means is that we have to be extremely careful here. We could walk right into the den of some monster if we’re not cautious.”

  Steve continued biting and chewing at his ropes. That bastard knew how to tie a knot, that’s for certain. He wasn’t sure what these ropes were made out of, but so far, they were resisting all his efforts of escaping. Maybe he could try loosening a couple of knots with his teeth instead. Hmm, that one looks like it’s on top, maybe that one first.

  Sarah, meanwhile, had found a small scrap of metal and was gently feeling its sides to see if any had a sharp enough edge to cut her ropes. Nope, doesn’t feel like it. Smooth on all sides. Dammit! There had to be another scrap somewhere. If only these ropes weren’t so tight, or else she had skinnier wrists.

  Her knees were hurting after being on them for the last couple of minutes, so she started to stand, only to stumble and land back down on them. Hard.

  “Ouch!!”

  “Are you okay?” Steve hurried over to help his wife up. Sarah grabbed a hold of her husband’s outstretched hands and hoisted herself up.

  “Yeah, I think I was sitting on my foot. It fell asleep. I’m okay.” Sarah flexed her arms, restoring some circulation back into her fingers. Was it her imagination? Did the ropes feel like they were loosening up a bit?

  She looked over at Steve, who had resumed picking at his bound hands with his teeth. She decided to hold off mentioning anything just yet. After struggling for another moment or two, much to her surprise, her left arm came free. The ropes slid down her right arm and plopped onto the floor.

  Steve, intent on making good his claim to earn his freedom, was still focusing on getting at least one knot untied.

  Sarah walked over to her husband. “Can I give you a hand with that?” And without waiting for an answer, dove into the many knots holding Steve’s hands tightly together.

  “What the…” Steve blinked. “How did you get free? You were tied up just a couple of minutes ago.”

  “It must have been when I fell down. My ropes felt loose and I was able to pull an arm out.”

  “Way to go!!” Steve remained motionless while Sarah worked on the ropes. Her small, delicate fingers made short work of the hastily tied knots.

  In just a matter of minutes, both former prisoners were rubbing their wrists, looking around in the fading light.

  “Now, let me take a look at that door.” Steve strode over to the ladder leading up. “There must be some way to get that thing open.”

  The rickety wooden ladder groaned under his weight as he ran his hands over the heavy wooden door fastened to the ceiling. The bolt to open the door, however, was on the other side.

  Steve pondered for a moment. Well, maybe the hinges? No, that’s not gonna work. I don’t even see any hinges. Maybe I can move it.

  He pressed his right shoulder against the trapdoor, braced his feet on the ladder, and heaved.

  C-r-a-c-k!!

  The wooden rung he was standing on gave way, dropping him unceremoniously down to the next rung, which didn’t like having two hundred fifty pounds suddenly appearing on it either, so it broke as well, plummeting him down to the next rung and so on.

  “Steve! Are you alright?” Sarah hurried over to where he was sprawled out on the floor. She tried fanning the air to get the dust out of her face. “What happened?”

  Steve coughed and stood up. He brushed off his clothes and made an attempt at reclaiming some dignity. He scowled at the remains of the ladder.

  “Piece of crap ladder. Damn thing is made out of twigs. No wonder it wouldn’t hold.”

  “So now we can’t reach the door.” Sarah threw up her hands in frustration. “This is great. Just great! This just keeps getting better and better!!”

  Steve knew he had to calm his wife down. Somehow. One can’t project a sense of calm if one didn’t feel calm himself. He took a deep breath.

  “Okay, honey, look at it this way. The lock for that door is on the top-side. There isn’t any way to get that thing open from down here. So we’ll just have to find another way out.”

  Sarah bristled with anger. How can he remain so calm? Didn’t he realize they were in a serious predicament?

  “Another way out? How?? There are no more doors and in case you hadn’t noticed, there are no windows, either.”

  Steve sat down on one of the wooden crates and motioned Sarah to join him. Reluctantly, she sat. She looked at her husband, her eyes filling.

  “What are we gonna do? We’re trapped in here!”

  “First things first, let’s calm down. That jerk said he wouldn’t be back for at least two days. So that gives us some time to think.”

  “Time to think? About what? About not panicking?”

  Steve took another deep breath and let it out slowly. “No, right now we need to start brainstorming. How can we get out of here? Can we use that jorii thingamajig?”

  Sarah sadly shook her head. “It’s not there. I put it, the crystal, and that gold coin in my change purse. When he took my purse, he upended everything on the ground. I didn’t see it. And you’ve seen that change purse. It’s small. They’re gone.”

  “Where’s your purse now? Maybe it just fell down into the bottom. That sort of thing happens all the time to you.”

  Sarah was losing patience. It was her favorite
purse. She knew it a lot better than he did, and she knew exactly where the missing items were placed: the small change purse. Besides, she had watched as the contents were dumped to the ground. They were missing. Period.

  Steve frowned as she scowled at him. If they weren’t there, then what did that mean? They were robbed? Was that why Kornal and Nilhanu offered to give them what money they had? Did they figure that they could sell the jorii? No, wait. That couldn’t be it. He had watched Sarah put the items from the safe back into her purse. Not only that, he didn’t even remember any of their hosts so much as touching their marble. So if the robber didn’t find it, then it must be somewhere in that purse.

  “Honey, now please don’t get mad, but would you mind if I looked?”

  Sarah’s glare could have initiated the next Ice Age.

  “I’m NOT a moron. This is my purse. I know damn well it’s not in there. Fine. Here. Don’t believe me??”

  Sarah pulled the pack over to her, yanked out her purse, and marched over to Steve. Without moving her eyes from his, she emptied the contents of her purse onto the crate. With a scowl, she reached down to pick up the small change purse.

  Even in the diminishing light, Steve could tell that the jorii or the gold grif were not among the contents of the purse. He watched as Sarah started to unzip the small purse when she hefted the purse in her hand, squeezed lightly, and with a small scream, dropped it.

  “What’s the matter?” Anger aside, Steve was beside her in a flash. “Did something hurt you?”

  “No! It’s there!! I felt it in the purse!” Sarah bent down and retrieved the small pouch. “See? See the bulge? It’s in there!”

  She unzipped the purse and held it upside-down over her hand. Sure enough the grif, crystal disc, and the jorii all landed softly in her hand.

  “What the hell? There’s no way that guy could have missed that. I watched him go through it, too.”

  Sarah was poking and prodding at her change purse. It just wasn’t big enough to hide something that size. Was there a flap or something that might have snagged it and prevented it from falling the first time? She poked several fingers in and felt around. Nope, the coin purse was of a simple design. No inside pockets, just the main zipper to prevent anything from escaping.

  Steve was perplexed, and whenever he was presented with a problem that he couldn’t figure out, he would start mumbling to himself.

  “Maybe since it’s ours, only we can see it. Maybe that’s how possessions work here.”

  Sarah snorted. “If that was true, then Kornal and Nilhanu wouldn’t have been able to see it.”

  “Good point. Okay, maybe jorii can only be used, and therefore seen, by people with a good heart.”

  “Unlikely, but if that was the case, what about the coin? It’s their currency. He should have been able to see that.”

  Steve nodded. “Good point.” He started to pace, another indicator that some serious synaptic misfiring was taking place. “What about protective magic? Maybe there is security-type magic that prevents these things from being stolen.”

  “That knew we were about to be robbed? I don’t think so. He clearly said he wanted our money. Seemed very surprised when we didn’t have any.”

  “Another good point. Hmmm.”

  Sarah watched as Steve continued to pace. She took her husband’s hand as he passed her the next time, pulling him to a stop. “Hon, umm, what if it was us?”

  Steve paused in mid-mumble to look at his wife. “Huh?”

  “What if it was us? What if we did something to it?”

  “Us? Do magic? Yeah, right. We aren’t from around here. I don’t think it’s us.”

  “Kornal said that he had never met a human without some type of power.”

  “He also said that they didn’t get that many visitors.”

  Sarah smiled. “Well played, dear.”

  He grinned back at her. “Wouldn’t that be something, though? Having an ability to protect your valuables, without you even knowing we were doing it? If we could market that then our financial difficulties would be over.”

  “I think we do need to acknowledge, though, that something did happen to the jorii.”

  Steve thought a moment and then smacked his hand on his forehead.

  “I’ve got it! What do you want to bet that that jorii thing, being magic, and strong magic at that, has some sort of built-in protection? And since it does, it probably was able to mask the disc and coin as well. Huh? Huh??” He playfully poked his wife in the ribs. “What do you think?”

  Sarah considered. That scenario was actually plausible.

  “I obviously don’t know for certain if that’s what happened, but I like that idea. A lot. If it can protect itself, then there has to be a way that we can use this thing to get us out of this predicament.”

  Steve hefted the jorii in his palm. “Okay, Mr. Marble, do your thing.” He held the jorii up to the closed trapdoor. Nothing happened. He gestured wildly, swinging his arms back and forth across the trapdoor. Nothing.

  “Maybe you need to be closer to it,” Sarah suggested. “The door, I mean.”

  “Okay, I’ll buy that. Let’s see. I can use some of this stuff to get closer.”

  He dragged the moldy bales of straw directly under the door and placed several crates on it. Gently, ever so gently, he stood up on the crate and repeated his movements from before. The door remained fastened, and the jorii was still unchanged in his palm.

  Since he was teetering precariously on his makeshift podium, he climbed down and glared at the door. Clenching the jorii tightly in his fist, he raised his arm and asked the door to open.

  “Open sesame!”

  Sarah burst out laughing.

  “Open sesame? You gotta be kidding me! Did you really think that would work?”

  “Hey, it was worth a shot,” Steve grumbled. Another glare at the door. “Abracadabra! Hocus Pocus!”

  “I have an idea.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Maybe it needs a spell.”

  “A spell? As in witches and wizards?”

  Sarah held up her hands. “Hey, I’m just giving ideas here.”

  Steve chuckled to himself. A spell. Great. This ought to be a hoot. That means he needed to come up with some type of rhyme, right? Let’s see. What could he use?

  He took a breath and faced the door. With the jorii held tightly in his right hand he started to chant.

  As visitors to this land, we wish to leave

  We don’t know what could be in store

  So using the power of this jorii,

  Blow away that mother freakin’ door!

  The door was unimpressed. Still locked, with nothing to even indicate that they were on the right track.

  “I’m impressed!” Sarah gave him a high-five. “I thought you weren’t good at rhyming!”

  “I’m not. That just came to me. Besides, what are you complimenting me for? It didn’t work. Stupid thing is still closed.”

  “Okay, let me try for a while.”

  Steve handed her the jorii. “It’s all yours. I hope you have better luck.”

  “Maybe it has a mental trigger.” Sarah concentrated on the spherical object in her hand, willing something to happen. Anything. No luck. She drew a picture of a door in her head that led to the outside world and tried to invoke the jorii into making that a reality.

  Steve suddenly grabbed her hand. “Umm, I think I know what the problem is here.”

  “You do? What is it?”

  “I just remembered what Nilhanu said about that thing. Remember? She said that a jorii enhances your jhorun to the point of being on the same level as the wizards. She didn’t say that it created an ability, only that it enhanced what you already have. So if we don’t have magic to begin with, how can it enhance what doesn’t exist?”

  Chal
k one up to her husband. Now that he had brought it up she did remember Nilhanu mentioning the fact that a jorii only enhances the magic inside you. Well, so much for this thing helping them esca- wait. Then what had happened to the jorii? How did it hide itself from the would-be thief? Was it something that one of them did? Keeping this revelation to herself for the time being, she decided to practice on the marble in silence.

  Marble. Sarah chuckled to herself. He had her doing it now. It’s a jorii.

  Sarah worked on the jorii well into the night. While Steve slept soundly (how does he do it??) next to her on the floor, she tried everything she could think of to activate her jhorun. Did she really have some magical ability lying dormant inside her? Could she walk through walls here if she tried hard enough?

  She concentrated so hard, for so long, that her only accomplishment was to give herself a pounding headache. Admitting defeat, she snuggled next to her snoring husband. Being both mentally and physically exhausted, she dropped instantly off to sleep.

  She was uncertain how long she slept, but at least she did sleep a few hours. Of that, she was certain. However, she could never sleep once the sun started to shine. She shifted her back a little. Why did her back hurt so much? Did she forget to turn down her Sleep Number bed? Why was there debris on the bed? Did the cats drag something up? Since her left arm felt pinned, she used her right arm to explore her surroundings. Damned if that didn’t feel just like straw.

  Her memory of last night came rushing back to her. She groaned. Damn. Not a dream. They were prisoners in some damn cellar with no way out.

  The sun! Why was it so bright in here?? Sarah’s eyes snapped open. Sunlight was streaming down from above. The trapdoor was open!

  Sarah shook Steve awake. “Hon! Wake up! The door is open! We have to get out of here! The mugger might have come back early!”

  “Wha’? Timezit?” Steve rubbed a hand over his face and tried to blink his eyes. They refused to open. “Did the alarm not go off? Damn thing.” He started fumbling for the remote to the TV. In their household television, not coffee, woke them up.

  Any other day Sarah might have found this amusing, but not now. She had to get him to wake up. Fast. She hadn’t heard any movement from upstairs, yet, and she didn’t want to take any chances.

  “Steve, wake up! The door is open! I swear, if you’re not awake in two seconds I’m going to pull every single arm hair off of both of your arms!”

  “I’m up, I’m up. What’s going on?” Steve used both hands to rub his eyes.

  “Look! The door is open!”

  He craned his head to look up. Sure enough, the trapdoor was open. In fact, he blinked a few times, the door was gone!

  “What happened? When did that disappear?”

  “Disappear?”

  “Hon, the door isn’t open, it’s gone!”

  Sarah peered at the opening. No door. She had assumed the door was open, leaning against the wall above, but that wasn’t the case. In fact, by squinting her eyes she could see that the locking bar was still protruding over the sides, securing the nonexistent door in place.

  Steve yawned, stretched, and stood up. So what had happened to the door? Maybe one of the attempts to invoke the jorii actually worked! But what? There’s no way his “hocus pocus” attempts could have worked. So what else did they try? The arm gesturing, the scowling, the mental cursing. Hah! The spell! That cheesy rhyme he came up with. That had to be it!

  “I got it! I think my spell must have worked! It obviously took a bit longer to kick in. That has to be it!”

  Sarah was momentarily confused. “You cast a spell? You don’t even know how to cast a spell. Oh, you mean the rhyme you made for the jorii?” She thought a moment. “Usually spells are instantaneous. I’ve never heard of a spell that had a delayed reaction.”

  “You’re basing this on, what, television shows?”

  “Don’t be an ass. I clearly don’t know for sure, but all references we’ve ever seen have always led us to believe that when a spell was cast, either it worked or it didn’t. No gray area there.”

  Sarah glanced up and listened intently. “I don’t hear him up there. No noise. Let’s get out of here. We’ll try and figure out what happened later. I just want to go.”

  “Agreed.” He looked at his rickety platform. “How do you want to do this? I can go up first then pull you up, or I can give you a boost and then come up afterwards?”

  “Why don’t you give me a boost up? I’d rather have you helping me up than yanking my arms out of their sockets.”

  With Steve’s help, she climbed up onto the platform of wooden crates and bales of straw. If she stretched way up on her tippy-toes, she could just reach the lip of the hole. If only she was a few more inches taller, she thought angrily.

  Steve jumped up on the bales of straw. “I don’t dare join you up on the crates. I don’t think they’d hold both of us.” He interlocked his fingers and held them out to his wife. “Put your foot here and get ready.”

  Sarah took a deep breath and steadied herself. She put her right foot into the basket Steve’s hands had formed and braced herself. “Ready!”

  Steve lifted, propelling Sarah straight up about four feet. It was more than enough to get leverage to brace herself and look around.

  “Watch out for that bar!” Steve cautioned. The locking bar was still extended, presenting an unwelcome obstacle.

  “Can you brace me for another couple of seconds?” Sarah asked.

  “Sure. What’re you doing?”

  With Steve bracing her legs, she risked moving her right hand over to push the bar back out of the way.

  “Good one!” Steve was grinning. “That would have left a mark, no doubt about it.”

  With Steve’s help from below, and straining every muscle in her body, Sarah was able to pull herself up out of the cellar.

  “You okay?” Steve called from below.

  “Yeah, just trying to catch my breath.”

  “Here, take this!” Steve hoisted the pack up into the opening. Sarah took it and placed it next to her.

  From below, Steve clambered onto the top of the wooden crates. Being a full ten inches taller than Sarah, he was easily able to grab the edge of the opening. However, upper-body strength was not one of his strong suits. With arms shaking more than saplings swaying in a hurricane, Steve finally pulled himself out of the cellar to lie next to Sarah.

  “I swear, when we finally do make it home, I’m joining a damn gym.”

  Sarah laughed and sat up. “C’mon, let’s get going. I want to get out of this place.”

  They both scrambled to their feet and made for the door. The sun was shining brightly outside, only a few wispy clouds were visible just above the western horizon. Now that they were not prisoners, they took a little time to look around.

  The cottage was sitting in a small clearing with the forest surrounding them on all sides. A small fire pit had been dug about ten feet from the house. Used regularly, from the looks of the refuse scattered about. Several recent kills were still hanging upside down from a branch from the closest tree. Looks like large squirrels, Steve thought.

  “We came from that direction, right?” He pointed northwest. A tiny, overgrown footpath ambled off in that general direction. “Do we head off that way and risk running into that guy on his way back? Or should we head in a different direction altogether?”

  “Well, as much as I don’t want to take the same path as that other guy did, I really don’t want to go wandering through the forest blindly. It took us several hours to get from where we were captured to get here, and we’re still ahead of when he told us he’d be back. I say we take this same path back and hope we can find the enchanted road.”

  “I’ll go along with that. At any rate, we need to hurry and we need to be quiet. If for some reason he decides to come back earl
y, I don’t want him catching us off guard.”

  Steve opened the pack, took out several strips of dried meat, and handed one to Sarah. He bit off nearly half of the strip, hoisted the pack back onto his shoulder, grabbed Sarah’s hand, and took off down the path at a healthy clip. It wasn’t until they were well away from that run-down cottage that both of them were able to relax.

  “I am SO glad to be out of that house!” Sarah bit off a piece of her meat. “I was starting to have serious doubts that we were not going to find a way out of that mess.”

  Steve had finally slowed their pace. A little. He wanted to put as much distance as possible between the house and themselves. Did Sarah just say something? She hated it when he didn’t pay attention. Something about doubts and messes. Doubts about getting out of the mess they were in? Well, Steve thought, I have a fifty-fifty shot at this.

  “Yeah, me too. I’m so glad we’re out of there.” He waited, watching Sarah for the imminent danger signs.

  “So what do you think happened in there? Where’d the trapdoor go to?”

  Oh, thank God. Got it right for once.

  “I still think that something we did, whether intentionally or unintentionally, made that door go away.”

  “Okay, but what?”

  Steve shook his head. “I wish I knew. ‘Cause whatever we apparently did, I’d like to learn how to do it again. That will definitely come in handy.”

  “I’m impressed! This coming from someone who had difficulty believing in magic yesterday. What convinced you?”

  “Well, think about it.” Steve counted off on his fingers. “First, the jorii, the crystal disc, and the coin that were in your purse up and vanished when the thief wanted to steal it. Second, all three items were back safely in your purse when you checked. And thirdly, that trapdoor flat-out disappeared. I think we would have heard someone remove it in the middle of the night.”

  “I was thinking that, too. I think one of our jhoruns manifested itself last night. I just don’t know if it was yours or mine.”

  “Okay, let’s find out. I tried using the jorii for a little bit. You took it so that you could try. I fell asleep. Honestly now, how long did you work on it?”

  “Ummm, well, most the night if you want to know.”

  Steve stared at his wife in shock. “All night? You were up for practically the entire night trying to get that door open?”

  Sarah grinned guiltily. “I really thought I could do it.”

  Steve had stopped walking and was holding his wife by the shoulders.

  “Then it has to be you! You did something to that door. You made it go away. What did you do?”

  “Clearly, if I knew that, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion.”

  “The jorii disappeared from your purse. The door vanished as well.”

  “But the jorii came back! You’re telling me that I’m responsible for making the jorii disappear so it wouldn’t be discovered, then reappear when the coast is clear? Not to mention making that trapdoor completely disappear?”

  Steve snapped his fingers. “I got it. It’s triggered by fear, or maybe by some intense emotions. Has to be. That’s the only common denominator I can think of in the two situations we’ve seen it work.”

  Sarah was silent, deep in thought. Steve continued.

  “You were worried. You didn’t want that jackass to find the jorii, or anything else, did you? So without realizing it, you made it disappear so that our friend back there couldn’t find it.”

  Sarah was still silent. Was he right? Did she make those things disappear? But how? How could she have done something without realizing she did it? Could she test it? Is there some way to find out if she has a jhorun here in Lentari?

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe something I inadvertently did caused those things to disappear.” She took a deep breath. “Can we test this? I want to know if I did it, how I did it, and how to do it again.”

  “Yeah, sure. I want to know, too.”

  They stopped by one of the massive oak trees. Steve shrugged off the pack, reached in and pulled out his wife’s purse.

  “Okay, try this. You did it once, you should be able to do this again. Is the jorii still in the change purse?”

  Sarah nodded.

  “Okay, then, try to make it vanish again.”

  “How? How do I do that?”

  “Well, just pretend that a whole gang of thieves are hot on our trail and are about to overtake us, and we know that the jorii can’t fall into the hands of someone like that.”

  Sarah let out a nervous chuckle. “That shouldn’t be too difficult to imagine. I’m already halfway there.” She clenched her fists. “What do I do? Try and make a mental picture of the jorii vanishing?”

  Steve shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Ummm, that’d be a good first start.”

  Sarah conjured up a mental picture of the jorii sitting in her change purse. She imagined it disappearing, tried to imagine what the change purse would feel like empty. She looked at Steve. “Any luck?”

  “With what?”

  “I’m trying to make the freakin’ thing disappear! See if it’s gone!”

  “Oh! Sorry, I’ll check.” Steve opened her purse, fetched out her change purse and felt it. “Nope, still there.”

  “Damn. Okay, how about…” Sarah brought up a picture of the jorii and imagined a hole appearing in her purse leading to who knows where. She pictured the jorii falling into the hole.

  “What about now?”

  Steve reached back into the purse and felt the small purse again.

  “Nope, sorry. Remember, pretend you’re in a serious dilemma and that you’re scared.”

  “Scared. Got it.” Sarah concentrated, imagining the thief was rapidly gaining on them, about to overtake them at any moment. She must not let the jorii fall into the wrong hands. She couldn’t let it. Why, if it did, then who knows what would happen to this beautiful land and –

  “What the hell?”

  Sarah snapped back to the present and looked at her husband.

  “What is it?”

  “Your change purse. It’s gone. I know I put it back in your purse.”

  “Are you serious? It worked??”

  Steve’s eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. “You did it! What did you do? What did you do differently from last time?”

  “It’s triggered by emotions! I really got into the moment there and pretended that he was about to find us. I knew that if it fell into the wrong hands then we’d be in deep crap.”

  Steve snorted. “Ain’t that the truth.” He reached inside the purse again. “Umm, how do you reverse it? Can you make it come back?”

  Sarah considered. She hadn’t thought of that. How does she make it come back? Obviously she knew that the thief wasn’t closing in on them. She’s relaxed now, isn’t she? Why didn’t it come back?

  “Uh, I’m not sure. I just assumed that once I stopped thinking about it, and those intense feelings had passed, then things would revert back to normal.”

  He felt inside for the small purse again. It still hadn’t reappeared. Better double-check. He pushed aside her brush, keys, emergency makeup kit. No, it doesn’t appear that… Wait, there it was! He had just checked the far right of the purse. It wasn’t there a second ago!

  He pulled out the change purse triumphantly.

  “It’s back! Nicely done!”

  “But why did it take so long to come back? Does the magic have to wear off or something?”

  “Let’s do this.” Steve opened her purse, pulled out the tube of her lip balm, and held it in his open palm. He looked at Sarah. “Can you make this vanish?”

  “My chapstick isn’t as important as the jorii. I don’t know.”

  “It’s worth a try. Wouldn’t you like to know if it’ll work on non-essential stuff?”

  Sarah concentrated,
bringing back the feelings of pursuit, of being scared and not knowing if or when she’d be caught next. She didn’t want her things to be found, not by that scumbag. As a matter of fact, nothing she owned would ever fall into his hands again if she had anything to say about –

  The small circular tube that was sitting on Steve’s palm vanished. As did the jorii, change purse, purse, and their pack, with all their supplies in it.

  “Holy crap! I was just talking about the balm!”

  Sarah didn’t respond.

  “Hey! Are you okay? Come on, snap out of it!”

  Sarah gave a little jerk and her eyes snapped open.

  “What happened?”

  “Not only did you make the chapstick disappear, you made your purse and all of its contents vanish as well. Not to mention our pack.”

  “What?! I made it all disappear?”

  “That you did! You must have really conjured up some scary feelings!”

  “All I have to do is pretend that that mugger is behind us, coming after us. It’s not hard to do. Only thing is,” she paused a moment, “every time I think about it, it’s like I’m back in that cellar again. I can still smell that dank odor, feel the straw under my feet.”

  Steve took her hand and pulled her close. “I won’t let him touch you, honey. That’s a promise.”

  Just like that, Steve was holding Sarah’s chapstick again. Down by his feet, the pack materialized back into existence. The purse followed a moment later, both sitting on the ground as though they had been there all along.

  “Whoa! That’s cool!” Sarah picked up her purse and rifled through it. She pulled out her change purse and felt for the jorii. Yep, still there.

  Steve was all smiles. “Do you realize what this means?? You have a magical power! That’s so cool!”