Keys In My Hand

Keys in my hand. It’s a process I go through every time. Afraid of losing them, I put my hand deep into the right pocket and choose the one I need by feel. But that won’t do. I have to look at it also, see it to assure myself that it’s there. The end of work. I’m at my front door. Up the stairs, above my neighbors. I feel the key; I see the key; I have the key. I let myself inside.

Now, relaxing. The first thing I do is put my stuff down and make myself a snack that is just short of a meal. An apple, a chunk of cheddar cheese, a bagel. They are in a bowl within five minutes of closing the door. I am sitting down on the couch, lounging. The couch is dirty. The apartment is deserted. My roommates are not here, and haven’t been in some time. My jacket is in my bedroom, on the back of my computer chair, where I always put it. My hat and glasses rest on my desk beside my bed, where I always put them. My sheets are burgundy because Wendy, a woman I never slept with, loves that color.

I lounge on the couch, beside the beer stain that no one ever cleaned up, and on the other side of me are the things I had held in my hands upon entering the apartment: keys, a novel, a philosophy book, a notebook, and a voice recorder. I stretch. I eat. Something nibbles at the back of my mind. For so reason I can never completely calm down now. Not in this place. I live here. Ran into a person I didn’t know on the street home today. The television turns on. The television turns off. I fall into a mellow sleep, too tired.

A scream wakes me. It came from out back. Can’t see what it was. The neighbors playing movies too loud again. Happens every other night. Dark outside. Dark in here. Turn on a light, a freestanding lamp that is focused up so it lights one region of the ceiling very brightly and bathes the rest of the room in reflected lamp light. I hate yellow.

Stand up. The books don’t go on the couch. They go on the bed, or by the bed. I like to keep the notebook by me in case I think of something good. Writings about space stations and inventors who come up with super batteries. Too tired to read tonight. I sit at my desk, after putting away the other books, to write out something. The impeccability, or un-impeccability, of a medium depends upon how much it helps or hinders the transmission. Water effectively hinders the transmission of light, and therefore isn’t a good medium for it, but even pure crystal bends light somewhat, proving that there is no perfect medium.

Too tired to shower now. There is a commotion down the street, lights in the distance. I see them out the bedroom window, between the other apartment 4-plexes. It isn’t a mob. Lay down, clothes and all. No need for covers in this weather. Shut eyes. Go to sleep. Wake up. Look at wall. That shadow isn’t supposed to be there. Jump out of bed. Shoot gaze out window.

Nothing.

The shadow is made by the outside light on the apartment just across from me shining through the tree between us. But there is nothing there in the tree. Nothing shaped like that. It is a gorilla swinging back and forth by one arm, but there is nothing in the tree. Shake head; rub eyes; get hot chocolate. Back in bedroom. There is nothing out there. The lights down the street are closer now, blinking. Nothing in the tree. I reach for my hat and glasses, but they are not there. Where? On the table? They are not on the desk where I put them. Stand up, turn on light—another upward facing lamp—look around.

Another scream. Wish those guys would stop watching scary movies. Only other sound is driers in the washer room behind my building where rude people do wash at 3:30 in the morning. Where are my hat and glasses? Check floor on hands and knees. Shag carpet feels like dry grass. Makes me sneeze. Not there or under my bed. Check on bed and on couch. No. Nothing. Bed is a twin size collapsible. The coffee table is a glass affair with an old bed sheet draped over as tablemat. There are cookies on it since before I moved in. Beside them, my bowl and apple core.

Throw away. Clean. Rinse. There is nothing in the tree outside my bedroom window. While in the living room, I watch the news on TV. Kick back. Try to relax. Try to sleep. Remember when I first moved in. Life much easier. No work. No job. Summer before school. Bright, sunny days.

I hear the wind in the leaves, like the running of a highway. Like an earthquake. On the news, people talking. People happy. Talking heads accusing each other of not knowing anything. Not paying attention. The war is far away. Wars happen and don’t happen. Nothing here changes.

Woman I ran into today. I think of her. Didn’t know her. Never seen before. She was not Wendy. Definitely not Wendy. There is nothing outside my window. There is no mob in the distance. Go out to the balcony? I don’t want to. Another bombing half way around the Earth. Wind in trees. Window in the living room points the same way as the one in my room. Different light in different angles. Wind making everything sway. The lights are closer now.

There is no mob outside my apartment community. The police are not here. Turn volume up. Milk is good. Ax Body Spray will make women follow you everywhere. Oversized diapers allow elderly people to play tennis. The woman. The woman I ran into on the street as I was going to my car. I didn’t know her. She wasn’t being chased. I offered to hold a door open for her. I didn’t refuse to help her.

A scream outside the window. The loudest all light. Jump, rush, open window. “Shut the fuck up!” Something comes through the window. Crash! Break!

I did not lose my hat and glasses fighting against a croud of people trying to get back to my apartment. My right shoulder hurts. Stains on my jacket. Blood doesn’t show on black cloth. There are not people outside my door. They are not breaking in.

Who are these people? Sleeves of tattoos. Good shirts, torn. All skin white and red. Broken bottles. Lamp pole in my hands. Seven feet between me and them. I do not strike them. I do not hit them. The room does not go dark. Smell histamine in my nose. Nose swells, pains. Eyes go watery. Grab. Poke. Prod. The keys are in my hand. Gouge into something. Must get out. The keys are in my hand. The keys are in my hand. Nothing outside my window. No one inside my home. Not the woman. Wendy. Not the woman I met in the street. Keys in my hand. Make fist. Ram it into something. Not people. No one. Keys in my hand. Keys i—

Fiddling in the Woods

My parents’ fear of the deep woods infected my kid brother Ryan a long time ago. He won’t go near them. But I was intrigued by their fear. “What’s out there?” I asked myself again and again and again. I tried asking them what was out there, but they wouldn’t say a word of it. They said, “It isn’t something little girls should be talking about.” And they left it at that. The old folks always said things like that: “little girls shouldn’t go where they’re not supposed to. Little girls shouldn’t wrestle with boys. Little girls shouldn’t go into the woods alone. Little girls shouldn’t be talking about the deep woods.” Blaw blaw blaw and other things like that.
They said the woods were haunted, and that lost souls go wandering through them at night. I was never sure whether I believed that or not. I knew that such things existed; I just doubted that they were here, in these woods.

I’m not exactly what you’d call a good girl. I get in trouble a lot. People said it wasn’t proper for a girl to be playing in the mud, but I did anyway. People said it wasn’t proper for a girl to pick fights with boys, but when they had it coming, I gave it to them. And people always said it wasn’t proper for a girl to go places where boys wouldn’t… Well, that rule I didn’t break until my eleventh birthday.


I was curious to know what was out there in the woods that scared my parents so much. But I wasn’t stupid. I waited until I thought I was grown up enough to go off and explore it. Other women were made mothers by twelve, so I figured I’d be ready by eleven. On my eleventh birthday I set out to answer the question.

That was the day that I saw him, well, night I saw him. It was almost a full moon, which worked out well because I could see without bringing a torch or candle.

I was walking on an overgrown path that went far into the woods. After I had walked about three and a half miles I heard music. Someone was playing a fiddle in the middle of the woods. I followed the music off the path and came upon a man standing in the middle of a rather small clearing, playing a fiddle with great vigor and even greater concentration. The clearing was odd. It was almost an exact circle with the man in the center, and it was only far enough from the path so you couldn’t see it easily, even in the daylight. I watched him from behind a tree for some time. He wore regular clothes, a bit dirty, but well cared for. The playing became a bit softer. I felt as if it was time for me to step out from behind the tree, and so I did. He played very softly, and then stopped.

“Like my playing do you?” He said, still with his back to me.

I nodded. He turned around and had an odd smile on his face.

I guess that proper girls are supposed to be afraid all the time of strange people. Well, I’m not a proper girl.

“Aren’t you scared?” He asked. He seemed surprised.

“Of what?” I asked.

He laughed a bit. “Of me of course. There are a lot of very bad people that wander around, and if you meet one of them… bad things could happen.”

“I’m not afraid of anyone.” I said defiantly.

He chuckled. “That is stupid and could get you into a lot of trouble. For instance, what would you do if I, right now, jumped on you and tried to kill you?”

I thought for a moment. “I’d run I guess.”

He shook his head and frowned.

“I’m Jack.” He said at last.

“I’m Sara.”

“Well Sara, do you really think you should be out here at this time of night?”

“No, but I don’t often do what I’m supposed to.”

“Well,” he said. “It’s been nice talking to you, but I think that you’d best be getting back now. You’ve gone far enough into the woods for one night. But come back any time, I’ll be here.” He smiled again.

If it had been my parents or someone else from the town, I would have told them no, or I would have said okay, left, and then doubled back. But there was something about this… Jack. I don’t know what it was, but for some reason I agreed with him and started back home.


The next day I was filled with curiosity once again. Who was that Jack fellow I met in the forest? And I still hadn’t answered my original question. What were my parents afraid of?
After my chores that morning I went to find old man Milgade, the oldest man in our town. I called him Uncle Ernie. He and I had had a running friendship ever since I was six. I figured that if I could talk to anyone in the town about the forest I could talk to him. He was in his house when I found him. We sat on his front porch and talked about the people in the town, and about old stories, and we gossiped about this and that. By and by I got around to asking him what was on my mind.

“Uncle Ernie, why are my parents so afraid of the deep woods?”

He had been smiling, he liked talking to me, but now his smile faded. He looked off into the distance, then sighed and turned back to me.

“I suppose you’re old enough to know, and I suppose that if you don’t hear the story you’ll go scampering off into the woods looking for trouble.” He looked into the distance as if he would see the story being played out before him on the distant mountains and the clouds in the sky.
“Many years ago you mother was the prettiest young woman in the village, and she had many many suitors…. people who wanted to marry her.

“Anyway, one night she was carried off into the forest by this evil creature, ‘familiars’ they’re called. She was carried off by one of them in the middle of the night. The next day there was a whole lot of fussing over it. Everyone was fearing the worst, after all, familiars are only owned by witches and wizards and the sort…”

“Do they really exist?” I asked skeptically.

“Aye, they do.” He replied. “They and werewolves, and demons and ghosts too. Don’t be fooled darlen: jus’ because they don’t show themselves to everyone don’t mean they don’t exist.”

He stopped and took a breath. “Now then where was I? Ah yes, they had just taken away your mother. That day your father, her bravest suitor, went into the woods looking for her. None of them others went though, they were all too frightened, but your father went in with nothing more than an ax a pair of torches and a knife and flint. He was gone for two days and there were some that said he died. People were getting ready for his funeral, but then, just after dawn on the third day he came stumbling out of the woods, without his knife or flint or torches, but with your mother in his arms and his bloodied ax hanging from his belt. The other suitors were put to shame and your mother and father were married a few days later.”

There he stopped talking. I sensed that there was more to the story since Uncle Ernie hadn’t yet said what had happened in the forest, but he just stopped.

I decided to find out what had happened. “So what happened in the forest though?”

Uncle Ernie looked uncomfortable telling this. “No one really knows. He never talked about it, her either, and whenever asked, they outright refused to tell anything about it. My guess is that he had to fight something horrible to get her back, and the shock of it makes them not want to remember the experience.”

That explained why Uncle Ernie was uncomfortable: he doesn’t like admitting that he doesn’t know something.

That didn’t satisfy my curiosity as to why my parents were afraid of the forest, it just made me more curious. Why did they still refuse to go in there? Was that thing that father fought still alive? I’d need to go exploring to find that answer. And I was still interested in finding out more about this Jack fellow. So I made my decision: I was going back again, tonight.
I was going to see Jack again, but this time I would also go further.


The afternoon took an eternity to get through. I had to be with my normal friends the rest of that day so no one would be suspicious. Supper was rabbit stew and milk.

I waited until everyone went to sleep, then I watched the stars through a window. After about an hour I decided it was time to leave. This time it didn’t seem to take quite as long as last time, to get to the point where I heard the music.

I found him in the same place, just as he said he would be. He saw me and gestured for me to sit on a log on one side of his fire-less fire pit. The full moon was out so we didn’t need a fire just then. After pleasantries I asked him the main question that was on my mind. I’d heard that only witches and wizards and unnatural creatures lived in the woods, so I had to know.
“Are you a wizard?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Old man Milgrade said that wizards live in these woods.”

“Oh.”

There was an uncomfortable pause as he tried to avoid answering my original question. So I asked it again.

“Are you a wizard?”

He made a face of disgust. “Yes and no. I suppose you could call me that because I can perform magic, but I just don’t like that name. Call me a fiddler,” he raised his fiddle for me to see, “because that’s what I am.”

“But you can do magic?”

“Yes.” He said. He seemed proud that he could say that.

“Well, do a spell then!”

Jack laughed. “It’s not like that.” He went on to explain. “I don’t cast one particular spell or another. Everything has a spiritual energy about it, but only the energy in people can truly be called souls. I understand this energy, and through practice I have learned to use my own soul to manipulate this energy the way anyone else would use their hands to manipulate a piece of wood or a stone. The effect is called magic.”

I was excited, and confused. I hadn’t completely understood what he said, but I knew that it meant that he could do something. The things that wizards could do went through my head. “Manipulate something then. I know! Why don’t you turn my brother Ryan into a toad! Or you could…”

“No I can’t.” He interrupted me. “I can’t turn anyone into toads or rabbits or anything, and I can’t make fire come down out of the sky, or any of that nonsense. Think of what your father can do with just his hands, not much. But if he puts a tool in them he can do a lot more. My fiddle is a tool to help me do magic, but asking me to turn someone into a toad is like giving your father a hammer and telling him to build a castle.”

I was disappointed. “What can you do then?”

He thought for a moment. He looked up. The full moon was giving us more than enough light, but we could still use a fire. He gathered some sticks and twigs and dried leaves together from the ground around him. He put these things in the middle of his fire pit. With a look of concentration, he put his hands over the fire pit. They began shaking; then suddenly I saw a spark in the fire pit, then another, and another. With the fourth spark the leaves and twigs lit and soon we had a warm fire.

“Wow.” I said.

“I thought you’d be impressed.”

“What else can you do?”

“Many things. Would you like to here some fiddle music?” He took his fiddle out and began rosining the bow.

“Sure, yeah. But then will you show me more magic?”

“Maybe.”

He began playing. It was a slow song with a beautiful melody. I found myself being absorbed into the music; it was very relaxing.

I slouched down and let the music flow through me. After what seemed like an hour I looked up drowsily and saw a dark figure right behind Jack. In an instant I was wide-awake and sitting bolt upright. It was Ryan. My 10-year-old brother must have followed me out there.

“Relax,” said Jack. “He was watching from the bush behind me. I heard him move just after I lit the fire.”

I looked at Ryan’s face, it was blank and expressionless. He seemed to be in a trance of some kind. I started to settle down. Jack turned to look at him.

“Why don’t you sit down?” He gestured to a rock on the ground near the fire pit. Ryan sat obediently.

“What is your name young man?” Asked Jack.

“Ryan.”

“What did you do to him?” I asked, curiously.

“He is in a trance. While in this state he will do anything I tell him to do, unless he really doesn’t want to. If I were to tell him to jump of a cliff for instance, he would just come out of the trance instead.”
I looked back at Ryan’s blank face while Jack went on.

“But it is good for interrogation and for altering peoples’ memory. Now then Ryan, why were you watching us?”

“I saw Sara leave the house, so I followed her to see what she was doing.” Ryan said in a flat voice.

“What did you see?”

“I saw you do magic to light the fire and I saw you put Sara into a trance.”

I was shocked. He put ME in a trance? But Jack quickly turned to me and said, “I can’t control who is effected by the music and who isn’t, sorry.” He turned back to Ryan. “You didn’t see anything. You didn’t see me. You didn’t even see her leave. Now you will go back home because it is cold, and you will go to bed not remembering a single thing that happened here. Once there you will fall straight to sleep and will not come out of this trance until morning.”

Ryan nodded, and Jack finished. “That’s all. Go now.” Ryan stood and left.

I waited until he was gone to speak. “My parents hate these woods, they fear them or something.”

“Yeah, a lot of people think they’re haunted. But I happen to like the woods. Sleeping out in the open, under the stars, is comforting.” He sighed, “even so, I think I’ll go into town tomorrow. I do have to eat now and again after all.” He grinned and I laughed.

“You should go home now,” he said. “Need to get your sleep.”

I nodded, got up and left. I’d forgotten completely about my plans to explore more of the woods.


The next morning was like every morning: it made me remember why sleep is good. But there was a problem this particular morning: my brother wouldn’t wake up. My parents were frantic. Father had tried to wake him to help out with the fields before sunup, like he did every day. Only Ryan wouldn’t wake up.

“Wake up! Son WAKE UP!” He said, shaking Ryan.

Near the doorway Mom, on the verge of tears, crossed herself and said, “dear Lord, please let nothing happen to my son.”

“Danielle,” Dad called to Mom. “Stay here! I’ll go, get the priest!” He ran out of the house to get the carriage.

“Sara, come and help me.” Mother called. She had a bucket of water in her hands. “Go and get a cloth so we can drip water on his face, maybe that’ll wake him up.”

I went obediently to get the cloths, but I doubted it would help. I knew what it was that was keeping Ryan asleep. It was the trance Jack had put him in, it had to be. Jack told him not to wake up until morning, so Ryan was sleeping until sunrise. It made perfect sense. But how to tell mother, that was the real question. I found the small cloths near the cupboard, and was on my way back when Mom began calling me. I quickened my pace.

“Child! WHERE ARE Oh, there you are. What took you so long!? Here give me those!” She took the cloths from me and dipped them in the water. She then dripped water on Ryan’s eyelids. “There now. Wake up dear. Wake up.”

The sun rose high enough to shine light into the room and birds started chirping. Ryan blinked a few times and opened his eyes. Mother was ecstatic. She hugged him and kissed him. He pushed her away and said, “What’s all this about?” He looked at me.

I said, “You wouldn’t wake up.”

He looked out the window. “I slept in?”


Father, returned with the priest about ten minutes later. They had some trouble pulling Mother away from hugging Ryan, but after they did, the priest began to examine him. The priest inspected Ryan all over and could find nothing at all wrong with his physical being, or his spiritual one.

Breakfast was good: ham and bread, and milk to drink (we had cows in addition to the fields that Father tended). The priest ate with us, afterward he suggested to Father that maybe the thing with Ryan was just something that had to do with growing up. Father didn’t look very reassured.

After breakfast Ryan went to help Father in the wheat fields, and I helped Mother with doing the chores around the house. We washed clothes, churned butter, and swept out the house. All the while I was thinking of Jack. What a strange man he was. At times I found myself just staring into space, thinking. Mother told me to snap out of it. She jokingly guessed that I had met an interesting young man.

Lunch was much less tense because mother and father hadn’t seen anything else wrong with Ryan. Also because they had had time to cool down from the excitement this morning. Actually, it was the most relaxed meal I had had with my family for a long time.

That afternoon I went with my friends. I’m probably the only girl in a hundred miles that keeps boys as friends. We aren’t really kind to each other. We fight, we play dirty tricks on each other, but we are always loyal. Nobody rats anybody else out, ever. Even so, I wasn’t sure I could trust them with my secret, so I dared them to go into the deep woods with me without telling them that I’d already gone.

“But we aren’t supposed to be there.” Jared said. He was the fraidy cat of the group. We usually had fun by doing stupid things, but making him do them first. Even so, nobody went into the deep woods for fear of spirits and goblins and the sort. Even the woodsmen only cut down timber from the woods near town.

Michael was 13. He was the most adventuristic and usually our unofficial leader. He was also the only one that I would count my equal. All the others seemed to share the same feeling as Jared, though not through fear of getting caught, through fear of what creatures might inhabit the deepest region of the wood and what its reach might be during the daytime. Michael objected to going into the woods, but for another reason.

“Nah. I’ve already been there. There’s nothen’ to see.”

This seemed to reassure the others. But now they didn’t want to go because there was no point to it. Only, I wanted to go see Jack again, and I wanted to show him to the others. “What if I knew where to find someone in the woods?” I said.

Some of them gawked at me, the rest looked surprised, and Michael looked interested. Now that I think back on it I realize that they weren’t very surprised at all, but they were still somewhat surprised. Now that my secret was out, I knew giving out the details wouldn’t matter.

“Where did you meet this person?” Michael asked.

“About three and a half miles into the woods, camping out in a very small clearing.”

We looked around at the others. They seemed willing to go.

“Okay then,” said Michael. “Take us to this mysterious someone.”

“I don’t think this is such a good idea.”

We all looked at the source of the objection: Jared. We all rolled our eyes and someone said, “Jared, shut up and come on.” We left.


I took them on the same path I had taken the other two times. It looked different in daylight, but I found my way eventually. The others came with me; they were reassured after Michael told them there was nothing in here. Eventually we got to the spot where Jack was always camped out, only he wasn’t there. I groaned. I had forgotten that Jack said he’d be going into town today. The others took the fact that I’d stopped to mean that we had arrived.

“Where is he?” Someone asked.

“Who are we here to see?” Said someone else.

I didn’t say anything. I looked at the ground, hoping to find a fresh footprint to indicate that he had left this spot recently.

“Ah. She was just fibben'.” Said the first someone.

I didn’t find a footprint. Michael came up to me.

“Where is this someone?”

“He must have gone into town.” I said.

“Maybe that’s where we should be.” Said Norman in a shaky voice. He was looking past me into the woods farther beyond. We all followed his gaze and saw a dark shape lurk out from behind a tree and move in our direction. We were frozen in place as we watched it. It looked like a shadow in the shape of a raven, only, much bigger. It flew slowly in our direction.

Then I heard a strong, evil voice that sounded like it was right beside me.

“You’ve tempted the fates a bit too often my dear!”

Suddenly the raven grew to the size of a bear and sped toward me. Most of my companions were already fleeing the scene. Michael grabbed my arm and tried to pull me out of the way but he was too late, and I was still frozen to the ground by that invisible force. The raven hit me and encompassed me. I was scared now. It became a tornado around me and hurled Michael away. I tried to get out but it threw me back inside and I fell, my feet still frozen to the ground. I heard someone scream for me.

“Sara! Sara!”

I turned to look at where it was coming from. I couldn’t see anything through that black twister around me. Then there was something pale coming through it. It was a hand, and above that hand was a face. Jared! He was reaching through the twister for me.

“Grab onto me!” He shouted. I tried, but before I could get a hold of him the twister threw him away and closed in around me. The walls of it came closer and closer. It was suffocating me, sucking all the air out of my lungs.

I was terrified! I panicked. I batted my hands at the blackness, loosing strength with each passing second. I was filled with horror, my life flashed before my eyes.

And then there was blackness.


As you might have guessed, I survived. I couldn’t very well tell this tale if I’d died there. Well, I did live. I awoke on the wooden floor of a very old hut. I didn’t know where I was. I tried to stand up, but found that my hands and feet were bound. Looking behind me I saw that this hut was built right next to a tree, there were countless roots coming out of the wall across from the door. It was these roots that were binding me. I tried struggling against them, but the more I struggled the more they tightened. Eventually I gave up. I just had to wait it out.

After what seemed like hours the door opened and in came the giant shadowy raven with my brother in it’s beak and a shadowy wolf with my mother on his back. Both my mother and brother were unconscious. Behind the shadowy animals entered two women clothed entirely in black, there was even a thin black cloth that hung from their hats, covering their face. They went to a cauldron in the middle of the wall behind me and began putting odd plants in it.

Suddenly I got a flash of something, a memory. I thought back to it. I got it again. This time it was a vision. I was sitting with Jack on opposite sides of the fire. I recognized the place. It was the small clearing I had met him in. He looked me right in the face and started talking.

“You are being given this message while in a trance. You will only remember this message when you see two witches. If you have seen them, stay away from them, they want to kill you and your family. If you need me to help you with them just smash the charm on the end of the necklace I have put around your neck. You will only be aware of the necklace once you receive this message.” He turned around and made a gesture to someone. Then he turned back to me. “You will come out of this trance when you see your brother by the firelight.”

The vision faded out of existence and I could feel a small weight in my blouse that had not been there before.

Some black cats came into the hut as the witches were arguing about ingredients while looking through a recipe book. One of the witches made a sound of joy when she saw the cats and the other witch looked at them over the top of the recipe book. The cats looked at my mother and brother. The cats looked like they were concentrating. Suddenly more roots came out of the wall and they grabbed Mother and Ryan and bound them the way they had bound me.

I thought for a second. I had to get that necklace out and smash it. I needed to free my hands to do that. I remembered the roots though and how they got tighter the more I pulled my hands out of them. Then I had an idea. I pushed one of my arms farther through the roots and they loosened.

Excellent! I kept pushing until I sensed I had enough room for me to pull the other hand free. I pulled and the roots tightened, but they didn’t get tight enough to catch my hand before I had it free. Quickly I pushed myself into a sitting position and reached for the charm. The witches noticed and tried to stop me, but they couldn’t reach me in time. I yanked at the necklace so its rope broke off from my neck, and then I smashed the charm on the floor.

The smash woke my mother and brother and they struggled to get into a position from which they could survey the situation. The witches started speaking in what seemed like Latin, and more roots came out of the wall and wrapped around me while pulling me back to the wall. Soon I was imbedded into the wall eight inches from the ground.

“What did she do?” One of them asked.

The other one picked up the broken pieces of the charm, a seashell, off the ground.

“She called someone.” Replied the other one.

“Hrmmm…” Mused the first one. “We must fortify the door.” She took a vile of dark purple liquid out of her robes and tossed it to the other one.

The other caught the vile and poured it between the door and the wall next to it. Wood grew in the space where she poured, to seal the door in. Then there was a loud thud at the door. I smiled because I knew who it was. Ryan and Mother started yelling for help, and they tried to explain how the witches had sealed the door. Then there was a CRACK as the cutting edge of an ax blade came through the door. Jack didn’t carry an ax. It must be father, I decided.

The witches looked at each other and seemed satisfied. One of them looked at one of the cats. The cat stared at the door, which swung wide open. Father charged in, ax in hand, but the wolf caught him and knocked him to the ground. It stood on top of him, pinning him down. The door closed again and resealed itself. Mother and Ryan were still cheering for Father, still encouraging him, but it was too late now.

“We have been waiting for you Samuel.” One of the witches said to Father.

“Yes,” agreed the other witch. “Why, you are just in time for stew. We were hoping so much that we could have you for dinner.” They laughed together.

Once their laughter died down a slur of fiddle notes, low to high, came to my ears and the door fell in with a crash. Jack stepped in. Even though I couldn’t see their faces, the witches seemed angered at his entrence.

One of them pointed at Jack and said, “Get him!” The shadowy wolf leapt at him. Jack played three or four notes on his fiddle and the wolf disbursed into the air. The other witch said, “It’s her,” as she pointed at me. “He only came because of her, KILL HER!”

The giant raven swooped over to me, but a high note from Jack cut through the raven like a knife, it disbursed like the wolf and I was only hit by cold air. The witch closer to the door took a vile of greenish liquid from her robes and splashed it on Ryan.

The roots that were binding him untwined and he stood up, his hair grew long and horns started coming out of his head. He smiled at Jack with long, sharp canine teeth. Jack began playing his fiddle vigorously and the deformities disappeared, then came back, then disappeared again. The two witches began chanting, and the deformities came back. His horns started growing even longer and greenish pimples appeared on his face. The fiddle music sped up and the horns began to shrink.

The witches chanted more and the horns started growing again. Then Jack played five notes in a short melody. The witches cringed and stopped chanting for just a moment. But that was long enough. Jack played vigorously and the horns simply vanished. As soon as they were gone Ryan was released from the spell. The other deformities disappeared and he fell to his knees.

Jack stepped farther into the hut and started playing a moderately fast piece that used all the chords the fiddle had. The witches looked as if it hurt them. Then the one farthest from the door threw a potion at Jack’s feet and the floor in that place burst into flames all around Jack. Most people would have been repelled by flames five feet high, but not Jack. He played a soft, soothing melody that apparently made him immune to the fire. He stepped out of the fire and got back into the piece that hurt the witches. They cowered against the far wall, their cats clawing at it, trying to get out. And Jack let them out. A quick five notes blew a hole in the wall and all four of the evil fiends fled through that hole.

Mother screamed. The fire was now out of control. I only mumbled because there was a thick root covering my mouth.

Father got back on his feet. He grabbed his ax and chopped the roots binding Mother. Jack’s fiddle work was useful in loosening the roots holding me but Jack couldn’t get them to let go. With the fire coming ever closer Father simply began hacking away at them.

The fire spread to the walls and the fireplace where the witches’ half-finished stew still sat. The recipe book on the ground caught fire and began to bleed (it was the witches’ recipe book).

Father kept hacking away at the roots, but they weren’t coming loose. The fire was getting closer. The smoke was suffocating; and everyone, even Jack, was coffing. Finally, Father gave one last whole-hearted chop and the roots holding me all came loose at once. I was free and Father carried me outside.


Ryan and Mother were already standing a dozen yards from the burning hut as we joined them. We all watched the hut burn in the twilight.

“Jack,” I said. “Who were those witches?”

“The Whirly Sisters. They are sisters of the witch that kidnapped your mother twelve years ago.” Father was looking at Jack in wonder now. Jack turned to him. “You shouldn’t have killed that witch, you should have just defeated her and let her go. Just like I did to these two. Witches take blood fudes very seriously.”

“Who are you?” Asked Father.

“My name is Jack. I am a fiddler.” He raised his fiddle to Father just as he had done to me the night before.

“Jack, you said that magic isn’t particularly spectacular.” I pointed out to him. I was wondering why he said he couldn’t do much, but the witches could.

“I said I couldn’t do anything truly spectacular. I know what you’re thinking. These were witches. They take energies of different types and shapes and then have their cats manipulate the energies to turn them into spells. Then they just boil the whole mixture down and bottle it.”

“But… those shadowy animals…”

“Familiars.” Answered my father. “They are called ‘familiars’ Sara, and they can be either very weak or very powerful.” Then, still watching the burning hut he asked me, “So, when did you meet this interesting young man?”

“Two days ago Father. I went into the woods on my birthday to try and find out what you and Mother were afraid of.” I saw the frown on his face and added, “I’m sorry Father."

Persistence

It was black, which showed up well against my white, tanned skin. I felt the ant move as it struggled up my calf, over the long hairs. I craned my neck to look at it from a different angle. Sitting cross-legged on the ground helped me to do this without looking like a gymnast.
The ant climbed higher and higher up my calf until I had to pull my shorts back from my knee to watch it. Not wanting it to go higher, I put my hand down to stop it. The ant was a determined fellow, though, and started to go around my hand. The ant’s determination was very amusing. It forced me to move my hand to continue the block.
I decided to name the ant Jerry. Jerry was the name of a friend of mine who liked to play video games. When we’d play this one game, Warsong, he always cheered for his little soldiers, saying they had persistence.
“Perrrrrsissstaannnce!” I cheered under my breath. Jerry kept going, and when he got tired of running clockwise, he turned around and ran counterclockwise.
My amusement continued for several revolutions of my leg, but after Jerry changed directions four, and then five times, amusement slowly changed to disgust. Jerry was persistent. True to his name, he refused to climb on my hand so I could deposit him on the ground. This was bad for him because it left me with only a few options. I really did not want Jerry, or any ant, to explore my genitals, but I didn’t want to kill him either. What could I do? Monica, a friend of mine, let ants crawl on her because she said she thought they were cute. She might also think Jerry was cute, but the ants that crawled on her were respectful and restricted their movements to her feet and ankles, and hands and forearms. Those ants weren’t as rude as Jerry, who simply wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.
Push came to shove and I crushed him under the tip of my index finger. Pressing harder, I waited until the skin on my leg turned light red, then I let up. I looked down on the black, segmented body. Jerry was alive. It shouldn’t have surprised me, since he didn’t get his name from being a couch potato, but it did surprise me. Even as I watched, he tried to walk forward on six short, broken legs. He didn’t get anywhere, of course. He simply lost his balance, fell, regained his balance, and fell again.
My disgust turned to shame. If Jerry really wanted to complete his job that much, who was I to kill him for it? Even more, who was I to put him through this agony of half-life. I don’t know how, but somehow I’d broken none of Jerry’s body segments, while still breaking all six legs. I could have picked him up carefully, but I didn’t. I had tried to kill him.
Brave, persistent Jerry didn’t deserve to be in agony, so I resolved to end the agony as soon as possible. I put Jerry between my thumb and my index finger, picked him up, and squeezed him again. Before, when I’d crushed him, I’d done it on my lower thigh, where there was no bone. Now I hoped to finish the job with my bony fingertips.
After several seconds of pressing, I let up and looked at Jerry. His body segments definitely broken now, I could still perceive movement. His mandibles were opening and closing, and his neck craned in a way so he could try to bite me. I felt his anger and hatred. His head shivered as he tried to go beyond the maximum range of his flexibility. Sorrowfully, I scolded myself for having the malice to actually crush him a second time. With a being like Jerry, there is always the chance of recovery.
But not now. As I watched, his head shivers slowed and ceased, though his mandibles didn’t stop opening and closing. I realized that now it truly was too late for Jerry. That he would die on the tip of my thumb whether I liked it or not. With my fingernail, I pressed down on Jerry to slice him long-ways, then I scraped him onto the sidewalk.

The Machine

Josh and the Island
Hello, my name is Josh. I live on an Island. I know now that there are many islands, some big, some small, some pretty, and some not. But this story is not about them; it is about me, and my island.
I can’t tell you how big my island is because I have been to no others, so I have nothing to compare it to. But there is this breeze that runs through it in the summer to keep it cool, and the winters always bring rain, warm rain that you can wash in. There are many villages on the island, I live in the only city... And in the city there are several schools for people of every age, education is very important here.
I have several friends here; Guy is one of them. We call him Guy because his real name is incredibly hard to pronounce, and impossible to remember. He is much darker of skin than the rest of us, and he is far taller than us as well as being stronger, but he isn’t just a big oaf, he’s pretty smart and amazingly coordinated (though you wouldn’t know it from the way he bumps into the small people that he can’t see).
Another friend I have is Andrea; the first thing you’d notice about her is her glasses. They are the small kind, maybe a third of a finger tall, and the lenses change color from time to time. I have never figured out how she does that and I’ve never caught them in mid-change. She never removes the lenses but they always change. Andrea is easily the most intelligent person in the class. Other than that she is a little on the smallish side with light colored hair.
Wondra is the last more of my friends, she is always full of energy, always has a smile on her face, and likes everyone. She is a little taller than me and has long flowing black hair.
The other person in our group is Jason. He has a couple of other friends but for the most part he is a loner who hangs with us when he wants to. Jason is tall, has dark hair, light eyes, light skin and dark intentions. He likes playing tricks on people and making them mad, then pointing out something he has arranged to make sure that person can’t get him back. He enjoys finding people who think they are invincible, and proving them wrong, then rubbing their noses in it. Jason is so smooth and blunt about this stuff that you just have to laugh.
Oh, I forgot to describe myself. Well, I’m of medium height, I have short light hair, dark eyes and I sound funny when I laugh. I am kind of smart, and most others say I have the charisma and energy that people like being my friends. I guess that’s why most of the bullies and mean people leave me alone.

The people of my island worship a great machine, it comes to the edge of the island every ten years or so. Or rather, a passageway leading to the machine comes. The front part of the passageway actually comes onto the beach, if you try to look at the out side of the passageway you will see that from the island it goes out, curves down and drops out of sight very quickly.
The machine is made of an endless set of corridors, rooms, and huge spaces in between. One of the rooms is the imagery room, there is at least one of these. It can create images inside itself, and even appear to change the laws of physics. It can appear to change size and shape as well, even though its dimensions actually stay exactly the same.
The control room is the heart of the machine and is a little towards the front. Everything is controlled and monitored from there: every room, corridor, and person (well, guard).
Some of the rooms are called “changing rooms”, these can change their insides the same way the imagery room can, except they cannot change the laws of physics or even appear to, and the changes that happen inside are real changes, not illusions.
There are also defenses. The walls of the corridors have areas that are colored differently; guards can materialize out of them, or go back into them when they are damaged. All the guards are mechanical, but no one on the island has ever seen one. That isn’t the only defense; if an invasion by some as-yet-unforeseen enemy gets out of control someone in the control room can flood an entire section with fire, or energy or whatever happens to be on hand at that moment.
The last set of rooms I will tell you about are the record rooms. These rooms are devided into two sets. Some contain all the information the machine has ever accumulated, through any means, and how the machine arrived at those conclusions. Some contain what the machine has done, simply touching the correct place on one of the rooms one can re-live a moment in time as the machine. One of these rooms is the place where my trouble started...

IN CLASS
The day my trouble started was on a school day. It actually started off rather well. A breakfast of leftovers, and in two of my classes my teachers actually gave us our work BEFORE the end of class so we could do it in class (which I didn’t). Then came my fifth and last class, study class (the one that all the stuff that the other classes don’t cover is crammed into).
“Today is a very special day, class.” Ms. Rindone was saying. “As you remember, the door to the Machine arrived last night, and every time it comes, we are allowed to take students for tours inside. We are the first class to take a field trip this visit. So I will assign partners to make sure no one gets lost.”
We got our assigned partners, boys with boys and girls with girls, I was pared up with this guy that is always really quiet and just...well...there.
“Oh, man. Guess who I got stuck with.” Jason said to me. He looked down and depressed.
“Anthony??” I guessed. I had no idea who it was that would make him this down.
“No, Sam. You know him, right?” I did, and I was trying to find a polite way to describe him to make sure we were talking about the same person when he described Sam for me. “The sniffling, whining little twerp who everybody hates.” Well, leave it to Jason to nail exactly how a person is.
You see, Sam sees himself a kind of hero against injustice. The problem being that he can never find injustice. When he can’t find injustice (always) he settles for unfairness, which he usually finds when he looses at anything. When he finds injustice (or unfairness) he tries to fight it outright, but he is bad at fighting too, so he usually goes running to his mommy, also known as the assistant principal. Sam is the only person that I know who ever succeeded at getting Jason in trouble.
“So, you wanna switch partners Josh?”
I laughed at him. “Not a chance, Diego is just fine for my partner, and I do NOT want to be stuck with Sam!!”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Jason said. And then a little more silently: “I ditched Sam so I could come talk to you. I have an idea, we both go up to the teacher and ask her to put Diego with Sam and have you and I be partners.”
“They have to agree to it too, Diego is pretty easy going, but even he doesn’t want to be partners with Sam.”
“He doesn’t have to know, you just ask him if you can switch partners, he won’t ask questions, he’ll just go along with it... And I’ll tell Sam in a way to make him think that you will be his new partner, he likes you so he’ll go along with it... But first we need to tell the teacher that we want to do this change, then we just bring our partners to her, they say they want to change partners, and we ditch all of them before Sam and Diego realize what happened.”
I was chuckling so hard about this on my way to find Ms. Rindone. On the way Jason explained some things to me to make sure things didn’t backfire on us. First off he said, “When we bring our partners in to see her and give their okay, you go first. If Diego sees Sam there he’ll back out then and there.” We found her and with completely straight faces explained the changing of partners and Diego and Sam’s compliance with this. Then we went our separate ways.

It went off perfectly, we timed it so Jason and I would ditch the two suckers right before we had to leave for the passageway. The whole class walked together down to the edge of the island. Now, I know that the passageway curves down rather sharply as soon as it gets off of the beach, but when we were going through it I felt as if the whole thing were perfectly straight and perfectly level.
Most of the class went into the imagery room where the Machine's operator would entertain them with illusions. But Jason argued that we could sneak in with any other group and see that any time. So instead we snuck out the door and did some exploring.
We waited until everybody was distracted by the speech the Operator was giving. Then we were gone.

MEMORY ROOMS
I picked a corridor and we ran down it for a while... Eventually we started walking because it was soo long. Eventually the corridor had rooms on either side for as far as I could see.
We stopped to take a look around. I became certain that the corridor with the rooms was longer than the city was at any point. Then I realized what this place was; it was but a small piece of the Machine’s memory. All I could think was “Good God this place is big!”
We started running down the halls to find out if there was an end to the memory rooms. Every couple rooms there was a corridor going off to either side. Jason and I thought that simply running down corridors seemed a little pointless and boring so we stopped after passing the sixth or seventh room and tried to decide what to do next.
“Lets see what this thing has been up to.” he said. He went into a room and was about to put his hand on the wall.
I grabbed Jason to keep him from touching the wall. “If those walls have memories they are probably equipped with alarms too!”
“Don’t be so paranoid.” He said. After an uncomfortable moment of silence, “Where can I lean against without making you go crazy?”
I stepped outside the room and pointed to the wall between the room we were in and the next one. “The memories are INSIDE the rooms, not outside. Places like these…” I touched the wall to show him. All at once I couldn’t see the wall anymore. I felt depressed, lonely, and I got the image of the operator, he was moving in slow motion. Then one word ran through my mind over and over again... REPLACE,REPLACE, REPLACE. I began hearing a sound, at first it was in the back of my mind, and then in the front of my mind. It sounded somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.
THE ALARM!!! I was snapped out of my daze at once. I got my hand off the wall as Jason hit me up side the head and said “Smart one!”
We were racing down a corridor immediately. We heard steps ahead of us and took a left down another corridor. At the next intersection the machine’s operator was waiting for us, I stopped and took off in the other direction I kept running for some time, choosing turns at random to make it harder to be followed. Then before I realized it, I was outside, and Jason wasn’t with me.

THE CHOICE
Not having Jason with me was VERY disturbing. He was faster than I was so he should have at least been right behind me. Maybe he got lost; maybe he was still in there, maybe he was captured, maybe he was dead, maybe this maybe that. I was confused; my mind was racing. Then it occurred to me, the Operator, the one in charge of the machine, he had seen me. I had not been with my class when the alarm went off. As soon as Ms. Rindone and the Operator met up they would know I was the one who did it, and then they would be after me. The punishment for tampering with the machine came into my mind and a shiver ran down my spine. I would be banishment. I had time now, but I knew that the moment those two came out of the passageway they would tell everyone on the island... But they hadn’t yet, so I still had time to figure out what to do and to do it... But I don’t know what to do... Maybe Andrea does...

By the time I reached Andrea’s house I was out of breath, and it was late afternoon (how long was I in the machine?). I found Andrea with Wondra in her back yard. They both greeted me with amused smiles. Wondra jokingly commented that I could use a cup of water. Andrea just looked at me through her green glasses as I nodded to Wondra’s comment and began to ask for advice.
“I have a problem…” And I began looking for the right way to put it.
“Well, are you going to tell me what it is, or just let me guess?”
“My class went to the machine today. My partner and I sunk off to go exploring…”
“Oh god,” Andrea cut me off. Wondra started shaking her head. They both wore frowns on their faces. “What did you do?” Andrea asked me.
I was about to tell her when I wondered about what I did. The walls just outside the memory rooms weren’t supposed to do anything, and what I experienced certainly didn’t seem like a memory. “The walls of the corridor just outside the memory rooms, what kinds of memories do the contain?” I finally asked.
Andrea just looked at me through yellow lenses and said in an annoyed voice, “What happened?”
“I touched one of the walls in that corridor, felt something, and the alarms went off.” Now that I had answered her question I asked mine again. “So what kinds of memories do those walls contain?”
It was Wondra who answered me, “They don’t contain memories. I did a report on the memory rooms last year; those are just regular walls. You must have done something else to trigger the alarms.”
Then Andrea began one of her I’m-smarter-than-you-and-yet-I-pretend-not-to-know-it speeches. “Actually, something that most people don’t know about the memory rooms is that the walls between them aren’t normal walls, but they still do not contain memories. They contain objectives that the machine requires complete, as well as the current status of the completion presented in the form of being too fast, too slow, or just right. The alarm you activated by initiating contact with the current objective must have been set to inform the operator of an opponent attempting to infiltrate the great machine.” She explained.
Wondra and I had blank, zombie-like looks on our faces. I had no idea what she just said and I was the one it actually happened to.
Wondra recovered first, “Okay, now, what exactly does that mean to normal people? I mean, I can kind of get the gist of it, but an English translation would be appreciated.”
Andrea sighed and said at a slower pace, “You can touch the walls in the corridor near the memory rooms to find out the things the machine needs done now, and whether or not they are happening at the right speed. The alarm you activated must have been set to tell the operator if anyone was trying to find out the Machine’s goals.”
Wondra looked thoughtfully at me. “What did it feel like?”
I told them all about the experience; the feeling of lonelyness, seeing the operator in slow motion, and hearing the word “replace”.
Wondra said what I thought, “It sounds as if the machine needs someone to replace the operator.”
There was a pause in the talking after that while we all absorbed the information. All I could think was how releaved I was. If the Operator had hurt the Machine in some way, or needed to be replaced and wasn’t openly choosing a successor now and I revealed it…
The thought ran back and fourth through my mind. If I could prove that the Operator wasn’t doing his job, not only would I not be bannished, but instead I would be rewarded as a hero.
“Has the Operator started publicly looking for a successor?” I said, breaking the silence.
“No.” Wondra answered.
Andrea started shaking her head. “I can see where you’re going with this Josh, and it won’t work. In order to prove that the Operator isn’t doing his job you need something specific. Something that the Scholars studying the Machine and the police can investigate. Simply saying ‘he’s doing a bad job’ isn’t going to be enough.”
I sighed. My hopes to get out of this situation had just been crushed.
“Then what do I do?”
At this point Wondra interrupted. “Um… sorry to change the subject but who was with you when you set off the alarms?”
“Jason.”
“Well that figures.” Andrea commented.
Wondra ignored her. “Where is he now?”
“I don’t know, we got separated after we ran into the Operator, I didn’t notice until I was already outside.”
“And you had no idea what to do, so you came here.” Andrea finished up for me.
I nodded my head yes.
Andrea thought, then said, “Well that changes things. Now that the Operator has Jason he’ll probably find out who your friends are. That means that all of your close friends are in trouble.”
“Sorry.”
“I accept your apology although it doesn’t solve our problem. What you are going to do is you are going to stay here for tonight. And in the morning Wondra and I will go with our class into the Machine and we’ll look for the memory of why the Machine needs its operator replaced.”
Wondra looked reluctant to offer her assistance, but she saw that it needed to be done. So she went along with Andrea.
Andrea continued, “I know how to find that memory so we can have a head start on them by the time the Operator knows what’s going on.”

GUY
The next day Andrea met up with Wondra before school. I stayed inside to keep myself out of sight.
The police were waiting at the school for Wondra and Andrea, at least that’s what I heard from Guy. Guy arrived at Andrea’s house a little while after school was supposed to begin. Andrea had met him on the way to school, and told him all about what had happened. She also told him that the police might be looking for my friends too, so if Wondra and her were captured by the police, the police would be after him as well. Once he saw the two girls arrested he didn’t wait around to find out if Andrea was right and the cops would come after him too, he just took off and came to find me.

“After Andrea told me what happened; she told me to give this to you if she was arrested at school.” He handed me a note written in her handwriting, it said:
Josh, if you’re reading this then I have been arrested already. I don’t know why it took them so long to come after us (I was waiting last night for them to come to my house so we could sneak out the back) but they’ve come after us. If they got me they will probably search my house too, so you’ve got to go NOW. Go to the Machine and find that thing that’s wrong, for all our sakes. The last thing the police think you will do is go into the Machine so it will probably not be guarded on the outside, but the Operator will know that you need to get back in there so will probably have the internal defenses on high alert for you. So be careful! And good luck.
Andrea

After I read the note I let Guy read it while we started walking, taking a roundabout way to the beach so we could get to the Machine without anyone noticing.
“Damn it,” Guy said, shaking his head. “So what we need to do is to get in there, past the cops at the entrence…”
“But Andrea said there probably wouldn’t be police in front of the entrence.”
“Are you crazy?! Once the police hear about something this big they automatically help out with security. They uphold the law. That is how they are.”
“Oh.”
“Once we’re inside we still need to deal with internal security, find the memory rooms that are who-knows where, find the right memory out of hundreds, maybe thousands, touch the panel to get the info, and then get through all of the internal defenses back outside and find the police chief before the Operator can find us again. Is that all about right?”
“Yeah, that’s about it.”
“Do you know what the internal security consists of? Or even where the memory rooms are? You do realize that we can’t just walk in there and say ‘excuse me, but we need to get in there to look around until we find something to clear our names’ right?!”
“Of course I know that we can’t just walk in there and ask for directions!”
“And I hope that you know that I will break your nose after this is all over, right?”
“What we need is a plan. Lets stop and think for a minute.”
And so we did. We talked for a very short time. I wished that we had Andrea and Jason there because neither Guy nor myself had any idea what the internal defenses consisted of aside from the robot-guards, but Andrea probably did, and, well, Jason would have known ways of getting around the defences. But we didn’t have them, so we came up with what we could. We would both run into the machine, at this time there would be no classes in the Machine so our presents would automatically set off all of the alarms. We would both race down the corridors and take the same path that Jason and I had taken yesterday. I tried to describe the path to Guy. Once there we would both start looking frantically for the info. Then we would try to follow the same way out if possible. We had a hard time coming up with a plan for getting past the internal defenses but we decided that if we ran into guards one of us (probably Guy) would take them and the other would continue; and if we ran into something else we would just have to improvise.
With that taken care of we both started up again at a quick walk trying to conserve some energy for the task ahead.

THE PLAN AND THE ENTRANCE
Andrea was wrong, Guy was right, there were guards outside. They were two police and they saw us. I turned and was about to run when I felt a pressure on my chest. I looked down to see Guy’s hand keeping me from running. Confused, I looked at him. He had a smile on his face and said to me, “play along.”
Immediately the smile dropped from his face. He turned to the coming officers and with an expression of intense anxiety he said, “We’ve come to turn ourselves in.”
I didn’t understand, but I did it anyway. “Yeah.” I said with the same worn expression.
Once they got close they both got out their cuffs and the one on the left said, “Okay, anything funny and we’ll have to ‘interrogate’ you right here.”
“No funny business.” said Guy as he put out his hands. I, on the right of him, did the same and the two came to put the cuffs on us. WHAM!! The cop on the left went down, blood squirted from his nose and one of his legs was twisted at a funny angle. The other one (the one that was going to get me) looked over just as Guy grabbed him around the neck with one hand and expertly moved the man in such a way that Guy ended up behind him with one of the cop’s arms twisted behind his back and with one hand strangling the officer.
There he was with that man and I was staring open-mouthed at him. He was always big, but now he looked like a giant with an enormous hand around the officer’s neck. What struck me even more than his size or strength was how mastered that movement was and how practiced it looked. It was so fast I couldn’t even see exactly what happened. He just stood there with an expression of concentration, as if he was counting in his head. Then the man’s eyes closed and he stopped struggling. Guy waited a second…two, and then he dropped him. When he saw the expression on my face he seemed to understand what it meant. “Punishment for fooling with the Machine is life-long isolation. It can’t get much worse than that.” We proceeded into the Machine.
INSIDE
Well Andrea was right about one thing, the alarms did go off as soon as we entered. We started running, but not too fast in case we ran into something unexpected. There were footsteps behind us, but we were to the first turn and took an immediate left. One right and then a stretch and we reached the door to the Imagery Room and turned left, too fast for the footsteps behind us.
We were almost half way to the memory rooms when we saw him. He came out of this space in the wall that was colored differently than the rest of the wall. He looked very muscular, carried a very oddly shaped spear, and instead of a head he had what looked like a cone that was cut off half way up. But the most striking thing about him was that he was silver all over, even his spear was, as if he was made totally out of metal. He looked like he was bigger than Guy (though we found out later that he actually wasn’t) and started coming towards us.
Guy charged at him and changed it to a jump-kick at the last moment. All that force would have thrown me back through the air quite a ways. The metal man barely flinched. He pointed his spear directly at Guy; I pulled Guy away at the last minute, just as a click gave way to a burst of lightning into the metal floor. The two of us ran (he hobbled because that kick had hurt his foot) down the first corridor we came to and stopped short.
The Operator was there, and so were the police chief, two officers, and the girls Wondra and Andrea. The girls had their hands cuffed in front of them. The Operator said “There they are!” And the cops, except for the chief, raised their weapons at us.
Just then Andrea and Wondra acted. Andrea kicked one of the cops in the back of the knee and made him fall down, he fired; that projectile missed and went somewhere down the corridor. Wondra at the same time reached up to the other one and tickled him. Within and instant he laughed, moved his arm, but didn’t fire, pushed her down, and raised his arm again to fire. But the shot never came, I heard a click behind me, and dove to my left. A burst of lightning came and missed me but hit the armed officer; a short scream was followed by a thud as he hit the floor. I went to tackle the police chief before he could reach his weapon, but he punched me in the face and I went into the wall. Guy hit the other cop so as to knock him out. And I heard someone scream “No!”
It was Wondra. I saw the metal man leveling his spear at me again and Wondra trying to move it. She was pushing as hard as she could but couldn’t quite do it. Click, and Wondra lit up bright white. Her glow was a brilliant, almost omnipotent glow that seemed to have a light behind and above her. In that instant, for this didn’t last more than a second, she turned around and had a serene, healing look on her face. Then she dropped to the ground towards us and the metal man dropped to the ground in the opposite direction. (We later found out that her foot was touching him and the energy went through her and into him).
Guy started fighting with the police chief and the Operator so I grabbed Andrea and went down the hall at full speed. We had to get to the memory rooms.
Why did it have to come to this? Wondra DEAD, by the end of this Guy will probably be pretty hurt, and who-knows-what happened to Jason. Looking back I saw the Operator breaking away from the fight and coming after us. We turned a corner to the right and took a left at the next opportunity.
THE OPERATOR!!! How did he get in front of us? He was there and with two metal men identical to the one that got Wondra. We saw a room to the left and dove into it. The room had a door on the other side, but we couldn’t get it to open. Looking around for something to break the door or fight with we saw Jason. Or I did and pointed him out to Andrea. He was imbedded into the wall and looked asleep.
“Hey what’s he doing in here?” I asked nobody in particular. I went up to him and tried to wake him. Andrea went to something next to him on the wall that looked like a control panel and was fooling around with it. But nothing happened.
“What is this place?” she asked. And she was answered from the doorway.
“This is the interrogation room.” Answered the Operator. And we both spun around and stared at him.
“You hurt the Machine!!” Was all I could think to say to him. He scowled at me and defiantly said, “It hurt its own damn self!” He took a few steps towards me and Andrea attacked him from the side, he picked her up using her own momentum and threw her against the opposite wall. She would have grabbed his hand but her hands were still cuffed. I went at him and attacked with a punch, but he grabbed my wrist mid-flight and with his other hand he hit my throat and came forward at the same time knocking me to the ground.
“The Machine hurt its own DAMNED SELF!!” I couldn’t breath. “I tried to fix it but nooo. It wouldn’t let me.” I was gasping, trying to get breath. “And THEN, it wanted to replace me. Well I will not be replaced!! Not by someone from that miserable little island out there, AND CERTAINLY NOT BY YOU!!” My vision was getting blurry.
“Hold it right there, Operator.”
He stopped and his grip loosened. He growled at me and said next to my ear, “I’ll finish with you later.” He let go and got up. My vision was coming back and I looked up to see the chief of police in the doorway.
Though I couldn’t see his face, I sensed that the Operator smiled as he said: “Why Benjamin my old friend, how good of you to come. I see you have met my guards already.”
The cop got a questioning look on his face and turned around. There he saw the two metal men that we had seen with the Operator a minute ago. They had their spears leveled at him and drove him to the other side of the room (where I was). At the same time the Operator grabbed Andrea and said, “come my dear” as he brought her over to me and put her beside me. She groaned as she came to. The chief said hi to her, and looking at the situation she grasped what was going on and what had happened.
The metal men now had their spears pointed at us and the Operator was more towards us but out of the way. The metal men were next to the indent in the wall where Jason…wait a minute. Where was he? He wasn’t in the wall anymore and I saw a faint movement back near the goorway just before part of the wall exploded straight out and demolished both of the metal men. The Operator turned as Jason charged out of the smoke, grabbed one of the broken spears, and whacked the Operator across the head with it. He fell to the ground and dissolved into some dots of light until there was nothing left.

SOME TRULY STRANGE THINGS
I smiled because I was glad to see that Jason was all right. “We thought you were asleep.” I said.
He smiled weakly and said, “I was. But I was awakened by Wondra.” Wondra stepped into view, I was speechless. She smiled a big smile.
“At first I thought I was dead, then after a while I just opened my eyes and got up. Guy was handcuffed to the two police officers so I thought I would just come and find you. I picked a hallway that looked like a shortcut and went down it. And, well, here I am.”
Jason’s smile dropped. “While I was in there,” he gestured to the remnants of the wall, “I learned a few things. Like how to make the wall blow.”
“Really,” said the police chief. He was taking the handcuffs off of the girls.
“Yes, really. The Operator isn’t dead, he’s just run away to heal, and he still controls the inner defenses. So we should go, NOW.”

We were out the door in a flash just as the un-open-able door opened and a metal man came through it. We took the way back that Wondra had taken to get here because it seemed to have been much shorter than the way Andrea and I had taken. We saw Guy trying to drag the two unconscious cops in our general direction. He had a cut on his lip and several bruises on his face.
I said in rapid fire, “The-chief-is-on-our-side-now-Chief-unlock-those-cuffs-lets-get-these-officers-on-their-feet.” I made sure it was loud so everyone could hear me but I was still surprised to find that they all understood me. The girls and I started trying to rouse the two officers and we succeeded. The one that was shocked looked a bit crispy, but at least he was alive. By the time they were on their feet the Chief had taken off the cuffs. The Chief told them that the Operator had been bad to the Machine and now wanted to kill us.
Some marching metal men blocked the corridor in the direction of the exit. Jason looked around and said, “Okay now listen. If we get out and tell people what the Operator has been doing he is finished and he knows this. So the exit is probably guarded already. What we need to do is to get to the control room and shut the defenses off. Then we can apprehend him and get out safely.” He paused here to think of what he wanted to say next.
“Here, this way,” he finally said, “While I was in there I memorized the route we must take, the control room is spherical shaped and I will take you to it.” After a while he added, “I don’t know how to turn the defenses off though.”

We ran for a while in silence (the burnt officer, Andrea, and Guy lagged a bit). We didn’t run into any metal men, I was surprised, I had expected to see them around every corner, maybe they were behind us trying to box us in. (As it turned out later that is exactly what they were doing). Guy, the burnt officer and Andrea started lagging further and further, eventually I didn’t see them at all and went back for them. I went around a corner and saw that some of the metal men were holding them, Jason grabbed me and yelled, “There is nothing we can do for them from here. We need to get to the control room. It’s just up this corridor.”
I got up and ran down the corridor at top speed. There was a door with a metal man guarding it. Jason ordered, “Get his legs and lift up. I’ll hit him in the chest and try to knock him over.” The chief and the unburnt officer ran at his legs I came up the middle, Jason and Wondra were right behind me. The guard ignored the two in front and concentrated on me. I waited until I almost hit his spear and then I dived and slid between his legs just as he fired. Jason pushed Wondra one side and he moved to the other as the lightning bolt came roaring passed. Then he charged straight at the man. I didn’t see what happened after that because I got to the door, it opened, I went in, and it closed and locked.

THE CONTROL ROOM
I did it; I was in the control room. Now to the controls, I went to the controls at one end of the room and started fiddling around with them. Some truly strange things that I did not understand happened, but nothing helpful. I touched this panel and that one, but nothing happened. Then I happened to brush a small red panel with my hand and a bolt of electricity shot up my arm.
Suddenly I saw the panels not as pieces to a wall but as buttons that do things, and I knew just exactly what each of them did. I touched one and saw the confusion outside. Jason and the others had not succeeded in knocking the metal man over and were now fleeing from him. Elsewhere I saw Guy; his shirt looked torn and he was also running from the guards. He looked as if he had received some wounds in his escape. I saw the burnt officer and Andrea in the custody of some of the guards. Andrea’s glasses changed from red to gold, HA, I had finally caught them in mid-change. Finally, I saw the Operator, excuse me, the former Operator with two guards waiting near the exit. I silently told the guards with him to pretend to obey him. Next I pushed another button and the guard chasing Jason’s group stopped in his tracks. Then the guard chasing Guy and the ones holding Andrea and the cop froze where they were. I got the guards to release Andrea and the burnt man, and over some sort of intercom I told them all that I was now in control and that I would like everyone to stay where they were. To Jason’s group I said, “I have an idea.”

Anthony, for I found out this was the former Operator’s name, was waiting at the end of a hallway with two guards. He had positioned guards such that the “intruders” would be flushed to him. He saw three of them running, looking tired, and going slow. They were coming straight for him. He told the guards to go around the corner so they were out of sight and he too did the same thing. He told them to jump out right behind him when he did and to apprehend the people if they got past him. He heard the footsteps getting closer, closer, closer… NOW! He jumped out at them and they grabbed him and took him down with great ease. How did they know? It was almost as if they had been told of the trap. Which they had been. Why didn’t the guards do something? It was almost as if someone had ordered them to stand there and do nothing. Which someone had.
Anthony had arranged it so that Jason’s group had to take a very long path to get to him, which meant that Wondra (taking a shorter path and walking with Andrea and the burnt police officer) arrived there just a few minutes later. I was amused to hear and see the crispy cop both crying and laughing at the same time. Through the sob-laughs I heard him promising her that he would meditate twice a day, burn incense in an offering to someone named Marley Bob, and if he ever ran into any dragons he was to give them lots of yogurt because yogurt doesn’t last long in caves and so it is considered a delicacy. Wondra just has that effect on people.



THE MACHINE
The three cops escorted Anthony out of the Machine and Jason was about to follow them out when the door closed right in his face.

“What do you mean ‘the door closed’?” I asked.
“Well, just what I said. I was going to go out and it just closed right in my face.” Bringing up the area in the control room I could see that he was right. The others were now there with him and Guy was banging experimentally on the door. But it wouldn’t budge, it just wouldn’t. Wondra walked up to the door and asked it politely to open, it didn’t. They all turned around and started walking to come to me when the whole Machine, all of the corridors, turned gold, and a humming sound ensued.
I said, “guys, you’d better get up here and do it now. I don’t like what’s going on.” They started running towards the control room but they were a great distance away. The walls and floor in one small section suddenly lit up with a bright white light. It came for them, it got them and carried them. I tried to get the metal men to help my friends, but they were nowhere to be found. Where had they gone to? Frantically I began pushing buttons here and there, electricity started to come out of the buttons every time I pushed them. And then I began to sink into it. I was sinking into the wall of the Machine! Electricity was streaming everywhere, I was gone.

I awoke slowly; I couldn’t feel or see my body. I was in the middle of a giant sphere of electricity. It was huge. Suddenly the sphere closed in on me and hit me from all sides, I was fully awake. Now I understood, I wasn’t anywhere inside the Machine, I was the Machine. I had bonded with it somehow. I could feel the others too. Guy, Wondra, Jason, and Andrea; they were sleeping, and being healed, replenished. I would wake them, but later, not now. For now, I felt I had some exploring to do.
I glided up and down the different corridors with my consciousness; I looked at just some of the information stored in the memory rooms. That was when I found out about the changing rooms; the rooms that could change into any type of room imaginable. I used the Imagery Room a bit, and found out about the different types of defenses. Lastly I found out what the Machine needed us for, why it “captured” us, so to speak.
You see, the machine was getting too big and complex for one person alone to work it. Only, Anthony had refused to share control of the Machine with anyone. He, working by himself, wasn’t enough to carry out all the tasks that were needed, so the Machine decided that it would need an Operator that was willing to share power. I immediately saw that we were to be the new Operators. I looked at the jobs required and assigned them to us. The Machine normally exists in another world entirely and has many external parts that require skill to move efficiently. That job would go to Guy. Second, there were many problems that it would need to solve. Andrea is the smart one; I’d better put her in charge of that. Third, many of the problems required strange solutions and could not be solved by Andrea. That job had better go to Wondra. Also, there were many other Machines in that world that this one would need to interact with. For this job I picked Jason, because he, better than the rest of us, had a keen grasp of the nature of people; and there would be people inside these other Machines. And the last job is the only one that I can do; I can take over the other jobs, but not to anywhere near the ability of the others. The last job is to keep the others in line and keep the whole process running smoothly.
Once I had assigned us all our jobs I was ready to wake the others up. To acquaint them with this new environment I thought it would be best to have them in their normal bodies. So I had us all materialize in a corridor, I chose it completely at random and they found themselves totally awake, on their feet, and their wounds totally healed.
“Well, this is new.” Said Jason, a little dumbfounded.
I didn’t waste any time and put it to them bluntly, “The Machine has chosen us to be the new Operators.”
They all looked at me in surprise and wonder. My people worship the Machine; this is the greatest honor that could have ever been bestowed upon us. To work the Machine, what a wonder it would be. I was especially happy (and scared) because to do my job I was essentially the head honcho, I was the one in charge.
“Feel around inside yourselves,” I told them, “we are all connected to the Machine in our minds. So we can feel it all over.” They did and they discovered that they could. I then thought of something and took them to a nearby changing room.
“These rooms can change into any type of room you can imagine.” I said.
Wondra stepped up to it and said, “Really now? Well I guess I’ll just test out that theory.” She closed her eyes and a bed appeared against the opposite wall. The wall that the bed was against changed color to a swirling silver and black. The ceiling was covered by a giant picture of a dragon; and instead of the light coming from everywhere (like it did in the entire Machine) the light started only coming from the four corners. In one corner there was a statue of a winged cat, no more than a hand tall and sitting on a circular platform about one third of the way up the hall. In the other three corners were similar statues, a gargoyle, a dragon, and a fairy. Wondra said, “This is my room.”
We all stared in wonder as it kept changing. On the other walls were pictures of fairies, dragons, vampires, castles, wizards, and stuff. Then she thought for a minute and said, “Come, there is something I want to show you.” We all followed her to the Imagery room and we went inside and then she stopped. She kind of stared and was looking around just by moving her eyes, she concentrated. Then there were swirling spots of light on the ceiling and floor. They moved up and down ,depending on where they started from, to where they were about chest level. Once there they came together in a great burst of light and became a person. He was tall, younger than any of us, was tanned, and wore normal cloths. Wondra explained to us, “This is a program that I found in here when I was here in my class. He knows more about the Machine than anyone.”
We all stared at the boy. Wondra decided to demonstrate, “Why was the old Operator expelled from the Machine?” Wondra asked. “What did he do wrong?”
“You may have noticed that the Machine was due to come to the island eight years ago. Well, the Machine was getting so big and complex that one person could no longer handle it. Anthony didn’t want to bring anyone else in here because he would have had to share power with them. He knew that if he went back to the island the Machine would choose someone to help him, so instead he decided to not go back. It took eight years, but eventually the Machine caught him off guard and before he could stop it the doorway was on the island’s beach.”
Guy asked, “If he can sense the Machine like I can, why didn’t he know Josh was in the control room?”
The image turned to him and replied, “The Machine was helping you. Anthony didn’t request specifically if Josh was in the control room, so the Machine didn’t tell him.”
Andrea took her turn, “Aren’t the defenses a little light? If we could get into the control room than anyone could. I mean, if the shots don’t incapacitate the intruders for very long and the guards can’t run, and the guards are more susceptible to their shots than we are. Isn’t that kind of weak?”
Smiling at her he waited a minute and then spoke. “The shots are lethal, the guards can run, and the armor they wear is far more protection than anything you have ever seen.”
That baffled us and Wondra now asked the question that was on all of our minds. “Then why didn’t the shot kill that police officer? Why did the guards only walk? And why did that shot go through me and disable that guard yet not hurt me?”
“The Machine was helping you. It set the guards’ weapons to a level less than kill, and made them temporarily unable to run.”
“But you didn’t answer her last question.” Jason said. “If the guards have such great armor, why wasn’t Wondra killed, or even hurt for that matter, when there was enough energy to disable a guard?”
At this the smile went off the image’s face and he said in a very serious tone, “No one knows truly what the Machine is capable of, or how or why it works, not even I. But I imagine that it was helping you there too.” We asked him a few more questions after that, “Why didn’t the former Operator come out of the Machine at early evening and send the cops after me then” and other such things. He answered them with the same answer he gave for Wondra’s question. After a while we got bored, turned him off, and went on to explore the rest of the Machine.

Andrea went through all the memory rooms and looked at the data that looked important. She then told us everything that was relevant and we listened to it. The Machine’s age, what it was equipped with, what it could be equipped with, other Machines, etc. We used our time to explore the farthest reaches of the Machine and the closest, inner parts of it. It was amazingly huge and still growing. Then we sensed that it became time to bring the Machine into full operational mode, fully active.
We were sitting in the control room. The chairs had materialized for us, and the walls now curved outwards slightly as if they had controls on them that could only be used efficiently in a semi-vertical position. This first time we wanted to start the Machine when we were still in our bodies, not as part of the Machine itself.
“Loading up data,” said Andrea as she input information into the Machine that would be needed for the next day. I had told them all the say what they were doing so none of us were caught by surprise about what another was doing, and so if something went wrong we would immediately know what we did to cause it.
“The external sensors are coming online.” Said Guy. “And so are the mechanical parts and the optical sensors.”
“Why can’t we see anything outside then?” I asked.
“Because I haven’t removed the protective covering from it yet.” Replied Guy.
“Well remove it then,” I said.
“Hang on a minute.”

And the corridors became nerves. The vast internal machinery became muscles and bone; the external devices became arms, hands, feet, and legs; the external hull became skin; and the optical sensors became eyes, which opened onto a new world. And Brian Baker woke up. He got up and started getting dressed. WOW, he felt like a new person now and didn’t know why. Everything seemed new: new outlook on life, new ability to think, more coordinated, new imagination; new everything. Maybe it was because this was the second-to-last Monday, and after this Middle School would finally be over. Little did he know that his Operators were only on their first day.


THE END