“Not if you want your friend back.”
“Then, I guess I’m game.”
“Good, good. All you have to do is go into my pocket, find her, and summon me with a simple light charm.”
“I don’t know how to use magic.”
“That’s unfortunate, dear, but it’s really easy. The council makes it out to be more complicated than it really is. Just hold up your hand and say ’Lithiori.’”
“Lithiori?”
My hand started to glow, and fire shot out of my fingertips. The woman caught the fire in her cocoa mug and snuffed it out. “Be careful with that power. You’ll blow up the whole blasted place, won’t you? Inside my pocket. When you find her, throw up a flare, and I will bring you back.”
I stood up. “I’m ready.”
The woman snapped her fingers. “Then off you go.”
Suddenly I was lightheaded, and everything turned to black. My stomach rose into my mouth and it felt like I was falling a very long way in a short period of time.
“Goodbye,” the woman said, as I faded out. “Hope you don’t die.”
Chapter 42
I awoke in a dark, damp place that I didn’t recognize. The only light came from above me, where I saw a great eye peering down at me. The booming voice of the old gnome called out to me, “I forgot to tell you that nobody has escaped my pocket before. They usually just…die.”
The gnome cackled as she stood up, and the whole pocket swayed and crashed with her. I pushed myself to my shaky feet and moved forward. Somewhere, in her pocket, Samantha was waiting for me.
“Samantha!” I shouted. The gnome took another step forward and the earth quaked under me. “Hello!”
“Anna?” I heard Samantha’s voice.
I cupped my hands together. “Samantha? Where are you?”
“Be quiet,” she said. “Otherwise, they will hear you.”
“Who will hear me?”
But I didn’t have to wait for Samantha’s answer to find out. From every corner of the pocket, white critters with six legs, plump bellies, and big pinchers for a mouth converged on me. Dust mites don’t look that horrific in a microscope, but in person, when you are their size, they are hideous and terrifying.
I spied a Lego block in the distance and ran toward it as the earth shook below me. The gnome wouldn’t stop moving, and I suspected that was on purpose, to keep me off balance so I would be eaten by the mites.
“Where are you?” I shouted.
“The Lego!” Samantha called out. “On the other side of the Lego!”
I scanned the horizon and found Samantha hiding behind a blue, rectangular Lego piece with edges gnarled as if it had been chewed by a cat. The brick couldn’t have been more than a half inch high in the real world, but it stood as tall as a house in the gnome’s pocket dimension.
“Meet me at the top of it!” I shouted to Samantha.
Luckily, the Lego brick had been gnawed on all sides, which made it easy to climb. I latched onto the side of it and pulled myself up. Each one of the gnome’s movements nearly made me lose my grip, but I was able to hang on and make it to the top.
Samantha was already at the top when I made it there. She looked haggard and thin, but she was still alive. I ran over to her and gave her a big hug. “It’s so good to see you.”
“Me too, but I wish it were under better circumstances.”
I turned around and saw the bugs crawl from every part of the pocket toward us. “Don’t worry. We’re going to get out of here.” I place my hand into the air. “Lithiori.”
Nothing happened. I tried again. “Lithiori! Lithiori. Lithiori. Lithiori!” Still nothing happened. “Why isn’t this working?”
The great eye of the gnome looked down at me. “Oh, did I forget to mention…? You can’t use magic in my pocket dimension. It’s thoroughly warded until you reach the top of the pocket, where the magic leaks in again. Reach it, and I will retrieve you. Of course, the mites will prevent that.”
“It’s true,” Samantha said. “They won’t let us move away from this brick. Every time I try, they swarm me.”
I shook my head. “We’re going to get out of here. Trust me on that.”
I didn’t know why she should trust me. I didn’t even trust me. However, I noticed that all the dust mites had crawled down from the lining of the pocket. They were only on the floor of the pocket, which meant if we could somehow get behind them, we could climb up the lining and escape, assuming they didn’t catch us first.
“Follow me.”
I leapt off the Lego brick and onto the back of one of the dust mites. As it turned to me, I leapt onto another one, and one after that, and one after that. I looked back to see Samantha doing the same and leaping from one mite to the next. When we finally reached the end of the dust mite army. I ran to the edge of the pocket and latched on tightly.
“Now what?” Samantha said, running up behind me.
“Now we climb.”
“Are you crazy? They’ll catch up to us. They have like a hundred more legs than us.”
I latched onto the lining of the pocket. “We don’t have to get to the top, just high enough for magic to work again.”
I pulled myself up one strand of cloth at a time. With every step I took I tried magic again “Lithiori.” And with every step, the spell failed to work. “Lithiori.”
The dust mites climbed onto the lining of the pocket dimension to chase after us. We weren’t strong enough or fast enough to outrun them. Samantha was right, they would prevent us from escaping with everything they had, and they were much quicker than us.
“Lithiori,” I muttered again as the dust mites gained on us. “Lithiori.”
“This isn’t going to work!” Samantha said as a dust mite grabbed onto her leg.
“Lithiori,” I shouted one last time, and this
