Emily and the Spellstone

by Michael Rubens

  This time it got as far as a few feet above the water before coming to an abrupt, quivering halt, then reversed direction again to fly right back to Emily’s hand.

  “Argh!”

  She threw the Stone again. It didn’t even travel halfway to the water.

  “No!”

  Again. Back it came. Again. Right back to her hand.

  “NO!” Again, again, and again she threw it, each time the Stone reversing course after shorter and shorter intervals, until Emily was throwing it and it was zooming back to her hand like a child’s paddle ball game.

  “Stop it!” she said. “Get away from me!” She looked around desperately. There. A big rock. She ran over to it, used all her might to tilt it enough so that there was a space underneath, wedged the Stone into the space, and lowered the rock. Then she found other rocks and piled them atop and around the first rock until there was a sizable mound.

  “Stay there!” she said, and started to back away. “Stay. Stay!” She backed away a few more steps. Nothing. Then a few more steps. Nothing. A few more.

  Nothing. The Stone was trapped under the other rocks, hopefully forever.

  “Yesssss.” Emily wiped her brow, turned, and started to walk toward the trees.

  There was a scraping, grinding noise. A stone-on-stone sound, the sort a magic Stone might make if it was trying to wiggle itself out from under a much larger, heavier stone that was itself weighed down by other stones.

  Emily stopped. The scraping stopped. She took another step. Another scrape. She took three more steps. More scraping, and then the distinct sound of a few of the smaller stones rolling off the pile.

  Emily broke into a run. Behind her was the sound of a mound of rocks collapsing.

  Anyone observing the scene for the next minute or so would have witnessed something very odd: a young girl running in panicked circles and zigzags and dodging behind trees, shouting, “No! Go away! Keep away from me!” as if she were playing a game of tag in a forest with invisible opponents. A sharp-eyed observer would have noted that she was indeed being pursued, and tenaciously so, by what appeared to be a levitating stone.

  Emily wove through the trees, panting. She was exhausted but sensed that she was opening a bit of a lead on the Stone, and that gave her more strength. She glanced over her shoulder now as she ran, didn’t see the Stone, and then—​ooof! A root caught her foot and sent her sprawling face first onto the leafy forest ground. She raised herself up on her hands and—​

  “EEEIIEEE!!!”

  Directly in front of her, not three feet away, crouched something.

  It looked to Emily like the largest, most ferocious dog she had ever seen, its muscular body the size of a lion, its open, slavering jaws impossibly large and tooth filled, its paws equipped with talons as long as steak knives. And its eyes: green glowing eyes, eyes burning with a bloodthirsty animal intelligence.

  Eyes focused on her.

  With a savage, hideous snarl, the creature leaped.

  Emily threw herself down again, covering her head. She felt the rush of wind as the creature passed directly over her. Then she heard a crunch, followed by the sound of four viciously clawed paws returning to the earth, and then the sound of those paws galloping away from her.

  She flipped over and propped herself up on her elbows. The creature was indeed fleeing from her. It was running away, the Stone was nowhere to be seen, and she was safe. That thing must have taken the Stone! She was free!

  “I did it,” she said. “I did it!”

  Then she felt the tugging.

  As though every cell in her body was being tugged in the direction of the beast, and in the space of about a second the tugging went from Hmmm, what’s that to Wow, that’s insistent to Wait! Help! Now I’m being dragged through the woods toward that fleeing monster dog creature!

  Because that’s exactly what was happening. Whatever connection Emily had had with the Stone, it was still there, and instead of the Stone following her, she was now following the Stone. Which, unfortunately, was in the slavering many-toothed jaws of a very powerful dogg. That crunch she’d heard, she realized now, had been the sound of the creature snapping the Stone out of the air, much like a normal dog snagging a Frisbee.

  Emily was starting to accelerate, tumbling and rolling and then sliding headfirst over the leafy ground. She grabbed at trees and roots in an attempt to slow herself down, but it was no use. “Help!” she screamed. “Help!”

  Where was she going? Where was that terrifying doglike creature dragging her?

  A moment later she could hear music and the trees vanished and she was being dragged across the giant lawn between the edge of the cliff and the courtyard where people were dancing, oblivious to her plight.

  “HEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeelp!” she yelled as she zoomed past.

  On the dance floor, Emily’s parents were cha-chaing enthusiastically. They twirled around and her mother was momentarily facing out toward the lawn, and then they spun again.

  Over the music her mother said, “Does someone here have a dog?”

  “A what?”

  “A dog. A big dog.”

  “Dunno. Why?”

  “I thought I saw something.”

  She shrugged and they kept dancing.

  When the creature reached the woods on the other side of the lawn, it ran complicated loops around several trees and then went running back the direction it had come from. And Emily, hollering and scrabbling at the ground, was pulled along with it, as though they were connected by a giant rubber band.

  “HEEEEEeeeeeeeelp!” she yelled again as she was once more dragged across the lawn, now in the opposite direction.

  Emily’s parents came out of another spin and her father dipped her mother. Mrs. Edelman leaned her head back gracefully, giving her an upside-down view of the lawn. Her eyebrows rose—​or lowered, in this case, because the top of her head was pointing to the ground.

  When Mr. Edelman pulled Mrs. Edelman up again, she said, “Are you sure no one has a dog here? That Emily might be playing with?”

  “I don’t know. Why do you keep asking?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Okay.”

  Emily was zooming through the woods again, the music dropping away. The creature seemed tireless, as if it could pull her forever. Where was it going? Was it going to run around the whole planet? They changed direction again and were out of the trees once more—​and the creature was running straight toward the cliff’s edge.

  “Wait! No!”

  In that instant Emily saw, hovering a few feet beyond the edge of the cliff, what looked like some sort of portal—​as if someone had unzipped part of the world, distorting it and revealing a pitch-black nothingness beyond, rimmed by crackling light. The creature was racing directly toward the portal, and right then Emily understood its plan—​it was going to leap off the cliff and through the portal, and whether she got pulled along with it or stayed on this side, the outcome didn’t seem promising. As she was realizing that, the beast made its leap.

  “No!” Emily screamed, grabbing at and just managing to snag a root with one hand.

  The animal reacted like a standard dog would if it leaped forward and suddenly came to the end of its chain: it was jerked violently backwards, its bottom half swinging like a pendulum, and then the creature started to fall.

  The initial shock caused Emily to cry out, nearly wrenching the root from her grasp, but she held fast.

  Then, fleetingly, the sensation of tugging vanished.

  But Emily didn’t celebrate. Instead she whispered, “Oh, no.” Then she quickly grabbed the root with her other hand as well.

  Because she knew exactly what this was: It was the moment when a mountain climber slipped and went into free fall. And her partner, tethered to her by a rope, had better get a very good grip on the mountain right now, because in half a heartbeat the plummeting partner was going to reach the end of the rope and—​

  “Arrrgh!”

 
It felt as though Emily’s shoulders were going to pop out of their sockets. She could hear a growl rising up from somewhere down the cliff face. The weight pulling at her was terrible, enormous, and now her fingers were slipping, slipping; she couldn’t hold on to the root any longer, couldn’t even scream if she wanted to, and then a final desperate notion came to her.

  “Abra . . .” she gasped, “ka . . . donkulous!”

  There was a strange unfolding noise, and a yelp, and Gorgo’s voice saying, “What the . . . ?!”

  And then Emily had a split second for one final realization: That she’d just made a fatal mistake. Because now she wasn’t holding just the creature’s weight. She was holding Gorgo’s, too.

  Then her fingers lost their grip and she slid feet first toward the cliff, clawing uselessly at the dirt, and then she went screaming helplessly over the edge. And kept screaming the whole way down.

  Chapter

  Seven

  “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOF!”

  Emily lay stunned, looking up at several hundred feet of cliff face and the night sky beyond.

  Then Gorgo’s face blocked her view.

  “Oh, for Blarg’s sake,” he said. “This is ridiculous.”

  “Wha—?” wheezed Emily. “Am I dead?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” said Gorgo.

  “You . . . caught . . . me,” managed Emily with some effort. She was afraid to move, fearing that every single bone in her body was broken. Had to be broken.

  “Yes, I caught you.” He seemed exasperated. A few jets of flame erupted briefly from his scalp.

  “You saved my life,” said Emily.

  “Don’t rub it in!” said Gorgo. “It was a reflex! Totally automatic! You summon me, suddenly I’m in free fall and I grab at this dogg, and right when I land, something nearly lands on my head and I just reach and grab it, and fantastic, great, it turns out to be you.”

  “Thank . . . you.”

  “Argh. Had I known, I wouldn’t have bothered, and then I’d be free. And having dinner. Hey, would you leggo?”

  Emily wasn’t sure to whom this last part was directed, but she did hear growling.

  “Here, stand up,” said Gorgo, and he placed Emily on her feet. To her surprise she didn’t topple over, and apart from a collection of scrapes and bruises she was apparently uninjured.

  She and Gorgo were standing on the rocky shore at the base of the cliff. Gorgo had his hands on his hips, observing with a frown the creature clamped onto his left ankle and shaking its head back and forth as if it was trying to rip Gorgo to pieces.

  “What,” said Emily, “is that?”

  “That,” said Gorgo, “is a dogg.”

  “A daw-guh-guh-guh?”

  “Guh-guh. Two ‘guhs.’ A daw-guh-guh-guh, with three ‘guhs,’ is an entirely different type of creature, something very scary.”

  “This is not very scary?” said Emily, feeling a bit dizzy and disoriented after being roughly dragged back and forth through a forest and then falling from a height that should have left her in pancake form.

  “Scary? I always thought doggs were kind of cute,” said Gorgo. “Good daw-guh-guh-y.” He patted it on the head. The dogg took the opportunity to release Gorgo’s ankle and clamp its jaws around his forearm instead. Green slobber glowed on Gorgo’s leg where the dogg had been attached, but otherwise Gorgo seemed unharmed.

  “Adorable,” said Gorgo. “So what in the twenty-seven levels of darkness were you doing? Did you somehow summon this dogg to play fetch?”

  “Summon it? I tried to throw away the Stone, and then I couldn’t, and the Stone kept chasing me, and then the dogg appeared, and it grabbed the Stone, and—”

  “Aha. Someone sent the dogg for the Stone. How interesting.”

  “Is it?”

  “First off, didn’t I tell you that you couldn’t get rid of the Stone? It’s yours. You are its. You’re a Stonemaster. You’re tied together. Second, this dogg didn’t just show up on its own. They don’t do that. There’s someone out there who wants this Stone and sent the dogg after it. Ah—​of course!”

  “What?”

  “That shade that appeared in your room—​that was just to find the Stone and lay a trail. It’s easy to send a weightless spirit. Sending something flesh and blood, that requires real effort. It’s lucky they just sent a dogg. If they’d sent a doggg, you’d be in trouble. Although a doggg probably would have just eaten you and botched the job.”

  “I saw something up there, like a hole in the world.” Emily looked up, but the pitch-black nothingness wasn’t there anymore.

  “Sure. Whoever wants the Stone opened up a portal of some kind. I’m sure it’s closed now. Those things are difficult to manage.” Gorgo looked at the dogg, who was still hanging from his arm. “Who’s a good boy! Who’s a cutie!” The dogg growled in response and made more tearing motions with its head.

  “Now what?” said Emily.

  “Well, I doubt that whoever sent this guy can open the portal again. He’s stuck here. Do you want a pet?”

  “That?!”

  “What’s the problem? It’s just a dogg, not a doggg.”

  “Get rid of it!”

  “Get rid of it?” repeated Gorgo. “All right,” he said reluctantly, and raised his other fist.

  “Wait!” said Emily. “What are you going to do?”

  “You said to get rid of it.”

  “I didn’t mean . . . you know.”

  “You asked me to get rid of it, and that’s the way I’d get rid of it. If you don’t like that, why don’t you get rid of it? You’ve got the Stone.”

  The Stone! Where was it?

  Emily looked around the beach, turning left and right. The Stone was nowhere to be seen.

  “Ahem,” said Gorgo, and inclined his head toward her beaded purse, which was somehow still over her shoulder.

  She felt the purse—​and yes, there it was. The Stone had found its own way in there without her even noticing. Removing it from the purse, Emily held up the Stone and touched the surface with her other hand.

  “Awaken.”

  Sure enough, the familiar glow returned, illuminating her face.

  “What should I do?” she said.

  “Dunno. You’re the Stonemaster.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Whatever. Figure it out. Maybe there’s some sort of portal apth in there, something that will let you send the dogg back.”

  Emily examined the dancing runes and icons. Nothing called out to her.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Keep looking.”

  She swiped, swiped, and swiped some more. The dogg continued to worry at Gorgo’s forearm. “Goo’boy. Suuuuch a goo’boy,” said Gorgo, patting its head. The dogg let go and switched arms.

  Emily swiped again. The dancing icons seemed endless. How about this? She jabbed at one that seemed to call out to her. There was a sound like the muffled popping of thousands of kernels of popcorn.

  “Huh. Well, I imagine it’s at least vanished from view,” said Gorgo.

  His voice was coming from within a dense and Gorgo-shaped arrangement of flowers, his entire body now covered by a two-foot-thick layer of blossoms. The dogg, still squirming, was similarly concealed.

  “Dang it!” said Emily, and tapped the apth again to shut it off. The flower petals fell to the ground in a heap, revealing Gorgo and the dogg once again.

  “Something else?” suggested Gorgo.

  “I’m trying,” said Emily, tapping on another apth.

  “Would you quit playing around?” said Gorgo. “That’s not going to fool anyone.” Emily looked up. The dogg now had a terrible fake beard and mustache.

  “What kind of Stonemaster are you?” said Gorgo.

  “The kind of Stonemaster who isn’t a Stonemaster!”

  “Well, could you concentrate, please?”

  Emily scrunched up her face. How am I ever going to get rid of this dogg?

  Just as she was thinking
that, another icon seemed to present itself to her, an image that looked like a winged leopard playing with a ball. The runes underneath resolved into words:

  PETPORTALPOTTY

  Emily pressed on the icon and it expanded out like a hologram.

  A cat with orange fur and three eyes addressed her while alien flute music played in the background. “Hi! Thanks for using the PetPortalPotty apth! Tired of cleaning up after your pet?”

  The 3-D image changed to an enormous creature on a leash doing its equally enormous business on the sidewalk of a fantastical city, delicate spires rising in the background.

  “Ew,” said Emily.

  “With one tap, you can send your pet for a walk in an entirely different universe. And with an infinite number to choose from, you’ll never run out, and no one will ever catch on!”

  “That hardly seems responsible,” said Emily.

  “Who asked you?” said the three-eyed cat creature.

  “What? I thought this was recorded!” said Emily.

  “Just tap the mystic rune again, and your portal will be open,” said Three Eyes brightly, and Emily started thinking that maybe it was just a recording. “Just remember to keep the portal open until your little cutie is ready to come back in. PetPortalPotty: Why clean up a mess, when someone else can?”

  “That’s awful.”

  “Oh, shut up, you.”

  “Hey!”

  But the face had vanished.

  “Do it,” said Gorgo. “You open the portal, and I’ll dispose of our friend.”

  “Fine.” Emily tapped on the rune. She heard a brief twoodle of the alien flute music, and then what was unmistakably a hinged doggy door shimmered into existence in front of them, floating a few inches from the ground.

  “That,” said Emily, “is way too small.”

  “Oh, look who’s complaining. Next time get the paid version,” said the cat voice.

  “Are you a magical recording or not?”

  “Thank you for using PetPortalPotty!”

  “I’ll make it work,” said Gorgo. Seizing the dogg by the scruff of its neck, Gorgo tore it loose from his arm and held it up, its face a few inches from his own. The dogg snarled and snapped and squirmed.