Enola stood at the end of an aisle and waved her arms, letting her green halo slip out in brilliant bunches. She lowered her head and stared intently at the man holding Lily.
“Wha-what’s she doing?” he stammered. “Hey! Stop her!”
All at once, the men aimed their weapons straight at Enola. With a blinding flash, Cheyton and Pud rippled in from empty space, materializing right on top of two agents, taking down each of them.
“Stop!” the man in charge pointed his pistol at Enola. “I’m warning you! This is the business of the United States Government! Surrender or else!”
“No,” Enola skewed her head. “I’m warning you! Leave us alone or else!”
He ignored her decree, setting his aim even more intently. Enola answered with an eruption of green flames, a dazzling display sizzling in the direction of the lead agent. His eyes widened and he fell to the floor fast, just barely avoiding the unearthly glow.
Several agents ambushed Enola at the same time. With a flick of her fingers, she sent a cloud of green fire and enveloped the surly men. Frowns turned to smiles. Threatening sneers changed to warm greetings. They sat down, all grown adults, and beamed at Enola like she was about to give them a treat.
“Sir!” one of the unaffected agents pointed out. “It’s true! She has a love spell!”
“Get her!” their leader commanded, and the underlings aimed their guns instantly. Enola fired another salvo of emerald flames, forcing the men to dive for cover, pushing them toward the exit. The ones holding Liz and Lily and Amelia let go and ran, anxious to evade the bright green fire. They were almost out the door when Enola’s amorphous energy stopped suddenly. She lost her determined stare, and her face went blank. Then she grimaced and doubled over, hugging her own waist.
“Enola!” Ayita ran and caught her from falling. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“I, uh…” she murmured. “I don’t feel so…” and she collapsed in Ayita’s arms. Cheyton appeared in a flash by her side, helping Ayita ease her to the floor.
“Enola? Did they get you?” he searched her body, pushing aside tufts of fur, looking for a wound. He seemed to find nothing. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Enola breathed heavily. “All of a sudden I feel terrible.”
The lead agent alternated his pistol between the Tanakee and Liz. “You’re coming with us. We have a lot of questions for you!”
“They’re not going anywhere,” the store manager asserted. “These guys are heroes, if you haven’t heard. They saved a lot of lives, and they singlehandedly revived this town’s economy.”
“I don’t care,” the agent said. “These creatures are a danger to society.”
The customers grew bolder by the minute, coming forward slowly, one step at a time, and directing their ire at the agents.
“You can’t come in here and just take them!”
“They’re not a danger to society!”
“People,” said the lead agent. “We’re doing our best to protect you and your families. I know you think these creatures are cute and nice. They may have even helped to save your town, but that won’t stop me from doing my job. For your safety and ours, we have to put these creatures under quarantine.”
Gasps. Murmurs.
“Quarantine?” Liz knew what that meant. “Why? You think they’re diseased?”
“I mean they’re dangerous, and it’s our job to neutralize that danger,” the man snapped his fingers, and the agents not under Enola’s spell came forward, inching toward the Tanakee with their guns raised.
“We’ve got you cornered. Surrender before this gets ugly.”
“Teresa!” in an orange burst of light, Pud appeared on top of the agent with Teresa’s leather-bound book. He snatched the hardcover and tossed it into her outstretched arms. She plucked it out of the air, opened it, and began to read:
“From the four cardinal directions the spirits came to breathe life, to animate that which was once inanimate!”
On the shelves, packages and cans and jars began to shake and shimmy.
“Arise! Awake! Alive!—and come to the aid of your friends.”
In perfect unison, a torrent of cookies, crackers, candy, popcorn and other grocery items exploded from their boxes. Hundreds of them, flying with the force of little missiles, disorienting the agents with flurries of food, and giving Liz the chance she needed.
“Come on!” she took Lily’s hand. “Let’s get outta here!”
Cheyton let Enola lean on him and they followed Liz out the door. Right behind her ran Amelia, Ayita, and Pud. Then, sprinting faster than them all, was Teresa, carrying her book. Behind her swarmed a flood of candy—jawbreakers and Hershey’s Kisses and Hot Tamales—coming to life and dancing in midair along with the rest of the store’s merchandise. As she ran out the door, some of the smaller objects escaped. Sweet-tarts and Skittles flew in formation, then separated and rocketed out of sight.
As the renegades ran, a cadre of unmarked, four door sedans, black paint and tinted windows, raced into the parking lot from every entrance, blocking all possible ways out.
Pud hollered, “Let’s just blink outta here! You know, use Eteea!”
“Not with her like this!” Cheyton motioned to Enola. She rested against him, dependent on him to stand.
As the sedans closed in, Liz clutched her daughter and pleaded for a miracle. She should have known she’d get one. They had Teresa.
“Vroom, Vroom said the storyteller’s ride,” Teresa read. “Eager to please, enduringly loyal, the little yellow van saved the day—once again.”
With Teresa’s oration, her cumbersome Volkswagen sped from the crowded lot, aiming directly at them. Pud, to get out of the way, rolled on his side and then sprung to his feet again.
“Your van?” Amelia sounded puzzled. “But we wrecked it. You got it fixed already? That’s impossible!”
“Nothing’s impossible,” Teresa tapped her book. “As long as I have my stories to tell.”
As soon as the van squealed to a stop, Amelia opened the sliding door so Cheyton and Ayita could help Enola inside.
“Mommy? Is Enola going to be okay?” Lily asked as they climbed in the front seat together.
“Of course, honey,” Liz said, despite worries to the contrary. Enola was hurt, and Liz wasn’t sure if those government agents did something to her.
Teresa took command of her van, plopping into the driver’s seat. Then she caught sight of the oncoming fleet of federal Fords, turned the wheel, and hit the gas. The van banked left, toward the east exit. An official vehicle sped at them, hastening through the parking lot at a rather unsafe speed, considering how many innocent people were milling about on foot.
“Those guys are gonna kill someone!” Liz complained.
“Yeah,” Amelia said plainly. “Us. If they catch us.”
“And it looks like they’re gonna,” Pud pointed out the back windows, where a line of government cars were closing in on them.
“We’ll never get out of this!” Cheyton lamented. He covered Enola like a living shield.
“Yes we will,” Ayita smiled at Teresa. “Won’t we?”
“We will if I can help it,” the storytelling enchantress hit the brakes as she thumbed through her sizable book. “Let’s see, let’s see—ah! Here!” she cleared her throat. “The cars all have minds that wander, but those aren’t the only things that roam. Even the automobiles know they have a part to play. All good things join forces when the time comes. And that time is now!”
“Look, Mommy!” Lily pointed out the window.
Liz was shocked to see cars in the parking lot moving on their own. With no one at the wheel, a green pickup barreled from its spot and rammed a massive support column. Then a big, white SUV, again with no driver, lurched forward, slamming into the rear bumper of the crashed pickup. Together they blocked the oncoming government cars, pinning them in, forcing them to stop.
“Whoa! Cool!” Pud exclaimed.
&nbs
p; “There are more of them!” Cheyton announced. Teresa didn’t seem a bit nervous.
“They hurried to get in line” she read. “They took their places, those cars of every make and model. Not just mere hunks of metal, lifeless, soulless assemblies of wire and plastic and steel. They obstructed the interlopers, and made a path for the defenders or Eteea, for the universe depended on it!”
Liz and Lily squeezed each other tight when they saw the parking lot come alive. Every truck, car, minivan, even a motorcycle, began to roll. It looked like a precisely choreographed chorus routine, with each individual automobile taking its place in perfect position. Car owners stood stunned as the rolling machines zigzagged and maneuvered into place. When they were finished, after the last auto had pulled into its spot, all the government vehicles were cordoned off, and a passageway had been established for the Volkswagen.
“They’re helping us!” Pud climbed onto a beanbag shaped like a baseball mitt and peered out the windshield.
“Uncanny!” Amelia was wide-eyed.
“You never cease to amaze me, Teresa,” Liz conveyed everyone’s sentiment. Even Enola, now looking better, was up and watching the astonishing events unfold.
“Thanks, dear,” Teresa steered through the makeshift alley, over the curb and onto fifteenth, where she turned right and headed out of town. “But we’re not in the clear, yet.”
“Where are we going?” Cheyton asked.
“To the safest place we can possibly go,” she said. “My house.”
“But these people know where you live,” Cheyton pressed. “Do you think it would be wise to go back?”
“Silly,” she winked at him “We’re not going back there. We’re going somewhere else.”
“You just said we’re going to your house,” Amelia sounded confused.
“We are,” Teresa kept her eyes on the road, swinging the steering wheel left to right to left just to keep the van going straight. “Back to the house that’s been in my family for generations.”
“Wait a second,” Liz demanded an explanation. “We can’t be going somewhere else and back to your old house at the same time. That doesn’t make sense.”
“Sure it does,” Teresa giggled. “I moved.”
“Oh, you moved…” Liz began the sentence feeling confident she understood, but, by the end, she was as confused as ever. “So…you have a new house?”
“No. Same old house. Just moved.”
Liz scratched her forehead, trying desperately to figure out how it could be possible. With Teresa, though, anything was possible. Then, out of the blue, she got it.
“Oh, yeah,” she boasted. “You had your house moved. I’ve seen that done before. A whole house, put on a giant cart and rolled away. That’s a big job…must’ve been expensive.”
Teresa giggled even harder. “No, no. No expense at all. Not money, anyhow.”
They traveled to the outskirts of town, avoiding the bridge that took traffic over to Seaside. Instead, she took the mountain pass to the treacherous coastal cliffs, amongst some of the biggest evergreens Liz had ever seen. She’d been out that way many times. It was a favorite hiking and picnicking destination for her family. This time, though, the road’s twists and turns seemed different.
“Hey, where are we going?” Liz said as the pavement turned to gravel and the slope got steeper and steeper.
“I had to place my house in a little bit of a precarious spot this time, to watch over who comes and goes,” Teresa kept her eyes on her driving as the side of the road became a sheer drop-off. The road, or what used to be a road, was nothing but a wide trail in the woods, grass up to the windows, moths and crickets dashing aside at every turn.
“There’s no way you got a house up here,” Liz had trouble containing her agitation. One false move and the van would roll down a severe drop into a wooded abyss. Then the verdure surrendered to a clearing, and the Pacific Ocean opened up into a vast expanse. Liz lost her breath at the distance, waves crashing against a rocky shoreline hundreds of feet below. “You can’t even get us up here!”
“We’re almost there,” Teresa assured her, though assurance was not coming easy for Liz. Then Teresa repeated, “We’re almost there…we’re almost there…we’re THERE!”
In front of them, the trail ended at a well-manicured lawn, lots of wonderfully arraigned marigolds and daffodils and roses. A stone driveway led past a rickety old shed to a thatch-roof dwelling with exposed dark pine timbers, whitewashed stucco, and a rounded tower, giving it the look of a small castle. Teresa’s house. And it appeared just as it did before, right down to the stonework cellar.
“How did you..?” Liz got out after Teresa parked the van. “How did you do this?” she dug down into the mossy ground to a cobblestone. “This looks like it’s been here a hundred years,” she pointed to the front porch, where a tree had grown around and through the railing. “Look at that. There’s no way this was relocated by one of those big moving teams.”
“You’re right,” Teresa watched as Cheyton, Ayita and Pud walked Enola up the steps gingerly. “I did it…with magic.”
Liz shook her head. “Amazing.”
TWELVE
“WHERE IS EVERYBODY?” Jack searched room to room, downstairs and up. “Takota?”
Flash! Takota was by his side. “You see anyone, yet?” the little one asked.
“I was about to ask you the same question. Where’d everybody go?”
“You don’t think—”
Takota stopped himself, but Jack knew what he was going to say. He had no desire to entertain the thought.
“No,” Jack exhaled hard. “No way!” he pressed the O/A and the omnidimensional field enveloped him. Surging with untamed energy, he summoned the power to picture his mom, his sister, Amelia, the Tanakee. Nothing. He let loose a thunderous roar that rattled the walls. “They can’t be taken hostage too! They can’t be! Why did I leave them! Why!”
“Calm down, Jack,” Takota said. “You’re gonna wreck the neighborhood. Just concentrate,” he lowered his head. “I’ll help you.”
Jack breathed hard, allowing the dimensional energy to lift him like a boat on water. He caught a wave in the stream of minds, thought, and action—the hyperconsciousness. In a semi-dream state, he saw Takota, not too far away, riding another swell. They nodded to each other, then looked straight ahead, both drifting toward a sound, a call of distress.
“Jack! Takota!”
Two voices cut through the ether, echoing, hiding their source, though Jack knew who it was. Amelia and Ayita. They were trying to connect.
“JACK!” both called to him at once, almost overwhelming him with their desperation. “We need your help! Come to Teresa’s house, quick!”
Jack didn’t need any more prompting. He looked at Takota, and together they disappeared from the living room of the James household, rematerializing almost instantaneously at 23563 Fernhill Road. Teresa’s address.
Nothing was there. No house. No rickety garage. No flower garden or backyard shed. Nothing but ferns and tall timbers that appeared a hundred years old. There wasn’t even a clearing. Nothing disturbed—untouched forest.
Jack turned and turned and turned, until he had to stop and let the world catch up.
“What the..?”
Takota reacted similarly, head on a swivel, spinning behind, in front, to the sides…nothing. He crinkled his little nose and narrowed his coppery eyes.
“This is the same place, isn’t it?” he sounded as dumbfounded as Jack felt.
“I think so,” Jack kept searching for signs of the antique dwelling. Not one existed. “I don’t get it. It’s not like when Davos and the giant Gedegwsets destroyed it. That left a big pile of rubble, remember?”
“Yeah, but you said those forest dwellers rebuilt it, with Teresa’s magic.”
“They did, they did,” Jack shrugged. “That’s why this doesn’t make sense,” he pressed the O/A and its purple and bluish, spherical field surrounded him and his little pro
tector. With a thought, he had it lift them above the treetops to get a better view. Houses down the road, a mile or so away, but Teresa’s was AWOL. “This doesn’t make sense,” he repeated, controlling their flight with his mind, lowering them to the ground again. The protective sphere vanished. “No sense at all.”
“Jack, try Eteea again. Use the O/A to connect with Amelia.”
“Okay,” he held his hand on the machine and concentrated, this time being as specific as he could. All of a sudden, he heard giggling.
“What’s so funny,” he asked the voice.
“What?” Takota sounded concerned. “Who thinks what’s funny?”
“Hold on,” Jack told him, then went back to the otherworldly discussion. “Are you going to tell me what’s so funny? Because I don’t have a lot to laugh about right now!”
The giggling ceased, replaced by a stinging silence.
“Hello?”
“I’m sorry,” he heard Amelia loud and clear. “Hold on, I’m sending someone to get you.”
Before Jack could tell Takota what she’d said, a silver, black, and orange flash of light made them both stand back and shield their eyes. Then the brightness faded, and Ayita and Pud stood there, smiling ear to ear.
“Potato!” Pud hugged Takota. “You’re okay! Amelia said she saw you two going up against an army of Nagas! Were you?”
Takota sighed, but said nothing.
“You were!” Pud pushed him to arm’s length and kept ahold of him. “And you survived! I can’t believe it!”
“Ayita, what’s going on?” Jack said. “Where’d Teresa’s house go?”
She just kept smiling. “Follow me,” she lowered her eyes and disappeared from sight.
Jack held the O/A’s interface and concentrated on the slipstream Ayita left behind, her dimensional footprint. In less than a heartbeat, they were in a different part of the forest completely. Jack smelled the cool ocean breeze, and recognized instantly they were in an area he and his family knew well, but it was a long way from Teresa’s house. When he saw the structure, ensconced in the woods like it had been there a century, his knees weakened.
Jack James and the Call of the Tanakee Page 9