Joshua was mad. Really
mad. Daina and Jerry were gone, Naomi and Alan
weren’t listening to him, and Steven wasn’t helping at
all. The whole becoming an adult and making the adults into kids
thing was backfiring on him in a major way. He was about ready to wish the
whole thing had never happened when Christine walked in. It was kind of strange
the way it happened. At first, she opened the door and she was her normal 9
year-old self, then the minute she got inside the room, she aged until she
looked to be in her mid-20’s. The heavy schoolbooks
she was holding seemed to weigh nothing to her as she shifted them to her hips.
She looked at herself, then gave Joshua a suspicious glare. “What did you do?” she
asked him slowly.
Joshua, although wholly unafraid of Daina, was deeply afraid of the dark eyes of his sister,
the eyes that had seen and done way more than he could ever dreamed or had
nightmares about. His smooth adult body
suddenly twitched in a way not unlike a regular 6 year old. “Uh, what makes you
think I did anything?” he asked uncertainly.
“Oh, nothing, just
that your voice sounds like Darth Vader instead of Tweety
and your body looks like Denzel Washington instead of Steve Urkel.
Now, what did you do?” she repeated.
Joshua stood up angrily, suddenly
realizing that he was, after all, taller than she was, even though he was
younger. “Look, you can’t tell me what...”
“I can and I will and if
you don’t tell me what you did, I’m gonna make you wish
you’d kept your little dream magic
to yourself. You and I cannot stay this old! Now tell me what you did and where
everybody is!” Christine poked him
in the chest for every enunciated word until Josh found himself against the
wall cringing in front of a woman at least a foot shorter than him.
“Alright, alright, cut it out
already!” he whined. “I made all the adults into 5 year olds and I sent them to
their rooms, but Naomi and Alan are running around crazy and Daina and Jerry disappeared and I don’t know what to do
anymore!”
Christine glared at him for a
moment, then finally added, “Plus the fact that since Daina’s gone, you’re going to have to take care of her body
in the real world.”
Joshua looked confused for a moment, then gasped. “Oh, no! You
mean I’ll...”
“Have to teach 4th grade,” she
finished.
“I forgot about all that! Okay, we gotta find her, fast!” Josh started to run past Chris, who
grabbed his arm as he went by.
“Did you ever think that she might
not WANT to be found? That she’s getting you back for doing this to her?”
Christine said.
The idea struck Josh physically,
showing on his face as he winced, then covered his face with his hands. “Nooo,” he winced. “Oh, no, no, NOOOO!
We gotta call her back!”
“Right,” she replied sarcastically.
“What?”
“If she doesn’t wanna
be found, she won’t be.”
“Then I’ll call her and make her
come back!” Josh said seriously. “She has to come if we call.”
“Try it,” Chris shrugged, sitting
down on her bed. “But you keep forgetting that she isn’t required to play by
our rules. She made us, not vice versa.”
“Well, I made her 5, so I can get
her back!” Joshua insisted. He stood up and concentrated, then shouted mentally
and aloud...
I grinned at the sound of my name and shut it
out. Apparently, Josh didn’t remember who he was dealing with. Besides, I
really had other things to worry about just then. “Dude, I really don’t think
you should’ve grabbed that treasure from the Pirates of the
“I
know,” Jerry agreed, looking repentant. “Who’dve
thought the gold was plastic?”
“I’m
pretty sure you’re not allowed to bum rush Donald Duck, either.”
“I
couldn’t find Mickey!”
“And
I’m positive that taking that mannequin from that ride and pulling its pants
down was a bad thing.”
Jerry
shook his head. “Y’know, they’re right. It really is
a small world after all.”
“But
if I’m right about nothing else, I know this for sure. Whether this is right or
wrong is immaterial. Tightrope walking the Skyway was DEFINITELY a bad idea.”
Jerry
and I looked down at the crowd milling around several hundred feet below us,
then back up at the cable we were presently clinging to barehanded.
“Alright,
I’ll give you that one,” he nodded, straining to keep his little muscles from
letting go.
52...51...50...49...
“Well?” Chris asked. “Where is she?”
“Okay, you win, she’s not answering.
Now what?” sighed Josh.
“Now you do what she expects you to
do. Keep trying to hold the home fort together, however unsuccessfully, until
she decides you’re ready to admit defeat. Then you beg forgiveness and she
won’t ground you, she’ll just tell you you’ll learned your lesson and give you
a big hug.” she replied.
“How do you know all this stuff?”
Josh asked her in awe.
“I’m light years ahead of you, ya goober. Y’know, been there,
done that, got the t-shirt? ‘Course I was trying to kill her, but...”
“You tried to kill Daina???” Josh asked incredulously.
“6 was a rough age for all of us,
kiddo,” Chris said in a sisterly tone.
...27...26...25...24
“I
really didn’t think it’d be that far of an overhand climb to that last
anchoring post,” Jerry said.
“For
two adults, probably not,” I replied. “But for two kids...”
“Yeah,
yeah, I know. I think we’re cool, so long as this thing doesn’t start up before
we get to the post.” Jerry looked toward the post as he spoke and I frowned. We
were still hanging, but not nearly as worried about it. After all, it was my
imagination. How bad could it be if at the last minute, I could decide the
whole thing wasn’t real and strike it from my memory?
“Why?”
I asked.
“Well,
look up,” he said. “See, the Skyway cars don’t actually roll down the cable,
they clamp to the cable and the cable itself moves forward. When it gets to
those anchor posts...”
“Oh,
I see! The cable threads through those wheels and that’s what keeps it going. Man, that would seriously hurt your fingers!”
“Not
to mention the rest of you when your fingers got cut off and you hit the...”
The
cable jerked into motion before Jerry could say “ground” and for once, we
didn’t pause to say something silly before trying desperately to climb away
from the anchor post wheels (which were about 25 yards away and closing...)
3...2...1...Hey, kids, he called
out...
“...need
a hand?”
I
was startled enough to nearly lose my grip and so was Jerry. Neither of us
expected to see the dark haired man staring down at us from on top of the post
ahead. We stopped climbed hand over hand (most out of surprise) and let the
cable move us slowly toward him.
“How
did he get there?” I asked.
“If
I knew,” Jerry replied, “I wouldn’t have the same blank look on my face that
you’ve got.”
I
frowned, but the closer we got, the more I realized we didn’t have a real
choice. “Um, yeah, I guess we do,” I finally replied to the man.
“Are
we gonna be in trouble?” Jerry asked him
suspiciously. Had we been on the ground, I’dve
smacked him.
The
man looked down with a slight smile. “Somehow, I doubt you could be in any more
trouble,” he replied.
“Good
point,” I said, immediately reaching my hand out. He took it and I almost let
go involuntarily. The hand was so...
“Me next?” Jerry gasped, reaching out, too. Just in time,
the man took his hand and pulled us both up. The crowd below us began cheering,
but I could tell by the look on Jerry’s face that he felt the same way I did
about the man’s grip. It was as if the magic that flowed within was being
jumbled around, like soup boiling over on a stove.
A stove that, with a mere smile of reassurance, was getting hotter
by the minute.