Blurb Book

Beela travels through space--more or less

"So, are you going to tell me where you have been for the last four months while I watched your cat?" the woman at the door, stout with lazy brown hair, demanded with a hand on her hip. "Or were you just planning to pick him up like nothing happened?"

"I'm sorry," Beela mumbled.

"That's not good enough this time, Beela, not this time.  I need an explanation.  I almost called the cops when you didn't come back after the first week."

"I'm sorry," she repeated, unable to make eye contact. 

"An explanation. Now."

"I...I'm not sure I can," she replied with shaky breath.  She ran a hand through her hair nervously.  "You would think I was making fun of you."

"Not if you are honest," Lidia insisted.

Beela rubbed at her eyes but, despite her best efforts, she began to cry.

"Oh, come here sweetheart," Lidia said, her tone softening. 

She pulled Beela into a hug and murmured something in her ear that was unintelligible.  When Beela got her breathing under control, Lidia ushered her inside the house.  Beela shuffled to the living room, its familiar green walls and landscape paintings almost surprising in their normality, and sat on the edge of the couch.

"Now, tell me what happened to you.  Where were you?" Lidia asked gently.

"You won't believe me.  Enough has happened and I'd rather be spared being called a liar,"

"Beela," Lidia said, her patience obviously running short, "I have been watching after your cat while you were gone and worrying about why you never called."

"I know.  I'm sorry.  I never should have left."

"I'm practically begging you,"

"It's Nona's fault," Beela conceded at last.  "I finished a book and promised to call her when I did.  So I did.  And, um, and she told me to come take a look at these old books she had found because she knows I love old books so I went to her house to look at it.  It was like nothing I had seen at the time.  It was my first one.  And it was absolutely beautiful. 

"I paged through it for at least half an hour before Nona said I could take it home but she would need it back that week.  I picked up the sequel to the book I had already been reading--a great series about some people that go--"

"Please, don't get distracted," Lidia interrupted.

"Right, sorry.  Anyway, I took it home and looked at the book Nona had given me most of the night.  Like all night.  I went to bed sometime around four a.m. if I remember correctly.  It had a bunch of really cool stuff about spells and hexes and so forth and a bunch of stuff that wasn't in English.  I couldn't understand it but it looked to be very important.

"When I asked her about it, Nona said that she had bought it from this creepy little bookstore while visiting her family in Vermont last weekend for ten dollars. Well, last weekend when it happened.  That was super cheap for this book, too.  It was obviously ancient.  I mean, the cover was leather and it was all handwritten with gorgeous, gorgeous writting and it was in great condition.  Apparently the clerk was more than willing to part with it too.  He claimed it was bad luck to have."

"Why are you telling me about this book, Bee?"

"Because we were messing around with it one day--just testing to see if any of the stuff in there was real--and it worked.  The spell actually worked.  By the end of the week, Nona had found four other friends that were interrested and we were going to try one of the harder spells.  Well, it's not really a spell but we didn't know the difference at the time.