The Wounded World, a story of Mantra, Chapter 1

THE WOUNDED WORLD

By Aladdin 

Edited by Christopher Leeson

Originally written 2006

Revised Sept. 21, 2018
Revised April 26, 2020

A NOTE FROM CHRISTOPHER LEESON

I never enjoyed a comic-book series better than I did Malibu Comic's MANTRA, one of its Ultraverse titles. It ended in 1996 due to a series of bad business and creative decisions, first on the part of the management staff of Malibu Comics, and then by the leadership of Marvel Comics, which had only lately purchased it.

Mantra vanished along with the rest of the Ultraverse.  Out of all the darkness, there came a faint light five years later.  The stories of Aladdin started to appear, new tales of Mantra (published at Fictionmania.tv) which were professional in quality and presented a Mantra that ran true to the original. But Mantra's revival in fan-fiction was to be sadly brief. 

In all, Aladdin completed five stories inspired by Mantra's adventures. The last of them was Part I of a two part adventure called “The Wounded World.” It was intended to be concluded with a follow up, “The Twilight of the Gods.” Unfortunately, the pesky business of making a living foiled Aladdin's intention to bring out the latter story, at least to date. The text of “Twilight of the Gods” does exist, fortunately, as something between a rough draft and a very detailed outline. 

As an admirer of Aladdin's work, I made contact with the author. I must have made a pest of myself, urging Aladdin to, somehow, find time enough to finish the uncompleted novel. I was told that work has been keeping him pinned down. Nonetheless, he held out a hope that he could eventually go back to fan writing after retirement. Finally, I could wait no long and made the best of Ultraverse fan writers an offer. I would finish and revise “Twilight of the Gods” myself, if he pledged to give me as much editing and creative advice as he had time for. The last part was important; I wanted to turn out a finished product that held on to as much of Aladdin's original vision as possible. In exchange, we would be considered joint authors. It was an immense vote of confidence that Aladdin said "Yes." 

Consequently, I have started working on The Twilight of the Gods, based upon Aladdin's original work. It will be slow going, considering that I am currently working on the next "Eerie, AZ" novella, The Belle of Eerie, Arizona. The latter I hope to have ready for posting in about a year.

Okay, given that background, why, one might ask, am I offering what amounts to a third project, The Wounded World, starting today?

The reason is not so simple. Aladdin and I agree that readers would find Twilight of the Gods hard to understand if readers do not first get familiar with events of The Wounded World, which sets up the universe-shattering conflicts that Mantra struggles to resolve in The Twilight of the Gods. So, while I am putting most of my time into writing and editing the other two books, I'll also be doing some rather light editing on The Wounded World and posting it chapter by chapter into my personal TFTGS space.

The effort will take more than a year, but should leave me time enough to work on the other books also. Readers of TFTGS will be presented with a roughly 10-page chapter each month. My readers at TFTGS will already be familiar with this posting method.  Anyway, segmented adventures should be familiar enough to comic book fans.

As editor, I have made this pledge to Aladdin: That he will have approval rights over all modifications done to his original work. Incidentally, that is the best relationship that all authors and editors should seek to achieve. Too often, editorial ego gets in the way of smooth cooperation. Bad editing is more the rule than the exception. I will make it a priority to change that.

Now a word from Aladdin himself.

A NOTE FROM ALADDIN, Sept. 2018

I've just read the introduction that Christopher has prepared for his readers at The Full TG Show. I am as pleased as can be to work with such a skillful writer, who is, by the way, a great fan of Mantra. I think that his and my outlook on adventure fiction strongly coincides. What I was trying to do with Mantra, he has been doing for years with his many different characters in many different settings.

Most of my reading is non-fiction.  As a fiction reader, I am not easy to please. I can go through hundreds of story descriptions at a site without finding one that intrigues me enough to read. Especially in the tg category, I want action stories, not fetish stories. I'm looking for strong and logical plotlines and three-dimensional characters. 

Though few works of fiction out in the world meet my standards, I can honestly say that I have read every one of Christoper's posted stories, and have read them all more than once. Because of our long correspondence, I had the temerity to ask if I might read everything he has written, even his unposted stories.  The latter exist in rough drafts and intriguing fragments. I only wish he had more work to share with me.

But lets look back at the beginning. How did I discover Mantra?  I saw a Marvel comic ad in 1995 presenting one of the last Mantra magazines to be published.  I'd never heard of the character, but she sounded super-great. In a flurry of collector-comic buying, I soon had every story that Mantra had appeared in. (Imagine to my horror to learn that this wonderful character was to be retired only two months later!) 

After reading those approximately 30 stories, I was dejected that there might never be any more. I was slow at getting interested in the internet, but after getting hooked up with the internet, I observed that the many works of fiction were posted there, and comic book fan fiction was one of the most common types.  I consequently started writing and posting original fan fiction about Mantra. 

Pretty soon, I made contact with Mike Barr, Mantra's creator, and did a series of interviews with him. I asked Mike every conceivable question that I could think of and he graciously answered to the best of his knowledge. What I sought from the comic pro was everything he knew about the life, personality, and background of Mantra, and also about her friends, enemies, and associates. The material I got was great, and much of it suggested plot elements for stories that Mike never got the chance to write. 

Incidentally, in interviewing Mr. Barr, I learned that certain ideas that have long been held up as fact in the fan community are actually quite mistaken. For instance, it is commonly said that Mantra's powers were, during the ghastly event called "Black September," transferred to her young friend Lauren Sherwood, who became “the new Mantra.” This never happened. What I drew from Mike was that Lauren had her own potential for gaining Mantra-like power. This potential was established in Mantra #20, when the demonic Wiley Wolf used his sorcery upon Lauren to remake her into a cats-paw super villain whom he could use to attack Mantra. When the influence of Wiley Wolf was removed, Lauren's awakened powers went dormant. They reappeared at the time of Black September, apparently due to the forces released by the Infinity Gems. 

And why did Mantra's story line call for a loss of her powers? One has to understand the crisis existing in the comic market at the time.  After a short boom market, a disastrous contraction was harming many companies. What was happening was not well understood and some company managers, including Malibu's, rushed to save the day, using poorly thought-out false fixes.  Surely only a state of panic could account for what they did to the best independent comic company that was then in existence. 

The most unfortunate business decision they made was to sell their company to Marvel, instead of stalling for time, perhaps by using bankruptcy proceedings.  If Malibu had done this, they would have gained some precious months and Hollywood would have come to their rescue.  The sad fact is that, shortly after the sale to Marvel, Inc., movie makers made an offer to do a movie based on Malibu's title, the Men in Black, and eventually made a series of four different movies. Marvel had just closed the deal on the Malibu purchase, so the money came flooding into Marvel' coffers.  This windfall, if Malibu had still been independent, could have saved both the company and its Ultraverse.

But instead the owners went for a quick cash-out, accepting, along with the money, the empty promise that Marvel would preserve Malibu as a semi-independent line, with its executives continuing.  (Oddly, these same executives decided to downsize, and most of the best writers at Malibu either quit or were let go. But far from being independent, Marvel soon started demanding that their new property should yield a better return on the investment. To stimulate sales, the latter (blame them, not Marvel) concocted the idea for a mega-event called "Black September," which would rewrite the history of the Ultraverse.  The disaster hit the stands in September, 1995. When bewildered fans saw what the new Ultraverse was going to be like, many of the most diehard fans decided to give up on it. Their worst move, absolutely, was to think they could continue MANTRA Magazine without Mantra!

How did that come about?  Well, the management staff was guessing that Mantra, as a tg character, was too controversial for the Marvel-type market they wanted to acquire. This was illogical, since Marvel's fans had all the Marvel comics they could afford. The plan should have been to reassure the Malibu fans that the comics they loved would continue coming unchanged.  This should have been especially true of MANTRA, which had always been one of the top sellers at Malibu. Nonetheless, Mr. Barr was ordered to replace Eden Blake with a 100% woman as the lead.

Mike, with regret, developed a plan to let Eden lose her mystic powers while the powers of a teenage girl who lived nearby were awakened.  As much as fans loathed the cancellations and the changes that had come to the other Malibu comics, they especially loathed the changes in Mantra. While the new character might have been okay playing a sidekick to Mantra, she was a lightweight compared to the charismatic and mature original Mantra.  The comic dragged on for about 6 more issues and then expired. With Marvel itself facing bankruptcy in those tough times, Malibu very soon became a victim of cost-cutting. The last Malibu issue come out in January, 1997.

Another secret that Mike Barr confided to me concerned the origin of Mantra's friend Pinnacle. I liked what I was hearing and so worked Mike's idea into “The Wounded World,” as a major motivator for Pinnacle's actions during that story.

Why did I choose to form a partnership with Christopher Leeson instead of revising THE WOUNDED WORLD on my own? Basically, I had had time to work on Mantra about a dozen years ago, and then my work situation changed and I just couldn't afford to divide my energies. Even though I've wanted to go back and re-polish all my Mantra work, I haven't been able to get around to it. I'm therefore delighted that Christopher has offered to do a new edit of THE WOUNDED WORLD as an introduction to the never-before-seen THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. The finished parts of the editing have been impressive. He has made the story even better. And how can I find fault with a situation that takes so much work off my own shoulders? I'm very eager to see how he eventually cleans up and polishes THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS.

In regards to that story, many things that may seem mysterious in THE WOUNDED WORLD will be clarified in TWILIGHT. I can't believe that twelve years have passed since I suspended work on my Mantra series. Many people said good things about it back then, and I greatly hope that all who enjoyed Mantra's new adventures in the past will come back and enjoy equally the future posting of TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. Also, we hope that we can introduce many more new readers to the world of Mantra. The original series ended almost 23 years ago. There's a whole new generation of readers that has grown up in the meantime.

By the way, I have also enjoyed Christopher's recent novella, "The Falling Star." It is set in the Ultraverse, and makes some references to characters in the Malibu pantheon.  He has lately brought up an idea in which his character, Jezebel Watcher, a fallen angel on a mission, meets Mantra. I can't wait for that one, and I've already offered him as much help as he might be willing to accept.

For now, grab your popcorn and enjoy “The Wounded World.”

CHAPTER ONE

THE LITTLE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE,

When God commanded this hand to write

In the studious hours of deep midnight,

He told me that all I wrote should prove

The bane of all that on Earth I love.

                William Blake 

I have walked a strange and terrible highway, as, I think, the following pages shall make clear. The sorrows and trials that I have undergone have changed me. Worse, I’m not sure whether that these changes shall be for good or ill. I have, I believe, seen something of what mortal kind is not usually allowed to see. If I have learned anything by it, it’s that the tools that we use to understand the universe – sight and sound, taste and touch – are woefully inadequate.

And I have learned that the very world universe is too small a descriptor to encompass everything that exists.
 
I  do not know how long I shall be able to hold such an experience within my human memory. Out of a fear that it will slip away, I am applying all my energy and will to set down what I have experienced. It the readers I may have someday find it hard to believe, well, you can include me in your club.

The beginning is the most acceptable place to start a story, but where, exactly, did my story begin? Beginnings, middles, and endings are taken for granted. But what I have been confronted with has made such safe and commonplace concepts seem hard to apply.

#

Armageddon began, for me at least, when I took my family to The Mall, which is the largest shopping center in the L.A. suburb of Canoga Park. School had only lately started and some of the teachers started out by asking their students to bring in some special supplies that they didn’t have as yet. For that reason, on the evening of September the fourteenth, we were searching the aisles of the Target store, looking for things on our list.

I was new to school shopping, just as I was still new to parenthood. Where I am today I haven’t come to by an easy road. Just a year before, I’d been living in a fog of rebellion. I was in revolt against the whole idea of accepting a new sex, a new life, and a new family. In bitter denial, I had tried to stay away from “home” as much as possible. The kids were strangers to me and I wanted to keep them that way. They were often surprised and even frightened by the behavior of their supposed mother. Their grandmother, Barbara Freeman, stepped forward and filled in for my absences. The poor woman thought her daughter was suffering from emotional problems and kept nagging me about having psychological counseling. I had, of course, ignored her, and so it had fallen on her shoulders to get the kids ready for the previous school year.

Her line of thinking was reasonable enough, of course, but it was off the mark. Mrs. Freeman still, to this day, doesn't know that her only daughter, Eden Blake, died two years ago. I still don’t want to tell her that a man she’d never met, the man whom Eden had loved, had mystically taken possession her body. I can’t let myself get started on that topic. I’ve told that part of the story before.

Barbara had never heard the name Lukasz Theodoricson, but that, in fact, is who I was – in everything except shape. I’d started living Eden’s life from a dark place, but, little by little, the sun started to break the clouds. It’s hard to stay angry endlessly. It is also hard to hate the body and the life of one who I had loved dearly. I started to remember, that before she’d died, I wanted to be a parent for her children.

But my old life had entirely crashed and I had nothing left of it to salvage. Everything that I had been trying to accomplish for more than fifteen hundred years had turned into a shambles. Eden had saved my life and her daughter’s life by giving them over to me and by my willing acceptance of it, I’d started seeing everything differently. I’d come to understand that such a gift like hers was nothing to refuse lightly. To make a long story short, after a rough start, the parenting routine had started to feel natural. When I was on Thursday night, seeing how Gus and Evie were explored with fascination the colorful merchandise arrayed in front of us, I was actually having a good time. I even started to believe that it might be fun to take them out Christmas shopping later in the year.

That would be December. How audacious it now seems to suppose that I know where I will be, and who will be with me., in three months. Since my astonishing experience, time has come to represent a strange and daunting thing. But on that day of September 14, I still did not know what I know now. At the time, I was suspecting no danger. I was as unsuspecting as were the Indonesian islanders under the first smoke of Krakatoa in 1883.

We were passing by the writing supplies in the back-to-school section of Target when Evie asked me, “Mommy, can I get some eraser tops? I chewed the rubber off my best pencil.”

I frowned down at the dark-haired girl. "Evie! It's not healthy to chew on some dirty old pencil eraser. Do you want to get sick?"

"It wasn't my fault!" she answered back. "The eraser kept getting into my mouth and I was chewing it without thinking about it."

"Pencils can't climb into people's mouths,” I said. “People have to put them there. You're too big a girl to be chewing on objects that aren't good for you."

"I know, Mommy," she sighed glumly.

"Knowing is important," I told her, "but what good is knowing if you don't do the right thing once you know?"

"Do you always do the right thing, Mommy?"

She had me there! I've pulled thousands of dirty tricks in my time. "Nobody can be right all the time," I finally said. "But everybody has to try to do the best he can. Think about it. People do a lot of things they shouldn’t even while they’re trying to be good. The world would be a terrible mess if most people weren't at least trying to do their best."

While the youngster seemed to consider this bit of wisdom, I scanned the pen and pencil display and espied a packet containing ten eraser heads. I took a pack and handed it to Evie. "Will this do?"

"Oh, yeah!" she chirped. Then she let her attention stray for the umpteenth time. "Look at the ultra tablets! They didn't have them in the other store."

I glanced down and saw several neat stacks of writing tablets with photographs of well-known ultra heroes on their covers. They represented the crème de la crème from among the most popular vigilantes. Prime's stack had only a couple left, but Warstrike's didn't seem to be moving at all well. I noted that there was a Mantra cover, too, and had to scowl. It had a picture that I'd never posed for. The model was wearing cheap facsimile of my armor and she was physically no Eden Blake. Whoever had hired her didn't do justice to the real deal. Another thing that I noted was that Mantra's stack was higher than Prime's. I suppose that there could have been a rush on Mantra tablets and the shelf had already been restocked. Or maybe not. Using a skinny model that didn't fit the bill to fit Mantra certainly might have hurt sales.

"Evie, do you really need another tablet?"

"I like the pictures. Can I have a Contrary?"

I looked askance.

"She's pretty," Evie explained.

"Isn't Mantra pretty, too?"

The Evie grimaced uncomfortably. "Oh, sure. But Mantra is pretty like a mommy. She's not hot like Contrary!"

I was amazed. "Evie Blake, how do you know what's hot and what's not at your age?"

"The big guys say she’s hot."

"What big guys?"

"The fourth graders!"

I crossed my arms. "Well, that wolf-pack would certainly know what they're talking about. Doesn't anyone at school think that Mantra is hot?"

"I do!" put in Gus, now entering our aisle. "Mantra's hotter than Contrary. And she sure doesn't look like anybody's mom!"

She looks like your mom, Junior, I thought. I also thought that it seemed odd that I didn't care for my daughter comparing me unfavorably to Contrary, while at the same time I was embarrassed by the fact that my son thought Mantra was even hotter.

"She does so look like a mommy!" declared Evie.

"Ultra ladies are never moms! I know because I read the comics."

"They could be, if they wanted to!" the little girl insisted. "Even movie stars have babies!"

"Having kids are for dorks," Gus pontificated.

I picked up a Contrary tablet and handed it to Evie. I also took one of Mantra's. I'm a sucker for buying Mantra collectibles. I might have been doing something right. By ultra work had made Mantra a celebrity with a following, especially among schoolgirls. I wondered what they would they think if they knew my real history?

"By your rules I'm a dork, too," I told Gus. "Thanks for setting me straight." I looked about. "You kids are getting loud; people are frowning at us."

"Just shove them!" declared Gus. "Why do we always have to worry about what other people think?"

I sighed. Junior was well on his way to becoming a grumpy teenager.

"You should care about making people dislike you when don't have to," I explained. “If you wind up with a bad reputation, you'll have a harder life." He shook his head, pugnaciously unconvinced.

"Come on. We'll pay for this stuff and get something to eat at The Kids' Club before we go home."

The Club was on the Mall’s second floor. The serving line was a long one and Evie and Gus hurried to get in queue in front of me. Standing behind them, straining to see the menu, I suddenly started to register a feeling of being watched. On my guard, I peered around. Just behind me was a short, stout man with a round face and red hair. He was staring and he didn’t blench when my eyes met his.

Well, he was either bold or exceptionally rude. Finding people with bad manners wasn't too unusual, since Eden Blake was an eye-catcher whose looks sometimes inspired people to do crazy things. She could have made it as a supermodel, I think, if she hadn't opted instead for the riches and glamour of marriage, family, divorce, and a telemarketer’s career. Because I'm not especially thin-skinned, I didn’t slug the guy, and I wouldn’t, not unless he did something stupid.

I though I looked toward the front, I continued to watch him from the corner of my eye.

Ouch!

He’d moved fast and must have stuck me with something! I swung about, ready to demonstrate my Aladdin-style fighting techniques, but ---

But he wasn't there.

I hadn’t even taken my eyes off him, except when the paid made me blink, so how how could a man of flesh and bone have disappeared so quickly? Something was screwy.

Worst than screwy. A strange feeling swept over me.

Damn the luck! Had the creep injected me with some sort of drug? Poison, even?

The lunch line started moving like a sped-up film.  The queue accelerated to the speed of a freight train, until everything and everyone around me faded into a blur.

I tried to see, and when my eyes cleared up, I had a sunlit view of --
A parking lot..

#

Dazed, I found myself leaning against a green sedan. While I collected my thoughts, I noted a motel sign in front of me. What was I doing here -- wherever here was? What could possibly have carried me away from a shopping mall and out to some cheap motel?

And something else was wrong.

I had glanced at my watch. It was seven after eight -- in the morning, obviously. What had happened to the missing hours? Where were the kids? Because there was an eerie familiarly to what had just happened, a crazy thought came to mind. Was I still myself?

This is a question that wouldn't have occurred to most people, but I've been spontaneously switching from one body to another since long before Mohamed met the angel. Likewise, I'm used to being thrown into strange locations and situations without preparation. The last time that this sort of thing had happened to me, I'd become a suburban mother of two.

It didn't take more than a downward glance to confirm that I was still a woman, but was I still Eden Blake?

I turned and squinted at my reflection in the car window. With relief, I saw Eden's face.

Slightly calmed, I took stock. I wasn't wearing the jeans and pullover that I'd had on at the mall. Instead, I was dressed in a blue-skirted suit with a silk ascot. In my hand I held my familiar purse. Though I recognized this outfit from my closet, I couldn't remember changing into it. Was it possible that someone was controlling me, making me do things that I couldn't remember afterwards? Or was I sleepwalking?

There had to be a reason for this. Had something strange happened because that red-headed man had shoved some sort of crap into my bloodstream?

I didn't feel sleepy or drugged, just confused -- and who wouldn't have felt so in my situation?

Don't fly off the handle, Lukasz. Don't attract attention.

Okay, I was still Eden Blake. I felt fit and my face looked fine. As far as I could tell, nothing nefarious had been done to me, at least physically. Some thirteen hours had passed, however, and that time would had to be accounted for. The only thing I was sure of was that I was in front of a motel, an Econo Lodge. This was a well-known franchise catering to less-affluent travelers. Well, that fit, considering that my family was living from hand to mouth on child support and a government job.

First things first. I needed to get the address of my location to serve as a reference point. Straightening up, I walked toward the motel office. Under the shade of its canopy, I noticed a mailbox and checked the address stamped on it.

San Francisco.

What? How had I ended up in San Francisco?

Why would I ever have wanted to visit to the nuttiest town in the West?

Perplexedly, I passed through the glass doors and entered the tiny lobby, hoping that something I'd see would bring back my missing memory. The clerk, a Latino lady, glanced up brightly. "Meesees Blake, isn't eet? How are you thees morning?"

She knew me. Motel clerks didn't know out-of-towners, not unless they're current guests. On impulse, I checked my purse and found a motel key. The Econo Lodge logos and a room number were embossed on the violet plastic keyholder. I glanced back at the clerk. "Oh, I'm fine," I said. "I just thought for a minute that I'd lost my key, but here it is under some tissues."

The clerk smiled blandly and nodded. I turned and went back outside. There was no obvious menace in sight, so I reasoned that my next step should be to check out the room that I, apparently, had rented.

In front of my unit our family car was parked. I shook myself. Chances were that some sort of game was afoot, and when strangers invite me into some kind of game, it usually turns out to be painful and bloody.

I put the key into the lock and turned it. At the last instant, I decided to summon up my magical forcefield. An ultra never knows when he’ll be walking into a hail of machine-gun slugs, or something worse.

That is, I tried to call up my shielding, but nothing happened. To my dismay, I felt as inert as a stick of firewood. The magic just wasn't coming. Concentrating harder failed to light the spark. I didn't like this one little bit! What was wrong with me?

As I tottered there on high heels, someone inside must have heard me or seen me through the window and now opened the door. The knob, as it swung away, slipped from my fumbling grasp and I found myself looking into a face that I knew well.

Very, very well.

#

My daughter Evie looked nonplussed, as if surprised to see me. Glancing over her head, I saw that she was alone; also, the room seemed to be crammed with a broad selection of our personal belongings. Whatever was going on, our relocation seemed to have been a serious one.

"You just left, Mommy. Did you forget something?"

Oh, brother, had I!

I stepped past the little girl, trying to make sense of things. The queen-sized bed, newly made, was the only furnishing not loaded with boxes and cartons. What had happened? Just fourteen hours earlier, we had had no plans to go out of town, and yet here we were -- in San Francisco, no less -- with enough luggage to fill a pickup. Was I on the run? Had someone discovered my Mantra identity and forced me to go to ground? I sat down on the bed, bemused. Evie then stepped up, her brow arched with uncertainty.

"Wasn't the Jack-in-the-Box open?" she asked.

The Jack-in-the-Box was a fast food franchise, I knew. "Oh, you want breakfast?"

"Yeah."

"Sorry. I didn't get over there yet. I wanted to...to look in on you. Is everything all right?"

I saw some slight hesitation in her wide blue eyes. "I guess so. Did you see something else bad outside, Mommy? Is that why you came right back?"

Something else bad? The way she'd phrased that question made me wary. "How are Grandma and Gus?" I asked, as nonchalantly as possible.

Evie looked at me wonderingly. "Grandma was okay last night. Don't you remember that we talked to her? And Gus, he's still in jail, isn't he?"

"Jail?"

If I was trying to sound natural, I wasn't doing a good job. I decided to drop the subtlety. "Evie, these questions of mine sound funny, don't they?"

She nodded.

"Something just happened."

"Something bad?" Her little hands tightened into fists.

The tyke needed reassurance, so I enveloped her softly into my arms. "Evie, I sort of need your help."

She spoke to my shoulder. "Are you okay? You don't feel sick, do you?"

I rested my chin on her shampoo-scented head. "Shhh, it's not like that. It's just that I -- I suddenly seem to have...forgotten a few things. Did I seem all right when I was with you before...before I went out to the Jack-in-the-Box?"

"You seemed okay, 'cept that you still weren't Mantra."

Still weren't Mantra? Oh, brother, this was bad! My powers hadn't just glitched out momentarily. They'd been missing long enough for Evie to know about it.

"Evie, I don't know why it is, but the last thing I remember was us being in The Mall last night, standing in line to buy dinner at the Kids' Club."

She gave a jump. "No, Mommy! That was last Thursday!"

She'd said Thursday like it was a hundred years ago. "What day is it now?" I asked.

"It's Wednesday."

"Wednesday the twentieth?"

"Yeah!"

This was getting scarier and scarier.

"Darling, did something...bad...happen since Thursday? I can't remember anything about the last six days."

I felt her tremble. "You can't have forgot, Mommy!"

"Please, sweetie, tell me what I've forgotten."

“Did you forget Friday, too?”

“I’m afraid that I have.”

"What happened happened right after you got home Friday. We were all so afraid!"

She was still afraid. Evie had always been amazingly brave. What in Creation could have put her into such a state? Did it have anything to do with my sudden loss of magic?

Gently, I ventured to ask, "Evie, is there some grownup who knows about the bad thing that happened? I'd like to talk to that person, so you won't have to remember and be scared."

She shook her head. "There's just Lauren. Gus tried to kill her, too."

"G-Gus? Gus tried to kill his babysitter – and somebody else?"

She nodded.

Oh, brother!  What kind of mad world had I awakened into?


TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 2....