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At last the weekend was over. What had been acheived was anyones guess, certainly Truella couldn’t have said if it had been a success from the organizers point of view or not.  One thing was abundantly clear: the witches were not cut from the same cloth as the nuns and the pious gravity of some of them had been anathema to the witches. But not all of them, it had to be said.

When Truella had wandered into the library, ostensibly to look for material on the frog sisters, but in reality just wanting a break from the constant presence of so many others, she was initially disheartened to find someone else had the same idea. Sassafras was curled up in an armchair poring over an old journal.  She started guiltily when Truella walked in and quickly closed the leather bound volume.

“Oh please, don’t mind me. Carry on reading,” Truella reassured her, “I just came in here for a break. Point me in the direction of the local history section and I’ll not bother you.”

“Are you interested in the local history?” Sassafras asked, genuinely curious.

“Obsessed, more like!” Truella laughed, and proceeded to tell the story of the dig in her garden.  She hadn’t intended to go into such detail and at such length, but Sassafras was interested and asked all the right questions.

“You seem very knowledgable about the history of the area,” Truella was prompted to invite Sassafras to come to her house to see what she’d uncovered.  “I assume they let you out of here sometimes.”

Sassafras laughed. “Not very often, but I escape. I tell them I’m collecting herbs in the woods.   Want to know a secret?” she leaned forward and lowered her voice.  “I’m not really a nun, I’m only here because of the place. This place,” she sighed and her eyes had a faraway look, “This place, the history, oh my dear you have no idea, it’s rich beyond imagining for ancient history.”

The conversation that ensued had been illuminating for both of them, and they had agreed to keep in contact.  Sassafras had given Truella a bundle of old journals to smuggle out of the Cloisters, written in the early 16th century.

Now all Truella had to do was get the journals home without being detected. It would require an effective cloaking spell, and she wished she had more confidence in her own magic.

The obvious place to start with investigations into the history of the Morticians Guild was to question Rufus.  But first she needed to think. Truella made her way to her room, and locked the door.  At least now that Eris was back so soon, Truella was free to let Eris get on with whatever she was doing. After lowering the blinds at the windows, she lay back on the bed and closed her eyes.  As she started to drift off to sleep, an imaginary conversation ran through her head.

Rufus: “The Morticians’ Guild, originally known as the ‘Necro-Keepers,’ trace their lineage back to ancient Egypt. They were the guardians of rites that ensured the safe passage of souls to the afterlife. Over millennia, they adapted and evolved, absorbing arcane knowledge from various cultures—the Greeks with their Eleusinian Mysteries, the Romans with their burial rites, even the Celtic traditions of Samhain.”

Truella: “That’s fascinating. So, this ancient craft has been handed down through generations?”

Rufus: “Precisely. While Hildegarde von Bingen brought enlightenment and medicinal wisdom to her nuns in the 12th century, the Morticians’ practices were already etched in the annals of history. They operated in silence, often in the shadows, perfecting the skills of embalming, necromancy, and spirit communication.”

Truella: “And what about their presence here, in this coven merger?”

Rufus: “We’ve been called upon at times of great need, when balance must be maintained between the living and the dead. Our presence here isn’t coincidental. The dragons and ancient spirits awaken, and we, the keepers, ensure that not all realms collide irreversibly.”

Truella: “So, would you say the Guild has played a role in significant historical events?”

Rufus: “Indeed. We’ve been the unsung heroes, the silent watchers. From plagues to wars, ensuring the dead find peace and don’t linger to disrupt the world of the living. Our methods may have modernized, but our core purpose remains unchanged. The knowledge, the rituals—they are our legacy.”

Truella: “Thank you, Rufus. That’s more fascinating than a year’s worth of ancient spellbooks.”

Rufus:  “You’re welcome, Truella. Just remember, history isn’t merely dates and names; it’s living through us, weaving its magic continuously.”

“Wait! Look at that one up there!” Truella grabbed Rufus’s arm. “That cloth hanging right up there by the rafters, see it? Have you got a torch, it’s so dark up there.”

Obligingly, Rufus pulled a torch out of his leather coat pocket.  “That looks like…”

“Brother Bartolo!” Truella finished for him in a whisper.  “Why is there an ancient tapestry of him, with all those frog faced nuns?”

Rufus felt dizzy and clutched the bannisters to steady himself. It was all coming back to him in a rush: images and sounds crowded his mind, malodorous wafts assailed his nostrils.

“Why, whatever is the matter?  You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Come, come and sit down in my room.”

“Don’t you remember?” Rufus asked, with a note of desperation in his voice. “You remember now, don’t you?”

“Come,” Truella insisted, tugging his arm. “Not here on the stairs.”

Rufus allowed Truella to lead him to her room, rubbing a hand over his eyes. He was so damn hot in this leather coat.  The memories had first chilled him to the bone, and then a prickly sweat broke out.

Leading him into her room, Truella closed and locked the door behind them.  “You look so hot,” she said softly and reached up to slide the heavy coat from his shoulders.  They were close now, very close.  “Take it off, darling, take it all off. We can talk later.”

Rufus didn’t wait to be asked twice. He slipped out of his clothes quickly as Truella’s dress fell to the floor. She bent down to remove her undergarments, and raised her head slowly. She gasped, not once but twice, the second time when her eyes were level with his manly chest.  The Punic frog amulet! It was identical to the one she had found in her dig.

A terrible thought crossed her mind. Had he stolen it? Or were there two of them?  Were they connected to the frog faced sisters?  But she would think about all that later.

“Darling,” she breathed, “It’s been so long….”

When they arrived at the hotel, the witches soon realized they were not the only uninvited guests here. With her keen sense of observation, Eris was the first to spot the traces left by an army of bedbugs. Tiny droppings on the mattresses and linen, blood stains left after the previous guests crushed the bugs while rolling in their bed. And the smell of dead rats was everywhere. Did they even have a cleaning staff here? When they complained, the hotel manager said: “Why do you care? Nobody comes here to sleep during carnival?”

Jeezel noticed the bug reference. Indeed, something was still bugging her after she had closed the portal. Something that should be obvious, yet was still an eyelash away from her grasp. But something more pressing was at stake. She posted pictures of the rooms and a reel of her disappointed face in front of the disaster.

“I was so happy to come to Rio for the first time. But the light is yellow and flickering. How can I show you how to do a proper Carnival makeup,” she said fluttering her eyelashes. As soon as the sound of a message well sent faded out,  she started to receive support and love from her fans.

“Rio is not like that!”

“Somebody help.”

“2 bad! I’m on business trip. Wud hav luv to meet ya there!”

The sounds of likes and comments alerted Malové.

“What have you done! We were here incognito. Why don’t you go to the top of Jesus’s head and cast the Tempestarii Overture spell.”

“I could have! That would have gone viral. But we departed in such a hurry, I have left all my sapphires and stilettos in Limerick. You can’t cast that spell without them. Anyway, we don’t have to stay longer in that cesspit. One of my fans is abroad and has offered us to stay in his villa. Look at the pics! It looks as lush and gorgeous as a Jurassic park.”

Truella widened her eyes and said: “Saying that’s a big property would be an understatement. Roger would have loved to come with his new shovel.”

“Don’t even think of casting a second bilocation spell,” said Frigella. “You already look like deflated soufflé.”

“What’s the catch?” asked Eris with frown. “It looks like the kind of golden cage a king pin would own. But they have a pool.”

“He said we just have to feed the dwarf crocodiles while we are there,” said Jeezel nonplussed, looking at Truella whose eyes were ready to pop off of their sockets. Then she looked at Malové. “What do you say? You’re the eld…head witch of our coven.”

Malové’s eyebrow twitched. She was thinking fast. Little signs here and there, the orientation of the statues, the fountain, the placement of rocks that would look so random to a profane or a younger witch. Ancient earth magic? It was difficult to be sure with the framing of the pictures. Jeezel was swiping all the pictures her fan had sent her, hoping such glamour and mystery would melt Malové’s last reluctance.

“Omg! girls, we can’t refuse!” said Jeezel. “He’s got a bloat of pygmy hippos and a flamboyance of flamingos!”

As the drag witch continued to swipe the pictures, a prickle crept up Malové’s spine when she saw a familiar face amongst them.

“Look at him!” shouted Jeezel. “He’s a Gatsby with a spellbook.”

There were no more doubts for Malové about the kind of magic that had been used to build his empire. Augustus St Clair, a powerful witch indeed, and one whose invitation you couldn’t refuse especially since he now knew she was here. As one of the elders of the Rio’s witches community, she had danced the dance of rivals disguised as allies, a pas de deux filled with forced smiles and tight grips. Her words felt like needles scratching her lips when she uttered them: “Tell him we accept his invitation.”

The shouts of joy and disbelief coming from the witches couldn’t appease the memories that had resurfaced.

The soft candle light on the altar created moving patterns on the walls draped with velvets and satins. The boudoir was the sanctuary where Jeezel weaved her magic. The patterns on the tapestries changed with her mood, and that night they were a blend of light and dark, electricity made them crackle like lightning in a mid afternoon summer storm.

The altar was a beautifully crafted mahogany table with each legs like a spindle from Sleeping Beauty’s own spinning wheel, but there was no sleeping done here. On her left, her vanity with her collection of wigs, each one a masterpiece styled to perfection, in every shade you could imagine. Tonight, she had chosen the red one. It was a fiery cascade of passion and power, the kind of red that stops traffic. Jeezel needed the confidence and boldness imbued in it to cast the potent Concordia spell.

The air was thick with the perfume of white sage. Lumina, Jeezel’s nine tailed fox familiar, was curled-up on a couch adorned with mystical silver runes pulsating with magic, her muzzle buried in the fur of her nine tails. Her eyes half closed, she was observing Jeezel’s preparation on the altar. The witch had lit a magical fire to heat a cauldron that’s seen more spells than a dictionary.

Jeezel had carefully selected a playlist as harmonious and uplifting as the spell itself, to make a symphony of sounds that would weave together like the most exquisite lace front on a show-stopping wig. She wanted it to be an auditory journey to the highest peaks of harmony that would support her during the casting.

As the precious moon water began to simmer, Jeezel creased the rose petals and the lavender in her hands before she delicately dropped them in the cauldron. The scent rose to her nose and she stirred clockwise with a wand made of the finest willow, while invoking thoughts of unity and shared purpose. The jittery patterns on the walls started to form temporary clusters. A change of colour in the liquid informed the witch it was time to add a drizzle of honey. Jeezel watched as it swirled into the potion, casting a golden glow that promised to mend fences and build bridges. The walls were full of harmonious ripples undulating gently in a soothing manner.

Once the honey was completely melted, Jeezel dropped in an amethyst crystal, whose radiating power would purify the concoction. The potion started to bubble and the glow on the tapestries turned an ugly dark red. Jeezel frowned, wondering if she had done something wrong.

“Stay focused,” said the fox in a brisk voice. “Good. The team energy is fighting back. Plant your stiletto heels firmly into the catwalk, and remember the pageant.”

The familiar’s tawny eyes glowed and the music changed to the emergency song. Jeezel felt an infusion of warm and steady energy from Lumina and started humming in sync with The Ride of the Valkyries. She stirred and chanted, every gesture filled with fiery confidence. The walls glowed darker and the potion hissed. But in the end, it was tamed. The original playlist had resumed to the grand finale. A gentle yet powerful orchestral swell that encapsulated the essence of unity and understanding, wrapping the boudoir and the potion in a sonic embrace that would banish drama and pettiness to the back of the chorus.

Jeezel released the dove feather into the brew, then finished with a sprinkle of glitter with a flourish. And it was done.

“Was the glitter necessary?” asked Lumina.

“Why not? It can’t do any harm.”

The fox jumped from the couch and looked at the potion.

“It’s sparkling like the twinkle in your eye when you hit the stage. It’s ready. Well done.”

Jeezel strained it with grace and poured it into the most fabulous vial she could find, and she sealed it with a kiss.

Jeezel opened Flick Flock and started typing a message to Roland.

The potion is ready. I’m sending it to you through the usual way.

[…]

As you use the potion, you’ll have to perform a kind of team building ritual that will help channel the potion’s power and bring your team together like sequins on a gown, darling.

Fist, dim the lights and set the stage with a circle of candles. Then gather around in the circle with your team, each of you holding a small vial of the potion. Next, take turns sharing something positive, a compliment or an expression of gratitude about the person to your left. It’s about building up that positive energy, getting the good vibes flowing like champagne at a gala.

Once the air is thick with love and camaraderie, each team member will add a drop of the Concordia potion to a communal bowl placed in the center of the circle as a symbol of unity, like a magical melting pot of harmony and shared intentions.

With the power of the potion pooling together, join hands (even if they’re not the touchy-feely types) and my familiar will guide you in an enchanting and rhythmic chant.

Finally with a climactic “clink” of glass of crystal, you’ll all seal the deal, the potion will be activated, and the spell cast.

I can affirm you, your team will be tighter than my corset after Thanksgiving dinner, ready to slay the day with peace and productivity.

Let’s get this done. And don’t forget to add a testimony and click the thumb up.

xoxox Jeezel.

“And that, my Dear Reader, is why, even to this day, a traffic cone is called a witches hat.”

It was the boy’s favourite bed-time story and Frigella had read it so many times she knew it nearly by heart. She twisted her neck so she could look down on the child; his breathing was soft, the bedside light illuminated long white lashes resting on chubby cheeks. Slowly… silently, she closed the book, switched off the night lamp and edged herself from the bed. She was very keen to log on to the Ritual and see what progress, if any, Eris had made.

The encounter with Truella and Jeezel that afternoon down at the Cabbage had disturbed her. It was not like them … Truella pouting and mutinous, Jeezel swaggering in so full of her own self-importance. And herself! Blushing and snorting and carrying on for no reason when it was her very nature to be composed. They had always worked as a team, the four of them; it was their strength.

Was some powerful magic afoot that had got through their protection? Perhaps Eris had found something. Her nose twitched and she realised she could still smell it, a pungent uneasiness. Like stale smoke.

“Aunt Friggy?”

She sighed. Her brother had made her promise not to use magic on the child but surely just a wee sprinkle of moon dust couldn’t hurt?

“Yes Conor?”

“Are witches true?”

She sat down on the bed.

“What does your Daddy say?” She stroked the child’s yellow-blond hair. Silky, like her own. He looked more like her than he did his own parents with his alabaster skin and eyes that changed colour like the sea. Always watching he was too, as though he was looking to the very heart of a matter. Just like herself. She was sure he had inherited the gift but Lorcon was having none of that nonsense and had told her so in no uncertain terms. The boy would suffer for it in time though. Just like she had when it had been denied.

“He said Conor don’t be so daft.”

Of course he did. Lorcon clung frantically to his normal life with his normal wife. Tonight she was baby-sitting Conor while they went on a normal date night. Still, she should not be so hard on Lorcon; it was a strange upbringing they’d had themselves.

She kissed the boy’s forehead and breathed deeply. The sweet scent of night jasmin washed over her. At least she’d be there for Conor. The thought consoled her.

“Shall I leave the light on for you, Poppet?”

Zara took the notebook to the door of the hut where there was more light.  The notebook fell open in the middle.  A poem was written:

In the dry and dusty Outback land,

Where once gold was king and gold was grand,

Now a new treasure has taken hold,

A precious resource worth more than gold.

It flows beneath the sun-baked ground,

And in its depths, a fortune’s found,

For golfers come from far and wide,

To play on greens that should have died.

The mines that once lay abandoned and still,

Now hold the key to this water’s thrill,

For deep within their shadowed halls,

The liquid flows and never stalls.

But this is no natural spring,

The water here is a stolen thing,

Drilled and pumped with greedy hands,

To feed the golf course’s demands.

And so the land is left to bake,

While the greens stay lush and never break,

A crime against the thirsty earth,

A selfish act of financial worth.

For water is the lifeblood of this place,

A scarce resource that they should embrace,

Instead, they steal and hoard and sell,

A priceless gem, a living well.

So let us remember,

as we play and roam,

That water is not a thing to own,

But a gift from nature, pure and true,

That we must cherish and protect anew.

Golf!  Zara wasn’t expecting that!  As she closed the notebook she noticed a green pool had appeared just outside the hut, which had not been there before she found the poem.  Pool! Water!  Those green pools of water!

Zara almost dived headlong into the pool, and then remembered this was a group exercise and that she really ought to find out where the others were and share her finds with them.  

Perhaps it was the approaching storm that was the cause of the annoying inability to fall asleep, and when Zara had had enough of the bizarre juxtapositions of the hypnagogic images flashing before her closed eyelids,  she gave up trying and switched the bedside light on.  Often she felt restless before a storm, not really a fear of danger but an alertness to the power and the agitation of it.  A bit like having one strong coffee too many and wishing you hadn’t.

Zara padded over to the door barefoot, and opened it a crack.  Silence, and dark but for a night light in the hall and a distant light on the porch.  Quietly Zara made her way to the verandah. The night air washed over her face and made her smile and breathe deeply. She felt her self relaxing, and reminded herself that she was supposed to be relaxing, it was a holiday after all.  There was something in the air though, something she couldn’t nail down. A restlessness in the air.  It was as if something wanted to come to light, come out in the open, and yet an approaching dust storm threatened to obscure even the most obvious of things.

“May as well sit up and have a glass of wine when it’s like this,” Aunt Idle said when Zara had finished her deep breathing relaxing mental turmoil exercises and had eventually turned to sit down at one of the tables.  “Fetch a glass over there and come and join me. Ever been in a dust storm in a lager and cart race?”

Zara welcomed the distraction and smiled encouragingly and said that she had not.

“Oh, I could tell you a tale or two about dust storms and cart races,”  Aunt Idle said, and then drifted off into silent reverie. Zara refilled their glasses with wine. “Do tell,” she said, “Tell me a tale about dust storms and cart races.”

To Youssef’s standards, a plane was never big and Flight AL357 was even smaller. When he found his seat, he had to ask a sweaty Chinese man and a snorting woman in a suit with a bowl cut and pink almond shaped glasses to move out so he could squeeze himself in the small space allotted to economy class passengers. On his right, an old lady looked at the size of his arms and almost lost her teeth. She snapped her mouth shut just in time and returned quickly to her magazine. Her hands were trembling and Youssef couldn’t tell if she was annoyed or something else.

The pilote announced they were ready to leave and Youssef sighed with relief. Which was short lived when he got the first bump on the back of his seat. He looked back, apologising to the woman with the bowl cut on his left. Behind him was a kid wearing a false moustache and chewing like a cow. He was swinging his tiny legs, hitting the back of Youssef’s seat with the regularity of a metronome. The kid blew his gum until the bubble exploded. The mother looked ready to open fire if Youssef started to complain. He turned back again and tried to imagine he was getting a massage in one of those Japanese shiatsu chairs you find in some airports.

The woman in front of him had thrown her very blond hair atop her seat and it was all over his screen. The old lady looked at him and offered him a gum. He wondered how she could chew gums with her false teeth, and kindly declined. The woman with the bowl cut and pink glasses started to talk to her sweaty neighbour in Chinese. The man looked at Youssef as if he had been caught by a tiger and was going to get eaten alive. His eyes were begging for help.

As the plane started to move, the old woman started to talk.

« Hi, I’m Gladys. I am afraid of flying, she said. Can I hold your hand during take off ? »

After another bump on his back, Youssef sighed. It was going to be a long flight for everyone.

As soon as they had gained altitude, Youssef let go of the old woman’s hand. She hadn’t stopped talking about her daughter and how she was going to be happy to see her again. The flight attendant passed by with a trolley and offered them a drink and a bag of peanuts. The old woman took a glass of red wine. Youssef was tempted to take a coke and dip the hair of the woman in front of him in it. He had seen a video on LooTube recently with a girl in a similar situation. She had stuck gum and lollypops in the hair of her nemesis, dipped a few strands in her soda and clipped strands randomly with her nail cutter. He could ask the old woman one of her gums, but thought that if a girl could do it, it would certainly not go well for him if he tried.

Instead he asked the flight attendant if there was wifi on board. Sadly there was none. He had hoped at least the could play the game and catch up with his friends during that long flight to Sydney.

When the doors opened, Youssef thought he was free of them all. He was tired, his back hurt, and he couldn’t sleep because the kid behind him kept crying and kicking, the food looked like it had been regurgitated twice by a yak, and the old chatty woman had drained his batteries. She said she wouldn’t sleep on a plane because she had to put her dentures in a glass for hygiene reasons and feared someone would steal them while she had her eyes closed.

He walked with long strides in the corridors up to the custom counters and picked a line, eager to put as much distance between him and the other passengers. Xavier had sent him a message saying he was arriving in Sydney in a few hours. Youssef thought it would be nice to change his flight so that they could go together to Alice Spring. He could do some time with a friend for a change.

His bushy hair stood on end when he heard the voice of the old woman just behind him. He wondered how she had managed to catch up so fast. He saw a small cart driving away.

« I wanted to tell, Gladys said, it was such a nice flight in your company. How long have you before your flight to Alice? We can have a coffee together. »

Youssef mentally said sorry to his friend. He couldn’t wait for the next flight.

Although not one to remember dreams very often, Zara awoke the next morning with vivid and colourful dream recall.  She wondered if it was something to do with the dreamtime mural on the wall of her room.  If this turned out to be the case, she considered painting some murals on her bedroom wall back at the Bungwalley Valley animal rescue centre when she got home.

Zara and Idle had hit it off immediately, chatting and laughing on the verandah after supper.   Idle told her a bit about the local area and the mines.  Despite Bert’s warnings, she wanted to see them. They were only an hour away from the inn.

When she retired to her room for the night, she looked on the internet for more information. The more she read online about the mines, the more intrigued she became.

“Interestingly there are no actual houses left from the original township. The common explanation is that a rumour spread that there was gold hidden in the walls of the houses and consequently they were knocked down by people believing there was ‘gold in them there walls”. Of course it was only a rumour. No gold was found.”

“Miners attracted to the area originally by the garnets, found alluvial and reef gold at Arltunga…”

Garnets!  Zara recalled the story her friend had told her about finding a cursed garnet near a fort in St Augustine in Florida.  Apparently there were a number of mines that one could visit:

“the MacDonnell Range Reef Mine, the Christmas Reef Mine, the Golden Chance Mine, the Joker Mine and the Great Western Mine all of which are worth a visit.”

Zara imagined Xavier making a crack about the Joker Mine, and wondered why it had been named that.

“The whole area is preserved as though the inhabitants simply walked away from it only yesterday. The curious visitor who walks just a little way off the paths will see signs of previous habitation. Old pieces of meat safes, pieces of rusted wire, rusted cans, and pieces of broken glass litter the ground. There is nothing of great importance but each little shard is reminder of the people who once lived and worked here.”

I wonder if Bert will take me there, Zara wondered. If not, maybe one of the others can pick up a hire car when they arrive at Alice.   Might even be best not to tell anyone at the inn where they were going.  Funny coincidence the nearest town was called Alice ~ it was already beginning to seem like some kind of rabbit hole she was falling into.

Undecided whether to play some more of the game which had ended abruptly upon encountering the blue robed vendor, Zara decided not to and picked up the book on Dreamtime that was on the bedside table.

“Some of the ancestors or spirit beings inhabiting the Dreamtime become one with parts of the landscape, such as rocks or trees…”  Flicking through the book, she read random excerpts.   “A mythic map of Australia would show thousands of characters, varying in their importance, but all in some way connected with the land. Some emerged at their specific sites and stayed spiritually in that vicinity. Others came from somewhere else and went somewhere else. Many were shape changing, transformed from or into human beings or natural species, or into natural features such as rocks but all left something of their spiritual essence at the places noted in their stories….”

Thousands of characters. Zara smiled sleepily, recalling the many stories she and her friends had written together over the years.

“People come and go but the Land, and stories about the Land, stay. This is a wisdom that takes lifetimes of listening, observing and experiencing … There is a deep understanding of human nature and the environment… sites hold ‘feelings’ which cannot be described in physical terms… subtle feelings that resonate through the bodies of these people… It is only when talking and being with these people that these ‘feelings’ can truly be appreciated. This is… the intangible reality of these people…..”

With such strong ancestral connections to the land, Zara couldn’t help but wonder what the aboriginal people felt about all the mines.   If one of their ancestors had shape changed into rocks, and then some foreignors came along and hacked and blasted their way through, what would they think of that?

“….many Aboriginal groups widely distributed across the Australian continent all appeared to share variations of a single (common) myth telling of an unusually powerful, often creative, often dangerous snake or serpent of sometimes enormous size closely associated with the rainbows, rain, rivers, and deep waterholes…..”

She drifted off to sleep thinking of water holes in red rocky gorges, the book laying open in her hand.

When she awoke the next morning with the slatted morning sun shining through the venetian blinds,  the dream image of the water hole was bright and clear in her minds eye.  But what was that strange character from the game doing in her dream?

She closed her eyes, remembering more of the strange dream.  Deeply orange red boulders and rocky outcrops, shivering gum trees, and green pools ~ it was coming back to her now, that creature in the blue robes had appeared more than once.  In one scene he appeared with a blue diamond lantern with what looked like a compass inside.

I’ll ask about the hiking trails today, Zara decided, and go for a walk in that gorge I read about yesterday. Bert said there were good hiking trails.   You came here early so you could play the game, she reminded herself.

“It’s all a game,” she heard the parrot outside her window.

“I’d forgotten about the bloody parrot!” Zara said under her breath. “Pretty Girl!” she said, opening the blinds. “We’re going out for a walk today.”

Yasmin was having a hard time with the heavy rains and mosquitoes in the real-world. She couldn’t seem to make a lot of progress on finding the snorting imp. She was feeling discouraged and unsure of what to do next.

Suddenly, an emoji of a snake appeared on her screen. It seemed to be slithering and wriggling, as if it was trying to grab her attention. Without hesitation, Yasmin clicked on the emoji.

She was taken to a new area in the game, where the ground was covered in tall grass and the sky was dark and stormy. She could see the snorting imp in the distance, but it was surrounded by a group of dangerous-looking snakes.

Clue unlocked It sounds like you’re having a hard time in the real world, but don’t let that discourage you in the game. The snorting imp is nearby and it seems like the snakes are guarding it. You’ll have to be brave and quick to catch it. Remember, the snorting imp represents your determination and bravery in real life.

Rude!  thought Yasmin. Telling me I’m having a hard time!  And I’m supposed to be the brains of the group! Suddenly the screen went blank. “Oh blimmin dodgy internet!” she moaned.

“Road’s closed with the flooding,” said a man from the kitchen door. Yasmin didn’t know him; he had a tinge of an accent and took up a lot of space in the doorway. “They reckon it should be clear by tomorrow though.”

“Fred!” Sister Aliti looked up from chopping yam and beamed. She pointed her knife at Yasmin who was washing the breakfast dishes. “Have you met Yasmin? One of our new volunteers. Such a good girl.” The knife circled towards the door. “Yasmin this is Fred – Fred drives the van for us when we are too busy to do it ourselves. So very kind.” She smiled fondly at the man.

Fred nodded and, taking a step into the kitchen, he stuck a hand towards Yasmin. She quickly wiped her damp hands on her skirt before taking it. Fred’s hand was brown and weathered like his face and he gripped her fingers firmly.

“Nice to meet you Yasmin. So where are you from?”

“Oh, um, I’ve been living in London most recently but originally from Manchester.” Yasmin noticed he had a snake tattoo curling up his inner  bicep, over his shoulder and disappearing under his black singlet. “Is your accent Australian?”

A flicker of a frown crossed Fred’s face and Yasmin felt anxious. “Sorry,” she mumbled, although she wasn’t sure what for. “It’s just I’m visiting soon …”

“Yeah, originally. But I’ve not been back home for while.” His eyes drifted to the kitchen window and stayed there. For a moment, they all watched the rain pelt against the glass.

Sister Aliti broke the silence. “Fred’s a writer,” she said sounding like a proud mother.

“Oh, that’s so cool! What do you write?” Yasmin immediately worried she’d been too nosy again. “I’ve always wanted to write!” she added brightly which wasn’t true, she’d never given it much thought. Realising this, and to her horror, she snort laughed.

Fred dragged his eyes back from the window and looked at her with amusement. “Yeah? Well you should go for it!” He turned to Sister Aliti. “Internet’s down again too with this weather,” He dug into the pocket of his shorts and dangled some keys in the air. “I’ll leave the van keys with you but I’ll be back tomorrow, if the rain’s stopped.” The keys clanked onto the bench.

“He’s such a chatterbox,” murmured Sister Aliti after Fred had gone and Yasmin laughed.

“Shall I put these in the office?” Yasmin gestured to the set of keys then gasped as she saw that on the keychain was a devilish looking imp grinning up at her.

“Look, Pretty Girl!  That must be the lost traveler walking up those steps!”

Zara followed the mysterious man in red robes up the steps.  She lost sight of him and wondered which way he’d gone in the many side alleys. She wandered up a few of them but they all came to a dead end in a courtyard with closed doors.  Eventually she saw him disappearing into a manhole that looked like a labyrinth.

Zara followed him, and stepped onto the labyrinth manhole that the man in the red robes had disappeared into.  

“That must be another portal,” Zara said to the parrot. “I wonder where we’ll end up now.”

The labyrinth manhole led Zara to another portal, this time a round hole in the wall. She knew she should follow the man, who must be the lost traveler, but she couldn’t resist exploring the starlit night scene first. 

She found herself in a castle, its sand coloured walls glowing in the moonlight.  There was another round green pool inside the castle. Should she jump into the pool, or go back and follow the man in red through the hole in the wall?   Zara walked around the castle first, exploring the many courtyards and stairs and the enchanting views from the parapets.  She noticed that there were several green pools and wondered if they each led to different places.