It Begins
When they entered the cabin, they saw that Crystal and Ruby had already placed the four travel
cushions in a neat row on the floor and had surrounded each square cushion with the requisite four
passage sticks, pieces from the original gateway door linking Faracadar with the world in which the
Goodacres lived with Aunt Alice. The jars of colorful powder twinkled brightly, lined up next to one
another on the table. Doshmisi remembered the warmth and sweet spicy scent that had greeted them
the previous year when they had arrived at the cabin, filled with questions. Crystal touched the jars of
powder tentatively with trembling fingers.
“Do you know how to do it?” Aunt Alice asked.
“Sort of,” Crystal replied. “We should have prepared for this better; we didn’t imagine that we
would lose Amethyst so soon.”
Aunt Alice ran her hand up and down Crystal’s arm in a comforting gesture. Amethyst was Crystal’s
mother. “Amethyst is watching,” Aunt Alice said.
Crystal smiled even as tears filled her eyes. “So she is,” Crystal agreed.
Knowing that time was short to gain information, Sonjay cut to the chase. “Quickly, tell us why you
came tonight. Why couldn’t you wait until Midsummer’s Eve?”
“Uh-oh,” Bayard insisted.
“Uh-oh is right,” Ruby confirmed. “Compost has laid siege to Big House City with an army of
Mountain People. They assembled outside the city a couple of weeks ago and surrounded it. They won’t
allow anyone in or out.”
“What do they want?” Denzel asked. “Have they made any demands?”
Ruby answered, “Well, they say they want the Staff of Shakabaz, even though they must realize that
it will not come to them now, after it went to Sonjay at the Battle of Truth. And they could never use it,
even if Cardamom handed it over to them, which he won’t of course. Sissrath has not appeared at Big
House City. We don’t know where he went or why Compost remains on his own. We can’t make sense
of any of it. We need your help.” Compost worked for Sissrath. The Four had defeated Sissrath with the
power of truth in a nonviolent protest the previous year. During that protest, which people referred to
as the Battle of Truth, the Staff of Shakabaz had chosen to move from Sissrath’s control into Sonjay’s
hand. As powerful as Sissrath was, he had not been able to prevent the staff from changing hands.
Sonjay had left the staff at Big House City under the watchful eye of the mighty enchanter Cardamom
for safe-keeping. The royal family that ruled Faracadar lived in the Big House at the center of Big House
City.
“Cardamom can’t do anything to stop the siege?” Sonjay questioned.
“He has not done anything so far,” Ruby replied.
“What about High Chief Hyacinth and the princess?” Maia asked. “Where are they?”
“The high chief is with Cardamom in the Big House. Princess Honeydew went to the Wolf Circle
with her mother a few months ago. She has begun studying how to use her powers as an enchantress.”
The Four were the princess’s distant cousins and part of the royal family through their mother’s
ancestors.

“Something doesn’t seem right about this,” Sonjay said.
“What do you mean?” Crystal asked.
“The siege doesn’t make sense,” Sonjay explained.
“I agree,” Crystal told him. “Jack visited us today. He was extremely distraught. He told us to bring
you to Faracadar and that prompted us to attempt to come before the appointed time.”
“What exactly did Jack say?” Doshmisi asked.
“You know how hard it is for him to put things into words. He said to come get you and he said
‘whales’ over and over again,” Ruby told her. “He also said ‘bad oil’. He plopped a large clump of algae
on the kitchen table.” Jack was an intuit. Intuits had psychic abilities and they could often see the future.
Jack was just a little boy, only six years old, and his intuit’s mind moved so quickly that he had trouble
talking clearly so other people often had a hard time understanding what he meant.
Doshmisi groaned. “Not the whales again,” she said to no one in particular. She loved the whales
and, unlike most other people, she could even hear them when they spoke, just as she could
communicate with the trees in their language. But the trees made sense to her while the whales talked in
poetry and Doshmisi had a hard time figuring out the meaning of the words the whales spoke to her.
She didn’t want to have to rely on the whales to explain anything to her in their poetic words,
Just then a startling crash came from outside the cabin. Aunt Alice and Crystal bolted, followed
closely by the others, with Zora yipping at their heels. Aunt Alice had grabbed the lantern on her way
out the door and she held it high to reveal Maia’s friend Elena sprawled on the ground next to an
overturned plastic bucket beneath one of the cabin windows.
“What are you doing here?” Aunt Alice blurted angrily.
“Who is this?” Crystal demanded.
“Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh,” Bayard squawked from his perch on Sonjay’s head.
Elena burst into tears. Maia hurried to her friend and helped her up off the ground. “Are you hurt?”
Maia asked softly as she picked leaves out of Elena’s long black hair and patted her arm. “You didn’t
hurt yourself did you?”
Elena sniffled and wiped her nose on the back of the sleeve of her pajama top, which she wore over
her jeans. “What is everyone doing out in the woods?” she asked.
“We tried not to wake you,” Maia told her friend, with a note of apology in her voice. “It’s hard to
explain.”
“You left me all alone at the house,” Elena complained.
“You’re a big girl, thirteen years old, don’t tell me you were afraid to be left alone,” Aunt Alice
snapped with annoyance.
“What are we going to do with her?” Denzel asked his aunt. “We’ve gotta go.”
“Can Ruby take her back to the house?” Doshmisi suggested.
“No,” Crystal said quickly, “she has to stay with me to learn how to do this.”
“I’ll take her back,” Aunt Alice said with a frustrated sigh.
“I don’t want to go back,” Elena declared as she stamped her foot. “Tell me what’s going on. Ayee!
Locos!”
“Latina firecracker,” Bayard squawked.

“Bayard, you are not helping this situation,” Sonjay told the bird.
Bayard eyed Elena and then flew to her shoulder, where he settled in a most dignified manner and
repeated, “Latina firecracker.”
“Gracias,” Elena said as she stroked Bayard’s head. “I think,” she added uncertainly, as it occurred to
her that Bayard may or may not have been paying her a compliment.
“Elena is amigamia, my friend,” Maia insisted. “We’ll bring her inside with us and then after we go,
Aunt Alice please try to explain to her what’s going on.” She turned to Elena and begged her, “Por favor,
just let us do what we have to do here and Aunt Alice will tell you about it after we leave.”
“Where are you going?” Elena asked.
“No time,” Crystal stated as she hurried back into the cabin. The others swiftly followed.
“Places everyone,” Ruby announced, as she clapped her hands. Sonjay, Maia, Denzel, and Doshmisi
collected their things and then each of them selected a cushion and sat down. Bayard flew from Elena’s
shoulder to Sonjay’s shoulder. While the children arranged themselves on the cushions, Crystal and
Ruby unscrewed the tops from the jars and mixed the powders into a bowl.
“What’s the day of the return?” Denzel asked.
“It would have been the fourteenth of Loma; but since we arrived early it could come sooner, so
make sure to go to Angel’s Gate by the first of the month and hopefully Cardamom can help you figure
out the return,” Crystal told them as she and Ruby approached with the bowl of colorful powder.
“Keep your hands and feet inside the passage sticks,” Aunt Alice cautioned, unnecessarily, since the
children had done this before and knew how it worked.
“Ready?” Crystal asked nervously.
“As ready as we’ll ever be,” Denzel replied.
“Wait,” Doshmisi said. She hopped off her cushion and went to Aunt Alice and gave her a big hug.
“See you again soon,” she told her.
Aunt Alice’s eyes filled with tears as she released her niece. “Get on up outta here.” She waved
Doshmisi back to the cushion. Zora barked and Aunt Alice picked her up.
Ruby and Crystal began to sprinkle the powder over the Four. Crystal said some strange words and
Ruby repeated them. Doshmisi noticed that they spoke the words much more tentatively than Amethyst
had spoken them. Her thoughts were suddenly interrupted by Elena, who burst across the room, her
shiny blue-black hair flying like a flag behind her as she jumped onto Maia’s cushion, where she flung
her arms around Maia and held on tight. Then Elena and Maia disappeared as Doshmisi felt herself
swept up in the twister of powders and whirled off as if sucked down a wind tunnel.