bits and pieces of magic that had come down to her with the tales. So I drew the sign that would ensure he would know no peace until he returned the box to my hands.
I eyed the box, and while my head was down, muttered in a whisper, “I bind you now, oh box, to me, by the power of three times three, return return return to me.”
“What was that?”
“I was praying,” I said, straightening and handing him the paper. “That you would take mercy on an innocent orphan girl and not steal from her the last thing her dead grandmother gave to her.”
His eyes held mine for a long moment.
“I promise you will regret it if you don’t,” I added, letting my fury show in my face.
His marble eyes narrowed angrily. “It will be shipped to you when it clears the Department of Antiquities. Now go, before you miss your flight.”
I kept on staring. He thrust out an arm. “Go!” he shouted.
I knew I would be arrested if I stayed, so I went, feeling I had failed my grandmother utterly.
I didn’t see the box again for ten years.
Chapter Two
1992, Cortland, NY
I wasn’t much for television. At twenty-four, I was more concerned with finishing my final semester of university and doing freelance editing for a small publishing house on the side. It kept my writing skills honed, and it paid decently. And since I intended to be a successful author one day, it was nice to be working in what I considered my field.
Thoughts of Babylonian witches and curses and such rarely entered my busy brain anymore. And though the memory of that treasure chest haunted me, I’d pretty much written off the story—the mission—that had been given to me along with it. My grandmother had been only a few breaths away from her last, and heavily medicated. The stories she’d been telling and retelling to me, the ones her own mother had told to her and that went all the way back to the roots of our family tree, had probably seemed real to her, just as they had to me in my childhood. But it was easy to confuse a story that old, that much a part of the family, for something true, especially in a dying, morphine-muddled mind. And easy for a child of four—or one of thirteen—to get swept up in the delusion.
So I tried not to think too much about how I’d lost the box or how I’d failed to keep my vow to my dying grandmother, and I told myself it didn’t matter so much.
Until I saw the box again.
As I said, I wasn’t much for television, but I shared a house with seven other students, so the thing was always on. And as I walked through the living room one evening on my way to the library, feeling stylish in my black leggings with a long sweater over them and my backpack slung over my shoulder, I stopped in my tracks, fixated on the TV screen, where my gidaty’s prize possession was being handled by a TV show host.
“It’s a reproduction,” the man said, turning the box this way and that, examining it as if he were a doctor and my grandmother’s treasure chest his patient. “But a very good one.”
“How can you be sure?” asked the gorgeous blonde who’d handed it to him. She had big hair. I wondered how she got it so high. In the nineties women in the U.S. had become like male lions, the bigger the mane, the more status they had. And hers was massive. Or she was from Texas. One or the other. My own hair was perpetually flat, sleek and black. There was nothing I could do about that.
“See these paintings on the bottom?” the man said as he turned the box over. “Someone added these after the box was made, so it’s not in its original condition. I believe they’re the images of various Tarot cards—except this one, which looks Egyptian. And the locking mechanism is…something I’ve never seen before. This padlock here—” he jiggled the black iron lock in his hand “—it’s got no keyhole. I have no idea how this box would open, or if it even does.”
The blonde blinked like a cartoon kitten. I could almost hear the plink-plunk of strings that went along with the motion. “Why would anyone make a lock that doesn’t open?”
“I have no idea. As a joke, perhaps?” The man set the box on the table. “You say you’ve never opened it?”
“No. But we haven’t had it that long.”
“It’s a fascinating piece,” he said. “Where did you ever find it?”
“My fiancé brought it back from the Gulf War.”
I shivered.
The host nodded. “Please thank him for his service for us. I think this box’s true value is something other than monetary.” He slid it across the table toward her.
“Are you saying it’s not worth anything?”
Wide eyes now. And kind of empty. Like her head, I thought.
“Two hundred dollars, perhaps. But I think your husband should keep it.”
“Fiancé,” she corrected.
One of the roommates had been saying my name over and over, but I was ignoring her because the lettering on the bottom of the screen had the woman’s name: Glenda Montgomery from Akron, Ohio. I burned it into my mind as the show went to a commercial.
“Amarrah, are you okay? What’s up? You never watch TV.”
I blinked. “I thought I knew her. But, um, I was wrong.”
I have to go to Ohio, I thought.
But you can’t. You’ve got finals coming up.
Not for two weeks. That’s plenty of time to get there and get back.
Don’t be ridiculous. How will you even find her?
Not her. Him. She said it belonged to her fiancé.
Still…
All the way to the library I was having this inner argument. I didn’t have a lot of money, but Ohio wouldn’t be an impossible drive, and I did have a decent car. I could take my books with me, try to get as many assignments in advance as I could and cram for finals on the road.
It could be done.
The notion just wouldn’t leave me alone. And when I slept that night, I swore my grandmother was standing over my bed, shouting at me. “You must go, Amarrah! You must go and get the box! You promised me!”
And from there I dissolved into an image from the story. I was thirteen and very dirty, dressed in rags, with bruises on my arms and face. I’d finished my chores and run to play along the edges of the riverbank, where the grasses were tall and lush, and there I’d spotted a beautiful boy swinging a sword as if in the heat of battle with some invisible enemy.
Hiding behind the tall reeds, I watched, fascinated by him, until he tripped over a stone and fell on his face. I couldn’t quite suppress my giggle.
He spotted me, frowned and pushed himself up, brushing the dust off his clothes. “Come on out, girl. I
