Excerpt: My Dad and his Enchanted Artifacts

“I’ve got to go look at my hair,” Carrie said, and I followed her into our bedroom. Though of course she had seen her new hairstyle at Miss Debbie’s salon, she wanted to view it again after having seen the photo of Mother. She walked to the mirror and gazed into it.

Instead of her face, we both saw, sitting on the table opposite the mirror, a small box of dark wood with gold inlay, gold hinges, and a gold lock. “OK, what is that?” asked my sister.

“Offhand, I’d say it was Mother’s jewelry box,” I replied.

“Oh, no,” groaned Carrie. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, no, what?”

“If the mirror’s right—and it’s never not been right—some time between now and this time tomorrow, you’re going to go up to the attic and poke around and bring down Mother’s jewelry box, aren’t you, Amy Lynn? With or without Dad’s permission.”

“Why me?” I demanded. “What are you implying, Carrie Dodge?”

“What do you mean, why you? You’re always the one to go poking around where you don’t belong, and messing about with potentially dangerous magic.”

I sighed. “Just because that thing appeared in the mirror… look, it’s still there. Anyway, just because we’re seeing it in our room, it doesn’t necessarily follow that I’m the guy who’s going to find it and bring it down here.”

“Well, I’m certainly not going to!” Carrie interrupted.

“OK, fine. But there’s nothing saying that Dad might not find it before tomorrow and give it to us. He did say he’d find it and let us have it at some point. So maybe he’ll get inspired to go looking for it. And even if I did go into the attic—not that I’m inclined to do that, because of, well, you know why—but if I did go up there, and say I did find that thing, and it ends up being Mother’s jewelry box, why are you automatically assuming that it’s magical? Much less that it’s ‘potentially dangerous magic’?” I quoted her. “Not everything is magical, Carrie. Lots of stuff in this house that we use every day is just plain old mundane stuff, you know. Not every last pencil and teacup and toothbrush is an enchanted artifact. Not every darn book on the shelf is some sort of grimoire,” I ranted, waving a hand toward our bookshelf. “And really, the only dangerous thing we’ve got in the house right now is the screen, and we figured it out pretty quickly and nobody got hurt. The snow globe is safely packed away, and we also figured that one out as well. And yeah, I guess the glove could be pretty dangerous in the wrong hands—”

“On the wrong hand, you mean,” Carrie said, but with a suppressed giggle. “And we gave it back to its rightful owner, so if he’s out committing violent acts with it, it’s at least not here any more. OK, I’ll give you that much. All the magical items we’ve come across, we’ve managed to neutralize, like the screen, or take out of harm’s way, like the snow globe. And the pitcher really doesn’t do much, though I suppose if it decided to materialize upside your head, you’d think it was plenty dangerous. So maybe I’m being paranoid, but Amy Lynn, doesn’t it seem to you that everything that has to do with our Mother has some sort of magical significance?”

“No. Not really.”

“You’re being obtuse, Amy Lynn. Look at the clock.”

“It held her wedding band hidden in the three, and the hands were stuck at three o’clock and it only chimed at three,” I said. “I remember. But once we removed the ring, it went back to being a regular clock. The pitcher wasn’t Mother’s, it was Old Mrs. Delaney’s. The mirror wasn’t hers, the screen wasn’t hers, the snow globe wasn’t hers, the glove sure as heck wasn’t hers,” I ticked them off on my fingers.

Carrie was silent a moment, gazing at me thoughtfully. “OK, and what is the common denominator in all these incidents?” she asked quietly.

“What do you mean, common denominator?” I asked.
“The one thing all those objects have in common. Us, Amy Lynn. All of those things have come to us. Dad seems immune to them, or at least immune to their magic. Maybe he’s the magnet for them, maybe not. But they’ve all ended up in our possession, and we’re the people who figured out what they did and what they could be used for.”

I sat down on the edge of my bed. “So it’s not even Mother who’s got the magical significance, then.”

“Maybe not. Maybe it’s just us.”

I leapt to my feet. “OK, then. I’m going to play along.”

“Where are you going?” she cried.

“I’m going to the attic,” I said. “I’ve got to look for that jewelry box.”