Abby of the Mer was super popular for a few days at school. Grandma had Isaac write down his experience in the sea for all the children to read as an extra assignment for Summer time. She wanted to make sure he didn’t forget his writing skills. Grandma made copies and let everyone read about his adventure. The children were so thrilled to hear about Dolphinian and the Mer people. They had so many questions for Abby. Joseph and Hannah were excited that everyone liked her so much. They felt at home in the castle after Grandma gave them a couple of rooms. Abby and Hannah shared a girl’s room and Zeek of the Shells and Joseph shared another one right next door. They spent time on the pirate’s ship keeping it clean and fixing anything broken in case the-river-that-comes-and-goes, came again and they could go sailing.
The girls enjoyed their time at the pool and the boys went exploring around the castle. Isaac trained them all on the best way to eat Gilly weed so they also explored the moat. Pigalletto was so excited to finally play with his buds from school in the water that his father, Piggy Fish, had a hard time getting him to leave his friends and come to dinner each night.
The summer time flew by. Pumpkin Fairy seemed a bit preoccupied with Halloween and frankly a bit too early but the children just dismissed it because they knew he was just that way.
One afternoon Leify invited Hannah Banana up to his room to play with Legos. They pulled out all the diagrams of things they could make and Leif decided to make a space ship. It took nearly the whole afternoon and for a snack Hannah went and made some banana ice cream shakes. They were delicious and Leify sucked his up through the straw so fast, at first, that he got a freezing headache for a little bit. The Lego space ship was nearly as tall as Hannah by the time they were done and she stood next to it to compare her height. It was late in the afternoon and she was a little bit sleepy. She stretched her arms wide out and above her head and yawned a huge yawn.
“Oh, sorry, I’m just a little bit tired” she exclaimed shaking her body awake. She looked around the room and walked over to the large round window over looking the grounds. There was a comfortable cushion and it looked very cozy. She sat leaning against the window sill cross legged looking into the room and watched as Leif put the finishing touches on his ship.
“There, all done” he explained. “Now we just need to send it into orbit. Prepare to launch”.
Just then Hannah felt a vibration in the window sill she was sitting in.
“Leif, what was that?” Leif walked over to the window and noticed that the wall connecting the little round window sill to the room was partly detached.
“I don’t know”, he sat in the window sill and continued his dialogue with his pretend ship.
“Engage the engines, fuel check, oxygen check, seatbelts… launch on my mark in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three…..
Leify fell on his back side into the round window sill with Hannah. The window was shaking violently and was completely detached from the wall except for a few wires that seemed to be wanting to break. There was a large roaring sound and Leif and Hannah sat frozen in the round window sill. Leif knew what was happening and suddenly with out really thinking about the consequences, he blurted out
“…TWO, ONE, BLAST OFF!”
The window sill (now rocket) slowly inched its way up the side of the castle. Where the opening to room had been, a sliding mechanical round door rotated from inside the sill to close off the cube shaped hull. The inching up the castle became faster and faster. Hannah and Leify searched around for something to hold on to and from the top of the ceiling an opening appeared. Two chairs with seatbelts and helmets started sliding down into the sill of the window. The children squished their bodies against the side of the walls to make room for the chairs to lock down into place and they both scampered into the four strap seatbelts pulling their helmets on. By this time the ship had detached from the castle and was gaining altitude as it shot into the sky.
“WOAAAAAAAH” they both shouted as they launched into space clutching the arms of the chairs. They could both hear each other through the helmets. And Hannah screamed as they jiggled their way up, up, up into the sky
“DID YOU KNOW THIS WAS A ROCKET SHIP?”
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Isaac walked into the room and felt like something was missing or different but he didn’t really register what it was. He looked around and didn’t really notice anything at first. He walked back out after changing into his swim suit and grabbing his towel and he headed down the stairs to the pool. Half way down he stopped. His eyes got wide and he turned and ran back up to the room.
There the window sill was there was just a big piece of glass covering the area.
“What happened to the window sill?” He yelled.
He looked at the pile of Legos in the middle of the floor. The vibrations had tipped the creation over in a heap of partially connected pieces of a space ship.
“The whole window, it’s just gone!” Isaac explained to the wizard and Grandma after the general alarm had provoked nearly everyone to Isaac’s room.
“Oh ho ho!” laughed Wizard Helmstead. “How exciting, they found it”. He and Sivart the Genie winked at each other.
“Found what?” said Pinko and Malcolm in chorus.
Suddenly Wizard Helmstead and Sivart the Genie were fully engaged in an animated and excited whispering conversation. They exited the room walking quickly and talking rapidly. Grandma’s eye got wide and her face flushed like she had just remembered something.
“Woah”, she said “They took off!”
Meanwhile, Leify and Hannah sped toward outer space and were soon in orbit around the earth. The earth was blue, brown, green and white and much like a bouncy ball they could reach out and play with.
They both had been quite silent since Hannah had yelled her question to Leify. They could hear each other breathing through their helmets and could nearly hear the pounding of each other’s hearts. This, by far was the biggest surprise Leify had ever encountered in Grandma’s castle. When they were finally calm and the ship was sailing smoothly through space, Leify turned his head toward Hannah and smiled. “You ok?” he whispered
“Wow, that was incredible” Hannah sighed.
They both felt like whispering as they drank in the quietness of space. The earth was so peaceful from this distance. With their noses pressed against the glass of their helmets they stared wide eyed at the incredible view they were experiencing. Leify blew puffs of his breath against the helmet glass and trying to look at the moisture collected from it, made his eyes go crossed and Hannah giggled at his silly face.
The ship started to pick up speed and headed back toward earth. A thick gooey solution spit out from the top and like jello covered the whole ship in a protective shield. Leify guessed it was for the re-entry into the earth's atmosphere. He remembered from school, that coming into the earth’s atmosphere made things burn up and that it was very dangerous. (This is why all the stuff floating through space that would normally hit the earth, usually burns up and dissipates before it gets to the earth.) Hannah and Leify did notice what seemed like fire dancing on the ship window for several minutes while they hurried toward the green and blue bouncy ball (which was getting bigger and bigger). They didn’t feel any heat though, and Leify sighed a breath of relief.
He was still a bit nervous though because the ship seemed to be on a course all its own and the children had no control over it. Hannah and Leify watched as the bouncy ball earth got bigger and bigger and soon they could not see the edges of the circle and they seemed to be heading straight into… Straight into…
“LEIFY, We’re going to land in the water. There’s nothing but water there!”
And indeed they were speeding to the very middle of the Pacific Ocean and it seemed like there was nothing but water everywhere.
However, as the little ship got closer and closer to the surface, Hannah yelled “Look, an Island!”
Just then the top of the ship shifted open and the small middle part of the ship where the children were sitting was thrust out and up. Leify and Hannah felt suspended in the air for a minute and watched the rest of the space ship crash into the ocean. But then they started coming down, and coming down fast.
Just before they had time to be really afraid, two large parachutes opened and they decelerated to a slow comfortable speed dropping right on the beach of a small Island in the Pacific.
Back at the castle, Sivart and the Wizard were busy in the wizard’s house with Grandma charting where the ship would have taken the children for its first ride.
“We programmed it to take the children to a place that was personally significant to them. Let’s think, what’s a really important place to Leify?”
Isaac, peeking his head in to listen, blurted out,
“Leify just likes space. He’s always wanted to go up and fly around”.
“What are you doing here little one?” Sivart said.
“Um, he’s my brother and I was worried” Isaac said sheepishly, realizing that he probably wasn’t invited in the conversation.
“Well that’s ok, said Grandma as she lifted Isaac onto her huge tummy lap to listen to the Wizard.
“Space huh?” the Wizard mused. “Well, that would mean they would come right back down to earth—back to the castle or Leify’s original home in the jar on top of the fridge, but I didn’t put any special shrinking potions in it. We should be careful. Grandma, take the jar on top of the fridge out on top of the castle in case the ship tries to come back to that place. We wouldn’t want it coming through the kitchen ceiling would we? I’ll blow it up a little bigger so Leif can at least land safely in there with out damaging anything.”
“but what about Hannah Isaac said. What is important to her?”
“Well I suppose the pirate ship, so that should not be too difficult to land on, right?”
Everyone in the room was quietly thinking the same thing. But what was REALLY important to Hannah? Where was she really from? Where was her home?
Grandma was the first to say anything “Go and get Zeek, Joe and Abby. Perhaps they can help us know what place is important to Hannah”.
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Leify and Hannah crawled out of the pod and took off their helmets.
“Where are we?” Leify said?
“I don’t know but I feel so alive here and so comfortable breathing this air. It’s like it is filling my whole body with nutrition and strength”
“You are weird” Leify said scrunching up his forehead. “What in the world are you talking about?”
Leify crawled back in the space pod looking for some supplies and food. He found a small first aid/survival kit, some power bars, water and two emergency blankets in a small pack. He donned the back pack and rolling up the parachutes he took all the supplies to a near-by cluster of palm trees.
“We need to make a shelter for tonight. Help me please.”
The children were too small to really cut and carry much so they took the strings from the parachute and tied them in a round “ish” shape in the middle of a bunch of trees. They collected some soft dry seaweed from the beach and placed it under the new ceiling and then put the other parachute on the ground for a floor.
“There, that’s good.”
It was getting late and the sun was getting lower in the sky. They children found some matches in the pack and placing rocks in a circle just like at the camp out, they made a little fire from some dry drift wood on the beach. They drank their water and munched on the power bars.
They both talked excitedly about the adventure they had had that day and soon their eyes got heavy and curling up with the emergency blankets, they both fell fast asleep.
The next morning Hannah stirred in bed. She felt satin sheets and soft pillows and realized subconsciously that she must still be dreaming. She snuggled deeper in her blanket. “Wow, this is a nice dream” she thought.
Hannah had to use the bathroom so she rubbed her eyes and expecting to see a parachute ceiling, instead was surprised to see a beautiful and ornate delicately carved ceiling of crown molding. Where was Leify and was she? She jerked awake and sat up in bed.
A young maid near her bedroom door bowed softly to her. “Wow, what a vivid dream!” Hannah said out loud.
Rubbing her eyes again she looked around the room and saw Leify on a soft couch in the corner. She was afraid that she was still dreaming and would pee in her bed if she didn’t wake up but she couldn’t wait.
“Um, where is the bathroom?” she asked the maid.
The girl pointed to an opening on the North wall and Hannah slipped out of the large soft bed. Noticing that she was dressed in a soft comfortable nightgown, she quickly tip toed over to the door and walked into a bathroom as big and beautiful as grandma’s hot tub room.
“I don’t think I’m dreaming” Hannah said as she washed her hands and dried them on a soft thick fluffy towel hanging on a golden rod attached to the wall in the bathroom.
“Leify!” she whispered loudly to her very still friend on the couch.
“Urnnnnggg” Leify mumbled as he rolled over on his side. “Just a few more minutes.”
“Leify Nosompos, wake up”, she said shaking his shoulder and commanding in a much more bold voice. Everyone knew that waking Leify was almost impossible.
Leify opened his eyes for a moment and then closed them up. He seemed unphased by the ornate décor surrounding him but a few moments later his eyes shot wide open and he too sat straight up in bed.
“Where are we?” he exclaimed.
Just then, the double door (where the pretty young maid had stood) opened majestically and in walked what must have been some kind of king or something. He was dressed in a long flowing and very colorful robe, His head was wrapped in a bright orange turban, his jewelry hung off his neck, his ears, and arms in similar colorful tones. Around his neck he wore a strangely familiar pendent.
“Good morning” he said in a deep commanding voice.
"I trust you slept well?"
