#OriginalFiction – November 5

It felt good to feel the air on her face. She never really noticed how still closed spaces were until she came out of them. The air, the sun, it all felt right.

She gave her eyes a minute to adjust to the sunlight, then did a closer examination of the box. It was dull gray and rusted. The outside of the lock was in fairly bad shape. She wondered how she would get it open.

It was tempting to just drop the box on the ground, or perhaps even walk the few more feet to the river and drop it in there, but she had learned better. When the magic wanted something, the magic wanted it. And just because it had allowed her to leave the shack, it did not mean she had been released.

For now, the goal was to get the box safely to her room and then to find a way to open it.

The walk home took less than ten minutes. Not long, but long enough carrying a good sized, almost heavy, metal box, to make her arms and shoulder ache, for a twinge to start in her back. Also long enough to think about a plan.

Her grandfather had collected old keys. Her mother had not thrown them all out. She knew where a few stashes still were hidden. She did not know that one of those keys would actually open the box, but figured it was worth trying. The magic often had a plan, and so by the logic of magic, it seemed possible that one of her grandfather’s keys would fit.

The problem, of course, would be getting them without raising too much suspicion. She did not like to go into the old shed where her grandfather’s odds and ends were kept. She would have to find a time when no one else was home or get someone else to do it for her.

She pondered that. Most people did not understand the magic, and the magic often seemed to disappear if she tried to show someone a piece of it, or even tried to tell them. But the magic seemed to like her brother. She had once fallen through a brick wall he was trying to lift her over. The magic did not find him the way it found her, but he knew of it, understood the rules of it.

He could gather the keys for her.