Justin hurried through his chores the next day, and then Jessica was late. He was alone in the house, Lars having gone to practice. He decided it was time to forage. He got his daypack from his room and took it to the pantry.

That was an advantage of living in a very old house. It had a real pantry, one you walked into, just off the kitchen. It was like a large closet, with the walls filled from floor to ceiling with shelves. Back when Grandma Ranstrom was alive, the shelves had been filled with glass jar upon glass jar of preserved this and pickled that and at least a year's supply of blackberry jam. But that was a long time ago and Sally Ranstrom, as much as she would have liked to, didn't have the time to put up preserves. So the shelves that were at a convenient height, those where one didn't have to bend over too far or stand on tiptoe to reach, held a plentiful supply of store-bought items. The highest and lowest shelves remained empty, except for a small stock of cleaning supplies and odds and ends of things rarely needed.

At first Justin had started grabbing and tossing things into his daypack. But then he stopped. What was it a wizard would want? What did a wizard normally eat? And what could Justin sneak out of the house that would never be missed? He knew the wizard liked jerky and seemed to like granola bars. But jerky was expensive and Lars liked it too. He'd notice if the stockpile suddenly shrank. Justin replaced the items he had first picked, except for one bag of jerky, and started surveying the shelves.

Tuna came into the house by the case when it was on sale and there had been a sale recently. Justin picked up a can. Everybody likes tuna, he thought. But then he reconsidered. Did the wizard have a can opener? Or did he have a can-opening spell? Did he know what a can was? The can went back on the shelf.

The salami caught his eye. There were half a dozen of them. Lars and his friends could make a whole salami disappear in nothing flat. And salami, or things like salami, Justin had read, went far back in history. Salami was probably invented by some clever caveman, so it was likely the wizard would be familiar with it. Even better, all he needed was a knife to cut it, so into the daypack went a salami.

Bags of bread and rolls had their own section. One bag had only two sourdough rolls left. They'll never be missed, Justin thought as he stuffed the bag into the backpack. A jar of strawberry jelly, not Justin's favorite, and a jar of peanut butter, one of a dozen, followed the rolls.

The peanut butter made Justin pause for a minute. Would the wizard like peanut butter? Did he know what peanut butter was? "Well," Justin said to himself, "if he doesn't know about it, it's time he found out." For good measure, he tossed in several small bags of potato chips and corn chips.

A stop at the refrigerator yielded some apples and oranges. That would make his mother happy, Justin thought, because she would think that he and Lars were following her frequent advice to eat more fruit. After adding the fruit, Justin hefted his daypack and decided he had a good enough load. He parked the pack on the kitchen table.

Jessica still hadn't arrived.

He went out and killed some more time with what he called "batting practice." He'd played baseball earlier in the summer. His team hadn't done well, and he'd found that he had no great talent at catching or throwing the ball. He also seemed to be the slowest, on any of the teams, at running the bases. The one bright spot was his batting. While he was dead last on a last-place team at everything else, he was first on the team at batting. He had a good eye, good timing, and a good, powerful swing, so he concentrated on that. An advantage was that it was something he could do on his own with no one to make snarky comments when he missed.

Behind the old farm sheds grew a half-dozen aging apple trees, all that was left of an orchard. Justin spent considerable time earlier in the summer picking up windfall apples from the ground, tossing them in the air, and batting them off into the neighbor's pasture. It was better than having to chase a ball, the two cows who lived there didn't complain, and no one was going to miss the apples anyway.

At first he used a regular baseball bat, but Lars got upset about the residue of apple pulp and apple juice gunking it up. So Justin found a nice piece of wood, cut it to the right length and carved and sanded one end down to make a handle. The other end wasn't as wide as a regular bat, but Justin decided it was even better that way. It forced him to be more accurate in his swing.

He whacked about a dozen apples while he waited. The apples were getting too ripe now. Half of them splattered when he hit them, and the other half went off on weird trajectories with pieces missing. Finally he heard the sound of Jessica's bicycle turning in the driveway.

"'Bout time," Justin called out as Jessica leaned her bike against the picket fence.

"You're not the only one who does chores, you know," she shot back at him. "I have stuff to do, too."

Justin mumbled a reply and led Jessica into the kitchen. His daypack waited on the table.

"So what are you bringing?" Jessica asked.

He opened the bulging pack and smugly showed her his collection.

Jessica opened her daypack and somewhat sheepishly showed the contents to Justin.

"Pop tarts?" Justin said, surprised. "A box of pop tarts? And a couple oranges?"

"Look," Jessica replied defensively, "there's only two of us at my house and it's not like my mom keeps a lot of food on hand. She likes to shop every other day and just buy what she needs for the next few days. If too much stuff disappeared, she'd think I had an eating disorder or something. It's not like here. With your brother and his friends around, Attila the Hun and the Mongol hordes could go through your kitchen and no one would notice there was any more food missing than usual."

"Yeah, that's for sure," Justin replied. "If they were a rock band we could call them Lars and the Locusts. Well, anyway, between us I think we have enough for a day or two. Besides, maybe he'll figure out how to get back to where he's from soon and won't need very much. Oh, and it was Attila the Hun and the Hun horde. Not the Mongols."

"Whatever. Let's get going."

They retraced their route from the day before, passing the rusted yellow gate and again hiding their bikes behind the clump of young redwood trees. Again they followed the faint trail up the hill and onto the plateau, and soon they were approaching the Witch Ring, or, as Justin was starting to think of it, The Well of Danaan.

They climbed over the lip that surrounded the depression and slipped down the other side. They'd expected to find Tethion there but when they looked around he was nowhere to be seen.

"I wonder where he went to?" Justin asked.

"Maybe he went home," Jessica replied.

"Not yet, but soon," a voice said. The voice seemed to come from straight in front of them, but there was no one there. And then, there was. Tethion seemed to materialize in the center of the ring, grinning broadly. Justin and Jessica had already seen him do that trick the night before, but it was still unnerving to watch it.

"Good news, good news," Tethion said, the pleasure in his voice coming through despite the clumsiness he still had in pronouncing the words. "I believe I've worked out the spell. I've spent the morning trying different variations of it. None of them worked. But then I studied the akshana-mithona more carefully, and I realized that there's a small piece broken off, just one loop that's not where it should be. You can see where it used to be." He held the amulet out for them to inspect, but took it back much too quickly for them to really look at it. "And assuming that I'm correct, that makes the proper expression…well, it would be meaningless to you, so I won't trouble your ears with it. But I'm confident that I'm correct. And I'll soon find out."

Justin swung his daypack off his shoulders and held it in front of him. "We brought you some more food, but I guess you won't be needing it now if you're going back."

Tethion smiled broadly and laughed. "It's a foolish wizard who turns down a gift of food. Once I pass through The Well, I expect I'll be traveling quickly. Whatever you can spare me will be most appreciated. Let's see what you have for me."

They put their daypacks on the ground and began pulling things out and laying them on the ground in front of Tethion. Jessica was embarrassed at the few items she had compared to Justin. Tethion crouched down, picking up things, inspecting them, and stowing them in the bag hung over his shoulder. "Ah, echarqui. Most generous of you. Your fruit is excellent. And oranges at this time of year! Thank you."

The jar of jelly seemed to confuse him at first, but as Justin was about to show him how it opened he figured it out on his own. He dipped the tip of his little finger into the sticky red jam and tasted it. He smiled. "What do you call this?"

"Strawberry jam," Jessica said. "It's made from strawberries."

"Ahh, I thought I recognized the flavor. We have a small wild berry that we call syfaen that tastes much like this, but not so sweet. And they're so small it takes forever to gather a handful."

When they had finished giving him the food, and Tethion had closed up his bag, they all stood up.

"You have been most generous, most generous," Tethion said. "There is an ancient law in my land, one that has too often fallen into disuse. It is the law of hospitality to strangers. It's good to know that at least some people still honor it, even here in this strange land. It would do me honor if you would accept a small token of my thanks."

He reached into his pouch and pulled out two very fine chains. He dangled one in front of each of them. At the end of each was a small metal object made of fine gold wire, woven into an intricate pattern around a tiny crystal. The crystal appeared to be suspended within the cage of wires. It must be an illusion, he thought.

"They're pretty. What are they?" Jessica asked.

"Are they charms?" Justin asked. "Do they have spells on them? Power?"

Tethion looked amused. "They have power, of a sort. The power of what they say about those who wear them. They're symbols that show that the bearers are friends of a Wizard of the Grove of the Two Peaks."

Justin and Jessica each took one and slipped the chains over their heads. Justin almost asked about the crystal, but decided against it. He'd inspect it later.

"And now the time has come," Tethion said, "to get me back to where I belong."

He slung his bag over his shoulder and picked up his staff.

"It has been good meeting the both of you. Now I suggest you start on your way. You want to be a good long ways from here before I start. I've never done this spell before."

"Can't we watch?" Justin asked. "We'll get back up on the hill."

"No, no," Tethion replied. "This could be dangerous. Spells of this power are always dangerous, especially when you don't know if you're doing them right. You two need to get far away from here."

Justin reluctantly shouldered his pack and started up the path that cut through the rim of the depression. As he topped the low rise, he turned to look at Tethion one last time. The wizard was already engrossed in contemplating the amulet.

Justin led the way along the trail, Jessica following him. They had gone perhaps a hundred yards and were starting downhill when suddenly he stopped. Jessica collided with him.

"What's wrong?" she asked. She was afraid there might be a rattlesnake on the path.

"Nothing," Justin replied.

"So why'd you stop?"

"Noth...I'm going back," he said.

"What for?"

"I want to watch. I want to see how he does it."

"Does what?"

"How he does the spell. I've never seen anyone do a spell like that before. I want to see what it looks like. How he does it. Is he just going to disappear or what?"

"Justin, no!" Jessica stamped her foot in irritation. "Tethion said to get away from the Witch Ring. He said it was dangerous."

"No, he said it could be dangerous. Maybe it won't be dangerous."

"No he didn't. He said spells are always dangerous. Always, as in every time. He said spells are dangerous."

"But I won't get too close. I'll just get to where I can see him. It's not like I'm going to stand behind him or anything."

"Justin, you can't do it. It's too dangerous. Who knows what might happen. What if he gets it backwards and brings some monster or something from his world into this one?"

"That's just silly. How could he bring a monster here when he's trying to get back there? And how do you know there are monsters in his world, anyway?"

"Well, maybe you could ask the monster while he chews on your toes. There are wizards in his world. Why wouldn't there be monsters?"

"I thought you didn't believe he was really a wizard."

"I'm not saying he is, and I'm not saying he isn't. I'm just saying you don't know what he's going to do or what could go wrong, and he already told us to get far away before he starts."

"Don't be a worrywart," Justin said. "Nothing's going to happen. I'll just get close enough to see what's going on and if it starts looking too weird-like I'll come back. Just wait for me at the bikes."

With that he stepped around her and started jogging easily back the way towards the ring.

When he was within sight of the great trees surrounding the Witch Ring he slowed to a walk, then started stepping very carefully, bending over in a not-very-effective crouch. Like Frodo the Hobbit sneaking up on an Orc, he thought. Got to be quiet. And really, really slow.

He heard a twig snap behind him. He started for a moment, then turned to see Jessica walking up behind him. He motioned to her with what he hoped were the right hand signs for her to slow down. Then he motioned for her to get in a crouch, like he was. She gave him a look that said, "This is really stupid," but she did it anyway.

As he got closer, Justin dropped down onto all fours and crept forwards. He looked back to see that Jessica was doing the same and looking even more unhappy about it than before. He picked a spot where a big, many-trunked pepperwood tree grew out of the bank that surrounded the Witch Ring. Green, fragrant branches hung low, almost down to the ground. It seemed like a good spot to spy from, a place where he could just peep around a shadowed gray-brown trunk.

Tethion stood in the middle of the Witch Ring, holding the amulet studying it or maybe just thinking really hard. Faintly, very faintly, they could hear him speaking, but they couldn't understand the words. Then Tethion looped the chain from the amulet over the index finger of his right hand. Taking his staff in his left hand he began to twirl the amulet at the end of its chain. As he did so, he began chanting strange words, even stranger than the words of the spell that had enabled Jessica and Justin to understand him.

As the amulet spun at the end of its chain, Tethion raised his arm. He also changed the motion of his hand and forearm until, slowly, the amulet seemed to hang suspended in place and Tethion's hand was moving around it. Suddenly Tethion removed his hand, and the amulet was hovering in mid-air, the chain spinning rapidly around it. There was something unnatural about the way it did that. It wobbled a bit at first, but then the wobble disappeared and it seemed like the amulet was actually gaining speed instead of slowing down as one would expect. And, instead of spiraling down to the ground, it stayed right at the level it was at when Tethion released it.

Tethion's chant grew louder. It seemed for just a moment that light was beginning to gather above and below the amulet. And then it fell to the ground. Tethion stroked his beard and stared at the fallen object for a long time.

He picked it up. Again he began the twirling motion, chanting the strange words in a barely audible voice. Again he gradually altered his movements until the amulet was suspended in mid-air.

"Akshana namada," Tethion chanted, or at least that's what it sounded like to Justin.

This time light was definitely gathering above and below the amulet, coalescing into two shimmering balls. The balls stretched out, forming two thick elliptical shapes, one above and the other below the amulet.

"Akshana namada hikshona NIMALA," Tethion cried.

The two bulbous shapes suddenly flashed into a single, thin, laser-like shaft of light going directly down through the crystal at the center of the amulet and marking a spot on the ground. It seemed to Justin that there should have been a crack or a bang or a snap, but there was no sound at all, other than Tethion's chanting, which was growing ever louder.

A second after the beam struck the ground, Tethion planted the tip of his oak staff directly on the spot and grabbed the akshana-mithona with his free hand. A moment later he disappeared as the thin beam of light exploded outwards in a soundless wave. Justin decided he should duck, but it was too late. The wave of light was on him in a fraction of a second. He felt as if he was being lifted up, thrown back. Then he felt as if he were falling, but it was a strange, gentle sort of sensation, not at all frightening - more like drifting slowly to the bottom of a pool of water. Then he just gently drifted off to sleep.