Magic Sack Come Back Come Back

By Deborah Watters

What if you were a kid that had a powerful enemy who never lets you alone? What if that enemy was your own big sister, and all you wanted was for her to be your friend?

Shoshi OMalley is a kid just like this. Her life is hell. She feels totally alone. The family housekeeper, her beloved Signora Pagani, uses her powers (yes, she is a witch) to grow giant vegetables in her garden, but she is unable to protect her young charge, her little Principessa. That is until another supernatural being becomes involved. Everybody has had enough, it seems, of Kelly OMalleys awful behavior and of Shoshi OMalleys terrible, nerve-shredding scream.

It is the day of her ninth birthday, and everything is about to change.

Someone nearby is waiting for an invitation to help. Someone lying in a dusty heap in the back shed is woken by the local bush fairies, who are fed up with the noise and strife. It is the night of the full moon. It is a time when the magic in the land stirs and wakens. It is a time when Salladin Q. Sack, a magnificent flying carpet of Fabled Faroffistan, a magical carpet who has been turned into a jute burlap sack, rises from the dust and flies on missions to help anyone in distress.

Shoshis magic sack is to become an indispensable ally in triumphing over her sisters malice. Incredible adventures with the creatures of the bush and the sea await Shoshi. Other supernatural beings, such as a mysterious python and a rat under an enchantment, will join her on her adventures. Magical powers are acquired, lessons are learned, and confidence is gained.

After one last terrible, thrilling, and enlightening journey with the sack, Shoshi has at last come into her own, and everyone has been transformed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Dec 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514443460

Deborah Watters

Deborah is a former teacher who lives on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. She has been a member of the NSW Writers’ Centre for seven years and has learned the craft of writing from the many inspirational authors teaching there. This is Deb’s first book. It came about as a result of a reminder from one of her sisters about bedtime stories told by Deb, which featured the nocturnal adventures of a child flying on an old sack. The book was great fun to write, and it provided an appropriate vehicle for Deb to express her concern about the perilous state of the biosphere. Deb feels that she must take her characters forward into a sequel and hopes to enjoy the process of growing them up a bit. Deb has a young adult science fiction novel in progress and hopes to complete it in 2016.

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Deborah Watters.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2015920135

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5144-4348-4

      Softcover      978-1-5144-4347-7

      eBook      978-1-5144-4346-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/17/2015

Xlibris

1-800-455-039

www.Xlibris.com.au

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Epilogue

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

With grateful thanks to Penny Watters for inspiring me to write this book. Penny your notorious memory has helped our heroine to fly again.

To my other sisters; Jude, Tracey, Rose and Sylvia, thank you for your feedback and support and special thanks to Jude for her input. To Liz, thanks for your encouragement too.

To my co-Capricorn Celtic colleague Marilyn Hausmanns, thanks for your enthusiasm for my project and best wishes to your brave granddaughter Thalia Standley.

To my discarnate dad and to his spirit guide, thanks to you both for sticking your noses into it.

To a special teacher, Vicky Dean, for helping the writer within the story teller to emerge.

PROLOGUE

The strike came out of nowhere. Like an eagle plummeting out of the sun, Kelly O’Malley streaked into the backyard, where Shoshi O’Malley sat peacefully looking at a book.

The small figure of the youngest O’Malley was perched on a garden seat. A ray of late-afternoon sun lit up her pale curls, turning them silver. Shoshi’s gaze was riveted on an open spread in the big picture book.

The book was a birthday present from Annabelle and Jack. Both girls had received a beautiful birthday book. Being a writer, Annabelle valued books as the best of all possible presents. Shoshi’s was called Myths and Legends of the Ancient World. The image that had so entranced the book’s young owner was of a brilliantly coloured flying carpet. The carpet and its passenger were soaring through starry skies under a sickle moon just visible between long fringes that waved and rippled like sea grass under water. Riding straight-backed on the carpet sat a princely figure with an elaborately twisted moustache. His robes were magnificent. His turban was a masterpiece of bejewelled swathes all folded and pinned together at the front with a huge white feather.

Young Shoshi usually found few reasons to smile. Yet the magical colours of the picture and the fantastic characters of the carpet and its passenger had done their work. Her tight little mouth had relaxed into a big grin. Then out of nowhere, there was a rush of air, a hand reaching to rip out the page and cruel fingers twisting the skin of her arm in a savage pinch. ‘Nyaaaaa,’ Kelly screeched. Her face was thrust into her sister’s, and her expression was just as horrible and menacing as it always was during her attacks. With a sneer, she turned and raced back into the house.

Shoshi opened her mouth to scream. But no one had seen anything. No one would come to investigate what had happened. Not anymore. Jack might show up and ask what Kelly had done now. The Signora might come out and wipe away her tears, but that would be all that would happen. Shoshi might as well not waste her breath. She closed her mouth and gulped. She rubbed her throbbing arm, and her eyes flooded.

As the skinny child with the tangled curls sat sobbing on the lawn, the torn-out page was whipped away by a sudden breeze. She didn’t see it go. Her sodden face was buried in her hands. A stream of tears leaked between her fingers and dribbled on to the violated book. The page skipped across the lawn, the flying carpet and its passenger riding the breeze as though determined to reach some important destination. The breeze dropped, and the page came to rest between the slim branches of a grevillia bush.

As Shoshi wiped away a final tear, she sighed a great sigh of resignation. It was a sigh that expressed every hopeless thought she’d ever had about being the sister of Kelly O’Malley. Little did the distraught child know it, but her life was about to take a completely different course. Shoshi O’Malley could never have dreamed that a powerful ally was just waiting to be summoned. Nor could she have imagined the adventures she was about to have.

She could never have foreseen in her wildest fantasies that the tides of fate and magic were swirling closer and closer and that within a very short span of time, she was to be swept willingly away.

The bruised little figure stood up, searched briefly for the missing page, and spotting it, returned it to its former place. Head bowed and book tucked under one arm, she trudged back into the house.

CHAPTER 1

It was a bush fairy that started it all. Helping the grevillias to uncurl their rosy fronds was delicate work. In fact, everything bush fairies had to do was tricky. The little spirits that populated the O’Malley garden were becoming fed up. This child, the youngest of the O’Malley brood, had been irritating them for a long time now. The high-pitched screams that tore out of the house practically every day really hurt their sensitive hearing. They couldn’t concentrate.

Today had been particularly noisome. It was the day of the O’Malley girls’ birthdays, and as usual, the older one had found as many occasions as she could to make her little sister pay. The younger one, the one who’d had the misfortune to have been born on her sister’s birthday, was doing what she always did. She was screaming her shrill, nerve-shredding scream. They were so over it.

As a last ‘eeeeeeeah…’ of her scream died away, a fairy exploded out from the depths of the grevillias. More bush fairies followed her in a stream. They swirled into a shimmering cloud. The tiny half-seen forms then headed towards a ramshackle shed that sagged against the back fence. They knew what needed to be done. It was the day of the full moon after all. It was a time of unbounded possibility. Something had to be done about the child, and something would be done. They knew just the person to do it.

* * *

It was a dirty old shed where no one ever went. It was full of old lumber and rusting machine parts. Jack said that the place was bound to be full of redback spiders, and that certainly kept the boys away. The place hadn’t been disturbed for years.

Lying underneath a wooden bench was a dusty old sack. It was worn in places. It had threads hanging off it. It was covered in burns and scorch marks, and it looked as though it had once been used to put out a bush fire.

The worn patches, the burns, and the scorches happened to be arranged in such a way that it looked like the old sack had something like a face. Burn holes were the eyes. Unravelled threads pointed to where hair might be.

When the sparkling mist landed on it, the old sack jumped up. It shook itself all over, just like a dog. A cloud of dust drifted out of the shed. Nobody saw it. Tiny sneezes erupted from the sparkles in the dust cloud.

The bush fairies knew that the old sack had quite an unusual history. They knew that it had once been a magnificent flying carpet. It had belonged to a great magician who lived in Fabled Faroffistan, a land so ancient that it was lost in the mists of time. The bush fairies liked and admired the Sack. They knew his name and they knew his story, the tale of how he’d become a filthy, tattered old sack, but they kept it to themselves. It just didn’t translate into a believable yarn around these parts. Besides, they were always far too busy to sit around and gossip. They left that to the blue-tongued lizards that lived under the house. They had all the time in the world to tell stories as they took their daily sunbaths among the weeds.

According to what the Sack had told the bush fairies, the magician had been flying on his carpet one day when he had met a djinni. That was bad news for the magician. Djinnis usually spelled extreme trouble. The djinni had been summoned by a sorcerer who was consumed with envy at the magician’s popularity.

The Sack’s master was known as the greatest magician of all time, and as for his carpet… well, it was the most beautiful and powerful carpet ever woven in the kingdom. It had powers too, as most carpets do.

This carpet, however, was at the very top of the range. The two were known throughout the land as the best source of magical aid if you were on a quest.

The evil magician’s heart throbbed with jealous rage. He wanted them gone so that his own fame and power would be recognized. So he summoned up the djinni to serve him on his quest to defeat the much-admired magician.

The Sack told the bush fairies that the battle that ensued was to be the subject of legends and tales for centuries to come.

The djinni changed his form into that of a terrifying dragon and, with the evil sorcerer aboard, pursued the pair with deadly intent. The magician and the carpet used every power that they had. They cloaked for invisibility. They shape-shifted. They even tried escaping into the Between, but it was no use. It was a spectacular battle, but it was a losing battle. Spells and thunderbolts sizzled in the air. Great tongues of fire arched through the clouds as the magician on his carpet ducked and weaved and darted through the skies over five kingdoms. They could not escape the dragon. Finally the powers of the sorcerer overcame their own, and they lost the battle.

The cost of defeat was, as usual, quite devastating. The djinni transformed the magician into a humble genie, a lowly form of the djinn, and sealed him away inside an old lamp. The beautiful carpet was turned into a jute burlap sack and banished to a distant land on the other side of the earth. Not only was the carpet banished to a remote and lonely place, it was also sent far forward in time.

The bush fairies were amused to learn this. They used magic only to help Mother Nature, and being immortal, they didn’t have much of a concept of time. It was, though, of great interest to hear about these powerful beings from another land. Sorcerers and magicians, they learned, take delight in making enchantments difficult to reverse.

In the case of the magician and his carpet, it was to be only the happy tears of a young princess wetting the burlap sack that could turn him back into the great flying carpet that he used to be. Only when the old sack was restored to his former glory would the magician be released from his duties as a genie in a lamp. Then and only then could the magician be magically reunited with his flying carpet wherever and whenever that carpet might be.

The bush fairies delighted in telling each other this tale as they went about their work. They loved the bit about a princess wetting him with her tears. Of course, the blue tongues that always listened in spread the story. The Sack was quite famous in these parts. He was, in fact, a legend.

The shimmering cloud was about to whisk itself away. Impatient to get back to work, the tiny creatures yelled at the Sack.

‘We just need peace and quiet to do our work,’ one voice complained.

‘We can’t concentrate with all that racket going on,’ another added.

‘In the name of the Mother Tree, would you make the child happy?’ another commanded.

‘Just make it happen,’ screeched a last tiny voice as the bush fairies flew off. The dust gradually blew away, and the Sack settled down again.

* * *

Shoshi had exhausted herself after this latest bout of screaming. Her sister had just stormed her again as she sat at the kitchen table trying to restore the torn-out page with sticky tape. Now the page lay on the floor, and Shoshi was lying on her bed, kicking furiously at the covers with her feet. Her father had ordered both girls to their rooms. As usual. Outside, a car door slammed, and Shoshi heard the sound of her father’s Land Rover being driven away. She knew where he was going. When it got too noisy with her screaming and with the boys yelling at her to be quiet, he’d reach a tipping point. He’d slip away and drive off to the marina for a few quiet hours of pottering around on the decks of his beloved Dandy Octopus. That yacht was more than a research tool for the children’s marine biologist father. It was safe haven, a refuge from the trials and tribulations of his big, noisy family.

With a deep sigh of futility, Shoshi stood up. She went downstairs to look for the housekeeper. The Signora would most likely be in her garden at this time of the day. The black-clad woman with the hooked nose and the two lumpy moles on her left cheek might look quite sinister, but she had, Shoshi knew, a heart of gold. There would be a sympathetic hug from her, and then there’d be a job to do to take her mind off her miseries. Shoshi would weed between the rows of zucchini plants or she’d be set to the task of picking the big heavy tomatoes and aubergines. She’d water the plants, and she’d carry baskets of giant vegetables to the kitchen. As always, the garden would do its magic, and her outrage would be soothed. Soon her sister’s latest attack would be just another memory. Yet though the memory of her sister’s mean act would fade, what would never go away was the hope that Kelly would one day become her friend. Shoshi O’Malley still held the foolish hope that Kelly O’Malley would be a true sister to her, that they would be loving and loyal companions sharing each other’s childhoods as only sisters could.

* * *

The blue tongues hiding under the house could hardly wait for moonrise. The night of the full moon was always a time of excitement around these parts. With the Sack as a neighbour, just about anything could happen. They lifted their heads and opened their jaws, and they smiled their big pink-and-blue smiles.

It was about time that something interesting happened around here. That time was going to be when the moon had risen over the treetops. It would be when beams of moonlight ignited the magical radiations of the trees and the plants and the animals and the earth.

It would be a time of action and excitement when the legendary Sack, also known as Carpet, flew on special missions to help any creature or person who was on a quest or, if truth were known, in any kind of trouble at all.

The blueys were practically panting with excitement. They could hardly wait for the stars to light up the darkening sky and for the moon to lift its big blue face over the treetops.

CHAPTER 2

The Sack was very happy to have a new job. It had been a long, long time since he’d been given something useful to do. In his last job, he’d had been used to put out bush fires.

Before that, he’d had been the swag of a swagman and had travelled all over the country. He’d also been used to transport wheat and hay on long journeys, and he’d been filled with sand and used to build up riverbanks to stop flooding. He’d had been a very hard-working burlap sack, but now he was worn and threadbare. He’d been lying around in the shed for years. His only outings had been when he had gone on missions of mercy to help out any neighbour in need. That was at the time of the full moon, of course. Only ever when the moon was bright and full and the land and its animals became alive with power was it possible for him to fly under the stars and the blazing moon just like the great carpet he’d been of old.

The Sack had given up hope of ever meeting a young girl of royal blood who might wet him with her tears. That was just not possible in this faraway land. Even if he did meet one, how could she take him seriously when he looked as bad as he did? What kind of a princess would take a dirty old sack for a friend, a friend who might charm her and amuse her and make her happy?

There was, though, just a small chance for him. He knew that there was a witch living in the big house. The Italian housekeeper, the one the family all referred to as the Signora, was most definitely a witch. He could feel her magical emanations, faint as they were. And he’d heard the witch call each of the girls her principessa. Didn’t that word mean ‘princess’, even though it was in another language? Well, as far as he knew, if a witch called you something, then that is what you were! If this was true, then he had two princesses to choose from. He didn’t mind which one it was to be. The older, bolder one was full of dark thoughts and malicious acts. She’d be quite a challenge. The other one seemed to be quite depressed, yet there was a mysterious quality about her, and unbelievably, a tingle of magical power sparkled in her aura. There was something vaguely familiar about it, that hint of magic. It felt familiar, but he was not about to try to remember why. His past was his past, and too long a time had gone by. Yes, there was a small hope here for his salvation. The fairies had made it plain which of the two girls was to become his mistress. It was to be the younger of the two, the one with the piercing scream. They’d summoned him to take up her cause, and though she didn’t know it yet, the youngest daughter of the family was now on the warpath. Clearly there was a great big problem involving the two princesses. One needed help, and the other needed to be taught a lesson. So then. It was to be the child with the great green eyes in a shut down face. It was to be the one that hurt his sensitive hearing with her unearthly screams. It was to be the one that was always disturbing the peace and quiet of the neighbourhood with her noisy crying. It was that one.

The first thing he needed to do on this new mission, he thought to himself, was to make his introduction. So he settled down to wait for the perfect time.

* * *

Dusk was settling over the little coastal village where the O’Malley family lived. As the light faded the other occupants of the town appeared. Moving singly or in groups, the shadowy forms of wallabies hopped boldly across lawns and up and down the streets. Some people said that there were more wallabies than people occupying this place, and they might have been right. Just as numerous, if not more so, were the fat bodies of sulphur-crested cockatoos dotting the grassy verges and looking just like giant blobs of snow. After grazing briefly, they flew off as the lights winked on one by one through the town and the last ragged bar of kookaburra cackles faded away.

The Sack waited until it was fully dark. Then he lifted himself up, shook off the worst of the dust that coated his coarse fibres, and then flipped himself into the horizontal position. He flew out of the shed, across the lawn to the looming house, and slipped through the open window of the sleeping child’s room. He swished down to the floor and wriggled underneath a rug. He was waiting for the moon to shine through the little girl’s window so that she could see him clearly.

It wasn’t long before a great glowing globe rose up over the windowsill.

The Sack slipped out from underneath the rug and hovered upright beside Shoshi’s bed.

In a gravelly voice, he said, ‘Harrrumph! Haa… ahum!’ The Sack hadn’t spoken to anyone for ages, and his voice, which usually had a liquid quality to it, sounded rusty. He continued a little louder. ‘Time to wake up, little girl!’

Shoshi’s eyes flew open, and she sat up. A flat rectangular shape, brown in colour, was wavering in front of her face. It had long burnt-looking threads hanging off the top of it. It had a sloppy kind of a face with bright eyes burning in dark pits. Its mouth opened to a black hole. It was smiling. Shoshi opened her mouth to scream. ‘No need for that!’ the Sack said in a gurgley yet cheerful voice. Although his voice sounded kind and cheery, there was an undertone of determination that made Shoshi close her mouth and stare at the apparition bobbing up and down beside her bed.

‘Allow me to introduce myself. Saladdin Q. Sack at your service, mistress. Your wish is my command!’ The Sack bowed. Now his voice was soft and slippery like honey.

Shoshi was so astonished she couldn’t say a single word, so the Sack spoke in her place. ‘Er, you must be wondering what a rough-looking fellow like myself is doing in your chamber, hmmm?’

The Sack batted his sooty eyelashes at her once, twice, three times. Then he swivelled his beady black eyes to the right and to the left. He bowed again. All around the Sack, warm yellow moonbeams sparkled and danced.

Shoshi couldn’t help herself. For sure she must be dreaming this. She giggled but still couldn’t find her voice.

‘I’m here to serve your every need on the nights of a fair full moon. I am, after all, a magic carpet!’

At last Shoshi found her voice. ‘You’re not a magic carpet! You’re just a dirty old sack!’

‘A dirty old sack, you say? Ah yes, I remember now. Sorry to disappoint you. I may be, as you say, a mere bit of burlap, but I can do anything a magic carpet can do.’ The Sack grinned and shot Shoshi a cheeky wink. ‘Watch this!’

He sank to a horizontal position, twitched his four corners, and then sailed serenely out the window. As he went, the Sack raised one corner, and Shoshi was astonished to see that corner stretch out into the shape of a hand, which gave a cheerful wave.

Shoshi’s eyes were as big as saucers. ‘Keep watching,’ called the Sack. He swerved upwards towards the lower branches of a gum tree growing beside the window. A possum was just making its way along a branch when suddenly a flying brown thing enveloped it completely and scooped it off the branch.

It was all over before the possum had time to even think about it. The Sack straightened out to reveal the bewildered creature sitting on its tail with its limbs outstretched and its hands and feet splayed open like starfish. The Sack did a little bobbing dance in front of the window. The possum’s eyes were as big as the headlights on Jack’s Land Rover. Shoshi’s eyes were equally as big, and her mouth was wide open in astonishment.

Suddenly the Sack wrapped itself around the creature again. There was a flash of light and the smell of singed fur, and there was the Sack, opened out again, hovering beside her bed. Outside, the possum was hissing piteously as it struggled to find its balance on the branch. Shoshi’s eyes swivelled from the Sack to the possum and back again.

‘You see? What did I tell you? Magic! That’s M-A-G-I-C!’

‘But you’re not a carpet!’ Shoshi had a firm idea of what was magic and what was not. Since when did dirty old sacks have magical powers? Did this thing look anything like the glorious carpet she’d seen only this afternoon in her new book? Before it had been destroyed, that was. No, it just wasn’t right!

‘Aha! I see where you’re going with this. You are perfectly right. I am not, in this form, a carpet. Carpets can sometimes have magical powers. I am an old sack. Old sacks do not have magical power. Correct?’

‘Yes,’ said Shoshi. It looked as though this was going to be sorted out.

‘What if…’ said the Sack carefully, ‘what if it so happened that once a wonderful and amazingly beautiful flying carpet got into a fight with an evil djinni, and what if that flying carpet lost the battle and was put under a spell that turned it into a dreary-looking, ugly old sack? And what if the sack’s master, a great magician of Fabled Faroffistan, was also put under enchantment and couldn’t be reunited with his carpet until the spell was broken?’ Shoshi’s mouth dropped open again.

‘And what if… . what if that poor sack, a sack that’d once been a wonderful and amazingly beautiful flying carpet, was then banished by the djinni?’

Shoshi closed her mouth. She was starting to feel a little more kindly towards the Sack. She had no idea what a djinni might be, but it didn’t sound very nice.

‘Imagine that!’ the Sack implored. ‘Just imagine that you were sent to the other end of the world and forced to take up hard and dirty occupations. How would you feel about that?’

Shoshi knew what it felt like to be sad a lot of the time. She knew what it was like to be hurt by someone, and she knew what it was like to have nobody believe you when you screamed and cried. So although she didn’t really understand what the Sack meant by ‘hard and dirty occupations’, she guessed that the Sack had had a difficult time of it, just like she had.

Suddenly she had an amazing thought. This funny-looking brown thing, this saggy-faced thing with magical powers, wanted to be her friend!

‘Um…’ said Shoshi.

‘I suppose you’d feel like you didn’t have a friend in the whole world!’ the Sack answered for her.

Shoshi smiled a small, tight smile. ‘I don’t have a friend in the whole world. I don’t have any one. Not even my sister.’

When she said that last bit, her smile disappeared and her mouth turned down at the corners.

The Sack’s droopy face took on a look of deep sympathy. This little girl certainly seemed to be terribly lonely. He battered his eyelashes at Shoshi again and gave a respectful bow. Shoshi felt tears well up. Nobody ever believed her—ever! Her sister had been hurting her and setting her up and making her take all the blame for everything for as long as she could remember. Not even her protector, the housekeeper who’d practically raised her, was able to shield her from the malice of her sister.

As the Sack straightened from his bow, he saw a tear drop from Shoshi’s cheek. Quick as a flash, he made another hand out of one of his corners and whipped it out to catch the tear drop. Luckily Shoshi’s eyes were blurred and she didn’t see his lightning-fast move.

The Sack sighed. There was no sizzling flash of magic to transform him back into his former glory. There was to be no joyful reunion with his master. He gave another deep sigh. The little princess’s tears were sad tears, not happy ones. Why, this little girl had probably never cried happy tears in her life!

Well now, Saladdin old fellow, the Sack said to himself, it might just be up to you to put a bit of magic under this poor child. She certainly needs some help, by the look of it. Why would those annoying fairies have woken me up otherwise? Hmmm, where shall I start? Wherever shall I start?

‘Oh, dear me,’ came the Sack’s warm, slippery voice. Shoshi looked up. She was feeling so sad that she’d nearly forgotten that she had a visitor. ‘Oh, dear. Cheer up now, mistress. There’s hope for you yet, believe me. Wait till you hear what I have to discuss with you!’

Shoshi wiped her eyes and forgot about feeling sad. She looked at the strange-looking thing floating beside her bed, this ugly brown thing with floppy threads hanging over its saggy face, this burlap sack that could talk and was doing magic and calling her mistress. Even more golden moonbeams surrounded it now.

Hope flooded her heart. Could this be real? Surging alongside the hope in her heart, there was a feeling of anticipation too. Suddenly she knew that something amazing was about to happen. Somebody—somebody besides the Signora, that is—was on her side. Who knows, maybe she could hope for a miracle and her sister would stop hurting her and she wouldn’t feel angry and sad all the time!

The Sack was very good at reading minds. It was one of his many, many powers. Now was the time to lay things out for the little girl. With a bit of luck, she would be able to understand exactly what he was and what he could do for her.

‘Er, you must realize that I am here for a particular reason. I am highly specialized in helping people in distress.’

The Sack paused for a bit. The child’s head was cocked to the side, and she was staring at him intently. Good.

‘Back in the old country, the noble profession of flying carpet is well represented by many classes of rug. I am, however, of the highest class.’

The Sack suddenly wished that he were still arrayed in the glowing purples, royal blues, reds, and jewel-like greens and golds of his pattern. Looking drab and dishevelled was not going to help his case. He looked at Shoshi again. The little girl was nodding solemnly. Excellent.

‘Flying carpets come in many varieties. There are explorer carpets. There are battle carpets, and there are carpets dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure. As well, there are rescue carpets, racing carpets, and stealth carpets—that is, carpets that specialize in the arts of spying and assassination. Harrumph, well,’ the Sack said in a suddenly serious voice, ‘the latter are of no concern to children. Now,’ the Sack continued with another courtly bow, ‘now each of these carpets has a special power that helps it to do its work. The stealth carpet can shape-shift. The racing carpet has the power of swift flight. The rescue carpet has the power to travel in time or to make time slow down and even to stand still. What do you think of that, eh?’

Shoshi was still taking all this in, so she just nodded again.

‘Well then, that leaves the battle carpet, which has the power of invisibility; the pleasure carpet with its ability to grant wishes; and lastly, the great explorer carpets, which can find anything that is lost, forgotten, or simply undiscovered!’

Shoshi thought about the explorer carpet. Exploring sounded like fun. She smiled.

‘That’s the way!’ the Sack exclaimed. ‘Now where was I? Ah yes, the nature of magic carpets. Yes, there are many types of carpets, but there is one that is greater than all the rest. Why is it, do you think, that my middle name starts with Q? Because that name is Questor! Saladdin Questor Carpet is my full name, and questorial adventures are my game! I take on people who have big problems in search of big answers. I have all the powers of the other carpets and a special power of my own. My power is that of mind-reading. Having said that, I can tell you what you are thinking right now. You’d love to go exploring. Am I right?’

Shoshi was astonished to have her mind read so accurately, but she