Hannah sat silently in the taxi, mulling over the information she knew. Steve’s mother, Ava, sat beside her, looking incredibly worried. Ava had received a phone call earlier that day from Eric, and had overheard a very troubling exchange. She hadn’t understood most of it since it had happened so fast, so she’d called Hannah immediately to investigate what was going on. The fact that Eric had called her and not the police meant that he didn’t want them knowing about it.

A mile from the site, though, they rounded a bend and were stopped by a police roadblock. “What is this?” Ava asked in surprise. She was already nervous about the status of her family, and was very high-strung and irritated at the moment, liable to blow her top if pushed too far. She had the car pull over, and she got out to talk to the officers, Hannah right behind her.

“Excuse me!” Ava said, walking up to an officer. “May I ask what’s going on here?”

“A missing child was spotted near here,” the officer responded. “Since the tip was called in we’re thoroughly searching the area.”

Ava was having none of the runaround. Considering it had been less than three hours since the established meet time, Hannah wasn’t buying it, either. It was too coincidental. “My husband is Sergeant Eric Dodson, and he should be here,” she told the officer firmly, staring him down. “If I may, might I speak with him?”

The officer wasn’t intimidated. “I don’t know the names or ranks of all of the police personnel on site,” he told her. “You’ll have to wait to speak with your husband until he leaves, if he’s even here at all.”

“Can’t you, like, check or something?” Hannah volunteered.

The officer sighed, and then reached for his radio. “Can Sergeant Eric Dodson come to Checkpoint A, please?” he asked. “His wife is here.”

There was silence for a minute before a voice replied “It’s Dodson’s day off, isn’t it?”

Other voices soon joined the conversation. “Yeah, it is. But he would’ve come in for this.”

“Dodson, if you’re here, you know where to go!”

There was another silence. “Nobody’s seen him, so we don’t think he’s here. Say ‘hi’ to Ava for us.”

“There you have it,” said the officer. “If you want to help search, please join one of the civilian search parties being organized.”

Ava was steamed, since while she was worried about the child, as was Hannah, something smelled fishy about the whole situation. Hannah had heard a recording of the whole encounter, which led her to believe the whole search was a coverup for something else. How anyone else had found out about it, though, was a mystery.

“This is bull!” Ava shouted, punching her seat once the car had turned around and started going away. “I went a week last fall not knowing where my son was, and that was bad enough. I won’t lose my entire family to those monsters!”

“Don’t worry, we’ll find them,” Hannah reassured her. “We know they’re in Charminia, so let’s get our friends there to search for us. They were expecting their guy to be passed through to us, so they should be on alert.”

“So let’s go there and tell them what happened,” said Ava. “You can open one of those portal things, right?”

“Uh, no,” said Hannah. “I can’t use magic, and that’s what you’ve got to use. Unless you want to blow up a bomb next to one, or crash an old gas-powered car into one, we’re not getting in.”

Ava looked dejected again. She clasped her hands with worry, her anger dwindling now. “I wouldn’t be nearly so worried if I just had a sign they were okay,” she said softly.

That gave Hannah an idea. “Hey, do you remember how Nadine got that transfer request to begin with?”

Ava thought a moment before her eyes lit up. “A letter!” she said excitedly. “She’s been in contact with her home ever since she got here. She must have some kind of system in place to get and receive the letters.”

“Then we’d better find out what that is,” Hannah smirked, reaching forward and altering the destination on the GPS.

XXX

When they arrived at Ava’s house, the two immediately entered and headed upstairs to Nadine’s room. Eric and Ava had been more than happy to house Nadine, even before they’d found out about the gold Rachel had given their group. After a discussion, they’d decided to keep their house and sit on the gold rather than spend it all at once and risk attracting the government’s or the bank’s attention. Or the attention of the IRS. Therefore, they were very careful about spending it. To help with this, Hannah, Alec, and James had all taken a cut of the gold to spread it around.

Ava opened the door to Nadine’s room, formerly a guest room, and flipped on the light. It was pretty stark for a pre-teen’s room in terms of furniture and pop star posters, but it had all the necessities. Clothes spilled out of the closet and onto the floor, and there was a pile of books on the nightstand, mostly romance stuff, although there was one book, The Traveller's Journey, that Hannah had lent her. The bookmark was sitting on top, indicating she'd recently finished it, so Hannah took it back. The book, a young adult sci-fi novel about a multiverse traveler named Georath, was one of her favorites. A computer sat on the desk, turned off, along with a cheap prepaid cell phone which Eric had gotten for her. She was always forgetting the phone since she’d never used one before, so Hannah wasn’t surprised to see it.

“She grew up in a castle, yet she’s this much of a slob?” Hannah wondered out loud. Her own bedroom was spotless, and that was the way she liked it. Her bag of gear was meticulously organized as well.

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“I imagine the castle servants took care of stuff like this,” said Ava. “And some people are just slobs by nature. Take Eric for instance. Or Steve. It’s like they tune me out every time I complain about it. Now, let’s find those letters.”

Ava went over to Nadine’s backpack and began searching it while Hannah went over to the desk. Unlike most people these days, Nadine still preferred writing by hand rather than typing it out on a computer, so there was plenty of stuff to look through. She’d even made arrangements with her teachers to turn in hard copies of her work, which was quite remarkable.

Hannah began searching the stack on top of the desk. The top papers were just school assignments that were due the following week, mainly just busywork. There was also an assignment prompt for a project that was due in a few weeks, along with a permission slip for a field trip to the art museum. Further down, the stack turned into letters, just not the kind she was looking for. They were all from Earth, and were postmarked from Washington D.C. Out of curiosity, Hannah opened the top one and found a social security ticket inside, featuring a number and what it was for. She might have been nosy by nature, but even she knew when something wasn’t her business, and someone’s fake social security number was one of those. Or maybe it was somehow legit. Either way, she didn’t pry.

The remainder of the stack didn’t prove fruitful, so she started opening drawers. The second drawer down on the right had what she wanted. “Found them,” she said to Ava, who dropped what she was doing and raced over.

The top letter was postmarked from Philadelphia, but the rest didn’t have one at all. Ava opened the first letter and the two looked it over.

Hello Nadine! This is Rachel, in case you didn’t figure it out. I suppose you didn’t expect to hear from me in a letter like this. I want to hear everything about what Industria is like, so that’s why I’m writing.

Marisia is fine as of now. Nothing has really happened since you left to speak of, other than Donovan being annoying as per usual. He turned in a large cache of Industrian contraband in an effort to seduce me again, which didn’t work. I’ve had enough of older men trying to court me. The Goblins have retreated back home and issued a formal apology to us, Marisia, along with sending an offer of assistance should we need it. So now we have an additional army on standby should we need it. They’ve also discontinued formal diplomatic relations and instituted sanctions on the Callistian Empire, which is also nice.

Lord Micheal has started changing the Callistian Empire from the inside out. I think he’s trying to model his policies off of ours, which is fine by me. Mother’s policies were very intelligent and progressive, so good for him. Maybe we can write them off as enemies before the year is out! I hope it’s not premature for me to say that…

I wish to hear about your experiences as well, but we need to establish our own system. Our agent that I had forward this letter was not enthusiastic about it, and I doubt any of the others will be, either. So how about this? Every week, on Friday afternoon, I’ll use magic to send a letter directly to you across Portalspace. In every letter there will be a blank piece of paper for your response. The paper will be enchanted to find me no matter where I am. In your response to this letter, please designate an out of the way location for me to send future letters so that they won’t be found or intercepted. I just devised this new communication system based on my experiences in Portalspace, so I hope it’ll work. If not, we’ll find something else.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Rachel L. Hana

Rachel L. Hana, Princess of Marisia

Hannah and Ava looked at each other. Then they simultaneously dug through the pile looking for the latest letter. “Here,” said Ava, pulling it out. It was dated the previous day, and included a blank sheet of paper in the envelope. Ava held the paper reverently before looking at Hannah in determination. “All right, let’s do this,” she told Hannah.

The two of them put the room back together before heading downstairs to Eric’s office. Ava put the paper on the desk, sat down in the chair, and pulled out a pen and another blank paper. It had been difficult to tell before, but the enchanted paper actually sparkled in the sunlight.

Ava took the normal paper and began writing on it. “I’m not wasting that paper, so I’m doing a test run first. You can pull up a chair if you’d like.”

Hannah took her up on her offer, and advised Ava as she wrote. “Listen, the girl the letter’s going to is the princess of the kingdom, so you need to be respectful when you talk to her. Otherwise she might get offended and not read it.”

Ava scribbled something out and kept writing, concentrating on the words intensely. After twenty minutes, Ava read out what she had written:

Please forgive the suddenness of this request, but I need a big favor from you. I am Ava Dodson, mother of Steve Dodson, who I’m sure you are familiar with. Earlier today, my husband Eric, my son, and the young girl staying with us, Nadine, were all kidnapped by a faction of people Nadine identified as ‘elves’ and taken through one of those Portals that connect our worlds. Our mutual acquaintance Hannah Matthews is here with me, and is assisting me in my efforts to contact you. That leads me to my request. My family is in the custody of the Elves, so, if you wouldn’t mind, work some magic and make sure they get home. PLEASE.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation,

Ava Dodson

“A little upfront, but it should be fine,” said Hannah, looking it over. “The girl’s not that much of a stickler for professionalism as you’d expect. Now we just have to get it to her.”

“First you tell me she’ll get offended, and now you tell me she won’t care?” Ava said, breathing a sigh of relief. She began to copy the letter onto the magic paper word for word, taking great care in the process, and slightly changing certain phrases to make it flow better. Then she got an envelope, sealed the letter inside, and wrote ‘Official Correspondence for the Princess of Marisia’ on the outside. Then she looked at Hannah. “Any ideas?”

Hannah thought about it, before taking the letter from her. She knew no magic, but she’d seen magic performed, so she knew what to say. She hoped that was enough. Holding it up over her head, she said, “Letter, return to Princess Rachel.”

The envelope shuddered for a moment before the letter ripped through it, flew around the room, and vanished into thin air, leaving only a thin orange line in the air, which faded within a few seconds. “Is that it?” Ava asked nervously.

“It’s out of our hands now,” said Hannah. “Assuming Rachel gets it, I’m 99% sure she’ll try to do something. From the time I spent with her, I gathered that she was fairly headstrong and self-sufficient, and she is allegedly one of the best magic users around. So now, I guess, we wait.”

“You want to stream something?” Ava asked as the two headed to the living room. “I need to do something to stop worrying.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I’d like to try and investigate the site again. There’s also the crime committed on your parents to look over. Something about that doesn’t sit right with me.”

They reached the front door and Ava opened it for her. “Good luck with that, then,” she said as Hannah left.

“I’m going to need it,” Hannah thought.