PIRATE JACK'S CAVE
![[Picture of Kids]](dev.jpg)
© Rick Kephart <
>
at http://LPHRC.org/rmk,and the Kids From Devon:
Alison, Alex, Chris, Colin, Greg, Jaclyn,
Julian, Meg, Melissa, Rachel, and Robin
>
ne day, the Kids From Devon went exploring around some caves they found
near the ocean. Chris was off by himself at one of the caves, and found
something at the entrance. It was an old skeleton! From what was left of
the clothes it was wearing, it seemed he had been wearing the clothes of a
pirate. He thought about breaking the skeleton up, but first he called the
other kids to come over.
Chris called out to everyone that he found a skeleton at the cave. Greg came running over and was the first to get there. He asked, "Is it alive or dead?" as he came. When he got there, he could see that the skeleton was certainly dead.
Julian got there next. He was wondering what a pirate was doing by those caves.
Then they noticed a map in the skeleton's hand. It was a treasure map! It said it was the map to "Pirate Jack's Treasure". But the map wasn't finished. The map showed that his treasure was somewhere inside that cave, but it didn't say where the treasure could be found.
They all decided they would go in and hunt for Pirate Jack's treasure, inside the cave.
They went inside, and they were in a very large cavern, with a stalagmite about ten feet high near the entrance, and lots of piles of boulders.
They looked around, but didn't see any signs of a treasure chest, or any other passageways leading off to any other caverns in the cave.
Meg was convinced the treasure was somewhere in this cavern. "He hid his treasure somewhere near these boulders," Meg said to everybody, "So nobody would get it."
But Chris didn't agree. "I can't find anything in the cave," he said.
Alison had an idea. "I know a different way out," she said suddenly.
Then Meg got the same idea. "You dig a tunnel underneath the cave!" she suggested.
Alison said, "Yeah, that's what I was going to do."
Alison had a little shovel with her that she was using while exploring around some other caves, and she started digging right away into the floor. She dug down a couple feet, until it got so rocky it wasn't possible to dig any farther. There was no treasure down there that she could find.
"Where's the treasure?" Meg wondered, when it was clear that they wouldn't be able to dig under the cave.
Meg was going to start digging at the stalagmite, when Chris got the idea of climbing up on it. Greg tried to climb up it, but it was too slippery, and he couldn't get more than a few inches up before he'd slide right back down. Chris tried to climb up it too, but he couldn't make it either.
Meg decided to try climbing up the rocks near the stalagmite instead of trying to climb up the stalagmite itself. By doing that, she was able to reach the top of the stalagmite, and she saw something up on top of it!
Chris called up to her, asking what she found.
Meg pulled it off the top of the stalagmite, and then Chris and everyone else could see what it was.
Meg had found a magic necklace on top of the stalagmite. It had a single large jewel on it, which gave off a bright, clear light. Meg put the Necklace of Light around her neck, and climbed back down with it. It lit up the whole cavern. Then they went back to their search for the treasure.
Meg went to one of the big boulders, and tried to push it, to see if the treasure was back there. She didn't find the treasure; instead, there was a large snake there! Meg yelled as the snake popped out at her, and she put the rock back and got away from there, and the snake went back where it was before.
Then Greg went to another boulder to check behind. There was no treasure there, nor was there a snake. But there was a huge spider! It ran out right past everybody, and went to another boulder.
Julian checked another one, and he also only uncovered a big spider, and it also ran over to another rock.
Greg tried another one, but didn't even find a spider. There was nothing at all there.
Meg pointed to a boulder over in the corner and asked, "What's behind that rock?" But nobody had checked it yet. Julian went over and pushed it aside, and uncovered a large hole in the wall of the cave!
"I want to look in it," Meg said, as she hurried over to the hole and stuck her head inside. It was too dark to see, so she took the Necklace of Light and held it in front of her face as she peered into the hole.
Chris asked her, "Does it go down to the Devil or something?"
It was too far to see where the tunnel led, even with the Necklace of Light. "Who wants to go down?" Meg asked everybody. "I'm going down this tunnel. I don't believe it, but I'm going to do it." Then she added, "Maybe I won't."
Julian said, "I'll go." But it was too dark, and Meg was the one with the Necklace of Light.
Meg took another look down the tunnel, trying to see as far as she could. All she was able to see was that the tunnel wasn't natural; somebody had dug it. She told them that the tunnel was man-made, and said, "That means there must be something down there that's real expensive or something!"
Meg was ready to start down the tunnel. She insisted that somebody go down with her, because she didn't want to get hurt. Julian said he would go down there with her, and Meg said she wanted him to come too. Chris also said he would go. Meg said it was enough for her just to have Julian, but Chris wanted to go anyway. Everybody else followed too. Meg went in first; she had to lead the way with the Necklace of Light.
"La la la la la," Meg sang as she led everyone into the tunnel.
Chris was worried that there might be a werewolf down there in the dark tunnel. "I'm close to the middle so I can really run," he said as they made their way through the tunnel.
Rachel, who was the last to go in, said, "I'm the last one so I can really run up the tunnel."
The tunnel was so narrow they had to crawl through. The tunnel led downwards, deeper and deeper into the earth.
At last, the tunnel came to an end!
"There's probably rocks there," Chris said from behind Julian.
But there weren't. There was a room at the end of the tunnel, deep underground.
"There has to be something in this room," Meg said, as she climbed out of the tunnel and stood up in this underground room.
Everybody called from behind, "I'm coming in." They all came crawling quickly through the dark tunnel toward the light coming from Meg's necklace in the next room.
"I have the light," Meg said, "I have the Necklace of Light."
Alison, still back in the tunnel, said, "That doesn't mean it's dark in there." But it would have been much too dark to see if Meg hadn't had the magic necklace.
Meg held up the necklace as Rachel, the last one in the tunnel, came into the room.
It was the pirates' guardroom. It was a big square room, that nobody had been in for hundreds of years. There were cobwebs and dust everywhere. When she realized it was a guardroom, Meg said, "Wait a minute. We have to be close to the treasure."
As they looked around, the first thing they found was a sword, leaning against a wall. It was a very old sword, dirty and rusty.
"I'm taking the sword," Julian called out as soon as he saw it.
But Meg said, "I want the sword."
Meg and Julian started arguing over the sword, but then Rachel said to Meg, "You already have something though."
"You have the necklace," Chris said to her.
"No," Rachel told her, "Everybody has to get something to hold." So Julian was the one who got the sword, and he kept it with him.
In the room there was also a table with some old papers on it, with a chair in front of it. On the table were some very old, yellowed, crumbling papers.
Meg wanted to take the papers, but as soon as she touched them, they all crumbled into dust, except for one. That one, still on the table, they were able to read.
Meg wanted to take the paper, but Rachel told her, "No, that's no fair. You already have something. Everybody gets one thing."
"It must be part of the treasure map," Greg said, as they started reading it. But it wasn't. It said:
Rock Man wasn't fed last night. Keep him well fed. We can't have him for an enemy. Check on him before you go to bed tonight.
"Wait a minute," Meg said, "I know something. I think I know that the Rock Man guards the treasure, and if anyone tries to steal it, he will eat them. Where is this Rock Man?"
But the paper didn't said anything about where the Rock Man was.
Rachel picked the paper up. Meg was afraid it would crumble, but there was still enough left of it that it didn't crumble away. Meg wondered if it might have been written right before the pirate died.
Once they realized that this room did not hold the treasure, Meg wondered if she could dig farther down at the tunnel. But then Chris found a door.
"Ooooh," Meg said, "Let's go down the door. Who wants to go with me?"
"I am," Rachel said. And everyone else yelled "Me!" as they all raced for the door.
Meg opened the door, and found an even bigger room there. It was a banquet room. There was a big table with twenty chairs around it, with dirty and cracked plates and glasses, covered with dust. There were paintings all around on the walls. There were also two other doors.
"One of them has to be a secret door," Meg said, turning around looking at all the paintings.
One of the paintings was of a black cat sitting on a broomstick.
Another painting showed a green treasure chest. It was cracked down the middle, and there was a cloud of green smoke pouring out of it.
"I don't think I'm going to open it!" Meg said when she saw that painting. "You're going to open it, I'm not."
"I am," Rachel said, fearlessly.
"O.K.," Meg replied, "I'm not touching that, never, not in a million years."
Another painting showed an army shooting arrows at a pretty white bird that was flying above them.
"Why are they shooting at the bird?" Chris wondered as they looked at that picture.
"I know that white bird must be something," Meg said.
"Nobody got the white bird," Rachel suggested, "Because the white bird had the key that locks up."
On another one there was a painting of a solid silver table, surrounded by four giant candles, one on each corner of the table.
"There has to be silver table," Meg said, trying to understand the meanings of the paintings.
There was also a painting of a burned-out wheat field. In the middle of the field stood a scarecrow.
"Why is the wheat all burned up?" Chris wondered.
Meg said, "There has to be a wheat place somewhere."
There was one more painting. That last one was a life-size painting that covered much of the wall. It was a painting of a bunch of pirates all drinking and getting drunk on a pirate ship.
Rachel tried to explain the painting, "The captain went down, see, and fell into the hole, and then died of no food and water. That's the captain; the captain's on the boat."
After they had finished looking at all the paintings, they started exploring.
"You open one of the doors," Meg said, "I'm not taking any chances of getting hurt. I have the Necklace of Light, and if I lose the Necklace of Light that won't be any light in the cave."
They went over to look in one of the corners of the room, to see if they could find anything. Meg held the Necklace of Light over the spot, while some other kids checked it out. All they found was a pile of broken plates and glasses. There was nothing else in the pile.
They looked in several other corners, but couldn't find anything at all interesting.
"Let's go out the door," Chris said, getting tired of looking and not finding anything.
But then Meg said, "You haven't looked under the table."
Rachel decided to look under there. She crawled under the table. Meg held the Necklace of Light so Rachel could see if she could find anything under there, but wouldn't go under the table.
But there was nothing but dirt under the table.
Then Meg thought of looking behind the paintings. She suggested looking behind the painting of the treasure chest.
Julian went over to it and said, "I'll turn under the painting."
Colin came over saying, "There's a passageway behind there."
Julian checked behind the painting, but there was nothing but the wall behind it.
"Look behind all the paintings," Meg said to everyone, "I'm not looking behind."
Rachel moved another painting to look behind, but she too found only the blank wall.
They checked two more paintings, finding nothing. But then the next one, which was the painting of the pirate ship, did cover more than just the wall.
"I found a panel!" Meg cried out when she saw the secret panel behind the painting.
They pulled down the panel right away.
Behind the panel, there was a small room. It was long and narrow. The room was completely empty, except for a life-size, beautifully decorated mirror on the wall across from the panel.
Meg went into the little room, and then Rachel, Greg, Colin, and Chris went in with her. Rachel went up and looked at herself in the mirror. "Wait," Meg said, "There has to be something. Look behind the mirror, Rachel."
Rachel tried to look behind the mirror. But the mirror could not be moved.
"Wait," Meg said, "There has to be some way to get behind the mirror."
Greg said, "Break the mirror, that's how."
Meg agreed, "Yeah, break the mirror."
But Colin warned, "You get seven years of bad luck."
Meg thought a hammer would be good to break the mirror, but nobody had a hammer.
Then Meg remembered that Julian had taken the sword.
"Julian, did you give the sword to somebody?" she called out to Julian.
"No," he answered, "I still have it."
Meg told him, "Give the sword to Rachel. She needs to break the mirror and see if there's anything behind it."
"I'll break the mirror," Julian said, joining them inside the little room.
Rachel still wanted to break the mirror, but Julian walked past her with his sword, and struck the mirror with all his might. The sword shook so hard his hand hurt from the blow on the mirror, but it didn't even crack. No matter how hard he hit the mirror, it just would not break.
"There has to be something behind it," Meg insisted. "Look around the room for a secret panel."
Julian wondered if there might be some way to cut it and make a hole.
Chris had a different idea. "What if soft is hard and hard is soft, and if you hit it soft, it breaks." They tried doing that, but it didn't work.
"Look around the room," Meg demanded. "There has to be something near that mirror if it's not going to break. There has to be!"
Rachel suggested, "Look for an ax in the room."
Then Chris said he knew why they couldn't break the mirror, "Because the treasure's behind it. Wait, I have a good idea. The treasure's probably behind that because you can't break it or move it; they probably wouldn't know when to get it."
Meg said, "There has to be another room. There's a door somewhere."
Chris had only one other idea, "Get dynamite."
But of course nobody had dynamite! They finally had to just give up, and they left the secret room with the mirror.
They went back to the banquet room, and went to one of the other doors to see what they could find there.
Through one of the doors, they found a bedroom where the pirates slept. They decided to take a look under the beds.
Colin and Rachel each went to look under a bed in that room.
Rachel looked under a bed first. But as soon as she tried to see what was under it, a monster looked out and growled at her!
"Run away!" Meg called when she saw what happened.
Rachel did run back when she saw it, and ran to another bed. When she ran away, the monster disappeared back underneath the bed.
Rachel looked under another bed, and the monster turned out to be under there and growled at her again.
As she started to run away again, Colin looked under another bed. Under there, he found a bunch of gold coins! He got the monster's treasure just in time before the monster noticed Colin and went back in and came out from under the bed where Colin was. Colin stuck the coins in his pocket, and then ran away as soon as he saw the monster. When Colin ran away, the monster went back under the bed again. Then they decided to leave.
Then Rachel went first into another room.
There was a big, moldy rug on the floor of this room, as Meg suspected, hoping there would be something under the rug.
"Wait," Meg said as she entered the room with Rachel, "There has to be something under that rug."
But first, they noticed a treasure chest in the room, a green treasure chest.
"Somebody's going to open that," Meg said, "And it's not going to be me!"
"I will," Rachel said. But then she said, "Colin has to do it. Colin's the only one brave enough to open it."
"You open it," Meg said, "I'm not getting near it. I swear it."
Rachel finally did open it. And as soon as she did, a cloud of thick green smoke blew out of the treasure chest, right in Rachel's face.
"I'm dead!" Rachel thought when she saw it. But it didn't kill her. But it did make her start choking and suddenly get very, very sick.
When they saw that this wasn't the real treasure chest, Meg said, "Somebody's got to lift the rug, and it's not me. I got the Necklace of Light and I'm not going to find any more things."
After the green gas cleared and Rachel got some deep breaths of fresh air, she started feeling better. She said that she would lift up the rug and see if anything was under it.
She lifted up one corner of the rug, and in that corner there was a trap door in the floor.
They quickly pulled the trap door open, and found that it led to a staircase going down far into the ground. Just about all of them hurried down the steps, Meg in the lead with the Necklace of Light; Julian had stayed above to look around some more. There were exactly one hundred steps to go down.
When they finally reached the bottom of the underground staircase, they found themselves in a large, triangle-shaped room.
The first ones down the steps called up to the others coming down that the stairs led to a triangular room.
"I have a triangle room at home," Robin said, as she reached the bottom of the steps.
In the room, they could see a huge iron door, and in one corner there was a pile of rocks. Nothing else was there.
"How are we going to open the door?" Chris asked, as they started examining the gigantic door.
"Look at the keyhole," Meg said. But there was nothing special about it.
"I got the sword because Julian's not here," Chris said, since Julian had let him take the sword until he came down to join them. But the door looked too strong to break with the sword.
Meg looked over at the pile of rocks and had an idea. "Take the rocks and throw them at the door," she suggested.
Chris agreed, "If there's a real heavy one that's really small you could throw it kapoom kapowee!"
Meg tried it. She went over and picked up a rock, and threw it at the door.
"It came open!" Chris said. They were all very surprised to find out that the door was not locked! But the door was heavy, and it opened just a crack.
"You could like get a mouse to push it open," Chris thought.
They decided to try to push it open. It was hard to move, but Jaclyn, Chris, and Alison all pushing together were able to push it open enough to get through it.
Behind the door were lots of stone, an enormous room of rock, and, sitting by a wall, there was a man of stone.
"The Rock Man!" Meg cried from the doorway. "You guys are in trouble."
"What does he eat?" Chris wondered.
It was hard to see him because there was only the light from the Necklace of Light, which Meg was holding near the door since she didn't want to go in yet. They could see that he was sitting over against the wall, not doing anything.
"Wait, I have the sword!" Chris said, about to go toward him. But then he said, "Uh oh, I forgot. He's rocks. If he was made out of glue, I could take the sword and cut the cracks and he'd just be a big pile of rocks."
Just then, the Rock Man turned around and looked over at them at the door! But then he turned back around, without doing anything.
Alison called from the doorway, "Are you hungry?"
The Rock Man looked over at her, and said, "No, but I'd like some company."
"Let's go in!" Meg said.
But Chris warned, "I know what he's going to do. Like these cartoons when the cat invites the fishes in for company and they go, `Want some dinner?' `Yeah.' `Well, you're the dinner!'"
"I don't know what to do," Alison said.
But Meg trusted him more, and went in. The others went in along with her. As they went in, the Rock Man just sat there watching them. With the light from the Necklace of Light filling the room, they could see him better. They could see that he looked very very sad.
Meg whispered to Chris, "Thank goodness it's not the Rock Man."
"It is the Rock Man!" Chris said to her.
"Then run, quick!" Meg said. But they didn't.
The Rock Man looked over at them once they were all in the room with him, and then he smiled.
"Maybe he's hungry," Chris whispered, getting nervous.
"You go in front," Meg said to Chris, "Because you have the sword."
"So what," Chris said, "He's made out of rocks. He's glued there, hopefully. If he's not, I want to be able to scramble out really fast."
The Rock Man looked up and said, "I have been so lonely here. I haven't even seen those pirates for a long, long time."
Alison yelled, "That's because they're dead, dummy-dumb!"
"They are?" the Rock Man said.
Chris warned Alison, "Don't say dummy-dumb or he'll come after you!"
But the Rock Man didn't. "How did they die?" he asked.
"They died of starvation," Meg told him. "They ate all their food in one night."
The Rock Man said, "They talked about food. I don't know what they were talking about."
"Who was talking about?" Chris asked him.
"The pirates," the Rock Man answered. "They'd keep bringing piles of stuff and they'd call it food. I don't know what it's for."
"To eat!" Meg screamed.
"To eat, you dumb idiot," Chris said to the Rock Man.
"You eat with your mouth, dummy-dumb," Alison said, pointing to her mouth, laughing at the Rock Man. "You stick it in your mouth!"
"All I do with my mouth is talk," the Rock Man said to Alison. "What do you have to eat for?"
Alison answered, "Because if you don't eat, you're going to die of starvation."
"Rocks don't starve," he said to her. Everybody laughed.
Meg said to him, "Rocks may be hungry."
But the Rock Man told her, "Rocks don't eat. Rocks don't get hungry."
"Oh yes they do," Meg insisted.
Then the Rock Man said, "I've been trapped in here so long!"
Chris began to feel sorry for the Rock Man. "How come you can't get out?" Chris asked him.
"Because of that rotten witch that stuck me here," the Rock Man answered. "She put me here, and I was here for so long before the pirates finally came in, and at least they were company for me. I hope that witch is dead by now; it's been so long since she imprisoned me and my friend, the Fairy Girl."
"Where's the Fairy Girl?" Chris asked.
But the Rock Man said, "I don't know. I haven't seen her since the witch stuck me here and her there."
"Well, where?" Chris asked.
But the Rock Man just said, "And I can't get out."
"We'll find her," Meg said to the Rock Man.
Chris asked him, "Is she a human, a big girl?"
The Rock Man told them that she looks something like they do.
Alison asked if she was smaller. The Rock Man said she was about their size, and Meg said, "Then she's a human, and if she's a human, then she's probably dead by now."
But the Rock Man told her, "No, she is a fairy, she's magic. But the witch had stronger magic, and she was able to trap us here."
Meg asked the Rock Man, "Can you stand up, or are you glued to the wall?"
The Rock Man stood up. He was at least ten feet tall.
As the Rock Man wandered around the room, some of the kids started discussing what they would do next.
Chris was worried that the rocks might be too sharp to move. Meg was saying it would be easy because the rocks were small.
The Rock Man interrupted, "Are you talking about the rocks over in the triangle room? They piled them there. They thought people wouldn't be smart enough to figure out that there's a passage behind there."
"Well, we were!" Meg said. "Those people who did that must have been total idiots."
The Rock Man warned them, "They do have some tricky things to keep people away from their treasure, though."
"Where is it?" Meg asked the Rock Man.
"I never saw it," he answered her, "I can never leave this room. But I did hear a secret one time that they had!"
"What?" Chris asked.
The Rock Man told him, "They told how the treasure chest has a magic spell on it, and it's impossible to move it except by one way."
"How?" Chris asked. Meg also asked him, "How?"
"You have to clap three times when you find the treasure chest," the Rock Man revealed, "And that will move it."
"Good," Meg said, "Now we can find the treasure chest."
Alison asked, "Where is it?" Then she clapped three times. "There," she said, "It will come right to you."
But nothing happened.
"No," the Rock Man said, "It doesn't work that way. You have to be at the treasure chest. And then you cannot move the treasure chest until you clap three times."
"What's inside the treasure chest?" Meg asked him.
"Treasure," he answered.
Meg yelled, "Oh boy!"
The Rock Man added, "Gold, and magic."
"I'm taking the magic!" Meg announced. "I just hope it isn't rotten shoes or rotten supper."
Jaclyn said, "Maybe it's a witch!"
But the Rock Man said, "Oh, the witch should be dead by now, if the pirates are all dead, since she was here long before them."
"But if she's magic," Meg said, "Then she must be able to keep herself alive."
"She's not that magic," the Rock Man said to Meg.
But Meg said, "I thought you said she had power over the fairy."
"She does," the Rock Man said, "But she can't live forever: the witch is a person with magical powers, but the fairy is a magical person." Then the Rock Man sat down and said, "It's been real nice having company at last. Will you come and visit me again?"
"Yes," Meg replied, "After we find the treasure chest. That's what we came here for."
As they were leaving, the Rock Man mentioned, "Oh, and there was one other thing I was wondering and I wanted to ask you."
Meg stopped and asked, "What?"
"Do they really have a Magic Mirror that can answer all questions?" the Rock Man asked them. "I heard them talking about a mirror they had that could answer any question that was asked to it. Was that real or were they just making that up?"
"We found a mirror," Meg said. "We can go up the steps, and we can ask it a question. We can ask the mirror a question: Is the witch dead by now? And where is the pirate's treasure?"
They all went running out of the room, with Meg leading the way. They went back up the hundred steps, and made their way back to the secret room where they had found the mirror.
When they reached it, Meg said to Alison, "You ask if the witch is dead."
So Alison asked the mirror, "Is the witch dead?"
A deep, loud voice came out of the mirror, saying one word: "Yes."
"Where is the treasure chest?" Alison then asked it.
Once again, one word was its only reply: "Below."
"Below where?" Meg asked it.
The voice from the mirror said, "Below this place."
"Wait a minute," Meg said. She asked the mirror, "Can you move?"
"No," it answered.
Meg asked, "Is there any way to get down?"
The mirror said, "Yes."
So Meg asked it, "How?"
"There are steps," replied the mirror.
"Where?" she then asked it.
The mirror told her, "Below the trap door."
Chris asked, "Where's the trap door?"
The mirror answered, "In the room with the green treasure chest."
"Green treasure chest?" Alison said.
Suddenly, Meg realized the mirror was telling them how to find the steps they had just come up! "We are such stupid idiots," she said.
Then Alison realized the same thing. "In the room where Rachel got sick," she said.
Then Meg asked some more about the treasure chest. She asked if it was in the room with the green treasure chest, but the mirror said it wasn't.
"What room is it in?" Chris asked the mirror.
He was told, "It is in the room far below."
"Far below?" Chris said, "How do we get there?"
"Down the steps," the mirror answered, "and down the passage."
"Does it have a Rock Man in it?" Meg asked.
"No," it answered.
"Does it have a metal door?" she then asked.
The mirror said, "Yes."
Then she asked, "Does it have a pile of rocks in front of it?"
"No," the mirror told her.
Meg asked the mirror where it was. The mirror answered that it was below that room.
"Is it below the steps?" Chris asked. He was told that it's far below the steps.
When they heard that, they began to wonder if there was a trap door in the steps somewhere.
"You mean there's another way to get down below more steps?"
Before the mirror could answer, Alison asked, "Where in the world is the trap door?" Chris answered before the mirror, "In the steps."
But then the mirror replied, "In the room with the green treasure chest."
Then they realized that the mirror was telling them about the trap door that they had already found, underneath the moldy rug! "Are we stupid idiots or what!" Meg yelled.
Then Meg said, "I have one more question to ask it. Do you know where the fairy is?"
The mirror answered the question she asked: "Yes." So Chris asked, "Where is she?"
The mirror told them where the fairy girl was: "Below the treasure chest."
"O.K." Meg said, "Let's go back. I have one more question." But she never asked it. But Alison asked the mirror, "Is she alive?"
The mirror answered their final question, "Yes."
"Good," Meg said, "Let's go down the steps and tell the Rock Man where she is!"
Meg went running out of the room back toward the steps. Everybody had to run to keep up with Meg with the Necklace of Light, so they wouldn't be left in the dark!
Once they had run back down all the steps (and had caught their breath), they went back to the Rock Man and Meg said to him, "You know where your fairy friend is?"
"No," the Rock Man said, already very happy just to see all his friends back again so soon.
"Well we do!" Meg told him.
The Rock Man smiled even bigger. "Where is she?" he asked excitedly.
"Underneath the treasure chest," she answered.
"Oh," the Rock Man said to them hopefully, "Will you rescue her?"
Alison said to him, "She's alive, Rock Man."
The Rock Man said to her, "Perhaps if you free her, she can free me."
"O.K." Alison said, "Let's go."
Meg decided she wanted to go back up the steps again, back to the mirror, because she had more questions to ask. Since the only source of light was from Meg's Necklace of Light, everybody else had no choice but to follow her all the way back up the hundred steps, and back to the magic mirror.
Once they were back in the room, Meg asked the mirror which treasure chest the fairy was under.
The mirror told her, "It's the treasure chest with the pirate's treasure."
Robin asked the mirror, "Where's the treasure chest with the treasure in it?"
The mirror answered in one word, "Below."
"Below where?" Chris asked.
"Below here," the mirror responded.
Then Meg thought of something else to ask. "Is there any secret way to get there?" she asked it.
"No," the mirror told her.
Then Meg asked, "Is there any way to get down there?"
"Yes," the mirror said.
"How?" she asked.
The mirror said, "Down the steps."
Seeing that they weren't getting anywhere asking these questions, Alison asked the mirror, "Can we carry you down so you can show us?"
But the mirror answered, "No."
"Can you move yourself?" Meg asked the mirror.
"No," the mirror answered again.
Alison asked it, "Well how come you can speak?"
The mirror told her, "I can speak because I am magic."
"Why can't you move though?" Meg asked, getting frustrated.
"I was made here," the mirror said to her, "Once I am made, I can never move."
"Well can people break you?" Meg asked.
But the mirror answered, "I cannot break."
"Can you be crushed?" Robin asked.
"No," the mirror said.
"Can the wall around you be chopped?" Meg asked, looking at the wall around the mirror.
But the mirror again said, "No."
"What kind of wall is this?" Meg shouted.
But the mirror's simple answer was, "I am here forever."
Then Meg recited a question to the mirror:
"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who has a treasure chest after all?"
"Nobody," with the mirror's reply.
"What?" Alison screamed.
The mirror answered, "You just asked if anybody has it: no. Nobody has it."
Meg asked the mirror, "Can you show a picture of the room?"
But the mirror said, "No."
Jaclyn asked the mirror, "How come you are magic and you can't even show us a picture?"
"I can only speak," the mirror told her.
"You can't even look at us?" Robin asked it.
"No," the mirror told her.
Robin said, "It can't even look at us; it doesn't know where we are."
Meg asked it, "What room is it in?"
The mirror told her, "It is in the treasure chest room."
"No," Meg said to the mirror, "I mean which room is the treasure chest in?"
But all the mirror would tell her was, "It is in the treasure room."
Meg asked it, "Where is the treasure chest room?"
And once again the mirror told them the location of the treasure: "Below."
Meg asked, "Is there any entrance in the stairway?"
"No, just at the bottom," the mirror replied.
"Where at the bottom?" Meg asked, "In the room with the rocks in it?"
The mirror said, "In the room with the iron door and the rocks in front of the passage."
"Yes!" Meg said, when the mirror finally mentioned something she recognized.
With that, they finally stopped trying to find out anything more from the mirror. They left the room of the magic mirror, without quite being able to learn from the mirror exactly where the treasure chest could be found. But at least they knew they were headed in the right direction!
They were all getting tired out from going up and down those hundred steps so many times, even Meg. So they slowly and casually made their way down the hundred steps, back to the triangular room.
"Here's the pile of rocks," Chris said.
Meg said, "We got to move those rocks."
The rocks were fairly small, and they weren't hard to move. With everybody working together, they had the pile of rocks moved away in no time, revealing a passageway.
Meg volunteered to lead the way through this passage, but wanted Chris, who still had Julian's sword, to come along right beside her.
Chris said, "I'm going behind you."
The passage slanted downwards. It continued on very, very far, the longest passageway they had encountered so far in the cave. After going quite a long way, they found that the passageway split up, and started going in two different directions.
Meg stopped, confused. "Which direction?" she asked.
"How do we know which direction?" Chris wondered.
Nobody knew which way to go; both directions looked exactly the same.
After several minutes, Meg decided to go back up the passageway and ask the mirror.
So that's what they did. They all turned around, and walked back out of the passageway, back up all one hundred steps again, and went back to the room with the mirror.
Still out of breath, Meg asked the mirror just one simple question, "O.K., which tunnel should we take, the one that's leading left or right?"
The mirror gave them the one word answer: "Right."
So again the gang went back to the hundred steps, and trudged down all those steps once again. Julian was with them now, and they explained to him what they had been doing as they went. Back to the triangular room, and back into the tunnel again, once again with Meg and Chris leading the way. And when they reached the fork in the passage, they all went to the right. They kept going down through the passage, and at the end of the passage there was a square hole, big enough for one person at a time to get through.
"I'm going first," Alison said.
When she got through the square hole, it was too dark to see. But Meg came in right behind her, with the Necklace of Light.
In the room there were two doors, besides the hole they had just come through, in two different walls. And down in one end, there was a big, cushiony chair, that looked very comfortable.
Meg wondered what would happen if somebody sat down in the chair! "Somebody better sit in it," Meg said. "It is not me. Chris is the one with the sword, so if anything pops out he can chop off its head."
"Not if it's the witch!" Chris said, "Because she's a ghost."
"She's dead," Alison said.
But Chris said, "Her head might be crawling around the place!"
While everybody else was standing around worrying about ghosts of witches, Jaclyn walked right up to the big soft chair, and she just sat right down right in the middle of the chair.
When Chris saw Jaclyn sit down on the chair, he joined her and sat down on it with her. They waited to see what would happen. And they waited. And everybody else stood around watching. Finally they realized that nothing was going to happen! Then Chris and Jaclyn got up.
Rachel and Alison still thought something would happen by sitting down on the chair. Rachel tried sitting down on the chair, and Alison sat down right after her.
While they were waiting for something to happen, Julian asked Chris for his sword back, and Chris gave it to him.
Then Rachel got an idea. "Hey," she said, "Maybe there's something behind it or something under it. I'll look under it!
"I'll look behind it," Alison said, as they both hopped off the chair.
But underneath the chair they could find nothing but dust. Behind the chair it was very hard to see, but she couldn't find anything back there either.
Then Rachel and Alison looked at each other and they both shouted, "Under the cushion!"
Rachel pulled up the seat, and Alison helped. And there they found a great big key.
Julian said, "I want the key." But then Rachel said she wanted the key. Since Julian already had the sword, Rachel got to keep the key.
Melissa said, "They can use the key to open the treasure chest."
"I'll open the treasure chest with it," Rachel said.
Then there were the two doors to check. Before going through either door, they opened both doors to see what was on the other sides.
Behind one door they could see a cage, with bars made out of light! The cage was about five feet tall. Inside the cage they could see a bird. And in the other room they could see another green treasure chest.
Alison wanted to go to the room with the cage first. But Rachel said that she wanted to go to the room with the treasure chest first. But in the end they all decided they would first go into the room where they saw the treasure chest.
Rachel and Julian both went over to the treasure chest. "I'll open the treasure chest," Rachel said, holding her key.
Rachel was about to put her key into the the treasure chest, but it didn't have a keyhole on it!
"Uh oh," Julian said, when they noticed there was no keyhole.
"So you need to get the key, right?" Melissa said, but Rachel and Julian told everybody there was no keyhole.
"Oh, it unlocks the door," Alison said. Then she said, "I know, you can dig it under the little slant and pop! it's open."
Then Rachel said, "I'll go under it."
She reached under it to lift it, but the moment she touched the treasure chest, she suddenly disappeared!
"I know," Alison said when she saw her vanish, "She went under the treasure chest and found the fairy."
"I'm not touching that treasure chest," Julian said, backing away from it.
But Alison said, "I want to touch the treasure chest." And she walked up to it, touched it, and she too was gone.
Then Robin said, "I'm going to touch it." She touched it, and was the next one to vanish.
As soon as she disappeared, Jaclyn and Chris and even Julian went up and touched it, and they disappeared. A minute later, everyone had touched the treasure chest, and there was nobody left in the room.
Everybody found themselves in the same place, joining Rachel in a triangle-shaped room. They were all back in the triangular room near the Rock Man.
Julian was worried when he heard the Rock Man was nearby. They hadn't told him much about the Rock Man yet. "The Rock Man's coming now?" he asked.
They told him that the Rock Man was friendly.
"Oh, it's O.K." Julian said. "Is he on our team though?" he asked.
"Yes," Alison told him.
"Oh good," he said when she told him that.
Melissa decided what to do next. "Get back to where you were," she told everybody. Chris and Rachel agreed right away, and so did everybody else.
Julian wondered what would happen if the sword touched the treasure chest. He tried it, and found himself back in the triangle-room, in the dark.
Rachel went back to looking for a keyhole. She looked around the sides, but still no keyhole.
"Clap three times!" Alison said suddenly. "Hey, stupid, clap three times. One, two, three." Nothing happened. Alison was mad. "Hey, he said..." Then they realized that the Rock Man had said that it would affect the treasure chest with the pirate's treasure in it.
Ali said the real treasure chest was probably under there. Rachel still thought this was the real treasure chest, but everybody else convinced her that it wasn't. But still, once more, Rachel and Melissa tried clapping three times. Nothing happened. Then Melissa also said it's probably underneath there.
Then Alison announced, "I know where the secret passage is. Under the bird cage."
"Let's go into the bird cage room," Rachel said.
They left the room with the booby-trap treasure chest, and went back into the room with the big chair, just as Julian returned. He had been able to make his way back to that room by feeling along the walls.
When they were all in the room with the bird cage, Melissa went over to open the door of the cage. But as soon as she touched the bright bars, it burned her fingers, and she jerked them back saying, "Ouch!"
"I have an idea," Julian said, "Don't touch the wires. Put your hand through it."
She tried that. She was able to get her hand between the bars of light safely, but it didn't do any good. The bird was singing, and as the bird sang, it made them want to let it go.
"I'll take the sword and cut it," Julian said. He was about to try it, but then he backed away, saying, "Oh, I'll get electrocuted."
Then they noticed a little latch on it, that looked like it could open the cage. It was too small to open with the sword, but it also had the burning light coming from it, so they wouldn't be able to open it with their fingers without getting burned.
"I know," Melissa said, "Get the key!"
Rachel took the key she was carrying, and got it into the latch, and opened up the door of the cage. Immediately, the bird flew out, and flew right onto the shoulder of the one who had freed her.
"I want the bird though," Julian said.
Rachel said, "No, it flew up onto my shoulder."
"I should," Julian insisted. "I don't have the key, so what could I do?"
"But he flew onto my shoulder," Rachel said.
The bird wouldn't leave her rescuer anyway. The bird started singing into Rachel's ear, and Rachel could understand what the bird was saying! She told them she could understand the bird.
"What does the bird say?" Melissa asked her.
Alison said, "You can tell us."
"Well," Rachel said, "He said, `Thank you.'"
"I knew it," Alison said.
"Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you," Rachel repeated.
"You're welcome, little bird," Alison said.
There were no other doors in this room, but there were still two other doors in the room with the phony treasure chest. So they all went back to that room, and tried to decide where to go next.
Julian wanted to split up into two groups, so they could explore what was past both doors at the same time, but nobody else wanted to do that.
While they were still trying to decide which door to go to first, Rachel went over and opened up one of the doors. Alison went in with Rachel, and everybody else followed.
Inside the room, they found a table, with what looked like a pair of sunglasses on it.
Melissa and Rachel and Alison all wanted to try out the glasses, but Melissa got them first. She put them on. It made everything dim and hard to see. She was about to take them off, when she suddenly realized that with the glasses she was able to see right through the walls!
When she told them what was special about the glasses, Julian said he wanted to wear them. But Melissa kept them on, since she had gotten them first, and Julian still had his sword.
Then Julian asked her to tell them what was behind the walls. Melissa wanted to keep it secret, but Julian said, "Pretty please, what's behind the walls? Tell us guys." Melissa then told them what she could see through them.
"What I see is behind one wall is a globe that has light coming out of it," Melissa told them.
"I'm taking the globe," Alison shouted right away.
"I'm taking it," Julian insisted.
Alison said, "I said it first."
Then Melissa told them what else she could see: "Behind another wall all I can see is a lot of doors. And through another wall I can see sort of like a hula hoop hanging from the ceiling."
"I'll take that," Alison said.
There was one other thing Melissa saw. "And another door I can see it's just a person," Melissa said, "He's not moving, just a person up against the wall."
"Pirate Jack!" Rachel said.
But Melissa said she couldn't see well enough to see who it was.
Rachel and Alison decided they wanted to go first to the room with the man Melissa had told them about. They all went, but Rachel and Alison went in first.
Once they were in the room, they could see that the man standing there had two big fangs, and looked like a vampire!
"Yikes!" everybody shouted when they got a good look at the man.
But he was just standing there, not moving. When they opened the door, they didn't see him move.
Rachel looked to see if he had his eyes open. When she saw that they were, she said, "I'm going far away from him!"
Melissa and Julian went up to the vampire next. They went much closer, and got a better look at what was standing there, and then they could tell that it was nothing but a statue!
Alison had an idea. "I know, look underneath. There's a secret passage-way! There's a secret passage-way! There's a secret passage-way!" she kept saying, sure there must be something there.
Julian checked under the legs, but there was nothing there.
Melissa used her glasses to look through the wall behind the statue. But there was nothing there.
Julian didn't think they would find anything around the statue, so he decided to go right to another door.
Melissa was going to look behind the door with her magic glasses, but Julian said, "I got the sword," and didn't wait for her.
"Do you want me to see what's behind it first?" she asked him, but he didn't even answer her, he was in such a hurry had already opened the door.
While Julian was doing that, Robin was looking around, noticing that a lot of the other kids had special things: Melissa and the magic glasses, Julian and his sword, Meg and the Necklace of Light, and she began to feel bad that she had not found anything she could carry.
Rachel had two things, the bird and the big key. So she gave Robin the key she had found under the seat of the big chair, so Robin would have something too.
Julian went first into the room, before Melissa looked at it. The room had one door in it, and over in the floor, there was a trap door.
Julian pulled the trap door open, and went right down into it.
Rachel and Alison were about to go in too, but they waited to find out what Julian had found down there.
As he started down, he could hear a squishing, squirming noise coming from below. "I'm not scared of nothing," Julian said, as he descended into the weird sound below, while Meg held the Necklace of Light over the trap door. Once he was down there, he found himself up to his ankles in worms!
He called up, and told them what was down there. "I'm chopping all the worms up," he told them, as he was swinging his sword around through them.
"You're making them all bleeding," Rachel yelled down to him.
There was nothing down there but a pit of worms. "I'm going back out," Julian called up, and climbed up back into the room with everybody else.
"What if it had poisonous snakes?" Alison said to him.
Then Julian went over to the other door, and started to go through it. Melissa offered to look through the wall and check it out before he went in, but Julian didn't want her to check it first.
But Melissa had already seen what was in this room; it was the room with the hoop in it.
Julian decided to take the hoop, but it was too high up to reach. Alison went into the room with him. But when they went in, lights started coming out of it. It was turning around very slowly, and when the light touched them, they felt funny.
Julian started trying to chop up the light, as Alison went to try to see if she could reach it. As more of the light struck Julian and Alison, they began to feel stronger, stronger and faster.
"I'm strong," Julian said.
"I know how you could get the hoop down," Melissa said. "Everybody could step on everybody's shoulders and put Julian on the top."
"I'm strong though," Julian said. He jumped up to get the hoop. He grabbed the hoop and pulled it down. As the hoop came down, they heard a loud "Pop!" and all the lights from it went out. It turned dull. The magic was broken.
"So who cares?" Jaclyn said, when they found out it was destroyed.
Alison said, "Just a stupid hula hoop."
They started going through one of the other two doors in that room. "Don't you guys want me to check it first?" Melissa asked, but they didn't wait for her.
Julian wanted to split up into separate groups again. He said that he was going to go with Ali, and Alison said she wanted to go with Rachel. But nobody else wanted to split up. Besides, Meg was the only one who could provide light!
Melissa asked again, "Don't you want me to look through it first?" But they went into the room while she was still speaking.
The room was very damp. There was water dripping from the walls. There were three doors in the room, a metal door that was very rusty, and one other normal door besides the one they had come in through.
Julian took his sword, and said he would chop up the door.
Before he started, Melissa put her sunglasses on, and looked through the door.
"Now what?" Julian asked her when he saw her looking through the doors.
Melissa told him, "On the one that is the metal one, there's nothing in there but water."
"Oh, then I'm not going in there!" Julian said when he found out what was behind it.
Then, pointing to the other door, Melissa said, "And in this door, there's nothing in there but another door." Then Melissa took the sunglasses back off so she could see normally.
"I'm going through it," Julian announced.
Everybody decided to go through that door and into the next room, which was completely empty except for the other door. But that other door had no handle on it.
"I'm chopping it up," Julian said as he marched to the door with his sword.
"Push it, push it, push it," Alison suggested, "Push the door."
"No," Julian said, "I'm chopping."
He started hacking at the door with all his might. He still had some extra strength from the magic hoop, but even with his super strength, the door was indestructible.
"What!" Alison shouted when it was clear that even Julian's super strength couldn't chop down the door.
"Is there a keyhole in it?" Melissa asked. She looked all around the door for a keyhole, but there was none.
"Uh oh," Julian said, as it seemed less and less likely they would ever be able to find a way to open the door.
"Want me to look through that door, see what's in it?" Melissa asked everybody. She put on the sunglasses saying, "I'm going to look through the door, see if there's anything in it, if there's anything good in there."
"Whatever it is, I'm taking it," Julian announced.
"Like gold or maybe..." Melissa started saying as she used the magic sunglasses to see into the next room. But all she saw was a very tiny room, empty, with no other doors, but with a round hole in the middle of the floor.
While everybody was trying to figure out how to get through the knob-less door, Robin started saying she was getting tired of carrying the big, heavy key. Jaclyn said she would like to have the key, so Robin gave her the key to hold.
Alison suddenly got an idea: maybe they could ask that magic mirror! But first she had another idea. "Hey, anybody have a shovel around here?" she called out.
"We can dig underneath the door," Meg added.
But nobody had carried a shovel all that way down with them.
"I have an idea," Julian said. "While we're at the metal door, I could chop the floor to make a hole and I could keep on chopping until we get to the other end of the door."
He hit the floor a few times, but it didn't even make a dent in the rock floor.
Then Alison mentioned the magic mirror.
"Let's ask the mirror! Let's ask the mirror!" Rachel yelled. "Let's do it. Let's just do it."
"Yes," Julian said, "Let's do what Alison said."
Alison called to everyone, "Let's go back to the mirror." With Meg and the Necklace of Light beside her, Alison led the way all the way back to the mirror: through the other rooms, all the way along the passageway to the triangle-room, up the hundred steps, through the secret panel behind the painting, and into the little room with the special mirror.
Meg, the first to enter the room, approached the mirror and recited:
"Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, How do we get through the door?"
The mirror gave her the secret: "Command it to open."
Then Rachel came in, and before Meg could tell her what the mirror said, Rachel asked the magic mirror, ""How do we open that steel door with no handle?"
The mirror repeated, "Command it to open."
"Command it to open?" Rachel said, "O.K. Open!"
"Wait a minute," Alison said.
Jaclyn said, "We're all going to do it. Can I say it please?"
"I said it first," Alison said.
Meg said she was going to say, "Door, Door, across the hall, open now or I'll use a saw!"
"I command it," Alison said, "I said it first."
As they headed back through the rooms and down the hundred steps back to the room with the hole in the floor, Alison said, "Please, I was the one who said it."
But Julian disagreed. "No, you have two things. Why don't you go down and all tell it to open?" he said to Meg.
"Yes, that's fair," Rachel said.
"Open now, door," Meg said, as they went through the passageway from the triangle room.
But Alison said, "No, Meg, you're going to say silly stuff."
"Please, door, open," Rachel suggested saying to the door.
"Door, open," was what Alison thought they should say.
"No," Rachel said, "That's a nice word to say: please. Or else the door will just say..."
Now they had reached the knob-less and keyhole-less metal door. Alison and Julian both said at the exact same time, "Please, door, open."
The door vibrated. Then it loudly rumbled. Then, with a loud screech, the door very slowly opened up all by itself.
"It's open!" Alison screamed.
"We'll all go in," Julian said. "I'm going into the hole." Looking down the hole, he saw a long ladder leading down into the darkness.
"I'm climbing down," Rachel said.
But since it was so dark down there, they decided that Meg had better go down first.
"Meg and I will go down," Julian said.
"So will I," Alison said.
Rachel hugged her bird, saying, "And I'll hold the bird to my chest so that way it won't fly away."
But only one person could go down the ladder at a time.
"I'm going first," Meg said.
Rachel suggested an order to go down in: "Meg goes down, then Julian, then me, then Alison."
But Alison complained, "Why do I have to be last?"
"I have to go first because I have the Necklace of Light," Meg said.
"Yes," Rachel agreed, "You have to go first."
"I'll go second," Alison said.
Rachel said, "I'm third."
And Julian went down after them.
At the bottom of the ladder was a very tiny room. In this room there was only one object: a treasure chest. But instead of being green, this one was gold-colored.
"I'll open it," Julian said as soon as he saw it.
"No," Rachel said, "You have to clap three times. I'll try clapping three times. One. Two. Three."
The treasure chest shook a little as soon as she did that.
"Touch it," Alison said.
"No way!" Rachel said, jumping back away from it.
Then they noticed that there was some writing on the wall behind the treasure chest.
"What does it say?" Alison asked, as Meg went up to the writing and held the Necklace of Light close to it.
The writing said: "Help me."
"The fairy!" everybody screamed excitedly.
"Yes yes yes yes yes!" Meg said, jumping up and down.
"Let's lift the treasure chest up," Rachel suggested.
"Let Meg touch it," Julian said.
She found the treasure chest much too heavy to lift up, but she noticed that they could slide it across the floor.
"Slide it away," Meg suggested.
"Pull pull pull pull pull," Alison said.
Meg said, "Everyone pull."
They weren't able to pick it up, but they were able to slide it along the ground.
Meg tried to open it, but it was locked.
"Hey, Robin can use the key!" Rachel said.
"I have the key," Jaclyn said. She unlocked it, and everybody opened up the lid.
The treasure chest was full of gold, and strange-looking things, but they didn't know what any of that was.
"Goody," Meg said when she saw all the treasure. Then she said, "Now, is the fairy underneath this box?"
They pushed it some more, and then they found the treasure chest was covering up a big hole in the floor.
"I'm going down," Meg said as soon as she saw it.
"I knew it," Julian said. "Meg and I are going down."
"I get the fairy," Meg said as she started down.
"You can't keep it; it's the Rock Man's," Rachel said as she followed Meg and Julian into the hole.
Down below, they found another little room. There was a girl in there, and there was a table made of silver. She was lying on top of it, in a box made of glass, and at the four corners of the table were big candles and all four of them were lit.
Meg said, "Let's just blow them out."
But Julian said, "They're trick candles."
"Trick candles!" Meg said. "I got them on my birthday cake. How dare they do it to me again!"
Meg decided to run back to the mirror again to find out from the magic mirror how to put out the candles. This time, she went up all by herself; there was plenty of light for everybody else from the four lit candles.
"La la la la," Meg sang as she went back up through the hole and through the other rooms to the passageway and back to the triangle room and up the hundred steps and back through the other rooms and finally she was back at the magic mirror.
"Magic mirror, honey," she said to the mirror, "How do you blow out those stupid candles on the four sides of the table with the fairy inside?"
The mirror gave her the simple answer: "Blow on them."
"Oh goody," Meg said, and she returned to her friends down with the fairy.
"We blow them out," Meg told them when they asked her how the mirror said to put out the candles. "I'm blowing the first one," she said, walking over to it and standing by that candle.
Meg, Julian, Ali, and Alison each stood by a candle.
"One. Two. Three," they all said, and they blew with all their might. All four candles went out at the same time.
As soon as all four candles went out, a thin line formed, all by itself, around the four sides of the box, right below the top.
"Let's open it up," Rachel suggested.
Meg said, "Smash it."
"No you guys!" Alison yelled.
Julian said, "I'll chop the line."
"No, you know what may happen? The fairy may die," Rachel warned.
"Smash it," Meg said again.
Before she could try that, Alison said, "I'll lift the lid up."
"You can't do that," Rachel said to her.
Meg said, "Let's go back up to the mirror." And so she did. Again, nobody else felt like going with her. She still had a lot of energy from all the excitement, and she quickly made her way all the way back to the mirror again. "La la," she sang as she went back to the mirror.
When she finally got there she said to it, "Mirror, how do we open up the box with the fairy in it?"
"Take off the lid," the mirror answered.
She still wasn't too tired, but she was slowing down as she made her way all the way back down to the room with the fairy.
She told them what the mirror said, and Alison said, "I'm taking off the lid."
But Meg then said, "I want to."
"Me too," Julian said.
But Alison complained, "She gets to do everything. She got the necklace at the beginning."
"I'm taking off the lid," Julian said.
Rachel said to Alison, "She didn't get to open the door with the bird in it."
Then Alison said, "Yes, but you did. I didn't get the glasses."
"But you got to open the steel door," Meg told her.
"No, I didn't," she said to Meg.
Then Rachel suggested that they all lift up the lid together. Alison didn't want to at first, but Meg agreed that that would be fair.
In the end, they did all stand around the glass box, and they all held onto the top of the glass box and lifted up the lid together. They carefully removed it from the box.
When they picked the lid up, the fairy opened up her eyes and sat up. She started coming out of the box, and said, "Who are you?"
"We came to rescue you," Meg told her, "The Rock Man said so."
"The Rock Man is here?" the fairy said, looking around.
Alison told her, "Yes, he's alive."
"He's locked in the silly stone," Meg said.
The fairy pulled on the sides of the glass box, and floated right out and landed on her feet beside the box. "How long have I been here?" she asked, stretching.
"Twenty thousand years you've been locked up," Rachel told her.
Alison said, "She's been there so long that she can't remember anything."
Then Rachel explained to the fairy, "There was a pirate in this cave when we first started and his name was Pirate Jack, but he never found out what happened. And there was a hole under that rock, and he never ever, so he died before he could ever find you. So we found you the very first time. So we're going to try to help you get back."
"So here we go!" Meg said.
Then the fairy said, "Well, now that I'm out of the magic box and I'm awake, I can use all my own magic powers."
"Do it," Alison said.
Meg said to the fairy, "Make this cave, instead of a gloomy old cave, into a pretty castle."
But the fairy told her, "I'm not that powerful. But I can light up the cave!"
"Yes," Rachel said.
The fairy moved her hand, and everything in the cave suddenly lit up.
Meg suggested, "Light up the whole cave."
"Yes," Rachel said.
"It is all lit up," the fairy told them.
"What about the tunnel?" Rachel asked. The fairy nodded her head.
"Can you do one thing for me?" Meg asked her. "Tell me why Pirate Jack died."
But the fairy told her, "I never even knew Pirate Jack."
Rachel said, "When she was in there, Pirate Jack came in and she never knew he was in it."
"Just do me one favor will you do?" Alison asked her. "Kill the witch for good."
"Are you powerful enough..." Meg said.
"To show us the witch," Rachel added.
"When she was alive?" Meg continued. "Just a hologram of her."
"I can show you a picture of the witch," the fairy told them.
"Go ahead," Rachel said.
Meg asked, "Was she ugly?"
She made a picture of the ugly witch appear on the wall.
"Yucch!" Rachel said.
Then Meg asked the fairy, "Are you powerful enough to show a picture of Pirate Jack?"
But the fairy shook her head and said, "No, because I don't know what Pirate Jack looked like."
Rachel said to her, "He looked like a pirate with a hat and he is a captain and he looks really scary."
Alison said a little poem she made up about the fairy:
Fairy fairy Magic magic fairy.
Then Meg suddenly remembered what they had originally come into the cave for in the first place: the treasure! Meg suggested that Julian carry the treasure chest, forgetting that it had been too heavy for them to lift.
They went up to the treasure chest to see how they could take it. The fairy came up behind them.
"I have an idea," Julian said, "I'll turn my sword to the side and push it and push it and push it and push it."
He pushed it from one side of the room to the other, but couldn't figure out any way to get it up through the hole where they had come down.
"How are we going to get it up?" Meg asked. Nobody could think of anything.
But then Meg said, "I know: let's ask the fairy. We can ask the fairy if she can make the box lighter."
"How are we going to push it up a hundred stairs?" Alison asked.
But Meg just asked the fairy, "Can you please make this box lighter, full of treasure?"
"I could take the treasure out," the fairy suggested.
"What!" Alison yelled.
"But how would it come up with the treasure chest?" Meg asked.
The fairy told them, "I have enough magic to get the treasure chest to go up."
"Oh," Julian said.
Meg still didn't know what good that would do. "But how are you supposed to get the silly treasure to go up?" she asked the fairy.
"I know," Alison said, "We could take the treasure out of the treasure box and carry the treasure up by our hands."
The fairy told them again, "My magic is good enough that I could make the treasure chest go up."
"Even with the treasure in it?" Meg asked.
"Sure," the fairy said, "It doesn't matter how heavy it is."
"Yea!" everybody yelled at once.
"Lift it up," Alison said.
"Come on, come on," Meg said, "I'll help you."
"It's heavy," Rachel mentioned.
The fairy simply lifted up her hand, and the treasure chest went shooting up through the hole!
Then Alison turned to the fairy and asked the fairy, "Can you beam us back outside of this stupid cave?"
"Sure," the fairy answered.
"Now can you beam me to where the Rock Man is?" Meg asked her.
"We can get outside of the cave for real, with the treasure chest," Alison said.
"We have to take everything with us," Rachel said, "The Rock Man, the fairy."
"I don't want to go with treasure chest," Meg said, "I want to go with the Rock Man."
Julian had a different idea and suggested to the fairy, "Make the whole cave go up."
But the fairy told him, "I can't do that."
"Then make everything in the cave go up," Alison said.
"I don't want to go up," Meg said. "Can I take my share out of the treasure chest and stay here? Please?"
"You could," the fairy told her.
"O.K. I'm going to take my share, thank you," Meg said.
But first the fairy said, "There are lots of magical things in there. None of them are working though."
"None of them are working?" Julian asked.
"No," the fairy said, "But I'm still strong enough that I could probably make one thing work for each of you."
"O.K." Meg said, "What can I have, what's in the box? I'd like a magic crown."
"That does what?" the fairy asked her.
"That can beam me anywhere I want," Meg said. "Can I have a crown that can beam me anywhere?"
"Let me look and see what's in there," the fairy said, looking through the things in the treasure chest. She pulled out a little crown, and said, "Here's a crown that will let you go through a wall or floor."
"I want it," Julian said.
"No, she's got it," Rachel said to him.
"Can you make it beam me anywhere I want?" Meg asked.
The fairy told her, "It will let you be able to go into another room, but it doesn't go very far, but it will let you go pretty far."
"How far?" Meg asked.
"With it, you could go from here up to the top part of the cave, that's how far it can take you," the fairy told her, handing her the crown.
"I want a necklace that can beam me anywhere and it can make itself light," Rachel said.
"There is a necklace in there that can make light," the fairy told her, looking through the things in the treasure chest.
"Me," Rachel said.
Meg said, "I've got that."
But the fairy said, "Yes, but there's one inside the treasure chest too."
"I can have it," Rachel said.
"O.K." the fairy said. She made it light up and handed her the magic necklace.
"Thank you," Rachel said, putting on the glowing necklace.
Julian told the fairy, "I want a crown that can do anything you wish."
"There are different crowns that do different things," the fairy said, looking through all the treasures filling the treasure chest.
"Can I change my crown?" Meg asked her. "What can the crowns do?"
But the fairy told her, "I'm running out of power. I only have enough to make one thing for each of you."
Meg said, "We want this crown that can make you walk through walls."
Then Alison said, "I want one that can make it beam me from one side of the world to the other side of the world."
"There aren't any that go that far," the fairy said.
"Can I have a crown that can make me invisible?" Meg asked.
Alison asked her, "What other crowns are there?"
"There is a crown that makes things invisible," the fairy said.
"I'm having it!" Alison said. The fairy lifted it out, and gave her a working invisibility crown.
"I want a crown that makes everything invisible," Julian said.
"Alison got the invisibility crown," the fairy said.
"Oh why can't I have it?" Meg asked.
Then Julian complained, "I didn't get anything but a stupid sword."
"What do you want?" the fairy asked him.
"What is there?" he asked.
The fairy told him, "There are a lot of things in here."
"Like what?" he asked.
The fairy told him, "You say what you would like."
Julian thought for a moment, and then said, "I'd like a crown that can show you anything from the future."
"That's a hard one," the fairy said, hunting through the treasure chest. "There is something here. There's a mirror."
"O.K." Julian said, "I'll have it."
The fairy went on, "And if you look at something through the mirror, you can see what it's going to look like in the future." She gave it to him.
The fairy asked, "Is there something that anybody else wants?"
"Me," Rachel said.
"No," the fairy said, "You already got something."
"I'm leaving," Meg said. She used her magic crown, and beamed herself to see their friend, the Rock Man.
Rachel asked, "Can I have a jewelry box with jewels?"
The fairy pulled out a beautiful box, saying, "There's a jewelry box that you can take jewels out of and never run out."
Rachel became very excited and said, "I'll trade, I'm trading for that."
The fairy wouldn't take back the necklace, but then somebody else took the jewelry box, and traded Rachel for the necklace, so she ended up with the jewelry box she wanted.
Everybody who had come down ended up with a working magical thing from the treasure chest. There were still other things left, but the fairy wasn't strong enough to make everything work. But some of the nonworking magical crowns and things would still be worth a lot of money.
Then the fairy waved her hands one more time, and everybody found themselves back at the entrance to the cave where they had started their adventure, beside the pirate skeleton, and with an enormous treasure chest full of treasure for them all to keep.
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