Tick felt an overwhelming feeling that if she left, he’d never understand anything that was going on. He desperately wanted her to stay, to talk, to help. But having just met her, he didn’t know what to do or say. “You really have to go?” he asked, like a small child begging Grandma to stay just a little while longer.

Mothball’s face softened into the nicest, kindest expression Tick had ever seen. “’Fraid so, little man. Got others to visit, ya know. Quite weary on me legs, it is, but not much choice in the matter. You’ll do well—me bones tell me as much.”

“Will I ever see you again?”

“I hopes ya do, Master Tick. I certainly hopes ya do.”

And with that, the tall woman turned and walked back into the thick copse of trees, her large shoulders sending an avalanche of snow off the limbs where she brushed them.

Tick stared for awhile, half-expecting to see a magic poof of smoke or the fiery blastoff of an alien spaceship, but nothing happened. Mothball had simply vanished into the trees.

His life had turned completely crazy and for some reason it made him more excited than he’d felt in a very long time.

He set off for home with a smile on his face.

~

Mothball waited until the boy went around a bend in the snow-covered road before she stepped out from behind the thick tree where she’d been hiding. She shook her head, bewildered by the exuberance and innocence of youth. He was a fine one, this Atticus Higginbottom, and though she knew she wasn’t supposed to do it, she’d settled on the one she’d be rooting for in this whole mess.

She walked the half-mile to the designated spot that lay deeper in the forest. No one in these parts probably remembered that this place had once been a burial ground, its wooden grave markers long since decayed and crumbled to dust.

Poor deadies, she thought. No one comin’ to pay respects and such.

She triggered the nanolocator signal for Master George, then waited for her boss to work his navigation skills. Funny little man, he was. A good man, really. As nervous as a midge bug caught in a toad paddy, but a kind and gentle soul when you dug down deep. Why, he’d saved her life, he did, and she owed him for it.

Several long moments passed. Mothball fidgeted back and forth on her feet, wondering if the restless man had messed up a thingamajig or whatchamacallit on the Barrier Wand. He was a very precise old chap, and usually responded in a matter of seconds, especially when expecting the nanolocator signal, as he should be now. Mothball had been right on schedule.