52stories

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So what did I do? I did exactly what you would have done. I took two steps back and closed the bathroom door. To my credit, I didn’t slam it. Instead, keeping my eyes locked with the wizard - why mince words, why try to rationalize, it’s obviously what he was- I slowly reached out with my right arm, grasped the handle, and swung the door closed, the latch making a gentle click as it snapped into the door frame. I looked down at the handle and counted slowly in my head to ten. The handle was carved, like the head of the wizard’s staff, in the shape of a dragon head. The tongue dangled obscenely out of the mouth, looping to the door to form the main bulk of the handle. I took a deep breath, and opened the door again.

The old man remained in the field. The impossible field. I turned on my heels, and started walking towards the door of the store. When I had taken a few steps, the skin in between my shoulder blades began to itch, as if I were being targeted for a knife in the back, so I began a shambling jog that quickly turned into a sprint.

Blasting through the entrance of the store, out onto the pavement of the street, I congratulated myself on my foresight in wearing comfortable sneakers and loose clothing for the day’s sightseeing. Obviously I hadn’t thought I would be being chased by wizards from another world, but practical shoes were again showing their value. Dodging between pedestrians, most dressed in the depressing dark earth tones of Europe, my wallet and my camera in my cargo pockets thumped my legs rhythmically.

Racing down the street, running faster than I had since my high school track days, which were fifteen years and twenty pounds ago, I had little time to think. That is, little time until I blasted around the corner leading to the street where I had left my wife.

She was still looking through her guide book - only a few minutes had passed since Daphne and I had left her here at this fountain. I was about twenty feet away from her, and she had her back to me. Quickly, I thought about what I would tell her when I got to her. Somehow I didn’t think that “Help! A wizard is after me, and a bathroom ate our child!” would fly with Liz. What could I tell her that would help this situation?

I remembered an incident back home in Pennsylvania. Liz, Daphne and I had all gone to a small fair being held at a pumpkin patch, just before Halloween last year. In addition to the privilege of overpaying for the same pumpkins we could have purchased at the grocery store, with your admission ticket you were granted the opportunity to take a hay ride out to the patch from the parking area around the barn, and you got a free apple from the farmer’s orchard. Of course, there was also a small midway with carnival games and bumper cars and pony rides, all of which cost extra.

Before we left, we made sure we dressed Daphne in the most eye-catching orange tshirt possible, both to fit the Halloween theme, and to make sure that if by some chance we got separated, she would be easy to spot.

I didn’t count on three things. The first was that Liz had brought her cell phone, and happened to get an important work call as we were walking through the midway.

When the call came, Liz stepped away a few feet to take it. I turned to look at the carnival games, trying to figure out which of them was the least rigged, so Daphne could go home with an apple, a pumpkin and the all-important stuffed licensed character, and when I turned back, Daphne was gone.

Liz hadn’t noticed, she was still on the phone, but I didn’t want to alarm her. She is an absolute terror when it comes to the safety of Daphne, a real lioness guarding her cub type thing, and I was going to be in major trouble at home, sleeping on the couch type trouble if I didn’t find Daphne before the call was over.

I thanked my lucky stars that we had come up with the eye-catching orange tshirt idea, and then started scanning the crowd. And that’s when I noticed the second thing I hadn’t counted on; nine out of ten children at the patch were dressed in the same color of orange tshirt. I briefly considered shouting her name at the top of my lungs, but that would have alerted Liz, and made Daphne sit down and cry instead of coming running.

As I started power walking down the midway, my heart started pounding in my chest, louder and louder. What-ifs started dancing in my head; What if she was kidnapped? What if she fell down an old well? What if I never saw her again? I started running, drawing odd looks from the parents walking around, their children wisely being held tightly by the hand. Liz was going to kill me. Why was I so utterly stupid?

Then I spotted Daphne, looking into the pony ride pen, standing next to a little boy (also in a bright orange tshirt). As I jogged up behind her, her little hands grasping the wooden fence surrounding the tramped down dirt on which the ponies circled, she turned her head to the little boy. “Ponies are my absolutest bestest favorite!” she squealed to him. That was the third thing I hadn’t counted on. Even better than staying within Mom and Dad’s eyesight as she had been told repeatedly to do, both on the ride to the pumpkin patch and upon disembarking from the van in the parking lot, even better than getting a pumpkin of her very own, was getting to see ponies.

“Daphne! There you are!” I managed to not quite yell. She turned to me.

“Daddy! This is Raymond! He likes ponies, too!”

“Nice to meet you, Raymond. Where are your parents?” Then I looked up, and saw Raymond’s mother, who had been standing a few feet behind him all along. She looked at me with a silent accusation in her eyes.

I turned my back on her, and grabbed Daphne by the waist and hoisted her up to my shoulders. Beginning to trot back to Liz, I told her, “You don’t need to ride on any smelly old ponies. I can be a much better pony than those four legged ones.”

Daphne had laughed, and grabbed my hair with one hand and slapped my ear with the other. “Giddyup, Daddy! Yah, hiyah!” Her velcroed shoes scratched both of my cheeks, and her slaps of encouragement were making my ear ring a little, but it was worth it, I had found her, she was laughing and safe. Of course, Liz had noticed our absence, but her face, which had been puckered with concern, lit up too, when she saw Daphne giggling and pulling my hair.

Looking at Liz’s back, here in the dingy gray streets of Europe, poring through the guidebook, I realized that my first instinct had been wrong. I couldn’t tell her about Daphne and the old man and the bathroom. We couldn’t go to the police and tell them that story. I had to go back and get Daphne on my own- seeing Liz made me realize that. My heart wrenched as I remembered the first time I had held Daphne, and her little hand clutching onto my pinky finger, as if she was never going to let it go. My eyes stung as turned around the corner again, and faced the entrance to the store down the street, its open door beckoning.