Welcome to Strangely

“I am,” Jenny confirms, unable to take her eyes off the man and woman reflected on the water in the bucket.

The man says to his wife, as he gives her a smile full of hope and encouragement, “These are the lucky numbers, I can feel it in my old bones.”

Jason turns away from the wishing well. “So, does your power still scare you?”

“The Book of Eudemon says every time we use our power, demons in The OtherWorld are somehow alerted to it and they can sense us.”

“But are you going to let that fear stop you from doing what’s right?”

“Is this the task you wanted me for?”

“It is. With your power of premonition, you can decide whether granting or ignoring a wish will be beneficial to the person making it. You have the ability to selflessly evaluate if that person will be just as happy whether their desire is fulfilled or not.”

“It’s a huge responsibility.” Jenny hesitates to accept his offer.

“With your power, it will be easy to decide which wishes are worthwhile, and which ones aren’t. Just remember, you cannot ever use your power for your own personal gain.”

Jenny looks back down into the murky water of the wishing well, trying to decide if this role, with its gargantuan responsibility, is what she wants to do. What if she makes the wrong decisions?

“Come, I’ll walk you home,” Jason offers.

“Where is this New York place?” Jenny asks as they squeeze back through the tiny doorway. It is just as Jason said earlier, when they were looking for the wishing well, they had to walk for a while to find it, and now the little door is only a couple of steps away.

“That’s a story for another day,” Jason replies.

“I have a feeling nobody is ever going to tell me where it is.”

“Patience is a...”

“Yeah, I know. It’s a virtue.”

They walk in a comfortable silence back to where Jenny lives, allowing her the much-needed time to evaluate the role she has been asked to consider.

“I hope you accept the offer of being the guardian of the wishing well,” Jason says as they approach the crooked house on the hill.

“I accept, even if I feel I am not worthy of such an important task, I would love to help people who really need their wishes to come true. I will always do my best to make only the right decisions.”

“Relax, Jenny. You’re rambling.” He smiles as their eyes connect.

“Oh. Sorry. I’m just nervous.”

“Good night, Jenny. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Goodbye, see you tomorrow.”

She watches him walk away from her, down the slight hill, away from the crooked house. The shape of his body is silhouetted against the clouds surrounding Strangely.

Jenny turns, opens the crooked door, and walks into the warm interior of the house she shares with Emily, Abby, and Zara.

Emily is already home and sitting comfortably at the wobbly table in the centre of the room.

“Hey, Emily,” Jenny greets her.

“Hey.”

“What are you doing?”

“Thinking.”

“About what?”

“About how incredibly vulnerable we are now that we have these powers.”

“You're never afraid of anything. I envy that about you, always have.”

“Yeah, well, don't, because it gets me into trouble sometimes.”

The girls silently ponder their new lives before Emily speaks again, “It's just, our whole lives, we've been like everybody else, then, suddenly, we read this old book, and everything is different.”

“We have powers now.”

“I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.”

Overhearing their conversation, Zara leaves her bedroom to join them. “Are you kidding? It's a great thing,” she says.

Emily disagrees, “We don't know that.”

Jenny confirms, “We don't know anything about these powers. Why we have them, what they mean, where they even come from.”

“How do we know it's not from evil?” Emily asks, almost rhetorically.

“Emily, we've been through this. We’re Eudemon. We’re good,” Jenny assures her.

“How do we know? What about Stephen? What about all the other demons who could be coming after us? How do we know we're not just like them? That is what scares me the most.”

“We don't know,” Zara says quietly.

“I just want to be normal again, like it was before Chris sent that Book to Abby.”

“Emily, you are the sweetest, most caring person I have ever met. You're always there to help anybody, even strangers and you've been doing it since I’ve known you,” Jenny says as she walks closer to the table to sit down next to Emily.

Zara says, “There's no way we’ve been given these gifts if it wasn't to do good things with them. To protect the innocent, just like the Book of Eudemon says.”

Sensing her friend's mind is not yet at ease, Jenny reaches over and takes her hand, gently rubbing her thumb over Emily’s knuckles. Wanting to move to a more positive subject, she decides now is the time to tell the girls of her own gift. “I discovered I have the power of premonition.”

“What?” Zara and Emily say in chorus.

Jenny smiles a happy smile. “And I helped an elderly couple, so they won’t lose their home. I helped those people, and who knows, if not for me, they might be homeless now.”

Jenny practically sees the weight lift from Emily’s shoulders at the news that she was able to use her powers to help someone out of a dire set of circumstances.

“It's nice to know our powers really are good, whether we like having them or not,” Emily says with a small smile.

Jenny glances around the room, looking for Abby, and asks, “Where’s Abby? Is she still out with Chris at this late hour?”

“It's just so un-Abby-like to be out after dark without letting us know first,” Zara says, worry creasing her brow.

“Everything's changing since we've read the Book of Eudemon, and I just think we need to be extra careful,” Emily remarks.