Jasmine was far, far from Yako and Popster.

She and Tiffany were between the worlds and she was homesick. But she was Clara fighting for her Nutcracker, she held the hand of a magic lady who was a little like Mary Poppins, and somewhere ahead was where they needed to be.

She felt Giles and Silver Mary too, only not so silver. They huddled far ahead, talking in the dark. She heard their voices, just about as loud as the spooky voices chanting all that hooey about ice and smoke behind.

Then Giles whisked away and so did Silver Mary. Jasmine Miyazuki Rainbow Bear slowed to a stop.

“What is it, my love?” whispered Tiffany. “What do you sense?”

“Nothing,” she answered in a quavery voice, and got scared to hear how scared her voice sounded. “I can’t feel them no more.”

“Who, my love? To whom did you intend to bring us?”

“You didn’t know? Giles and Silver Mary were up ahead there and now they’re gone.”

The gloved hand gripped hers. She looked up at Tiffany in the dim, wondrous light of the unending string of bulbs they followed far beyond where the real building must have ended.

In fact, the light bulbs weren’t really light bulbs anymore. A dead giveaway: they were magical glimmering jewels, very pretty.

And the tunnels they were in, they weren’t dusty plaster and wood anymore either. They were … they were … what were they? They were like rock, kind of like a cave Popster and Mama had taken her to when Mama was still alive but they were more than rock. If she had to say what they were, they were like stories, but pressed real tight, so you couldn’t hear them or read them. She could almost make out words or sounds in them but they were pressed so tight.

All this she noticed while understanding in a kid way that Tiffany was still in love with Silver Mary like Popster sometimes cried for Mama even though he loved Yako so much.

The babble in the distance behind them squeezed out words again. “Gawrd feck, naa-ow wot?” A creaky voice like the cranky old man who sold balloons at the zoo. And another voice, scary and cold, answering, something that sounded like Wizard whizzen zzaaa.

“Can you take us,” Tiffany asked, her cultured voice frighteningly uncertain, “to the spot where you felt their presence?”

Jasmine thought about the dark they were in.

There’s the scary darkness of a monster movie where you know something’s creeping out there in the mean unfriendly night, but this dark wasn’t like that (and this was weird because there were monsters somewhere behind them).

There’s the dark of chocolate and people’s skin and killer whale skin and panthers, the dark of life and food and animals and it’s fascinating and interesting. This dark had some of that but something else.

There’s the dark of your own bedroom when Yako and Popster have tucked you in and Popster told a story or Yako played music and they laugh and say goodnight and you sit up with your little paper lantern nightlight and then you turn that out too and everything is warm and cozy and you feel sleep and dreams coming. This dark had some of that in it too.

But then there’s the dark of night sky with a flash of lightning, zzkooom! And the dark of a crossroads at midnight when you just don’t know which way to go. There’s the dark behind your eyes when you’re trying so hard to remember someone’s name or the answer to a test question or the words of a song. The dark of not knowing. This dark was like that.

But Not Knowing also meant Anything Is Possible.

This dark was – she got it! It was the rich red dark of perfect clay under her fingers!

“Yup,” she said, once she understood that she could shape this dark. She pointed, or maybe the line of receding diamond lights shifted their direction. “Come on, we might just as well go there as not.”

“I should say so indeed.”

“You shall go nowhere!”

The voice was at their very backs with the solid stone-cold dark of a tomb.

“Eeeh, heh heh,” cackled the creaky voice beside the stone voice. “Gawrd no, eh?”

Tiffany whispered just in Jasmine’s private ear: don’t look … walk swiftly away but don’t run. The gloved hand gave Jasmine a little push.

The months of wandering these tunnels (or wherever they were now) helped Jasmine. She obeyed, taking five quiet steps away. She knew that Tiffany wanted her to go to where Giles and Silver Mary had been but she wasn’t going to go there without taking Tiffany to her Lady Love.

And she knew something. She knew part of the story Giles had told. After all, Giles had told it to her, hadn’t he?

“It was a cold day,” she whispered, trying to remember, but the exact words didn’t matter, “when I walked up to her little hogan.”

The cold voice spoke, unaware of her. “And so, Madame … Tiffany … we meet again. Do you remember what you left behind, my child?” The creaky voice, confused, chimed in, “Eeh?”

“Smoke curled into the sky,” Jasmine whispered. She liked that! But they still didn’t hear her.

“I don’t believe,” Tiffany’s voice said frostily, “that I’ve had the dubious privilege. Unsightly beast you are, at the least.”

Without looking to see (but she knew she’d see an ugly demon), Jasmine carried the story forward, right to the place where Giles had ended … and beyond! For of course Giles had continued the story, and so now she could as well. She giggled at the old woman nudging Robby from behind instead of leading the way and as they climbed onto the red mountaintop, her voice grew louder.

“Phwawt the feck is theht?” the croaky voice asked.

Jasmine told the story in her own words now. “Robby turned red as a strawberry thinking about that old lady’s butt sitting in the red powder. Meanwhile, the lady pointed and said, ‘That’s where he was, last I saw him. That’s where he was, right there.’” She saw the old lady point and looked curiously to see what she pointed at. The red rock sloped down for a ways and then came to a sudden, jagged cutoff. Robby stood looking as the old lady finished her thought about “that father his.”

With hope, Jasmine realized that red rock mountaintop was more real to her than the dark passages. The demon glided toward her but she wasn’t there.

She wouldn’t leave Tiffany! She pulled with her imagination…

Tiffany stood, glorious, raven hair blowing free, on a mountaintop beside her. The mountaintop from the story. She turned her amazed and amazing eyes on Jasmine. Jasmine felt her approval, her warmth, her excitement and her love. For a moment, Tiffany was little Doree again and the two girls gazed with warm friendship at each other. Jasmine saw not even the pre-teen Doree who was at the workshop when Cloud Rock was blasted free but little Doree when she was Jasmine’s age. They would have played together and made up whole worlds without any trouble.

But Robby Baker the reporter (with Giles inside his head) and that old woman were talking and Tiffany was Tiffany, calm and in control again, quickly mastering the situation.

“Not a word,” she whispered to Jasmine. “He mustn’t see you but you must observe.”