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Tata.”
    “Good,” she said softly. “Good.” She relaxed back on her
pillows, closed her eyes and exhaled the words “I love you, Amarrah. You’re a
very special girl.”
    She didn’t breathe in again.
    * * *
    I was all packed and ready, the box hidden—as well as
something that size could be—in my largest suitcase. I’d spent hours alone,
trying to get it open in between long sessions of crying my heart out for my
beloved grandmother, who’d gone and left me all alone, and full of fear over
what would become of me now. The box had a padlock without a keyhole, and odd
images painted in a grid pattern on the underside. Short of destroying the
witches’ box, there was no way to get inside it. And part of me thought opening
it would be a bad idea anyway.
    My gidaty’s burial had been arranged before her death, and my
airline ticket pre-purchased. Now that she was at rest, I was going to a world I
knew nothing about, to live with cousins I had never met.
    Part of me wanted to run away.
    Later, when the rifle-toting security officer at the airport
crooked his finger at me, calling me closer, I thought I should have listened to
that part. “I need to see what’s inside this bag,” he said. He had eyes like
black marbles, a moustache that covered his lips. He didn’t look like an honest
man to me.
    “It’s only my personal things,” I said.
    “All the same.” He opened my case while I stood there, helpless
to argue. Then his eyes fell upon the box and lit with greed. “What is
this?”
    “A family heirloom. It was my grandmother’s.”
    He picked up the precious box, and I lunged for him, reaching
out, but his arm—the one holding his rifle—shot out, and the cold metal barrel
pressed across my chest.
    “Open it,” he said.
    I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “I can’t. I’ve tried
and tried, but there’s just no way. It feels empty, though.”
    He held the box up near his ear and shook it. “No, there’s
something. Light, but still…. I’m going to have to confiscate this.”
    “But it’s mine!”
    “You’ll get it back,” he said. “Once I’ve cleared it with the
Department of Antiquities. People are constantly smuggling treasures from our
ancient sites, selling them on the black market.” He set the box down. My gaze
remained pinned to it as I searched my brain for a solution.
    Pulling a pad and pen from his uniform pocket, he handed them
to me. “Write down the address of the place where you are going in the U.S. I
will see to it that this is shipped to you once it has been cleared.”
    I obediently jotted the address, and then a symbol, one my
grandmother had taught me, because I wasn’t entirely powerless. It was a minor
hex of sorts—for along with the history of the witches, a few of their skills
had been handed down through the generations of my family. It was part of our
legacy, and my grandmother had taught me all the bits and pieces of magic that
had come down to her with the tales. So I drew the sign that would ensure he
would know no peace until he returned the box to my hands.
    I eyed the box, and while my head was down, muttered in a
whisper, “I bind you now, oh box, to me, by the power of three times three,
return return return to me.”
    “What was that?”
    “I was praying,” I said, straightening and handing him the
paper. “That you would take mercy on an innocent orphan girl and not steal from
her the last thing her dead grandmother gave to her.”
    His eyes held mine for a long moment.
    “I promise you will regret it if you don’t,” I added, letting
my fury show in my face.
    His marble eyes narrowed angrily. “It will be shipped to you
when it clears the Department of Antiquities. Now go, before you miss your
flight.”
    I kept on staring. He thrust out an arm. “Go!” he shouted.
    I knew I would be arrested if I stayed, so I went, feeling I
had failed my grandmother utterly.
    I didn’t see the box again for ten years.

Chapter Two
    1992,