Call of the Starbird--Chapter Four

Chapter 4

Chet and I were sitting on the couch, watching an episode of our favourite T.V. show, Tales of Twelve Year Old Witches, when the door to the apartment burst open.
Chet and I turned around to see Reilly and Yanelle come into the apartment. The first thing I noticed was that Yanelle was crying, and that my mom, although she was comforting Yanelle, seemed on the verge of tears herself.
“What happened?” I asked, jumping up and running over to them.
“We… Yanelle is upset because, well…” Reilly trailed off.
“What?” I repeated.
“We…sniff…couldn’t mange to…sniff…grant the…hiccup…the wish…” Yanelle said, bursting into fresh tears when she was finished speaking.
“You WHAT!?!” Chet, who had also left the couch and joined me alongside our mother and sister, exclaimed with horror. Not one person in our family had ever been unable to grant a wish. Sometimes it took a few days, but we always managed to grant it, in the end.
“Welcome home!” Arch exclaimed, walking into the room, but stopped suddenly when he saw the pained and shocked looks on our faces.
“What happened?” he asked.
“They couldn’t grant the wish,” Chet said frankly.
“Oh…” Arch sympathized, affectionately putting his arm around Reilly’s waist, “You’ll do it, just keep trying.”
“No, that’s not it,” Reilly said, sadly shaking her head, “They-they wouldn’t let us!”
“What was the wish?” I asked, not understanding her point.
“A young boy wished for a puppy when he blew out the candles on his birthday cake,” Yanelle explained, breathing deeply to keep from crying, “And we easily found a dog, at a pet store. We bought it-”
But Chet cut her off, “Hey, why didn’t you just use your magic to confuse the store owner and make him GIVE you the dog?”
“That’s what the problem is!” Reilly exclaimed, “That’s why we couldn’t grant the wish! We got worried when our spells on the shop owner didn’t work, but at least we had money, so we just bought the puppy! Then we set it down on the front step of the house, in a small box, and watched, as birds so we wouldn’t be noticed, until the boy and his father opened the door! And the boy asked to keep the dog, and his father said NO! As you very well know, we would normally just set a spell on the father so he accepts, but that’s when our problem got REALLY bad! Our spell didn’t work, and try as we might, we failed! The boy and his father left to bring the dog to the pound, and by that time we knew we had failed, and ,well, here we are…” At that, both Reilly and Yanelle burst into tears. Failing this mission meant so much to them.
“Let’s go sit down and see if we can sort things out,” Arch said gently, leading the family to the kitchen table.
The T.V, now forgotten, continued to play, unaware of our deep, DEEP problem…