The Curse of the Globe

“It was green, about so big!” Whistler held her hands about 10 inches apart, showing the Inspector the approximate size of the missing case.

When she had arrived at her destination, the family shrine of Arethusa, Whistler could not find the container holding her most prized possession. Inside the case was the crystal globe, handed down through the females of her family from before the before times. This globe, made from the froth of ocean waves, held the secret of water. Once a year when the parched earth of summer cried out for relief, Whistler made the long journey from her home on the island of Whye to her distant birthplace.

“Well, when did you see it last?” asked the Inspector. “What is so important about it that you’d awaken me from a sound sleep?” The normally dour man glared at the young woman in front of him. He was new to the location and unused to having a female, clothed only in diaphanous gown of sea-foam green, frantically knocking at his front door hours before midnight.

“Please,” cried Whistler, tears flowing down her pale face, “you have to help me find the case.” While she stood outside pleading with the annoyed man, a sudden breath of wind, hardly more than a zephyr, whipped her gossamer-thin gown around her slender body.

The Inspector gulped at the beautiful sight in front of him, but repeated his question, though this time less angrily, “When did you see it last?”

Whistler thought back before replying, “I don’t remember. We were riding through the desert, hurrying to get here as quickly as possible.” She gave the Inspector a small sad smile. “You see, if the globe isn’t placed in the shrine at exactly midnight on the night of the seventh full moon, the drought will be never-ending.” Whistler looked up at the night sky, seeing a bright moon shining down on them. “I must find the case, or all is lost!”

After dressing and going outside to help the young woman, the Inspector was almost knocked off his feet. The slight breeze had become a steady wind. The sturdy man and the delicate woman struggled through the increasing storm to reach the nearby desert, but failed to locate the case before midnight arrived.

At the distant sound of wild beasts crying out from thirst, Whistler fell to the soft ground and wept. The Inspector knelt before her and touched her face. No tears fell from her eyes, even this water now lacking with the loss of the case and crystal globe.

“It has started,” Whistler cried out, staring at the dry land at her feet. The Inspector watched while the sand of the desert crept further out into the surrounding green field. Before their eyes, grass died, flowers withered to dust, and small animals raced to try and outrun death brought on by the advancing sand.

“Hurry, Sir,” she yelled, bringing the Inspector out of his horrified trance, “perhaps we can outrun it and reach Arethusa’s shrine. Surely, she will protect us there.”

In the final hours of darkness between midnight and dawn, Whistler gathered her family. They and the Inspector huddled in terror as the sound of the wind intensified hour by hour into a gale-force hurricane.

When morning finally arrived, all that was left of the lush ground that once was the paradise for those living there were rippling rows of sand dunes. These went as far as the horizon and reached to the very steps of the marble shrine.

Off in the distance, in the middle of the original desert, lay a small green case. Locked inside was a tiny crystal globe. It lay there through the eons waiting to be found, slowly being covered by the shifting sands.

Winner of 07/15/07 daily Writer's Cramp contest