The Adventure of the Magic Chia Plant

Chapter 1: The Magic Portal

Twelve-year-old Brent Phillips flopped face-down on the bed and groaned. He wore his customary matching blue sando (a kind of sleeveless shirt best for tropical weather), shorts, and flip-flops. 

 "I'm booored. I wish something interesting would happen. "

His brother Bench, who was two years younger and dressed almost identically except that his ensemble was all in green, threw himself on the floor beside him and leaned his head against the bed. "What are Mama and Papa doing?"

"You know they're both seeing patients at this time."

"Oh, yeah."

Brent checked his watch. "It's three exactly. I already finished my homework. And it's too early for merienda. I'm not hungry yet, anyway.  How about you? Are you done with your homework?"

Bench scowled. "No. I still have a few left."

"Mama will get mad at you again if you leave them until tonight."

Bench rolled his eyes. "I know, but I want to do something else right now."

"Okay, but it's your funeral."

Brent suddenly sat up and grabbed his Kindle. He also slung his binoculars around his neck. "Let's go to the balcony."

Bench scratched his head and hunted around for something to bring. He finally decided on his own Kindle and, following some weird impulse, a small flashlight, which he pocketed. "What are we going to do there?"

"Read. Water the plants. Spy on the neighbors.  Whatever. At least we can see what's happening outside."

Bench looked around their room at the haphazardly strewn toys and half-open books, trying to come up with something better to do. After a minute, he gave up. "Okay, fine. But you know Bethie is up there." He was talking about their youngest sibling, whom he considered the most irritating person on earth.

Brent snorted. "She knows you're sensitive; that's why she provokes you. Just ignore her."

"I don't know how! She just makes me so mad!"

"Pretend she doesn't exist. That's what I do when she annoys me."

Bench just glowered all the way up the stairs, knowing very well that he was incapable of doing this. When they reached the third floor, he immediately looked around for his six-year-old sister, readying himself for her teasing, but she was nowhere in sight.

"Where is she?"

Brent pointed at the half-closed door of the maid's quarters. "She's probably napping with her nanny."

They both peeked in the room, but to their surprise, they could only see Ate Nora fast asleep on the mattress. Her arm was flung out as if cradling someone, but the space beside her was empty. Bench stuck his head further inside and looked around, but the corners were devoid of movement. "She's not here."

Brent started to feel nervous. "I don't remember seeing her go downstairs. And we would have heard if she had passed by our room."

"She's not supposed to go up and down the stairs by herself!"

Brent shrugged resignedly. "When did she ever follow instructions?"

A sudden movement from the corner of his eyes caught Bench's attention. "She's outside!" He ran out to the balcony, followed closely by his older brother.

Fortunately, the third-floor balcony was enclosed entirely by grills, so there was no danger of anyone falling. Still, this feature presented a danger in itself; anyone could climb up almost to the ceiling, especially their nimble and wayward little sister, whom their parents sometimes called a little monkey.

This time, however, despite the lack of adult supervision, she wasn't attempting to clamber up the chairs, the tables, or even the walls, as she was wont to do. Instead, she was merely squatting by one of the large ceramic pots in the right-hand corner, looking intently at the little chia seedlings their mother planted a few days ago. Like them, she was in a sando and shorts, but her predominant color was pink.

"Hey Bethie, what are you doing?" Brent asked, bending over her. Bench hung back a little, glad she was safe but unwilling to catch her unwelcome attention.

Bethie pointed at the little plants with the small plastic Mountain Dew bottle they had repurposed as a watering can. "They're growing."

Brent nodded. "Yes, of course, they're growing. Did you water them?"

Bethie shook her head impatiently, ignoring his question. "No, they're growing now. I can see them."

Brent opened his mouth to explain that plants didn't grow that fast when the soil in the pot suddenly shifted. And right in front of his eyes, two more seedlings sprouted in graceful slow motion. He almost dropped his Kindle. "What?!"

"What? What's going on?" Bench finally edged beside him and dropped to a crouch next to Bethie. As the three children watched in amazement, another seedling reared up and spread two baby green leaves. But this last one looked different from the others; instead of rounded edges, it had sharp, serrated ones with tiny hairs that seemed to tremble in the breeze.

Except there was no breeze.  

Bench rubbed his eyes as if waking up from a deep sleep. "Is that normal?"

Brent gave a half-incredulous, half-hysterical laugh. "Uh, no?"

Bethany was enchanted and old enough to realize the impossibility of what was happening. "It's a magic chia plant!" And before they could stop her, she reached out with her bottle and dribbled some water on the plant.

The seedling suddenly grew even faster, as if caught in a fast-forward video. Like a lithe green snake, it elongated swiftly, sprouting more leaves and thorns as it went. The three children started edging backward, watching wide-eyed as it grew towards the afternoon sun and twined around the grills, its tendrils anchoring it to the metal. In seconds, it had described a perfect leafy circle halfway up one side of the balcony, around three feet across. But the strangest part was the middle of the living wreath, where the grills seemed to have melted away. The center of the circle didn't look out into the spare lot across the house as it was supposed to.  

Somehow, impossibly, they were looking at a calm beach with sparkling pink sand and three perfectly round moons hanging on the horizon. Brent and Bench knew the more famous constellations, such as Orion's Belt and the Big Dipper, but the part of the vivid purple sky that they could see was spattered with unfamiliar stars.

 Feeling a surge of unreality, Brent glanced at his watch again. The digital display hadn't changed since they first arrived at the balcony, another thing that didn't make sense. But he could still see the hot mid-afternoon sun streaming brightly above the portal.

A portal. Because that's what it was, of course. He had read enough fantasy children's books to realize that.  It was a door that led to somewhere else, somewhere far away that wasn't in the solar system, possibly not even in the Milky Way Galaxy.  

"Beach!" Bethany shrieked gleefully, and without a second thought, she ran headlong to the circle. Brent and Bench gasped and tried to snatch at her clothes, but she was too fast for them. Still clutching her little green softdrink bottle, she sailed through the shimmering door and disappeared.