Castles and Cauldrons

Deep in the woods behind his house, Jimmy Barclay trails after his visiting cousin Len, who will barely speak to him. In the game they have been playing, Castles and Cauldrons, Len is the master Luther and Jimmy is his apprentice Jondell, and Len insists that the Wizards of Kith have caught them both in a spell. It is Jimmy's fault, Len says, because Jimmy would not go along with the magic. Jimmy admits the truth: he likes the game, but when Len starts saying all that magic stuff, it stops feeling like pretend and starts feeling creepy. Len tells him that is exactly the point, and that if Jimmy is willing to follow along, he has a plan for tonight, when the two of them camp out.

At Whit's End, Connie Kendall can tell something is wrong with Whit. He has not been himself for days. He explains that it feels as though something is oppressing his spirit - as if something dangerous or evil is nearby, though he cannot say where. It is like walking toward a very hot oven, he tells her: you cannot see the heat, but the closer you get, the harder it is to breathe. What can he do about it? What he has already been doing. Pray and wait.

Then Jimmy comes in, leaves in his hair, with Len behind him. Whit and Connie meet the cousin who arrived only yesterday and will stay a couple of weeks, and Jimmy nearly blurts out something about wizards before Len cuts him off and steers the talk to camping gear. Whit warns them to watch the weather, because a storm is brewing. Before the boys can escape, Donna Barclay marches in demanding to know what her brother has done with her doll - the one in the pink and white dress, the one with no arms. Jimmy says he never touched it. Len suggests, smoothly, that the cat carried it off, and adds that it is not very nice to make accusations without proof. The boys leave, and Whit, thoughtful, asks Donna to tell him more about her dolls.

Outside, Jimmy fumes about his sister, but Len has other things on his mind. Whit gives him the creeps, he says. Back home they would call a man like that an interferer - somebody who would shut the game down if he understood it. There was a woman in his town who turned into an interferer, and she was driven off by magic. What the two of them need now is Shalman, the one who comes to help game players and keeps Castles and Cauldrons alive. Shalman can break the spell of the Wizards of Kith. All they have to do, Len says, is ask.

At home, George Barclay finds a quiet moment with his son and tells him something Jimmy did not know. Len did not come to Odyssey just for a vacation. His parents say he has changed over the past few months, that he has taken up with a questionable group of friends, and they are afraid he may be drinking or using drugs. Jimmy answers honestly that he has seen nothing like that - the two of them have only been playing. George says he trusts him, asks him to speak up if anything unusual happens, and agrees they can still sleep outside, unless it rains.

That evening, Connie locks up the empty shop and finds Whit upstairs surrounded by books. Donna's story has sent him researching role-playing fantasy games. Some are silly and harmless, he tells Connie, but a few begin innocently and turn into something else. They start to consume the player's life, until the player is not a kid playing a part anymore but has become the character, drawn toward a deeper commitment, sometimes toward violence, sometimes toward magic that means real rituals and rites. Connie says he is scaring her. Whit says he is glad, because there are some things it is good to be afraid of. Then he decides to pay a visit to the Barclays.

In the dark woods, a battle goes badly and the boys run for the tent, which Len declares sacred ground. Inside, with thunder rolling closer, Len says they cannot win while the spell holds, and that there is a ceremony to call Shalman. He presses Jimmy hard - about trust, about conviction, about power, insisting that the people who get what they want are the ones who have it. Out of his knapsack come the Castles and Cauldrons book and the Board of Talismans, which Len claims can tell the future. And then he produces Donna's doll. He did take it, and he is not sorry; it is to be their symbol of human weakness. When Jimmy calls him Len, he snaps that he is Luther and will not be reprimanded by his apprentice.

The ritual begins. Lots are cast for the number of entry, the doll is set in place, and Jimmy is told to hold the book still. He says he does not want to play anymore. Len tells him it is too late to stop, then reaches for his hand: the ritual must be sealed with a blood covenant, a cut on the thumb. Jimmy fights free, shouting at him to let go. Rain hammers the tent and a branch groans, and Len says it is not the storm at all, it is Shalman, come at last. Jimmy backs away, saying over and over that he will not believe it.

Headlights swing through the trees. Whit and George arrive to find the tent, the book, the board and the missing doll. Len grabs for his things and insists they are his. They were his, Whit tells him. George sends both boys back to the house and says he wants an explanation.

Later, on the porch swing with lemonade and a gorgeous day around them, Jimmy sits with Whit while George brings news from a phone call with his brother, Len's father. Len is doing much better. He is getting counseling from a pastor who understands this kind of thing, and the whole family is working toward a change - though it will not be easy. It rarely is, Whit says. Jimmy asks what became of Len's Castles and Cauldrons things, and Whit tells him he destroyed them; there was no sense in keeping them around. Jimmy is glad, but he admits that thinking about that night still scares him. Whit knows the feeling, and he knows what to do about it. He prays. Their only guard against evil and the fear it brings, he tells Jimmy, is the Lord himself, who is the real master - and may they always have the wisdom to remember it.