Page 11 of Barbells, Broomsticks & A Baby

“Wonderful,” my mother mutters. “Now we have to retrieve the original and destroy the copies before they become permanent.”

“Let’s split up,” I say, already waddling as fast as my pregnant body allows toward the town square, where most of the items seem to be headed. “You go left, and I’ll go right.”

My mother hesitates, looking deeply skeptical about my ability to handle the situation, but another explosion of magical energy from our house—sending the rocking chair rocketing into the sky like a wooden spacecraft—convinces her of the urgency.

“Very well, but be careful. In your condition, any further magical mishaps could have serious consequences.”

She hurries off down the left fork of the road, her cloak billowing dramatically behind her. I turn right, following the trail of floating pacifiers and baby socks toward the center of town.

I’m halfway to the town square when I literally bump into Atlas, who is carrying an armful of baby toys and looking bemused.

“Honey,” he says, catching a teddy bear as it attempts to escape his grasp, “I think these belong to us?”

“Nesting spell gone wrong.” I groan. “Everything from the nursery is escaping. We need to catch it all before someone gets hurt.”

“Like from that?” Atlas points upward, where the crib is now performing aerial acrobatics above the town hall.

“Exactly like that.” I groan again. “My magic surged during the casting, and instead of nesting, everything is flying away.”

“Don’t worry,” he says calmly. “As Epictetus said, ‘Make the best use of what is in your power and take the rest as it happens.’”

“I don’t think Epictetus ever had to deal with an enchanted crib doing loop-de-loops over a government building,” I say with a hint of irritation.

Atlas chuckles and hands me the toys he’s collected. “Hold these. I’ll get the crib.”

Before I can protest, he backs up a few steps, then runs forward and leaps with astonishing agility, his powerful troll legs propelling him onto the roof of the town hall. From there, he times his jump perfectly to intercept the flying crib, catching it mid-loop and landing with grace on the town square fountain.

“Show-off,” I mutter, but I smile at his heroics.

“I got the crib,” he calls down to me. “What else is missing?”

I do a quick mental inventory. “The changing table, the rocking chair, about two dozen outfits, the mobile, the diaper bag, and... Oh, no, Mr. Snuggles!”

“Mr. Snuggles?” Atlas repeats, looking concerned.

“The enchanted plush dragon. The one that sings lullabies when you squeeze its tail. It was the first gift we bought for the baby.”

He nods solemnly, understanding the significance, since I wouldn’t even entertain buying anything until I was well past the second trimester. At my advanced state of...maturity...there was a lot that could have gone wrong. “We’ll find him. Don’t worry.”

As I look around at the magical chaos spreading throughout Evershift Haven—baby items continuing to fly in all directions, my mother chasing floating booties down the street, and the rocking chair now giving an impromptu ride to an opportunistic garden gnome—I worry this disaster is beyond even Atlas’s calm philosophy to fix.

Somewhere in the midst of it all is my mother’s ruined grimoire, soaked with a potion that was supposed to create the perfect nest for our baby but has instead scattered our carefully prepared nursery to the four winds.

If this isn’t a metaphor for how parenthood will go, I don’t know what is.

---