I yelped and twisted around. The weirding woman leaned on a shelf behind me, smiling with brilliant red lips as she rolled a mason glass jar between her hands. Her eyes widened and twinkled with glee as she saw me. "My, you look spritely."

"You!" I shouted, my anger overcoming my fear. I pointed the wand at her as if I knew how to use it. "You did this to me. Undo it!"

The weirding woman put one hand to her chest, "Me?" Then she tsked. "Why would I turn a mortal boy into a sprite?"

"You gave me the wand!"

A little chuckle ran up from her throat. "I did. I did do that. But! The wand is just a key. It was you who provided both the lock and the wonderful treasure behind it."

I stared at her blankly, trying to work through her words when I noticed my body, my clothes, and the wand itself begin to glow again. She saw it, too, and took measured steps toward me.

"Stay back!" I continued to point the wand at her, and to my surprise I felt something push down my arm and into the wand, causing the star to light up more brightly.

"Oh, what wonder! What will you do to me?" She never stopped or slowed her advance.

"I --" didn't know what the wand could do. Not really. "I'll turn you into something!"

"Into what?" Her eyes sparkled, and lips were in a full maddened smile, and in that moment, I knew she had no fear of me, and using the wand may somehow work into her plans, though I could not figure how.

I continued to glow brightly, and the light drowned out my vision. Closing my eyes didn't help, merely lessened and soothed my irises. My heart couldn't handle what was happening to me, and my mind raced with terrible worry. Then the glow broke and fell away into silver dust. My stomach lurched suddenly, and I gasped, my body warning me before my eyes that I, too, was falling. I opened my eyes and saw a world made for giants rush past my vision. The counter beside me was a skyscraper, the shelves in the distance practically was a city skyline, and the weirding woman in her green dress and wide smile was a monster coming to eat me. I screamed involuntarily on my way down, down, and down.

I smacked into the ground with a whump that threw all my breath from my body. Strangely, I didn’t feel all that much pain, having all the weight of a mouse. I sucked in air as I rolled over onto my back, just in time to see a huge glass jar come racing down over me. I yanked my arms and legs in as the lid of the jar perfectly enclosed me. The echoing thud it made reverberated through the floor and my tiny body. And I stared through the distorted glass to the ever-gleeful weirding woman.  Her face, half in shadow, was larger than my entire body and filled my vision.

Panic began to flood my mind, and I jumped up as fast as my dazed mind and drunken body would allow. I was surrounded by thick, rounded glass and the giant's hand that held it down. I looked around the jar's lip, wondering if there might be a knot or depression large enough for me to squeeze through. But when I saw none, I ran up to the glass and began to pound on it, shouting up to my captor.

"Let me out! Please, this isn't right! I got your riddles right, why are you doing this?"

The woman didn't answer, instead her deep voice warned: "Watch yourself, little bug." Then, with a simple twist of her wrist she made my prison move. The bottom of the jar went right as the top went left and, the lip caught me at the shin. I shouted, and tumbled down again, rolling and sliding the length of the moving glass. In one smooth motion the weirding woman had turned the mason jar right-side up and brought high into the air. She brought me all the way up to face level, so she could look me eye to eye, and I backed away all the way against the jar's wall.

It was an incredible sight being so close to her. Her face was so large I couldn’t focus on it all at once. Her skin, I could tell, had no trace of makeup and yet looked perfect and ever youthful. Each strand of curled red hair landed exactly where it was meant to. I could make out individual eye lashes, and her eyes were a huge and bright with beautifully deep gray irises.

And while I was busy staring into the weirding woman’s face, she brought her hand around the jar and screwed a meshtop lid to the glass. I looked up at the sight of the passing shadow just in time to see the lid come down.

“No!” I shouted, leaping up, and while I found I had an incredible vertical jump, my tiny fingers stopped short of the twisting lid. The sound inside the jar didn’t just travel through the air, but through the glass itself and I heard it seeming from all around me.

“Relax, this is for your own safety for the trip.”

"What . . . what trip?" I said, turning back to the woman, and paying attention to her grinning white teeth.

“The store’s closed. We can’t stay here, and I think it’s time to get you home.”

I had a surge of panic, imagining the woman taking me to my house and leaving me in the jar on the front porch. Or even worse, giving me over to Chris and telling him everything. And then I realized, she didn't mean my home. She meant hers.

“Wait! No!” I shouted. But trapped as I was in the jar, I had no choice in the matter. The weirding woman cupped the jar around the bottom and brought it down to waist level as she began to walk. I splayed my hands out and crouched down against the edge of the glass. Though she tried to keep the jar relatively upright, I still felt as though I was in a minor, continuous earthquake. And I watched in wide-eyed fascination as the store shelves and the knick knacks on them raced by me like I was in a speeding Hot Wheels car.

We approached the door and I further braced myself. I saw the weirding woman wave her free hand before her and we passed through the antique shop’s heavy oak wood door. She never stopped or paused, and I heard her speak:

“Home again, home again, jiggity jig.”

And then a shift of my vision and a wave of vertigo, and the weirding woman walked through a white garden gate beneath a trellis of vines and flowers. Instead of seeing the sleepy night time atmosphere of downtown Nowheresburg, I was being carried along a stone path in the middle of a quiet lawn. I saw a ring of mushrooms and stones on the left of the path, and a granite bird bath on the right. The blue house ahead must have been one of the oldest in town yet looked brand new and seemed almost like a doll’s house come to life, with a wraparound porch and flower boxes in every window. I had driven by it many times, but never remembered seeing who owned it.

She brought me into her house, and the inside seemed to match the outside, with bright pastel patterns on her walls and rich rugs over the wooden floor. Then we were in a living room, a cozy little space with high backed upholstered chairs. The lights came on automatically as she moved, fire flicking to life in pink kerosene lamps.

Then, I was rising into the air again as she set my jar prison on the mantle in front of a painting of a park scene. Like I was a mere decoration, or a trophy to keep.

“I trust the ride wasn’t too bad, little bug.”

I peeled myself away from the edge of the glass jar, my body only grudgingly letting go of the safety. My tiny heart was still bouncing in my chest. I stared at the weirding woman again, now in her own home. Her place of power. More than that, in a weird way, I was her guest. I bit down my first words that came to mind.

“It was . . .exciting.” I said instead.

The weirding woman’s mouth turned up again and her eyes sparkled, “Excellent!”

“What . . . what are you going to do with me?” I wondered at that brilliant face.