Sam tugs Daniel's sleeve toward the back shelf of the school library. He yanks open a book that hums like a trapped bee.
Its cover painted with knights clutching abacuses and dragons hoarding stacks of numerals. 'It's breathing,' Sam whispers, his fingertips catching the gold-leaf page as it lifts on its own toward the light.
Daniel steps through the open pages and his sneakers hit cobblestone. Around him, a knight in puffed sleeves frantically tallies apples while a tiny dragon sniffs the numbers off a wall.
The knight stammers, 'The witch took the zero—everything's falling apart—twenty is just two-without it!' and a whole column of numerals crumbles into grey dust on the floor.
Daniel and Sam race up the spiral staircase of the Number-Castle where the witch cackles on her throne, pinching zero between her black-painted fingernails like a shiny marble she's about to swallow.
Daniel tucks zero into his jacket pocket just before she gulps, and zero bounces free, rolls under her chair, and peeks out from behind a crack in the tile saying, 'Not yet.'
The witch whirls, her cloak snapping like a gust of wind, and screams, 'You little—'. Daniel lifts zero by its smooth, round back while Sam shouts the numbers the dragon asked them to memorize to be able to return back.
'One! Two! Three!' and the castle walls pulse in counting rhythm until zero slots into the missing gap like a coin dropping home. The witch's throne cracks down the middle with a boom.
The witch dissolves into a cloud that smells like chalk and old homework. The cobblestone beneath Daniel's sneakers softens into paper, and they're back in the library.
Sam pats the empty seat beside him in the reading circle and says, 'Same time tomorrow?', while the fluorescent hum of the library fills the still air.
