The Girl, The Admiral, and The Wardrobe

[WP] Any time you enter a closet or other small space, you have a chance of being transported to a whimsical magical kingdom where you have adventures that last years, but you always return at the exact moment you left. It's a gigantic pain in the neck, and you're completely fed up with it.

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“It’s on the top shelf, Sophie, and please be careful! It’s grandma’s favorite piece.”

Sophie dragged the step stool into the far corner of the closet, pulling her sweater over her mouth and nose to avoid inhaling any more dust.

Grandma Gloria was quite a successful sculptor back in her day, which meant that in Sophie’s day, every nook and cranny of her townhouse was stuffed with dusty old pieces of ceramic, clay, glass, and metalwork.

“It’s the purple one, the tall pointy thing,” mom’s voice rattled down the hall from the dining room, mixing with Frank Sinatra’s crooning rendition of “Jingle Bells.” Every Christmas it was the same story – Grandma Gloria gets drunk and starts dragging out her old art pieces. Sophie and her sisters smile and nod and do their best to make her feel special.

Sophie’s hands grasped the tall, pointy, purple ceramic vase. As she pulled it toward her, a layer of dust came with it, falling into her face like snow from a rooftop. She spat it out and jerked away, losing her balance.

She turned the fall into a leap, jumping off the step stool, keeping the vase steady over her head, but knocking into the door, which she had intentionally left ajar, as she stuck the landing.

The door slammed shut, leaving Sophie in total darkness. She groaned, threw the door open, and stepped off of a cliff.

A biting cold wind whipped her hair around her face as the oxygen was sucked out of her lungs – she was plummeting through a cloudless sky.

She tried to scream but she couldn’t even get a breath in to muster one. Below her, a range of snowcapped mountains stretched out in all directions.

“Fire!” came a booming voice. She felt something wrap around her waist. A rope. At the end was a metal hook, like a harpoon. It twirled around her and locked in on itself. Then she felt a sharp tug, and the vase slipped from her hands.

“Ah!” She grabbed it just in time, as another tug yanked her up into the air. She felt her Christmas dinner moving its way up her esophagus. “Oh no, oh no,” she said, finally regaining some sense of orientation, forcing her food down.

It was happening again.

Captain Potts, a four-hundred-pound bear of a man, wearing an admiral’s hat and smoking a cigar the size of a yule log, stood on the lowest platform of an enormous blimp. He heaved and hoed while reeling Sophia toward his ship, grinning as he did it.

A few shipmates took up the rope behind him and tried to help, but it was mostly for show. Captain Potts was strong enough to carry the whole blimp on his back if he were so inclined.

Sophie’s face fell as she drew closer to the blimp. She didn’t fight the rope, letting her body sag over it, her head droops, her lip jut out like a pouty child. As she closed in on the blimp, a few strands of her hair got caught on the shimmering steel barrel of a Gatling gun hanging off of its side.

“Ow! Bloody hell—” She quickly unknotted it as Potts yanked her up to the platform.

It was square and made of metal, with a circle of big ladders rising up into the blimp’s main compartment. Roughly the size of the belly of a cruise ship, it was dwarfed by the mind-bogglingly huge balloon above it that kept the whole vehicle in the air.

“Here she is boys,” Potts said, slapping Sophie on the back. “The hero of the 1,000-year war has returned, here and now, to our vessel, at the turning of the tide.”

The shipmates cheered. Sophie scowled at them.

“Shut up,” she said. “This is not okay. I am enjoying Christmas day dinner with my family and my Grandma Gloria. I can’t do this right now.”

She held up Grandma Gloria’s vase, “All I wanted was this. That’s it.”

The smile left Potts’ face. “I’m afraid, Sophie, Vanquisher of the dragon Pendayn, that you’re on quite the adventure now.”

As Sophie shook her head, cursing this world, and Potts, and this “adventure,” the rest of the crew started to look a lot more serious.

Behind Sophie ten big, black, fast-moving oval shapes were flying toward them.

“Invaders!” Captain Potts yelled, “To your battle stations, men! For the Queen!”

“For the Queen!” came the redounding chorus from the crew.

Everyone sprang into action, jumping onto the Gatling guns or climbing up ladders. Sophie rolled her eyes and checked her watch.

“I’m really looking forward to my mom’s apple pie, Captain Potts. I don’t want to deal with this right now. So here’s what we’re going to do.”

A young, red-faced shipmate raced by with a bandolier of ammunition slung over his shoulders. Sophie grabbed him by the hair – “Ow! ”

He ground to a halt. She pushed Grandma Gloria’s vase into his arms.

“You’re going to protect this vase with your life. If I find even so much as a scratch on it, I’ll hurl you overboard. Are we clear?”

The shipmate gulped, his prominent Adam’s apple bouncing in his skinny neck as he looked to his captain for help.

“You better do as she says,” Potts told him.

The shipmate nodded and raced off, gripping the vase with all his strength.

“Incoming!” shouted a voice from above. Boom! An explosive cannonball struck the side of the blimp, tilting it momentarily.

Sophie grabbed a harpoon and started swinging it in a circle. She stepped up onto the railing, grabbed a sword from a passing crewman, and said, “Once I’ve dealt with them, let’s chat about exactly what this adventure entails, Captain.”

“Why, only rescuing the Queen herself from a sinister band of air invaders who’ve taken control of the kingdom and clapped her in irons!”

“Every time,” Sophie said, as she bit down on the sword and swung the harpoon up onto a metal outcrop. Once it was locked in tight, she leaped into the air, dropping a hundred feet before swinging back up and launching herself right onto the deck of the invaders’ flagship.

Captain Potts watched, the smoke curling up from the end of his cigar, as Sophie took control of the flagship and drove it into the neighboring ship, causing a chain reaction of explosions.

As the invaders’ ships dropped from the sky, one by one, Sophie pulled up alongside Pott’s blimp, piloting a sleek vessel recovered from the enemy.

“Let’s go get her,” she said, tossing her sword to Captain Potts.

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