Chapter 2

The following type of vehicle appears in a number of chapters:

Tuk tuk

Not a character, a form of transportation. It is a small, three wheeled vehicle usually with a 2 cycle engine. The driver sits up front and there is a wide seat in the back for two passengers. It has an overhead cover. See pictures on the internet.

I held Jorani close to me in the back seat of the car on the way to the border. As we neared it, I had instructions for her before releasing her.

“Just sit here on the seat when we stop. Don’t say anything or move around. I’m going to bring the invisibility spell up around you again. No one will be able to see you or will know that you are in here. After crossing the border, we will be going to a hotel in Prasat. I will see about obtaining an identification card and a passport for you. They will both be Thai. Will that be alright?” I asked her.

“Yes, that will be all right. Many people who live near the border speak both Thai and Northern Khmer,” she told me.

The stop at both border stations was short, as we had only been in Cambodia for a few hours. The Thai border guards did search the trunk of the car for drugs, but that was all. The drive to Prasat went very quickly. I canceled the invisibility spell after we were well away from the border.

In Prasat, we stopped at the Thong Paek Hotel. It was just off of road #241 in Prasat. It was fairly large with 43 rooms and very modern. Suchin and Saroj shared a room, and Jorani and I shared a more expensive suite. It had a queen size bed, air conditioning, and a flat screen television. In addition to the bedroom there was a living room for relaxing. After being shown to our suite, Jorani insisted on taking a shower to get the dried blood out of her hair and to clean up. There was soap and shampoo in the bathroom. She was really amazed by the hot water supplied by the shower.

She had changed out of her bloody clothes back at the bar, but her other clothes were old and worn. She put them back on, and we went out for her to purchase some new clothes to wear. The selection of clothing in the small town of Prasat was rather limited, but she got some new clothes to wear until we reached Korat, where she could find even better clothing. She was worried about costing me too much money.

“Can you afford to buy me clothes?” she asked before we left the suite. “The car and the two men must be very expensive. Can you afford it?”

“Jorani, don’t worry about it. I don’t have a problem with money,” I told her.

“I saw when you paid for the hotel, you only had a little money left,” she said in a worried voice.

“I don’t carry all of my money around with me,” I told her with a smile.

“Is it in the bank? The bank in Samraong had a lot of money in it. Visitors would get money there when they needed it,” she told me in a knowing voice.

“No, I don’t keep my money in a bank. Banks ask questions about where you got the money, especially if you have a lot of money.

“There is a place, well it’s not actually a place. It’s more like a location. It’s reached by Magic. It’s called the Timeless Zone. I keep most of my money there. When I need more money, I call it to me from the Timeless Zone. No one knows that it’s there, and no one else can access it, plus I can get it any time I need it. Banks are closed at night and on weekends. The Timeless Zone is always available,” I explained to her.

On finishing, I called a package of bills to me. After removing five hundred dollars, I returned the rest of the package to the Timeless Zone. Jorani was shocked to see so much money appear out of nowhere and then that most of it disappeared just as easily. The clothes that she bought later weren’t that expensive, but she looked very nice in them.

Following the shopping trip, we joined Suchin and Saroj for dinner at a restaurant near the hotel. On returning to our room from dinner, Jorani found a Thai identification card and a Thai passport sitting on her side of the bed. She was shocked beyond words by this. Her shock didn’t last long, however.

“Are these real?” she demanded holding them up. “How could they be and appear here so quickly. We haven’t even been to see the people who make them, and passports always take a long time to be approved and made. How could even forgeries appear so quickly? Who would leave them here with no one to guard them? They could have been stolen,” she finished. I just smiled.

“Jorani, you know something about Magic. These documents are the work of one who is the creator of the Magic that we use. He is the Spirit of Ley Line Magic. He had no problem creating these documents. The forms themselves are real. He just created the information on them. He also placed the necessary information in the Thai data system. If the police or other government officials check, they will find that they are real and that the information on them matches what is in their computers. He created my passport in just a number of minutes, and I traveled here from America on it with no trouble,” I told her.

“Is this Spirit friendly to you? Can you trust him?” she asked in a very reserved voice. I had learned on the internet that the Thai believe in many kinds of spirits, not all of whom are friendly.

“Yes, he is very friendly to my entire family and has helped us a number of times. He is the one who produces the most powerful form of Magic,” I told her.

“There are different kinds - forms of Magic?” she asked in surprise.

“Yes, basically there are four forms of Magic. There is Regular Magic, Witch Magic, Ley Line Magic, and Black Magic. Dragons can use most of these four kinds of Magic. My mother and sisters can use Witch Magic, Ley Line Magic, and Black Magic. My father and I can use Regular or Ordinary Magic, Ley Line Magic, and Black Magic. However, our family seldom uses Black Magic, as it is usually destructive. We do know how to counter it though,” I told her. Jorani had been listening very attentively to all of this.

“Will I be able to learn these different kinds of Magic?” she asked very quietly.

“Oh yes, sweet Jorani. You have a large, strong Talent and will be able to learn to use the various kinds of Magic. There is a problem though. Before you can become a real Dragon, you have to complete learning your Magic. Until then you are an almost Dragon or nearly a Dragon. Once you have learned the necessary Magic, my Mother, the Dragon Queen will accept you as a real Female Dragon,” I told her.

“Will this take long?” she asked.

“It will require a number of months of hard study. There is much to learn, and we will need to find a place for you to study, as well as obtaining the necessary Books. There could be a problem with that,” I told her but didn’t go into it just then.

“Oh yes,” I added having nearly forgotten, “You will also need to learn to fly. That will take a couple of weeks, but you can do it while studying Magic.”

“YOU can fly?” she asked in shock. “Like the Dragons in the old people’s stories?”

“Yes, we can all fly. Even my sisters’ new husbands learned to fly with no trouble,” I assured her. She seemed very excited on learning this. Soon however, she began to look very tired and sat on the bed.

“We should get some sleep. It’s been a long day for both of us, and yours didn’t start out very well,” I reminded her. Jorani didn’t look too happy at the prospect of going to bed with me.

“Only to sleep. We can see about other things later when you are feeling better,” I added, which brightened her up considerably.

Following my usual nighttime preparations and showing Jorani how to brush her teeth properly, we were in bed. She had a question before I turned out the bedside light.

“Are you sure that everything is locked, so no one can break in?” she asked and had her new ID card and passport under her pillow.

“I’m absolutely certain that no one can get in here. I have cast a ward around the room as well as in the floor and the ceiling. We are absolutely safe in here. It would require a huge amount of Magic to break my ward,” I assured her. She seemed to relax on hearing this.

The light hadn’t been out for many minutes, when Jorani moved over near me on the mattress. I could hear her quietly crying.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” I asked.

“Could you hold me, I’m afraid of the dark. Usually, we girls would sleep together after the men left. They never stayed to sleep with us, and we were all afraid of the dark,” she told me in tears before moving up against me. I had read on the internet that many young women in Southeast Asia were afraid of the dark and often slept together, so this didn’t surprise me. I put an arm around her and pulled her even closer. She just seemed to melt into me. She was so very soft and warm, and in a few minutes, I could tell that she was asleep by her soft breathing. I followed her into sleep then also.

When I awoke in the morning, Jorani was still snuggled up against me, but I had moved my arm overnight. By the sunlight streaming into our room, I could see that the medical spells that I had used after she had changed into her new clothes yesterday had removed most of the marks and abrasions that she had suffered at the bar. Jorani awakened while I was checking on how she was.

“Good morning. Do you feel better?” I asked.

“Yes, better. Thank you,” she replied, as we rose from the bed to take care of our morning preparations. Later, we joined Suchin and Saroj at breakfast in the hotel’s small dining area.

“What are your plans for today?” Suchin asked while we ate.

“We will return to Korat today. Jorani still needs more clothes and other things. We’ll remain in Korat overnight. I’m not sure what we will do tomorrow. It will depend on what happens today in Korat,” I told him and Saroj.

The trip back to Korat was uneventful except for a discussion shortly after we had started. All of the luggage had been put in the trunk of the car, but Jorani had kept a small plastic bag containing several things with her. One of those things was the treasure map. The others were her new ID card and her passport. Suchin noticed the folded map protruding from the bag shortly after we had left Prasat.

“What is that paperwork? Is it important?” he asked from the front seat. He and Saroj were riding in the front, while Jorani and I sat in the back of the car.

“It is something that has caused me much trouble,” she told him.

“Really! Why do you keep it then?” he asked.

“Because it could have great value,” she told him.

“May I look at it, if it is so valuable?” he asked. Jorani was very hesitant about allowing anyone to look at the map, even me.

“It can’t hurt to let him look at it,” I told her.

“All right, but only for a short time, and he must be careful handling it,” she finally agreed, and handed the folded map to Suchin in the front seat.

He carefully unfolded the map and looked at it for maybe a half a minute before beginning to laugh uncontrollably. It took many seconds for him to regain control of himself.

“You think this is real, don’t you?” he finally asked.

“Yes, Heng stole it from a rich man’s house,” she answered.

“And he wanted you to find the treasure, didn’t he?” he asked and laughed again.

“Yes, what is so funny?” she demanded in an angry voice. Suchin stopped laughing.

“This,” he said and held up the map, “this isn’t a real treasure map. This was originally a map for a video game that is popular here in Southeast Asia. You can buy the original in any video game store for a few Baht. Someone took the original map and copied it then photo-shopped it to remove the words and other markings they didn’t want from the original. They then had it printed on a heavier paper and aged it some with tea or something before offering it to gullible individuals as a real treasure map. I’m sure the asking price was much higher than the few Baht that the original cost. It was probably in the hundreds of thousands of Baht area and possibly even more. There is no way to know how many they sold to fools,” he finished refolding the map. Jorani looked aghast on hearing this.

“You mean it isn’t real?” she asked in a heartbroken whisper.

“No, it’s not a real treasure map. When we get to Korat, I’ll take you to one of the video game stores, and you can look at the original. I recognized it because I have played the video game many times and have several copies of the map,” Suchin told her.

“No wonder I could never find where the treasure was,” Jorani said in an upset voice. Her ID card and the passport had fallen out of the bag when it slipped from her lap. She quickly picked them up and put them under her skirt on the seat. There wasn’t much said on the remainder of the trip after Suchin returned the folded map to Jorani. She placed it in the bag before slipping the ID card and the passport into the folded map. Suchin would have never believed they were real if he had seen them.

I held her in the back seat for the remainder of the trip, and kissed her to make her feel better. She cried for a while and rested her head on my shoulder.

“So much trouble and pain for nothing,” she whispered after a time. “Heng was a fool,” she finally whispered for my ears only. I could soon tell that she had dropped off to sleep with her head on my shoulder and my arm around her.

We arrived in Korat just after noontime and stopped to eat before getting a room in the hotel where we had stayed previously. They were surprised to see us again especially with our addition. After getting settled in our room, Jorani wanted to go shopping. Suchin and Saroj had other things to do, and we agreed to meet for dinner at a restaurant near the hotel.