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I’ve found it!” Tas said reverently. “A holy artifact!” He held it to the light. “The Kender Spoon of Turning.”

“Are you sure?” Usha leaned forward, examined it closely. “It looks like the spoons we used last night at dinner. It’s even got strawberry jam on it.”

“Don’t be frightened, Usha, but that’s blood,” said Tas solemnly.

“It’s the Kender Spoon of Turning. I’d know it anywhere. My Uncle Trapspringer carried one with him all the time. He had a saying: ‘Most undead are more afraid of you than you are of them. They just ask to be left alone, to haunt and howl and rattle their chains. But occasionally you’ll run into one who wants to suck out your liver. That’s when you need the Kender Spoon of Turning.’”

“How does it work?” Usha appeared dubious.

Tas scrambled to his feet. “You must present it boldly. Hold it up in front of the specter or skeletal warrior or whatever sort of ghoul you might chance to encounter. And then say, in a very firm tone, so that there’s no misunderstandng, ‘Leave.’ Or maybe ‘Begone.’ I’m not sure. Anyway, when the specter is concentrating on the spoon -"

“I’ll sneak out the door,” Usha joined in eagerly. “And then when the specter goes to look for me, you sneak past it, out the door. How does that sound?”

Tas sounded puzzled. “But we won’t need to sneak past it, Usha. By the time I get finished with it, the specter will be obeying my every command. Maybe,” he added, inspired, “we’ll take it with us!”

........


Gripping the spoon in his left hand, he held it up in front of him boldly, and walked over to the door.
“You open it,” he said to Usha.
“Me?” She gasped. “Why me?”
“Because I have to stand here boldly holding the spoon,” Tas replied, somewhat irritated. “I can’t be bold and open the door at the same time.”
“Oh, all right!”
Usha crept over to the door, flattened herself against the wall. Reaching out with one hand, she gingerly grabbed hold of the door handle and, holding her breath, she gave the handle a yank.
The door creaked open. The two disembodied eyes - now narrowed in anger - started to float inside.
Tas thrust the spoon in what he presumed to be the specter’s face. “Leave this place immediately! Be gone! Return to…to wherever it is you came from.” Tas wasn’t exactly clear on that point. He assumed it was the Abyss, but then you never knew, and he didn’t want to hurt the specter’s feelings.
“Haunt this door no more.” That was a rhyme. Tas was rather proud of it, repeated it. “Haunt this door no more…”
The specter wasn’t regarding the spoon with the respect it ought, considering that this was the holy Kender Spoon of Turning. The undead eyes were, in fact, glaring at Tas with a most deadly expression. A chill like the chill of the grave made the kender’s teeth chatter. But at least the specter was glaring at Tas, not Usha, who was almost through the door and heading for the hallway.
At that moment, the eyes started to shift.
“Hold!” Tas shouted with about as much boldness as he could manage. “Cease and desist!” He’d heard a constable say that once, and was rather fond of the expression.
The specter’s gaze was still moving around.
“Run, Usha!” Tas shouted.
Usha couldn’t. The cold numbed bone and muscle, froze the blood in the veins. She shook and shivered, unable to move an inch. The specter was almost on her now.
Tas, truly outraged - this was the Kender Spoon of Turning, after all - leapt forward, straight at the specter.
“Go away!” the kender shouted.
The eyes shifted to Tas, to the spoon. Suddenly, the eyes widened, blinked, and vanished.
The chill receded. The door remained standing open.
In the distance, a silver bell chimed faintly.
Usha was staring, not at the spoon, but at somewhere in the back of the room.
“I turned it!” Tas sounded slightly amazed. “Did you see that, Usha?”


...........



“Don’t come any closer, Tas!” Palin cried fearfully. “Go back! Go back inside!”
“No, no!” Tas called back. “You don’t understand. I have it! You’ll be safe now!”
And before Palin could say another word, the kender dashed down the stairs and ran straight for the specters.
The dim light of the staff flashed off the object in the kender’s hand: a silver spoon.
“Be gone, foul wraiths!” Tas commanded, using a deep, gruff, authoritative voice, such as he imagined a cleric might use. The gruffness proved too much for him to maintain, however; he ended up half-strangling himself. In between the hacks and sputters, he managed to repeat, “Be gone, I say! Be gone! Go away!”
He waved the spoon at the specters.
“We’re going to die,” Steel said.