The Wizard's Map by Jane Yolen

Before.”
    â€œBefore what?” He was clearly puzzled.
    â€œBefore you played the games.”
    â€œWhat games?”
    Only then did Jennifer realize that for Peter the last half hour—the three games of Patience, the changes in the map, and all their conversations in the attic—had not occurred. When Michael Scot had taken over Peter’s body and mind, Peter hadn’t felt a thing. Nor did he now remember any of it. It was like the time he’d fallen from the top of the slide at the town swimming pool onto the concrete and gotten an awful concussion. Everything that happened right before—and right after—the accident was gone. Forever.
    Patiently, she explained what had happened.
    â€œJen, this sounds crazy.
You
sound crazy.”
    â€œAny crazier,” she asked, “than stealing Molly away from the kitchen while we watched?”
    Peter shook his head miserably.
That
he remembered. “So what can we do?”
    â€œDo?” She had no answer.
    â€œMaybe we should take the map, the cards, the turban, and the key and go downstairs and find Gran and Da. After all, they seem to know more about this ... crazy stuff than we do.”
    She searched his face for any traces of the wizard, in case he was trying to manipulate her, but the eyes were Peter’s. The voice, too.
    â€œYou’re right,” she said.
    ***
    They raced down the stairs and into the kitchen, but no one was there. No one was in the family room or the dining room or anywhere else in the house, either.
    â€œBut they wouldn’t have just disappeared without leaving us a note,” said Jennifer.
    â€œUnless..." Peter said, “unless they were disappeared by force.”
    â€œOr by—magic.”
    Magic.
    The word hung in the air between them. For a moment it silenced them both.
    â€œThen what should we do now?” Peter asked at last.
    â€œCall the police.”
    â€œRight—and say that a thirteenth-century wizard just stole our little sister and our parents and our sort-of grandparents in the hopes of making a trade for a map that makes crop circles when it’s not being a magic bank. And that same wizard made me play three games of Patience and he has a demon that likes to have beardless boys for ... for pudding? They’ll put us
both
in a Scottish loony bin.”
    She had to admit that he was right. “Then..." She paused. “Then it’s up to us to find them by ourselves.”
    â€œHow?”
    They were back to that again. And they might have gone around and around, trying to figure out a logical next step and getting nowhere, but a strange sound outside the kitchen door suddenly broke through their argument.
    Peter peered out the window. “Jen—there’s a white cat out there, rolling around in the grass and making funny noises. Look.”
    Jennifer crowded next to him and looked. There indeed was the white cat, on its back, wriggling about in the raised herb garden.
    â€œCatnip,” she said to Peter.
    â€œCatnip?”
    â€œGran told me she’d planted it. I thought it odd at the time.”
    They stared for a moment at one another, then nodded. Without needing to say a word, they knew where it was they had to go.
    The minute they opened the door, the cat leaped up and ran off, toward the rose arbor.
    â€œCome on,” Jennifer said. She had the map in one hand, the key in the other. Peter was carrying the turban and the cards.
    They followed the white cat through the arbor and around the great holm oak whose trunk was bound by the ironwork seat. Their feet thunked solidly on the paving stones and then crunched onto the gravel path, where the high stone wall suddenly hid Gran and Da’s cottage from view.
    The white cat never looked around to see if they were following, but skittered down the pathway in front of them.
    Peter, who was slightly ahead of Jennifer, called over his shoulder, “How can there be this much