When Sarah found her voice, the first words to tumble out of her mouth were, "You're not the Flash."

Zatanna smiled tiredly. "Sorry to disappoint you," she said. "I would have traced my own symbol on the pavement, only I don't really have..."

She broke off, and glanced sharply towards the parking lot. Sarah followed her gaze, and saw a bearded man of about forty, whom she recognized as one of the local police constables, heading towards the Flash's statue with the look of a man who has seen something curious and intends to get to the bottom of it.

Zatanna frowned, and raised her right hand. "Ybodemos S'esle Melborp!" she said, in a tone so thunderous and awful that Sarah half expected the man to burst into flames on the spot.

This, however, did not happen. Instead, the man paused, shook his head, and turned around and made his way to his car without a backward glance.

Sarah turned to the legendary enchantress with a quizzical look. "What was that all about?" she said.

Zatanna grinned. "One of my personal specialties," she said. "A spell of disinterest. Under ordinary circumstances, of course, anyone who saw the explosion just now would want to come over and ask for a full explanation – and, for that matter, most people who saw a Justice League member standing around in front of a public building would usually want an autograph. Now, however, with the spell of disinterest around the two of us, anyone who sees us talking will not only ignore us completely, but will forget our very existence as soon as we're out of earshot."

"Oh," said Sarah. "Um... why?"

"Privacy," said Zatanna. "I have a lot to thank you for, and I'd rather not do it surrounded by paparazzi."

Sarah blushed. "Oh, it wasn't that big a deal," she said.

"It certainly was," said Zatanna. "If it hadn't been for you, the Justice League would have been incapacitated for the next twenty-four hours, and Medusa would have been able to have her way with the world's leaders."

When she put it that way, Sarah had to admit that it did sound like a big deal. "Who's Medusa?" she said.

"A young witch from upstate Massachusetts with a severe Napoleon complex," said Zatanna. "Her real name is Laurel Dommert, but she started calling herself Medusa after she discovered a way to enchant people into statues – not to turn them into statues, you understand, but to imprison them in statues that were already there. She was tremendously proud of this accomplishment, and decided to use it to take over the world: every national capital has an abundance of statues that she could capture its leaders in, and surely some of them would be willing to cede control of their militaries to her in exchange for not being slowly dismembered with a chisel."

Sarah shuddered.

"But, of course," Zatanna continued, "before she could do that, she had to take care of those pesky superheroes in the Justice League, who get paid by the American people to frustrate just this sort of scheme. So, somehow (I'm still not sure exactly how), she managed to forge a letter to me from the Flash, asking me to meet him in front of the Central City library at seven o'clock this morning; then she met me instead, and trapped me in this statue." (She tapped the Flash sculpture with a long, pointed fingernail.) "I suppose she then went and trapped Superman in a statue of me, and so on with everyone in the Justice League – except Batman, maybe. I've never heard of there being a statue of Batman anywhere, and frankly I can't imagine him ever posing for one, so she might have left him alone."

"Where is there a statue of you?" Sarah asked. She'd never heard of any grateful metropolis paying tribute to the Maid of Magic in such a way.

Zatanna laughed. "Madame Tussauds, believe it or not," she said. "Right next to the one of Houdini."

"Oh." That made sense. "So this Medusa person could just waft herself to London and nail Superman, then to Metropolis and nail Green Lantern, and so on? And then, once she had taken care of everyone in the League, she could waft herself to Washington and start enchanting senators into the statues there?"

"That was her plan," said Zatanna. "But now, of course, thanks to your invaluable assistance, it won't work quite the way she planned."

"But what did I do?" said Sarah. "And what was the deal with the top, anyway?" She glanced down at the base of the statue; the top was still there, but now it was lying on one side, completely devoid of any locomotive power.

"Ah, yes, the top," said Zatanna with a smile. "We got lucky there. You see, although I had no idea who Medusa was when she came out from behind that bush over there –" she pointed to an ornamental juniper bush about three yards from where Sarah was standing "– I can recognize a hostile magician when she pulls a wand on me, and I instinctively started to shout 'Pots!' so as to make her freeze in her tracks. Unfortunately, she was a little quicker than I was, and I only managed to get out the first three letters before her spell nailed me in the chest."

"'Pot'," said Sarah.

"Exactly," said Zatanna. "But, as luck would have it, that happens to be a word spelled backward in its own right, and so my abortive spell caused a top to appear next to the base of the statue. I don't think Medusa even noticed – she was too busy gloating over my defeat, and spelling out how she was going to conquer the Earth while I was imprisoned in marble – but it meant that I now had a prosopon that wasn't trapped the way I was."

"Prosopon?" Sarah queried.

"A tool that's also an extension of the user," said Zatanna. "Like a paintbrush to a painter, or a human host to Starro – or the Flash to the Speed Force, I suppose. Anyway, the point is that I had something that I could work through. It wasn't much of a something, admittedly, but, if I could use it to communicate with another person, that person might be able to put together a bucket of soap and water to break Medusa's spell. And, sure enough, you did."

"But why soap and water?" Sarah asked.

"Because that's one of the oldest methods of dispelling black magic," said Zatanna. "It's mentioned in any good textbook on the subject." (Sarah had a mental image of a teen-aged, acne-ridden sorceress picking up her copy of Scrying for Beginners at the college bookstore.) "I only hope the people at Madame Tussauds don't mind when I try to fling it on one of their exhibits; you know how touchy museum curators can get sometimes."

She stood up and brushed the dust off her suit. "Well, I suppose I shouldn't waste time in finding out," she said. "For all I know, Medusa could be in Washington – or Peking or Baghdad – at this very moment." She turned to Sarah. "Once again, thank you so much for your help. On behalf of the Justice League of America, I can promise you that we'll never forget this."

Sarah blushed hotly. "Oh, that's okay," she said. "I mean, it's just what anybody would have done, wouldn't they?"

"You'd be surprised," said Zatanna. Her face darkened for a moment, causing a shiver to go down Sarah's spine; then she sighed, and shook her head. "Well, bon voyage."

She took a deep breath, presumably to speak the spell that would teleport her to England, and Sarah suddenly realized that there was one thing she'd forgotten to ask her. "Oh, before you go, Lady Zatanna..." she said.

Zatanna turned back to her. "Yes?"

Sarah bent down and picked up the top from where it lay beside the statue. "Can I keep this?"

Zatanna stared at her for a full quarter of a minute, then put a hand over her mouth and burst out laughing. Sarah was a little nettled (was there something funny about wanting a souvenir of the day you saved the Justice League?), but her good breeding, along with the reflection that it wasn't wise to tick off someone who could reduce you to ash with a single word, kept her from saying anything.

After a minute or so, the Maid of Magic recovered herself somewhat. "Oh, dear," she said breathlessly. "I'm sorry, Miss..."

Sarah gave her name.

"...Miss Palmer." Zatanna pronounced the word thoughtfully, as though it were somehow significant to her. "I wasn't laughing at you; I was laughing at myself. To think that I was about to just whisk myself off to Paris and leave the person who freed me from Medusa's spell with nothing but a top for her trouble!"

Sarah blinked. "Well, I wasn't expecting anything else..." she began.

"No, of course not," said Zatanna. "But what you don't realize – and what I'd completely forgotten in my focus on catching Medusa – is that to release a magician from the spell that another magician has put on her is to place her under one of the greatest debts that one human being can owe to another. If you were an enchantress yourself, I would now be bound to your service until one of us died; since you aren't, the rules aren't that strict, but I am still obliged to do you one favor before I leave."

"What favor?" said Sarah.

"Anything you like," said Zatanna. "For instance, maybe there's a dress, or a book, that you've been pining after for ages but could never afford: just say the word, and I can conjure up a perfect copy of it to be all your own. Or maybe you'd prefer that I undid the death of a favorite pet, or took away a memory that you'd rather not have. Whatever your heart's desire is, I am honor-bound to grant it if it's at all possible for me – and the odds that it isn't," she added with a smile, "are somewhat slim."

For a moment, Sarah was unable to respond. The notion that the most powerful member of the Justice League had suddenly become her own personal genie was too much for her mind to process on top of everything else that had happened that morning; she stared vacantly at the Maid of Magic for perhaps fifteen seconds, and might have continued to stare for some time if Zatanna hadn't coughed gently. "Miss Palmer," she said, "if you're going to make a request of me, I'd appreciate it if you did so quickly. So long as Medusa is still at liberty, every second is precious."

Slowly, Sarah's brain began to work again. All right, so Zatanna was offering to give her whatever she most wanted in the world. What was that?

Well, to go to heaven when she died, of course, but she didn't think that Zatanna could do much about that. In terms of earthly goods, what did she want most? For the second time that day, a Calvin and Hobbes strip flashed through her mind: "Think BIG! Riches! Power! Pretend you could have ANYthing!"

This, however, was not something Sarah Palmer was good at. It wasn't that she didn't have the acquisitive impulse: she could quite easily blow an entire week's allowance at any dollar store in the nation. When it came to really ambitious greed, however, she was generally completely helpless.

Nor had Zatanna's suggestions helped her any: she had no memories that she really wanted to get rid of, her cat Thunderbolt still had several years left in him by the veterinarian's reckoning, and she couldn't think of any dress or book that she coveted enough to waste her one magic wish on it. In fact, she couldn't think of anything that her heart longed for to that extent – until, looking vaguely about her for inspiration, she caught sight of the Flash's statue.

Oh, she thought. Duh.

She whirled back to face the Maid of Magic. "Can you put me in contact with the Speed Force?"

To say that Zatanna was surprised would be an understatement. Her delicately chiseled jaw dropped a good three inches, and it took her a second or two to gather her wits enough to say, "I'm sorry?"

"The Speed Force," Sarah repeated. "I want you to make me its proso-whatever-it-was, like the Flash. That's my request."

Zatanna took a deep breath. "Miss Palmer, you don't realize what you're asking," she said. "There's an unwritten rule in the Justice League that one member never meddles in another member's domain unless the other member asks him to; that's why the Martian Manhunter has never read the Riddler's mind from a distance and telepathed Batman the answer to his latest puzzle. If the Flash found out that I'd been using magic on the Speed Force..."

"You wouldn't be," said Sarah. "You'd be using it on me, to connect me with the Speed Force. The Speed Force itself wouldn't be affected, any more than the force of gravity is affected when you roll a pair of dice."

Zatanna hesitated. "Well, no, I suppose not," she said. "Still, I don't think the Flash would appreciate it if someone else with his powers started running around Central City. He's very protective of the Flash persona – out of respect for his predecessor, you know – and I'm pretty sure he'd consider another speedster living right next door to be a threat to his uniqueness."

Sarah thought about that. She certainly didn't want to set herself up as a rival to her lifelong hero – but, on the other hand, this was the opportunity she'd been waiting for all her life, and she'd hate herself forever if she passed it up.

"What if it wasn't permanent?" she suggested. "Say you arranged it so that I could use the Speed Force for a month, and then at the end of the month I would go back to being an ordinary human. Would that be okay?"

Zatanna seemed interested. "You think that would satisfy you?" she said.

"Sure," said Sarah, ignoring a passing pang of regret. "No point in getting greedy, is there?"

Zatanna laughed. "No, perhaps not," she said. "All right, let's see. Today's the fifth of April, and it's –" she paused to check the clock on the nearby Lutheran church's spire "– about half past ten. So the spell that I put on you now will last until half past ten on May 5. Sound good?"

"It sounds great," said Sarah.

"All right, then," said Zatanna. She thought for a moment, her lips moving soundlessly as though she were rehearsing various wordings; then she took a deep breath and proclaimed, "Haras Remlap, eb a ssertsdeeps rof ytriht syad!"

As she pronounced the last word, Sarah felt a strange sensation sweep over her. It was, first and foremost, a sensation of boundless vigor; she felt quite sure that, at that moment, she could run halfway around the world and never stop for breath. But mixed up with this, strangely enough, was a note of serenity, even of stillness, as though the force to which she was now connected was the conclusion of all motion as well as its source. Sarah had once read somewhere that motion at infinite speed was the same thing as rest, but the idea had never seemed real to her until now.

She turned her head and looked towards the street. The scene was the same as it had always been – cars, pedestrians, the occasional pigeon fluttering from lamppost to lamppost – but now she was looking at it through the Speed Force, and so all was changed. The cars that had seemed to zip by so fast now appeared to be moving at a snail's pace, while the people and the pigeons were all but frozen in their places; Sarah found herself almost pitying them, though she knew that she herself had been just like them not fifteen seconds before. What was even stranger, though, was the way her other senses had been heightened: she could feel every vibration within twenty yards through the wind on her face, and she thought that, if she concentrated hard enough, she could estimate the speed at which the Earth was moving about the Sun from the miniscule corrections she was making to her sense of balance.

Then, with the tiniest movement of her will – like the refocusing of one's eyes that causes one to stop seeing a Magic Eye picture – she switched off this Speed-Force-resonant mode in herself, and the universe reverted to normality. Awestruck, she turned to Zatanna, who was leaning against a nearby pillar with a pleased smile on her face.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"My pleasure," said Zatanna. "And now, if you'll excuse me, I really must fly. Ot Emadam Sduassut!"

And, with that, the Maid of Magic vanished into thin air, and Sarah was left alone in front of the library. For a few minutes, she stood stock-still in her place, letting the reposeful celerity of the Speed Force insinuate itself into every nook and cranny of her being – a practice from which she was interrupted only when a voice behind her said, "Um... hello?"

She turned around, and saw a girl about her own age standing next to the Flash's statue with a quizzical look on her face. It seemed that Zatanna's "spell of disinterest" had stopped working when Zatanna had left, and Sarah supposed that she had been making herself rather conspicuous by standing in front of a public building with her eyes closed and her arms extended, as though she were John Carter waiting to be sucked up to Mars.

"Hi," she said, with what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

The girl didn't seem especially reassured. "Are you okay?" she said, with an expression that could have been taken as solicitous or just nervous.

Sarah's smile widened as she nodded. "I'm wonderful," she said. "Thanks for asking."