Crystal Wing Academy- The Complete Series

by Marty Mayberry

  “Only a sliver separates light from dark. Never forget that.”

  Like everything in life, this was about choices. But talk about vague. Cloven must’ve gone to the same school of thought as Alex.

  Signing the paper, I slid it across the desk then reeled back when it burst into flames and curled into ash as it burned. In seconds, nothing remained, not even a whiff of smoke or even a scorch on his desk.

  He closed his eyes for two blinks. “All set.”

  Had he mindspoken with Professor Grim? Perhaps there was a database he could sync into like the sundial in the Capital City, Grathe, and he’d added me to the class.

  “Professor Grim prefers to teach a small group of students,” Cloven said. “The class was full, but one student…dropped out, as you know.”

  Drea. Who hadn’t exactly dropped out.

  “I’m looking forward to the class.” And I added when he shot me an overly concerned look. “It’s going to be fun. And no dark for me. Only light and maybe a taste of gray.”

  With a laugh, he stood. “You’re more like me than you realize.”

  I took that as a compliment. There wasn’t anyone I admired more than Cloven. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I’ll see you in class next week?”

  “Yes. One of these days, I’ll share some knowledge about Elusive Threads.”

  Whatever they were. I had yet to find a color that refused my call, but I welcomed a challenge.

  I’d started for the door when he called out, “As I said, I passed Magical Creatures and How to Tame Them. Between you and me, I’ll share a secret.”

  My ears perked up, and I turned. “How did you do it?”

  “You’ve already learned that elemental magic is limitless.”

  “I’m beginning to suspect that.” And that elemental magic and skapti power may be more interwoven than everyone else believed.

  “Perhaps you need to…” he frowned, and tapped his chin, “think outside the square. Is that the right way of phrasing it in outling terms?”

  Outling. Yeah. Way to remind me I fit in sort of but actually didn’t. My shoulders drooped until I realized that couldn’t be what Cloven meant. He’d never be mean. Think outside the square… There was a secret inside his words. While unable to share every secret, he would help me if he could. “You mean I should try something unconventional?” What was he trying to say here?

  “Yes, that’s it.” A big smile filled his face. “There’s more than one way to skin a Cerberus, right?”

  Ugh. Why would we need to do that? I shuddered, hoping I’d never have to skin one of the three-headed guys. “I guess?”

  “A dead one,” he added quickly. “And only to extract their cupla stones.”

  “What are…”

  “Located under their fur, on their abdomen. Exceedingly rare. They’re used for specific types of magic.”

  “Like what?”

  “Magic not seen by the fae for years. As you know, Cerberuses live for hundreds of years.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “If one dies in your lifetime, you may participate in the extraction. It’s considered an honor.”

  If he said so.

  “Do remember with the aldakor.” He tapped his temple. “Elemental magic can be manipulated.”

  I still wasn’t sure what he meant but had a feeling this was the only “tip” I’d be receiving tonight. “Thanks.”

  “Any time.” Coming around the desk, he escorted me on the door. “I’ll see you next week for more elemental magic training? We’re going to learn a chameleon elemental magic trick. While it only lasts a few moments, it can be used to hide.”

  Chapter 7

  Two nights later, I showed up early to Magical Horticulture: Adding the D to Deadly.

  “Greetings,” Professor Grim shrieked when I stepped inside his classroom. Classroom being a loose term. The class took place in a greenhouse lined with benches covered with potted plants and, on each end, tall, locked chambers with vines and leaves straining around the seams as if they were desperate to escape. The cabinets must be where they contained deadlier varieties. Nightlace?

  “I’m Fleur. A new student,” I said. “Just transferring into this class.”

  “Of course.” He drifted closer, his steely-gray robe dragging across the stone slabs making up the floor. Only his bright school tie broke his, well…grim exterior. Hard to believe our teacher was a ghost. “Welcome!”

  I rubbed my ears and winced. His shriek was going to get old fast. Too bad the class wasn’t being taught by Cupid. Darting away from romantic arrows would beat hearing loss.

  “Ugh,” Alys said from the entrance behind me. “Outling alert. What are you doing here?”

  “I want to learn about plants,” I said. “The deadly ones.” The better to kill you with, my dear—I didn’t say, though I was tempted.

  “Figures. We get rid of the only outling in class and another takes her place.” She rolled her eyes at her best friend, Moira, who patted my shoulder and smiled as we were old friends who hadn’t seen each other in ages.

  “At least Drea had potential,” Alys continued with a sneer.

  “She was good with plants?” I asked, perking up at this detail. If plants liked her, why had one killed her?

  “The creature whisperer, Professor Grim called her after she discovered the naiads could be won over with trinkets,” Moira said. “But it wasn’t just the naiads. I swear, Drea could make even the most reticent plants perform.”

  Except, she couldn’t stop them from killing her. Assuming a rogue nightlace cluster was the real murderer. I still wasn’t convinced.

  “Creature whisperer. Not bad for an outling, then,” I said.

  “Some outlings have more abilities than others.” Alys’s nose almost touched the top of the greenhouse, it was so stuck up in the air. “As I said, Drea had potential. You have none.”

  “Nasty alert,” Moira said. “I keep telling you, honey,” she said to Alys. “Kindness wins friends.” While Moira had mostly been nice before I beat the power-sucking slake off her in the forest, now, I could give her a t-shirt with Team Fleur and she’d wear it proudly. A near-death experience will do that for a girl. She elbowed Alys in the side. “Practice your nice words.”

  Alys wrinkled her nose and strode around me to greet Professor Grim. It was going to take more than a t-shirt to win that wench over. Me being with Donovan still pissed her off.

  “She’s a work in progress,” Moira said, giving me an even bigger smile before she followed Alys. “Just coming into her full potential.”

  Being an empath, Moira must know. Frankly, I’d only once seen Alys’s soft side, and then only directed at Moira. If she had a nice bone, I’d yet to see it.

  Alys reeled, glaring. “By the way, I want that book.”

  “Not getting it.” The Original Six, the book I’d found containing history of the sixth family no one was willing to share. So, she’d figured out I’d removed it from her backpack after she’d stolen it from me in the library. Took her long enough. It had been weeks since I’d experimented with teleportation, replacing the book she’d taken with one about trolls.

  Alys held out her hand as if she expected me to pull it from my backpack and hand it over.

  “No can do. Lost it,” I said.

  “What?” Her hands formed fists, and steam chugged from her ears. “Where did you lose it?”

  “In the library.”

  Like someone had pulled the tub plug and all the water drained away, she limped. “Oh, perfect.”

  “Good luck finding it.” If I couldn’t locate it, what made her think she could?

  “My father will help me.”

  Like her father could help her here, at the Academy?

  As if believing her reply was enough, Alys sashayed away, joining Professor Grim again.

  I followed them farther into the greenhouse.

  “Tonight,” Professor Grim
screamed as we gathered around him. “We will work with dandybucklions.”

  Dandybuck-whats? Did he mean yellow flowers that turned into fluff balls? Dandelions. How were they deadly?

  “What about nightlace?” I asked, lifting my hand. I’d signed up for this class to investigate the plant, nothing else.

  “Nightlace is off the syllabus for the rest of the semester,” Professor Grim shouted.

  “Why?” Donovan asked from beside me. He gave me a quick smile and squeezed my arm. “So glad you’re taking this class.”

  Patty and Bryce grinned behind him.

  Eli, a fellow outling, entered the greenhouse. After shutting the door, he sauntered over to stand with Moira and Alys. Seven students. A small class.

  “Nightlace is deadly,” the professor yelled. “Too deadly.”

  Especially to Drea.

  “Bummer,” Moira grumbled, slouching against one of the wooden tables. “I really loved wrestling with the baby vines. When you pop off their heads, they squirt blue blood.”

  I cringed. “That’s disgusting.” I almost felt sorry for the nightlace plant.

  “Aw, they don’t mind,” she said over her shoulder. “They grow another head immediately. It’s an ongoing thrill.”

  Just couldn’t see it. However, if anyone understood how the babies felt about having their heads popped off, it would be Moira, an empath.

  “Come with me, class,” our teacher shrieked. He floated through a door on the far end of the greenhouse, his wispy, shredded fabric robe dragging on the ground behind him. I swore bugs bailed from the cloth and sank into the soft soil. And the ground smoldered wherever he placed his “feet”. Assuming the former Grim Reaper had feet underneath the trail of fabric.

  We followed, crossing behind the Academy and taking a wide trail to the eastern pasture on the upper right side of the main buildings. When we stopped and milled together on the edge of the woods, I shifted my feet and a tiny stick snapped beneath my shoe.

  “Quiet, please,” the professor hollered. “You’ll frighten the dandybucklions away.”

  “What about him?” I asked Donovan, jerking a thumb in the Professor’s direction.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Professor Grim is yelling all the time. That’s not being quiet.”

  “The dandybucklions can’t hear him. Only we can. In the past, only those he had plans to reap could hear his words, but the Headmistress warded him so he can project to students without sucking away our souls.”

  “Seems like a good idea. I’ve heard of warding before.” Regarding slakes. “Is it an elemental magic?”

  “Actually, in this case, it’s a skapti,” Patty said.

  The Headmistress had more skaptis than numbers in a deck of cards.

  We stood silently for a while, the only noise the drone of pesky mosquitoes. Eventually, I got fidgety and leaned into Donovan’s side to quiz him some more. “Why the sickle?” I asked in a hushed voice, gesturing to Professor Grim holding it. He waved it around, making Eli duck before he was beheaded. Or reaped. Whatever.

  “He told us in the first class it reminds him of his life’s work.” Donovan’s face crinkled, and an odd edge slid into his voice. “He said some of the other teachers find it sexy.”

  Not going there.

  A snap of the Professor’s sickle-less fingers, and a thin, coiled rope for each of us dropped from the air. Donovan deftly caught his. Mine smacked against my forehead and fell on the ground.

  Alys snickered.

  I scowled. Yeah, love you, too.

  Tall haystacks were scattered across the upper portion of the pasture, straw hourglasses bound with rope in the middle.

  “Quickly, class,” the professor shrieked. “Take cover. They’re coming!”

  Patty and Bryce, holding hands, darted away with Patty’s giggles trailed behind them. Alys, Moira, and Eli slunk behind trees on the edge of the woods.

  I stayed with Donovan.

  Wait. Take cover? A flicker of unease shot through me. Deadly creatures. What exactly was a dandybucklion?

  “Hide,” Donovan hissed out, rushing behind a haystack. No room for two, I plastered myself to the back of the one next to his and peered around, out into the field.

  Nothing happened.

  “What do we do?” The fact that I needed a rope was not a good sign.

  “The second the dandybucklions start to appear, you grab one and tie it up,” Donovan said.

  The lion part of this was beginning to worry me.

  “Why are we capturing them?” I asked.

  “We’ll take them back to the lab and, in the next class, drain their anti-venom.”

  Definitely worried. But also, a little excited. We were talking plants, not riding an aldakor. This had to be easier. “Fill me in a little more. What do we do exactly?”

  “When you see one, jump on it and wrap a rope around it tightly, being careful to pin down all their arms. Then hold on for the ride.”

  Ride. More uncertainty dumped through me. “Okay,” I said slowly. How hard could it be to ride a magical plant?

  “Here comes one,” Donovan said, cocking his head. “Hear that?”

  Hard to miss. A grinding-gnashing rumble shook the ground beneath us. “I don’t see anything.”

  Despite the full moon beaming down on us, too many shadows played tag in the pasture.

  “They haven’t arrived but will any second, now.” Donovan tightened his fingers on his rope and crouched, his eager gaze focused forward.

  The sound grew louder, making pods on the tall grass jump and bob back and forth. Around me, kids loped through the grass, ropes swinging in the air. I couldn’t quite see—

  Something green and yellow erupted from the dirt in front of me, making me yelp and stumble backward. About two feet tall, the dandybucklion wavered, tipping its sunflower head back to bask in the moonlight. Couldn’t miss its creepy-smiley face. Or its multiple arms—branches—with sharp points on each end. Oh, and it had fangs. Awesome.

  “Rope one, Fleur!” Donovan said as he leaped from behind the haystack and ran to his right where other dandybucklions burst from the ground.

  It danced as if it sucked power from the moon, its multiple stick-like arms waving in the air.

  I leaped forward, my rope extended, but the plant must’ve seen me flying its way because it snarled and sunk back beneath the soil as if the earth had swallowed it whole. I skidded across the grass then turned onto my butt and rubbed my sore knees.

  Another dandybucklion sprang from the ground to my left and I jumped to my feet and scrambled in that direction. It too disappeared.

  Another! Springing in that direction, I smacked on the grass again, grumbling about wily vegetation. By the fae, I was playing dandybucklion whack-a-mole with my body filling in for the mallet.

  “To your left,” Donovan shouted. Tumbling onto a dandybucklion, he quickly wrapped the rope around its branchy arms while the creature swayed and, head tipped toward the sky, wailed like a newborn baby he’d jabbed with a pin.

  Kids scrambled around me, roping dandybucklions while I feared I’d be left lion-less, like I was still aldakor-less.

  Patty and Bryce, closer to the woods, sprawled in the grass with trussed up plants draped across their laps. Frazzled grins on their faces, they high-fived each other.

  Rope tight in my hand, I opted to pause and strategize. Leaping around willy-nilly wasn’t snagging a dandybucklion, and I was determined not to fail this assignment.

  I waited until the grinding sound rang out again, then followed it to stand directly over the location.

  The earth shifted beneath my shoes and a dandybucklion popped up between my legs, sending me tumbling backward, onto my ass. Wasn’t giving up yet. I’d barely hit the ground before I flung myself forward, grabbing the bucklion around the neck. While it quivered and baby-wailed, I wrapped my rope around and around, securing its pokey, stick-like arms to its sides.

  “Great job, Fleur,”
Professor Grim shrieked behind me, making my bones eager to spring through my skin. I’d never get used to his way of speaking. Keeping hold of my dandybucklion, who whimpered and gave me mournful looks, I turned to face the Professor.

  “Now yank it from the ground!” he said.

  “Will it hurt the plant?” I asked.

  “No more than a reaped soul wrenched from its earthly body feels pain.”

  Sure hoped I didn’t discover how that felt any too soon.

  One grunting pull and Sparky, my newly-named dandybucklion, released from the ground, its root-feet fluttering in the air, its mouth open, emitting spine-jarring wails as its head tilted back and forth.

  As I stood and faced Donovan, I tucked Sparky underneath my arm.

  While his grin matched mine, Alys’s scowl from behind him dimmed my excitement. That girl was too eager to see me fail. Her dandybucklion dangled from her pinched fingers and she held her arm extended as if the plant was not only stinky but covered in slime. I thought the bucklions were kinda cute.

  Eventually, we all held plants.

  “To the greenhouse lab,” Professor Grim screamed. “To the greenhouse lab, students. Hurry, now, before they dry out.”

  “You did awesome, Fleur!” Patty said, cradling her trussed-up plant in her arms like a wounded toddler.

  “Thanks. You, too.”

  As we followed Professor Grim back to the Academy, Donovan shared more about the plants. “Dandybucklions only come out of the ground during a full moon. Otherwise, they’re kinda shy. They turn their faces up and absorb the moonlight to transform it into anti-venom.”

  Inside the greenhouse lab, we gathered around Professor Grim. “Get your bucklions into water immediately students, before their roots dry. But not too much liquid or they become frisky. One cup only. I’ll take care of them after that.”

  Sparky’s little flowery face screwed up and it rocked and wailed, interspersed with forward jabs, trying to nip off my fingers with its fangs. But the moment I dropped him into a bucket and added water, he stopped fidgeting. He was soon swaying and humming, his little face turned up to absorb the moonlight streaming through the glass roof overhead.

  “Time to add supplements,” Professor Grim shouted. “Vials of venom-boosting nutrients can be found on the top shelf in the cabinet marked B. Please avoid cabinets A and C, which contain more lethal plant varieties.” As we crowded over to cabinet B and each grabbed a vial, he said, “Two dropper fulls only, please, and be sure the nutrient reaches the water.”