Spell Song
Chronicles of Azuria Book 1
J. F. Forrest
Contents
Prologue - The Girl
1. The Power
2. The Man With The Bag
3. Ghost Face Killah
4. Old Matilde
5. Tik Tuk
6. Hooked On A Feeling
7. Hidden Hollow
8. Farm Brownies
9. Furry Caulla
10. Matilde Is Missing
11. The Milky Way
12. Virtual Immortality
13. Walls Come Down
14. Going Plaid
15. Renegotiation
16. Old Friends
17. Sacrifices
18. Into The Forest
19. Beyond The Limit
20. Hard Landing
21. Trouble Calling
22. Dark Magic
23. A Message For Sami
24. Gone
25. Underground
Epilogue - Down
Prologue - The Girl
Fentress County, Tennessee 1835
“Well? Is she?”
“I don’t think so.”
Mary Proctor, who was lying in bed, let out a sigh of relief.
“So that’s it then?” Wilmot Proctor asked as he leaned over the baby.
“Yes. We will speak of it no more.”
“Perhaps the…talent skips a generation? Maybe…just maybe.”
“And she will be spared?”
“It is hard to say. If it never manifests, she will live a completely normal life.”
Mary sputtered out a laugh that ended in a wet coughing fit.
“Normal?” she wheezed. “Since when has anything about this ever been normal?”
Wilmot smiled and started to speak, but three loud knocks at the door interrupted him.
“Wilmot Proctor!” the voice from outside called. “Open the door or be subject to penalty.”
It could be the villagers, or maybe someone worse—someone far worse. Somehow the townspeople had discovered them and found out about the baby. Wilmot wasn’t sure what fate lay beyond that door, but he wasn’t willing to trust his new daughter’s future to it. Somehow he needed to alert the White Cloaks; find help.
“On what grounds?” he demanded, hoping to buy a little time.
“You know what grounds,” the voice growled, and pounded three more times.
Wilmot turned to Mary with a question in his eyes. Her lip quivered and she swallowed the lump that was forming in her throat.
“The child—” Mary Proctor whispered to her husband. “Take her. Take her and go.”
“But Mary!” Wilmot pleaded, with tears in his eyes.
“You must,” she cried. “West of the Appalachian Mountains there is a safe haven—a place for those like us. Take her there.”
Wilmot looked down at the baby in his arms. She was a beautiful little girl who shared her mother’s dark cocoa skin and radiant emerald eyes, but thankfully not her other frowned upon abilities, at least not yet.
“I will return.”
The knocking at the door became the pounding of a battering ram, and Mary doused the oil lantern.
“Go, Wil!” she said hysterically. “Please, just go! I can use a spell to hold them off for a little while. Run!”
He grabbed his coat and wrapped it around the baby, and trod as lightly as he could toward the back door. As he passed it, he saw the violin case in the bottom of the coat closet. He dared not leave it behind, so he grabbed it and went out the back door. As he closed it behind him, he heard the wooden front door splinter and crack as the ram burst through. Heavy footsteps clomped into the house as he climbed onto the old mare tied in the barn. Throwing a bridle onto the horse, he held the baby close and slapped the reins. He never looked back.
The Power
Present Day
Samantha Dawn Proctor watched in horror as the massive pane of reflective gold glass broke free of its supporting frame on the bottom of the Sunsphere. She couldn’t remember why she’d looked up—maybe the sound, maybe the snow, or maybe just to get a look at the Sunsphere, which was a three-hundred-foot-tall building shaped like a microphone left over from the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville. It could’ve been a trick of light from inside or the reflection of the sunset outside, but Sami would have sworn that the edges of the glass were glowing yellow and emitting dancing orange sparks.
Samantha was a young Solarian Elf, closing in on two hundred years old—a different kind of millennial. When the witch-hunting townspeople had beaten on their door, her father Wilmot had taken her to a safe place in the middle of nowhere in Tennessee called ‘The Farm.’
Thankfully Mary Proctor had also escaped and joined her family, and she had trained her daughter to use the magic that ran in her blood. And more importantly, she had taught Samantha when not to use it.
Time slowed down as Samantha reached for the kids she was chaperoning, but two hands were not enough to wrangle the entire group. Twelve children ages seven to eleven gathered around her waiting to get into the Fantasy of Trees at the nearby convention center when, two-hundred-and-sixty feet above, the glass window toppled end over end in a deadly arc toward them. She guessed she had only a second or two to react before it slammed down on the kids.
What happened next was hard to describe. Sami, as her friends knew her, centered in her mind the desire to push all the children out of the way as a group. It burned inside her mind with a strange heat that she later thought of as…well, as purple.
She knelt, though she wasn’t sure why, and the desire—and the power—to move the children compressed into a core inside her, where it vibrated and hummed within until she thought she wouldn’t be able to contain it any longer.
Strange words came unbidden to her lips. “Protectas forceras.”
Under her skin, strange symbols she remembered appearing only once in her childhood flowed from her shoulders to her elbows and into her fingertips, fiery orange and searing white. Her eyes felt hot too, and she remembered that they would glow when she was channeling magic.
She screamed, but it was lost in the shrieks of the crowd, who had suddenly become aware of the danger plunging from above. Air rushed from hands she didn’t remember lifting, shimmering and rippling around her. The tornado of air circling her flung the kids gathered around her out of the danger zone.
All were now clear of the falling glass—except Sami. It hurtled toward her faster and faster. A new surge of power from her hands slammed into the glass panel and shattered it into a million pieces. The shards rained down around her in a perfect circle to leave her untouched. She counted all the kids twice; they were all present and unharmed. Everyone was safe. Relief flooded through her as the police sirens began to wail in the distance.
“Are you okay?” a mother clutched two kids, keeping them away from the debris.
The entire plaza beneath the Sunsphere glowed purple and pink. It was like the aurora borealis had landed in the former World’s Fair site. Sami searched the faces of the people nearby for signs that they could see the glow and recognize the swirling residue of magic. No one could.
“Fine, thanks.”
“It’s a miracle you weren’t hurt.”
“Yeah.” Sami shivered as she struggled to control her emotions, and her heart pounded in her chest.
After herding the children into the lobby of the convention center, she collapsed on a red and green plaid chair in front of a white Christmas tree. The bustling sounds of people standing in line and the joyful music blaring in the background were at odds with what had happened outside.
Sami looked down at her hands, wh
ich were shaking as well as bright; the all-too-familiar glow of magic hadn’t yet faded from her fingertips. What the hell had that been? The power…the magic had always responded, but nothing like this. I did something to push everyone back and break that giant window, but what?
She counted the kids again, just to be sure. They were all there, safe and sound.
“Miss Sami, are we gonna go see Santa now?” one of the older children asked her.
She nodded and took a deep breath. “Yeah, yeah. Give me a second.”
The children gave a collective cheer. The broken window was already forgotten—you could always count on Santa to distract the small set, even from a disaster. A few of them began to tell each other what they were going to ask for when they got to sit on Santa’s lap. Others were jumping up and down with excitement. Some of them were doing the pee-pee dance, but trying to hide that they needed to go. Sami realized she did too, but she wasn’t sure if she needed to pee or to throw up.
She decided either would be a good thing. After arranging the children in a single-file line from youngest to oldest, she assigned each a buddy to stick with. They went up the escalator and she shuffled them into the bathrooms.
When they were all settled she hurried into the last stall, slammed the door shut, jerked the semi-circle lid open and vomited…twice. Her gut roiled with what felt like molten lava and she was suddenly exhausted. Way more exhausted than that time she’d stayed awake for two days cramming for her chemistry final. Thank you, caramel macchiato. She shuffled to the sink and rinsed her mouth out.
“Well, I never,” huffed a woman standing next to her and covering her daughter’s eyes.
It was obvious she thought Sami was drunk.
“I’m not surprised,” Sami said, pulling a strand of wet hair off her face as she walked past her.
She collected the children and took them back downstairs, then gave a ticket to each as they filed through the turnstile into the Fantasy of Trees.
The area inside was home to rows and rows of fake Christmas trees decorated and donated by different schools, churches, businesses, police departments, fire stations, and some upper-class society types. Everything was for sale in the name of charity.
Bright lights flashed, blinked, twinkled, and shone in blues, reds, greens, yellows, whites, and even purples and pinks. On a stage to the right, some school children were crooning out the jolliest of traditional holiday songs, and Sami had to smile. She loved Christmas, although St. Patrick’s Day was a close second in the “favorite holiday” race.
The kids began oohing and ahhing at all the festiveness surrounding them, but eventually they congregated in the corner of the building where the line for Santa’s workshop snaked back and forth—several times—in front of the jolly old elf’s photo op. Ahead of them were at least fifty screaming, laughing, crying, smiling, fidgeting children with an exhausted adult attached to each. Sami’s shoulders slumped.
“Oh, crap,” she muttered.
One of the older girls gasped when she heard her curse, and tittered as if they were in on a private joke when Sami put her finger to her lips.
Sami herded the kids into line, then dug around in her purse for her phone. She tapped out a message to her best friend Scott Montgomery, who was a senior at the University of Tennessee and thoroughly human. He had no magic or pointy ears, but he did hold the record for the most sacks on the football team this year and a southern accent so thick no one past the northern state line of Tennessee could understand him—although girls didn't seem to notice or care. They had been inseparable ever since he rescued Sami from eating her lunch alone at Gus’ World Famous Fried Chicken two years ago, and he was one of the very few people outside her family who knew her true abilities.
“Where are you?”
“Doling out sweets to the ankle-biters.”
“With Santa?”
“Yup. The fat man is takin’ names up here.”
Sami smiled at Scott’s message.
“Okay, we’ll be up there in, oh, probably an hour.”
Scott sent back a thumbs-up emoji.
A young mother in front of Sami’s herd looked back at her. “I saw,” she whispered.
“Excuse me?”
“I saw what you did out there.”
A sliver of panic iced into Sami’s spine. She remembered her mother’s advice. When others pry, don’t hesitate to lie.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you—”
“It’s okay,” the woman said, interrupting her with a knowing smile. “I won’t say anything. Besides, I can see your aura.”
Sami opened her mouth to protest, but a burly guy behind her growled, “Yo, keep it movin’ up there.”
The woman winked at Sami and turned back around.
Dang, she thought, wondering if one of the White Cloaks had seen her very public display outside. Couldn’t be helped. I didn’t even know I was going to do it. The White Cloaks were the undercover wizards who governed the use of power in public. They usually lived within a few hours of a Caulla. The Caulla usually had towns and villages of magic users squatting all around it, they could feel its power refreshing them and filling them back up. The Cloaks were very specific about the use of magic on Earth: DON’T.
The speakers overhead began blaring Rudolph and all the kids started screaming along, which broke Sami out of her thoughts. She couldn’t help but join in.
2
The Man With The Bag
Scott Montgomery looked ridiculous in his elf getup, pointy ears and all. Ironic that Sami had a glamour on twenty-four-seven to hide hers, but here he had to gum-paste his on while he worked. He was, as they said in a popular song, six-foot-four and full of muscles, although his shaggy blond hair and smooth-shaven face made him look like a high-schooler even though he was a senior at the University of Tennessee. Part of his duties as captain of the volunteer football team were to do a million hours of local volunteer work. Required or not, he loved doing it…but the elf costume was a bit much.
“You look amazing.” Sami laughed as her kids got to the front of the line.
“Aw shucks.” He smiled.
“Where the hell did they get that outfit?”
“Bet they took it from a real live elf.” He tugged at the green sleeves on his jacket, which were four inches too short.
Sami laughed and pecked his cheek. “Well, I think you look cute.”
“Thanks.” He grinned.
The kids took their turns sitting on Santa’s knee to ask for tablets and phones and game systems and robots and all manner of gadgets.
“Whatever happened to kids wantin’ footballs ‘n fishin’ poles?” Scott snorted.
He had always been the athletic one in his family, but he wasn’t the dumb jock everyone assumed he’d be. First in his class in biochemistry and second only to the class valedictorian in anthropology, he had more brains than brawn…and he had a lot of brawn.
Sami rolled her eyes. “Oh geez, next you’ll tell me you want a Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time.”
“Shoot, girl.” Scott winked and touched the fur on his elf cap, “All I want fer Christmas is you.”
“Yeah. Right.” She punched his shoulder.
Scott was slowly developing a crush on her—like two years’ worth of slow—but he could never tell if she felt the same. She was smart, sexy, caring, funny, worldly, and altogether amazing. This year he planned to find out what she thought about him, but there was one catch.
Being a star on the football team and a well-respected member of the volunteer community hadn’t gotten rid of his ever-present social awkwardness. Scott rarely felt at home in front of people, and he flailed like a fish out of water around girls. Sure, he’d been on double dates with his football buddies, but once girls found out he liked talking about the plethora of uses for lab-grown algae they bugged out.
He’d even bought a ring, although they’d never been on an official date. It was a ver
y non-committal this-is-not-an-engagement ring with a bluish-purple star sapphire and a white gold band. As soon as he had seen it in the case at the mall, he knew he had to buy it for her. He took a deep breath.
“Hey, you wanna grab a coffee later?” he faked his best casual look.
“Yeah.” She said, with a strange look on her face. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.” I need to tell someone about the bizarre glass-shattering magic I used…in public!
Scott was suddenly worried that she knew what he was up to.
“Oh,” he stuttered, “well, yeah. Or we don’t have to…or whatever.” Ugh, that came out weird.
She gave him another strange look, crinkling her nose. “We don’t have to what?” she asked. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I mean, if you don’t want to or whatever.”
“I do. I do.” You can be so weird at times, she thought.
“Sweet,” he said, doing his best to look nonchalant. “I’m off at nine.”
“Hey, what’s the hold up?” a man with a crying two-year-old yelled up at them. “I got a kid here who’s gonna see Santa before his next break—or I’ll break something.”
“Don’t get yer panties in a wad, sir.” Scott held up both hands in surrender. “Sorry, Sami. I’ll holler at you later.”
“Cool.” The last of her kids had finally gotten through the sheer terror of sitting on the lap of a big hairy fat man in a red fur suit, so she called, “Come on, kids. We gotta go.”
Spell Song: An Enchanting Urban Fantasy Page 1
