Awakening Magic

by Kayla Bashe

Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe

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  Abby slips into the common room so silently that you hardly notice her. She tends to do that a lot.

  “Want to help me with my homework?” As usual, she’s wearing a thick knit sweater and a pair of dark jeans.

  “I’m listening. What’s your homework?”

  “A lot of the students in my personal development class got the same assignment: take something you remember from your home that was at least sort of good, or, like, a tradition or something, and do it with people you care about to create a new and positive memory.

  I was wondering… perhaps you’d like to go fake hunting with me. Like, foraging. “She smiles brightly.”We’d look for edible plants! I’ve been looking at a wilderness guidebook, and, as far as I know, none of the mushrooms in the forest here are poisonous. Plus, there are wildflowers that would be incredibly delectable in a salad.” Her vocabulary always seems to get larger when she’s talking about food and cooking, and you know she’s thinking back to her training. To be honest, it’s adorable.

  The forest connecting the Academy and the Academe Magia curves around the city in a sort of crecent shape, only without the pointy bits. Although you’ve strolled through it in the past—as part of a workshop on herbs with useful properties, and to attend a cookout at the Academe—never before have you explored it the way you’re doing now.

  It’s full of wonderful surprises—such as a large fallen tree, its roots spreading like a sunburst, that’s toppled in the perfect spot to form an impromptu bridge over a lake as clear as crystal.

  Abby coaxes a deer to eat leaves from your hand. Its face is soft, its tongue rough like a cat’s. Squirrels let you pet them, and birds fly down from the trees to rest on your shoulders.

  The sun filters down through the trees and everything suddenly seems vivid and emerald.

  “We are wild girls,” Abby murmurs, half to herself. Together, you run through the forest.

  That evening, there’s a beautiful wildflower-petal salad at dinner, and it’s all thanks to the two of you.

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  Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe

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  You’re hanging out in the common room, brushing your hair, when Chant enters, breathless and smiling. Her dark green dress has sweetly puffed sleeves. “Can you help me with one of my assignments?”

  “Sure, what?”

  “It’s to take something that our upbringing has given us and make something positive out of it. The nature of the assignment is up for interpretation, I suppose. But, anyway, there was this thing we used to do at home—one of the few things that made me happy. So, now, I’m trying to figure out how to turn it into something I don’t hate.”

  “What’s the thing?”

  “The harvest songs were the only good thing about where I came from. They weren’t technically religious, but the village had been singing them for so long that the priests had no choice but to go ahead and permit it.

  Sometimes one of the older woman would tell my Ma that even if I was only a girl, I did have a pretty voice, and that maybe I’d be a priest’s wife someday, and sing to him."

  She fiddles with her hair. Then: “Can I sing to you?”

  “Sure. Go ahead, Chant.”

  It’s the sort of song they sing in places where there are a lot of sheep and mountains and verdant meadows. You feel yourself bending over a cast-iron pot set above a smoky wood fire, stirring a thick soup with a wooden ladle, harvesting corn until your hands are red. Sitting on haybales in the back of a horse-drawn wagon on a cold autumn evening, laughing and joking with other girls your age as the wagon rattles over each bump in the dirt road, exceptionally large jolts making you whoop or clap or giggle..

  There’s a sense of community, and you could feel how easily such closeness, such isolation, could turn painfully stifling. Constricting, even. But Chant’s protecting you, letting you feel only the good things—and, in doing so, she’s comforting herself as well.

  As the song ends, you feel yourself returning to your body.

  “Chant, did you know you just-“

  She nods shyly.

  “When did you figure out you could do that?”

  She smiles and hides behind her hair. “Today, in choir. We were singing a song about a mountain, and I pictured something I’d seen in a book once—a mountaintop in springtime, covered with blooming red roses, and sunlight and wildflowers in the valley. When the song ended, everyone said they’d heard something, or seen something, or smelled rose petals, or felt sunlight.”

  I had a special extra private lesson right after that, and I worked with my teacher until I could control whether or not I transmitted what I was vizualizing.”

  “Do you have any idea how amazing that is?”

  She shrugs, clutches her hair, giggles.

  “You could heal, you could help people, you could—I don’t know, but—Oh, Chant, you’re extraordinary!”

  “I could help people. Maybe, someday, when I’m older… I could even go home and help my sisters. Help them learn to see things the way I do, and that being female doesn’t make them worthless. The place I came from…it got everything sort of tangled up in my head. Loving someone because I want to and loving someone because I’ve been told to. Being silent out of politeness and being silent cause I’ll be beaten if anyone hears me. But I’m working on it. I want to get better, so I will."

  “Oh, Chant…” You spread your arms; Chant curls into your embrace, and you give her an enormous hug. She buries her face in your shoulder and hugs you back.

  After a while, she lifts her head. “I’ll teach you the harvest songs, if you’d like.”

  Chant ends up needing to get her pitch pipe to slow down the faster runs of a call-and-response song, one where the higher voice sings something and the lower voices sing it back to her; still, she’s pleasantly surprised at how fast you pick everything up.

  You want to stay like this for as long as you can, just you and Chant and music and happiness.

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  Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe

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  After two months, you receive a digital telegraph from the Academy. Its message is short and simple:

  Come back to school. Now.

  You know it’s something to do with your comatose squadmate. Choosing to hope for the best, you pack up your belongings, say a heartfelt farewell to all the new friends you’ve made, and catch the next spaceship back to the Magi Country hovertrain station.

  Maybe she’s awake, you tell yourself. Maybe she’s awake and she wants to talk to you. After all, it never hurts to be optimistic!

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  Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe

  * * *

  After two months, you receive a digital telegraph from the Academy. Its message is short and simple:

  Come back to school. Now.

  You know it’s something to do with your comatose squadmate. Choosing to hope for the best, you pack up your belongings, say a heartfelt farewell to all the new friends you’ve made, and catch the next spaceship back to the Magi Country hovertrain station.

  Maybe she’s awake, you tell yourself. Maybe she’s awake and s
he wants to talk to you. After all, it never hurts to be optimistic!

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  Please turn back a page

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  Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe

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  A few days later, after a tough obstacle course and a long, hot shower,

  you’re sprawled out on your bed, reading, and you hear Chant before you see her. She’s strumming a ukelele—and wearing a harmonica like an epaulet.

  “Lucy my darling, Lucy Angel darling…” She finishes her ditty with some power chords on the ukelele and a loud blow of the harmonica.

  “Okay, what is it?” you ask, laughing.

  “Will you go shopping with me?”

  “Sure, what’s the occasion?”

  “Everything I own is too small for me,” Chant laughs. “I was half-starved when I came here—normal-looking on the outside, but since I’m just naturally mean to be larger—for me, I was scary skinny. Now I’m fat and pretty again, and I honestly have nothing to wear. Afterwards, we can go to Miraga and buy pretty jewelry…”

  Shopping in the city, plus an excursion to the small, charming town of Miraga? There’s no way you’re turning that down.

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  (1/1) Go shopping with Chant.

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  Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe

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  When you talk to Rosemary, the head doctor at the infirmary, you receive some unexpected information.

  “We’ve finally been able to analze what type of poison is affecting her. Basically, it traps the victim in a coma, forcing them to relive their worst memory. At the end of the memory, it snaps back to the beginning. However, there are a few moments—when the memory starts ending, but before the reset—when the whole thing is malleable. If you can enter her thoughts and use your telepathic powers and the power of your love for each other to get through to her, you may be able to wake her up.”

  You don’t have to think twice. “I’ll do it.”

  “It’s only logical that you’d be able to do something like this. After all, you’re objectively good at things,” says Magda.

  “I’m writing a song about this. Just, you know, preemptive announcement,” Chant tells you.

  “You’ve got this,” Abby says. Her tone is quiet, but there’s firm determination in her voice.

  After changing into a comfortable nightgown, you sit on the edge of the bed.

  “Are you ready, Miss Angel?”

  Miss Angel. Actually, that might be a new one. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” you say, managing a smile.

  Rosemary hands you the cup. You drink its contents quickly—it tastes like a lumpy fruit smoothie.

  She takes it from you, and you lay back against the pillows, interlacing your fingers with

  Abby’s.

  “Tell me when it’s working,” Rosemary says.

  But before you can answer, you’re falling asleep, falling through the celing, through the crust of the planet, through the star-studded darkness of space itself, through the darkness behind your eyelids, and into the dreams of…

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  (1/1) >> Abby.

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  Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe

  * * *

  When you talk to Rosemary, the head doctor at the infirmary, you receive some unexpected information.

  “We’ve finally been able to analze what type of poison is affecting her. Basically, it traps the victim in a coma, forcing them to relive their worst memory. At the end of the memory, it snaps back to the beginning. However, there are a few moments—when the memory starts ending, but before the reset—when the whole thing is malleable. If you can enter her thoughts and use your telepathic powers and the power of your love for each other to get through to her, you may be able to wake her up.”

  You don’t have to think twice. “I’ll do it.”

  “It’s only logical that you’d be able to do something like this. After all, you’re objectively good at things,” says Magda.

  “I’m writing a song about this. Just, you know, preemptive announcement,” Chant tells you.

  “You’ve got this,” Abby says. Her tone is quiet, but there’s firm determination in her voice.

  After changing into a comfortable nightgown, you sit on the edge of the bed.

  “Are you ready, Miss Angel?”

  Miss Angel. Actually, that might be a new one. “Ready as I’ll ever be,” you say, managing a smile.

  Rosemary hands you the cup. You drink its contents quickly—it tastes like a lumpy fruit smoothie.

  She takes it from you, and you lay back against the pillows, interlacing your fingers with

  Magda’s.

  “Tell me when it’s working,” Rosemary says.

  But before you can answer, you’re falling asleep, falling through the celing, through the crust of the planet, through the star-studded darkness of space itself, through the darkness behind your eyelids, and into the dreams of…

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  (1/1) >> Magda.

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  Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe

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  First, you go into the city to buy clothes.

  Chant sticks to her usual forest-girl earth tones. She buys a cute grayish-green skirt with a petticoat that makes it puff out and a straw bonnet with a black bow to protect her fair skin from the sun; blouses with heart-shaped buttons, patterned tights.

  You’ve brought plenty of clothes that fit perfectly—still, you’ll probably get bored of some of them and give them away soon, so you decide to pick up a few new outfits. They’re all ultra-cute on you. Of course, you have a great body and a wonderful smile—why wouldn’t clothes look cute on you?

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  Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe

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  You’re walking through a forest, being led by a tall man who grips your wrist tightly with a large, calloused hand.

  “You know how God told Jacob to sacrifice his son Isaac? Well, I ain’t gotten no message from no deity… but I know what I need to do with you, Abigail.

  Ever since your mum died… You just ain’t right, child. I’ve tried to love you, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how.

  The way you’re so pale, as if your skin’s never seen sunlight. The way you don’t eat like most folks. You eat dead things, and not things that’ve died natural, either. Meat rotting in the forest and creatures that ain’t in no Farmer’s Almanac.

  And you’re just staring at me with those cold, dark little eyes. Hell, I don’t even know if you understand me, since you ain’t spoken a word since the day you were born—and hardly cried, either. “

  He hefts his axe.

  “My Ellie, afore she passed on, said you were a blessing. Well, I’m thinking you’se a curse, and I gotta get rid of you. You ain’t no kid of mine. You’re a monster child.”

  I am a monster child, you think. I should be ex
terminated before I am allowed to grow up. Maybe I was never meant to exist at all. Maybe I am a mistake. Maybe I am contagious.

  I am a mistake and I am contagious and I am a monster child. I eat rotting meat and drink blood as if it’s milk and everyone is scared of me.