Awakening Magic
Page 17
I will go unloved forever. I am a monster child.
In the moment before the axe lands, time seems to freeze.
This is the point where the memory is mutable. You step outside Abby’s body and send her herself.
Pale Abby who giggles with bloodstained lips and teeth, who tells the most outrageous jokes with a completely straight face. She knows a thousand ways to tie a scarf and even more ways to make her friends smile.
The way she goes outside when it’s raining to rescue worms from the garden paths. The way she’ll touch anything, investigate anything, try anything.
Abby, as enchanting as the forest. The way she grins.
Abby reaches up and stills her father’s hand. “I am a monster child,” she whispers, looking up at him with her cold child-eyes. “And I will be loved.”
He tries to bring his arm down, but Abby twists. Instead of her neck, the axe goes into his chest. Into his heart.
She stands up, regards him emotionlessly, tries to wipe the still-spraying blood off her clothes—and then, all at once, the full weight of what she’s done overwhelms her. No family. No friends. Nowhere to go home to. And my own father—She retreats to a corner of the clearing, where she begins to shake and cry.
“Hello?”
Voices come from somewhere outside the clearing.
“Hello? Are you there, child?”
It’s a posse of teachers from the Magical Girl Academy, all wearing raincoats. Even though they’re younger, you recognize them.
“We were told that there was a young magical girl here, and—oh, sweetie.” Miss Plum Vodka’s face visibly softens. “Oh, you poor thing…”
You carry Abby from the clearing, away from the place where she believed that she was unloved, away from her father’s death.
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Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe
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Hot, humid air on your skin. And a man in a labcoat. Your father.
“It’s time for your tests, Magda.”
There is a secret inside you, one that you wish to tell no matter the consequences. Nevertheless, you never disobey him, so you clamber up onto the tall stool.
He looks inside your ears and your mouth, listens to your heartbeat.
The greenhouse’s glass is a one-way window. No one can see in, because your very existence is a secret, but you can see out. You can see the sky and the birds and occasionally kids on hoverboards—laughing children, you’d like to be one of them—and, once, a Sanguine. You envied its freedom.
Someday, you’d like to see the sky. Not as it looks through glass, but the true sky, with no barriers between you and its blueness. Pure, unvarnished sky, unblocked and unconditional.
He folds his stethoscope and puts it away in his jacket. “Very good, Magda. Now I want you to see something for me.”
“Please, Father,” you say, even though you don’t know how you’ll finish that sentence.
“Oh, but you will, Magda. It’s what you’re good for.” He’s kind, as always. That just makes it worse.
“Father, I’m having the headaches again-“
“Don’t you love your father?”
“Father, I think… I think I’m a magical girl.”
“What.” He says the word as if it’s not even a question.
“Yesterday, a—a monster got into the greenhouse. I lied about a child dropping their backpack—it was the monster who broke the glass, not the backpack. It was going to damage your research, so I transformed and fought it.”
When you have a vision, he’s proud of you. He pats your head and smiles benevolently and gives you medicine that makes your headaches hurt less. Sometimes he even hugs you, or kisses your forehead.
Right now, though, he isn’t proud of you. “And… what? You think that you should go to the Academy?”
“Perhaps, Father.”
“Magda, the powers of magical girls are innate. Yours aren’t. I programmed them into your DNA, just like I programmed your brown hair or your brown eyes or the visions.” He gathers you close and pets your hair. “My sweet, naïve Magda. The girl who shouldn’t exist, the scientific miracle. You’d never be able to go to the Academy.”
You shake your head and make a wordless noise, unable to believe something so startling.
“Oh, Magda, my sweet girl.. besides, you wouldn’t be able to cope with independent existence. You need me.”
The headache starts in your heart this time. It hurts because it’s true.
“I created you, Madeline. You exist only in relation to me. You were born because I willed it to be so.” He strokes your hair. His hands are so gentle. “Could you truly survive without me, even for a moment?”
You picture everything he’s told you about the outside world—the cold, cold streets, the unfriendly people plagued by monsters, the trouble that young girls can get into, the young men who live only to rape and kidnap—and shake your head vigorously, trembling in sudden fright. He’s right, you think, burrowing into his arms, holding onto him more tightly. You exist to give your creator visions, to bring him the magic he could never rightfully have. It’s a good life, a honorable life, and you’re ungrateful for not loving it as much as you should. Wanting to leave makes you wicked. He needs you.
You’re his miracle girl, and you’d never be able to manage in the outside world without him, not even for a moment. Can’t understand the things he tells you, can’t even remember small things like where you’re supposed to sleep or where to find the mini-fridge. Sweet naïve little Magda.
You are an appendage. You are a creation. You are less than nothing.
And suddenly, you’re thrown outside of her thought-body, and you are an insubstantial conciousness. What can you do in this form? You can think, of course. So you do.
You send your thoughts to Magda.
Magda the Clever, Magda of the Galaxy. Magda, who reads long books faster than anyone and remembers everything she reads.
You show her the way her visions have saved lives, the way the younger students appreciate how she helps them with schoolwork, how incredibly brave she is, braver than you’ve ever truly realized until this very moment.
You show her herself the way you see her: clever, witty Magda in her vibrant dresses and extravagant hats, the way she fascinates everyone.
You are more than he says you are, you send to her. You’re more.
As if she’s heard you, she lifts her head from her father’s shoulder, loosens her grip on him.
“No,” she says quietly.
He looks puzzled. “No?”
This time, she doesn’t back down.
“No. I’m not just your creation. I’m my own person. My powers, even if unnatural, are valid.” She’s clambering down from the stool, her voice rising to a perfectly modulated shout. “And no matter what the outside world is like, I bet it’s an improvement upon being trapped here!”
His eyes are wide and dark with furious shock; hers burn with the light of galaxies.
“Burn,” she whispers, and waves her hand.
The greenhouse goes up in flames around you.
You catch her as she topples over and haul her out of there until you lose consciousness.
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Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe
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Once you’re done shopping for clothes, you decide to take a hovertrain to Miraga, a tiny, artsy town near the city. You and Chant stroll through tiny stores and amazing art galleries f
illed with beautiful objects. Tiny bells and floating lotus-shaped candles, polished crystals that fit perfectly in the palms of your hands, hand-carved wooden spoons and flower-shaped ramekins. On the train back to the city, you model your purchases for each other, discuss the perfect gifts you bought for your squadmates, and exchange high-fives.
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(1/1) On the way home from the city, though, you encounter something completely unexpected…
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Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe
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You come back to your body gradually, like you’re drifting in a still ocean—and then all at once, as if surfacing from underwater into the sunlight.
Abby’s skin looks even paler than normal—and for her, that’s really something. But when you brush a lock of dark hair from her forehead, her eyes open.
You came so painfully close to forgetting how green they were—forest-green, emerald-green, almost startlingly so.
Abby’s awake, and you are happy.
She lifts her hands and studies them carefully, as if she’s expecting to see blood on them. “Oh,” she says at last. “All right, then.”
She stretches, rolls her neck, massages her temples. And then, as if waking up after a nap, peaceful and in love with life: “Hello, Lucy.”
The words that come out of your mouth are ones that you don’t entirely expect: “Can I kiss you?”
Instead, she kisses you. You taste the beeswax-and-honey gloss on her lips, smell her pine-scented soap at the crook of her neck. This is the Abby you remember, the girl from the forest. You’ve been waiting for this.
“I knew I’d be all right,” she says softly, a while later. “In the back of my mind, even when I thought that I was a terrible person and I needed to send away anything good that could ever happen to me to make amends for something I couldn’t quite remember doing, but knew I had to atone for; even when I believed that my disappearance would make everything better, that I was a monster girl who deserved to be slaughtered, I knew I wasn’t alone. I knew I’d have somewhere to come home to.” She kisses the side of your neck. Then: “You’re my somewhere.”
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Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe
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And then you’re back in your body, holding Magda’s hand. Slowly, you uncurl your fingers from hers, sit up, finger-comb your hair. You’ve done all you can; the rest is up to Magda.
And then she stirs. Her dark eyes flutter open.
“Hello,” she says, her sweet voice slightly creaky. “What day is it?”
“It’s Tuesday,” you say, laughing. Tears spring to your eyes. “Magda, I missed you.”
“Tuesday? Did I miss the book club meeting? Oh, bother!”
She thinks it’s Tuesday two months ago, so you explain everything that happened to her. She’s not annoyed in the slightest; in fact, she feels that “sleeping for over a month” explains quite a lot, because how else could one have dreamed so much?
“You know, when I was dreaming, I thought I was just a tool and an object and hardly even a person in the slightest, and that I wasn’t worth saving, and that I didn’t even deserve to save myself—but I could sense that there were people about there like the characters in my books. Kind people. Good people. That someday I’d make lots of friends who would affirm the fact that I deserved to be happy—and that perhaps I’d fall in love someday. That happiness was, in fact, a possibility. You were quite a large part of that.” Her hands find yours. “I love you, Lucy Angel.”
“And I you,” you murmur in return, overflowing with happiness.
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Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe
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A large man leans against a doorframe, having an aimless conversation with five or so other men, all formidably bulky. You glance at him, but decide to keep walking. After all, you’re a Magical Girl—what reason do you have to be scared of anything. But then “Hey, cuties.” the man leaning against the doorframe says. “Wanna smile for us?”
“No,” you say, glaring at him, and tug Chant along.
Only…you realize that they’re following you.
“Why can’t you just calm down? Like, what’s your problem?”
“Jeez. We’re just trying to be friendly and talk to you.”
“You should take your shirts off! That would be funny.”
There’s a strange aura around them, one which you recognize at once from your textbooks. These are no ordinary people—they’re men who’ve been possessed by monsters.
“Chant, they’re possessed,” you whisper into her hair.
“Okay, um, I think I’m kind of scared now.” Chant says quietly.
In response, your hand finds hers.
As the men pursue you, their heads become steadily more mutated. Eyes bulge out. Teeth lengthen.
“Did you know that women only turn to other women when they can’t find a man who’ll put up with them?”
“Are women who look like you even allowed to go out in public?”
“Keep it indoors, freaks!”
You turn a corner—and are faced with a brick wall. Dead end.
“We need to fight.” you say decisively—but that’s when your hands are yanked away from Chant’s, and you find yourself held in the grip of someone much stronger and larger than you.
In an instant, you surround your body with a shield of white light. Even though your hands are still pinned behind your back, it’ll prevent the monster men from hurting you—for now, at least. In order to fight back, you’ll need to transform.
“Chant, transform!”
“The magic of music is singing in me…” Chant’s voice quavers. She doesn’t seem to believe what she’s singing.
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(1/3) Appeal to her self-confidence
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(2/3) Say something super-sweet
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(3/3) Say something deep
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Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe
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Chant made up an acrostic song to celebrate the eventuality of Abby’s awakening; ever since she taught it to you and Magda, you’ve both fallen into the habit of humming it. Perhaps it’ll finally get out of your head now.
With arms linked, the three of you shuffle into the room; Chant hums your opening note, and you all begin singing.
“A is for awesome, and that is what you are
“I suppose you missed me, then,” Abby murmurs, smiling.
Magda nods. “I know I was worried, at least. You are a dear friend, and I missed you ever so much.”
“No one makes cupcakes as well as you do,” Chant adds. “And I think you’re a lovely human being.”
“I’ve already said my bit,” you tell her.
“It was a good bit,” says Abby. “I liked it—I loved it. And I love you too, but you know that, don’t you.”
She smiles at you, and you smile back.
Magda points at you. “Unreliable narrator!”
“I knew it,” Chant stage-whispers. Raising her voi
ce back to its normal level of volume, she adds, “But, then again, I’m a hopeless romantic.”
Magda stamps her foot, pretending to be angry. “Oh, plot twist!”
Chant sticks her tongue out, and Magda chuckles.
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Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe