UnTwisted

by Elise Allen

  “Maybe Raya took the blinzer stones with her,” Flissa suggested. “She could have moved them with magic.”

  “Maybe,” Sara said. “Or maybe Zinka’s putting on a show to cover up what they did, just to throw everyone off before the next attack.”

  “Throw who off?” Flissa asked. “We’re the only ones who suspect anything.”

  Sara had to admit that was an excellent point, but she still didn’t believe Zinka was entirely in the clear.

  “Let’s stick with the plan,” she said. “We’ll see if the stones are in Zinka’s room, then figure everything else out from there.”

  Flissa agreed, and they soon arrived at Maldevon Academy.

  “Please just wait here,” Sara called up to the driver. “We’ll let you know when we’re ready to go.” Then she ducked back inside to run over everything with Flissa.

  “Send me a bubblegram when you’re about to go into the dorm,” Sara said. “I’ll wait a little while for you to get Zinka to the topiary gardens. There’s no way she’ll see me from there. Then I’ll go in and check out the room. You’re sure I can get past the Invisible Wall of Doom?”

  “You can if you look like me,” Flissa said. “I mean, of course you look like me, but—”

  “Watch,” Sara said. She closed her eyes, concentrated, and focused on exactly what she wanted to happen. When the image was perfectly sharp and clear in her head, she ran her hands in front of her body, wiggling her fingers down from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet. She could feel the scarlet mist coming out of her. She felt her silk dress change to slim-fitting jodhpurs with a blouse and jerkin. She felt her delicate shoes grow into heavy boots. Most of all, she felt the almost-forgotten heft of long hair as it wove into a braid that thunked down over one shoulder.

  “Wow,” Flissa said.

  “So it worked?”

  “I mean, you didn’t change yourself from a lioness into a cat—”

  “Because even the strongest Mage can only make cosmetic changes, not completely alter their species,” Sara pointed out defensively.

  Flissa smiled. “You did an amazing job. We look like twins.” She slipped out of the carriage, then leaned back into the window. “Bubblegram you in a bit.”

  She ran off, and Sara jounced her knee impatiently. She turned her head from side to side just to feel her braid flop around. She didn’t miss all that weight, but it was definitely fun to play with. She had the end of her braid in one hand and was spinning it around like a lasso when a bubblegram floated in through the window and popped in front of her face.

  “Just outside the dorm,” Flissa’s voice said, “about to head in.”

  Sara made herself slowly count to one hundred, while in her head she went over what Flissa had told her about blinzer stones. They could be any size, and since they were so rare, different sources said they were different colors. What every book Flissa read seemed to agree on was that blinzer stones were smooth, shiny gems and could always be identified because they would hum when a Mage touched them. Even one blinzer stone could amplify a Mage’s magic significantly, but it seemed likely that Raya had used several to curse every Genpo in Kaloon, so who knew how many Sara might find?

  By now Sara was sure Flissa and Zinka would be at the topiary garden. She waited just a little bit longer, in case Zinka was so upset about the cat it took more time to get her out of her room, then she left the carriage.

  When Sara had come up with the plan to masquerade as her sister, she’d figured it would be easy—she’d done it a million times before. Yet now that she was out of the carriage, she realized that actually wasn’t true. She’d been Flissara a million times before. That was someone different—a combination of Flissa and Sara that was somewhere in the middle of them both.

  Now she had to be Flissa…and she was stunned that she wasn’t sure exactly what to do.

  She thought about it. Flissa was confident. At least physically she was. She was great at sports and she was all kinds of coordinated, so she would have a super-confident walk. That meant Sara would do the same. She stood as tall as she could and kept her head up as she strode toward the dorms.

  She got nervous when she saw people walking around on the fields. Would Flissa nod and smile to them? That didn’t sound like Flissa’s style, but what if her style had changed? She was a popular girl now. Maybe that meant people expected her to smile.

  Or maybe she was so popular that people expected her not to smile.

  This was a lot harder than Sara had thought. She was grateful when she felt sweat on her upper lip—that she knew was pure Flissa, so she was doing something right. She made it to the girls’ dorm porch and climbed up the steps. She kept her eyes forward, opting not to look at people and smile.

  There. That was a choice. One down, a million more to go. She opened the door and slammed into a girl with bright blue curly hair and a silver ring through her eyebrow.

  “Oh,” Sara said. “Sorry.”

  “Flissa?” the girl asked. “I thought you and Zinka just went out.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Oh. Um…yeah!” Sara said. “I just…I…had to come back and use the bathroom.”

  “Got it.” The girl bounded down the porch stairs, and Sara let out her breath.

  “Oh hey!”

  It was the girl again. Sara winced, then turned and smiled. Then she wiped away the smile. Then she smiled again.

  The girl scrunched up her face. This was going fabulously unwell.

  “I’m guessing Zinka told you, but Odelia and Trinni are good. Trinni went home, but Odelia’s upstairs if you want to see her.”

  The names meant nothing to Sara, but they had to be Genpos and friends of Flissa’s. She tried to look both concerned and relieved. “Good. I’m glad they’re okay.”

  The girl gave her another weird look, then she raised her hand in a goodbye and took off up the field.

  Sara shook her head and went inside the dorm. Now she just had to hope the blue-haired girl didn’t run into Zinka and the real Flissa in the next few minutes.

  She loped up the steps, cringing a bit in anticipation of the magic wall, but she must have looked enough like Flissa to pass. She ran to the third floor, took a left down the hall, then stopped in front of the door with Zinka’s nameplate. Flissa had said the doors weren’t locked. Sara hoped it was true.

  She tried the knob and it opened. Perfect. She slipped in and closed it behind her.

  The floor was covered in dirt. Big chunks of it. Like as if someone had been tromping around digging for blinzer stones and dragged all the dirt back on her clothes and shoes.

  She’d had a whole plan about how to act in front of the cat. She was going to say something out loud, like, Good thing Zinka’s letting me borrow her History book, or I’d be in huge trouble! That would’ve shown the cat she was in there for something real and certainly not a blinzer stone.

  Now that she was actually in the room, she was very glad that Raya had run off. Considering how horribly she’d done with the blue-haired girl, she knew Raya would have seen through her act in a heartbeat.

  Of course, there was a chance Zinka was lying about the cat disappearing.

  Sara quickly gave the room a quick once-over, peeking in the closet, under and behind the couch, and on the loft bed. No cat. No obvious blinzer stones either, but she hadn’t imagined they’d be out in the open.

  So…where would a girl and her evil ex-lioness friend put a bunch of blinzer stones?

  Sara shuffled through everything on top of Zinka’s desk. She unrolled scrolls, peeked in ink pots, and lifted piled of parchment. Nothing. She went through the desk drawers next, first just glancing through for any large stones, then shifting things around in case there were smaller ones hidden inside. Still nothing.

  With the desk exhausted, Sara quickly went through every drawer in Zinka’s dresser and moved or patted down all her clothes. No luck. She climbed onto the loft bed and felt under the mattress and inside the pillowcases
; she patted down all the couch cushions; she peeled back the throw rug.

  She didn’t want to stay in the room much longer. She had no idea how long Flissa could keep Zinka distracted, plus it could be a hopeless search. What if Flissa’s theory was right and Raya had magicked the stones away with her?

  Still, this was their one chance to look around, and Sara didn’t want to leave until she knew for sure she’d checked every possible spot.

  The closet; if she searched the closet and the stones weren’t there, she’d give up. She opened the closet door, then stood on a chair to check the shelf on top before sifting through every hanging piece of clothing, and putting her hands in every pocket.

  No stones.

  Sara didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. She didn’t even know what it meant. Was Zinka innocent because the stones weren’t there, or was moving the stones part of her and Raya’s mutual plan?

  She had no idea, but now wasn’t the time to figure it out.

  Sara walked to the door and was about to leave when she noticed four pairs of boots sitting in a line. They were set by the wall, where they’d be blocked by the door when it opened, which was why Sara hadn’t noticed them on the way in.

  Could Zinka have stashed a blinzer stone or two in one of the shoes?

  Sara crouched down and picked up a black leather ankle boot. Not only was the sole coated in dirt that chunked off and crumbled all over Sara’s clothes, but it reeked like spoiled egg tarts. “Ugh, what do you do in these?”

  She did not want to reach inside. She held it up to her ear and shook it to see if anything moved.

  Ka-THUMP.

  Sara’s skin prickled. Now she was dying to reach inside.

  WHAP!

  “OW!”

  Sara fell over as the door to the room smacked her in the back. The boot fell out of her hand, and a perfectly smooth, shiny orange stone the size of her palm tumbled out of it.

  Sara glanced up. Zinka stood in the doorway, towering over her, green eyes blazing. Her hands clenched into fists.

  She looked like a warrior, ready for battle.

  Zinka slammed the door shut behind her, and Sara lunged for the shiny orange stone. Her fingertips were on it and she could hear the stone hum.

  “NO!” Zinka yelled.

  Sara heard a single, clear chime, then an electric shock bit into her hand.

  “Ow!”

  She pulled her hand away, and Zinka scooped up the stone. She stared at Sara, and in the one second before she heard that clear chime again, Sara realized Zinka didn’t look like a warrior at all. She looked terrified, and there were tears in her eyes as she closed her hand around the orange stone.

  Then the chime rang out, and all Sara felt was pain.

  Flissa ran full speed up the girls’ dorm stairs, taking them two at a time.

  She never should have agreed to the plan. It was a bad idea.

  It was Flissa’s fault it failed. She should have known she had too many friends on dorm. She should have known someone would see her and mess things up. And she definitely should have known that once Zinka lost Teddy, she’d be too distraught to stay out of her room for long. It took forever for her to even convince Zinka to go for a walk, so they were nowhere near the topiary garden when Dallie called out, “Zinka! Flissa!” and told them that she thought Flissa’s twin was playing tricks on them, because she just saw someone who looked exactly like Flissa—but acted a lot weirder—outside the girls’ dorms.

  Zinka seemed to understand right away, and Flissa remembered the look she gave her—a horrible mix of anger, betrayal, and terror.

  Then she broke out in a run.

  Flissa ran after her. They’d raced before; Flissa thought she could catch up to her. What surprised her was that Zinka turned around and flicked out her hand midstride. Flissa heard a clear chime, then her feet slid out from under her, as if she were running on ice. Every time she got up, she fell back down again, until Flissa realized Zinka had magicked the soles of her shoes. She threw them off, then kept racing after her, but she’d lost precious time.

  Please be out of the room, Sara, she thought to herself. Please be long, long gone.

  Flissa reached the top of the third-floor stairs and barreled down the hall. She saw some girls standing around outside Zinka’s door, and she felt sick. They’d only be gathered there if they’d heard something strange. Flissa struggled to find more breath, more speed, but she didn’t have anything left.

  Then she heard the screams.

  It was Sara. She’d know her sister’s voice anywhere. And she sounded like she was in agony.

  Miraculously Flissa moved faster.

  Her lungs breaking apart, she threw open Zinka’s door.

  Zinka stood in the middle of the room, her hair splayed wildly around her head. She squeezed a smooth, shiny orange stone in one hand and sobbed as she stared down at Sara, screaming and writhing on the floor.

  Flissa didn’t stop to think. She looked at Sara and her blood boiled. She drew all her anger from deep inside herself, then threw her arms forward and flung it out at Zinka.

  Cream-colored mist covered Zinka, and she zoomed backward as if shoved by a giant hand. She slammed against the wall so hard the blinzer stone clanked to the floor, and within seconds the mist around her had hardened into a cement that covered every inch of her, from her chest to her knees, and plastered her against the wall.

  Flissa quickly picked up the blinzer stone and slipped it in her pocket. She didn’t really want it anywhere near her, but she couldn’t let it fall into anyone else’s hands. Then she knelt down next to Sara. Whatever curse Zinka had put on her, it had shocked Sara’s twinning charm away so she looked like herself again. She was curled into a ball, twitching and spasming as if someone were nudging her with a cattle prod.

  “Sara?” Flissa said. “Are you okay? Sara, please be okay.”

  Sara didn’t respond. Aside from the twitching, she didn’t move.

  Flissa spun around to Zinka, plastered to the wall. “What did you do to her?!”

  Tears ran freely down Zinka’s face. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to. Sara had the stone. I couldn’t let her take it. She said she’d hurt me, so much worse than before….”

  Flissa jumped to her feet and ran to Zinka. “Who would hurt you? Raya? I mean, Teddy?”

  Zinka shook her head, confused. “Teddy? I don’t understand…Teddy ran away. What does she have to do with anything?”

  Flissa wanted to shake her, but she forced herself to take a deep breath and stay calm. “Forget I said Teddy. Who wants to hurt you? Is it the someone who made you dig up the stones? The someone who takes over your body and makes you stay up digging until your fingernails break and bleed?”

  Zinka’s tearstained face widened in shock, like she couldn’t believe Flissa actually understood. She gave the slightest hint of a nod, then Flissa saw the fear come back and she shook her head hard.

  Flissa’s heart broke for her. This was her friend, not a monster; she’d only cursed Sara because Raya terrorized her into it.

  “Zinka,” she said, “I’m begging you. If you’re really innocent, tell the truth. To everyone. To Amala, to my parents, to the General Council…they’ll believe you. I’ll help you.”

  Zinka’s eyes watered all over again, then Flissa saw the steel seep into her face. Her jaw set, her tears dried, and she seemed to stand taller, even while plastered to the wall. “I’m not innocent,” she said. “I knew Raya in the Twists. That’s why she came to me.”

  Flissa backed away like she’d been stung. “What?”

  “Move away from the door!”

  Flissa heard Amala’s voice, and a moment later the Shadow was in the room, tailed by the same two male teachers who’d come when Loriah was in trouble. They must have been Shadows as well. In one moment Amala took in the entire scene: Sara unconscious and twitching on the floor, Flissa in the middle of the room, Zinka plastered to the wall. She closed her eyes a moment as if
it weighed on her terribly, then turned to Flissa.

  “I’ll need to talk to you,” she said, “but I’m happy to do it at the palace so you can stay with your sister. She’ll do better with Katya than she will at the infirmary.” She turned to the men behind her. “Please take Flissa and Sara home. Stay with them until I get there. I’ll bubblegram the king and queen to let them know.”

  One of the men stepped up to Flissa and gently took her arm. “One second, please,” she said.

  She pulled the blinzer stone out of her pocket. It hummed as it slipped into her palm. “Here,” she said handing it to Amala. “This should be with you.”

  The stone hummed even louder in Amala’s hand, and she let out a soft gasp. “Yes,” she said, and slipped the stone into her robes. “Thank you.”

  Then Flissa went home with her sister.

  * * *

  The next few days were a strange haze that flowed in and out like a dream. She must have told the story of what happened a million times: to her parents, to Katya, to Rouen, to the entire Council, to Amala…then to all of them all over again in every combination and permutation. Plus she had to tell her friends.

  Putting the story of Raya and Zinka together with Sara had been almost exciting. Reciting it on her own made her feel hollow and foolish for trying to accomplish anything without more help. The price was too steep. Katya thought Sara would be okay, but she wasn’t sure how long it would take before she fully recovered. Maybe days, maybe weeks, maybe months. That was the problem with a blinzer stone. Even if Zinka had meant to curse Sara lightly—just lightly enough to keep her from coming after the stone—its powers would have magnified that curse in ways Zinka couldn’t control.

  In the meantime, Sara lay in her bed, eyes closed, as if she were sleeping. She still twitched every now and then, but she didn’t respond to anyone’s voice. Every time Flissa went to bed at night and saw her sister lying there across from her, she inwardly cursed herself for ever putting a wall between them and losing precious time together.

  With Sara recovering, it seemed like there were always visitors in and out of their room. Galric came all the time and talked to Sara as if she were alert and understood. Sometimes Krystal came too, with Skeed or her other friends. Jentrie came by as often as she could. And of course Loriah was there all the time. Everything that had come out about Raya had made her nightmares worse. She suffered from real spell terrors now and felt much better when she slept at the palace.