Like a tree, he fell over.
“Oh, dear heavens!” Miranda squeaked.
Hastily, she handed the Turner Triplets to Nan and dropped to her knees beside Sir Basil. Randal was there first, his hand to his uncle’s neck, seeking a pulse.
“He’s alive,” the warlock said, sounding totally composed. Although how he could be after what had just happened, Miranda couldn’t image. “Over-extended himself with that one.”
Miranda blinked in bemusement. “What? Is he hurt? Will he live? Please tell me I’m not guilty of murder by the inciting of excessive profanity!”
Randal wiped his uncle’s face clean of spittle with a handkerchief. When he looked up at Miranda, his dark eyes were warm and calm. “He’ll be fine. Eventually. This isn’t the first time he’s cursed himself to a near-death experience. I’ve warned him he needs to be more careful at his age.”
That handsome face, so composed, was a balm to Miranda’s ragged soul. Relief washed over her like an ocean wave. Drawing a heavy sigh, she rose. With the back of her hand, she swiped the tears from her cheeks and stood utterly spent, staring at the mess on Ardmore Manor’s front lawn. She was so stunned, she could only stand there unable to think.
Randal stood. Planting his hands on his hips, he gazed sternly at the horde of children gathered around watching the drama of life and death play out before them.
“The lot of you should be ashamed of yourselves,” he said in that rich voice that never quavered. “Boys, I’ve taught you how to handle provocations. Magic should always be your last resort. And girls. Look at what you’ve done to your beloved headmistress. The poor woman is in tears because of you. For shame, children! For shame.”
Sniffing back her tears, Miranda watched as heads hung and feet scuffled the grass. None of the children dared to speak.
Randal continued in a stern tone. “I expect this mess to be cleaned up before the sun hits it. Spic and span, everything. Do I make myself clear?”
Heads nodded.
“Move!”
Children darted in all directions. Where before had been magical chaos, now magical orderliness ruled the manor.
Randal turned back to Miranda who still sniffled and fought to hold back her tears. His smile grew warm and sultry as he reached a finger to brush a tear from her nose.
“Don’t cry, my dear,” he murmured. “All will be well.”
“How can it be?” Miranda panted between huffing sobs. “My career is over. My school is ruined. I’ll be sent to Australia for this!” She punctuated her words by throwing her arms in the air.
Randal’s smile never wavered. From some pocket of his frock coat, he drew another handkerchief and gently patted her face. “No, they only send horrid people to Australia. You aren’t horrid.”
“What do you call this?” Miranda sniffed.
“I call this a bloody mess.” Randal laughed. “But it will be gone by morning, I promise. And no one will be the wiser so long as you, I and a hundred little witches and wizards keep our mouths shut.”
“What about Sir Basil?”
Randal glanced at his uncle who still lay underfoot. “He won’t remember a thing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
Miranda watched as the warlock hunched over his uncle, circled his hand above the man’s puffy face and murmured some words in a singsong voice. That music in soft tenor could have lulled even Miranda to sleep.
Rising briskly, Randal rubbed his palms together. Calling two of the older boys, he ordered them to carry Sir Basil into the house and put him to bed. As he watched the trio depart, he said, “There. He’ll awaken in the manor house none the wiser about his adventures.”
Miranda stared at Randal both awed and suspicious. “Why are you helping me?”
“Because I can.”
Again knocked for a loop, Miranda stood mute. All around magic whirled as little witches and warlocks straightened up the mess on the lawn.
Seeing that reminded Miranda of what had caused the battle in the first place.
“I’ll lose my conjurer's license,” she moaned.
“No. I promise.”
Miranda flapped her arms against her sides. “Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. My school is broke. I’m broke. I guess I’ll have to go home to Old Dime Box, Texas and admit my daddy was right. I’m a failure as a witch.”
Chuckling, Randal took her into his arms and held her against the strong wall of his chest. “I don’t think so. I won’t let that happen.”
“How can you stop it?” Miranda hiccoughed into his shoulder.
“Because the Grand Abracadabran needs good witches here in England.”
Miranda half-laughed as she drew away from Randal’s embrace. “Oh, sure! The Grand Abracadabran is going to throw me into the Irish Sea.”
“No.” Randal traced his fingertips across her face gently. “Because the Grand Abracadabran intends to marry you.”
“What?” Miranda didn’t think her mouth could hang open any wider than it did at that moment.
Randal’s smile only warmed more. “I’ve been in negotiations with the International Council of Witches and Wizards. I explained that to keep my uncle in his position is endangering his health. They’ve agreed. Sir Basil is retiring at the end of the month.”
Miranda continued to blink.
“I’ve been named his successor,” Randal explained. “I’m the new Grand Abracadabran.” His hands tightened on her waist. “And I’m not letting you go.”
Miranda’s heart throbbed even as it melted under his warm regard. Then she stiffened. “But what about my school?”
Randal rolled his eyes. “I’ll see that it’s fully funded.”
“And I get to keep my independence?” she demanded, knowing how English marriage laws ended many of a woman’s privileges.
Randal drew a deep breath. “I’ll do my best in that regard.”
“And you’ll…”
Randal cut her off by kissing her.
Lost in that strong embrace, Miranda surrendered. At least for the moment. Because she couldn’t cast a spell or argue further. Her mind awhirl, Miranda decided allowing Randal to win an argument might just be a wonderful thing.
Science fiction and fantasy author Mel Lee Newmin is a native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA, home of the Amish and not much else. Following careers in corporate accounting and technical writing for the defense industry, Mel began a new career as a fiction author with short stories appearing around the world (US, Canada, UK, Australia) in Ligurian Magazine, On the Premises, Sixfold, The Collapsar Directive, Full Metal Horror, Rapture, Carrier Wave and many others. Mel’s science fiction novel Balance of Fortune is pending publication with Devil’s Party Press in the Spring of 2021 and Noman’s Land is pending publication with Clarendon House Publications. Mel also produces a popular weekly fiction blog about Niles Gule, vampire hunter and detective in Baltimore.
The Path of the Phoenix
Emily Martha Sorensen
“The Path of the Phoenix” is set in an alternate universe of my books Black Magic Academy and White Magic Academy. Rulisa is the death-enemy of the main character in the first book, and she was so much fun that I made her the main character of the second book. This short story is about Rulisa, and answers the question: “What would have happened if there had been no death-match in Black Magic Academy?”
The Path of the Phoenix
Rulisa was in danger.
That wasn’t a new thing. She’d been in danger ever since she’d entered Black Magic Academy, a school for female wicked witches that was the most prestigious educational institution in the kingdom.
But now, that danger was intensified. Now, she was standing outside the door to Familiar Talismans, the class that had the power to reveal that she didn’t belong here.
As she steeled herself to push the obsidian door open, her eyes roamed the carvings emerging from it. There were dragons and giants and rocs and cerberi all at war wi
th each other above a Forest Beyond in flames, with a distant castle wrapped in the loops of a vicious sea serpent, rising from the depths of the ocean to crush the power of the contemptuous Normal royalty.
There were, of course, no phoenix carvings.
There were, of course, supposed to be no phoenix familiars at this school.
Rulisa took a deep breath and pushed the door open, stepping into the classroom.
“Oh, good,” a sarcastic voice said from the front. “I see our newest student has finally deigned to join us. Welcome, Rulisa.”
Flames rose and crackled around Rulisa’s ears. She was a fire witch, and she found it difficult not to emote magically. The teacher singling her out seemed blatantly unfair, given that there were only six other girls in the classroom right now, and all classes at the Academy had thirteen students. But that was only to be expected with Witch Fyrailn, unfortunately.
Witch Fyrailn had, in her years as a student, been close friends with Rulisa’s mother’s death-enemy. Needless to say, the teacher now had no love for Rulisa, even though both Rulisa’s mother and her mother’s death-enemy had been dead since she was a baby.
Come to think of it, maybe that was part of the reason.
Still, Witch Fyrailn was rigorously fair in ranking students, not letting her personal feelings stand in the way of accurate evaluations, perhaps because her own ranking as a teacher depended on it. At this school, all thirteen teachers were ranked according to their skill in each subject every week, and the class level of the subject they were assigned to teach depended on what rank they were given.
Witch Fyrailn rarely taught below the eleventh level of any subject, and she was often found teaching more than half of the thirteenths. Unfortunately, that meant Rulisa had the woman in five of her eight classes this week. And while Witch Fyrailn was fair in her evaluations, she had no trouble whatsoever showing off her disdain.
And being rude back to a teacher was considered a fair reason to fail that student at the end of the week.
So Rulisa gritted her teeth and ignored the taunt, sitting down at a table and helping herself to a textbook from the stack. She had read it cover-to-cover multiple times over the past few years, but it wouldn’t hurt to start again from the beginning while the class was waiting to start.
Your familiar talisman is the symbol of who you are, the prologue of the book said, in spiky, spindly handwriting. The creature you are given shows your nature at its deepest level. A dragon, among the rarest and beyond a doubt the most sought after, symbolizes power and your profound love for it. A giant symbolizes a desire to dominate. A goblin symbolizes . . .
Rulisa’s mind began to wander. She had long since memorized all of those. She knew Witch Fyrailn’s familiar was a sphinx, which symbolized intelligence. She knew High Witch Tractia’s familiar was a shadow-panther, which symbolized cunning. She knew her mother’s familiar had been a nightbat, which symbolized deception.
What she didn’t know was what a phoenix symbolized, or why she had one. And she certainly couldn’t ask.
The one thing she knew for certain was that phoenixes were a creature of white magic, and whenever a student with a white magic familiar was discovered, they were expelled or worse.
She knew that better than most because it had happened with the daughter of her mother’s death-enemy, a naïve idiot with a unicorn familiar. The High Witch had even set up a death-match between Rulisa and her, to make sure the girl died.
Fortunately, the girl had escaped instead, and was apparently now living in hiding in the Forest Beyond with her least malevolent aunts.
Not such an idiot after all.
Rulisa didn’t have that option, though. She needed to graduate. She needed to prove to her family that she could.
Not only that, she wanted to be the valedictorian.
The valedictorian was the girl who graduated in the least amount of time within a given year. Rulisa’s mother had graduated in just over three and a half years, rather than the usual five, and she’d been the salutatorian — or second-best. Rulisa was determined to surpass her, to accomplish the great honor that her mother had never achieved.
Especially since her boyfriend had graduated as valedictorian of Kraken Institution last year. She couldn’t very well marry him unless she was his equal. That would be intolerable.
The end of the year was in three weeks. Three thirteen-day periods. If she advanced in every thirteenth-level class at the end of the same week, she would automatically graduate. And if she did that by the end of the year, she would definitely be the valedictorian.
Rulisa had been here for just under two and a half years. If she graduated by the end of the year, it would be one of the top hundred fastest graduations in the school’s centuries-long history.
But only . . . only . . . if she mastered this class without anyone figuring out that she’d been lying about her familiar the whole time.
Only if she didn’t get expelled first.
Or worse.
“Good!” Witch Fyrailn smacked her hand on the desk in front of her. Rulisa jumped, startled out of her reverie. “You’re all here. Llonka, did you get lost, or were you just too busy chattering with your friends out in the hallway?”
The water witch girl’s eyes widened, and she started to fumble an excuse, beads of frost standing out on her forehead.
“I don’t care,” Witch Fyrailn cut her off. “Don’t be late again. The two students advancing into our class this week are Contessa and Rulisa. It’s Contessa’s third time advancing up, which means she’s failed down twice.”
That’s a cruel way to put it,Rulisa thought, although it was true. She’d watched Contessa advance and fail back and forth between Permanent Talismans and Familiar Talismans several times now.
It was a common pattern. Usually the weakest students in a class were the newest ones. Rulisa rarely experienced that herself, though, because she always made sure to read the textbook for the next level up thoroughly before she was advanced into it, and then worked extra hard in the first week to make sure she didn’t get ranked one of the two worst. She hated the idea of wasting a week stuck in a class she’d already mastered just because she was a novice in the next one up.
It was one of the things she hated about Black Magic Academy. There were many others. But becoming a valedictorian would mean conquering all of them. It would mean proving, now and forever, that she was better than the school.
And Kyre. She had to prove she was better before she married him. He was just so insufferable when he thought he was better.
“Get out your familiar talismans,” Witch Fyrailn said, pulling her own golden disc from her sleeve. She unfurled the chain with a snap. “Let’s see how fast you are at displaying an image.”
The grin dropped from Rulisa’s face. She grabbed the golden disc hanging around her neck and cast a rapid illusion spell to display a fiery nightbat, billowing black smoke from its wings. She was slower than everyone else in the class.
Silently, Rulisa cursed. How many other speed tests would there be that she wasn’t expecting? She did not want to get failed down at the end of this week.
“Good. Good. Good,” Witch Fyrailn said, pacing through the illusions. She stopped at a particularly messy one. “Anha, what is this supposed to be?”
“A — a goblin, Witch Fyrailn,” the older girl said quickly.
“A goblin.”
“Yes, Witch Fyrailn.”
“A symbol of cleverness with one’s hands.”
“Y-yes, Witch Fyrailn.”
“Then why does it have a stupid expression on its face?” the teacher snapped, jabbing her finger at the illusion.
Anha gulped and hastily modified the illusion. The goblin was now rubbing its hands with a look of craftiness and cunning.
Witch Fyrailn turned and examined the rest of them.
She stopped for a long time at Rulisa’s nightbat, scrutinizing every aspect of it. Rulisa swallowed, trying to show no hesitation or un
certainty.
“It looks exactly like your mother’s,” Witch Fyrailn said coldly.
Rulisa’s heart skipped a beat. “I’m a lot like her, Witch Fyrailn.”
“If I were you, I’d be ashamed to admit it.” The teacher snorted, then thankfully moved on. She seemed to find nothing else to criticize with the rest.
All the students made their illusions disappear in unison, Rulisa included. She held the familiar talisman in her hand, ready to start whatever else they were expected to do next.
“Here’s the plan for this week,” Witch Fyrailn said, tucking her talisman back up her sleeve with a practiced shake of the wrist. “At the beginning of each class, we’ll test your practical skills. After that will be a written test about your knowledge. I’ll waste no time on lectures, except to correct any stupid mistakes you students made in the previous day’s test. That, of course, includes today, which means we’ll move on to a long test right now. If you have not already read the textbook, expect to fail spectacularly.”
Contessa shot an eager look at Rulisa, as if hoping that she would let out a groan.
Rulisa merely smiled.
Witch Fyrailn’s preference for testing knowledge of the textbook over practice worked to Rulisa’s advantage for the next few days. Unfortunately, then they started to spend the first half of each class transforming into their familiars and battling each other.
They did this deep in the Forest Beyond just outside of Academy grounds, because it wouldn’t be safe to risk possibly killing each other inside the school. The building was a living dragon that had been turned to obsidian centuries ago, and rumors said that if a student ever died within its walls, the dragon would wake up and eat all of them.
Personally, Rulisa considered this to be evidence of sheer idiocy by the school’s founders, while also not being surprising at all. Powerful witches could rarely resist showing off, especially when it made things significantly more difficult for no good reason. According to her father, making things more dangerous for oneself was part of the thrill.
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