by Ruby Loren
“Hazel, try to find Linda. This isn’t your fight,” my aunt told me.
I nodded, sensing that she knew what she was doing. This was clearly something personal between the two women. I turned to her to silently wish her luck, but it was then that I felt something happen, before I even saw it. A tremor in the air warned me, and I spun back and drew weapons just as the slicing arc of white magic lanced down towards me. The twin swords cut the magic into ribbons, as if it had been a solid thing.
Kimberly looked surprised, but she kept the insane smile on her face.
“You have stooped low in your old age,” Minerva said, her voice barely containing her anger.
Even I was shocked. Attacking someone whilst their back was turned was a coward’s move - no matter whom you were fighting or what the situation was. This might have started out as Aunt Minerva’s battle, but she’d made it mine, too.
“Hazel,” my aunt said, sensing my fresh resolve and warning me.
“And you’ve gone soft.” Kimberly recovered her sense of superiority. “I was going to use them to finish you off when I got bored, but I wasn’t expecting you to bring a guest to spoil our fun. Guards!” she called.
There was the sound of running footsteps. A column of men and women, all dressed in black uniforms, appeared round the corner of the corridor behind Minerva and me. We were sandwiched between two adversaries with no way out.
This whole thing had been a trap. And we’d walked right into the middle of it.
“Hazel,” my aunt started to say again.
“I can handle it,” I told her, and willed myself to believe the words that were coming out of my mouth.
“Yes, you can,” my aunt replied, with surprising fervour.
I turned back to back with her, and then the battle began.
I still had the twin swords in my hands from when I’d summoned them instinctively to deal with Kimberly’s sneak attack. Now I flung them towards the advancing guard, not hoping to achieve much more than giving myself the chance to summon a new weapon. With a bit of luck, whatever inner need that controlled my powers would pick something useful… like a machine gun.
As soon as the swords were gone, glancing off the magical shield I should have expected the guards to have wrapped around themselves, I drew out a new weapon. I looked down at what I held in my hands.
It wasn’t a gun.
It wasn’t even a sword.
Instead, I was holding a modern looking bow and a quiver of arrows. “I don’t suppose it comes with an instruction manual,” I muttered, slinging the quiver on my back and notching an arrow.
“This is why you should have let me have sabre claws!” Hemlock complained from somewhere near my feet. I’d forgotten he was with us.
“Finished your snack?”
“Yes, and what I could really do with right now is a nap. So, if you’ll excuse me…”
“Hemlock!” I hissed at him. It came out as more of a cry for help than a reprimand. “Can’t you do something? Curse them?” The guards were advancing, albeit slowly, now that I was pointing an arrow their way. They weren’t sure what to make of me yet.
Heck - I wasn’t sure what to make of me either.
“Oh, sure! One sec.” Hemlock shut his eyes and I watched as gold threads of his magic - our magic - shot out of him and into the guards, somehow bypassing their magical shield. There were screams of horror and dismay and then…
“My eyes! Something’s on them!”
At first, I didn’t realise what had happened to my would-be attackers. They were still standing. Then I squinted and realised something had changed.
“You gave them all eyelash extensions!”
“Be a doll and tell them that if they want a top up in six weeks, I’ll do the first time half price. Thanks!” Hemlock said, before trotting back towards the spider corridor we’d entered this mess through.
“Hey! HEY!” I shouted after the disappearing cat.
“Sabre claws!” he shouted back.
If I got out of here alive, I was going to kill Hemlock. Or, in real terms… take away his treats for a week. I’d probably get through all of a day before his revenge for his punishment got too much to handle. I’d cave in, and things would be back to the way they always were.
What had I done to deserve looking after a teenage cat?
“Back off, or I start shooting,” I said, feeling like I was having some sort of out of body experience. The most archery I’d done was at a Medieval fair. I’d been seven-years-old and I’d missed the target by a mile. But I had managed to hit the archery coach. That was something, right?
Unsurprisingly, the guards didn’t back off. Instead, I heard the mutterings of several spells being cast and felt the air start to move. I was about to be cursed into oblivion unless I did something… and fast. Behind me, I sensed more movement of magic as Minerva battled her old enemy. It was my turn to earn my stripes and to pick a side I hadn’t expected to choose so soon. The Council hadn’t ever actually done anything to me… but they were leaving me with no choice.
I took a deep breath and let an arrow loose, trying to aim at something non-vital. At least that way I could say I’d tried… even if my poor aim moved it somewhere completely else.
I’d forgotten that my weapons tended to come complete with magical powers.
The arrow shot through the air. I saw the bright coloured mass of curses and hexes, so recently uttered, shooting across to meet it. Just when it appeared that the arrow was about to pass by the spells aimed at me, golden magic blossomed out from it, forming a shield that momentarily blocked the narrow corridor. I felt a sense of the inevitable when I watched the curses collide with the arrow’s light and then… bounce straight back off it, magical lights ricocheting around the guards. The spells meant for me had turned around and hit the ones who’d cast them.
This time, the screams were worse. Eyelash extensions, and other things, were blown off, left, right, and centre.
I wasn’t sure what had happened to the arrow, but the shield had disappeared as soon as its work was done. When the smoke cleared, there wasn’t a single guard left standing.
I turned around to see what was happening behind me… and was nearly kissed by death.
The white magic streaked past, probably hitting one of the hapless guards.
Minerva retaliated with her dark blue magic, but the woman in white slashed it away like it was nothing. For the first time, I realised my aunt was in a fight she wasn’t going to win.
I notched another arrow and let it fly without a thought. Kimberly sent another beam of deadly light towards it and then… to my intense surprise, the arrow shattered. I looked sideways at my aunt, wondering what was different about this woman’s magic.
“She’s done something. She never used to be this powerful,” my aunt hissed out of the corner of her mouth at me.
“I’ve been waiting for this moment ever since we both worked for the Council. Did you know your aunt was once a member of the very group she is now here to attack?” The magical barrage stopped. Kimberly stood still and calm, like an iceberg in the middle of an ineffective sea. She was toying with us. “She was better than me. I was forced to watch her rise up through the ranks, whilst I loitered in mediocrity.” She bared her tiny teeth. “How times have changed…”
“It’s not possible,” Minerva said, gathering what I knew were her final reserves of power.
“It is,” I said, looking at the mad woman in white. “She’s made a deal.”
11
The Not-So-Great Escape
It was enough to turn my aunt’s attention away from her nemesis for the briefest of moments. “How could you possibly…?”
“I just know,” I said, feeling my insides crawling. But it was true. I did just know. The same way I knew that nothing I could pull out from nowhere and nothing my aunt could magic up would be able to combat what this insane person was able to dish out. She’d been playing with us all along. She knew there was not
hing we could do to stop her. Whatever the deal was… it had given her everything she wanted.
I stood next to my aunt and felt her magic fade away.
This was it.
This was the end.
The end of everything? a little voice in my head whispered, like a reminder. I opened my eyes and found I knew what to do. Or rather - what not to do.
I’m dead anyway, I thought, somewhat selfishly, before I tried to remember the power I’d hidden from myself ever since my Witch Trial. Kimberly muttered some words and unleashed so many bright blades of white magic no weapon or shield could have stopped them from finding their mark. I opened my eyes and there it was, or rather - there everything was. It felt like time slowed down. I was able to examine the very fabric our world was formed of… and tear a hole in it.
“Hazel!” Aunt Minerva gasped.
I opened my eyes and discovered that I’d succeeded. Kimberly’s magic was gone, presumably into the hole hovering in front of us. A hole that seemed to lead… somewhere. I blinked and tried to work out how I could both see Kimberly through it, and yet… her magic had disappeared into it. Dimensions were hard to get your head around. It was probably the kind of thing you should study for a lifetime before messing with, but here I was… poking a stick into a hornet’s nest.
“Illusion magic,” I heard Kimberly mutter, apparently forgetting that her magic had somehow disappeared with no explanation.
She strode forwards, reaching out towards the hole in time and space.
I suddenly recognised the world I’d opened a doorway to. It was the same one I’d faced with January. This time, we were on a level with the ground, but I recognised the grey stones and the veneer of despair that seemed to coat everything that the dim light touched. Worse still, I recognised the roars of the monsters that crawled and stalked within.
“Hazel, what is this?” my aunt asked, her voice stiff and scared. She knew it wasn’t an illusion.
“It’s what I told you happened in the woods during my witch trial. It’s my power.” It was only then that I realised she hadn’t really believed it. Not until now.
“Curious,” Kimberly said. She reached out from the other side of the tear, pushing her hand towards us, clearly expecting to be able to push straight through. As soon as her hand touched the void, she lurched forwards, as if something had grabbed her and pulled. Before either of us could utter a word or make a move to help (or alternatively - give her another push) she was gone… and so was the tear between dimensions.
“What?” I muttered. The last time something like this had happened, I’d had to magically sew it shut again. This time around, I’d hoped it would act as a long enough distraction for me and Aunt Minerva to think of a new plan and get Aunt Linda out… and then I’d hoped I’d get a chance to pull the thing shut again, before a hell beast came through.
“Come on. We don’t have long before someone else comes looking,” Minerva said, dragging me down the corridor in the direction we’d originally been heading. It didn’t escape my notice that, while the tear was no longer there, my aunt skirted the entire zone.
“Yes! I win my bet,” a familiar voice said when we were halfway down the corridor. “Jeremy bet me a pot of gold that a rescue party would come for him first. Thanks a lot! You guys stopped me from having to weasel out of something I could never afford to pay.”
We pulled the slat on the door to one side. Aunt Linda’s bright eyes looked back at us. She didn’t look the worse for wear, which surprised me. Perhaps it was judgmental, but I’d imagined that anyone who went against an organisation, who then became their jailer, would not fare well. I stowed my doubts about good guys and bad guys for later. Right now, we had a jailbreak to carry out.
“Jeremy’s been in here since jazz music was the hip new thing, so it wasn’t the worst odds in the world,” she carried on, before frowning. “Come to think of it, I don’t know how he’s going to pay up when he’s stuck in here without any contact with the outside world.” Her face brightened. “Hey! We should take him with us. We’ll all be rich!”
“Linda…” my aunt warned whilst she trifled with the lock.
Several moments later, she gave up with a sigh. “It’s no use. This place has been designed the way that I’d design it. Only a fool would rely on their security personnel to keep intruders out and inmates in. A magic adverse lock is a sensible and elegant solution.”
“Apparently they’re the same locks that you put in when you worked for this corrupt government. Everyone in here hates them, by the way,” Linda said.
“Oh! Well, I never. That’s rather flattering…”
“No, wait… everyone in here hates you. That’s what I meant to say,” Linda corrected.
Whilst they bickered, I’d been looking at the lock. I’d hoped that Aunt Minerva would be able to figure out a way around it, but it seemed that we were more likely to stand out in the corridor having a heated discussion than get any closer to releasing my other aunt.
One thing I’d noticed about witches and magicians was that they didn’t tend to think outside of the box. Magic was there to be used, and they used it in the most obvious way. Growing up with no discernible powers, I thought that for once, I might have the advantage.
“Stand back!” I shouted, having pulled out the perfect weapon for the situation. I willed myself to be able to wield it and took a swing at the door. The sledgehammer I was holding made contact with a loud clunk and then, probably with a little magical help, the hinges broke and the door fell off.
There was silence for a moment as my aunts stared at the fallen obstacle.
“How does it feel to not be the smart one any more?” Linda said, seizing the opportunity to get some sniping in.
“That was hardly…” my aunt started to say, before sighing. “Excellent work, Hazel. Now… let’s all leave before anything else goes wrong.”
“Help! Help! The eyelashes have come to life and they’re after me!” Hemlock streaked down the corridor towards our group of three. A look behind him revealed that there were indeed a large number of spider-like things, half-crawling, half-fluttering in his wake.
“What’s going on? Are those more of Linda’s spiders?” Aunt Minerva asked, not being able to hear the running commentary my feline familiar shared with me.
“They’re eyelashes,” I said, at a loss for how else to explain.
“Oh, someone tried to make a charm into a curse. That comes with side effects. They don’t look that deadly. Let’s go,” Aunt Linda said, reaching out to grab my arm.
Her hand made contact with my skin. I pulled away instinctively, before looking at her in horror over what I’d just done. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why…”
“Don’t mention it. It’s the natural reaction,” Aunt Linda said.
“They took your powers again? Linda! You know how hard it was to get them back last time! And that was when I worked here.” Minerva stuck her hands on her hips.
“How ‘bout we figure it out later? We can share your magic. It will be fine,” Linda replied.
“Share mine? That’s not how magic works!”
“I just meant… you could do all the magic stuff. I’ll do the other stuff. It’ll be fun! Living a normal life with normal people.”
“You’re forgetting something, Linda… that age spell won’t last now that your magic is gone.”
The smile dropped from my other aunt’s face. “Forget about a rescue. We’re going to search this entire complex until we find my magic. Then, for every new wrinkle I see on my face, I get to snuff someone out.”
“That sounds like a party to me,” Hemlock said, having apparently overcome his fear of the eyelashes now that they were attached to our legs and not making much of an impact, beyond looking weird. “Does the Witch Council perchance have any spell books lying around open on pages I can read? Or, failing that, a cat-friendly copy that doesn’t require thumbs to open it?”
“No spells,” I told him.
“What? Why not? Unlike some people, my spells work. Just think of what I could do, if you let me take a look in some of the big bad magic books you’re hiding behind old copies of The Reader’s Digest. Imagine… just imagine the power…” He ended his little speech with a cackle.
“And that is exactly why you are not learning any more spells! Magic is a responsibility. It’s something that you earn.”
“Is he okay?” Linda asked, confused by the strange noise the cat was making.
“Says the person who got all her power in one go! Where’s your responsibility, huh?” my cat smart-mouthed back at me.
“Don’t give me lip! You’re not even one year old yet. We can talk about this again when you’re seven.”
“Seven?! That’s ancient! Do you really think you’ll be able to last that long without my help?”
“Whilst this sounds like it’s a very important discussion about responsible magic, we should be leaving,” Aunt Minerva cut in.
“I’m not going. I’ll just stay behind and tell the Council everything they need to know. They’re sure to reward me with spell books and power. So much power…” Hemlock’s eyes had that worrying shine to them again.
“We’re connected, you nit! If I end up like Aunt Linda, you’ll have nothing either,” I told him. “No offence,” I added in my blondest aunt’s direction.
Ha! I’d always wanted to do that.
“We are leaving!” Aunt Minerva said, with enough finality that our feet started moving. When we turned the corner into the spider corridor, I took one last glance back at the space where the tear between dimensions had been. There was nothing there and no sign that anything ever had been. The woman in white who’d been about to wipe us out was gone without a trace. All that remained in the corridor was the semi-conscious moaning and groaning of the guards who’d cursed themselves and lived to tell the tale. It was certainly taking the phrase ‘a taste of your own medicine’ very literally.
