The Magical Book of Wands

by Raven M. Williams

  Chapter 12

  Rylan’s head rang, but he could see well enough to tell two things: Elwen was on all fours struggling to get up, and they were not alone.

  “You’re not the only one who can climb trees,” Middle Man said, and kicked her in the head again. She groaned and collapsed, her arms flailing as he planted his knee on the back of her neck. “George was my brother! I’m going to gut you and feed you to that skinny kid.” He shoved his knife deliberately and slowly into her side. Elwen’s face contorted in agony as she screamed.

  Something broke within Rylan. He grabbed for the wand and, without thinking, pushed Middle Man off of Elwen and started stabbing him with it.

  The man shoved his fist into Rylan’s stomach; enraged with pain and the unfairness of it all, Rylan stabbed the wand into the man until blood spurted from his mouth and the light went out of his eyes.

  “Asshole!” Rylan shouted at him, not caring he’d just killed somebody. He rolled off and kicked the man away.

  His stomach really hurt; he wanted to check on Elwen, but couldn’t get up and found he had trouble catching his breath.

  He felt for where Middle Man had hit him, and with shock discovered the handle of that ugly hunting knife, the rest jammed in his body. Rylan rolled onto his back, the world spinning.

  I need to get to the rest stop. I don’t know how I’ll explain the world’s first elf, but I can’t let her die. And Naia...

  He flinched when cool gentle hands touched his face, and opened his eyes to Elwen staring down at him with a relieved smile.

  He’d never seen something so beautiful.

  “How...” he tried to ask.

  She didn’t say a word but dragged him to a seated position up against that tree, and without further ado, yanked off his shoes and jeans, followed by her own boots and pants.

  This totally would’ve felt different if I wasn’t bleeding to death, Rylan thought.

  Elwen pushed the wand into his hand. “Do as I say. As I say. Will hurt much.” She moved so their legs were touching.

  “Touch for me here,” she said, and guided the wand tip to a spot on the inside of her thigh. “Now!” she said when he hesitated. “Say my words.”

  Dizzy, he said her words as she said them. “Jae é ton, abe é tillerion; don eras tana, wae jera é dollar tillerion.”

  She drew in a breath as the tip of the wand appeared to become white-hot and lifted it away from her. It left a white spot on her skin, and the wand tip continued to glow.

  She moved to his other side, where she took his wand hand in hers and pressed the tip in the exact same position on his thigh. After all she’d said about hurting “a lot” he expected it to burn, but it didn’t. More of a pinprick.

  “Your hand for you I move, okay?” she said.

  Rylan nodded.

  As she moved the wand across his skin, it left a bright trail, and he came to understand what she meant: everywhere it touched, the pinprick sensation never ceased. As the design became more elaborate, more skin came on fire with the sensation of a thousand needles. He was beginning to wonder if dead would be better.

  She gasped and he looked over at her; she was biting her lip and holding her breath as she drew. Movement on her thigh drew his eyes: it was bright with the same design as his, and getting bigger as if drawn by an unseen hand.

  “What––” he asked.

  “Shh,” she admonished.

  When the wand took its final turn and closed the design, the entire thing flashed then went dark. His back went rigid as hot euphoria not unlike being electrocuted poured through the rune, flooding him. He yelped when Elwen pulled the knife out of him, but the pain quickly ebbed as his rent insides knitted together. After what felt like an eternity, the being-electrocuted sensation subsided and he was pain-free. Totally pain free, like he’d never been wounded at all.

  He lifted his shirt, and the wound was gone; just a nasty scar, as if he’d spent weeks healing.

  Elwen had been lying on the ground panting as all this occurred, but seemed fine now and sat up to look at him.

  “What just happened? What did you do?” Rylan asked.

  “My life and your life, together,” she said simply. “You heal now, like me.”

  His heart raced. “Does it cost you, I mean, will you get older because of me?”

  “No. I have forever life.” She shrugged. “Just don’t die.” She offered her hand to help him up, then set about putting her pants and boots back on as if nothing had just happened. Rylan shrugged and did the same.

  When she was done dressing, she retrieved the wand for him plus Middle Man’s knife with Rylan’s blood still wet on it.

  He looked at it like it was a live cobra. “What do I need with that?”

  “Learn discipline before magic. You act, but not with mind.” She gave him a strange look, then giggled and pointed at the wand in his hand, to Middle Man’s drying blood. “Use wand for stab?” she asked and giggled again. “I give you gun, you use for stabbing.” She burst out in laughter.

  It took Rylan a moment to get what she was talking about, then lost it himself. “Yeah, I guess I did, didn’t I?”

  After that was done, she gave him a warm smile and clasped his arm at the elbow, like a warrior. “You save me.”

  He felt jolted by a live wire as this brought home to him what he’d just done: he’d fought, he’d done it to save someone’s life, and it was someone he cared about...

  He could do it.

  Feeling stronger than he ever had before, he released Elwen’s arm and took the offered knife. “When do we start practicing?”

  Elwen shook out her shoulders and drew her knives, spinning them on her fingertips. “We begin now.”

  Chapter 13

  They didn’t begin quite then; they still had to don’ik’tora the other bodies––to Rylan’s mind, that spell had become a verb.

  They’d missed the bus by almost an hour; a couple of phone calls later, they negotiated with the bus company to pick the next one up the following day.

  The rest of the morning was spent practicing with knives; Elwen only using one of hers, of course. She taught him dodging and blocking mostly. Or rather, her attacking and him stopping her blade with his body, mostly.

  He made ample use of their life-sharing, bitching the whole way. He’d finally had enough after she slashed him in the chest for the umpteenth time.

  “Every fucking one leaves scars!” he said, cradling the flesh moving under his fingers as it knitted.

  “Fucking watch my eyes. My balance, how I move, where I look. Keep tension in your body but not too much; balance on toes...”

  “Let me catch my breath,” Rylan panted, bending with his hands on his knees and definitely making sure to keep his eyes on hers; that was a lesson he’d learned early. “I swear, your English is getting better and you’re learning it from my screams.”

  “Is it? Good,” she said with a smile and kicked at his knee.

  He dodged, but it was more of a haphazard leap and he tumbled onto his back. She pounced on him the moment he hit the ground, her face inches from his and her knife at his throat.

  “Better, but still dead,” she said with a smile.

  He thrust his knife at her side but she caught his hand at the wrist and slammed it back into the ground, the knife tumbling away in the grass without her even breaking her gaze. “I feel your body move, the tension in your muscles, so I know what you do. You must learn to control. Misdirect.”

  “Enough,” he said, baring his teeth. “Let me up!”

  Smile disappearing, she holstered her knife and did as he asked, pacing slightly. If she had a tail, it’d be twitching.

  “Forgive me for not being some amazing elf from Planet Zero,” Rylan said. “You’re twice as fast as I am, three times as strong, and harder to catch than a greased alley cat. It’s not a fair fight.”

  “I am so bad?” She got in his face. “Naia not your sister anymore, no mercy!”

&nb
sp; He holstered his knife. “Stop saying that. She’s still my sister no matter what you say. What is it that’s got her, then? You never told me. What is Toth?”

  Elwen gathered herself, looked around and spotted a large rock in a clearing a hundred feet away.

  She pointed at it. “Sit. We train long.”

  Chapter 14

  There, the sun warmed Rylan’s skin, helping him relax. Elwen pulled her hair back into a loose ponytail over her shoulder, baring her elegant neck and ears to him. Rylan had trouble not staring at them, feeling very much the hormonal teenager.

  “What your sister has, what makes her good, Toth takes,” Elwen began, watching her feet. “Thousands of years ago, Toth was human like you, he was maché’na––magic person. On my world, I live in Second Age of Peace. Before that was First Age of Legends. It end with the Breaking, the great war of magic. Many millions die.”

  Rylan sat in rapt silence to the true alien history of another world.

  She drew one of her knives, fidgeting. “Thousands of years after the Breaking, I was born, and still we remember the terrible war. We only use small magic ever ... bring water to a dry field or stop a fire ... or make one. Sometimes for defense. But Toth want more. He do not like small magic. He want to make world like First Age, great things, the age of the great wizards. He learn, try things to remake knowledge. Many agree and follow him. But there were ‘accidents.’ People die. Horrible things.”

  She winced as she accidentally sliced open her thumb and sucked on it. “He say no accidents! He did for purpose. Necessary for learn! They say to him, bad. They say, this is of First Age, it is for war. But Toth say no, he want peace! He say, war because too many maché’na. For peace, there can be only one ... one, to rule all.”

  Rylan sighed. “Sounds like some things about people never change,” he said, and remembered what he’d learned the prior year about Hitler when he wasn’t sleeping in Western Civ class.

  Elwen set her knife aside and turned to him cross-legged, her hands on her knees. “They make an army, but too late. They do not know fight. They do not know strong magic! He have dark magic of First Age, and an army of terrible creatures. They lose. It is bad time, many years.”

  Rylan couldn’t imagine an entire world at magical war that ended in single rule by a despot ... but something didn’t fit. “You said Toth was human. How did he become this thing that invades bodies?”

  She sighed. “A human maché’na named Marakath realized only First Age knowledge can stop Toth ... fight stick with stick, he said. He go, but not come back seven years, very long ... they thought him dead, but he was not. He bring back First Age knowledge, and something more: a drop of dragon’s blood, small like this.” She pointed to the nail of her smallest finger. “He called it the Bane.”

  “Dragons?” Rylan choked. “You actually have honest-to-God dragons?”

  She shook her head and licked her lips. “Stories from the Breaking, dragons as big as mountains. No one believe until Marakath, but he refuse to say where or how, he say only Bane matters ... he use it and dark First Age magic to kill Toth. Use kerr’ik’naa.”

  “Wait, Marakath used that face-melting spell on Toth?” Rylan asked, shifting and nearly slipping off the rock. “How the hell did he survive that?”

  Elwen shrugged. “Not sure ... but probably, he bind life to magic. When he die, he live there ... inside magic, waiting. Hundreds of years to figure out how to join another being and live again.”

  “Oh my God, Jolon...” Rylan said in a whisper.

  “Ché,” Elwen replied with deep sadness. “He take all that is good of Jolon, all that made him what he was, and twist it. Make it terrible.”

  “But why didn’t Marakath stop him again, where was he?”

  Elwen shook her head. “Marakath human, mortal. Many hundreds of years until Jolon’Toth ... Marakath long dead.”

  “He couldn’t teach anybody? He didn’t think, you know, maybe it’d be a good idea in case Toth came back?”

  “You forget, First Age magic dangerous, corrupting. Marakath knew this, knew because he wanted more, like Toth. He knew he could not stay, he needed to go to a place where he could do no harm.” She met his eyes. “He took the Bane to a world without magic.”

  The blood drained from his face. “Wait...”

  “You and Naia are descendants of Marakath Kova’Tarana, the Lifebringer, and the greatest maché’na warrior of our Second Age,” she said, taking his hand. “Now Toth has Naia, and the Bane ... and the only way to stop him.”

  Chapter 15

  Rylan leapt up off the rock. “If the Bane is the only way of stopping Toth and he has it, then what’s the point? Why all the training––why did you stab me fifteen zillion goddamn times?”

  She unfolded her legs and followed him off the rock. “When he joins a new body, he is weak! I know this.”

  He took a step back. “But he has the Bane, right? Wouldn’t that kind of cancel things out?”

  She stopped and licked her lips. “Different life here, different magic. Take time, learn.”

  “You sure about that?”

  She looked past him into the distance. “Not sure. Hope.” She sighed. “All we have.”

  Rylan screamed in anguish and rage and Elwen took a step back, her eyes wide.

  He ran off into the woods, in no particular direction. It’s not fair, I didn’t want this, he thought to himself, tears welling in his eyes.

  He just wanted to be a normal kid, and be left alone. Forget all that ‘connection making me stronger’ bullshit, I fucking hate Jason Feurman. And what was up with Naia following me into False Falls ... why couldn’t she leave me damned alone? She brings the fucking most powerful magic artifact in the Universes with her because she thought it was pretty? And if she was going to fucking be there, couldn’t she at least have used her fucking Krav Maga training and fucking ducked?

  And why couldn’t Mom and Dad have told me I might actually fucking open a portal with their stupid incantation before they died? That’d have been nice, wouldn’t it? Maybe I wouldn’t be in this place if I knew it could actually happen!

  He ran until he was tired and his lungs refused to work anymore; he ran until his legs gave out under him, and he curled up into a ball in the leaves, dizzy with exertion.

  After a time, the animals spooked by his headlong rush through the underbrush resumed their lives; a distant woodpecker made its familiar rut-a-tut. Rylan’s heart and breathing slowed down and he turned to lie on his back, thinking.

  All that stuff happened, and as much as I hate it, I’m the only one who can fix it. Other than Naia, I’m the only magical person on this planet, and I’m the only one who has any chance of saving her and the world from what’s inhabiting her.

  I hate it.

  And Elwen. Even she wouldn’t be here. She’s ripped from her world because of me. “Elwen,” he said aloud in a groan in remorse for her, his eyes pressed closed.

  At the sound of her name, Elwen dropped from the branches to the ground next to him, some of the leaves blown away from her by the impact.

  Rylan nearly jumped out of his skin and sat up. “Were you there the whole time?”

  “I watch,” she said, and pulled hair back from her face.

  He was angry at first but also gratified that if there was a creature that could kill at a moment’s notice, it was nice to have her as an ally.

  He stood, faced her, and sighed, pulling out the wand. “Teach me. Teach me to fight and do what it takes to kill that son of a bitch.”

  Elwen smiled.

  “But on one condition,” Rylan continued, “only Toth. Naia lives.”

  Her mouth opened and then closed as her face became a mask. “Ché, I will do it,” she said evenly.

  Chapter 16

  They practiced with the wand until the sun was low in the trees and Rylan’s eyes were going crossed, taking breaks only for lunch and dinner at the rest stop. Elwen ate exclusively pizza.

  I
t wasn’t just the sheer number of spells and remembering their weird pronunciations by rote in Elvish, but Elwen’s strategic training on how and when to use them. He felt like he was taking a semester of organic chem all in a single afternoon, and his only hope was it didn’t all leak out of his ears as he slept.

  Speaking of sleep ... Elwen was babbling about teaching him how to make a bed out of leaves, but Rylan wanted none of that; he wanted a real bed and a shower.

  It was him needing a shower that convinced her, and he wasn’t sure how to take that.

  Something useful: before they went to lunch, she taught him a spell that makes you look like whatever you imagine yourself to look like, which was handy given he looked like he’d been run over by a farm combine, and he’d gotten tired of explaining why his companion looked like an escapee from the nearest Comic-Con.

  When they reached the hotel, Rylan gave Elwen the nickel tour of the wonders of modern plumbing before using them himself and crawling into the one bed, chivalry out the window, mumbling she could have the other side when she was ready as he fell into a deep exhausted sleep.

  Chapter 17

  Rylan dreamt of flight. A flight where he had no body and he was just an essence of the wind. After all the stress of the day, he welcomed this sense of freedom, his lightness of being.

  He felt like he could go anywhere, escape. And there was more. He was magically attuned. He could feel all of it––all the life teeming below him: the billions of animals, the trillions of plants, the quadrillions of leaves, the countless godzillions of bacteria. He wanted to get lost in it, give himself to it ... like the waves into the sand, lost without a care, water among the grains.

  But there was an itch that held him here.