The Dark Shadow of Spring

by G. L. Breedon

  Alex awoke to his body juddering.

  Blinking his eyes open, he realized that his father was leaning over the bed, shaking his shoulder.

  “Wake up, Alex,” his father said, his voice filled with a hard concern.

  Alex shoved himself up on his shoulder and looked up his father. “What?” he said, rubbing the sleep seeds from his eyes.

  “I’ve been trying to wake you for nearly a minute,” his father said. “You had me worried.”

  “Just tired,” Alex said. “Didn’t sleep well.”

  “I’m not surprised,” his father said. “In your clothes and only half on the bed.”

  Alex looked down to see that his father was right. He was still in his clothes, his legs dangling off the edge of the bed. “Guess I passed out.”

  “Well, take a shower and get changed quickly,” his father said, giving him a quick kiss on the head. Alex shrugged off the kiss. For a man so usually gruff, his father was oddly affectionate in some ways, which Alex had deeply appreciated until he’d turned twelve and started thinking himself too old for such displays of affection. His father ignored him and went to the window. “I wasn’t just worried because you were hard to wake. Something’s happened in the town.”

  “What?” Alex said, standing up, fully awakened by the tone of his father’s voice and the look on his face as he stared out the window.

  “Come see for yourself,” his father said.

  Alex stepped up to the windowpane and looked out. His window overlooked Marigold Street from the front of the house and he could see up and down the block several hundred feet. Something was strewn along the street, like hundreds of small black rocks. Alex stared at them, taking a moment to realize what they were. He gasped aloud when he understood what he was seeing.

  The street was littered with dead birds.

  Chapter 12: Dinner Plans

  The talk at school was all about the dead birds, even though most had been cleaned up by townspeople before the school bell rang. What could kill so many birds all at once? Was it some kind of creature? Had they been poisoned? What did it mean? Who was responsible? Was it a sign of something?

  Alex knew exactly what it was a sign of, but he didn’t say. He had been on the verge of telling his father everything, about the astral travel, about meeting Batami, about the living shadow, but he had held back. Nina was right; if their father even suspected that he was marked by the Shadow Wraith, as Batami had said he was, as the dragon, Gall’Adon’s destiny seemed to imply, Alex would find himself locked up for his own protection until he was old enough to need a walking cane. No, the Shadow Wraith had marked him for a reason, and he would have to find a way to deal with it. First, he would need to deal with the rumors.

  Someone, and Alex had a very good idea who, had started the rumor that the thousands of dead birds found throughout town were the result of a wild magical experiment gone wrong. An experiment conducted in secret by the Young Sorcerers Guild. Alex and the others in the Guild did their best to dispel those rumors, and it took up so much of their time that Alex didn’t have a moment to tell his friends what had really happened the night before.

  Alex was not surprised when he and the other Guild members, Victoria included, were pulled from their first period writing class to see Principal Gillette in his office. The snickers from Anna and Dillon in the back of the room made it easy to discern from where the rumors had started. Alex gave them both his best angelic look, beginning to plot in his head how he could use astral travel to exact a revenge on the Mad Mages.

  Alex had almost expected to see his father in Principal Gillette’s office and was pleased to find the only member of his family present was his sister, Nina. She looked furious and oddly self-satisfied. Nina loved animals, especially birds, and the idea that someone would think she had anything to do with killing them made her eyes bulge out of her head. Alex realized the satisfaction he saw on his sister’s face likely came from that fact that Principal Gillette seemed to consider her a full member of the Guild.

  Principal Gillette looked at them all and frowned. “I don’t like calling you all in here, but given the circumstances and your history, I felt I had no choice but address the stories that have come to my attention.”

  “I’ll bet I know which slug-munching slime sucker brought them to your attention,” Daphne huffed.

  “Language, young lady,” Principal Gillette said. He straightened the tie around his thick neck and cleared his throat. “So, let’s have the truth. Did you do it?”

  “No,” Alex said, staring the principal in the eyes. “We would never do something like this.”

  “Do you know who did?” Principal Gillette asked, the tone of his voice saying that he was inclined to believe them.

  “No,” Nina said, her fists clenched. Alex stayed quiet. He had no need to get caught in a lie. He did know who or what was responsible. “Why don’t you ask the Mad Mages?” The rest of the Guild rumbled in agreement.

  “I am on the verge of banning all clubs and extracurricular organizations at this school,” Principal Gillette said, wringing his chubby hands in exasperation. “You two groups of children must find a way to get along or I will have no choice. And I am hoping that you, Miss Radcliff, will see that such associations will not improve your reputation in this school.”

  “I’m not worried about my reputation,” Victoria said quietly. It had been hard for her to squeeze the horse half of her body into the office and she seemed cramped in the corner by the door. “I’m very happy to be a member of the Young Sorcerers Guild.”

  “Hmff,” Principal Gillette said. “Well, I have no time to deal with this or the lot of you. This is the responsibility of the warlock and the town council. I have enough to handle with Fallowtooth disappearing. I’ll have to teach his classes on top of everything else today.”

  “Mr. Fallowtooth is out sick?” Alex asked, swallowing a lump that had appeared suddenly in his throat.

  Principal Gillette frowned, realizing that he had said too much. “Mr. Fallowtooth will not be in today. That is all you need to know. Back to class with you. Now.”

  They returned to class and found that, as the day wore on, the rumors of Mr. Fallowtooth’s disappearance spread as quickly as those regarding the mass avian extinction that had struck the town. Apparently, Mr. Fallowtooth was nowhere to be found. Not in his home, not in the town, nowhere. The rumors were that Alex’s father had been sent out to track him down. Had he disappeared on any other day, his absence would have gone largely unnoticed and would have generated little concern. But the circumstances of the day led everyone to wild conclusions, which seemed to fall into two categories: Either Mr. Fallowtooth had been taken by whatever had killed the birds or was himself in some way responsible for the all the birds’ deaths. Alex knew exactly which one he thought was true, but whenever one of the Guild members tried to raise the subject, he deflected the conversation or simply said, “Later.”

  Later turned out to be in the back booth at Uncle Sal’s Soda Shop and Burger Joint. The soda shop was narrow, but deep, its black-and-white-tiled floor leaving plenty of room for row after row of well-upholstered booths covered in rich red leather. A white Formica soda counter ran alongside half the shop, opposite the windows and booths. A row of black leather-clad stools mounted on stainless steel posts rose out of the floor in front of the counter.

  Behind the counter stood Uncle Sal himself, manning the soda machines and ice cream coolers. Uncle Sal, who was strangely unrelated to anyone in Runewood, was a thin, balding man in his late fifties wearing a spotless white apron. A window in the side wall opened on a back kitchen and grill where orders will fulfilled by Ned, a half-dwarf whose head was rarely seen above the lip of the grill, yet still made the best burgers in town.

  Alex had planned on rushing straight to the Guild House after school, but had discovered one of the side effects of astral travel was it left him ravenously hungry. He had eaten twice as many pancakes at breakfast and had begged foo
d from his friends at lunch when his own had proved insufficient. With a large cheeseburger, a substantial plate of French fries, and a tall strawberry shake stuffed in his gullet, he finally began to feel full again. Normally, his mother would be very mad at him for eating so much before dinner, but Alex suspected he would probably be hungry again by meal time.

  The back booth of Uncle Sal’s was their usual meeting place outside the Guild House. Daphne wove a magical bubble of dense air around them to prevent eavesdropping by other customers near the front of the restaurant. Alex had watched and listened to the spell she cast dozens of times, but he still couldn’t manage to do more than enclose his head in an air bubble that prevented anyone from hearing him at all. As the spell fell into place the sound of the Outsider musician Elvis Presley singing the song Hound Dog from the jukebox in the corner faded away. Uncle Sal's was practically the only place in town where music from the world outside the valley could be heard, which made it a popular hangout with all of the teenagers in Runewood.

  The Guild members looked at him in silence. He had just finished telling them everything. He stuffed a French fry from Rafael’s plate into his mouth. Rafael frowned. Alex looked to the end of the table where Victoria sat. With her horse legs kneeling at the table edge, she was almost at eye level with the others. Fortunately, the back of Uncle Sal’s left plenty of room for a centaur to join them at the table. And the tables were large, which was good, because Victoria had even more food arrayed before her than Alex. She was working her way through her third burger and second piece of apple pie. She had apologetically explained that it required a lot of food to feed a centaur, and she hated the looks she got in the school cafeteria, so she tended to eat more for breakfast and dinner. Now she paused, mid-bite, and looked at Alex.

  “Well, at least we know what we have to do,” Victoria said.

  “Run,” Ben said, slurping a Royal Crown Cola through a straw. “For our lives. That’s what we should do.”

  “Running for our lives is never the first plan,” Rafael said, grabbing the last fry on his plate before Alex could snag it. “It’s just how every plan ends up.”

  “I’ll be an ogre’s uncle,” Daphne said, wiping her mouth on her sleeve, an action completely at odds with her dainty features. “Astral travel is very, very rare, Lex. And dangerous. You should see Old Batami right away.”

  “How do you know you can trust her?” Nina said around a mouth full of pie. “She was right there when the shadow thing showed up. Maybe she’s working with it and was trying to distract you. Maybe she took Mr. Fallowtooth.”

  “You’re more paranoid than Dad,” Alex said, but Nina seemed to take this as a compliment.

  “Um, so, how do we defeat the Shadow Wraith?” Clark asked, licking ketchup off his sausage-sized fingers. Unsurprisingly, he had managed to eat as much as Alex and Victoria put together. Clark grabbed a fry from Ben’s plate while his friend was looking at Alex.

  “I have no idea,” Alex said.

  “That is not as comforting as I’m sure you intended it to be,” Rafael said.

  “But I think I know how to find out,” Alex said, grabbing a fry from Daphne’s plate now.

  She smacked his hand. “You thinking about telling us, Astral Boy?”

  “It seems obvious,” Victoria said. “Given what little we know, there is only one place we can learn what we need to know. And, Alex now knows that what we need to know is there. So, it would seem that we need to break into the library.”

  “Exactly,” Alex said, the grin on his face as much for Victoria’s vocal support as for the adventure ahead.

  “A plan,” Ben said. “I suppose you have a plan.”

  “Not really,” Alex said, still grinning, although he wasn’t sure why.

  “Oh, I have a plan,” Victoria said, bubbling with excitement.

  Alex knew then why he was grinning.

  Chapter 13: Breaking and Enchanting

  Alex winced and shifted to the side as the thorns of the juniper bush dug into his ribs again. He was wedged between Clark and Ben as the Guild crouched behind the town library, squatting in the dim shadows cast by the pale light of the street lamps. Alex looked around Clark’s wide chest to see Daphne and Nina squeezed together in the bushes. They were trying to avoid being noticed while they waited for Victoria to arrive with something she had said was the crux of her plan. Only Rafael seemed comfortable, having shifted the coloration of his skin to create a camouflage that, with his dun brown shirt and pants, helped him blend into the bark of the nearby trees almost seamlessly.

  They heard Victoria before they saw her, hooves clattering along the street, pausing for a moment, and then the sounds of movement over soft grass. Victoria slid around the back side of the library as graceful as a gazelle. Alex was impressed. He’d seen horses that could not move nearly as well, especially in the dark. But then again, as a centaur, Victoria was only half horse.

  “What took so long?” Alex asked as Victoria crouched down on all fours beside the others. Not for the first time that night, Alex noted that the juniper bushes were not nearly large enough to hide the Guild.

  “I had to distract Daddy long enough to get what I needed,” Victoria said. “Usually he’s distracted enough on his own, but he was very excited about something new he is working on and he kept rattling on and on about it. It was ever so annoying. Sorry.”

  “Hmm, so what’s the plan?” Clark asked, shifting his bulk to make more room for Victoria.

  “This,” Victoria said as she took a small glass bottle from the pocket of her vest and held it up. The liquid in the tiny bottle caught the faint light and seemed to shimmer in the darkness with a glow of its own.

  “Perfume?” Ben said. “The plan is to smell better?”

  “Hades’ hobnails,” Daphne muttered.

  “Don’t be silly,” Victoria said. “This is something Daddy created a few years ago. He never figured out a practical use for it, but it’s terribly useful for our purposes. Let me show you.”

  Victoria stood up on her legs in a single motion that startled Alex with its swiftness. She cantered quietly to the back window of the library and uncapped the small glass bottle. Leaning forward, she sprayed a gentle mist across the windowpane, whispering an enchantment that sounded familiar to Alex. “That should work,” she said as she leaned back.

  “What does it do?” Nina asked from the shadows behind Victoria.

  “This,” Victoria said as she thrust her arm out toward the glass windowpane. Alex and the others jumped with a startled twitch, expecting to hear shattered glass. A soft gasp of surprise escaped his lips, much like the one he heard from his companions. Victoria’s arm had slid right through the window as though it were made of a thick gelatinous glaze. “It’s an enchanted water that makes glass act like, well, like water. You can slide right in and the glass won’t be damaged. Just be quick. It’ll harden back to its normal state in about ten minutes.”

  “Holy troll tonsils,” Daphne said. “That’s brilliant.”

  “Daddy is ever so smart,” Victoria said with a prideful tilt of her head.

  “That he is,” Alex said. “What’s the rest of the plan?”

  “The rest of the plan?” Victoria echoed, looking crestfallen. “I didn’t realize we needed more of a plan. Can’t you sneak through the window and get the book you need?”

  “Not quite,” Alex said.

  “The restricted room is locked,” Nina said. “And the door is enchanted to open only for Mrs. Yaaba.”

  “Oh,” Victoria said. “I thought we only needed to get inside.”

  “Wait,” Alex said. “The door to the restricted room has a glass panel above it. It’s not very large, but we could use the spray to slip through it.”

  “We’ll just need someone to do the slipping,” Daphne added as she and the others turned to Rafael.

  “Why is it that whenever we need to stuff someone into to a small and dangerous space, everyone always looks at me?” Rafael aske
d.

  “Because you’re ever so good at getting into and out of them, I imagine,” Victoria said to Rafael.

  “And you’re ever so brave,” Nina chimed in.

  “And ever so clever,” Daphne said.

  “Hmm, butter him up any more and I’ll start to get hungry,” Clark said.

  “Food,” Ben said, poking Clark in the ribs. “Why does everything make you think of food?”

  “You’re also the only changeling we know,” Alex said.

  “At last, some honesty,” Rafael said, putting his hand on Alex’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  “What do you need me for?” Alex asked.

  “In case I get caught, I want an accomplice,” Rafael said. “And I could use someone to hold my clothes and act as lookout while I’m in the restricted room when something goes wrong.”

  “Right,” Alex said. “That makes sense.”

  “What could go wrong?” Victoria asked.

  “Who knows?” Rafael said with a frown. “But something always does.”

  “That’s why it’s called an adventure,” Alex said.

  “How many times did you say Mom dropped you on your head?” Nina asked.

  “Let’s go, Rafa,” Alex said, ignoring his sister. “We’ll need that,” he said, pointing to the small glass vial of enchanted liquid in Victoria’s hand.

  “There’s an enchantment that you need to say when you use it,” Victoria said, handing the vial to Alex.

  “I know,” Alex said. “I recognized most of the words you used.”

  “Most,” Rafael groaned.

  “Just kidding,” Alex said with a smile in Rafael’s direction. “I can speak the enchantment. Give us a hand up, Clark.”