“A rune,” Alex said, trying to keep his voice neutral. “What kind of rune?”
“I don’t know,” his mother said. “You father said he’d never seen it before, which is very odd. And then Old Riley came into town at the crack of dawn saying he’d seen things in the woods of the White Forest down by the Alabaster Creek. Couldn’t even say what it was, but he seemed frightened out of his wits. Your father has a busy day ahead of him. And the silly fool refused to wait for me to make him an egg sandwich. How can he expect to have the strength to deal with everything on an empty stomach?”
That was a sentiment that Alex could wholeheartedly agree with. So, he helped himself to a second serving of oatmeal as he contemplated what might be out in the White Forest and how he could find out. By the time he and Nina reached the schoolyard, he had a plan, but it wasn’t one that the Guild was likely to appreciate, because it was as likely to get them into trouble with Principal Gillette and their parents if it was successful as it was likely to put them into danger if it failed.
Before Alex ran into the Guild, he ran into Dillon and the Mad Mages. Or what remained of the Mad Mages, to be more precise. Anna and Earl were noticeably absent. Alex and Nina were late leaving the house and late to arrive, so the schoolyard was nearly empty. Not expecting open violence, Alex was surprised when Dillon and Koji slammed him up against the schoolyard fence near the bicycle rack while Mei held Nina.
“Where are they?” Dillon said, practically spitting onto Alex’s face. “What did you do with them?”
“Get your hands off me,” Alex said, shoving Dillon back. The movement loosened Dillon’s hold, but the older boys were sufficiently larger than Alex. Breaking free wouldn’t be easy.
“Not so brave without your freaks, are you?” Koji said with a vile laugh.
“That’s ironic,” Alex said, “considering that there’s two of you and one of me.” When Koji frowned, Alex taunted, “What’s the matter? Not sure what the word ‘ironic’ means?” Koji’s frown became a smirk as he punched Alex in the stomach.
“Leave him alone,” Nina screeched as she struggled with Mei. Alex looked at his sister and was sorely tempted to use magic on Dillon and Koji, but with three against two, it wouldn’t be a well-matched fight.
“Anna and Earl are missing,” Dillon said, shoving Alex against the fence again. “What did you do with them?”
“A lot of people have gone missing,” Alex said, staring the older boy in the eyes. “Use your head, Dillon. Do you think I’m behind all of them disappearing? Is that something you really think the Guild would do? Just because it’s something you might consider, doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t have morals. Now let go of my sister and me before I call down something on you far worse than any ghost.”
As Alex glared at Dillon, a sound arose from somewhere nearby. A dog howling. It was quickly joined by another and then another until it seemed that, within seconds, all the dogs of Runewood were howling together. Dillon looked around and then back at Alex before he suddenly let go and backed away.
“Let’s get out of here,” Dillon said, not even waiting to see if Mei and Koji followed. Mei quickly let go of Nina and raced to catch up with Dillon while Koji gave Alex another shove against the fence and a snarl before walking away. As soon as Dillon and his friends were gone, the dogs of the town ceased their howls.
“Was that you?” Alex asked, putting his arm around his sister.
“Just because the rules say I can’t use magic on them doesn’t mean I can’t use magic at all,” Nina said, straightening her skirt. As Alex had suspected, Nina had used her affinity with animals and the natural world to start the town’s dogs howling. He hadn’t heard her speak a rune-word, but he had long noticed that, when she was really scared, Nina could perform certain magics without speaking. Especially if it was magic to control animals.
“Nice job, Sis,” Alex said.
“Thanks,” Nina said. “They must be really scared if they’d try that.”
“They should be scared,” Alex said. “The whole town should be.”
“Were you really going to call down something wicked on them?” Nina asked, a hint of excitement and envy in her voice.
“I don’t know,” Alex said as they walked toward the entrance of the school. “With you around, I guess I don’t need to.”
Nina did nothing to hide her smile as they headed into the schoolhouse.
Throughout the morning, Alex met the various members of the Guild in the hallways or at the beginning of shared classes and informed them quietly as to what he had seen in his astral journey the night before and what his plan was about the sighting of creatures in the White Forest. Everyone was equally afraid of what Alex had seen and what it portended for the town. They were also in agreement that his plan was outrageous and unnecessarily risky. None of them, however, had a better plan, so at lunchtime, they all rendezvoused at the back of the school while the other students were eating in the cafeteria. Everyone except Victoria held the bicycle they had ridden to school.
“Let’s go,” Alex said. “If we’re quick, we can be back before we miss more than half the first class after lunch.”
“I don’t know how you remain such an optimist in the face of experience,” Rafael said.
“Easy,” Alex said. “I simply ignore all evidence that would suggest failure.”
“You have no idea how reassuring that is,” Rafael said with a sigh.
“Nope,” Ben said. “I’ll bet he knows exactly how reassuring that is.”
“Hmmf,” was all Clark added.
“Let’s get this sideshow moving,” Daphne said as she began to pedal down the path away from the school.
“I’m still not clear what the plan is once we find whatever is loose in the White Forest,” Victoria said as she leapt into a quick trot.
“What makes you think there is a plan?” Nina said, pedaling to keep pace with Victoria.
“Don’t worry,” Alex said racing past Victoria and Nina to take the lead. “I’ll know what to do when the time comes.”
“Now that’s reassuring,” Victoria said with a grin directed toward Rafael. Rafael laughed aloud, surprising himself so much he almost lost control of his bicycle, to which the others joined him in laughing.
There wasn’t much laughter twenty minutes later as they reached the edge of the White Forest. As they rode over the Billy Goat Bridge that crossed the Alabaster Creek and led into the heart of the White Forest, the members of the Guild fell into silence. The Alabaster Creek was so named because of the pearly white stones that lined the creek bed, making the melt water that flowed down from the icy tops of the Black Bone Mountain appear to be even more silver-white than rushing water normally might.
The naming of the White Forest was for even more obvious reasons. All of the trees of the forest were a special breed of birch, their leaves being just as pale white as the bark that covered their trunks. For reasons as much magical as botanical, the trees of the White Forest did not shed their leaves even in winter, somehow managing the extra weight of the snow without being snapped in half. Even the tall grass and the wild bushes that filled out the forest floor were of a pale white-gold hue.
The sounds of the forest were the same as found in any wooded area. Alex found himself comforted by the noise of birds singing, insects buzzing, branches clacking, and the occasional woodpecker knocking away at a tree trunk.
“Which way?” Nina asked as Alex and the others rolled slowly down the main path from the creek into the forest proper.
Alex could see up ahead that the path split in three directions. The paths were not marked, but Alex knew that the middle one would take them to the Ivory Glade and, beyond that, to Batami’s hut. He had avoided going to see Batami, even though he knew it was important. He had tried to convince himself that it was because so much was happening so quickly that there hadn’t been time. Being honest with himself, he knew it was because he was afraid. Afraid of what he would learn and what it would mean for him. H
e knew instinctively that being a Spirit Mage was as much a burden and a responsibility as a blessing and an honor. Probably more so.
He also knew, from his previous trip into the forest with his father, that the middle path was the one they needed to follow.
“This way,” Alex said, pedaling his bicycle toward the chosen path.
Everyone followed him silently. The path through the forest was as unremarkable as the forest itself was extraordinary. Alex noticed as he rode that even the insects flittering through the air and the ants crawling across the dirt path were white. As he pedaled, he caught glimpses of a rabbit, a fox, and a squirrel, all with bone-white furs. The ever-present whiteness gave the forest an appearance of stark beauty, but also a feeling of dread, as though it was populated by thousands of skeletal beings raising their arms skyward in unison.
Before long, the trees gave way to a wide-open clearing. Like the forest that surrounded it, the Ivory Glade obtained its name from the color of its vegetation. The tall, willowy grass of the clearing was of an even paler hue than the grass that grew between the trees of the woods. Rolling down the path that cut through the middle of the glade, Alex thought the tall white grass looked like the pelt of some massive magical beast.
“It’s heavenly,” Victoria said, trotting up beside him.
“Yes,” Alex agreed. “Like a dream.”
“Look,” Rafael said, riding up beside Alex and Victoria as he pointed to the other side of the glade near the shadows of the trees. Alex looked to where Rafael pointed and saw three people standing within the shade of a tree. A tall man in a long white overcoat and a wide-brimmed white hat stood beside two dark-haired women in long white dresses. They looked oddly out of place, their clothes a hundred years out of fashion.
“Who in the name of Zeus’s zits is that?” Daphne asked.
“Don’t know,” Ben said. “I’ve never seen them before.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Alex said.
“Why not?” Victoria asked.
“Because this town is too small for anyone not to know everyone,” Nina said.
“Well, they certainly see us,” Clark said, gesturing toward the three people they were rapidly approaching. Alex saw that the man had raised his hand toward them in some manner of greeting.
“Let’s ask them if they’ve seen anything,” Alex said to the others. “But stay close together.”
“I never would have thought of that,” Rafael said as he followed Alex off the path and through the tall grass to where the man and the two women stood in the shade. They did not move from their places as Alex and the Guild approached, but the man did lower his arm. Alex stopped about twenty feet away from the three strangers and dismounted his bike. He was cautious about getting any closer to them than was necessary.
“Hi,” Alex said. “Nice day for a walk.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his shirtsleeve and looked up at the sun as a friendly way of indicating how lovely the day was. The faces of the man and the women were completely impassive, and they made no response.
“Are you lost?” Alex asked, glancing around at the other Guild members. “I don’t think we’ve seen you around here before.”
The three strangers were silent for a moment and then the man spoke in a deep voice with an eccentric and unrecognizable accent. “We have only recently arrived.”
“Where do you live?” Alex asked. There was something oddly disturbing about the stoicism of the three strangers. Something about the emotionlessness of their faces. As though they could not register normal facial expressions.
“Are you alone?” the woman to the right of the man asked, her voice higher than the man’s, but her accent just as thick and foreign.
“They are,” the other woman said, her voice sounding identical to the first woman’s voice. “And the one who speaks for them is not like them.”
“Yes,” the man said. “Different.”
The three strangers were now staring directly at Alex, their eyes looking darkly human, but probing in a way that was deeply unsettling. Alex’s instincts were screaming at him to flee. To cast the most powerful and destructive spell he knew and run for his life. Just as he opened his mouth to tell the others to run, the three strangers moved. Their motion was so swift and such a contrast from their former stillness that Alex’s words caught in his throat. Those words became a scream as the three strangers crossed the boundary between the shade of the tall birch trees and the sunlight of the open glade. As the sunlight struck them, their human forms fell away like wax melting before the flame of a blowtorch, their faces peeling back to reveal hideous features of leathery obsidian skin pulled tight over misshapen skulls with spike-like bones jutting out at every angle. Their clothes faded as swiftly as their faces to reveal bodies of contorted bone and muscle clad in a scaly black hide riddled with oozing pustule sores.
Even as the scream filled his lungs, Alex grasped for the magical energy of the forest land and struggled to focus his mind. The creatures where so incredibly fast that the beast that had been the man a moment before suddenly had its hand around Alex’s throat. He threw his hands to his throat in a desperate attempted to pry the creature’s fingers free, but it was like trying to bend bolts of iron. Frantically, Alex turned his head, hoping to find some of his friends had escaped. His hope was shattered as he saw that the male creature holding him also held Victoria by the throat while its companions, looking now like nothing that could be called female, held the others in vice-like grasps. One creature held Nina and Daphne crushed to its chest with one arm while it clasped Rafael by the neck. With her affinity for nature magic, Nina had somehow managed to summon a flock of birds to attack the creature, but to no avail. The creature ignored the attacking birds as though they were buzzing gnats. Even Clark was powerless against the strength of the creatures as the third one held him firmly by the throat with one hand while dangling Ben above the ground, its hand wrapped completely around his head.
Alex was becoming desperate for breath as he fought against the creature’s hold and as he watched his friends’ futile attempts to do the same. He was also feeling something else. The creature’s stare bored into him as though it were drilling into the ground in search of water. Alex felt the creature pulling something from him. Slowly, but perceptibly, it was sucking at his essential essence. It was trying to eat his soul.
Alex fought to concentrate on his soul, his very subtle essence, and hold it firm against the vile creature’s silent onslaught, for none of the creatures had made a single sound. As he struggled to keep the essence of his being intact, Alex felt something bubbling up from the deepest recesses of his very subtle consciousness. A rune-word. A word that Alex knew, in a way he could never explain, would open a door between this realm and another. A realm where this creature that was draining his soul had come from. A realm that Alex could send it back to.
“Kerris’Ta-Gal-Tram,” Alex said aloud as he focused his will and his being and all of the magic of the land that he could gather into the word. The creature’s oily black eyes went wide as it screeched and shuddered.
“No!” the creature wailed. “I will not go.”
“Kerris’Ta-Gal-Tram,” Alex said again and he felt his strength gather as the creature’s pull against his soul weakened. The air around the creature began to shimmer with a flickering blue-white light.
“Ishoma’Ka,” the creature hissed and the light around it began to stabilize. Alex could see the other two creatures looking to the one that held him. Their faces were distorted and inhumane, but he could recognize the look of anger that contorted them. The eyes of the one that held him now blazed with viciousness and hatred.
“Kerris’Ta-Gal-Tram,” Alex said again, willing the flickering light that surrounded the creature to intensify and engulf it. The light crawled over the creature’s shoulders, but no further.
“You are not strong enough, youngling,” the creature spat, its drool flowing down its chin and across Alex’s face
.
“No, but I am,” a slightly melodic voice said from beside them.
Alex twisted in desperation to see a vision of his salvation. Batami stood a few paces away, staring at the vile creature that held Alex with a glare that would have rendered a mortal human quivering to its knees. Beside Batami stood a beast that made Alex gasp even with the creature’s fingers around his neck. Batami’s hand rested on the shoulder of an enormous white wolf the size of a small horse. It stood nearly as tall as Batami herself, its eyes steely gray and its fur the color of fresh-fallen snow. It bared its long fangs in a deep, ground-rumbling growl. Alex noticed something else: The pommel of a sword sticking up over Batami’s shoulder.
Alex felt the creature holding him shiver and he knew it could feel fear. He saw no signal pass between Batami and the giant wolf, but without warning they flowed forward like a single being, Batami reaching up to grasp the handle of the sword and unsheathing it in the same motion she used to bring its blade around her shoulder in an arc that sent it slicing through the head of the creature that held Alex. A moment later the white wolf smashed its jaws into the back of the beast that held Nina, Daphne, and Rafael. Even as Alex watched the two fallen creatures fade away into wisps of rancid-smelling black smoke, the third creature released its captives and started to flee back into the forest. It managed two steps before both Batami and the white wolf set upon it, the wolf’s long fangs tearing at its back as Batami’s sword blade severed its skull in half. Alex thought he heard a strangled cry as the creature evaporated into a rapidly dissipating, inky black vapor.
As the last of the creatures faded from existence in the bright spring sun that fell on the Ivory Glade, Batami stared at Alex. It wasn’t the terrifying glare that she had lain upon the creatures, but it was enough to make him catch his breath and hope that he would never find himself the object of her full wrath. He would rather face the conjoined fury of his mother and father than face that look.
“When I said to come to see me,” Batami said, “this is not what I had in mind.”
The Dark Shadow of Spring Page 17
