by Julie Wright
And we were there.
We were where Farmor stood, with the wind shoving us through the corridor that led us away from the flames. In my desperation to escape the flames, it didn’t even occur to me to worry over where the next corridor would lead.
I got off the horse, if Nils could be called a horse anymore; for he had melted into a blobby looking monster. The heat from the stones underneath me were nothing compared to the heat of the air in the cavern I’d just left. “Farmor!” I cried.
She was crying too, the ghostly version of her wept and wept and wept. “You’re okay,” she said. “You’re all right.”
I took several wobbling steps forward, but couldn’t stay on my feet. I collapsed to the floor, using my cape as a shield from the heat against my legs. I wasn’t dead. Wax drippings covered me, and my legs were bloodied and burned, but I wasn’t dead.
“Does my mom know what we’re doing? Shouldn’t she have had to sign a consent form or something? Because this? Is a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
Farmor laughed through her tears.
“How many left?” I asked.
“You’re almost done. A little more, then the vows, and then you can sleep. You’re doing very well.”
I doubted that, but didn’t argue with her. Arguing would take too much energy. And there was an item she’d left off the list. I had to save Jake.
“You must get up,” she said. “We can’t delay.”
“I just need to rest a second longer.” I didn’t add that I actually needed to rest ten hours longer, and that I thought the witches were whacked for agreeing to go through this kind of garbage. But I finally got up and followed Farmor out into another room, down another narrow corridor, and up a flight of spiraling steps. I left a trail of wax flakes behind me as we walked.
The steps went up forever, and my tired body screamed with every each one. Shouldn’t people with magical abilities install magic carpets, or, at the very least, elevators?
At the top of the steps, Farmor pointed to one of the torches resting in a torch holder thingy on the wall of the cave. “Take that.”
“The fire tried to eat me. I think we’re doing just fine with your magical light.”
“That fire was in a feeding frenzy. This fire is controlled and pliable. Take it.”
I did as directed, but made sure to grumble about it.
We wound through another narrow corridor, Farmor bouncing her ball of flame on her shadowy hand as we walked. The bouncing flame cast long and short shadows as it moved, and it bugged me that Farmor had grown transparent enough that I could not only see light through her, but the shadows as well.
We walked in an upward course for a long time. And it was just as I opened my mouth to ask a sarcastic, “Are we there yet?” that the ground rumbled.
All my suffocating fears of being stuck under the earth came to the surface as actual boulders and rocks crashed down on both sides of us.
I dropped my torch and threw my hands over my head to protect myself, not that my hands were all that amazing in stopping boulders from squashing me, but instincts aren’t always intelligent things.
None of the boulders or rocks landed on top of me. They all fell exactly in front of us and behind us. We’d been blocked in.
“We’re trapped!” I yelled to Farmor. But when I turned, her little ghost image was no longer there.
Alone.
She’d left me alone.
Chapter Twenty One
Note to self:
Talking mirrors are dangerous. Just ask Snow White.
I’d been abandoned. Locked up behind a wall of rocks on all sides, in a space much smaller than my bedroom.
She promised she wouldn’t leave me. She’d said she’d stay with me. Was this part of the trial, or was the trial interrupted by an earthquake? I picked up my still burning torch, grateful she’d thought to have me grab it so at least I wasn’t in the dark, and waved it around to see every nook and cranny of my new tomb.
There were no holes.
I focused my energy and found the air around me to be stagnant. We were trapped—the air and I. We’d both be running out of oxygen soon.
“Help!” I screamed and scrambled at the pile of rocks in front of me to see if any could be loosened. “Help! I’m trapped!”
Trapped.
And how many tons of earth was on top of me and surrounding me? My breathing came faster as the horror of claustrophobia settled itself over me.
The air nudged me; I sensed it warning me to be careful, to breathe slowly, to be careful and not douse it all out entirely. If I used it all up, we’d both be dead.
I tried to calm down, to think of how to get out. Both of my hands would be needed to move any of the boulders, so I wedged my torch in between some rocks and then realized the truth. This was part of the trial. She gave me the torch so I’d have light even after she’d gone. This was my earth trial.
Could I dance with the earth? It seemed doubtful since air and water were fluid—made to dance. Or would I have to battle the earth like the fire? How did a person battle rocks? There wasn’t much time. The limited oxygen constantly nagging at me to be careful with it.
I focused my energy and mentally probed at the rock pile blocking my path. It wasn’t dancing like with the air and water, but it wasn’t battling either. This was strictly manual labor—even if I didn’t have to physically move the boulders. I used the flow of energy and aimed it at the top of the pile to pick a rock up and move it to the pile behind me. The rock rolled down the pile and to the other side at my urging.
It worked.
I tried to mentally move several at once, but found it only worked when the rocks were smaller in size. The bigger ones had to be moved one at a time. The problem was that there were a lot of bigger ones. It took forever to move through a couple of layers. I stopped to rest a moment and wipe my forehead.
How many rocks were left? How deep did this pile go before I broke through to the other side? The air nudged me again, urging me to keep going before it went out.
I had to close my eyes to pick out, through the energy, which rocks to move. And then realized that I wasn’t the only one using up the oxygen in this cave.
The flame was also eating the air.
This left me with a choice: I could extinguish my light and save my oxygen and then be left in the dark alone, which scared me to insanity. Or I could keep it on and hope that the rocks wouldn’t take much longer to move.
It killed me to make the hard choice. I crushed the top of the torch with a boulder and all light died with the flame.
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about the dark and the scary things that hide in the dark. Don’t think about the fact that you’re alone.
But it was tough to not think about those things. Tough not to consider spiders and fangs and creepy things. Those things hadn’t been there when the torch was lit, why would they suddenly appear now? And it was tough to not feel totally abandoned. Why would Farmor leave me? It was hard to not fall to the ground, give up, and have a good cry.
Jake.
Jake needed me to not give up.
The air flowed around me, urging me to keep working, to not panic, to breathe carefully.
I went back to work, moving stone by stone. The oxygen supply grew smaller every minute and with that diminishing supply, my body felt weaker.
So tired.
So stinking, lousy, stupid tired.
When this was all over, I planned to run for president of the witch world. My first act would be to abolish the trials. “Abolish the trials!” I yelled. “Hear me trolls! No more trials!”
The air begged me to stop yelling, to stop using it up so fast.
I stopped yelling out loud, but kept screaming in my head. I cursed every troll and boulder on the planet. I cursed witches and powers in general. I even cursed Lisa Snoddy—not because she had anything to do with my current situation, but just on principle.
I cursed and moved rocks, cur
sed and moved rocks, cursed and—wait, was that light?
I’d moved one of the top boulders, deciding to clear out just the top, hoping to get a hole big enough for me to climb through.
Yes. Light—a thin shaft reflecting off the dust particles floating in the air. The air flowed in and out of my tomb, happy and grateful to be free again. I stopped cursing and moved several more boulders until the shaft of light felt big enough, then I scrambled up the rocks and through the hole. An empty corridor of flickering torches stood in front of me—a corridor free of debris and boulders. But my body wouldn’t move. I breathed hard, my body shaking as my muscles found new ways to cramp up. I hadn’t really physically lifted boulders, but my body didn’t seem to know the difference.
I finally rolled myself down the hill of rocks and lay there at the bottom of the heap for another several minutes. I’d expected to see Farmor on the other side, expected her to be waiting, but the corridor remained empty. Feeling totally deserted, I stood and took a few steps forward.
A mirror split the ground in front of me, rising up until it filled the entire passageway, separating me from the corridor. In the mirror, only my reflection and the pile of rocks behind me were visible. There was no way to freedom in the mirror.
My reflection looked terrible. Dirty tear streaks trailed down my face. My hair looked like I’d stuck my finger in a light socket, and my cape—that gift from Farmor that had meant so much to me—had burn holes from the fire and hot wax. It had rips from the shards of stalactites. It was stained and ruined. I fingered my cape and tried to wipe away some of the dirt.
“You look stupid,” Lisa Snoddy said.
Shocked, I jerked my head up. My reflection had vanished. In the mirror, Lisa stood where I should have been.
I glanced behind me, but no one else was there. It frightened me to not be able to see myself in the mirror—to have my reflection be her.
“You aren’t special,” she said, her face—the face where mine should have been, sneered at me. “You aren’t anything but trouble to Kristin. It’s your fault she isn’t more popular. You hold her back. You’re nothing at all to Jake. He feels sorry for you. That’s the only reason he talks to you or notices you at all. You’re charity to him. You’re weak and pathetic.”
My lips trembled. Tears rolled hot and stinging into the scratches on my cheeks. I shook my head as she smiled and nodded. “Even your grandma doesn’t think you’re worth saving. Look around you. She isn’t here, is she? She left because you’re not good enough. She saw you were going to fail and gave up. No point in sitting around waiting for you to prove you’re worthless. You’re even scared of the dark.”
With those words, everything went black for a moment before her image in the mirror lit up again, startling me with its sudden appearance.
“Scared of a little flame,” she said, and a fire roared up from behind me in the mirror. I whirled to face it head on, but it wasn’t there. She laughed.
My shoulders twitched. I took a step back. Lisa took a step forward, so she was pressed right up to the glass. “You really are an Ally Kat—a homeless unwanted, scraggly cat, feeding off the garbage left behind by others.”
“I’m not . . .” But the words wouldn’t come out. I felt so insignificant. For years Lisa had tormented me, and never once had I really been able to stand up for myself. Even in the jungle when I’d held all the power over her, I still couldn’t defend myself.
“You failed. You failed your parents. They aren’t together because you couldn’t manage a simple wish. You failed Kristin. She was basically under house arrest for the last three days because of you.” Lisa glanced around in her mirror and smirked at what she saw. “You’re a mess. You’re covered in blood and wax, and your hair stinks from getting singed by the fire. You can’t pass the trials by being less than average. Others made it through the fire trial without so much as a burn. Others made it through the air trial without a single stalactite falling. You . . . look at you. You failed. You’re a disgrace to your grandmother. She’s so ashamed, she left you.”
The reflection—that should have been me—laughed harder, the laugh echoing and bouncing down the corridors of the entire cave system. I wanted her to be quiet. What if the trolls and witches heard? Would I fail if they knew how scorned I was by the kids at my own school? Would I fail if they knew how everyone else saw me? Had I really already failed? I looked down at my cape, burned and crusted with wax. My hair did smell awful. Even the hairs on my arms had been singed off by the heat and flames.
I hung my head, feeling ashamed and wishing to hide myself, even considering going back to the rockslide and burying myself back in. I wrung my hands together, feeling the opal stone of the ring my dad had given me scratch up against the raw, burned skin of my other hand. The ring was made from natural materials and hadn’t been removed when I was dressed.
The words my dad had said came back to me:
“I just want you to look at this ring when your heart gets broken, when you’re breaking hearts, when you’re lonely, when you’re loved. I want you to look at it and know you are loved by your parents—both of us.”
Lisa is wrong.
I lifted my chin, and, unnervingly, she did the same—defiance in both of us. Even with my magic, it felt that, here and now, Lisa held all the power.
Yet, she was wrong.
I put my hand where the scrying glass was still hidden under my leaf shirt. Jake waited at the end of the trials. He needed me to finish.
“You lie,” I said out loud. “I haven’t failed. I made it through the trials—all of them. And just because I got dirty along the way doesn’t mean I didn’t make it. You can’t do hard work and not expect to get a little dirty.” I quoted one of my mom’s favorite sayings. “What I did was hard, and I’m a little dirty. So what? And my parents love me.”
I held up my hand so she saw the ring. “They may not want to be married, but they both love me. Kristin’s my best friend. I’m the one she calls when she’s happy and when she’s sad. I’m the one who bought her smoothies to celebrate getting braces when she wanted to hide in her room for a month because she thought they looked ugly. I’m the one who carried her two blocks to her house when she broke her ankle. We’re there for each other in everything no matter how bad or how good. That’s what friendship is.”
I took a step forward. Lisa took a step back. She looked nervously around her as if trying to find something to defend herself with.
But she didn’t need to defend herself. I had nothing to attack her with. All I had was the truth, and if that hurt her, there wasn’t much that could be done about that. But she would no longer lie to me. It was time to stand up for myself.
“And my Farmor? She didn’t leave because she wanted to; she left because she was forced to by someone else. If she could, she’d be here with me. She knew she couldn’t stay. That’s why she gave me the torch. So I’d know she hadn’t left me alone. People love me, my parents—even my little brother.”
“They’ll use you.” Lisa interrupted me. “Those people you say love you. They’ll use you for your magic. You’re only special because of your magic.” Lisa smiled, baring all her teeth. “And since you failed the trials, you won’t have that anymore.”
But I felt her deceit down to my very bones. Dancing with air and water and making wishes come true didn’t make me special. It had nothing to do with my magic. I was extraordinary for being a granddaughter, a daughter, a sister, a friend.
“I did not fail! I have love in my life. Not for what I am, but for who I am!”
I put my hands out and shoved at the mirror, to try to move it off the path to let me pass through. When my fingers touched the cool silvered glass, Lisa’s image shimmered back into mine. Startled, I stepped back away from the mirror. I blinked, confused by what I saw. My image didn’t look horrible anymore. My hair was done up into a braided bun on top of my head, with flowers and ivy intertwined into the braids. My face was clean, and the leafy gown an
d my cape were no longer shredded and burned, but clean, spotless, and perfect. I glanced down to my legs and feet—no more cuts, bruises, or wax drippings. My toenails had a burgundy polish and little flowers painted on each toe. So did my fingers—like I’d made them in imitation of Lisa’s manicure.
“What is this?” I whispered. In the mirror, my image smiled at me and waved me forward. It held out its hand to me. Totally baffled, I took my reflection’s hand. It gripped firmly and pulled. Without much in the way of options, I followed along, through the mirror, until the glass dissolved around me.
I was outside again, breathing fresh air sharp with the scent of pine and flowers. And the hand that was holding mine reworked itself. The smooth skin gave way to blue veins and wrinkles.
My eyes met Farmor’s, her face an explosion of tears and smiles. She was real—not that wispy thing in the caves, but real. I flung myself into her arms.
“You made it, älskling! I knew you would. Ja, I knew it.” She kissed my forehead and both my cheeks before she raised my arm above my head. She turned to face the crowd that I’d ignored in my relief to see her with me.
“She has walked the trials, and faced them with courage. She has passed through water, wind, fire, earth, and soul, and come to us in control of herself and her magic.”
The circle of witches and trolls waved their torches from left to right and again gave the illusion that I’d been encircled by fire.
Farmor hugged and kissed me again, and then released me to the others who were waiting—others who were like me, having just gone through their trials and celebrating alongside me. There were five of us initiates.
Witches in capes fluttered around us lärlings, offering hugs and congratulations. The stoic faces were now broken up in smiles, grins, and giggles. It was a huge party, a celebration for the five of us who made it.
Chapter Twenty Two
