Scary Cool (The Spellspinners)

by Diane Farr

  I shivered, and only partly because I was cold. His words were chilling. “Why kill me? It seems a bit extreme, doesn’t it? The idea of only having forty-nine spellspinners is just a whim, as far as I can tell. It’s not like the race is destroyed when there’s fifty, or anything like that.”

  “Well, it’s a little more than a whim, Zara.” His lips thinned disapprovingly. “Did you really think we’d be in such an uproar over a whim? No, it’s a little more important than that. Our world’s been out of whack for sixteen years. And when Lance discovered you, we knew why.”

  This was news to me. And not good news, since I wanted to convince them I was harmless.

  Rune leaned forward. “I am trying to make the case,” he said earnestly, “that we could allow you to live, and then, when the next spellspinner passes, let you into our ranks. No one likes to say it in so many words, but in the natural order of things we are going to lose a Council member or two fairly soon. We’ve lived with diminished power this long; living this way for another year, or two, or three would be—to many of us—preferable to having your blood on our heads.”

  “Thanks,” I said faintly.

  “We could simply wait it out. And then let you in, and be forty-nine again. Instead of going through the gestation period with only forty-eight of us.”

  “So…no baby?”

  “It wouldn’t be necessary, if they accept you.”

  Amber was going to love this idea. Not.

  “It occurs to me,” I said—trying to sound casual—“that I might have something to offer.”

  Rune quirked an eyebrow. “In what way?”

  “In the way of—“ I took a deep breath, then blurted it out. “New blood. I mean, wouldn’t that be valuable? To the race as a whole?”

  He looked intrigued. “It would,” he said. “If we could figure out your parentage.”

  “Well, what about that?” Hope flared within me. “Are there any theories floating around?”

  “None that make sense.”

  “Tell me. Maybe I can help narrow it down.”

  “Okay.” Rune almost grinned. He held up his index finger. “The first possibility is, your parents were sticks and you are the result of some kind of rogue throwback gene. Although we know of no other occurrence of this kind, a child with your gifts might have sprung from perfectly normal, boring parents. After hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years of separation between the races. You could just be a fluke.”

  “Hmm,” I said.

  He heard the skepticism in my tone and nodded. “The odds are slim, to say the least.” He held up two fingers. “Theory number two. Your parents are among us, even though each of us has denied all knowledge of you. There are a couple of problems with this theory: one is that spellspinners cannot conceal their thoughts from one another—certainly not from the Council—sufficiently to pull off a lie of this magnitude. The other is that your birth does not coincide with a period of time when spellspinners were fertile. Had you been born the same day as Lance—“ He shrugged. “But you weren’t.”

  “Ah,” I said. “What else you got?”

  Rune held up three fingers. “A freak accident at a sperm bank.”

  I actually laughed. It had been days since I’d laughed. “This I’ve got to hear.”

  He smiled. “Don’t get your hopes up. This theory has the same problems as the last one. But if a male spellspinner—on a dare, or because he lost a bet, or for whatever nutty reason—donated his sperm to a sperm bank, his sperm would be sterile. So he'd feel safe doing that. But if it just so happened that someone took it out of the deep freeze during our mating season, who knows?”

  “Except that none of you recall donating to a sperm bank.”

  “Right. Under this theory, the sperm was donated by a spellspinner who is no longer living. Unfortunately, you weren’t born after a fertile period.” He shrugged. “So there ya go.”

  “What’s theory number four?” I asked.

  Rune shook his head. “I don’t have one.”

  But I had. My heart started to pound so hard that I felt dizzy. Did I dare tell him? Every instinct screamed no. But what choice did I have? Rune was the only person who might have an answer for me.

  I clasped my hands together so hard they hurt, in an effort to hide their trembling. And I leaned forward, the better to watch his face.

  “What if…” I bit my lip, struggling to find words that wouldn’t give everything away. I blocked, blocked, blocked the image of my baby blanket, which—naturally—was all I could think about. Rune’s expression turned puzzled, then wary, as he picked up the fact that I was hiding something from him. “Sorry,” I gasped. “I’m having a hard time with—I can’t—“

  “Just tell me.”

  I tried an indirect approach. “Have there ever been—and I don’t mean now, I mean ever—spellspinners born with only one spellspinner parent? The other parent being, you know, a stick?” When he didn’t answer right away, I plunged ahead. “What would happen in that circumstance? Would the kid be a spellspinner or—or not?”

  He frowned. “You think you’re only half spellspinner?”

  “Maybe.”

  His frown turned thoughtful. “Theoretically, a one-time infusion of fresh, unrelated genes into a spellspinner bloodline might, er, freshen the batch, so to speak. Which could result in unusually powerful offspring. But it could go the other way as well. The child might have no powers at all. And over time, of course, if spellspinners and sticks intermarried, the spellspinner line would become so diluted that our race would die out—which is why, Zara, even if we could—which nobody knows anymore—we don’t reproduce with sticks.”

  “What, never?” I shook my head in disbelief. “That’s not possible, is it? At some point, somebody, somewhere, must have fallen in love with the wrong person. We’re only human.”

  He shook his head regretfully. “Sorry to burst your bubble. The Council keeps a very tight rein on these things. And we let them, because we all know how important it is. There have been a couple of instances of spellspinners falling in love with ungifted humans, and at least one marriage, but that doesn’t mean they produced offspring. The penalty is death.” He leaned forward, fixing me with his gaze. “For the child. Try explaining that to your spouse.”

  I collapsed back against the tree, unnerved. “So even if it were true, this is not an explanation that helps me.”

  Rune nodded. “If you are the product of one of us mating with a stick, you’re toast. That’s been the law since the first Council formed.”

  Since the first Council formed. Which was at the end of the Great War—a war the sticks never even knew about, since it took place only among spellspinners. “And when was that, again?” I asked. “When the first Council formed?”

  He looked surprised. To him, it must have looked like I was changing the subject. “You know we don’t keep written records. But it must have been around the end of the 17 century or very early in the 18. Possibly 1690 to 1705. In there somewhere. Why?”

  Maybe I could be grandfathered in. My hands were trembling again. Rune apparently picked up part of my thought, judging by his puzzled expression. I looked away quickly, afraid to let him glimpse the half-crazy ideas boiling in my brain.

  “I was just wondering,” I said—trying to sound nonchalant, and failing miserably—“what the rule would be if a child had been conceived before that law went into effect.”

  I wasn’t looking at him anymore; I had picked up a leaf and was watching my hands twirl it idly from side to side. But I sensed his amazement, of course. “Wow,” he said. “Talk about clutching at straws. Where are you going with this?”

  We’d been so absorbed in our conversation, we hadn’t noticed Nedra standing up and folding her camp stool. Now she stumped over toward us and we both looked up. Behind her came more spellspinners—five of them. All were expressionless, and their minds were completely closed to me. I caught a flash of what Rune was feeling; guilt and alarm. He scra
mbled to his feet as if ashamed to be caught talking to me. Then his mind closed against me as well.

  Fear scampered along my nerves. I tried to keep my face as smooth and blank as theirs, my mind as tightly shuttered, but I don’t know if I succeeded. The seven spellspinners stood before me in a roughly-formed semicircle, their eyes fixed on my face. There was something formal about their stance. I didn’t like sitting on the ground while everyone else was standing up, so I stood too, brushing ineffectively at my beat-up silk skirt. I knew I was filthy, and my once-neatly-braided hair had fallen out into what I feared was a straggly mess. I felt that my disheveled appearance put me at an even worse disadvantage—as if being a prisoner wasn’t bad enough.

  The sun was low, slanting obliquely through the trees that stood all around us like pillars. Dust motes danced in the mellow golden light. The effect was cathedral-like, solemn and beautiful. The air around us was so still, I could hear the distant surf and the cry of sea birds. And then …

  Zara Norland. My name sounded all around us, deep and sonorous as the voice of God. No one’s mouth had moved. We were hearing it in our heads. Zara Norland, the voice repeated. And a third time: Zara Norland. Come into the court.

  There was something ancient in the measured words and cadence. I caught a whiff of centuries of ritual. The weight of tradition. Perhaps if I had understood it, if I had been a part of this community all my life, the summons would not have frightened me so. But as the alien in their midst—the skunk at the garden party—hearing that voice calling my name like a tolling bell filled me with horror.

  Come into the court! Where the deck would be stacked against me. Come into the court where my enemies lay in wait. Come into the court to be tried on charges I did not understand, accused by people I did not know, and found guilty of crimes my parents committed before I was born.

  My mouth went dry. My eyes darted frantically from face to face and found no hint of empathy in the gazes that met mine.

  A mindless terror seized me then. I panicked, and tried to bolt. My body slammed into the invisible barrier immediately and I screamed—whether with fear or pain I cannot say. But I was beyond reason now, hurling myself again and again against the walls of my tiny prison, beating my hands against the smooth, unforgiving surface and scrabbling idiotically for chinks or breaks or weak points. There were none, of course. The surface did not even exist—not in any real sense, not in any way that my nails could grab.

  I was almost grateful when the world disappeared in a rush of blackness and I lost consciousness.

  Chapter 17

  The faint must have been spell-induced, because when I came out of it I came out completely—and, incredibly, standing on my feet. There was no wooziness. No confusion. I knew exactly where I was, even though they had moved me while I was ‘out’ and I was somewhere I’d never been before.

  I’d glimpsed it last summer, in Lance’s memory.

  I was before the court.

  It was full dark, so I had been unconscious for a while. I was standing in a forest clearing, before a large fire built inside a ring of stones. A campfire, with a rough semi-circle of log benches curved around the other side of it. I had been placed slightly to one side, facing the benches, close enough that the firelight beat against my face, illuminating me.

  On the benches sat forty-one spellspinners. A transparent curtain of heat and smoke rose from the fire, causing their faces to seemingly waver, going in and out of focus as the firelight waxed and waned. I stood motionless, trying to keep my mind clear and blank. Giving them nothing—nothing—besides my fear.

  My fear, unfortunately, I knew I could not hide from them. It was too strong.

  To my right, also facing the rest of the spellspinners, sat seven people. One was Pearl Doyle. They were all old. A couple of them were incredibly old, too old to be trusted with any sort of important work—had they been ordinary people. But these, of course, were not ordinary people. They were the most important and powerful spellspinners of all. They were the Council.

  Lance was nowhere to be seen.

  The deep, authoritative voice that had called my name earlier spoke. “Zara Norland. Do you know why you are here?”

  To my surprise, the voice belonged to an old man so frail that he looked like a strong wind might blow him away. He was sitting half-reclined among the Council members in a peculiar-looking wheelchair stacked with pillows to support him. I was astonished that that powerful voice had issued from his wasted body. Then I realized that his true voice, the one produced by his vocal cords, was barely audible. His mind, not his body, had manufactured the voice I heard. I had heard him in my head, in true spellspinner fashion.

  Amazing.

  My voice, in contrast, piped out like a child’s. “No, sir.” My words were met with silence. I realized they were waiting for more. I cleared my throat. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Immediately my mind filled with images. Five-year-old Zara, causing strange things to happen at the commune where she and Nonny lived, drawing too much attention…forcing Nonny to grab her and flee in the night. Thirteen-year-old Zara, carelessly using her powers at Camp Greenhorn in front of sticks, getting caught by Megan O'Shaughnessy…then compounding the error by befriending said Megan O'Shaughnessy and subsequently sharing way too many secrets. Fifteen-year-old Zara at a crowded water park, impulsively intervening to stop an accident—working a ‘miracle’ that ended up on the ten o’clock news.

  The ripple of horror and anger that went through the crowd told me that everyone was receiving these images, not just me. Viewed through the Council lens, even I could see how bad it looked.

  I was glad they didn’t seem to know about Alvin—my careless skatching and my idiotic promise to explain it to him someday. What they did know was bad enough.

  The voice rolled out again. “You are a danger to us all. By risking your own exposure, you risk ours.”

  I tossed my hair back, stood up straight and flung down the only gauntlet I had. “What about this?” I sent them all an image of my last night in Cherry Glen—the crazy, dramatic attack in the gym that had ‘disappeared’ me in front of hundreds of sticks. “How many rules did you break to bring me here? If that didn’t risk exposure, I don’t know what could.”

  My defiance did not have quite the effect I expected. People seemed startled. They looked around at each other, muttering and exclaiming under their breath. Too late, I realized that I had just demonstrated to them that I was more powerful than I should be.

  I guess the beaming-images-into-multiple-brains trick was a Council-level power.

  Oops.

  Pearl spoke. She seemed unperturbed. But then, she had already come to grips with the idea that I was powerful. “Child, what we did there did not expose the rest of us. It put you in the spotlight, but only you. And you were already at risk. Our purpose was to tip the balance. Expose you completely and force you into hiding.” She looked at the rest of the Council. “And bring you here, where you belong.”

  “But she doesn’t belong.” Amber’s voice rang out, tight with anger. She rose to her feet in the second row of spellspinners and addressed the Council. “She’s here because she doesn’t belong. She’s not one of us. We don’t know where she came from. She has spellspinner powers, but how did she get them? What is she doing with them? She has no allegiance to the Council. We all know what that means.”

  “I don’t know what it means,” I said.

  Amber’s golden eyes swept over me, filled with contempt. I was painfully aware of my unkempt state. “If you don’t know, it’s not my place to tell you,” she said. “But the fact that you don’t know is just one more proof that you’re not one of us.” She sat.

  Rune, who was sitting in the first row, slowly got to his feet. He didn’t look happy. “Be with us or against us,” he said, obviously reciting from memory. “All who do not join must die. Those who band together loyal shall secure the peace thereby.” His pale blue eyes met mine across the fi
re. He shrugged. “If you’ve got something you want multiple generations to remember, make it rhyme,” he said. And sat.

  All who do not join must die. This was clearly a rule from the old days, when the Council first formed. It must be the bargain that ended the spellspinner wars.

  I spread my hands, palm up, in a gesture of appeal. “But you can’t apply this rule to me,” I said, sounding as reasonable as I could. “It would be unjust. I have been given no chance to join.”

  The Council immediately sent out images again. Lance, struggling to teach me, urging me to come to Spellhaven, trying to convince me to embrace my nature. And me, rejecting the idea in no uncertain terms, over and over.

  My heart sank.

  I heard my own voice, raised in fury: “Thanks anyway, Lance, but no thanks.” And again, a snippet from another conversation with Lance: “…that’s really what I want. Teach me how to be a spellspinner, but don’t make me actually be one.” And again, more recently: “How many times are we going to have this conversation, Lance? I get to choose my life. Not you.”

  I felt my face grow hot. How childish I sounded to them. How arrogant. What I viewed as showing strength and sticking up for myself, they viewed as acting out—like a surly little punk.

  I couldn’t call my words back. And now any plea I made would ring hollow. Beg to join them, now that I’d been told death was the only alternative? How sincere would that sound? Not very.

  I stood there, stricken, and tried in vain to come up with something to say. There was nothing I could say. Not now. My own words had indicted me.

  In the silence the fire cracked and popped, sending up a shower of sparks. They flared in a bright, momentary show, then faded to nothingness. Like I would, I thought, swallowing the metallic taste of fear. A flash of defiance, and then…ashes.

  Pearl said sadly, “Will no one speak for the child? I remind my fellow Council members that she was raised among sticks. None of us knows what that might do to us. Perhaps we should make allowances.”