by Rain Oxford
“Stop! No one can jump that far!” I yelled. I only meant to warn the creature, but somehow, the magic inside me called to my wand. I felt energy heat up in my blood like anger, and my wand flashed with a violent red light in the fox’s mouth. Suddenly, the fox stumbled and rolled.
To my horror, the animal made no move to stop himself from rolling right off the ledge and into the water. I didn’t think before jumping into the rushing water after him. Fortunately, I didn’t have my sorcerer’s robe, or it would have been impossible. As often as I had to swim for my life from my brothers, I was a decent swimmer, although I had never tried to swim in such violent water. I swam with the stream towards the fox that was bobbing up and down in the water without thrashing or even struggling to breathe.
The water was so fast and rough that I could barely see. Finally, and quite unexpectedly, I caught the little fox, only to realize why he was so motionless. It was my fault! My magic had frozen the fox and he couldn’t swim.
I held him to my chest and kept his head above the water. He was as still as a stone. I tried to retrieve my wand, but it would have broken his teeth and a fox needed his teeth. That was when I heard the waterfall. I struggled to see over the crashing waves and sure enough, we were heading right for a drop. I stopped trying to retrieve my wand and instead swam with all my strength and speed to dry land.
Although we weren’t that far away, the current was pushing us to the middle and I couldn’t swim very well one-handed. Keeping the fox’s head out of the water was impossible. I focused on my wand in the fox’s mouth and imagined us floating out of the water. I had levitated a massive pirate ship, so this should have been easy.
It wasn’t. I tried with everything I could to do the spell, only to be dragged under the water’s surface.
And then, suddenly, the ground was gone and we were falling. I didn’t have time to do magic or worry about being splattered on the rocks below. All I could do was close my eyes, clutch the fox, and wait for it. Protect us.
After a moment, I still heard the crashing of water all around me. I was still alive. Furthermore, I wasn’t drowning. I opened my eyes just a tiny crack at first, then fully when I saw what was happening. I was floating above the river inside a huge bubble. Water beat against the bubble and was reflected. It was a ward, but not even Magnus could create a ward against the elements. The only one I knew who was powerful enough to do this was my mother.
As the bubble slowly floated to the shore, I glanced around for my mother, but there was no one in sight, and it was my own wand that was glowing with glittery, blue light. I had unintentionally created a ward much more powerful than the ones I was taught.
I always thought wizard magic was as powerful as sorcerer magic, and it was only a combination of motive and experience that made one person more powerful than others. According to Merlin, my neutral magic was theoretically supposed to mean I could do both sorcery and wizardry, not that I was good at either of them.
Deciding that I could worry about that later, I laid the fox on the ground gently and tried to wake him. Although I still couldn’t get my wand out of his mouth, plenty of the handle stuck out the side of his mouth. I took hold of it, closed my eyes, and focused. Heal.
The magic inside me stirred, but the fox did not. Healing was mage magic.
I concentrated harder on healing. My mother had never taught me how to help people, but breaking curses was something I had learned to do on my own. I let my magic pour through my wand into the fox and encountered my own spell. Healing the fox over my curse wouldn’t work; I had to break it. Since the curse had been created out of desperation, I knew exactly how to go about it.
The danger for me and my wand was over; all that was left was to save the fox that had never intended to harm my wand. My internal peace and the desire to help him guided my magic as I focused on freeing the fox and imagined the fox moving again. I felt the curse start to unravel.
And then I realized that there was another curse underneath it.
Before I could work on it, the fox bounced up, licked my face, and dashed off my lap. He still had my wand. “Please give that back!” I said, keeping a firm hold on my magic.
The fox bounded towards me until I reached out to him, and then he jumped back when I tried to reach for my wand. With a sigh, I stood and followed him. I didn’t run this time as he ran into the woods, and he didn’t run out of sight. He stayed just out of reach, obviously leading me somewhere.
I considered using magic, but I already felt extremely guilty for what I did. When we broke from the forest again, I groaned. “This can’t be good.” There was a cabin right in the middle of a small clearing. The fox went right up to the front door and turned to me. “Whose cabin is this?” I asked. There were several trees around the house that were dead, indicating the presence of sorcery. Even more bothersome were the glittering rainbow flowers surrounding the cabin, because that meant there were fairies about.
Fairies were known enemies of sorcerers and if a cluster of them caught me in their territory, my wizard magic would mean nothing. I was a sorcerer by blood.
The fox pawed the door lightly, as if it wanted me to open it and let him in. “I’m not going in there.” I didn’t even cross the threshold of dead trees. The fox sat and a moment later, the door opened… to a bear. The sound I uttered was as embarrassing as it was involuntary.
The bear waved.
I squeaked and hid behind the tree.
After a moment, when I didn’t hear the running bear or feel his claws trying to rip me open, I peeked around the tree. The fox and bear hadn’t moved. In fact, they looked like they were frowning at me. Then, thankfully, they both went into the cabin.
“Okay, something is definitely weird about this,” I whispered to myself aloud. Foxes and bears didn’t live in cabins in the woods together. It wasn’t natural. When I realized what I was thinking, I sighed. It certainly wasn’t my place to judge them. I was a wizard/sorcerer. What right did I have to judge a bear and a fox for living together in a cabin? “I think I’m losing my mind.”
I turned and found myself face to face with a huge jaguar. “You may very well be correct,” the cat said, her lips displaying sharp fangs as they contorted for speech.
I did what any sensible person would do in my situation; I screamed and climbed up the tree.
The jaguar sighed. “Oh, do come down. You are making a fool of yourself.” Her words were clear and her voice was feminine, almost with a purr.
I climbed higher, not even caring that I was scraping every bit of exposed skin on me. Then I grabbed the wrong branch, which snapped. Suddenly, I was falling, and every branch I could reach on the way down barely slowed my fall. Using the very best of my survival skills, I managed to land on my back instead of my head.
The jaguar sighed again. “Are you done?”
“Done what?!”
“Did you think you could escape me by climbing a dead tree? Now, if you would calm down, I will explain why---”
“How are you talking to me?!” I screeched, interrupting the jaguar.
She snarled. “I will explain that if you would calm down.”
“How can I calm down?! You’re a talking jaguar!”
“I am not as I appear.”
That got through to me and I tried to control my shock. “So you’re… like a shapeshifter? Are you a werecat?”
“Not hardly. My name is Eva. I was a mother and a wife, until a sorceress cursed my family. We need your help.”
“A sorceress?”
“Why would a sorceress curse you?”
“Because they are evil.”
I tried to keep the scowl off my face. “You’re lying. Curses are easy and sorcerers do them all the time, but not like this. The amount of magic it would take to transform you would be taxing even to the best sorcerers. You did something to anger her. I’m not helping you if you won’t tell me what you did.”
She scowled for a moment before her expression relaxed and
she looked down at her paws. “My husband stole from her.”
“And you call me foolish.”
“We had to eat. He only stole some food. It was a terrible winter. The sorceress tracked us here, killed my husband, and transformed myself and my two children.”
“So the fox and the bear are…?”
“They are my children, yes. Hayla said she saw you a few days ago practicing your wizardry by the creek. We had hoped you would be willing to help us.”
I opened my mouth to explain that I wasn’t a wizard, but instead asked, “Why are there fairies here?”
“There is only one fairy, and she only visits occasionally. She protects us from sorcerers because Hayla became friends with them when she was a small child.”
I considered my next words carefully. If I broke the curse, at least it would make up for cursing the little fox. Of course, it was just as much her fault for taking my wand in the first place. I had never been good at sorcery, but I still had the blood of a sorcerer, so I couldn’t cross the fairy barrier. “Have your children come outside and bring my wand back to me and I will do what I can to break the curse.”
“Why not come into the house?”
“I never go into a stranger’s house, especially not one in the middle of the woods. There are sorcerers around, after all,” I said. That was a perfectly good excuse.
She looked like she was going to argue for a moment before she finally nodded. “Very well. I understand the concern with things as they are.” She started to walk away.
“Wait. What do you mean?”
“With the black star approaching.”
“The what?”
She frowned. “You don’t know what the black star is? What wizard doesn’t know about the black star?” She shrugged. “If you weren’t warned about it, I am sure it must be a myth. You would have to be the lousiest wizard in history not to know about it.”
I opened my mouth to ask, but she was already walking away. It was probably for the best. Eva entered the cabin and returned a short time later followed by the bear and the fox. Eva had my wand in her mouth this time, and when she reached me, I took it from her easily.
Having seen several fully grown bears in person, as well as a werebear, I realized this bear was quite small. Even the fox was on the small side. I studied my wand. Although there were a few nicks from the fox’s fangs, it hadn’t been in perfect condition beforehand.
“Now, please break the curse,” Eva requested.
“I will do what I can, but only one at a time.”
Eva and the fox stepped back, indicating that I break the curse over the bear first. They probably assumed there was no danger in breaking a curse. There hadn’t been any in breaking my own curse, but there were different kinds. Some were more devastating to break than they were to suffer through.
Using my wand to guide and enhance my magic, I let my magic flow into the bear. The first thing I sensed was the curse, which I ignored for a moment to see if the person was strong enough to handle it being broken. Although he was healthy, he was just a child.
Then I focused on the curse. It was stronger than I was used to dealing with, definitely stronger than my brothers’ curses, but not the strongest I had ever seen. The sorceress had created it out of spite and did so with great detail. This was not an afterthought. I wouldn’t be able to hack at it the same way I could with my brothers’ curses.
But all curses had a weakness because all sorcerers had a weakness. This curse was simple; make the kid into a bear. There was nothing in it to alter the boy’s behavior to make him act like a bear or even to give him bear instincts. When a curse was rooted in someone’s magic, it was often fatal to remove. Fortunately, this boy had no magic, so the magic was just wrapped around him. I tested it for soft spots, literally. Even the most vile sorcerers could feel regret over something, and that usually laced their curses. Of course, that could also be the strength behind their magic.
There were no soft spots; the sorceress was very certain in her desire to curse the boy. I looked for anything that she might have missed. Sometimes, people will have a natural resistance to magic, especially curses, if they were cursed as a very small child. Some curses could even be worn down through constant resistance over years.
By acting like a person instead of a bear, the child would have been wearing it down if it had any stipulation on his behavior, but the sorceress was more clever than that. Since I couldn’t find the weakness in it, I would have to do it the harder way; I would have to attack the spell.
I pulled my magic away from the bear. “It’s too dangerous to break like this. I need to return home and get supplies.”
“Supplies?” Eva asked.
“I need to draw the magic out of him, and I’m not strong enough to do that with my wand alone.”
“Can’t you just break it?”
“It could kill him.”
“What about killing the sorceress?”
“Well, that would work, but---”
“Then do that,” Eva interrupted.
“This sorceress is powerful. I’m not going to fight her if I can help it.”
“Which is less dangerous for my son?”
“Obviously, if I went and fought the sorceress it would be less dangerous for him, but much more for me. I’m not going to do it.”
She scowled. “Then we will find another wizard who is braver!”
“So be it, but you need to look for a wizard who is a fool, not brave. I will return home. If you change your mind and you wish for me to break the curse my way, you can find me at Magnus’s castle, just south of the creek Hayla found me at.”
She growled. “You will regret refusing to help us.”
“I never refused to help you; I refused to clean up the mess you made by fighting the sorceress you stole from.”
She lunged at me, and if I wasn’t already riled up, I would have been terrified. Instead, I raised my wand and a sinister red fire lit up the tip of it in a threatening manner. Eva’s eyes widened with shock as she jumped back. “You aren’t a wizard! You’re a sorcerer!”
I considered correcting her and saying that I was both, but that was not a concept she would understand. I still didn’t understand it. Without another word, I turned and walked away. My wand still glowed until I was sure I wasn’t being followed. Since I had no idea which way the castle was, I knew it was going to be a long day.
* * *
My brothers were devastatingly cruel and slang curses without considering the consequences, but I knew what they didn’t. We were all my mother’s pawns, which was why she never wanted us to learn to read. My father taught me in secret. Although my two oldest brothers were very powerful, none of us could challenge my mother, and it wasn’t just because of our magic.
There were different kinds of curses. What she taught my brothers and me was meant to temporarily incapacitate our enemies, but she certainly wasn’t teaching any of us to take over the family in the future. The kind of curses she and other powerful sorcerers could do made my skin crawl. The most powerful curses I read about were created for other magic people and creatures; they bonded to the person’s magic itself.
For example, my mother once cursed a man to build her a castle. The man was even supposed to make the blocks. My mother was aware of how much the man was loved by his family and the other people of his village, so she was unconcerned when they sent for a powerful wizard. Two came to help, only to refuse when they saw him. They knew what kind of curse had been placed on the poor man, yet they would only say that it was too dangerous to break it.
My mother made us watch this all and my brothers thought it was the greatest thing they’d ever seen. I wished I had enough magic to break the curse. Unfortunately, the third wizard to visit the cursed man wasn’t as wise as the previous two. He had the power to break the curse and he did so, but the curse was rooted in the man’s magic. My mother knew something the man himself didn’t even know; he had latent wizard powers. Although
it never manifested, magic did make up the essence of his life, and in breaking the curse, the wizard shredded the man’s hidden magic.
The curse was broken and the man turned to stone. To my horror and my mother’s delight, so did every member of his family. His children, grandchildren, siblings, nieces and nephews, and everyone else who shared his blood all turned to stone. My brothers cheered for my mother’s brilliance. They never realized how much my mother kept from us. She made us loyal to her out of fear, not love, and we all knew we were expendable to her.
* * *
By the time I reached the castle, right as the sun was setting, I was cold, hungry, and tired. At least the warm sun had dried my clothes, but my boots were still at the creek and my feet were in bad shape. I had another pair in my room, though, so I didn’t worry. I went to the front gate, which opened by itself. The gate knew me, which was great because I couldn’t sneak back into the castle grounds without setting off Magnus’s wards.
I proceeded cautiously, opened the front door quietly, and saw no one standing around the entranceway, so I decided to sneak to my room. If Magnus wanted me, he would know where to find me.
I reached the top of the steps and turned to walk down the hall… only to be blocked by Magnus. The wizard scowled and crossed his arms.
“Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been? Where were you? How did you get out of the castle?”
“I didn’t know I was a prisoner.”
“Your mother might be after you. I thought you were in danger.”
“Oh.” He had a good point, which made me feel guilty. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have left without telling you. I didn’t mean to be gone so long.” I explained what happened with the fox. When I was done, he looked concerned.
“I see. I suggest we do a little more training with your wizardry and for you to stop sneaking out of the castle.”
