by Isobel Bird
“Just as you chose your words of power to begin your journey, you’re now going to choose another challenge to end it,” Sophia told them. She indicated the box. “This is the Challenge Box,” she said. “Inside are a number of slips of paper. Each one has a challenge written on it. Each of you will select a challenge. Whatever you select will be the final test you will undergo before it is decided whether or not you’re ready for full initiation as witches.”
“Sort of like when Dorothy had to get the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West,” remarked Cooper. “That doesn’t sound too bad.”
Sophia raised an eyebrow. “Really?” she said. “There are many past class members who would disagree with you about that,” she added cryptically. “And Dorothy had her friends to help her. You’ll each be on your own.”
“What kind of challenges are they?” Annie asked.
“All kinds,” answered Sophia. “Some ask you to perform a particular task. Others require you to find something out. Each challenge is unique to the person choosing it. Or should I say to the person it chooses.”
“So if we pass the challenge, we’re in?” Kate said.
“Not quite,” Sophia answered. “The final challenge is only one of the things we consider when deciding whether or not a candidate is ready for initiation. However, I will say that if you fail to complete your challenge then it’s very unlikely that you’ll be asked to undergo initiation. But we have a way to go before we reach the point of making those decisions. Right now it’s time to find out what your challenges are. Who wants to go first?”
“I do,” Kate said, earning looks of surprise from her friends, as well as from Sophia and Archer. She blushed. “I know, I usually don’t volunteer to go first. But I want to get it over with.”
She stood up and walked to the box. At first she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to get anything out of it, as there was no discernible lid and there didn’t seem to be any way of opening it. For a moment she panicked, thinking that maybe this was the test and she was failing it. Then she noticed that the center of the box’s top panel was actually a circle of black velvet, and not wood. She poked at it with her finger and discovered that there was a slit in the velvet. She pushed her hand through and into the box.
Just as Sophia had promised, the box was filled with slips of paper. Touching them with her fingers, Kate was reminded once more of the dedication ceremony and how she’d hesitated before selecting the slip of paper with her word on it. That time she’d been terrified about what accepting the challenge meant for her life. Now she was afraid again, but for a different reason. This time she knew what accepting the challenge meant, but part of her was terrified that she might not be able to meet it. Then what would happen? If she wasn’t accepted for initiation, she would have gone through a lot of trouble for nothing.
She pushed her fears away, knowing that thinking about them wasn’t going to help. One thing she’d learned about magic was that you had to meet it head-on. Before she could second-guess herself anymore, she grabbed a slip of paper and pulled it out. She looked at it, then looked at Sophia.
“Do I tell everyone what it is?” she asked.
“No,” answered Sophia. “You should show me and Archer, because we need to know so that we can see how well you accomplish your challenge. Other than that, I recommend keeping your challenges to yourselves.”
Kate looked at her paper again, then showed it to Sophia and Archer. Archer, who was holding a notebook, wrote down Kate’s challenge. When she was done she nodded at Kate. “Good luck,” she said.
Kate returned to her seat, the slip of paper clutched in her hand. She thought about what was written on her paper. Would she be able to do it? She hoped so. But she wasn’t sure. She looked at Cooper and Annie, who were seated beside her, watching the proceedings. She very much wanted to discuss her challenge with her friends, to see what they made of the task she’d been assigned. But Sophia had told them not to. It was going to be up to her, and her alone, to figure out exactly what the words on her slip of paper meant. For the moment all she could do was watch as the others went forward to reach into the Challenge Box.
Annie was the second of the threesome to go forward. She reached in and felt around. She stirred the slips of paper with her hand, hoping that some feeling—some sign—would come to her when she touched the right one. But there were no flashes of light, no trumpet blasts or voices telling her to pick a particular slip.
You’re overanalyzing this, she told herself. That scientific brain of yours is working overtime. Just go with what you feel.
She closed her eyes, stirred some more, grabbed a handful of slips, and then let all of them but one fall from her fingers. The one that remained behind she pulled out. She showed it to Archer and Sophia before she even looked at it herself. After she’d read it, she folded it carefully and tucked it into her pocket as she returned to her seat.
Cooper waited an unusually long time before standing up and walking to the Challenge Box. But unlike Kate and Annie, once she was standing in front of it she didn’t hesitate at all. She plunged her hand in, snatched up the first slip she touched, and pulled it out. She read it, an indecipherable expression passing over her face as she did so, and then presented it to Sophia and Archer to be recorded in the book. Then she walked back to her friends and sat down.
The three friends sat and waited for the other class participants to finish choosing their challenges. None of them said anything to the others, but it was clear that they were all thinking about their own challenges. When the last person had drawn a slip from the box, Archer closed her notebook and Sophia put the black cover over the Challenge Box once more.
“Now you have your challenges,” Sophia said. “You have two weeks to complete them. We won’t have class next week, and will meet again on the fourteenth of March. At that time you will each be expected to give a short description of your challenge and how you did—or did not—complete it.”
“That’s it?” asked Cooper, sounding surprised.
“You expected more?” asked Sophia, laughing.
“Well, yeah,” Cooper said. “This is the last class, right?”
“The last regular class, yes,” Sophia answered. “After class on the fourteenth, only those people preparing for initiation will meet. There will be four preparatory classes, with the initiation following on April the thirteenth.”
“Right,” Cooper said. “So this is really the last class. Shouldn’t we do something?”
“Oh,” Sophia said. “Now I see what you’re getting at.” She and Archer were grinning broadly, as if they had been keeping a secret from the class. “You mean like a party?”
“Yeah,” Cooper said. “Like a party.”
Sophia looked at Archer. “Think you can work some magic and get us a party?”
Archer nodded. “I think I can come up with a party spell,” she said. She cleared her throat and looked solemnly at the class. “Party gods and goddesses,” she said, “come to us and bring the fun. Send us music, send us munchies, now that all our work is done.”
No sooner had she finished speaking than several people emerged from the back carrying trays of food and things to drink. They were members of the various covens involved in putting the class together, and when the class saw them they clapped and cheered.
“Party time!” called out one of the men carrying a plate of brownies. His long white hair and beard were tied with multicolored ribbons, and as he walked around the room handing brownies to people, he shook his hips like a hula dancer.
“Leave it to Thatcher,” remarked Cooper to her friends as they watched their friend from the Coven of the Green Wood. Although he was one of the older members, he was always the first one to take part in any festivities.
The harp music that had been playing changed to something more lively as someone popped a new CD into the player, and the room immediately took on a party atmosphere as everybody began talking and eating. Annie, Cooper, and Kate sto
od together, chewing Thatcher’s brownies and talking.
“I know we can’t say exactly what our challenges are,” Cooper said, her mouth full, “but what do you guys think of yours?”
Kate and Annie looked at each other. “I’m not sure I understand mine,” Kate said.
“I understand mine,” Annie said. “At least I understand what it says. But I don’t know if I understand exactly how to do it.”
Cooper nodded. “Same here,” she said.
“You’re not discussing your challenges, are you?” Archer said, sneaking up on them.
“Only in the most basic of ways,” said Annie. “Promise you won’t bust us?”
“Well, okay,” Archer replied. “But enough serious stuff. Let’s dance.”
She took Annie by the hand and dragged her off to start a spiral dance. Soon many of the others had joined in, leaving their plates of food and cups of drink for later. Cooper and Kate were swept up in the dancing as well. As they celebrated the end of class with their friends and classmates, they laughed and sang. But in the back of each one’s mind was the challenge she would soon face.
CHAPTER 2
There’s no way, Kate thought grimly as she bit off a piece of carrot stick and chewed on it. I just don’t get it. She was thinking about the challenge she’d picked the night before. At first, she’d been able to not overanalyze it too much. Yes, the words of the challenge were a little cryptic, but she’d told herself during the party that it would all come clear once she’d had a chance to sit and think it over.
Well, now she had had a chance to sit and think it over. She’d thought about it for most of the night, once she’d gotten home and into bed. And it hadn’t helped. All she’d been able to do was go over the challenge again and again in her head, wondering what it might mean. She did it again now, seeing the words that were written on the slip of paper scroll across her thoughts: “Answer the question that has no answer.”
How can a question have no answer? she asked herself. If it’s a question, then there’s an answer to it. It seemed pretty obvious to her. But clearly she was a moron, quite possibly the stupidest almost-witch there ever was. I bet Sabrina or Willow would know the answer right off the top of their heads, she thought dully.
“Hey there.”
Kate looked up and saw Tara and Jessica. They sat down at the table and opened their lunch bags, taking out plastic containers and opening the lids.
“What’s yours?” Tara asked Jessica.
“Pasta salad,” replied Jessica. “And I told my mother that I’m doing the no-carbs thing.”
“Mine’s grilled chicken,” said Tara.
The two girls swapped containers wordlessly and began eating from them. Jessica, stabbing a piece of chicken with her fork, turned to Kate. “So, you excited about New Orleans?”
“What?” asked Kate, still stewing over her challenge. “Oh, yeah, I am.”
“You’re going to love it,” Tara told her. “I went once with my parents to some jazz festival. That part was dullsville, but the city is so cool. Anne Rice lives there, you know. Ooh, maybe you’ll see her!”
“Maybe,” said Kate. “But it’s Mardi Gras, so there will probably be, like, sixty billion people there. I’m sure Anne will be in hiding.”
“I hear she likes to walk around in costume during Mardi Gras,” Jessica said knowingly. “You probably wouldn’t be able to recognize her anyway.”
Tara sighed. “I wish I was going, too,” she said. “But no. I get to spend my break right here in thrilling Beecher Falls, the world capital of excruciating boredom.”
“Look on the bright side,” Jessica replied. “You can get your English paper done.”
“Oh, right,” Tara said with mock excitement. “Because reading Jane Eyre is so much more fun than going to New Orleans.”
Kate listened as her friends continued chatting, letting their voices fade into the background as she resumed thinking about her challenge. It just didn’t make any sense to her. How could she answer a question if she didn’t know what it was? And how could she answer it if it had no answer? Why couldn’t I get something easy, like slaying a dragon? she thought miserably.
She wondered what challenges Cooper and Annie had drawn. On the bus ride home from class, they had talked about everything except the one thing they all really wanted to talk about. Kate had been surprised at how hard it was to keep her challenge a secret. After all, Annie and Cooper were her best friends. She was used to sharing practically everything with them, especially when it came to magical stuff. They’d started the class together, and they’d gone through a lot of difficult things together. But now that they were facing their final challenges, she wasn’t allowed to ask for their help. It was frustrating having to do it all on her own. Was it as hard for her friends? She didn’t know, but the insecure, worried part of her was pretty much convinced that while she was suffering, still just trying to understand her challenge, her friends had already completed theirs. She pictured them all at the initiation ceremony, Cooper and Annie smiling triumphantly as Sophia and the others did whatever they did to make them real witches, while she stood in the back watching, having failed her test. It was too much to even consider.
And thinking of failing just reminded her that she was now officially failing Ms. Ableman’s science class. After having the unfortunate luck of being paired with her arch nemesis, Sherrie, for a big-deal lab project that counted for a huge chunk of their grade, Kate had ruined any chance of getting by when she had let Sherrie’s incompetence get to her and had started a catfight with her rival. Their experiment had been completely ruined, Ms. Ableman hadn’t budged even after Kate had apologized, and the end result was that Kate was facing a big F in that class. Even the joy she’d experienced from dumping several pots of dirt on Sherrie’s head couldn’t make up for the fact that for the first time in her life, Kate was probably going to be forced to take a class over again.
She hadn’t been able to tell her parents about the F. Report cards for the period hadn’t been sent home yet, and she hoped Mr. and Mrs. Morgan wouldn’t find out about the disaster until she was back from New Orleans. If they’d known about it, they would never have agreed to let her go. Kate was sure of that. She felt a little guilty about hiding her failing mark from them, but she tried not to think about that. After all, she thought, resorting to the justification she’d been using to make herself feel better about not being entirely forthcoming with her parents, Sherrie started it.
“And gumbo,” Tara said, jarring Kate out of her thoughts. “You have got to try gumbo. I wish you could bring us back some.”
“Right,” Kate said. She hadn’t heard anything her friends had been saying, but they didn’t seem to notice. “Gumbo.”
For the rest of lunch she faded in and out of the conversation, sometimes listening to what Jessica and Tara were talking about but more often than not thinking about her own problems. When the bell signaling the next period rang, she got up with a sense of relief and tossed her garbage into the trash before leaving. She loved her friends, but she was so preoccupied with her own thoughts at the moment that she wanted to be alone.
Sadly, her next class was algebra. Math had never been one of her favorite subjects, and the fact that she had Ms. Ableman’s science class right afterward made it even less appealing. While Mr. Niemark rambled on about cosines and factors and other things Kate couldn’t possibly care less about, she found herself writing in her notebook. But she wasn’t taking notes on the lecture. She was making a list. Maybe, she thought, if she could come up with some ideas, she could get started on her challenge. At the top of a clean page she wrote:
Questions that Possibly Have No Answers
1. What is the meaning of life?
2. Why did the chicken cross the road?
3. If a tree falls and no one hears it, does it make a sound?
4. Is the glass half full or half empty?
She looked at her list and then added:
; 5. Could I be a bigger idiot?
The list was not helping. While perhaps the questions she was coming up with were valid ones (although she couldn’t possibly imagine why), she knew they weren’t what the challenge was about. That would be stupid. No, her question had to have something to do with witchcraft. That was the only thing that made sense. But what? Was there some ancient question that witches had been trying to find the answer to for centuries? Was there some legend that centered around an unanswerable question? Maybe it was a trick. Maybe she was being challenged on her knowledge of Wiccan lore.
That cheered her up a little. Maybe Sophia and the others were just trying to fool her into thinking the challenge was harder than it really was. Maybe all she had to do was figure out what story they were referring to. Perhaps her challenge was like the kind the people in fairy tales were always being presented with, like finding the key to a glass mountain, or locating a castle that lay east of the sun and west of the moon. That has to be it, she thought, feeling very clever for having figured out at least part of the challenge. Now she just had to find out what this mysterious question was. Fairy tales and legends had never been her strong suit, but how hard could it be to do some reading? She’d go to the library during ninth period, when she had study hall.
Feeling a lot more optimistic than she’d felt since selecting her slip of paper from the Challenge Box, Kate turned her attention back to Mr. Niemark and algebra. She still didn’t have much interest in the subject, but at least she was able to concentrate a little more fully now that she’d taken the first step on the road to completing her mission. As she’d been reminded over and over during her Wicca study, that first step was always the most difficult. But now that she’d begun, she was confident that she would succeed.
