The Awakening of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  Will picked up his beret, and dusted it off, looking it over carefully.

  I chewed on my pencil top. “What's with the beret?”

  He looked chagrined for a moment. “It was the only garment in the cloaking closet at the checkpoint.”

  I couldn't stop a smile. “Seriously?”

  “It took a lot of wheedling to obtain it, so I can't really complain. The ironic thing is that I had to argue for it legally. People think this layer of the world is generally magic free, but today just proves how many illegal items are here.” He shrugged. “As long as the hat is on me somewhere, it hides me from ordinary sight, and initially, that is what mattered in this foray.”

  He tucked the beret into his back pocket again and withdrew a black trivet from his jacket. It appeared identical to the one that Mr. Versetti had used. Will threw it on the ground and tossed a piece of wood at it. He looked frustrated when the wood bounced off.

  I shifted uncomfortably, feeling cold. “What is that?”

  “Portal pad. Probably better that it doesn't work in here. Should something go wrong, it's doubtful you could get me to a qualified mage in resurrection time.”

  “What is resurrection time?” The words were almost incomprehensible, I said them so quickly.

  “Ten minutes post death is allotted for resurrection. Not enough time for the soul to separate.” He looked considering. “Akin to someone being paddle-shocked on an operating room table here.”

  I leaned forward. “Allotted? But can a person be resurrected later?”

  “Necromancy is considered a black art.”

  That wasn't a no.

  “Ren?” My Mom's voice jolted me from the conversation.

  “Coming!” I checked the defense measures I had put in place for Will. They were solid. I hurried to the door, cracking it open. “Yes?”

  Mom tried to peer behind me. “Ice cream?” She held up the cup.

  “Great! Thanks!” I took it, shut the door, then hurried back to my desk.

  “Ren?” She said through the door.

  “I'm doing great, Mom!” I was doing pretty well, actually. I was going to get Will out of there, and he was going to take me to a necromancer.

  I set the ice cream to the side and focused on the drawing. “So, let's get you out of there.”

  “Great.” Will gathered up a few things around him and leaned forward. “I'm ready.”

  Ten minutes later as flowers kept blooming beneath his feet wherever he walked, he looked less enthused. “You have no idea what you are doing.”

  I chewed on my pencil top. “Nope. I'm going to make it so you can do magic. Maybe then you can get yourself out.”

  He perked up. “Great!”

  Twenty minutes later as cheerful pixies circled his head and lightning bolts alternately flashed from his new “orb,” he stared at me in a manner that said I was dead to him.

  “Does Mr. Verisetti's magic work like yours?” A shudder went through me, and it took me a moment to realize it was the first time I had said his name outside of school. I had always followed my urge to call him Mr. V when I left the school grounds. Come to think of it, I had never heard him called Verisetti outside of school...ever. That freaked me out a bit.

  “Raphael Verisetti is a mage, if that is what you mean. An extremely dangerous one. Smack on the top of the ten most wanted list. Speaking of which...why do you know him?”

  Will asked the question in concern, but his gaze wasn't judgmental. Fierce warmth rushed through me.

  But I didn't want to think of Mr. Verisetti. Betrayal was still toffee-sharp on my tongue. “I don't know him.” Anything I had thought of him as a mentor and friend had been a lie. “Maybe I could give you a magic glove that channels your magic.”

  I thought long and hard, then drew one to fit his hand. He pointed it at the pixies, which gasped in shock, then grabbed the orb and flew toward the drapes, sobbing. Will looked chagrined. The pixies disappeared into one of the three-dimensionally-drawn circles on the drapes, then the glove flew from Will’s fingers, raced toward the same circle, and disappeared within. We stared at the circle, then at each other.

  “Should I draw another?”

  He considered it. “Not now, though I might make one when I get out of here. Magical gloves are a commodity begging to be improved upon. But it only worked on the things that you had just created while thinking about how magic might work. It didn't work on the other stuff.” He pointed at the debris around him and hugged his sword closer. “Maybe we can attach your intent to the base creations of this world, though.”

  “Ok.”

  He pointed to my closet door. “You really haven't been to the magic world before?” At my negative response he looked bemused. “That looks a lot like the transport system in the main depot.”

  I looked at my door—at the winding black-and-white tubes and tunnels funneling around and through each other.

  Will held up his black trivet. “Portal pads are just one of the ways that we travel. They only work in the Second and Third Layers of the world. Well, until today when one worked here in the First.” He waved a hand at my unspoken questions about layers. “Another time. Let me tell you about portal pads.”

  He leaned forward, eager to proceed. I could recognize a fellow nerd, and knew he was about to embark upon a five thousand word dissertation.

  He seemed to read my reaction correctly, as he suddenly blushed. “Ok, let me sum up.”

  I smiled—another time I would be interested in the full dissertation. As he described how they worked, I drew a copy of his portal pad trivet on a separate piece of paper under his supervision. Since I had seen Mr. Verisetti use one, I followed the explanation well enough.

  “Magic is all about using the four cornerstones to produce solid results: intent, focus, knowledge, confidence. Send something through the portal while willing it to reappear.”

  I drew a feather and let it drop onto the trivet pad. The pad sucked over the top, enveloping it, then disappeared into the floor of the paper. I blinked. A moment later a black circle appeared on the ceiling and the feather fluttered down and out. The trivet made a suction noise, detaching from the ceiling and plopping to the bottom of the sketch.

  “Yes!” Will's hands were against the barrier of the sketch between us, expression enraptured as I drew. “I can't believe it worked the first time. I wish I could make notes. Where did it go? Did you just let your subconscious magic will it through? Or did you have the feather cease to exist before you willed it to exist again? Or did you create a pocket of space in the sketch using the fibers of the paper, like an insane origin mage might? Or was it something else entirely? I need to study art magic more. Send a gopher through, then tell me what you were thinking.”

  I blinked at Will, but gamely drew a gopher. The gopher sniffed at the trivet, then looked out at me as if to say, no way. It toddled off the screen. Concerning.

  Christian would tell me I needed to draw a gopher with more gumption. And maybe it needed to jump and not just step onto the pad. What if only half of its body made it in?

  I drew a little platform above the trivet, then drew a tiny nose-twitching gopher with little stubby legs and a big belly on a tiny frame. He looked ready to go, but I strapped a hat with earmuffs and a chin strap on him, just in case, then doodled a pair of goggles over his eyes. I accidentally wedged the edge of a goggle into a socket, and a paw reached up and nudged it into place.

  The gopher gave a salute then shuffled out onto the platform on his back legs. I halted him with my pencil tip and drew some shoes. He tucked his gopher paws against his sides, then gave three little grunts as if he were counting.

  “Aiyeeee!”

  He jumped into the air and plummeted straight down, shod feet out, like a scuba diver jumping off a bridge. The trivet dented down into the floor of the sketch, sucking the gopher halfway in. His little gopher belly-roll pushed up over the edge for a moment. He sat there, suspended for a moment, then he was sucked down
as the trivet swallowed him whole—over the top of him, disappearing after him into the white of the floor.

  I waited in dread for a choked little gopher squeal, but there was only the steady hum of Will murmuring, “Awesome” over and over. A gopher had just disappeared into a sketched oven mat and the only thing to mark the event was a small burn mark in the white floor of the sketch.

  The seconds ticked down as the time that the feather had appeared came and went. Then suddenly the ceiling pad appeared and so did the gopher, falling through the air. I caught him with the tip of my pencil and lowered him slowly to the sketched ground. The gopher raised his arms in triumph. Just like Christian after completing a touchdown pass, but stubbier.

  “Yes!” Will said. “Ok, draw a pad in here.”

  But the pad cracked and shattered in Will's sketch. Will blinked at it. “Ooookay. Try again?”

  Five more attempts yielded the same result. None of my sketched portal pads worked in Will's world. After some serious discussion with Will about alternate forms of travel, I tried doors, tethers, rips, windows, mirrors, and keyholes. All of the lines would crack and break as soon as I formed the intent to release Will from his prison.

  On the other hand, since I tried each mode of transport in the practice sketch first, gophers were dropping, diving, squeezing, and sucking through portals and gateways in their created world like small mad beasts. Little “Aiyeee!” yells punctuated the air.

  I tried to change my emotion. The gopher sketch turned into a serious, marching battle formation. I then thought happy thoughts and flowers bloomed and the rodents did a series of can-can style kicks, before pirouetting and leaping into portals.

  Will suggested drawing gates, water pools, tubes, pipes, and pockets next. Gophers swam and slid. But as long as my intent was to port Will out of his sketch, nothing stayed whole on his paper long enough for a field trial. Will swept the last of the broken charcoal lines into the now towering pile of trash in the corner.

  He became more energized and excited the more we failed. As if the entire process was the best thing that had happened to him—aside from the imminent death part.

  “Back to materials,” he said. “That blue paint. Energy in, energy out. Paint in, paint out. Some magic only works to the reverse of what was put into it.” He looked at me expectantly. “We need to retrieve that tube of paint that got dropped.”

  I didn't want to go back to school.

  Will's expression was full of hope. I looked down at my hands. “My parents installed an alarm system downstairs a few weeks ago.”

  They hadn't even been able to look me in the eye the day it had been installed—weeks too late in their minds. I looked up to see Will's hopeful expression disappear.

  “I...” I swallowed, then shook my head, unable to look at him.

  I flicked off my light and took a deep breath, then crept to my door and opened it a crack. A broom was propped next to my door. Mom had been cleaning again. She didn't even put the supplies away any more, knowing she'd just be off on another tear the next day.

  I could hear her sobbing in their room even though the volume on their TV was almost loud enough to drown out the sounds. I slumped against the doorjamb, head resting uncomfortably against the wood, listening to my strong mother cry herself to sleep.

  As the sounds grew weaker, I closed my door softly and walked unsteadily back to my desk. “We'll go in thirty minutes,” I said quietly.

  Chapter Four: Unwise Actions

  Thirty minutes, a sheet protector, and some safety pins later, Will and his sketch were attached to the front of my black hoodie, and I was slowly removing the screen from my non-alarmed second-story window.

  I tightened the straps on my slim black backpack. It would allow me to move quickly and avoid getting stuck going in and out of the window. The porch roof was a few feet to the side of my window and about five feet lower—an oversight in my parent's alarm installation. Using a chair to balance my arms in a strange push-up, I stuck my legs backward through the window, then pushed out and lowered myself down. I could hear Will swear as the protected paper crumpled a bit when my chest moved over the frame. I dangled for a moment, holding on by my fingertips, then swung my legs over to the porch. As soon as one black moccasin touched, I went with the motion, pushing upright.

  Getting back inside the house would require a leap and some extra arm strength, but I'd worry about that later.

  I took in a deep breath as I stood on top of the porch and looked out into the dark, silent night. It wasn't the first time I had been out past curfew. Over the years, I had accompanied Christian on everything from post-midnight capture-the-flag battles to TP'ing houses. But I had never been on a mission without him.

  “You still with me?” Will asked, voice muffled by the sheet protector. We had debated the merits of puncturing the sketch with a pin and had decided attaching pins through the holes of a sheet protector was the better alternative, even though the barrier muffled Will's voice.

  I took another deep breath and held up my thumb in front of the sketch, then made my way slowly to the edge where I'd have to jump down to the deck.

  My moccasins made no sound as I landed. First mission accomplished, I put up my hood, tightened the straps on my pack an inch more, then took off into the night.

  “You live in a creepy neighborhood,” Will said as I jogged along the wooded path behind our house.

  I hesitated, then held up a thumb in front of the sketch again, the rest of my hand wrapped around my closed utility knife. The trees had never seemed creepy before the night we'd been attacked. Now shadows jumped and parted everywhere.

  It was a fifteen minute walk to school. Jogging, I made it in eight, with one hand wrapped around my can of pepper spray and the other around my knife.

  The sidewalks in front of the school were brightly lit, which threw darker shadows farther out. The wall of bushes Will and I had stumbled behind was not near a light. I darted looks in every direction as I quickly made my way toward it. I crouched down with the bushes at my back, the sound of my short, quick breaths filling my ears.

  “Ren?” Will asked, voice concerned.

  I held out a thumb in front of the sketch. Pull it together, Ren. Reaching back, I withdrew my flashlight from the open side pocket of my pack.

  Flashlight stuffed between my ear and shoulder, I rummaged under the bushes. Sitting between a familiar brown hair clip and ballpoint pen was a plain white tube of paint with a blue smudge around the lip of the cap—shining brightly beneath a gnarled branch.

  My fingers clumsily closed around it.

  “Yes,” Will crowed. I could almost hear him dancing about. “Let's get out of here.”

  I pulled my small backpack off of one shoulder and unzipped it. I nudged the charcoal pencil aside and heard it tap against Christian's lock pick set in the bottom of the bag. Mine had been confiscated by my parents in the hospital while I had been comatose. Luckily, since they hadn't known we'd had one set, they didn't know we had two. I dropped the tube in along with my other forgotten items and moved the gopher sketch so that I could zip the bag back up. The gophers were still zipping and zooming about.

  “You. Hold it.”

  I jumped at the sudden voice and the heavy Scottish accent. A large man dressed in black was quickly advancing down the sidewalk toward me. His brows were furrowed as he looked down at some sort of scanning device in his hand.

  A device just like the one Christian's killer had had. I crouched, frozen, staring at it.

  “Run.” Will yelled.

  The man reacted to Will's muffled shout, narrowed his eyes, and pointed the scanner at me. A light shot from the sketch on my chest and impacted the scanner, sending it flying through the air. I scrambled backward and the gopher paper fell to the grass. The Scottish man didn't waste any time going after his scanner, though, and threw something in his hand at me instead. I dove to the side, rolling with the motion, and came up behind a tree.

  Like play
ing paintball—except there was no Christian to flash signs to, telling him the best field positions. And, again, the enemy wasn't throwing paint.

  A bolt of green shot past and a chunk of the tree three feet to my left exploded. At the point of impact, a net stretched nearly invisible tendrils through the air, then slowly collapsed to the ground when they found nothing but wood chips in their embrace. I couldn't catch my breath, so I clutched my pepper spray with tight fingers.

  The ground shook all around us.

  “A kid?” The heavy Scottish accent sounded irritated. “They left me here for a kid? Well, come on. Whatever little trick you have there won't work for long. I can just destroy that tree too—give you a good concussion or worse. Don't make this more difficult.”

  “Do not go,” Will warned in a low voice.

  “Whatever you've done wrong, they'll work it out with your parents, after your questioning.” When I still didn't move, his voice changed perceptibly. I could hear the soft crunch beneath his feet as he slowly approached. “You don't want to get me irritated. Every capsule that you make me waste costs a hundred slaw, and I'll rip each loss out of you.”

  I peered around the other side of the tree to see him reloading something, my rodent sketch at his feet. Blue seeped oddly from the edge of the rodent sketch, the color growing fainter and blending in as it spread across the page threads. I looked down at my fingers. They were clean. But I had touched the lip of the tube...the blue smudge at its closure.

  The man smirked at me and stepped forward. “There now. Just come along and—”

  The edges of the paper crumpled around the sides of his boot.

  Schwoop.

  I pulled back, harsh, unforgiving breaths issuing from my chest.

  “What is happening?” Will's voice was stressed. “Why aren't we running?”

  An owl hooted, and the area grew brighter as lights popped on in the houses across the street from the school. I could hear voices yelling down the street about an earthquake and lightning strike. I peeked back around the tree. Only the paper remained. I turned fully so Will could see. “I think...I think I gophered him somewhere.”