The Awakening of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  The reader panned in just as a familiar paper winged its way toward Marsgrove. If he found any of my items in there, I prayed he would just think they were ones he had forgotten to remove.

  It didn't matter. I was here. Unable to leave. I could choose to be freaked out and scared, or I could do this thing until I was caught. I would get Christian raised and be ready the next time someone tried to do something to me without my permission. Or the next time someone decided to destroy a town around me.

  The dorm starting shaking. I could feel seismic shock waves running through the mountain. I knelt to the floor, touching it with my fingertip. Please, please, please don't let me have destroyed this too. The tremors lessened. I placed my palm down on the tile, and everything around me crystallized—slowing like it did whenever I entered “the zone.” Heal, heal, heal. The rumbling stopped completely.

  For several seconds everything was unnaturally silent, then the chatter out in the hall started again. I laughed shakily at the thought that I had tried to tell a mountain to stop destroying itself and for a moment believed it to be possible. Delia from the student center would applaud such self-delusion. I touched my reader in order to tune it to campus news. The professors must be doing something.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  I approached the door warily. An extremely harried student officer stood on the other side.

  “Hell of a morning. And it says here that you racked up a substance abuse offense two hours ago, eluded pursuit, then racked up two more substance offenses in the last fifteen minutes. That adds up to a Level Three.” He shook his head. “Listen, kid. There is no reason to use this much, even with the world being as screwed as it is. Get some help. A Level Three is serious. The punishment I'm going to give you allows three days of leeway, but my advice is—do it in the first two, don't push that third day. Maybe some hard punishment will stop you wanting a fix?”

  I wasn't capable of speaking anything other than the wooden acceptance response that was required. He handed down my punishment—molted firesnake skin collection on the fourth circle. Even through my numbness, that seemed weird. What the h—

  “Take these.” He handed over three pieces of paper that had popped out of his tablet. “And be a good citizen from now on.”

  One paper contained the campus address of a substance abuse facility. The second gave the drop-off address for the five skins I was supposed to collect. The third was a general student advisory that I read as I closed the door.

  Mountain integrity has been assured. Travel Restriction Advisory: Students may not leave Excelsine unless accompanied by a Department official or the Academy President.

  I dropped the paper to the floor. Guarding me or guarding against me? I needed a guard against this world. Magic streamed from beneath my cuff as if it was no barrier at all.

  The paper at my feet flew over to the fist-sized piece of arch rock that contained the first dollop of paint I had squeezed from the new tube. The paper wrapped around the rectangular rock, covering it tightly, then binding to it. Little arms and legs grew through the rock's sides, as the paper was absorbed into the stone.

  My wild anger fled, and I knelt by the bed to watch as the rock waddled around. It picked up a pencil that had spilled from one of my bags and thumped the pointed end down, standing at attention like a small sentry. A guard. I looked at the door nervously, but no one knocked to arrest me for the effects of my wild magic or the paint I had already been punished for.

  I reached out a finger and the rock's free hand clasped around the tip, giving it one firm shake, as if we were sealing a pact. It thumped the pencil against the Picasso bull of my Guernica bedspread and stood at attention again.

  My magic might leap to my chaotically guarded intentions, but my paint...made things live. Creation. Life.

  “Me,” Christian said.

  The door opened and I whirled around. Olivia stopped dead in the doorway, eyes sweeping over the utter mess strewn everywhere.

  I waved my hand behind my back, hoping the rock could interpret hand gestures and would stay put. “Uh, I'll just, uh, get this all cleaned up now.”

  She thumped her books on her desk and turned her back on me.

  Shakily, I started shoving things into drawers. I swallowed hard. It felt so permanent. I levitated an empty notebook toward the desk. Paint drop flowing, powering—

  The notebook burst into pulp, landing on the floor like lumps of papier-mâché splatting. I stared, then tried to levitate an empty trash bag. Paint drop flowing, powering—

  A trash bag banshee formed and screamed, diving toward me. Holy—!

  It fell harmlessly to the floor, trash bag rippling for a moment before stilling. Swallowing, I decided to do the rest of the cleaning by hand.

  Even so, my desk tried to bite me. Twice. For no reason that I could deduce other than that I had been thinking of how hungry I was. The toilet tried to swallow me whole when I absently wondered where the pipes went. And I was pretty sure my dresser drawer ate one of my socks when I was contemplating a change in wardrobe.

  Throughout it all, Olivia read her books and paid no attention to me. Existing in a world of which I was not really a part.

  I felt for Christian's magic mingling with mine, and clasped it to me. Not alone. Not alone.

  “Ren, stop hurting yourself.”

  “Enslave them! Let me free!”

  I sat down on my bed and stared at the sketch that had brought me here, as Olivia packed and headed for her next class.

  “Free me! Help me.”

  I closed my eyes tightly and hugged the familiar sound of his voice to me while quickly drafting a sketch of him. My fingers hovered over the lavender tube, but reached instead for the store bought one.

  Two minutes later, I closed the door on the second beleaguered looking officer, who had added on an additional skin to my collection punishment.

  I looked at the lifeless sketch of my brother and the paint that was smudged along his arm, tossed the useless art store tube in a drawer, and carefully withdrew the lavender paint.

  The woman in the Kinsky painting had looked as if with just a little bit of magic, she could walk free. That she could have been real, if the artist had willed it.

  “I want you here, Christian,” I whispered.

  “Yes, do it now!”

  “Will...will I be me?”

  “Of course you will.” I touched a fingertip to his forehead, then stroked it down his cheek, thoughts of our last real conversation in my mind, magic flowing out wildly from beneath my cuff. The paint spread out and along the penciled lines, blooming into the colors in my mind's eye as his skin turned a healthy hue, his hair turned brown, and his eyes brightened to teal. Sapphire slowly circled the irises.

  My brother screamed in my mind, making me flinch.

  Then his teal eyes blinked.

  “Christian?” His name barely made it past my heaving breaths. Every emotion and muscle I possessed clenched, and so many brain chemicals collided together I could barely form thought. “Are you ok?”

  “I feel strange.” His brows drew together and he looked at his flesh-colored hands, stretching and retracting his fingers. Shadows shifted behind him in the flat sketch.

  “Well, you've been dead a while,” I said somewhat hysterically.

  He looked at me blankly and I hastily added, “You left me.”

  No. I hadn't meant to say that either.

  “It's ok. It's all going to be ok.” I could feel the hysteria overtaking me, so I took a few deep breaths. Focus. Concentrate. Brother alive and in sketch. Win!

  But the hysteria screamed that something was very wrong.

  “I feel strange.” His brows drew together and he looked at his hands, stretching and retracting his fingers. “But good strange. Like I've just made twelve perfect passes and could complete a hundred more.”

  A piercing alarm sounded in my brain.

  “It will be ok.”

  “This is our year, Ren. It's
all about continuing a benevolent dictatorship and having fun. And it is time for you to become a general, instead of first lieutenant.”

  He stopped suddenly. There was a blankness behind his eyes that was wrong. Wrong, wrong.

  “Christian?”

  “I feel strange.” His brows drew together and he looked at his hands, stretching and retracting his fingers.

  The piercing alarm finally spit out a full report.

  Our last conversation. His actions just as I remembered from that night. The blankness as he couldn't find anything new to say. This wasn't Christian. It was my memory of him.

  I grabbed the tube of lavender. I could fix it.

  I just needed to get him out of there. Even if he was a not-quite-real version of my brother, I'd fix him afterward. I thrust paint on the paper and tried to push my fingers inside, but it didn't work.

  Then suddenly, the top edge of Christian's head peeled away. Like a sticker pulled downward from a page, Christian separated, tipping forward and toddling along the surface of my bedspread on paper legs, arms windmilling as his body bent forward and back—a barely two-dimensional cutout.

  My lips parted, but nothing emerged. He toddled around unsteadily. The enchanted arch rock helpfully steadied him when he nearly fell over near the foot of the bed. When he tripped back toward the head, only reflexes made my fingers shoot out and grip him before he fell off the bed.

  Holding him in my palm, he looked up at me with blank teal eyes.

  “I feel strange,” he said with his rosy paper lips.

  Then he spontaneously combusted, the paper burning quickly. I let the flames burn my hand, unable to look away or drop the ashes.

  I carefully put the ashes in a Ziploc bag, then numbly collected my punishment of two more firesnake skins from the same beleaguered looking second officer—bringing my total to eight.

  I stared out the window for a long time, the rock sitting beside me.

  The same thought tumbled over and over. The woman in the Kinsky painting had looked as if with just a little bit of magic, she could walk free. That she could have been real, if the artist had willed it.

  But I couldn't recreate Christian. Unlike one of the art pieces in the art store, where the adventures and characters were programmed to work with one's magic like a Choose Your Adventure, I didn't want a fake Christian that I could pretend was real—with my memories of him creating a distorted, real person. I wanted the real Christian, who always surprised me. Who sometimes knew me better than I knew myself. Who did things that exasperated me.

  I wanted Christian with his grumpy morning temper and all. I...couldn't trust something I created purely from my magic and mind to be the actual Christian.

  I opened the book I had purchased and started reading. It was all about storage theories and the abilities needed to make them. Kinsky was briefly mentioned. I definitely needed to look up more about him later.

  But a storage space...

  A three-dimensional construct...

  A place where I could safely store Christian's soul...

  If I could trap his true soul, I could then make him a body with which to walk free.

  There were a thousand different things I needed to research. A million more than I needed to try. And a billion magical ideas, constructs, and limitations that I didn't even know existed yet.

  It was a good thing I didn't have time to question the existence of magic or my place in the world. Because I only had nine weeks in which to succeed.

  ~*~

  I met Will at our predetermined meeting spot—the busy fifth circle west arch that ported to the third circle east area where Rubens Hall was located. I had spent the entire afternoon drafting storage constructs, then had performed a two-hour grid search on soul binding.

  “You look tired,” Will said promptly.

  “Rough day.”

  Will shook his head as we waited in the line for the arch. “For everyone. Some weird rumors circulating that the mountain almost split. And other things.”

  I gripped the straps of my bag, holding some of the weight off my shoulders. I was carrying far fewer things, but everything now weighed far more. “Like what?”

  “About the weird porting abilities in Ganymede and the identities of the mages involved in the attacks. People are freaking out about an unknown origin mage on the loose.”

  I could see Alexander Dare and a group of combat mages conferring under the Dormitory One arcade.

  Will snorted. “I think they had to up the enchantment levels in the cafeteria to keep everyone calm. Sucks that campus is on lock down. Lolinet Village is locked down too—someone blew an entry arch that in turn destroyed half a dozen others in Lolinet's central henge. The arch from here was one of the ones destroyed. I want to go to Ganymede and get a look—see what was used for porting. The Department is deliberately choosing which parts of the recording enchantments to show the public, so I don't even have an educated guess.”

  “Recording enchantments?” Alarming. More alarming than calming enchantments even. “Like they have security tapes of the entire town?”

  Will nodded. I stumbled through the arch. They would show me speaking to Raphael Verisetti.

  “But they must have been damaged by the wild magic involved, or else they would have broadcast them by now,” Will said, as he too came through.

  Unless they were biding their time. I forced my feet forward. Marsgrove already knew about me. Keep moving. “Do you think the meeting is still on for tonight, with everything else going on?” It was a risk for me to go anywhere at this point, but I needed to know everything about productive art magic that I could find.

  Will waved a hand. “Course. World is threatened all the time. Every time you experienced a really weird weather event or unnatural sighting in the First Layer, I guarantee something crazy happened in one of the others and bled or shifted through. We are usually the layer that most affects the others, but that is least affected ourselves. The average Second Layer mage is great at pretending everything is normal, but the hard core conspiracy theorists, old magic users, and combat mages on campus will be out plotting tonight, make no mistake.”

  A bunch of student vigilantes. Likely with Dare as their head. Great.

  “They'll open school back up to the outside tomorrow, and no one will care.”

  I really hoped that would prove true.

  We approached the building. I was hoping simply to get through the door without setting off an alarm at this point.

  I carefully entered Rubens Hall behind Will, who had launched into a recitation about everything he wanted to learn. No alarm activated upon entrance, though there had been no alarm activated in the art building entrance either. Six adults were talking together near the entryway.

  “What do you think he will do next, Lucille?” asked a man dressed in black.

  “Do I look like his pen pal, Gregor?” a cool, thirty-something blonde said sharply. She had really great, severe cheekbones. I was totally sketching those later. As if she could feel my gaze, her scathing glance turned in my direction. Her eyes narrowed immediately and there was something strange and unreadable in her expression.

  I quickly looked back to Will, who was still counting out points on his hand for what he wanted to get out of the session. I nodded along with point number eleven, then turned my gaze back to the woman.

  She was still staring at me—or more accurately, at the top of my head. I felt a little prick on my arm, like something had poked me. Jumping a bit, I rubbed the spot. She abruptly turned on her heel and walked down the hall.

  “Did she just walk away from me?” The man referred to as Gregor looked astounded.

  Someone snorted. “She walked away from all of us. I can't believe your infatuation is still intact after all this time. Didn't she turn you into a goat last year?”

  Someone else snickered. “A female goat, too.”

  Will walked through the door to the lecture hall, not noticing my hesitation. I tentative
ly stepped through. No siren sounded, but a light brush of magic registered on my skin. My paranoia was tagging everything as a threat.

  “Ren, come on,” Will said, three steps ahead. “There are two seats on the aisle.”

  I gave a shaky laugh, rubbing my arm again. “Coming.”

  I pulled my pack around and clutched it in my lap as we sat. The people to the right of us were holding little paddles. I hoped there wasn't some hazing ritual associated with being an artist.

  Will was craning his head, looking around. “It looks like there are a bunch of student-made supplies up front. Do you want to go look?”

  “Sure.” Maybe they had charcoal. I cursed my tunnel vision which had made me totally focused on paint while in the art shop. I should have picked up some magic charcoal or magical sketching pencils or bargained Mr. Verisetti into throwing some in, I thought darkly. The magic required to animate objects using regular pencils took a massive toll. I had dropped off three times while drafting storage spaces, and woken up with my cheek smashed against my desk and pencil shavings in my hair.

  And I was going to hold off on the lavender paint for a bit—until I got a firm bead on Christian's soul. Seeing a figment of my brother had messed with my head.

  I needed safe, magical charcoal.

  Will was nearly bouncing in his seat. “Let's see if we can get more information on which product does what during the meeting, then go after.” He nudged me in the side. “Maybe they'll have good paint.”

  I clutched my pack harder, feeling for the edge of the tube inside in reassurance.

  I forced myself to look around. There were student displays and written materials around the edges of the room. Like in the art shop, pictures and images moved in swirls of paint or in the harsher marks of charcoal.

  The emcee took the stage and did a fancy swirl in the air with a paintbrush, producing a red dragon that dripped and dissipated. “Welcome folks! Looks like our timing was right in line with the world's. Excitement! Instead of our regular weekly workshop, we have our biannual auction tonight!”