“Basically, the third examination is designed to test your instincts as a witch. You’re going to be given three challenges, and you’ll have to get past them in whatever way you can. You can use any spells you want. It’s designed to see how well you’re able to think on your feet, and how well you’re able to cast spells while under pressure.”
“Ok,” I nodded. Luckily, if there was one thing I’d learned since coming to the paranormal world, it was how to stay cool under pressure. After all, multiple paranormals had tried to kill me on various occasions. Surely compared to that, this examination wouldn’t be too difficult.
I hoped.
Chapter 23
The half hour that I had to rest passed like a blur, and before I knew it, Lita was making her way towards us once more, motioning for us to get up and ready to go.
“Are you all set, Tina?” she asked, and I nodded, not really trusting myself to speak. I had been doing ok, nerves-wise, up until this moment by telling myself that I had already surpassed all expectations just by getting this far. But a part of me still didn’t want to fail now that I was here.
“Alright. Your challenge is to go through the woods. As you get deeper into them, you will be challenged in multiple ways. I can give you no further details than that, other than to tell you there will be three challenges. When you make your way through all of them, you are to come back to this spot.”
“What if I get into trouble and can’t get past one of the challenges?” I asked.
“If you feel as though you need to give up, please shout the word ‘fiddlesticks’ loudly. A special spell will trigger that will automatically end the examination. However, do not do it unless you absolutely must, as once you’ve called out the word, the examination cannot be continued.”
“Ok,” I nodded. “I’m ready.”
“Good. Then, please feel free to enter the forest at your leisure. The first challenge will make itself visible to you shortly.”
“Good luck!” Ellie called out to me.
“You can do it!” Sara shouted.
I smiled as I knew my friends had my back, and made my way into the woods.
Even though it was a gorgeous, sunny day out, the woods were thick, and even following the small path that led from the clearing, things got very dark very quickly. I started looking around, jumping at the sound of leaves crunching under my feet, expecting at any moment that something would come flying out of the woods and attack me.
And yet, as minute after minute passed, and I got further and further from my friends, nothing happened. The cold started seeping through my bones, and I remembered Amy’s spell with a start.
“Jupiter, god of Lightning, I need some warmth, bring it forth.” I pointed the wand towards me and cast the spell; the temperature of the air around me rose until it felt like I was standing in front of an invisible fire, and I went from being freezing cold to comfortably warm.
“That’s better,” I said to myself as I continued to move along, still on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary.
It took about five more minutes before I reached my first challenge, and it wasn’t what I had expected at all. Standing in front of me, blocking the path, was a giant, growing collection of weeds that had wound around themselves to create a giant wall, blocking the path. When I got about thirty feet from it, I stopped. The weeds were at least fifteen feet high, and expanding across. In fact, I eventually realized they were expanding in a circle, and they were trapping me in!
I rushed to the other end to try and get back out, but the weeds were moving too quickly, and I was trapped in the middle of a circular wall made of plants. I looked around, then looked up. No, the weeds were forming a complete dome. I would never get out in time, even if I could remember a spell that would allow me to get that high without a broom.
“Ok, stop, take a second, and think about this,” I said to myself. “You have lots of time.” Unfortunately, a second later, I realized that wasn’t the case. The weeds were growing inwards, coming towards me, making the dome I was stuck in smaller and smaller. I probably only had about one or two minutes before I would be suffocated to death.
“Alright, Tina, think,” I muttered. How could I destroy the weeds? Plants were always susceptible to fire, right? At least, that was how it worked in Pokemon. Finally, a childhood spent watching cartoons paid off.
“Jupiter, bring forth fire, the cousin of Lightning,” I shouted, pointing my wand at the weeds directly in front of me. A blast of flame shot out from my wand and straight into the wall of weeds. It blew a hole straight through them, but there was a problem. Instead of a clean, easy hole for me to run through and escape, the weeds now swung around aimlessly, trying to hit anything that might get past. I gasped as I recognized what the weed was from lessons with Ellie: stinging petals. I remembered thinking that the consequences of touching it were way worse than the human world’s similar-sounding stinging nettles.
Coming into contact with any part of the stinging petals weed meant immediate third degree burns. Paranormals had died coming into contact with it on too much of their bodies. I quickly ducked away from an errant weed that had swung towards me and tried to make a plan. I needed to stop the weeds; I needed to make them freeze in place somehow.
Freezing! That was it. Stinging petals were super sensitive to ice and cold weather. But I had never really learned a pure freezing spell. I turned my mind back to Ellie, on a hot day a few weeks after I’d moved to Western Woods. She had decided to turn her bottle of rosé into frosé, and she had cast a spell to do it. Now, what were the words she’d used, exactly?
I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, not daring to keep my eyes away from the stinging petal for longer, and remembered!
“Jupiter, God of Thunder, I need some ice, freeze this weed.”
I let out a yelp as a giant crack pierced the air, but it had been a good thing! The weed immediately stopped moving, suddenly encased in a giantic cube of ice. The ice travelled along the entire weed wall, and most importantly, along the edges of the hole that I had managed to burn through. I darted as fast as I could through the hole, finding myself in the forest once more, and I kept running for as long as I dared, until I couldn’t even see the weed wall behind me anymore.
Only then did I stop, heaving a sigh of relief in between gasps for air. I was definitely not a runner, and it showed.
“One down, two to go,” I muttered to myself. I had completely lost track of where I was in the forest compared to the clearing where I had started, so technically, I probably still had three challenges to go: once I finished all of these, the final challenge would be figuring out how on earth I was going to make my way back to Lita and my friends. But hey, that was a problem for future Tina; right now I had to focus on the task at hand and be on the lookout for the next challenge that was undoubtedly going to come at me at any moment.
I crept through the forest, my eyes and ears on high alert. A couple of minutes after I left the weed wall, a screech came from above me. I looked up to see hundreds of flying creatures coming towards me, their sharp beaks glistening in the sun before they dove into the trees and towards me. I had just enough time to cast a shield spell to protect myself before the first one reached me, and it bounced off the invisible shield with a little bit of a squawk.
What on earth were these things? Knowing I was protected, I dared to look at them a little bit more closely. They had birdlike heads, like crows, but bodies like winged horses. They were the size of geese, and I realized with a start that while I had never seen one in real life, I had read about these. I had seen a picture of one in a book and Amy had brought home, and I immediately laughed at the picture, thinking they looked completely ridiculous and that there was no way a creature like this actually existed in real life. What were they called? Poulipotamus. That was it. The world’s most ridiculous name to go with the world’s most ridiculous animal.
It looked like I was wrong. They were very real, and right now, they were fra
nkly terrifying.
Why hadn’t I paid more attention to what could defeat these things? Why had I just laughed at the picture instead of learning about them? But then, how could I have known that it might get me through something like this one day?
Of course, my shield would hold. I knew that. At least until I got tired. But that wasn’t going to defeat them. There had to be a way to get them out of my path.
What on earth was it?
I took a couple of steps further back, but to my surprise, the birds kept attacking the same spot where I had been standing a few minutes earlier. That was strange. Suddenly, something caught my eye. It was the broccoli pin that I’d been wearing; it must have fallen off at some point and was now lying on the ground, the little bit of gold outline shimmering in the sun.
It actually looked like the birds were trying to attack that, and not me. Could that be it? After all, they had heads like crows. Would I be able to get away simply by attracting them to something glittery? It was worth a shot.
I pulled off all of the other pins I was wearing, stuffing them in a pocket so that they wouldn’t be seen by the poulipotami. I stepped further and further back, and sure enough, they kept trying to attack the shimmering pin.
“Sorry, broccoli pin,” I whispered. “I think we’re about to find out whether or not these things like vegetables.”
I had a sneaking suspicion everybody was going to be pretty pleased that my annoying broccoli pin wasn’t going to come out of this examination alive.
I broke the shield spell and began running, casting a light emitting spell as I did and pointing it to where I had left the pin. The pin shimmered in the light, and all of the poulipotami flew headlong into the ground towards it while I ran in the opposite direction as fast as I could.
“Nobody told me there would be so much running involved,” I panted, talking to myself as I did my best to get further away. After about ten minutes had passed, I decided I was finally safe, and that the poulipotami were probably no longer going to come after me.
One more challenge to go. I took a deep breath, telling myself I could do this. I really hoped I was right.
Chapter 24
I was down to the final challenge of the examination. I tried not to pay too much attention to the shape my body was in: I knew I had scrapes and bruises all over myself, my hair was covered in dirt, but at least I still had my wand. I gripped it tightly, knowing I also had two others in a pocket, and set off through the woods once more. I must have looked like some sort of creep sneaking through the woods looking around every which way in case something was going to pop out of nowhere and attack me.
I definitely hadn’t realized that the ground underneath me was shifting until it was too late. As the firm ground under me turned to mud, I picked up my shoes and realized this wasn’t natural. A gross squishing sound happened every time I took a step, and by the time I was almost ankle-deep, I realized it had to be magic.
I let out a cry of panic even as the ground began trying to suck my ankle deep into it, like quicksand. I shouted, pulling away just in time, and jumped up to grab a low hanging branch just above me. I wrapped my legs around the branch, clutching it, just as the ground beneath me turned into a kind of muddy liquid, bubbles popping out of it. It was like a real life game of the ground is lava.
Slowly, I managed to hoist myself up onto the branch, and looked around. As far as I could see in any direction, the ground was now molten and impossible to walk on. I was stuck in this tree. Looking down at my leg, I grimaced. My shoes were completely ruined; hopefully Amy had a spell that could remove thick layers of mud and make them look brand new again. Still, that was an issue for later.
Suddenly, something in my brain clicked, and I gasped. I knew what it was that I had missed the other day when we were at the market, and I knew who had killed Florin. At least, I was pretty sure I knew.
I had new incentive to get out of here; I needed to tell everyone who the killer really was.
“Focus, Tina, focus,” I muttered to myself. If only I had a broom, I could just fly out of here. But no, that wasn’t going to work. What about if I tried a spell? I pointed my wand at the ground and cast the same freezing spell that I had earlier, but as soon as the ice formed, it simply melted away again, getting enveloped by the mud.
I frowned, trying to think. The tree shifted slightly all of a sudden, and I grabbed at the branch, knowing what was coming next: the molten ground was going to envelop the tree, which meant I had to get out of here quickly. I looked around. The only thing anywhere near here was more trees, but I had no way to get from one tree to the other. They were too far away. After all, I wasn’t a monkey.
As the realization dawned upon me, I smiled. I knew a spell that would work. It wasn’t a spell from the coven of Jupiter, but hopefully I wouldn’t get marked down too much for using it. It had been cast by Ashley, one of the girls we had met from Pacific Cove a few months earlier.
I closed my eyes as I remembered the words she had used, and changed them to fit the situation.
“Mars, ruler of ours, make this witch into a monkey and make it last ten minutes.”
I let out a giggle as I looked down at myself a second later and saw that I was in fact now a monkey with brown fur. Perfect. I jumped up to the branch above and swung easily from it, my coordination levels having gone up about a thousand percent. This was exactly what I needed. Still, I only had ten minutes to get away from here, so I immediately looked at a branch on a tree about fifteen feet away, and jumped.
A part of me was still terrified that it wasn’t going to work, but I swung through the air easily and reached the other side, grabbing the branch with my oversized arms and swinging up onto it. I ran nimbly along the branch until I saw the next tree, jumped again, and before I knew it, I was soaring through the air and along the branches as comfortably as if they were solid ground. After about five minutes, the molten ground disappeared, and it became solid once more. I was still a little bit cautious - I grabbed an errant twig and dropped it onto the ground to make sure it was solid before jumping down myself - but sure enough, the ground was firm and back to normal. I had solved the last challenge!
Feeling pretty pleased with myself, I walked along as a monkey for a couple of minutes before all of a sudden the feeling of having eaten something strange came over me once more, and a second later the spell reversed and I was back to being Tina, regular human witch.
Great. Now all I had to do was find my way back to the clearing where the others were waiting, and I was finished. I wanted to say that the exam hadn’t been nearly as hard as I thought, but that would’ve been a complete and total lie. I had definitely come close to having to give up a couple of times.
I still held my wand out, just in case. After all, I did trust Lita, but I could also imagine there being a secret fourth challenge that I would have to pass, and that not telling me about it would be part of the challenge.
I pulled out my phone and tried to open the maps app to see where I was, but I was so deep into the woods that there was no service. I frowned, and instead opened the compass, knowing that should at least work. Since I had gone north from the clearing, I figured that if I headed south, that was my best bet to get back to a trail that could lead me to my friends and Lita. I started heading that way, but as I reached a small clearing, I quickly ran into what was going to be my fourth challenge of the day. Only, it had absolutely nothing to do with the examination.
As soon as I looked up and saw Barry standing there, I gasped slightly.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, even though I had a pretty good idea of the answer. Nobody would be this deep in the woods on purpose; he had to have been looking for me.
Barry’s eyes flashed. “You were getting too close to the answer,” he said. “When I heard that you were taking your examination today, I followed you in secret. It’s going to be so tragic: the new witch in town, who obviously wasn’t quite up to snuff, and was killed before she coul
d say the word to cancel exam.” He shook his head sadly. “What a tragedy.”
I steeled myself. Normally, I would have been terrified right about now. But frankly, today I had already battled a killer weed, a bunch of weird flying horse/crow hybrids and then successfully gotten away when even the earth itself tried to kill me. One wizard who was also going to do his best to kill me wasn’t that much more terrifying.
At least Barry didn’t have wings.
“You haven’t done anything stupid yet,” I said. “You can always go and tell Chief Enforcer King what you did, and not have to face charges for attacking me, on top of killing Florin.”
Barry laughed, a cold, humourless sound. “Whatever. If I get caught, I’m already spending the rest of my life in Spellcatraz. What’s an extra few years on top of that? I’m going to kill you, and then I’m going to kill your friends before anybody can figure out what happened to all of you. That stupid vampire. It wasn’t enough that he embarrassed all of us by dating my sister, but then he had to go and flirt with a fairy while in public? Like my sister meant nothing to him? I couldn’t have that. I wasn’t going to let him get away with it. And I’m not going to let you bring me down.”
I wanted to keep him talking, but before I had a chance, Barry pointed his wand at me and shouted.
“Jupiter, God of thunder, bring forth lightning and make this witch shudder.”
I had just enough time to cast a quick shield spell before lightning shot forth from Barry’s wand and right towards me. He was not messing around; if that had hit I would have been burned to a crisp right then and there. Rather worryingly, I could feel my energy levels fading. I had cast way more spells today than I ever had in my life, and it was exhausting. Magic was a lot like exercise: you had to train your body to do more of it, or eventually it simply broke down and refused to continue.
Six Ways to Spellday Page 13
