Scorched Earth

by Randall Pine

  “It’s some sort of intense-heat withering,” Llewyn continued, after finding the right word. “A slow frying of the body. I’ve seen version of it before, but never like this. Not on this scale. Not with an entire football team’s worth of victims at once.” His face darkened, and the blue light in his right eye socket turned to a gemstone purple. “Never with children,” he said, his voice uneven with anger.

  “Who would want to do that?” Abby asked uneasily. She had felt sadness and anger and spite and fury and jealousy and greed and a thousand other negative energies from powerful and petty people and monsters. But she had never felt a rage so strong that it would sap the lives of thirty high schoolers at once, and with such prolonged, sustained agony.

  “I don’t even know who would have the power to do that,” Llewyn countered. His hand moved absently to his chest, touching the black shard lodged in his sternum beneath his shirt and coat. “Even at my full power, I couldn’t sustain a column of energy that powerful for more than ten or fifteen seconds. You say this one was live for half an hour?”

  “At least,” Virgil said. “We got there about fifteen minutes after we saw it on the news, and it had to have been there long enough for people to notice it and for the news to hear about it and send out a crew to go live with it.”

  Llewyn considered this. Then he shook his head. “Impossible.”

  But it wasn’t impossible. It had happened, and by now, all of Templar had seen it. All of the world had probably seen it; the news footage was undoubtedly making the rounds on social media.

  Virgil pulled out his phone and typed “Templar Pennsylvania” into YouTube. “Yep,” he said, holding up the phone so everyone could see the footage. “Fifteen thousand likes and counting.”

  “It’s on YouTube?!” Simon said. “Why didn’t we watch the video instead of combing through my brain with a magic light?!” He still hadn’t even attempted to make eye contact with Abby out of embarrassment.

  “Because I don’t know what YouTube is,” Llewyn said, annoyed. He snatched Virgil’s phone and glared at the screen. “Impossible,” he murmured again. He peered closely at the newsreel video. “Wait. Stop it. How do I stop it?” he asked, shaking the phone. “Rewind!” he commanded it.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Easy!” Virgil said. He reached out and took the phone out of Llewyn’s hands.

  “Rewind it,” the old magician commanded.

  “I’m rewinding it, I’m rewinding it!” He scrubbed the video backward a few seconds, then held out the screen so Llewyn could see it. “Look, but don’t touch,” he said.

  Llewyn watched the footage carefully. “Stop!” he bellowed. Virgil paused the video. The sorcerer peered closely and asked, “Can you make it larger?”

  Virgil pinched his fingers out on the screen and zoomed in. “What am I looking for?”

  “That,” Llewyn said, stubbing his finger against the image.

  Simon and Abby came up closer, and all four of them looked down at Virgil’s phone. The frame was a close-up shot of the football field and the lightning tree. On the far side of the field stood the metal bleachers that flanked the announcer’s box, and behind the bleachers were dark woods. Llewyn was pointing to the spot where the bleachers ended, near the end of the field.

  There was a person standing there, a woman dressed in a long, purple cloak, with a deep purple hood that was pulled up over her head, hiding her features from view. She wore a pair of long, gold gloves, and her hands were clasped together at her waist. She seemed to be simply standing there, observing the fracas and going unseen as little more than a piece of background scenery.

  Virgil hit play, and the video advanced. All four of them kept their eyes glued to the figure at the end of the stands. She continued to watch the madness, right up until the lightning tree fizzled out of existence. Once it had vanished, the woman inclined her head, turned her back on the field, and disappeared into the woods.

  “She’s the culprit,” Llewyn said, straightening up and walking out of the room. “We need to find her. Soon. Before she strikes again.”

  Chapter 7

  “How exactly do we find her?”

  They were winding their way back through the maze of hallways, Llewyn leading the way, his footsteps falling heavily with determination.

  “We’ll try the Font of Finding,” the wizard said.

  He led them back out to the main hallway, then he turned and strode up to the circular door at the end of the hall, the same door he had taken Simon and Virgil through on their very first visit to his magical tent. He pulled open the door and motioned them inside.

  “I’ve got to get to work,” Abby said apologetically. “But let me know if I can help.” Llewyn nodded at her, and she turned to go. But before she did, she reached out and touched Simon’s sleeve. “Come find me later?” she asked, her voice lilting with hopefulness.

  Simon blushed, but he nodded. “Definitely,” he said.

  Abby smiled, and her eyes brightened behind her glasses. “Good.” Then she hurried down the hallway and back out the door, into the outside world.

  “Come on,” Llewyn gruffed. Simon and Virgil hopped through the doorway, and the wizard stepped in behind them, closing the door and sealing them all inside.

  They walked the pier-like platform over to the stone basin, where Llewyn formed his brilliant orange globe and set it into the stone. As they watched, the orange coloring swirled away from the surface, replaced by the familiar asphalt gray, and the orange bits collected into the energy signatures of magical beings in Templar, and beyond.

  Llewyn frowned as he studied the globe. He moved his hands over the surface, and sometimes he would poke and prod at an orange dot, inspecting it carefully. He was unsatisfied each time. Soon he had examined every square inch of the gray-and-orange ball. “I can’t see her,” he said, furrowing his brow.

  “What does that means? She doesn’t have a magic signature? She doesn’t have any powers?” Simon asked, confused.

  Llewyn scratched his cheek. “That is one possible explanation. But not a likely one. Someone utilized an extraordinary amount of magic to make the lightning column. An energy signature like that should show itself clearly. Very clearly.” He waved his hands, and the globe broke into small pieces of ash and flaked away, dissolving completely in the air. “The more likely explanation is that her power is cloaked.”

  Simon considered this. “What would it take for someone to hide magic from a wizard at your power level?” he asked.

  The wizard gritted his teeth. “It would take a lot.”

  “Okay, so what do we do?” Virgil asked.

  Llewyn’s face darkened. “We either track her down, or we wait for her to strike again.”

  “If she strikes again, won’t more people get hurt?” Virgil asked. Llewyn and Simon both gave him a look. “Oh,” he said, blushing. “Right. You meant that as a not-actual choice.”

  Llewyn led them out of the chamber and back toward the front of the tent. “Go back to the high school and see if she left any trail,” he instructed. He stopped at the chest in the sitting room and pulled it open. He reached in and grabbed a small packet of seeds. “If you find one of her footprints, plant one of these seeds there. It will help you track her down.”

  “What is it?” Simon asked, looking curiously at them. Each one was about the size of a watermelon seed, but emerald green in color, with thin blue veins stretching across the surface.

  “Ripple ferns,” he said, as if this simple phrase explained everything. He ushered them out. “Move now,” he urged them, holding open the door. “Look carefully, and work quickly. If we don’t find this woman soon, people may start dying.”

  Chapter 8

  “I always wanted to be a Hardy Boy,” Virgil said, rolling his eyes.

  “Hey, the Hardy Boys were awesome,” Simon said defensively.

 
; Virgil pressed his lips together thoughtfully. “Yeah…I guess that’s true,” he admitted.

  They were back at West Templar High, standing at the edge of the bleachers, right around the spot where they had seen the woman in the purple cloak stand in the video. The football field itself was cordoned off with police tape now, and there were a couple of officers lingering over the burn mark at center field. They gave Simon and Virgil suspicious looks when they approached the field, but the boys had given them an awkward wave, and since they skirted around the police tape instead of approaching the field, the officers let them go. Every few minutes, though, one of them would look over at the bleachers and scowl.

  Virgil pulled out his phone and brought up the video on YouTube. He zoomed in on the woman in the cloak and held up the phone, using the image to verify his own position. “Yeah, looks like she was about here,” he decided. He put the phone to sleep and slipped it into his pocket. “See anything weird?”

  “I don’t see any footprints,” Simon said, crouching down and scanning the grass.

  “Neither do I,” Virgil confirmed. “Should we plant one of the seeds anyway? See what happens?”

  “Yeah, ’cause the one thing I really want to do with something that possesses a magical power that I don’t understand is use it in a way that was not included in the instructions,” Simon said.

  Virgil pouted. “You’re no fun.”

  Simon mumbled his agreement, and he continued to search the ground. “Hey, how’s your shoulder?” he asked, nodding up toward the arm Virgil had broken during their fight with Asag.

  “Better!” Virgil said, flexing his fingers and spinning his arm like a windmill. “I thought it would still be sore after the cast came off last week, but it feels totally normal. Except for when it rains. It gets a little stiff when it rains. When I woke up on Tuesday, I couldn’t really move it for half an hour or so, ’cause of the storm. Aside from that, it’s pretty good.”

  “Small price to pay for saving the world from a demon from the eighth circle of hell,” Simon said with a wry grin.

  “Easy for you to say,” Virgil replied.

  They continued to search the area, making small circles between the bleachers and the field, looking for any print the woman might have left.

  “I’ve got nothing,” Virgil said after several more minutes of searching.

  “The ground’s too dry,” Simon agreed. “We haven’t had any rain since that storm on Monday, we need the ground to be wetter and—” Simon stopped short. The wheels in his brain were turning smoothly, and an idea was forming in his head.

  “What?” Virgil asked.

  Simon looked up at him, his eyes brightening. “The creek,” he said, pointing to the trees behind the bleachers. “The creek in the woods!”

  “What about it?”

  “It rained on Monday, and the creek down there gets filled with overflow when the river gets too high.”

  “So?”

  Simon made an exasperated look with his eyes. “So, we had a big storm on Monday, and if it rained enough to raise the river, it would have flooded the creek, so the creek bank would have been higher, and by now it must have receded, and that means the banks are now…?” He trailed off his question, twirling his hands in the air and waiting for Virgil to finish his thought.

  Virgil blinked. “The banks are now…banking?”

  Simon slapped his forehead with his palm. “Virgil! The banks are wet! The banks are muddy! The banks were under water, but now they’re not, and the ground right here is too dry for her to leave footprints, but she went back into the woods, toward the creek, and the ground down there is wet enough and soft enough from the flooding for her to have left a footprint!”

  Virgil nodded slowly as the pieces fell into place. “Wow, you really are a Hardy Boy,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Simon said smugly.

  Virgil snorted. “That wasn’t a compliment. I’ve reconsidered my stance...the Hardy Boys were total nerds.”

  They walked across the narrow strip of grass that connected the football field to the woods, moving slowly and keeping their heads down, looking for any sign of the woman’s tracks. When they approached the edge of the woods, they stopped and peered into the thicket of trees. Even though it was the afternoon, and the sun was still bright and fairly high in the sky, the woods seemed darker, and ominous somehow. Most of the trees still had their leaves, though they had been drained of their brilliant autumn colors and had faded to a desaturated and mottled brown. The leaves not only blocked out the direct sunlight, but also seemed to swallow up the diffuse brightness of the world.

  “Do woods always look so creepy?” Virgil asked, fighting off a chill.

  Simon nodded. “Yeah. Pretty much always.”

  “Okay, then.”

  There was a small trail that wound into the woods on their right, a narrow footpath that had been made by several decades’ worth of children stomping and crashing their way through the underbrush. “She probably used the trail,” Virgil said, indicating the path. “Not as many branches or brush there to snag on her cloak.”

  Simon raised an eyebrow, a little impressed in spite of himself. “Nice deduction, Nancy Drew.”

  They stepped onto the path and entered the dark, foreboding woods.

  The sunlight wasn’t the only thing the trees swallowed up; they also absorbed the sounds of the city, so that even after just a few feet, Simon and Virgil could no longer hear the sound of traffic on the road outside the high school, and the dull chatter of the two police officers on the football field fell away. All they could hear was the crunching of the leaves underneath their own feet.

  The woods were deeper than they appeared from the outside, and soon they could no longer see the edge of the school property when they turned back to look. “Were there always so many trees here?” Virgil asked.

  Simon shrugged. “Guess so. They probably wanted a big enough barrier between the school and the interstate to keep out the sounds of the traffic.”

  “Well, couldn’t we have built a sound wall like a normal city?” Virgil asked. He couldn’t quite keep that chill from prickling through his shoulders.

  After a few more minutes, the trail led them to the creek. It was running hard, with little eddies swirling up in the water as it rushed down the rocks, but it wasn’t particularly high. Whatever flooding had occurred earlier in the week had long since washed downstream, and the creek had leveled out.

  “Look,” Simon said, pointing down into the mud. “Bingo.”

  There were three footprints in the soft earth, prints made by a woman’s shoes, from the look of it; they could make out the impression of a narrow heel, and the print was much smaller than either of their own shoes. The prints led down to the water’s edge. Simon peered across the stream; there were two more prints leading away from the creek. The first one on the far side was deeper than any of the other prints. “She must have hopped over,” he surmised.

  “All joking aside, we’re pretty good at being detectives,” Virgil said, clearly impressed by their uncanny abilities. “We should open our own detective agency.”

  “We just did open our own detective agency.”

  “We opened a laundromat.”

  “Oh, give it a rest.” Simon fished the packet of seeds out of his pocket. He tore open the package and plucked one of the green and blue seeds from inside. “Where do you think you buy something like this?” he asked, examining it carefully.

  “That’s a good question,” Virgil admitted. “Like, where did Llewyn get any of that stuff in his chest?” He had been referring to the large trunk in the sitting room, but the way he worded it put both of them in mind of the gleaming black blade that was ever-burrowing into Llewyn’s chest, toward his heart.

  Without saying a word, they agreed to let the question drop.

  Simon took the se
ed between his fingers and pushed it down into the wet soil, directly in the center of the woman’s footprint. He sank it about an inch into the dirt, then he covered it with loose topsoil.

  Then they waited.

  “Is that it?” Virgil whispered, speaking softly, as if he were afraid he might disturb the seed.

  “I don’t know,” Simon replied.

  “Should we water it?”

  “I don’t know,” Simon said again, sounding annoyed this time.

  “It’s just, usually you water seeds if you want them to grow,” Virgil pointed out.

  “Virgil! I don’t know!” Simon hissed. “Why don’t you go get some water from the creek and water the stupid seed, if you’re so worried about it.”

  Virgil glanced down at the rushing water. It looked cold. “Nah,” he decided. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  The seed proved him right. As they looked on, a tiny sprout pushed its way through the earth, curling like a tendril. It grew quickly, yawning up toward the canopy of the trees, and soon it was joined by another sprout, and then another, and then another. After just a few seconds, the entire footprint was filled with small green shoots, all curling and writhing and growing straight upward.

  Simon pulled Virgil back from the footprint as they watched, mesmerized. The shoots began to twist together, forming two separate, thick stalks, each one made up of dozens of growing green tendrils. The stalks grew taller and thicker as the sprouts filled out and increased in size. Soon, each of the stalks was as big around as a human leg. They were so big that the footprint could no longer contain them, and they separated from each other, one pushing out to the left, one pushing out to the right, dragging a narrow channel in the soil between them. It was like the footprint itself had split in two and burst out sideways from its mooring in the mud.

  The stalks continued to grow. After a few feet, they spread out near the top, the thick tendrils reaching from one stalk to the other, and they became connected, like a high bridge. Then, as one solid trunk, they began to grow straight up again, until Simon finally understood what they were seeing.