by Adam Bennett
Agoras was about to say something cutting in reply but he was interrupted by a large rumbling noise.
“Is that really the best you’ve got?” Ava grumbled and Agoras glared at her and smacked his finger against his lips. “If you think you can shush me...” she started but failed to say anything more as Agoras smacked his hand across her mouth.
The rumbling noise continued, it grew steadily louder and then the ground began to shake. Gallantly Agoras threw an arm around Ava to steady her but she pushed him away so that he was the one who stumbled. He would have fallen if it hadn’t been for his walking stick planted firmly in the ground.
“This part of the world isn’t normally known for its earthquakes,” Ava said calmly, her feet planted firmly on the still swaying ground.
“That’s because this isn’t an earthquake.” Agoras looked up towards the summit of the hill. “At least not a natural one.”
“You look worried darling Agoras.” Ava almost purred the words.
“I’m not worried, a little concerned maybe.” He tried hard to sound nonchalant but he couldn’t hide the tremor in his voice. “You know I warned them not to take it too far. I told them it was imperative that they wait for me.” The words were muttered sotto voce but witches have keen ears.
“I take it your students have let things get a little out of hand.”
“More than a little,” Agoras muttered before he could stop himself. Cursing himself for having let his guard drop, he glanced at Ava. If he hadn’t known better he would have sworn he saw a look of concern on her face.
“This is not good,” he said, a note of panic in his voice. Agoras put one hand on Ava’s shoulder while he used the other to pull his stick from the ground. It came free reluctantly and Agoras almost felt as though it were glaring at him. “And that is quite enough of that.” He plucked the polished stone from the top of the stick and pocketed it.
“So where to now?” Ava was suddenly all business.
“You’d come with me?” The wizard sounded genuinely surprised and there was a brief flash of relief in his eyes.
“I think you could use all the help you can get.” Ava shrugged. “Plus it’s not as if this won’t be the first time I’ve pulled your arse out of the fire.”
“That’s not very ladylike,” Agoras said.
“Do you want my help or not?” Ava glared at the wizard. “I’ll quite happily leave you to deal with things here.” She took a step away from the man at the same moment that another tremor shook the hillside around them.
“I take it all back,” Agoras said hastily.
“All of it?” Ava asked.
“All of it,” Agoras confirmed as the evening air was once more rent apart by a loud rumbling noise.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Smiling in triumph Ava turned and strode quickly up the path, Agoras following in her wake. The expression on his face was neutral but the whitened knuckles of the hand that was gripping his stick betrayed his feelings.
As the pair crested the summit they were met by the last lingering rays of the sun. The sky above the hilltop was figuratively ablaze although Ava, glancing upwards, feared that very soon it might be ablaze for real.
As she picked her way carefully through the long grass, she almost smiled when she saw the young men and women that Agoras had recruited. They were grouped around a small set of standing stones, although the term leaning stones might have been a more accurate one. Each person had a glowing ball hanging above their head. The light inside them flickered like the flame of a candle and Ava wondered if Agoras had ever heard of electricity. Positioned at equidistant intervals around the stones, their hands linked, Ava could see that they formed the rough outline of a triangle. At the apex, there was a gap where Agoras should have been standing. This time Ava did smile; the man, she thought indulgently, never changes.
“Master.” It was one of the women who spoke up and immediately all the others turned their heads towards Agoras.
“You make them call you Master?” Ava stage whispered.
“Come and take your place.”
But the wizard, whom Ava felt was starting to look his age, didn’t step forward. His eyes swept restlessly across the people gathered on the hillside and he frowned.
“What?” Ava moved closer to Agoras who shook his head. The hand holding his walking stick opened and it tumbled to the ground.
“What?” Ava asked her question again, although she already had an inkling of what was wrong.
“Why did you come here?” Agoras, his eyes wild, turned to the witch. “Why now?”
“Just a holiday,” the woman dissembled, hard to break the habit of a lifetime even when the whole world was at stake. “Although, to be fair, I should perhaps have chosen a more exotic location. The Gloucestershire Hills are awfully dreary, even in June.”
“Now tell me the truth,” Agoras snapped, although he did not look at Ava. His eyes were instead riveted on his students.
“You know why,” the witch said. “It’s why you’re here after all.”
“You sense a growing power.” It was not Agoras who spoke but one of the men standing around the stones. “Magic as it should be, before men got involved, when there were only gods.”
Agoras bent, a little stiffly, and picked up his stick. He leant on it and then shook his head and said, “From gods to men,”—that statement drew a harrumph from Ava—“to humans. A natural progression; it needs to be protected.”
“No.” The young man let go of the hand of the woman standing next to him and raised his arms above his head. “The old magic needs to be allowed back into the world.”
Watching quietly Ava saw the blue sparks of electricity fly from the man’s fingers.
“This is one of the weak places, a place where magic can flow.” Agoras was in lecturing mode. Ava half expected his students to whip out paper and pens and start taking notes. “A place where the old world meets the new.”
Ava was growing impatient. “That’s all very well Agoras. So you’re trying to bridge the gap? You know I’ll have to stop you.”
The wizard looked at Ava reproachfully. “After all this time you should know me a little better than that.” Agoras once more looked at his students, his gaze lingered on each face for a short time before moving on. “I shouldn’t have asked them to do this but I have no one else.”
“You have me.” Ava glared.
Agoras laughed. “Funny, you’ve never said that before.”
“Master please.” It was a blonde woman who spoke this time. “You must join us.”
“Yes of course.” Agoras knuckled his eyes as though he were waking from a long sleep and took a step towards the stones.
“No!” Ava grabbed at his arm and held on. “It’s too late.”
The students were still standing, hands linked except for the point where Agoras should have been. A sheet of flame had sprung from the earth. The man on the left drew back startled, stumbling over the small hillock that separated him from his companion. The man standing on the right however, smiled.
“No!” Agoras had probably intended to shout the word as a warning but instead it came out as an agonised whisper.
Something was rising in the flames, something that despite the fire around it, glowed white with cold. Something that abruptly snapped as the young man stepped into the flames.
“Pythagoras.” With a chilling smile the man turned blank eyes onto the wizard. The voice was so cold it made Ava shiver.
“No!” This time Agoras managed to put some force behind the word and despite the heat of the flames he moved forward. “Not this time.”
“You’re going to stop me?”
Agoras didn’t bother to respond, instead his hand reached inside his coat. But just as his fingers were about to close on the small polished stone it flew from his grasp. The thing in the flames reached out its hand and caught it.
“What a precious little trinket. Your students think this is the source of all you
r power. Shall we test that theory? Of course your students also do not really believe that you are the man you say you are. That must be very frustrating for you.”
“It’s not,” Agoras asserted, but his eyes flicked from side to side as though searching for an escape route.
Ava moved forward, she stopped just in front of Agoras and smiled at the man standing in the flames. “We haven’t been introduced. I’m Ava, pleased to meet you.”
“I know you, witch.” The tone in which the words were spoken was full of contempt. “Once you served me.”
Ava smiled but her back was ramrod straight and she was quivering, ever so slightly. “I think we’ve all done things in our youth that we’re not proud of.”
“Not so young anymore.” The words were mocking and the man’s eyes were now filled with flames.
“Indeed, but neither are you and I think you have forgotten just how fragile humans are.”
The man was burning now and there was a nimbus of smoke around his head.
Ava smiled again and she reached out for Agoras’ hand. “I think you underestimated us.”
The burning man’s face was beginning to blacken around the edges and his eyes bulged from their sockets. The smell of roasting meat filled the air and several stomachs rumbled audibly.
“Oh really?” The words were slurred and Agoras jumped as what was left of the body crumpled to the ground.
“Agoras!” Ava clutched at his sleeve and the wizard groaned as he turned to see the blank eyes of his students.
“You’ve failed, Agoras.” The youngest and prettiest of the girls spoke the words, but it was the same pitiless voice that came forth from her mouth.
Ava was not sure what worried her most, the look of triumph on the faces of the ten young people or the dismay on the face of the wizard.
“You forget,” Ava said, impressed by the way she managed to keep her voice from shaking, “you’re vulnerable like this.”
“Pythagoras would never hurt his students.”
Ava could not dispute that statement. Agoras was the literal definition of a bleeding heart. He had been a vegan thousands of years before it was fashionable, and she knew he would never knowingly harm another creature.
“You’re right, of course. Pythagoras is a gentle man and he wouldn’t hurt a fly. But me…” Ava’s smile grew dangerous. “I’m not like him.”
The students all moved together. The globes of light above their heads moved as well, but now they seemed to cast a demonic light on each young face. Slowly they converged on Ava and the witch stepped slowly backwards until her back came to rest against the trunk of a somewhat spindly tree and she could go no further.
“I shall enjoy this.” The words were spoken in stereo by all of Agoras’ remaining students as they spread themselves around Ava and her tree.
She reached out and patted the trunk and the tree shivered despite the lack of wind. Its branches, which had been bowed down to the ground by the weight of their leaves, suddenly straightened, standing to attention for the witch. Then Ava pointed her hand out towards the first of the possessed students. They were still moving towards her, but slowly, as though the entity who had taken over their bodies was having trouble coordinating so many legs at the same time.
“I’m sorry,” Ava murmured the words under her breath. Then she spoke aloud, “Metamorphosis.” Immediately all of the students slapped their hands against their necks, much as the two thugs who had threatened Agoras had done.
The look of surprise on their faces almost made Ava laugh out loud. There was a flurry of squeals and ten pink piglets trotted away down the hillside.
“Now that was what I call real magic,” Ava said with a smile. “You know wizard, I think some remedial education is in order. You almost got us killed.”
“You turned them into pigs.” Agoras turned to Ava. He sounded upset.
“You’re welcome.” Ava dusted her hands on her skirt and nodded her head decisively, pleased with a job well done.
“Pigs!”
Ava smiled; poor Agoras, she thought, a wonderful intellect of course, but never really sure of what’s going on around him.
Agoras’ mouth was still moving, although no sound emerged.
“You’re in shock.” Ava closed the gap between them. “I’ve got the perfect cure for that.” Then the woman stretched up onto her tiptoes and firmly planted a kiss on the wizard’s lips. His eyes crossed and he stumbled away from her, landing with a bump on his bottom.
“Photizo.” Ava spoke the word clearly and a small globe of light appeared in the branches of the spindly tree behind her. Unlike the globes that Agoras’ students had used, the light was steady and bright. Together with the light from the moon it was enough for her to see the expression on Agoras’ face and she laughed.
“How long has it been since someone last did that to you?” she teased.
Agoras just looked at her, still on the ground where he had fallen. Ava stretched out a hand and with difficulty pulled him to his feet.
“Never.”
“What?” Surprise drove the exclamation from Ava’s lips. “Not even once?”
“No.” Agoras met Ava’s eyes calmly. “You know my feelings on the subject.”
“I knew you didn’t believe in marriage, but abstaining altogether?” Ava was shocked by the discovery. “And what about your students? Do they have to follow the same code of conduct?”
“My students!” That brought his thoughts back to the present situation. “Ava, why pigs?”
“I like pigs. Besides which would you rather, ten delightful porcine running free through the Gloucestershire countryside or ten copies of whatever that was in that fire laying waste to every village and town within a few hundred miles?”
“I thought you knew who that was.”
Ava waved her hand airily. “You know after a while all those gods and titans and what-not begin to become indistinguishable from one another. Anyway, I thought you knew. The two of you almost sounded like old friends.”
“What was that thing you did?” Abruptly Agoras changed the subject.
“Thing?” Ava’s voice was full of sweetness but her eyes were hard.
“Yes, thing. Like this.” Agoras stretched out his hand in front of him and waggled his fingers.
Ava sighed, she was loath to reveal her secret to the wizard, but considering what he had just been through maybe, just this once, he deserved the answer to his question.
“You know that in order to transform my subjects I need to touch them with my wand?” Agoras nodded. “In much the same way if someone has a sword and they wish to kill a person they need to touch that person with the sword.”
Agoras rolled his eyes.
“But if you have a gun you don’t need to be as close for the same effect.”
“You weaponised your wand?” Agoras sounded aggrieved.
“Oh please.” It was Ava’s turn to roll her eyes. “You have to move with the times, darling Agoras. Have you not listened to a single word I said?”
She left Agoras dumbfounded and walked across to the place where the young man had been consumed with flames. With one outstretched foot she fastidiously pushed aside the piles of ash until she found what she was looking for.
“Yours, I believe.” She dropped the polished stone into Agoras’ hand. “You might want to take a little more care of that if you’re powerless without it.”
The wizard quickly tucked the stone away inside his coat. “That’s not strictly true. It is not, whatever anyone else thinks, the source of my power. Much as is the case with your wand, it allows me to focus.”
There was a silence between them as the animosity of centuries bled away into the night. Perhaps, Ava thought to herself, we both deserve a new beginning.
“Well.” Agoras looked around at the fire scorched stones. He reached out gingerly to touch one and then patted it thoughtfully. “I suppose there’s no reason to stay here any longer.” The wizard let out a long exhala
tion of air. “Shame. There are some nice pubs around here.”
“If only the weather were better it would be perfect.” Ava waved a hand and the small globe of light in the nearby tree moved to hang over her head.
“Shall we say goodbye then?”
Ava tucked her hand through the crook of Agoras’ arm. “We never have before. Now I come to it I think you and I deserve a break.”
“Arm or leg?” Agoras asked, deadpan.
Ava crinkled her nose at him. “You always come across as clueless but I’m beginning to think it’s nothing but a front, hmm?”
“So where do you suggest for our holiday?” Agoras once more evaded the question and Ava frowned, she really must stop letting him get away with doing that.
“How about Australia?”
“Never been.”
“Well, I think that after all this time you really need to broaden your horizons.”
Agoras nodded and, smiling with satisfaction, Ava pulled the wizard closer to her side. Then, arm in arm like old friends, or perhaps two people who were learning to be friends, the witch and wizard began their descent of the hill.
Lost Love
Diana Grove
Liam pulled his copy of ‘You’re Dead: Just Deal with It and Move On’ from the back pocket of his jeans. Every ghost received the slim handbook shortly after they discovered they were no longer among the living. The handbook covered practical things like participating in séances and how not to turn into a poltergeist. However, it was a bit light on the metaphysical stuff, which only appeared in the final chapter, ‘Where to from Here?’
Liam was tall with a boyish face and unruly, floppy brown hair. Although he had been a ghost for seven years, Liam still couldn’t move anything that weighed more than a paperclip. He was about to read the chapter on moving objects with willpower again when he glimpsed a tall silhouette moving outside. Ethereal and imperceptible, Liam glided over to the bay window. There was someone lurking in the front yard. Someone scary looking.
Vanishing through a wall, Liam reappeared in his friend Ella’s bedroom. Ella lay on her side with her floral quilt cover pulled up to her chin. Liam wished he could give her shoulder a shake, but all he could do was call out her name. Ella didn’t rouse, so he bent down closer to her ear, and called her name louder. Her peaceful face didn’t even twitch. Whatever sense or ability allowed Liam’s friend to see and hear ghosts did not appear to function when she was sound asleep. He didn’t know what to do.
