The Society of Imaginary Friends

by Kristen Pham

  Chapter 7

  Valerie awoke for the second time with a shock as the plane touched down with a thud, trembling as it raced down the runway. Instantly she was wide awake.

  “Welcome to London Heathrow International Airport,” the friendly voice of the flight attendant announced.

  “I’m in a brand new country! A whole new continent, and a new time zone, even!” Valerie exclaimed. Even if she failed the test and had to go back to the hospital, at least she had the chance to see some of the world.

  “Okay, get a grip, kid. Low profile, remember?” Thai scolded.

  She suppressed her urge to smack him and held on to her good mood. Thai navigated through the airport and expertly led her outside to jump on a bus to London. When they arrived at the downtown bus terminal, they grabbed their bags and began walking.

  Valerie thought she would drown trying to take in all the sights that floated by. Landmarks that she recognized from movies and her history books jumped out at her every time they turned a corner. Big Ben, the Tower of London, she was seeing them in all of their three-dimensional glory.

  “Unbelievable,” Valerie whispered as she and Thai boarded a red, double-decker bus. “Can we sit on top? A bus with two floors!”

  “Sure,” he said, grinning. “Try not to let your eyes pop out of your head or anything.”

  She ignored his snarky comment, too enthralled with the sights. “Can’t you feel it?”

  “What?”

  “The weight of the history in this place. I mean, these buildings have been around since before the United States was even founded. That’s centuries-old dirt on that library! William Shakespeare walked these streets!”

  London even smelled different to her. She never imagined that a country that spoke her language could seem so foreign. All the buildings seemed darker and older than the buildings in California, but their age gave them dignity. The storyteller in her was entranced as she imagined the centuries of drama that had played out in this city. But all too soon, Thai said it was time to get off.

  “Would it kill us to spend one day in London, Thai? There’s so much to see! Is it true that the palace guards won’t move, no matter how hard you try to distract them? And the crown jewels, I’d love to—”

  “It wouldn’t kill us, but it might kill you,” he said, not unkindly. “We’re on a quest, and neither of us can rest until we’ve accomplished it.” With that he held out his arm, directing her down some stairs to the underground train, which Thai called the Tube.

  “He’s right, Val,” Cyrus’s voice whispered softly in her mind. She couldn’t see him, but she knew that he’d been watching over her the entire time.

  “Okay, fair enough. So where are we going, exactly?”

  “We’re going to Salisbury, where we’ll camp for the night. At dawn, we’re going to Stonehenge.”

  “Stonehenge? My test is at Stonehenge?!” Valerie’s voice rose an octave in excitement.

  “Keep it down!”

  “Sorry. This is great! I’ll get to see some sights after all! I can’t believe that’s where this magic test happens. How has no one found something out about this? I mean, archeologists are digging up that place all the time. And how will we get in and out without being seen?”

  “Enough with the questions. You’ll see for yourself when we get there,” Thai snapped. She shook her head. He should have slept on the plane ride, like she did. But soon, she was too distracted by the English countryside to even think about Thai or his mood.

  “This is our stop,” Thai announced as the train screeched to a halt in Salisbury.

  “Let’s not wait until tomorrow. Let’s go to Stonehenge now. I’m sure it’s not too late to catch an afternoon tour,” Valerie pleaded. It would be nice to see the monument without the pressure of having her magic tested—and the disappointment if she failed.

  “We need to go just before sunrise. No one will be there, and dawn is the time on Earth when the rules binding magic are the weakest.”

  “It can’t hurt to scout the place out before we go tomorrow, to get an understanding of how it’s laid out.”

  “I guess that makes some sense. And you’re going to give me a headache if you don’t take it down a notch. But you do have a point. I’ve never been there before, either.”

  “Thai, there’s a bus leaving for Stonehenge right now. It’s a sign.”

  They jogged over to the bus and boarded it in time. As the bus sputtered along the bumpy road, Valerie strained her eyes to catch her first glimpse of the tall stones. Her heart jumped as Stonehenge appeared in the distance. Even from miles away through a dirty bus window, it was more majestic than she had ever imagined.

  Gigantic rectangular stones stood vertically, roughly in a semicircle. Some of the stones were joined at the top by large slabs that connected the vertical stones. Inside the half circle were more stones, some that were standing and a few that had fallen over. Despite the obvious toll that time had taken on the ancient monument, toppling many of the boulders over, it still possessed a majesty and mystery that took her breath away.

  Valerie was in a trance as she and Thai paid the entrance fee and walked down the visitors’ path. They could only walk around the perimeter of the ruins, and she had to fight the urge not to break the rules and run inside the ring of stones.

  As she took it all in, a boulder in the distance caught her eye. “Why is that stone all the way over there so far away from the rest?”

  “I think that’s the Heel Stone. There used to be a second stone next to it, and the sun would rise and shine right through the two stones and onto the altar stone that stands in the middle of the ring of tall stones, which is called the Trilithon Horseshoe.”

  She turned to him in amazement, and he grinned. “What? I like to read. You think I didn’t research the place where the secret to leaving this planet is? I’m your guardian. I have to know what to expect.”

  “Do people know what this place was built for?”

  “Well, they don’t know about the test, if that’s what you mean. But it wasn’t built only for that reason. People used it to learn about the stars and the seasons, for religious reasons, and for burying important people when they died.”

  “Can you feel the power of this place? It’s humming in the ground.”

  “What?”

  “Be still.”

  Valerie shut her eyes, and Thai did the same. The hum vibrated in her veins. It was the magic; she knew it. She opened her eyes and saw Thai’s startled reaction.

  “I feel it, too.”

  Then, without warning, her vision went black and she collapsed to her knees.

  Valerie was running through a dark wood. Her feet pummeled the ground and her lungs burned. But she knew that no matter how fast or how far she ran, Sanguina would always find her. Find her and mentally torture her until she did what she asked.

  “Stop running, little one.” The whisper came from everywhere, yet nowhere, and Valerie’s fear spiked out of control. She spent so much of her time afraid—she couldn’t take it anymore.

  “You have to leave me alone!” Valerie cried.

  Sanguina stepped out of the shadows and stared at her with such ferocity that Valerie took a step back. “Never. I will never leave you alone. I will always be here. Give me what I want. Tell me about the monster you’ve seen in your dreams. I know there’s a new one.”

  Valerie squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t understand what Sanguina wanted from her, but whatever it was, she would never give it to her. “I’m not telling you anything.”

  “It doesn’t have to be this way. Stop fighting and join me. We will bring the universe to its knees.”

  “No!” she was suffocating from her fear, and her grip on her own sanity started to slip.