Willow's Perfect Storm

by D J DuMont

  Sylvie gasped. “I think your spell worked. But I don’t recognize those carvings at all. Are they words? It looks like some sort of ancient language.”

  Willow’s eyes shone as she looked at the words. “It is an ancient language. An ancient dragon tongue.”

  The carving that glowed in front of her at that moment would have looked like gibberish to many people, but not to Willow. She instantly recognized the script as the ancient dragon language she’d been working so hard to master. She furrowed her brow as she tried to figure out what the words said.

  “Can you read it?” Sylvie asked impatiently.

  “Some of it. It says something about passing through here…I’m not quite sure. I only recognize about seventy-five percent of the words.” Willow slowly looked over the words again. The glow was starting to fade, and she tried to cast the spell again to refresh it. “Prodo!”

  But the glow kept fading, despite Willow’s attempts to make it come back. When she realized that this might be her only chance to read the words, she tried even harder, trying not to panic as desperation began to take over.

  “All may open…no, all may pass…something about magic,” Willow muttered. “And I think that’s the word for door? No, portal. It says portal.”

  Willow felt beads of sweat breaking out on her forehead. The glowing script was nearly indecipherable now, faded almost back to nothing. She only had a few more seconds to figure it out. Her eyes scanned back and forth across the carvings, until finally, at the last second, she looked triumphantly up at Sylvie.

  “I’ve got it! It says ‘All who are willing may pass. Whether or not magic flows through your veins, you must only believe it is possible, and the portal will open for you.”

  Sylvie blinked a few times. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly,” Willow said. “But we should write it down. I don’t want to forget it, and we might not be able to get the message to appear again. Do you have any paper?”

  Sylvie shook her head. “No, but it should be easy enough to make some from some tree bark using an alchemy spell.”

  “Can you try? You’re the better alchemist.”

  Sylvie nodded, and went to strip a large chunk of bark from a nearby tree. Alchemy, although it was often hailed as a trick to turn ordinary objects into gold, was actually a branch of magic that had far more uses than turning everyday things into treasure. With the right spells, many of which unfortunately required the use of a cauldron, almost anything could be turned into anything else. The spells were difficult, and had never been Willow’s strong suit. But Sylvie had a knack for them, and Willow hoped her friend was going to be able to transform some of the nearby tree bark into paper for her. She did not want to forget the well’s message.

  Willow needn’t have worried. In less than a minute, Sylvie had changed the tree bark into paper, and had made a pen out of a short, slender twig. Willow smiled gratefully at her friend and took the pen and paper, hurriedly writing down the message. Only when the message was completely written down did she finally relax a bit.

  Sylvie and Willow stared down at the message for several minutes, trying to make sense of it.

  “I don’t think there’s any super deep meaning here,” Willow finally said. “I think this message is just saying that the well is a portal to somewhere else.”

  “A very old portal,” Sylvie said. “This well looks like it’s hundreds of years old. I wonder where it goes.”

  Willow shivered, partially from nervousness and partially from excitement. “I’d love to find out. Should we try it?”

  But Sylvie was shaking her head. “I’m not so sure. It could be somewhere dangerous, and besides that, it’s almost certainly somewhere outside of the Dragon Heart campus. We’ll get in big trouble if we leave, even if our leaving is done through a magical portal.”

  Willow sighed. “True. But this well must be important. Why did Cayenne show it to me now? She must have known it was here all along, but she didn’t bother to bring me here until now.”

  The Dragon Heart campus was large, stretching several acres back into the Maine wilderness, and all of those acres contained hidden magical objects. Some were large and obvious, and some were small and very hard to find. The students probably could have spent all four of their years at the Academy searching through the campus and only found a fraction of the artifacts. But most of the artifacts weren’t actually that useful, and so none of the students went out of their way to find them. Sure, it might be cool to come across a rock that spewed fire or a flower that made music, but those sorts of things were merely party tricks. They weren’t that exciting, especially once the students had themselves learned how to cast spells that would make ordinary objects do similar things.

  A portal to another place, though, could hardly be called mundane.

  Willow had a sudden thought, and looked over at Sylvie with wide eyes. “Do you think that whoever caused the Terraemotus earthquake used this portal to get on campus? Perhaps the magic shields don’t stop people from traveling through portals.”

  A horrified expression crossed Sylvie’s face. “We should tell Anjali about this. Maybe the portal needs to be sealed off.”

  Willow wasn’t usually a fan of running to Anjali with every little problem, but this time, she agreed. If this portal opened somewhere into the outside world, and the traitorous Agent had discovered or knew about it, then this old well was a huge security breach. Was that why Cayenne had suddenly wanted to show it to Willow?

  With a rising sense of dread, Willow took off running back toward Cayenne. “Let’s go, girl! Back toward the stables.”

  Cayenne let out a long sigh that made Willow feel like she had somehow missed the point of the well. But her dragon didn’t try to protest Willow’s command to head back toward the stable. Instead, with a loud roar, Cayenne rose into the air, followed closely by Sylvie and Saffron.

  Despite Cayenne’s seeming annoyance, Willow felt confident that telling Anjali about the well was going to help solve the mystery of the traitor—and perhaps solving that mystery would help solve the mystery of where Stein was holding her father captive.

  “Faster, Cayenne! Faster!” Willow urged, her heart pounding with excitement as she and her dragon rose high into the air, the earth once again falling away beneath them.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Anjali looked back and forth between Willow’s and Sylvie’s faces, not saying a word in response to what she’d just been told. Willow panted, trying to catch her breath. She and Sylvie had run all the way back from the stables and run straight to Anjali’s office, bursting in to tell their professor about what they’d found. Sylvie’s face was red and flushed, and Willow was sure her face must look the same.

  But Anjali seemed less than impressed with their news of the well portal. She seemed to be expecting them to say more, and when they didn’t, she finally asked, “Is that all?”

  “Well, yes,” Willow said, a bit impatiently. “Don’t you think it’s concerning that there’s a portal on campus that could lead to anywhere?”

  Anjali leaned back and smiled. “No, because I know exactly where that portal leads.”

  “You do?” Sylvie asked, her voice airy and light from lack of breath.

  “I do,” Anjali said, pausing dramatically for a moment before continuing. “It leads to the Birch Point campus.”

  Willow and Sylvie exchanged glances.

  “The Birch Point campus?” Willow asked. “Why in the world would a portal right along the boundary of the Birch Point Campus lead there? Wouldn’t it be easier just to step over?”

  Anjali shrugged. “I suppose so. But that portal used to lead somewhere else, long ago. It’s a very old well, and predates the Academy itself. The first headmaster here was bothered by the idea of a portal on campus that led far away off campus. You’re correct in assuming that this would be a security risk. Portals cannot be destroyed, but they can be redirected, so he merely redirected the p
ortal a few feet away. This made the portal essentially useless.”

  “Not completely,” Sylvie said. “Birch Point isn’t covered by magical shields, right? So someone could enter there, use the portal to get by the shield, and cause trouble on the Dragon Heart Campus.”

  Anjali still looked unconcerned. “We have magical shields up around the Birch Point Campus now, too. We’re not taking any chances. It’s still safer over here on the Dragon Heart Campus, because we have so many Agents here helping to patrol. But Birch Point isn’t just some open door where it’s easy for someone to come in and cause harm.”

  Willow looked over at Sylvie, feeling somewhat defeated. They’d thought they had found useful information. They’d thought they might have even solved the mystery of how the traitor was sneaking into their midst. But Anjali was telling them that the well portal was essentially a dud.

  Anjali must have seen the frustration on Willow’s face, because she leaned forward and smiled kindly at her and Sylvie. “Listen, girls. I appreciate your trying to help, but you don’t need to worry about security here. We have the brightest minds at the Agency making sure to keep this place as secure as possible. You two should be focusing on your magical studies. The third year is a difficult year, with lots of new, intense magical subjects. Your time would be best spent mastering your coursework. Leave the security of campus up to others, okay?”

  Willow and Sylvie both nodded, but they didn’t feel any less dejected as they left Anjali’s office.

  “Well, that was a bust,” Sylvie said. “So much for saving the day. I guess we should head back to our dorm rooms and get to studying. Anjali is right. The magical coursework this year is no joke.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Willow agreed as they turned to head toward the stairwell. “But I still feel like there’s more to that well portal than meets the eye.”

  “You think Anjali is wrong about where it leads to?” Sylvie sounded more than a little bit skeptical.

  “I don’t know,” Willow said slowly. “Maybe she’s not wrong about where it leads to, but there’s something important about that well. Cayenne wouldn’t have taken me there otherwise.”

  Sylvie let out a slow sigh. “Maybe Cayenne doesn’t know that the portal just leads over to Birch Point.”

  Willow shook her head. “Cayenne’s not dumb. She wouldn’t have shown me that unless she had a solid reason for doing so. There’s something more there, and I’m going to find out what it is. I don’t know how I’m going to find out, but I am.”

  “Alright,” Sylvie said in a resigned tone. Over the course of their friendship, Willow had stubbornly chased down many ideas that Sylvie considered a lost cause. Perhaps her practical-minded friend had finally realized that once Willow’s mind was made up, it was nearly impossible to change.

  The girls had reached the long hallway where the Dragon Heart students’ temporary dorm rooms where located, and Willow figured it was time to buckle down and study. There didn’t seem to be much else to do these days, anyway, since they had been essentially cut off from the outside world, and since Anjali clearly didn’t want their help on tracking down the traitor.

  “Look who it is,” a snide voice called out from down the hallway. “The two slackers who like to go flying around for fun instead of taking our magical classes seriously.”

  Willow groaned as she looked up to see Locke stepping out of the long shadows that the late afternoon sun was casting in the hallway. “Do you ever say anything nice?” she asked him. “Or is it impossible for anything but venom to come out of your mouth?”

  Locke dramatically clutched his heart. “Oh, you wound me, Willow! I’m not spouting venom. I’m only telling it like it is.”

  “Give it a rest, Locke,” Sylvie said in a tired voice. “Why do you care whether Willow and I are studying, anyway? If we make bad grades, it’ll just make you look that much better.”

  Locke smirked. “I suppose that’s true. The trouble is that the Agency always insists on all these ‘teamwork’ assignments. If I’m going to be forced to work with you, then I wish you’d take your magical education seriously.”

  “Duly noted,” Sylvie said in a sour tone. “Was that all? I’d like to get to my room and actually do some of my magical coursework.”

  Locke crossed his arms and got a superior look on his face. “I won’t keep you, then. I was just about to go call my parents. You know we’re allowed to contact our families, right? I’m planning to ask my mom and dad what they know about the traitor situation. I’m sure they know more than Anjali is telling us, and they’ll be happy to give me the inside scoop. You two should go contact your parents and ask them what they know. Oh, wait. I forgot—your parents aren’t Dragon Heart Agents, so they don’t know anything. Not everyone comes from a family of Dragon Hearts like me.”

  Locke puffed out his chest, and Willow glared at him. “My dad is a Dragon Heart Agent.”

  Locke shrugged. “I suppose that’s true. But you can’t exactly call him up when he’s being held prisoner, can you?”

  Willow started to lunge at Locke, ready to pummel him in a good old-fashioned fist fight. Before she could take two steps forward, however, she felt Sylvie pulling her back.

  “Don’t, Willow. You’re only going to make Anjali mad at you. He’s not worth it.”

  Willow might have pushed Sylvie away and kept trying to attack Locke anyway, but at that moment the door to Cara’s dorm room opened.

  “Hey, do you all mind keeping it down out here? Some of us are trying to study.”

  Cara’s annoyed face was just enough to snap Willow back to reality. Without another word to Locke, she marched to her dorm room and slammed the door behind her. Sylvie didn’t bother to follow her, and although Willow would have liked to discuss the well portal more, she couldn’t blame Sylvie for not wanting to follow her right now.

  Willow was too much on edge to have a rational conversation at the moment. All of the Dragon Heart students were too much on edge. It had been too long since the four of them had seen anyone except each other. Even though they weren’t cooped up in the same room anymore, they were still crossing each other’s paths far too often.

  Willow poured her frustrated energy into unpacking and arranging her dorm room, and then into studying for the next day’s classes. She caught up on several assignments where she’d fallen behind, and got so engrossed in her Practical Magic textbook that she even missed dinner. When the hunger pangs finally caught up with her, she raided a snack box she had in her dorm room, eating a protein bar and a bag of chips. Not the healthiest of dinners, but Willow would survive. She hadn’t been in the mood to go eat with anyone, so she was grateful for the snacks.

  The sun had long since set by the time Willow got ready for bed and turned out the lights. From the small window in her room, she looked down on the lawn below. Several senior Agents still patrolled, and Willow sighed as she watched them. How long would this go on? How long would she and the other students have to constantly worry about being attacked by one of the Agency’s own?

  It was an impossible question to answer. All Willow knew was that it had already been far too long. As she crawled into bed, she tried to fight off the sense of despair that threatened to overwhelm her by focusing her thoughts on the old well portal.

  There was something more to that well than Anjali thought. Willow knew Cayenne well, and she had seen the look in her dragon’s eyes when Willow asked her to fly back to Anjali after deciphering the well’s message.

  Cayenne hadn’t shown her that well because Anjali needed to know about it. Cayenne had shown Willow because Willow needed to know about it.

  But why?

  As Willow drifted off to sleep, she vowed to find the reason.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Willow tossed and turned so much that night that she felt like she’d barely slept by the time her alarm went off the next morning. With a groan, she dragged herself from her cozy bed and into the day ahead of her.

&nb
sp; At breakfast, she made small talk with Sylvie and Cara. No one wanted to talk about the fact that they were all still under “house arrest,” and Willow didn’t want to talk about the well portal in front of Cara. Locke didn’t show up for breakfast, which was surprising since he normally ate like a horse. Willow wasn’t going to complain about his absence, though. If she had to endure much more of his snark, she was liable to accidentally set off another mental magic attack in his direction.

  Practical Magic was the first class of the day, but even though Willow entered the room just one minute before class was scheduled to start, Anjali wasn’t there. Sylvie, Locke, and Cara all sat at their seats, staring down at their textbooks instead of each other. Everyone felt moody and on edge, and Willow was no exception. She sat in her seat and watched the clock on the wall until it reached the class’s official start time, but Anjali still wasn’t there.

  Willow felt an uncomfortable prickle of worry. Anjali was one of the most punctual people Willow knew, and hated tardiness. There must be something serious going on if their professor was late for class. Willow chewed her lower lip nervously, and hoped that there hadn’t been another attack from the traitor.

  Before she could worry too much, Sam appeared at the door of the classroom. He was holding a giant burlap bag and had a broad smile on his face, and Willow relaxed. If he was still smiling, then things couldn’t be too bad, could they?

  “Morning, everyone,” Sam said in a bright tone. “Look what just came in from the island! A giant shipment of coconuts. Your dragons are all going to be in a good mood later at dragon flying class. I’ve picked up some coconuts from the grocery store for them, but those aren’t nearly as fresh as these bad boys. Oh, and Willow—your mental magic tutor arrived from the island this morning as well. She’s excited to get back to lessons with you.”