The Sorcery Trial

by J. A. Armitage

  I rolled my eyes at him. Of course, he knew that literary reference. I forged ahead. “What you did back there with the hedge—I need to be able to do things like that. If something happened to you…”

  “Plan on ditching me?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “I’m just saying…if you were sick…or injured. If I needed to help us escape—”

  “It still amazes me that you went through an entire month of training and you have the magical ability of a rock. Less than some rocks actually. How is that possible?”

  I scowled.

  “You did magic at the final trial,” Orin said. “Why don’t you just build on that?”

  My eyes flicked to Ben and his blinking light. I didn’t want to admit that Tristam had done the magic that had gotten me through. I didn’t think the FFR execs would pull me at this point in the race, but I couldn’t risk it. Not when I’d already come so far.

  “I can’t recreate it,” I admitted, searching for an excuse. “I’m not sure why. Maybe under pressure, I summoned something that I can’t now.”

  “You don’t consider this under pressure?” He gestured to the ominous forest around us, where at any moment, some toothy faerie monster could leap out and attack.

  “You know what I mean. Fine. Forget I said anything.” Why had I thought this was a good idea again?

  “Wait a minute,” he said his eyebrows quirking. He looked almost cute when he did that. I banished the thought with horror. Orin—cute? Absolutely not. Orin had been nothing but an ass to me since we met. “Are you asking me for help?” he continued. “Is the great Jacqueline Cunningham admitting there is something she can’t do better than everyone else?”

  I punched him in the arm with all my might. Wish it could be his smug face, I thought savagely. “Only when it comes to magic. In all other arenas, I’m vastly superior to you.”

  “Including humility.”

  I wanted to scream. “Will you help me or not?”

  “I will. But I’m going to make you suffer for it a bit longer.”

  I let out an incredulous laugh. “I don’t think you’re supposed to admit your devious plan.”

  “Just another thing I’m not as good at as you,” he said.

  “Indeed,” I countered with a toothy grin.

  He looked around. We were in a sparse stretch of forest that looked slightly less forbidding than the rest of the thick foliage we’d been traipsing through. We had to be almost all the way to the faerie hill. “Maybe we should stop for the night,” he suggested. “We don’t know what we’re going to face in there. It wouldn’t hurt to tackle it on a full night’s sleep.”

  That sounded like sense to me. “I agree. It’s been too easy to get from the Erl-King’s castle to the hill. There will be some sort of nasty surprise before we get the next clue.”

  Orin laid out his sleeping bag while I gathered some kindling and dry brush for the fire and tried not to be too annoyed that I didn’t have a sleeping bag of my own. It’s not like we had anything to cook for dinner, but it would be nice to be warm for a change.

  “All right, start the fire,” Orin said.

  I looked at him. “You have the magic.”

  “I thought you wanted to learn.”

  I snorted. “We’re going to be here forever if that’s how you’re trying to teach me. I tried with Evaline for about the entire month of training and failed at every point.” Though I had been successful that time with Tristam on the roof.

  “Just show me,” he said.

  “Fine.” I sat down cross-legged and gazed at the fire. I pulled memories of warmth to me—a toasty fire in the lodge at Big Sky ski resort, a hot shower after a long day of training, that week last year when we all thought the entire city of L.A. was going to melt. God, what I wouldn’t give to be in any of those situations over this one…I banished that thought as I felt the warmth building inside me, focusing on the heat. But when I tried to release it as Tristam had shown me, nothing happened.

  I opened my eyes with a huff.

  Orin was studying me like a science project.

  “What?” I asked self-consciously.

  “What do you do to when you try to light it?”

  I furrowed my brow, looking for words. “I try…to light it. I imagine myself lighting it. I shove my hot thoughts towards it—”

  “Your hot thoughts?” He chortled.

  I hissed. “You know what I mean. I try to see it in my mind. Will it to happen.”

  “Hmm.” He stroked his chin like a detective from a cheesy movie. “That might be your problem. You can’t…force magic. You’re not its master. It’s a partnership of equals. You have to surrender to it. Trust it.”

  “Trust it? Hell no. This stuff ruined my sister’s life.”

  Orin’s eyes widened, and I cursed my slip. I shouldn’t have mentioned Cass. “Your sister had a bad experience with magic?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You don’t have to tell me what happened. But…how did it make you feel?”

  “You’re not my shrink, Orin. How the hell do you think it made me feel? I never wanted anything to do with the stuff ever again.”

  He nodded. “I think you might have blocked yourself.”

  “What do you mean?” My ears perked. This was new.

  “Your fear of magic is keeping you from fully surrendering to it. Imagine you have…walls around you that you’ve built for what you think is your protection. You need to take its hand, but you can’t do that from inside your fortress.”

  “I’m not afraid of it,” I said. “I just don’t want anything to do with it.”

  “Me thinks thou doth protest too much…” he said, giving me a tight-lipped smile.

  “Shut it, Shakespeare,” I snapped. I chewed on what he said, turning it over in my mind. I wasn’t afraid of magic, was I? I was just being cautious to stay away from something that had hurt Cass. It was self-preservation, not fear. Right? The sentiment rang false within me. Maybe I was afraid. Just a little. “If you were right…which I’m not saying you are,” I hurried on, “What do you suggest I do?” I hated that I needed his help. I hated that I needed magic.

  “You need to get over your fear.”

  “Oh, okay, I’ll just…do that.” My fists balled at my side.

  Orin sat down on his sleeping bag across the dark pile of kindling. “Jacq, when it comes to things like fighting a crocodile to save a girl you’ve just met or battling ancient forest kings, you’re the most fearless human I’ve ever met. And humans have no reason to be fearless. You’re incredibly easy to kill.”

  “You flatter,” I said dryly.

  Orin went on. “It’s the truth. But for whatever reason, nothing scares you.”

  “Except this,” I admitted quietly.

  “When I was a kid,” Orin said, “my father told me to pretend magic was my…pet.” He closed his eyes as if embarrassed to admit this.

  “Your pet?” I laughed.

  “Yes. All types of pets, really. You know about the five elements, right?”

  “I’m not a complete magical dunce, thank you.”

  “Just checking. Well, he told me to think of each of the elements as a pet. Fire was a little dragon, obviously.”

  “Like Mushu from Mulan?” I asked. That was one of Cass’s and my favorite movies as a kid. A pang went through me at the thought.

  “I have no idea what you just said. But…sure,” Orin said. “Water was a fish. Air was a hawk, and Earth was a rabbit. It made magic feel…familiar. Friendly even. The elements don’t want to work with someone who doesn’t want to work with them.”

  “You make it sound like magic is easily offended.”

  “It has a personality. I mean, sure, the magician shapes the magic. But in its essence, it’s playful. Lively.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” I admitted. “And what about quora? That’s the faerie life force, right?”

  “Yes. My father told me to imagine
quora as me. A…spirit version of myself. To hang out with my element pets. Together, we could…do things.” He rubbed his brow, not meeting my eyes.

  “That sounds…really sweet, actually,” I said. “Where’s your dad now?”

  Orin’s mask slammed back into place. “I don’t want to talk about it.” It seemed that I wasn’t the only one with secrets.

  I recoiled at his fierceness, searching for a safe subject. “So you think I should think of magic as a pet?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about that in years. But it helped me not be afraid of it. Maybe it will help you.” With that, I could tell that our conversation was over. Orin lay down, crawled into his sleeping bag. and rolled over, his broad shoulders a wall between us.

  Just before he began to snore, I saw the flick of his hand over his shoulder.

  The fire before me burst into a cheerful blaze, banishing the chill of the night. Next to me on the dirt lay a new sleeping bag, in all its downy glory. With a smile, I crawled into it, zipping it up all the way. As I drifted off to sleep, images of magic bunnies danced around me.

  17

  Orin shook me awake the next morning. I was stiff, and my stomach was unhappy from the all-apple dinner we’d enjoyed last night. But overall, it wasn’t the worst night I’d had over the Hedge. At least I’d been warm.

  “I found a good vantage point to scope out the faerie hill. I think we should get moving.”

  “Okay,” I said, reveling in the last moment before I unzipped my sleeping bag and let all the cold air in. Before, I might have made a snide remark, but last night we’d seemed to form an uneasy truce, and I was loathe to break it. It was a relief to feel, for a change, like I had a partner. That I wasn’t in this strange place entirely alone.

  He threw something at me, and it took a second to register what it was. A packet of Oreo cookies? A bunch of berries I might have understood, but Oreos? I opened my mouth to question him, but he held his forefinger to his lips and pointed at the bag of the sleeping Ben. It was open. Orin had stolen the cookies. Normally I'd have been as angry as all hell, but I was so hungry that I found I didn't care. Pulling open the pack, I shoveled three in my mouth at once, savoring the chocolaty taste and passed the pack to Orin.

  "Very ladylike," he whispered, taking one cookie and chewing on it.

  We ate the full pack before quietly zipping Ben's bag back up and waking him from his sleep. He'd notice they were gone later, but as a cameraman, he'd be able to get more.

  We packed up our meager camp and trudged up a little hill to an outcropping at the edge of the forest. The thick trees opened up to a soft rolling hill that sloped down before us, leading to a grassy meadow. The faerie hill hunched in the middle of it, covered in a riot of flowers.

  “It’s beautiful,” I admitted.

  “Beautiful, and deadly. These are places of great power. Usually, that attracts powerful faeries.”

  Great.

  “Best to stay out of sight.” Orin knelt down and took my hand, pulling me down beside him. I huffed but relented, lying out on my stomach beside him in the dewy grass like a sniper, trying to ignore the familiarity of his motion and how it made my already-queasy stomach flip.

  “Do we see anything that could be a clue?” I squinted, trying to spot anything out of the ordinary. Or…more out of the ordinary. Because everything seemed weird in this backward place.

  “It won’t be outside. It will be underneath.”

  “Underneath?” I asked. “You can go inside that thing?”

  “The hills are gateways. Many faeries live below ground. There are vast networks of tunnels. Worlds you don’t see.”

  That was a disconcerting thought—there could be hostile faeries walking beneath us right now. “Do you see…a door then?”

  “I don’t. It could be on the other side. I suggest we make a lap. But keep our distance.”

  A sound of cracking branches reached our ears, and Orin seized me, slapping a hand over my mouth, and pulling me even further down into the tall grass.

  I froze, partially in surprise at his closeness. This close he smelled of the forest—herby smells like sage and mint and fresh-turned soil.

  Out of the tree line tromped Yael and Duncan. Yael had tied his long white-blond hair in a braid over one shoulder, and with his pale skin, he shone nearly white in the morning sun. He strode with that proud swagger that I was beginning to recognize as a faerie trademark. He walked as if he owned the whole world, and it was here to serve him.

  Duncan at his side moved more cautiously, his head swiveling as if entering enemy territory. I suppose it was all enemy territory. But still, he kept his dark eyes sharp above the shadow of a beard that was coming in.

  Orin removed his hand from my mouth, shifting imperceptibly away from me.

  As the team moved closer to the faerie hill, Yael gestured in a pattern I didn’t recognize. The blanket of flowers parted, revealing a wooden door on the side of the hill facing us.

  It reminded me of a scene from Lord of the Rings. But I knew that there was no hobbit inside.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “We can go in after them.”

  Orin shook his head. “Let’s see what happens. I don’t trust Yael not to betray us.”

  Funny, that’s how I felt about all the faeries. But, there must be something extra about Yael that Orin didn’t like. “We don’t know how he made the door appear,” I protested. “What if it disappears? We could miss our chance.” I tried again to stand, but Orin grabbed my arm, pulling me back down. “Wait,” he hissed.

  “What?” I looked back, and my eyes widened. He was right. Amongst the blanket of reds and pinks and magentas…something was moving.

  “They wouldn’t,” Orin said, his eyes growing wide with horror.

  “What?”

  Yael and Duncan were just feet from the door when an explosion of movement burst forth from the blossoms. Dozens—hundreds of tiny creatures with pointed red hats swarmed at them.

  “What the hell are those?” I asked. They were like…garden gnomes. If garden gnomes had razor sharp teeth and bulging white eyes.

  “Red Caps,” Orin breathed.

  The creatures swarmed around Yael and Duncan in a racing circle. The competitors raised their hands, and magic crackled the air around them. A protective bubble of magic materialized around the faerie and the man.

  “What are Red Caps?” I whispered, mesmerized by the sight of the little creatures moving in tandem. They were like a swarm…ants…or bees?

  “They’re like…” Orin searched for the right word. “Piranhas. They’re flesh eating. Once they have your scent, you’re done for. I can’t believe they put the clue directly under a nest.”

  “Those things…eat people?” I swallowed. Flesh-eating garden gnomes. Leave it to Faerwild.

  Orin looked directly into the camera that Ben held a few feet away, talking to the show producers. “You guys are bastards.”

  The circle around Yael and Duncan was growing smaller as the swarm tightened, surging against the magic—testing the defenses. Where a Red Cap brushed against it, the bubble would flash with light like a bug zapper.

  Yael held up his hands, maintaining the shield, while Duncan flung magic through it—lightning bolts that sent the Red Caps sailing into the air. But there were so many of them. “There’s no way he can get them all,” I whispered, paralyzed by the sight before me.

  Duncan seemed to realize the same thing and sent out a spell like a shock wave, knocking the Red Caps off their feet. But more came. With every creature that Duncan killed, it seemed two more took its place.

  “We need to help them,” I said, pushing to my feet, realizing with horror how this scene would end. “They’re going to die.”

  “We can’t help everyone,” Orin protested. “They got themselves into this mess by bumbling forward like a couple of idiots.”

  “How can you be so heartless?” I rounded on him.

  He faced me, staring me down.
“I’m not heartless. I’m just not willing to sacrifice what I care about for strangers. They’re our competition.”

  “What do you care about?” I scoffed. “Seems to me to be one thing. Orin Treebaum. Stay here if you want. But I’m going to help.”

  One of the Red Caps had made it through Yael’s magic shield now, and darted at Duncan, latching onto his shin. He bellowed in pain as I lunged down the hill.

  Orin’s strong arms caught me around my waist and hauled me back into the grass. “No!” he shouted as I struggled against him, trying to scramble out from under him. “I let you save Genevieve. I’m not letting you save them. I can’t lose you,” he said, his dark eyes burning like stars as he looked at me.

  His words stunned me, shaking me back to myself. I froze.

  “You can’t…lose me?” Was it possible that somehow, Orin had actually come to care for my safety?

  “If you die…I lose the race,” he stammered, leaning back on his heels, putting distance between us.

  Reality slammed back into me. “Right,” I said, realizing my assessment of him was all too true.

  Another Red Cap had made it through Yael’s protective enchantment, and Yael pulled out his sword and sliced it in two. But it seemed the creatures who had made it through had weakened the field, and now the little faerie bastards began pouring through.

  Yael and Duncan shouted in dismay, swinging swords and shooting magic.

  “I can’t watch,” I said, my stomach churning.

  “If they’re in danger, they can use their emergency beacon,” Orin said. “They’ll forfeit the race, but they’ll live. It’s their choice to still be there. Don’t put this on yourself.”

  I turned away, my hands hovering over my eyes. Of all the things that I thought might happen in my life, watching someone be eaten alive by tiny, bloodthirsty monsters was definitely not one of them. “And you wonder why I’m afraid of magic?” I said, fighting back tears.

  I risked a peek through my fingers just as Yael and Duncan’s protective bubble failed. The Red Caps swarmed them.

  But suddenly, a bright purple light shot into the sky. Instantly, a faerie in a gray uniform with the FFR logo appeared in the sky, hovering like an avenging angel. He shot a spell on the scene below that froze every single Red Cap.