I burst out into Braden’s living room and swung my staff again, praying the mysterious artifact would not let me down. I grinned as a translucent wave rippled through the air toward the massive, blockheaded man near Braden’s desk. He crossed his arms in front of him and grunted as the wave reached him and sent him sprawling back onto the desk in a swirling, chaotic mess of books and papers.
I shot past him, wrenched open the door, and flew down the hallway. My self-satisfied grin quickly dissipated when heavy footsteps issued from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder at the furious giant lumbering after me with a stout wand in his right hand. I swung left at the end of the hall and sprinted for the back door.
The door crashed open behind me as I turned left, and I wondered at the speed of the enormous man. I risked another glance and saw that he was gaining on me as I dashed down the walkway toward my dorm in Boleyn Hall.
I glanced back around and yelped as the small, sharp-nosed man appeared before me, his mouth curled into a wicked grin. It was the last place I wanted to be, but I didn’t see any alternative with Blockhead behind me and the smaller man blocking my way forward. I growled in frustration as I cut right and raced across the field, towards the woods where Lucas Billings died.
I don’t know if it was muscle memory or a trick of the woods, but somehow, I ended up sprinting through the same clearing that the cult had used several nights ago. If it wasn’t the same one, it sure looked similar, though I saw no evidence of the enormous bonfire that had illuminated the area.
A threatening crack issued from behind me, and great chunks of dirt flew up from my right and sent me sprawling leftward. I rolled and regained hold of my staff, rising to my feet just in time for another impact to knock the air out of me and send me flying backwards.
I groaned as I lay on my back, blinking to clear my spotty vision. The impact had knocked the wind completely out of me, and I coughed up a mouthful of earth. A wicked soreness was already developing on my lower back and tailbone, and I only hoped nothing was broken.
“Now, just don’t you move another muscle there, missy.” The gruff voice issued from an enormous shadow above me.
“Nice shot, Lem.” As my vision cleared, features of the smaller, sharp-faced man came into focus. He rubbed at a red, angry lump on his forehead. “Little bitch clocked me good.”
“She sure did.” The larger man chuckled. “The guys will get a real kick out of that one. Knocked out by a hundred-pound girl.”
“Hey, if you’re so tough, how’d she get past you, then?” the smaller man shot back angrily.
I reached for the staff on the ground to my right.
“Not another move,” the large man growled, his deep voice losing all amiability. I raised my hands as both men trained their wands on me menacingly.
“So, you want to take care of her, or me?” the smaller man hissed at his partner without taking his eyes off me.
“Why don’t you take this one?” The man shrugged his massive shoulders. “Maybe it’ll make you feel better about that ugly lump.”
“You know, it just might.” The small man trained his thin wand on the center of my chest. “Thanks, Lem. You’re a good—Ah!” The small man let out a terrible cry as a massive blur of fur leapt out of the woods to my right and latched onto his outstretched arm. His wand fell from his grip as the huge wolf bit down on his arm with a terrible crunch.
“No!” The large man stumbled away and fired a wild bolt of energy over the wolf as it shook his partner’s arm savagely. I scooted myself away from the chaos, and an unfamiliar voice echoed through my head.
“Run, Meena, run!”
I looked around for the source of the voice, but there was only the two villains and the wolf.
“Run!”
I thought the wolf’s yellow eye rolled toward me as the voice sounded in my head again, but it was hard to tell with all the commotion.
I grabbed my staff and took off into the woods. I had no idea if I was headed back in the direction of the school or not, but I didn’t care. My only desire was to put as much distance as I could between me and the two horrible men.
I slowed as I realized that no one was following me, then froze as a pitiful whimper carried through the woods behind me. Not the whimper of a man, but of a dog. Or a wolf. The whimper of a wolf that had saved my life.
But wasn’t my life more important than that of a wolf? Surely it was okay for a wolf to sacrifice itself so that I could live?
I shook my head and groaned as I turned back toward the clearing.
The two men circled the wolf, who whirled about, snarling, showing its yellowed fangs. The wolf was limping badly, dragging one of its rear legs as it tried to keep both attackers at bay.
“Now don’t kill it, Hobbes. The Professor needs the bastard alive,” the big man shouted at the smaller one as they circled the wolf.
“Like hell! This thing broke my damn arm!” Hobbes’ right arm hung limply at his side, dripping blood. He held his wand out with his left hand.
“That broken arm will be the least of your concerns if the Professor finds out you killed his specimen.” The large man’s voice held a touch of warning.
“Argh, fine. Let’s get it over with already, then,” Hobbes growled, stepping toward the wolf. He leapt back as the drooling jaws snapped shut just short of his leg. “Still got some fight in her.”
The wolf’s not the only one.
I waited until the larger man, Lem, circled around near me. I leapt out and swung my staff with all my might while at the same time trying to conjure some magical energy to augment the physical attack. The staff whooshed through the air, trailing a faint blue glow, and slammed into the side of the massive man, who flew twenty feet through the air and slammed into a towering oak with a sickening thud.
“Lem!” Hobbes cried out, glancing toward his fallen comrade.
It was all the time the wolf needed. In a rush of gray fur, the wolf leapt at Hobbes’ chest, knocking him to the ground. The man howled in agony as the wolf bit into the fleshy bicep of his other arm, and the wand fell harmlessly to the ground.
The wolf stood with its paws on his chest, snarling and drooling on his face.
“Wait, don’t!” I shouted at the wolf before I knew what I was doing. I was talking to wild animals now?
Surprisingly, the wolf turned its great head and trained its yellow eyes on me. I flashed back to my first night at Broken Wand, when I had made eye contact with the chained-up wolf through my bedroom window. It couldn’t be the same wolf, could it?
But those eyes…
The wolf took Hobbes’ slender wand in its wet jaws and snapped it in two, then limped over to me and looked back at the defeated man.
“He must die.”
I looked around for the source of the voice. The large man had not moved since his impact with the tree, and other than him, it was only the small, whimpering man, the wolf, and myself. The wolf glared up at me with its large yellow eyes, then turned back toward the whimpering man.
I stepped toward him and stood over him. Blood seeped through both sleeves of his shirt, and his face twisted in agony. To my horror, I felt my fingers clench around my staff, felt myself raise it. I wasn’t a killer. I wasn’t even a fighter. And yet I felt the form of the staff shifting, felt it flatten and its edges sharpen. I glanced up and found myself holding a long sword, the silver blade glistening in the moonlight. I looked back to the terrified face of the fallen man, whose eyes were trained on the blade, wild with fear.
“Please, don’t.” He tried to scoot himself back, but only winced in pain and lay down again. His arms weren’t of much use.
As I gazed down on his panicked face, I saw how easy it would be to strike the final blow. I saw our positions reversed—myself on the ground as he aimed his slender wand at my chest. I knew beyond a doubt that he would not have spared me. I knew that if the wolf had not intervened, he would have killed me and thought nothing of it. Why should he be spared, then?
My fingers tightened around the handle of my staff-turned-sword.
“Do it,” the mysterious voice said.
I let the staff drop to my side, and saw with relief that it had returned to its usual smooth, white form. I glanced back to the confused, but still terrified man, and was thankful that I felt no urge to do him any harm.
“You’d better get out of here before one of us loses control,” I warned, nodding at the wolf, who snarled in response.
He scrambled to his feet and took off through the woods.
“Fool!” the mysterious voice apparently chastised me as the man fled.
The wolf growled and limped off after him. I hoped it wouldn’t catch him, but a dark part of me realized I didn’t really mind either way. Good thing, too, because I was soon distracted by the latest in my long string of bizarre developments.
My staff vibrated in my hands and glowed a brilliant white. A blinding flash of light briefly illuminated the clearing. I blinked as my eyes recovered, and a shimmering, luminous form appeared before me.
The resplendent, silver-blue robes were unlike anything I had even seen her wear before, but I recognized the little dollar-store flip-flops. Her once-pale skin was now semi-translucent, but her grey hair was pulled into a tight, familiar bun.
Her smile was radiant as ever.
Tears blurred my vision and rendered the scene even more otherworldly.
“Grandma?”
“Meena, darling. I’ve missed you.”
She spread her arms and I raced to her. She wrapped me in a cool, electrified embrace that was unlike anything I had felt before. Yet it was also exactly like all of our previous hugs, and tears flowed freely down my face as I relaxed into her.
Chapter 13
I finally managed to pull myself away from her, my curiosity and confusion overcoming my reluctance to let her go as I gazed in wonder at her shimmering, smiling face.
“I don’t understand, Grandma. Are you really here?”
“In a sense, yes. But I’m only here for a short time, to serve a very specific purpose. Bring me that staff.” She pointed behind me to the staff I had dropped when I rushed over to hug her.
“But I have so many questions,” I said as I retrieved the staff and carried it over to her. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a witch?”
She smiled as she took the staff from me. “Ah, hello old friend.”
“Grandma?” She looked off wistfully as she caressed the white staff. “Why didn’t you tell me about the Academy, about everything?”
“I’m sorry, Meena.” She peered back at me with a sad smile. “I wish I could have told you all about our true heritage. But your father never truly understood us. I warned your mother that was a risk she was taking by marrying a non-mage, but Kim just loved him so much.” She shook her head sadly. “I tried to teach you our secrets, but he couldn’t bear to be reminded of her. And who could blame him, after what happened to your mother?”
“After what happened to my mother?” I had always been told my mother died in a car accident. What did that have to do with magic? “What does that mean?”
“We don’t have much time, Meena. Kneel, please.” She pointed to the ground in front of her, and I dropped to my knees.
“Please, Grandma.” I gazed up at her as tears welled in my eyes again. “I’m so confused.”
“I know, dear. Maybe I should have told you more, but I couldn’t stand to see how it made your father suffer. I don’t know if I made the right choice, but I did the best I could. That’s all we can ever do.” She gazed down at me with a sad smile. “Now, hold still.”
She raised the staff above her head.
“Meena Song, daughter of Kim Song, Granddaughter of Lee Young-Mi, you have earned the right to wield our family’s ancestral wand. You have shown selflessness by risking your own life to save that of another.” She brought the staff down and touched my right shoulder. “You have shown courage by fighting when it would have been easier to quit.” She moved the staff over my head and touched it to my left shoulder. “And most important, you have shown mercy by sparing the life of an enemy who may not have done the same for you.” She touched the end of the staff to my chest, and a warm, tingling sensation radiated through my body. “Now rise, and accept your gift.” She waved her hand over the length of the staff, and suddenly she was holding a slightly crooked, pale length of wood, the same color as the staff, but only about a foot and a half long.
She held the wand out to me as I stood.
“Wield it wisely, Meena.” She fixed me with a stern gaze as I grasped the strange length of wood. “There’s nothing quite so alluring as the temptation of power.”
I bowed my head in a solemn nod. “I will.”
“I’m afraid I must go now, grandchild.”
I snapped my head up and found her grimacing. “What?” Tears formed in my eyes again. “But you just got here. You can’t. Please, Grandma, I still have so many questions.”
“I know, I know. Come here, it’s okay.” She spread her arms and I folded myself into another embrace. It was colder this time, and I felt her slipping away. “I’m so glad I got to hug you again, dear. I wish I could still do it every day. But I’m afraid I won’t be around after tonight.”
“So this is it? I won’t see you again after this?” I pulled my head back and gazed into her fading eyes. They grew more transparent by the moment. “But you’re magic. Can’t I contact you somehow?”
“Maybe, dear, maybe. That’s up to you, now.” She grinned. “Be careful, study hard, and trust Henry. He’s a good man.”
“Wait, what happened to my mother?” I called out to her fading form as tears ran down my face and off my chin. “Please, Grandma, don’t go!”
“I’ll always love you, Meena.” Her words echoed through the woods as her transparent form disappeared.
I sank to my knees and sobbed on the damp forest floor, suddenly cold and alone under the faint, cloud-obscured moonlight. I looked around the clearing as my sobs lessened. I wasn’t sure what I should do next, but I did know one thing: I had some questions for Professor Henry Wallace.
End of Episode Two
Episode Three: A Hidden Truth
Chapter 1
“Get up, Meena.”
The mysterious voice that fractured the silence of the clearing had the complete opposite of its intended effect on me. Instead of standing, I sank into a defensive crouch, one palm pressed hard against the prickly forest floor while the other gripped the slender wand my grandmother’s spirit had magically whittled from the powerful white staff.
“Don’t come any closer,” I warned, but my voice had been scraped down to a hoarse rasp after my extended crying jag. Not that the mysterious voice could possibly get any closer than appearing directly inside my mind—because that’s exactly what was happening. The voice was bypassing my ears completely and materializing within the same part of my brain that registered my own inner voice, yet somehow, I could still sense the other speaker’s tone and timbre as if her voice were actually creating sound waves.
The unseen speaker released a soft noise somewhere between a bemused chuckle and a derisive snort. “I see you don’t follow instructions any better than your mother.”
That got my attention. I straightened up on my knees, eyes searching the encircling tree line, my wand pointed stiffly outward like a very skinny knife.
“What do you know about my mother?” I demanded, unsuccessfully attempting to keep the quiver out of my voice. My emotions were already rubbed raw after the encounter with my grandmother’s apparition—if that was even the right word for what I had experienced, since we had shared far more physical interaction than I would have ever thought possible with a ghost. This was not the right time for some invisible being to taunt me with knowledge of my long-dead mother who I knew almost nothing about. “Tell me right now!”
“I know that she is dead because she didn’t follow instructions,” the voice answered har
shly. “So perhaps, in the future, if I instruct you to dispatch someone who wishes to bring about our deaths, you will comply with some haste?”
“My mother died in a car accident,” I answered reflexively, but my mind was spinning back to something Professor Wallace had said at our last meeting, something which also called that one most basic fact about my childhood into question.
“As did I, I would imagine,” the voice scoffed, dripping with bitterness.
I sucked in a breath. Was I standing in some sort of haunted forest? For a moment, I dared to hope that was true, because then we could simply find and ask Lucas Billings exactly what happened to him. And why. But then sense returned to my head with a shudder. A haunted forest was not something to hope for. It was something to be searching for a way out of as soon as possible.
My eyes darted around the clearing. Dread filled my chest. I had no idea which direction would lead back to campus.
“Who are you?” I asked, since it appeared I was at least temporarily stuck here with my new invisible friend. Or enemy. It was hard to tell. “And how did you know my name?”
“You may call me Rhea. And I knew you from the moment our eyes first met. It was like seeing a ghost. Or staring through a crack in time.”
“Since our eyes...?” I wrinkled my brow, mentally reviewing all the female faces I could remember making eye contact with since I’d arrived at Broken Wand Academy a few very long days ago. But none of them matched the voice I was hearing so clearly in my head.
Of course, I supposed the speaker could be someone I hadn’t exchanged words with, or maybe even a man using magic to disguise himself. After all, the voice had only said I could call it Rhea, not that Rhea was actually its name.
I shook my head, dispelling the buzzing swarm of thoughts. “Show yourself.”
“As you wish.”
A twig snapped. My head pivoted sharply to the right just in time to see two yellow orbs floating out of the woods, keeping low to the ground. What kind of magic was this? Ghosts? Fairies? Aliens? After hugging my dead grandmother, I couldn’t rule out much of anything anymore.
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