CHAPTER 3
Please, Be a Fluke…
“Hugo, are you sure we aren’t being followed?” Izzy asked in a hushed voice.
Hugo stretched his arms out sideways and his head fell back as he closed his eyes and chanted under his breath. A gorgeous halo of aqua-blue light surrounded him in a cloud of sparking electricity. It was breathtaking. Stunned, I sucked in air.
Hugo straightened up. “What is it, Addie? Are you okay?”
I swallowed hard. “Sorry, just choked…on a gnat.” I couldn’t tell him anything yet, and I had no idea what had just happened. Was it possible I’d just seen his magic working? Come to think of it, hadn’t I seen a light green glow around my lunchbox earlier? The box was imbued with magic. Had I seen its magic, too?
Hugo glanced around. “Well, there’s nobody anywhere near here. There’s a couple of deer, and a black bear with her two cubs, but don’t worry, they aren’t too close.”
Hugo had a rare talent for sensing sentient beings, whether they were a person or an animal.
In a few more steps along a barely visible winding forest trail, we came to what we called our waterfall. Hugo had warded the area to discourage any human, wizard, or sorcerer from entering the forest immediately surrounding the waterfall. And now, I could actually see the ward. It was a huge dome-shaped barrier of translucent shimmering energy. I squelched the urge to run my fingers along its exquisitely iridescent surface.
“Give me a few seconds to reinforce my ward,” Hugo said, again stretching out his hands.
He’d explained the ward to us when he’d triggered it a few months ago. It wouldn’t exactly keep intruders out if they wanted in, particularly if they were powerful wizards or sorcerers. Instead, the ward acted almost on a subconscious level, kind of like subliminal advertising in reverse, sending out the message you don’t want to come this way. And so far, it had worked. Izzy and I recognized our friend was very talented. Although as girls we had very limited knowledge of magic, from what we’d heard peripherally, Hugo seemed fairly powerful for a wizard his age.
We wound our way down the path to the waterfall. Ours was not a huge waterfall, more a gentle flow of water down a meandering slant of stones and moss disappearing into a subterranean river.
Our waterfall always infused me with tranquility, and today at least that hadn’t changed. I imagined tiny fairies flitting in the spray of the water and nearby in the flowers, or sunning in the dappled rays that dotted the soft moss. Now, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I caught glimpses of tiny firefly bursts of light. Was it possible I’d seen fairies or pixies? Of course I hadn’t. The stress of the day was just getting to me.
“Earth to Addie,” Izzy called out, waving me forward as she disappeared behind the waterfall. While I’d been daydreaming, Hugo and Izzy had walked all the way to the hidden path behind the waterfall. I quickened my pace to catch up with my friends.
I edged along the rock ledge to the small crevice behind the falls and sidestepped through the narrow opening. Outside the cave, our meandering waterfall was louder, but inside, behind the rock wall, it was muffled to a softer, even soothing sound.
By the time I caught up, Hugo had already lit the two wizard lanterns in our little cave. Over the years, we’d smuggled in all kinds of things, like the lanterns, a small stash of food, folding chairs, a folding table, a folding cooler, even a couple of folding cots. I guess we had a whole folding theme due to the small cave entrance. In fact, if Hugo grew much more, he wouldn’t be able to squeeze in unless we did a little excavation on the entrance, or if we learned to fold him.
“Honestly, Addie! Knock, knock. Are you home in there? I just asked you to give Hugo a little demonstration.”
I stared blankly at Izzy. Did she really want me to do magic again when I wished I’d never done it at all? Couldn’t Izzy just let me be in denial? That was sure where I wanted to be. After all, I was the daughter of the High Chancellor. I was supposed to be the model daughter and ultimately the model wife and the model mother, not some kind of desecration to our whole way of life. “Demonstration?” I squeaked.
“Addie!” Izzy pulled her hood off and cocked her head. “You know, something like you did earlier…” She did a you-know tilt of her head.
“Ha!” My laughter echoed off the rock walls of the cave. “I can’t do that again.”
“How do you know if you don’t even try? Just concentrate and believe.”
“What the heck are you two talking about?” Hugo threw his hands in the air. “Enough already, spill!”
“You’ll see in just a second,” Izzy told him, and then turned my way. “Just do it.”
“This is ridiculous. It was just a fluke,” I said dismissively as I sat down in one of the folding chairs.
“Do it, Addie!” Izzy ordered.
Maybe I needed to give it a try to stop her from pestering me. When it didn’t work, maybe she’d stop. I looked around the cave. What should I try? I’d left a bottled water on the folding table and I was thirsty. I concentrated, silently telling the bottle to come to me, but nothing happened. I stared at Izzy and shrugged.
“Try harder,” she said stubbornly.
Okay, I’d have to give it more of a try to get her to give up. In my head I imagined the bottle floating over to me. I commanded it in my head. Nothing happened. I gave Izzy another shrug. “Nothing, Izz. I tried.”
“You didn’t try hard enough, Addie. Try to feel whatever emotions you were feeling earlier.”
One more shot and I was so done. I thought of the panic I’d felt in the abandoned broom closet. I’d desperately wanted that cloak in my hand. I tried to feel the same emotions as I imagined the water in my hand. I even let that same urgency surge inside me, but still nothing happened. I tried once more, and this time I allowed the panic to build inside me, but channeled it into determination. In the next instant, the water flew at me, and it came so fast and hard that I ducked my head. The bottle flew past me and slammed against the cave wall, sending up a spectacular splash as the lid popped off from the impact. And this time, I saw my magic in a dazzling arc of deep, royal blue light.
“What the—?” Hugo yelled. “What the hell was that? Did you do that, Addie?”
“She did!” Izzy exclaimed with excitement. “She did it! She did it again!” Izzy jumped up and down.
I sighed and slumped further into the folding chair, resting an elbow on the chair arm and propping my head against my fist. This meant it hadn’t been a fluke earlier.
“Addie, that’s big magic. Do you realize the sheer physics behind that? I can’t even perform telekinesis on that scale yet. I’m still working on moving dominoes around a table.”
“How would I know?” I muttered. My ability to stay in denial was being ripped away from me.
“This is huge!” It was Hugo’s turn to pace. “It is epic.”
“I told you!” Izzy exclaimed. “It’s history in the making.” Izzy beamed at Hugo.
It’s a desecration, I thought to myself.
“We can’t tell anyone yet,” Hugo said in hushed tones, as if anyone could hear us.
“We already figured that one out,” Izzy agreed, rolling her eyes.
“What are we going to do?” Hugo asked Izzy.
“You’re asking me? I don’t know, but we have to keep Addie safe. You know what could happen to her.”
“Council prisoner, a lab rat or she gets retrained,” he replied.
The catchphrase from the Virgin Mobil commercial ran through my head: it’s time to retrain your brain. I swallowed back a hysterical giggle.
“See, Addie?” Izzy met my eyes. “We’ve got to keep this quiet.”
As if I needed telling. “Why do you think I would tell anyone when all I want is for it to go away?”
Izzy and Hugo both started pacing back and forth in opposite directions.
“Hugs.” Izzy paused in her pacing, meeting him in the middle. “Didn’t you tell me about some prophecy about a wizard woman with magic?
”
“You don’t think…Addie? I mean it could be—” Hugo glanced from Izzy to me. “But that would mean—”
“Just spill it already!” Izzy yelled.
Hugo turned serious eyes on me, and then Izzy. “Addie might be the Millennial Wizard Queen!”
“I thought so. But what does that really mean?” Izzy asked. “I can’t remember what you told me.”
“Let me look it up to make sure before I say anything else. But maybe Addie will change things.” Hugo glanced my way and then looked back at Izzy. “She just needs more…confidence.”
Izzy put her hands on her hips. “Tell me about it! She needs more fight, too.”
They just kept talking as if I wasn’t there; as if there were something to be done to change me. I couldn’t blame them, really. I’d never been a person of action. That had always been Izzy. I was, other than my friendship with Izzy and Hugo, the model daughter and student. I wasn’t cut out to be a wizard queen, whatever that was, or the agent of change they were making me out to be. I didn’t like to cause trouble. I didn’t want to be in trouble.
“I say for now we all lie low about this,” Hugo suggested.
“Sounds like a plan to me.” I finally added a few words to the conversation. “I need to get through this party tonight.”
“Uh-oh,” Hugo whispered.
I stood up, not liking the sound of that. “Uh-oh? Hugo, what do you mean by uh-oh?”
“Well, I was just thinking about what happens to wizards on their sixteenth birthday.”
“Zarius will be formally declared a wizard,” Izzy responded.
“And his familiar will come forth and bond with him,” I finished.
“Exactly,” Hugo said, going a little pale, like he’d swallowed a worm. “What if a familiar presents itself to Addie?”
I laughed and shook my head. “Hugo,” I paused, then laughed some more. “That’s ridiculous.”
I glanced at Izzy to see if she was as amused as me, but her eyes were wide with dread. “Addie, you’re a wizard, too, and it’s also your sixteenth birthday.”
“A familiar could come forward and choose you,” Hugo concluded.
I shook my head like before, but stopped laughing altogether. “I think it’s safe to say that would be really bad. As in really, really bad.” Could today really get that much worse?
Hugo and Izzy only nodded. They chose that moment to finally stop talking.