She was particularly proud of the last bit, but Hunter only acknowledged her words by squinting. When nothing happened, Ivy bent over quickly and grabbed some of the dead leaves from the ground, crunching them between her fingers, sniffing them, and letting them fall back onto the forest floor. Again, nothing.
“Are we supp—”
“Shh!” She jumped back up, holding her finger out to him and pretended to listen hard. “Do you hear that?”
Hunter’s eyes widened, but he shook his head.
“Yeah…yeah…uh huh.” Ivy bit her lip, knowing Hunter’s eyes were locked on her. “They say they haven’t seen it.” She smiled nervously.
“Damn,” he was quick to say. “Well, we could try dowsing?” He looked at her expectantly, but when she didn’t respond, seemed to second guess himself. “Or scrying, if you happen to have one of its feathers…or scales?”
“Oh, uh.” Ivy cleared her throat. “No, no, I think…dowsing? Yeah, that should work fine.”
“Great.” He started to search the forest floor. “I just need the right equipment.”
While he looked for whatever that meant, Ivy watched him, blowing out a long breath, amazed her ruse had worked. Maybe he’d never met a sylvan before, they were supposed to be rare, or maybe she was just that good? She preferred the latter.
Feeling useless just standing there, Ivy pretended to also search the ground. She picked up a stick as if to examine the forest floor better.
“Oh, that’s perfect.” Hunter took the stick from her and held it up beside another he already had in hand. “Great match.” She tried to hide the bewilderment on her face as he grabbed onto tiny branches jutting off the ends of each stick, the lengths of both laying perpendicular over his fists. He closed his eyes, holding his arms out. “Now, we focus on what we want to find.”
Ivy wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be helping—not that she could—so she simply watched as he stood in the center of the forest, sticks in hand, head tilted up to the sky. Frankly, he looked a little crazy. Crazy, that was, until a jolt of blue light charged out from the ends of each and arced to meet one another. Connected now by a constant, if slightly erratic, beam of neon sparks, the sticks swayed gently in unison, and Hunter opened his eyes.
“Whoa.” Ivy’s heart fluttered. This was magic, right in front of her. She could touch it if she wanted, but she didn’t dare.
“Ah, great, it worked!” Hunter almost seemed surprised. He turned and the sticks turned as well, pointing off to the left. “I guess we start that way.”
“I guess so.” Ivy was truly in awe, unable to look away as they traversed the forest. “Where did you learn that?”
“What, this?” Hunter shrugged. “It’s pretty basic. My mother taught me when I was really little so I could always find her if I ever got lost. Which I sort of used to. A lot.”
The image of a four-year-old Hunter following bright blue sticks through a department store was cute, Ivy thought, if a little freaky. Then she noticed a question in Hunter’s eye that she was afraid to answer, so instead she headed him off. “I have something to confess. I’m not a…very good sylvan.”
Hunter laughed deeply. “I doubt that very much.”
“It’s true,” she insisted. “I think Oakley got it all.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, I don’t think I’m a very good witch either. Warlock,” he corrected himself. “Whatever.”
“Oh, thanks.” She rolled her eyes and kicked a pine cone out of her path. “I bet that’s completely true.”
“It is. Sometimes I feel like…like I’m missing something.”
Ivy looked after him as he focused on the sticks. He’d said it casually, but his reach for the right words hadn’t seemed to be because he was making them up.
They came upon a space where a tree had once been, but now only a pile of ash and a burned stump remained. It hadn’t been particularly big, and the trees around it had survived, but the bright yellow petals of what once was there littered the ground, the tips of them seared.
“Golden elm,” Hunter mused, kicking at the leaves. “Interesting. Rods,”—he looked down at the sticks with a laugh—“Continue.” The sticks bumped themselves to the right, and they followed.
“I think your magic is impressive.” Ivy remembered seeing him open his door with a wave. Sure, it wasn’t fire like Safiya had, but telekinesis or whatever wasn’t nothing.
“I appreciate that.” He grinned at her like he thought she was just being nice. “So your brother got all the plant stuff, huh? From what I understand, sylvans usually end up specializing in something, sort of like witches. What’s yours then?”
She thought about all the history classes she’d ever taken, carrying little to no weight in the real world, and her bar-tending skills which were average at best and useless to her now. “I don’t actually know. Maybe I don’t have one.”
“Sometimes it takes a while to find your calling. You have plenty of time. Oakley just found his early.”
“Oh, he lucked into that,” she said rubbing her face. He lucked into everything.
“What about your parents?”
“Parents?” Ivy swallowed.
Hunter stopped. “Wait, sore subject? I didn’t mean to—”
“No, no.” Ivy continued on, and so did he. “My dad’s a doc—a healer, and my mom’s a professor.” Ivy assumed there was at least one magic academy around. “But none of that’s for me. Maybe I’m just an organizer.” She chuckled. “That’s what I’ve done my whole life.”
Hunter made a sound in the back of his throat. “Maybe. The world could certainly use it.”
“Do you have any siblings?” she asked, poking at a bright red flower hanging off a tree. It shriveled up at her touch.
“Nope, just me.”
“Ah, you came out perfect, so they stopped with you.”
Ivy was laughing, but Hunter squinted at her. “What do you mean?”
“Just a joke. You know, parents of only children are satisfied with the one, so they don’t try again.”
Hunter watched the sticks for a minute, his brow furrowed. “Is Oakley your younger brother?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Just curious.”
It seemed like they had been walking for a long time, following the sticks. They talked casually, and Ivy found it easy even when evading the magically-charged questions. Birds chirped off in the trees, but after a while their sounds died away, replaced by the slow rattle of unseen insects, a last hurrah before the cold set in. They continued on, the sound of the forest hollowing out, the bray of something far off and foreign calling out now and again, and were led past a few more charred places. Hunter hadn’t remarked that they were strange, and so Ivy played along, but the patches of burnt forest made her particularly uneasy.
Then they came upon it, a spot where a tree much bigger than the others had once been, but in its place was a burnt trunk poking up from the ground a few feet. With its branches gone now, the sunlight shone brightly on the spot. Blackened and shattered, what was left of the stump jutted up before them, the leftover roots still crawling through the dirt and the base covered in ash. Luckily, the fire hadn’t spread far, appearing to burn out in the wetness of the fallen leaves, though some of the surrounding trees had smoke-smudged branches.
When the dowsing rods didn’t bend away, Ivy went up to the stump and pressed her hand against the trunk then pulled it back sharply. “It’s still hot.” She shook out the warmth, a faint orange glow from between the chunks of thick bark still covering what was left of the base.
“Burned from the inside?” Hunter paced around the tree, the sticks positioning themselves to continuously point at the stump as he moved. “We might have found our bird.”
Ivy knelt down and peered into the hollow. She expected some kind of burning ember or coal within, but instead there was a gem of bright green lodged inside. And then it blinked.
With a yelp, she threw herself back. “Some
thing’s in there!”
Hunter dropped the sticks, the blue arc going out, and came around to where she was. He leaned in close and examined the trunk. “Hey there, dude. Pretty far from home, huh?”
Ivy scurried up onto her knees and peered over Hunter’s shoulder. Inside, the creature shifted, pressing itself against the back of the tree. The space around it emanated with a dull, orange glow, just enough to illuminate the thing. It had a long, slender neck and its body was wrapped around itself in a ball, all green and scaly, but its head was bird-like with a sharp beak and brilliantly red comb cresting from between its eyes and down the back of its neck.
Hunter huffed. “We might be able to coax him out of there with something shiny.”
Ivy brought her hand up to her chest. She’d completely forgotten about the necklace, so used to wearing it every day, never taking it off. A gift from Travis, but how long ago now? Ivy tugged the chain over her head and held it out in front of Hunter, the heart pendant catching the light. “Will this work?”
“There’s a chance he might ruin it.” Hunter waved a hand. “We should find something else.”
“Oh, no.” She pushed it toward him. “Trust me, it’s fine.”
Hunter held the pendant up when she insisted he take it, and it dangled in front of the hole in the stump. “You see this, little guy?” He kept his voice quiet, pitching it a bit higher than normal. “You want it, don’t you?”
The creature’s head jerked with the dangling pendant and slowly began to unravel itself.
“That’s right.” Hunter jiggled the charm, taking a step back. “You gotta come out here to get it.”
With careful movements, it unfolded and took a step toward the edge of the hollow, one taloned foot creeping over the edge, chicken-like with three toes digging into the ashy wood. Another, single talon gripped the side of the hollow, extending out from its back and revealing thin, leathery skin pulled taut along its body—a wing, but featherless, blue-green veins running like rivers all over it.
It finally unraveled itself completely and perched on the edge of the hollow, its sinewy, scaled body tense, craning a long neck toward the pendant, a rooster’s head complete with vibrant tawny feathers and a bright red comb and wattle fully extended into the sun. Its beak parted, and its head twitched, and then it jerked forward with a snap.
Chapter 18
“Whoa!” Hunter pulled back, just jerking the golden charm out of the cockatrice’s reach. The creature cocked its head, narrowing green eyes, and its tail, long and scaled with bright red ridges running along the top, snaked out from the hollow and thumped against the trunk like an annoyed cat. Ivy’s mouth went dry from hanging open at the sight. It was everything she imagined a dragon might be, only a tenth as big, and, well, with a rooster’s head. And god, was it weird looking.
“Looks like he’s been burning down the trees trying to stay warm at night,” Hunter said, carefully swaying the necklace before it.
Ivy was still struck silent, frozen as she watched it raise up the claw at the end of its wing and paw at the air between it and the necklace. The cockatrice nearly lost his balance and gripped back onto the tree, frustration playing across his face. “Wait,”—Ivy shook her head—“Burning down the trees? How?”
Then the creature reared its head back, its eyes closing. Hunter’s free hand shot out, grabbing Ivy’s arm and pulling her back, and they fell into the leaves just as a blast of fire shot out from the cockatrice’s beak. Hunter kicked at the fire, smothering it with his foot, throwing his arms back, and the necklace went flying. The cockatrice dove then, taking flight. Up it went and then back down, catching the chain in its mouth before shooting back into the air.
“Oh no!” Ivy jumped to her feet.
“Shit.” Hunter grit his teeth. “It’s okay, don’t worry, I’ll get it back!” He started off after the creature.
Ivy ran after him. “It’s fine, we just gotta get that bird-thing!”
The two followed the red and green blip of shimmering light as it soared over bushes and between branches, skillfully dodging the trunks. The cockatrice was quick, but its big belly kept it lower than the tops of the trees, and it didn’t cover much ground before it perched itself on a branch right above them.
Hunter slid to a stop, catching his breath with hands on his hips and a scowl on his face. The cockatrice peered down at him with the chain dangling from its beak. “Come on, now,” he called up. “That wasn’t fair!”
Ivy watched the little thing twitch its head from one side to the other then flip the necklace up into the air to land around its own neck. With the little claws on the tips of its wings, it gripped the pendant and held it up in front of its face. “I didn’t think it could…” She shook her head slowly, watching it admire the charm. “Breathe fire?” She couldn’t believe those words were coming out of her mouth.
“Not all of them can, but I guess that’s why Mr. Vlcek had that metal coop.”
“How in the world are we supposed to catch it?” Ivy already felt defeated.
“Well, it’s pretty distracted right now.” The cockatrice looked to be slowly falling in love with the bit of fake gold. “I might be able to bend that branch down to us if you’re willing to grab it.”
The creature sat on the end of a long limb a few feet above Hunter’s head. “Bend it?”
Hunter nodded, but instead of jumping up and grabbing onto the limb, he held a hand out and tipped his head down, eyes cast on the tree. Magic, of course! In the quiet of the forest, the tree’s branch moved ever so slowly, dropping down with the cockatrice atop it none the wiser.
Ivy smiled, biting her lip and watching the branch move seemingly on its own, holding back the urge to shout excitable expletives as it went. It was coming closer to them, and the cockatrice jerked its head down as it held the pendant higher, examining its other side. It had no idea what was coming.
At its limit, the far end of the branch just reached Ivy’s height, and she crept forward, crunching leaves underfoot as quietly as possible, her arms raised. The back of the cockatrice was merely a foot away, and she could grab it just around the middle and tuck it under her arm like Safiya had done the chickens. It was so simple. Too simple.
The cockatrice jerked its head back, and with a screech it blasted a hot gust of fire right at Ivy. She threw her hands in front of her face and ducked, and heard Hunter call out her name just before a snap broke through the forest.
The limb lost all of its tension and whipped back up into place, and the cockatrice shrieked, firing off another flame as it barreled toward the sky. Ivy gasped, dropping her arms to just see the tail end of him be catapulted up through the trees, his wings spread as he shot off and disappeared over the forest.
“Are you all right?” Hunter was there then, looking her over, concern and regret on his face. “I’m sorry, I lost it when he attacked. I was sure he didn’t know you were there.”
Ivy’s eyes widened, but not because his hands were feeling up and down her arms to see that she was unharmed, though if she had the wherewithal she might have completely ignored whatever else was happening around her. She managed to point over his shoulder. “That doesn’t look good.”
A tree had caught fire and was quickly lighting the one beside it as well. Ivy swallowed hard, looking up at the leaves turning red then black then into nothing at all. “Do you, like, have a water spell or something?”
Hunter balked. “Uh, sort of.” He placed a hand against the trunk of the tree and started mumbling to himself. Nothing seemed to be happening.
“Nothing is happening.” She fidgeted on the spot. “Nothing good anyway.”
“I’m trying to call up whatever liquid is in this tree to put it out, but it’s not working.” He turned to her. “I need your help.”
“Wha—me?” She looked around at the otherwise empty forest. “Do a spell?”
“Yes, you.” Hunter grabbed her hand and pressed it against the tree next to his. He closed his eyes again
and started mumbling under his breath. Ivy stared at the warlock, bewildered. There wasn’t a thing she could actually do, but she could pretend.
Ivy squeezed her eyes as tightly as possible and whispered nonsense under her breath, some words she’d heard in television shows, some she made up on the spot, and she was pretty sure ottoman and Zanzibar made their way in there at some point. Hunter’s voice died away, and she dared to open her eyes, her face lifted. Embers flitted down around them, the last remains of the unluckiest leaves, but the tree was no longer alight.
“We did it.” He was wearing a ridiculous grin, and he raised his hand off the tree to her.
“I guess so,” she said, knowing the truth was, No, you did it, and went to high five him, then yelped.
“Oh, shoot, you did get burnt.” Hunter took her hand and flipped it toward her. The center of her palm had a bright red cast to it and the skin was starting to peel at the edges. “I have something for this.”
The forest knew, like he said, to let them out right where they needed to be at the blocks of condos lining the lake just across the lawn. Ivy looked back at the trees, hoping to see the cockatrice sailing above them, but he’d completely disappeared again.
Hunter said he’d have to look for the balm, but it was in his kitchen somewhere, and he started rummaging through drawers and cabinets the moment he let them in. Ivy lingered by the front door, noting how, well, normal the whole place seemed. You wouldn’t know a warlock lived there, she thought, her eyes glancing across the living room, a basket full of laundry on the couch, a pizza box on the coffee table, shelves of books on either side of a television.
When he saw her looking, he quickly crossed the room and grabbed the basket. “These are clean, I just hate folding, and this,”—when he picked up the box, the few leftover pieces slid around inside—“Well, there’s not really an excuse for that.” He dropped the box off on the counter that separated the living room from the kitchen and took the basket down a hall, calling back. “I think the ointment is actually in the bathroom. I’ll be right out.”
The Association Page 13