The Girl Without Magic

by Megan O'Russell

  At the girl’s words, three beasts rounded the corner, their talons clicking as they slunk forward.

  “Ellen, stay behind me,” Maggie said calmly, not taking her eyes off the glistening, black beasts that approached.

  “You fight us?” the closest monster hissed. “You know you cannot win. It is decided.”

  “Gonna try anyway,” Maggie growled, feeling the magic in the floor beneath her. It hummed as though it were alive. A living force waiting for a command. Digging her hands into the air as though the magic beneath her were palpable, Maggie clawed upward. The ground trembled and rose, forming a wall blocking the path of the monsters.

  “Ellen, we have to go the other way.”

  At Maggie’s words, the little girl ran back down the hall and into the black talons that waited for her. Shining red poured onto the floor as Maggie screamed, and the scene disappeared.

  “I won’t,” Maggie said as the scene around her vanished. She knew what was coming. She couldn’t change anything that was about to happen. Wouldn’t be able to stop any of it.

  “Don’t make me do this,” Maggie whispered, keeping her eyes firmly shut as sounds emerged around her. “I won’t do this. You can’t make me.”

  Spells were being shouted. Screams of pain and rage carried through the sounds of the battle. The swoosh of a sword close to Maggie’s head didn’t even make her flinch. That wasn’t how it had happened. She hadn’t been killed by a sword. She hadn’t died in the battle at Graylock at all.

  “Emilia!” Jacob screamed.

  Maggie could picture him―running toward the girl he loved, bent on protecting her from every danger. But had he managed it? She hadn’t seen everything that had happened. Hadn’t been there to find out who had survived, if any of them.

  Maggie opened her eyes. The battle raged all around her, spells shooting through the trees and shattering rocks around the entrance to a cave. The entrance seemed so small. Such a strange place for power to be lurking.

  But the Pendragon was there, fighting with his men. Determined to kill everyone who fought against them and to destroy the world Maggie loved.

  Maggie walked slowly toward the cave, not flinching when spells streaked toward her, not stepping aside when a centaur ran past, whip flashing in hand. She didn’t care if they hurt her; it didn’t matter anyway. She wanted only to see, to know what had become of them all.

  The ground lurched and crumbled, dropping away to form a gaping hole in front of the cave. Green mist blossomed from its depths. Dexter. She had seen him in the shadows. That was why she had run forward, to save Dexter. But this was different, wrong.

  Dexter wasn’t standing in the mist; the mist was alive in its own right. It reached for Maggie with tangible tendrils, determined to pull her into the darkness. To drag her away so she would never know what had happened.

  “Leave me alone!” Maggie screamed, turning and running through the battle. An arrow whizzed overhead. Maggie ducked but kept running, leaping over bodies, not looking closely enough to know if they were friend or foe. She could feel the mist behind her drawing her back toward her fate.

  A tree cracked in front of her and was falling, blocking her path. Pushing at the air with all her strength the tree swayed as it fell, moving out of Maggie’s way. She ran farther toward the edge of the battle. There was no one fighting here. Only bodies left to wait for the victor to deal with. A body lay between two trees. Eyes wide and blank as they stared at the sky.

  “No!” Maggie screamed, pausing for only a moment. But that moment was enough. The mist wrapped around her, dragging her toward the darkness.

  “No!” There was magic in the mist stronger than any she had felt before. Stronger than anything inside her. “Please don’t!” But the mist had no pity for her screams. She reached out, grabbing a tree and trying to halt the terrible pull of the mist, but her hands slid uselessly across the bark.

  Her hands dripped blood, which fell through the mist, not tainting its bright green with the deep red. The mist could pull her away, but a drop of blood could pass through. It couldn’t hold everything. It wasn’t all-powerful. Only magic.

  Maggie closed her eyes and felt the magic swirling around her. Without caution, she drew the magic inside her. Letting it fill her until it burned, until there was no Maggie left. Only magic.

  With a scream that drowned out the battle, Maggie threw her arms wide, severing the mist as though it had only been a string trying uselessly to bind her.

  She turned to the chasm that led to the Siren’s Realm, toward the blackness that led to her fate. Magic crackled from her fingers, sparking brightly as the battle faded.

  Scooping her hands through the air, she filled the pit with darkness, blocking her path to the Siren’s Realm as the shadows surrounded her.

  aggie lay gasping and shaking on the ground. The heat from the cavern had gone, and she was numb as though she had been lying in snow.

  “Maggie.” Tammond knelt next to her. Maggie blinked, trying to focus on his face in the dim, blue light.

  “I’m back,” Maggie croaked. Her throat hurt like she had been screaming.

  “You never went anywhere,” Tammond said gently, lifting her from the ground and cradling her to his chest.

  He was warm, and Maggie pulled herself closer to him, shivering.

  “I did,” she said softly. “I did leave here, and I went to the worst places.”

  “I heard.” Tammond held Maggie tightly. “I heard everything you said.”

  “And that’s how you’re supposed to learn?” Maggie asked, anger welling inside her. “You get to go revisit the worst moments of your life and watch helplessly as people die?”

  “You go to the moments that will make your magic strongest. What they are varies with each person.”

  “I hadn’t even seen it happen,” Maggie murmured, crawling away from Tammond, afraid she might be sick on him. “I was hundreds of miles away when my parents were killed. Was that even how it really happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Tammond said. “The mist shows you what it must for you to learn. I don’t know how much of it is true.”

  “Great. Torture as a tutor.” Maggie rubbed heat back into her hands. “Does this mean we can go back up and fight Jax now? Am I all crazy powerful?”

  “The powers you feel in the mist aren’t what you’ll really have, or I would be able to transform into a wild cat.” Tammond smiled tentatively. “But you’ve felt the magic pour out of you, and now you’ll be able to find it again.”

  “Awesome.” Maggie pushed herself unsteadily to her feet. “All that so I can see how something feels. Cause I really needed all that pain for some freaking magic!” Maggie’s voice echoed around the cavern. “That’s great!”

  Tammond moved to wrap his arms around Maggie, but she stepped back.

  “Don’t,” her voice caught in her throat. “Thank you, but don’t.” Tears stung in the corners of her eyes. “I’m not really good with sympathy.”

  “As you wish,” Tammond said. “We can begin the next step of your training.”

  “Of course there’s more,” Maggie growled. “Now what? I walk on hot coals?”

  “We go into the darkness and let your magic work.”

  “Doesn’t sound as bad as the last part,” Maggie said. “So it’s probably going to be worse.”

  “Not worse.” Tammond took Maggie’s hand and led her toward the back of the cavern. “Just darker.”

  It was already darker at the back of the cave. The mist had cleared, leaving the blue lights still dancing on the ceiling. But their light didn’t touch the hole in the back wall. The opening was barely tall enough or wide enough for Tammond to fit through, but he crossed into the darkness without hesitation, leading Maggie behind him.

  “Are there monsters back here or something?” Maggie whispered, grateful to hear her voice sounding off the walls around them, carrying as though they were in a long narrow tunnel. “Or is it going to be more like jumping o
ver molten lava?”

  “It’s different for everyone,” Tammond said.

  “But you’re going to stay with me?” Maggie asked, tightening her grip on Tammond’s hand without realizing it.

  “I am,” Tammond said. “You found the magic within yourself, but the way magic works in the dark dream is different from the way you can use it in the real world.”

  “Dark dream sounds right,” Maggie said. “But real world might be a stretch. No offense but―”

  Maggie fell silent and froze where she stood. Her voice had echoed as though she were in a vast place, larger even than the cavern where the mist had been.

  “Tammond,” Maggie whispered, but still her voice carried around the space. “Where are we?”

  “I need you to trust me, Maggie,” Tammond said, taking his hand from Maggie’s so she was alone in the dark.

  “I’m not really great with trust.” Maggie stepped forward, but Tammond wasn’t there.

  “Where you were taught―”

  “The Academy,” Maggie said, moving to her left where Tammond’s voice had come from.

  “At the Academy―” he sounded like he was behind her now “―did they teach you to fight?”

  “Yes, a bit.” Maggie tensed, her hands waiting for Tammond to strike. “I learned some on my own, too.” Maggie laughed ruefully. “Didn’t have much of a choice, really.”

  “Then attack me.” Tammond was back in front of her. It sounded like he was only feet away.

  “What?” Maggie stepped backwards. “I’m not going to attack you.”

  “I’ll defend myself, Maggie,” Tammond said, his voice sounding only inches in front of her. “But you have to attack.”

  Focusing all of her energy into her hand, Maggie pulled the air into her fist, compounding it into a sphere. Without a sound, she threw it as hard as she could at where Tammond’s voice had last been.

  “The spell was good,” Tammond said from far behind her. “But you need to be able to sense where I am. You can feel the magic in you, in the air around you. Now feel the current I am creating.”

  “Don’t you think when Jax attacks, I’ll be able to use my eyes to see who’s trying to kill me?”

  “Jax Cayde can set fire to the water,” Tammond began, and Maggie knelt silently on the ground, placing her palm against the stone floor. “He can fly without wings…”

  Maggie let the magic fly from her palm into the stone, sending a ripple toward Tammond. Maggie pictured it. The rock made soft, moving in a wave, wrapping itself around Tammond’s feet. A small grunt of surprise made her sure the spell had worked, but the sharp cracking of rock a moment later meant he had broken free.

  “Nicely done,” Tammond said. “But using my voice to find me wasn’t what I asked you to do.”

  “Fine,” Maggie growled, closing her eyes against the blackness. Sure enough, she could feel the magic moving through the air around her. Could feel it moving through her veins with every beat of her heart. And there was something… in the vast swirling power of it all she was sure must be Tammond. Whipping her hand through the air as though grabbing a dart, Maggie hurled the spell at what she thought was Tammond.

  A dull thunk! echoed through the dark as the spell struck stone.

  “Better,” Tammond said from the opposite direction.

  Maggie ran her hands through her hair. If she only had a bit of light. Without thinking about how to make the light form, a pale red orb shimmered into being right above her head. Maggie spun on the spot, looking for Tammond, but the light reached only a few feet in any direction.

  “More light,” Maggie whispered. Magic surged through her, and in a moment twelve orbs had split from the first, zooming in every direction, filling the cavern with their faint red glow. Tammond stood not twelve feet from her in front of a grouping of stalagmites ten feet wide that reached nearly to the ceiling. All around the cave as far as her lights could reach, stalactites and stalagmites showed the slow passing of time.

  “You shouldn’t have done that yet,” Tammond said, worry filling his voice.

  “Why not, it worked?” Maggie pushed the air from her hands so it hit Tammond in the stomach. “Tag you’re it.”

  “But they come toward the light, Maggie.” Tammond moved closer to her as a sharp clicking began in the shadows. “And they won’t want you to see.”

  “They?” Maggie asked, tensing as she searched the shadows. “You never mentioned anything about a they.”

  “I said I would stay with you, and I will.” Tammond squared his shoulders as through preparing to fight. “Wanderers never face the shadows until their training is complete. You weren’t meant to see them.”

  “Well, then you should have told me not to turn on a light,” Maggie hissed as a pair of pinchers appeared from behind the rock.

  he thing was small, no bigger than a housecat. But it wasn’t the size that terrified Maggie. The thing looked more like a scorpion than anything else Maggie could think of, and its shining black armor forced bile up into Maggie’s throat as she pushed away the memory of the monsters that had destroyed the Academy.

  “What the hell are those things?” Maggie said as more of the scorpions crept out into the light.

  “They live here,” Tammond said. “And they don’t like visitors.”

  “Then why the hell are we here?” Maggie squeaked, taking Tammond’s arm and dragging him toward the exit just visible in the darkness on the far wall. But their path had already been blocked by more of the creatures.

  “Get rid of them,” Maggie said. “I don’t care what you wanted to do down here. We’re leaving.”

  “I can’t get rid of them, Maggie,” Tammond said. He sounded afraid. Maggie followed his gaze. He wasn’t looking down at the floor where the creatures were growing in number. He was looking three feet above them where Maggie could see only thin air.

  “What are you seeing?” Maggie asked, but before Tammond could answer, he had shouted as bright streaks of white light flew from his palms, striking some invisible thing that shrieked. Tammond moved in front of Maggie again, sending a spell at something she couldn’t see.

  But the black creatures were moving closer. Drawing the heat from her fear, Maggie let her magic flow. Flames poured from her hands, covering the floor in a sea of fire.

  The creatures scuttled away from the flames. Some weren’t fast enough, and with hisses and pops, the fire consumed them.

  “Maggie, get down!” Tammond screamed, covering Maggie’s head.

  A sickening crunch sounded as Tammond flung his arm through the air, striking something that left blood dripping from his hands.

  “Tammond!” But she didn’t have time to see how badly he was hurt; the creatures on the ground had almost reached them. With a shout that shook the air, Maggie slammed her foot into the ground. The stone rippled like waves in the sea, throwing some of the creatures back.

  Something sharp dug into the top of Maggie’s head, and she swung her arm up. It connected with something hard, and rubbery wings flapped against her hand as the thing escaped her grip.

  “Tammond, duck! Primurgo!” Maggie screamed, praying the spell would work. The shield blossomed above Maggie’s head, forming a shimmering dome around her and Tammond. She pressed her palm through the shield and closed her eyes, letting all the magic she could feel funnel into her.

  Eyes shut tight, she let lightning and fire pour out into the cave.

  Howls rent the air, but still Maggie didn’t look. Soon the only sounds were the whooshing of the fire and the crackling of the lightning. Trembling, Maggie opened her eyes and lowered her arm. The cave’s walls were scorched. The things that had been attacking them were gone.

  “Maggie, are you all right?” Tammond took her by the shoulders, examining her.

  Maggie touched the top of her head where blood coated her hair.

  “I’ll live,” Maggie said, “but this is a really shitty way to train people. Sending monsters after them? I mean, what if we
had been eaten alive? Wouldn’t have been much good fighting against Jax now would we?”

  “You weren’t supposed to light the room.” Tammond laid his palm on Maggie’s head. Heat trickled down her scalp. “You weren’t meant to jump right to the end.”

  “Still, fighting scorpion monsters and invisible things―not really my idea of advancing the learning curve.”

  Tammond took his hand from Maggie’s head, and she felt where the cut had been. Her hair was still sticky with blood, but the cut was gone.

  “Thanks,” Maggie murmured.

  “They don’t usually attack like that,” Tammond said. “Not with such force. They belong in the shadows and are creatures of darkness. They appear to everyone, but never in the same way. They’ll fight us, but I’ve never heard of them attacking in such numbers.”

  “So what?” Maggie asked, sitting on the ground, hoping Tammond wouldn’t notice her legs shaking. “The shadows just really hate me because I’m not from Malina, because I’m not a Wanderer?” She balled her fists, digging her nails into her palms as tears welled in her eyes. “As if watching my mom die wasn’t bad enough, I had to get attacked just for good measure?”

  “We cannot learn to fight from the light or from the good things that we know.” Tammond knelt next to her. “Peace begets peace, and it is how we all hope to live. But when fighting must come, we can’t expect to learn to survive it staying only in the sun.”

  “Is that why I was lucky enough to jump ahead?” Maggie’s voice sounded thick. “Because I’m not made of peace and light? Because I know exactly what it is to fight, and hurt, and hate? Because I’ve seen death, and the shadows can smell it on me?”

  “Maggie,” Tammond whispered her name. In the dark cave, it didn’t sound like a name at all. But like a prayer, rising up to the sun far above the darkness. A wish for something away from the shadows and pain beyond.

  He kissed her gently, as though afraid she might push him away again. His mouth was warm on hers. He was alive, so very alive. With the burned rocks surrounding them, and unknown horrors ahead, he was there. Pulse racing in time with hers. Maggie moved in closer so her body was pressed next to his, forgetting where she ended and he began. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered as long as he was holding her. If he held her tightly enough, nothing horrible would come for them. They would never have to go back up to the lake and everything that waited above.