by Lucia Ashta
Copyright 2018 Lucía Ashta.
All rights reserved.
Published by Awaken to Peace Press.
This book is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously or are entirely fictional. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer or with written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed via email to [email protected].
Cover design by Mirela Barbu.
Edited by Elsa Crites.
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About the book
Sometimes magic requires the ultimate sacrifice.
To do what’s right, Isadora had to die.
But not even death will keep her from fighting—not when her family at the academy is under attack.
Isadora knows far too little about magic, and she understands even less about the spirit world. But with the help of some unexpected friends, she intends to find the ghost with the power to turn the tides of the magical war.
Will Isadora find the way to survive the spirit world? Or will it claim her forever?
For Malcolm.
Thank you for believing in me and my books.
The unseen teems with life.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Transformations - Book 8
Make a difference
Acknowledgments
Read more by Lucía Ashta
About the author
Chapter 1
I was half dead—or rather totally dead, but only for the time being. I was banking on that. My brother Nando was too.
His tears had receded while he focused on the steps needed to return me to my body. None of the magicians gathered in the gardens of the Magical Arts Academy was entirely certain how to make me whole again. They had theories, lots and lots of theories, but theories alone wouldn’t cut it.
“Ask them to hurry up please, Elwin,” I told the bluish-indigo firedrake, the only one who could see and hear me now that I was dead. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t hurry the magicians along. They were my seniors, thousands of times more experienced in magic than I. But I wasn’t concerned about what etiquette dictated I should or shouldn’t do anymore.
All my concerns about propriety vanished like a puff of smoke. I supposed that was what happened when you died.
“Tell them I need to get back to my body right away,” I added, though not because I was experiencing any particular urgency to return to my body. The magicians seemed to generally agree that I had half a day during which my spirit could roam free and still reenter my physical shell.
I didn’t want to wait a second longer than I had to, however. Being out of my body, watching myself there, stretched out on the grass as if I were sleeping, felt indescribably strange.
I understood they were hurrying, especially since Nando was pushing them every few minutes to get on with it. But still... I needed back in my body, and if I had to find Albacus first, then we’d best get on with it, especially since no one was certain that their proposed plan would work.
Elwin waddled from where he’d been standing, halfway between Lady Arianne and me, and lowered his forehead to hers. He’d done this several times since I died, so she tilted her forehead to meet his the moment she noticed him.
Mordecai, Marcelo, and Gustave, the ones who were being most vocal in that particular moment, stopped to watch and wait.
Arianne closed her eyes, and her granddaughters, Clara and Gertrude, took a step toward her. Clara especially shared her grand-mère’s ease with magical creatures, though no one was as adept at interacting with them as Arianne.
The three flame-haired women wrapped around Elwin, who I knew from experience could take a long time to deliver a message. He liked to express himself the roundabout way.
I sat at the periphery of the circle of gathered witches, wizards, firedrakes, hellhounds, and a talking owl. At first I’d positioned myself in the middle of them, but every time one of them shifted and I was in the way, they passed right through me. Some of them didn’t even notice me, others looked down at whichever appendage I’d touched as if something felt wrong. It was… an odd experience, one I didn’t enjoy.
I was quick to move out of range. I was already struggling not to examine my circumstances too closely. I’d wait to have an emotional breakdown until I was back in my body, alive. There was no time to waste now.
Elwin took a waddled step backward, and Arianne opened her eyes.
“Well?” Nando pressed right away. “What does she say?”
“She says that we need to hurry up. She wants to return to her body.”
“See? We’re finished here. Whatever plans we’ve come up with will have to be good enough. She can try to find Albacus, but in two hours she goes back in her body, no matter what.”
“Two hours!” Mordecai said, stepping forward. He’d been especially agitated since he’d figured out that, as a spirit, I might locate the missing ghost of his brother. “We have at least six.”
“I’m giving you two. Not a minute more.”
Nando wasn’t usually this uncooperative. But then, his little sister, the one he’d sworn to protect, had never died before either.
“Give her at least four. That’s plenty of time for her to claim her body. You have to keep in mind that spirit location isn’t an exact science. It can take time.”
“I don’t have to keep in mind anything beyond Isa’s well-being. I’ve already failed her magnificently, as she lies dead at my feet. I won’t fail her again. Exact science or not, you have two hours. You’re wasting time.”
In a magnificent huff and whoosh of his robe, Mordecai whirled to face Elwin. “Tell her that she needs to disconnect her spirit from her body. Do you understand me when I speak to you, Elwin?”
Mordecai looked to Arianne, asking for her intercession. She leaned forward and placed her head against the firedrake’s. He spoke to her so that not even I could hear. She chuckled, pulled away, and said, “He says he understands you just fine, Mordecai.” From the amused expression on her face, it was clear that what the firedrake had said was more colorful than that. Since I was becoming more accustomed to his nebulous way of expressing himself, I guessed his response was far more poetic, and difficult to understand.
“He also says that there’s no need to communicate what you want to say through him. She can hear you fine. She’s right here with us, watching everything we do. We just can’t hear when she talks back.”
“Of course. Very well then.” The hoary wizard spun in a slow circle while he talked, trying to find me, I supposed. “Isa, you need to detach from your body.”
I wasn’t attached to my body. Wasn’t that obvious? That was the problem. I wasn’t in my body at all. It felt as if I were observing the body of some other girl.
“Elwin, will you please relay that I’m in no way connected to my body.” I sighed. This could take a while, time I didn’t have.
We all waited while Elwin and Arianne repeated the process until Arianne said, “She says she isn’t attached to her body.”
“Of course she is,” Mordecai said too quickly. “If not she wouldn’t still be here with us. She’s holding on.”
“That may be so,” Marcelo said, “but you have to r
emember that she’s a novice in magic. We’ve barely had the chance to train her at all. Things that are obvious to you, won’t be to her.”
Well, that was one big, fat understatement.
“She might not be aware of the connection at all if she doesn’t understand what it feels like.” Thank you, Marcelo!
“He’s right,” Clara said. “You need to give her the basics.”
“And fast,” Nando added, showing Mordecai his rarely used look of impatience. Nando wasn’t going to give the old wizard a minute more than two hours, just as he’d promised.
Mordecai tugged at his beard a few times—a nervous gesture, I realized—and started pacing across the center of the loose circle the gathering of all the Magical Arts Academy’s creatures, staff, and students had formed.
“All right. I can do this,” he muttered, to himself I thought. I realized he missed Albacus. He’d mentioned more than once how he was used to solving complex problems with his brother’s help. Apparently, they’d bounce ideas off each other until they landed on the working one.
And I really did want to help find Albacus. I liked him and Mordecai. I’d help them if I could. But I knew myself well enough to realize that the fact that I wasn’t completely freaking out that I was dead was odd. I mean, I was dead. There’d be a time when that reality would come crashing down on me, and I’d have no choice but to face it. And then what would happen...?
They’d better hurry before I found out.
Mordecai stopped suddenly, and faced Marcelo. “I don’t even know how to explain this!” The old man’s eyes were wild; Marcelo’s were compassionate.
“You’ll find the way. You always do. There are few wizards more brilliant than you. We’ll find Albacus. Don’t worry about him; just focus on teaching the girl so she can do what she needs to. You’re the best one to explain this.”
Mordecai stared at Marcelo for a few prolonged seconds, nodded with resolve, and pinned his focus on random spots, in turn, since he couldn’t see me. “All right, child.” He breathed in and out deeply. “What I mean when I say that you need to detach from your body is that your spirit is maintaining a connection to your physical body. That I know with certainty, because if you weren’t, your spirit would have moved on already. I suspect it’s because you didn’t die of natural causes, but the reasons for it aren’t important at the moment.”
He hurried on. “What I need you to do is focus until you find that link between your spirit and your body. Once you do, completely pull the end that’s connecting you to your body.”
“Wait,” Nando interrupted. “I don’t like the sound of that at all. Isn’t the connection between her and her spirit the way for her to return to her body?”
“Yes, it is, that’s why she’s not going to let go of the end of the connection.” Mordecai behaved as if he’d been just about to tell me that, but Nando looked at him suspiciously.
So did I. I didn’t like the sound of this. If the connection between my spirit and my body was the only thing keeping me from truly dying, then I didn’t want to mess with that, not one bit.
Mordecai had the runes, didn’t he? He loved his runes, used them for guidance all the time. He hadn’t achieved success in finding Albacus through them yet, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t. He apparently had unwavering faith in divination.
Nando spoke for me. “Mordecai, I realize how important it is that we find Albacus. But you have the runes—”
“The runes haven’t pinpointed his location.”
“Thus far, they haven’t. The risk is too great. We need to focus on getting her back to her body.”
“But—”
“I’m sorry, Mordecai, but it has to be this way. It’s too dangerous.”
“You said we had two hours.”
“That was before I realized you intended to disconnect her from the one thing linking her to her body.”
Mordecai didn’t say anything, nor did anyone else.
“You can’t ask me to risk the sister that can still come back to life to find a brother, whom we’ll find eventually. A brother who’s already dead, and has all the time in the world.”
Mordecai’s shoulders slumped in resignation. Obviously, Nando was right, and he knew it.
“All right. I understand. It’s just that if she holds on to the end of that link to her body, she’d still be able to return. As long as she doesn’t let go of that line, she’ll be able to reattach it.” I didn’t think Mordecai was even trying to convince Nando anymore. The poor man was lost without his brother, and the idea of missing out on a chance to find him was crushing him.
“You’re sure about that?” Nando asked, and Mordecai whipped his face upward, alight with an infusion of sudden hope.
“I’m quite sure.”
But how could he be? He was talking about matters of the spirit. None of them had ever been spirits.
Ah... but Albacus was one, and the brothers were as close as any siblings I’d ever known. Maybe Albacus had told him.
Mordecai saw his window and pushed. “All she has to do is find the connection which holds her to her body. Let’s picture it as a rope. She has to disconnect the end of the rope that links her spirit to her body, hold on to the rope, never letting it go, and allowing her spirit to connect to the spirit world, which is everywhere around us.”
“So... she wouldn’t be going anywhere? Just staying right here, by her body, and me, while holding this ‘rope’ and connecting to other spirits out there?”
“Yes. She’d stay right here. And as soon as she finds Albacus’ spirit, she can latch the end of the rope back onto her body and come back.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.” Mordecai was starting to sound excited.
I didn’t fail to notice the wary expressions of those magicians who looked on. Neither did Nando, apparently. He looked around the circle. “You’re sure it’s safe?”
“Nothing is certain in life or death, son. But I wouldn’t ask this of her, or you, if I didn’t wholeheartedly believe she could come back from this.”
Nando bit his lip and looked to Marie and then Walt. Certainly they were the least experienced in magic there, but they were also the most like us. Nando seemed to be silently asking them what they thought.
Marie shrugged her shoulders before saying, “I know nothing about these things. I’ve never even heard talk of dealings with the spirit world.”
Walt just pursed his lips. He wasn’t any happier about the situation than Nando was. He shook his head from side to side. “I don’t know.”
So Nando scanned the circle of magicians and creatures. “Does anyone else have experience in dealing with the spirit world?”
Marcelo spoke. “You know, Nando, Mordecai is a brilliant wizard. He’s been studying magic his entire life, and he’s lived a very long time.”
Nando just stared, not entirely convinced, then nodded. “What about you, Sir Lancelot? You seem to know something about everything and lived a long while too. Have you ever had dealings with the spirit world?”
The pygmy owl looked unusually somber perched atop Brave’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Lord Hernando, but I haven’t dealt with the spirit world personally. So long as I’m cursed to my painting, I can’t even die. Well, I guess I can, but I can’t die of natural causes. Certain types of magic would probably do it, but nothing ordinary. Of course, it’s been argued that I’m not ordinary, so there’s that.”
The owl seemed to notice he was beginning to ramble, something he often did, but rarely reflected on. “I’ve seen others interact with the spirit world, but always from the outside, since the spirit world can’t be seen unless you’re connecting with it directly. But none of those experiences inform me as to how to help you make your decision.
“And then there’s Albacus, of course. I’ve interacted with him plenty since he’s been in spirit form. But his situation is different as he’s no longer connected to his body.”
“That’s a go
od point,” Nando said. “Why doesn’t Albacus leave this world if he’s no longer connected to his body? Where is his body?”
Mordecai’s spine stiffened. “My brother is buried at our home in Irele, and he stays around here because he’s a powerful enough wizard to be able to choose when his spirit moves on. But he’ll never be able to return to his body. Not now.”
Not now? Did that imply that Mordecai could have brought him back to life before and didn’t?
“The magic necessary to return someone to life claims a heavy price, one I wasn’t willing to pay for Albacus. Mostly because he wouldn’t have wanted that for himself. He wouldn’t have been the same person, and there would have been the chance he would have been infected with darkness after that.”
Ah. Now I understood. There were some things worse than death.
“Is there a risk of that happening to Isa?” Nando asked. “Will she be the same once she returns?”
Mordecai nodded, but I found no comfort in the clinking of the beads in his beard this time. “She should be.”
“Should?”
“As I said, there are no guarantees in life or death. The reality is that your sister is already dead. There’s a window for her to return, somewhat naturally, to her body. That is a marvelous gift. Take it and be grateful.”
Nando hesitated while he gazed at my body, and I knew what he must be thinking. He was worried that once I came back I wouldn’t be the same.
Suddenly I was worried about that too. I hadn’t even considered it before, and doing so now was terrifying.
Marcelo stepped forward and clamped a hand on Nando’s shoulder. “Mordecai wouldn’t suggest you bring Isa back if there was a significant chance that she’d be infected with darkness. None of us want that. Not for her, not for anyone. There are no certainties, but there are probabilities. Chances are high that we can restore Isa to her body, and that she won’t suffer any significant consequences from her temporary death.”