by Mara Webb
“Dog, papers, laptop. Everything you’ve got. Hand it over and you and your little friends get to live, Nora,” he said. He was fixed on me alone, Ryan fired in his direction, but the man leaned back with a twist at his waist to counter the attack spell. He was fast and capable and walking towards me.
16
I was frozen in place. This man intended to kill us all and he knew my name. I shot a look over his shoulder and saw Ryan lift his wand to fire again, and again the man blocked the attack. Ryan lifted his arms up in a ‘why aren’t you doing anything?’ gesture and I realized that I was also capable of using my magic, the man couldn’t stop attacks from two of us at once surely.
In one swift motion I pulled my wand out of my pocket, “Cultro!” I shouted, as Ryan cast the same spell from behind him. As I had expected, he had only blocked one of them, he winced as a deep slice appeared across his cheek. He spun around to attack Ryan who fell backwards in pain. Ryan. I couldn’t run over to help him; I wasn’t even sure that I could help myself.
The dark eyes of the man in front of me grew ever closer and my heart was pounding in my chest. I looked down at my feet and saw that my shoes were covered in mud, just like in the premonition. It must have rained recently, the grass sunk beneath each step and water rose out of the soil into small puddles. Was this when I got hurt? Was this man about to cast the spell that blew my leg open?
I heard frenzied voices and turned towards their source, it was Amber and Quin shouting for us to get back inside. They must have almost completely repaired the bubble; we would be trapped outside if we didn’t hurry. Ryan was rolling onto his hands and knees to try and stand up again, how did we distract this guy long enough so that we could run? I thought for a moment about what was the most distracting thing in my life. Quin.
“Inodiare avem!” I cried. Small birds began to fly out of the tip of my wand, more and more, filling the air. They were the size of hummingbirds, and darted about in the same way, but their wings would swell and shrink like a pulse, growing suddenly very large then become small again. The swirled around the man’s head as he tried to flap them away. That’s when they began talking, the annoying birds.
“Why do you have glasses? What’s wrong with your eyes? Do you like tomatoes? What about cherry tomatoes? Is something upsetting you? You seem angry. You’re tall, do you play basketball? Do you play any sports? Do you have a girlfriend? Who are you voting for this year?” they squeaked, all at once asking a thousand questions that prevented him from hearing beyond the cloud of birds surrounding his body, flying around him like a tornado.
“Ryan, come on!” I shouted. I ran over to him and pulled him onto his feet, I couldn’t bring myself to see if we were being followed. I could still hear the birds as we reached the door and fell through the door onto the floor of the laundry room. Amber slammed the door shut and the group inside worked as one to complete the repair on the fortification. We were safely inside.
I put my hands on the top edge of the washing machine and pulled myself up to look through the glass window in the back door. The birds had disappeared as soon as I had been sealed inside the house. The man loaded another energy wave and I waited for him to throw it towards us, but when it did, nothing happened. Nothing shook or fell down. Our plan had worked. In a flash, the man disappeared. He must have realized that there would be no way to get to us until we came to them.
Quin jumped down from the counter and started to weave his way between my legs, I heard him purr loudly and that attracted the other cats to join in. A swarm of furry bodies nuzzling up against my calves and shins.
“That was one of the sons I think,” Arnold said from the kitchen. He was sitting next to Professor Eastey who seemed to have spent the last fifteen minutes opening every lunch meat packet she could find to feed the dog she had been asked to protect.
“When is a good time to ask what is going on dear?” the Professor asked. She smiled sweetly at me and I realized that she didn’t know anyone’s name, we had never met face to face, and she had transported herself into a house that was under attack and was now trapped inside. I walked into the kitchen and everyone followed me.
The kitchen at number thirteen Charm Close was probably my favorite room. The island in the center was gorgeous, the top of it was made of one thick slab of polished granite in which the stove was fitted. The décor in this house would frequently change on a whim.
I would return from work and find that the dining table now seated twelve for some reason, the carpets were all a different color, or the stairs were made from a different type of wood. The current version of the kitchen was an absolute fantasy and I hoped the house heard my daily chants of “Wow this is perfection. How lucky I am to be eating toast in this paradise, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” but the house did what it wanted.
Professor Eastey was sitting at a barstool at the kitchen island. There were only two cupboards beneath it, on the stove side, meaning that the heavy granite slab was held up almost entirely by magic. This was also ideal as it prevented me from banging my kneecap on anything when I would throw myself onto a stool for a hurried snack.
The house had provided additional stools that were spaced around the island as if it were an informal board room, we all took a seat and I filled the kettle with water. “Would anyone like a drink? I have—” I opened the fridge door, “I have literally everything. Place your orders!”
I handed out mugs of hot tea and coffee, fresh orange juice, a few glasses of water, seven orders of whole milk, one bowl of gravy for Arnie and a very large long island iced tea for the Professor who drank it in two gulps. I looked at my team and they all looked back at me. They were waiting for me to guide them to the next task. I had forgotten what we were in the middle of when the attack on the house had started.
“Nora?” Jen asked. I had been lost in a daydream trying to figure out a plan, I did this a lot. Someone would ask me a question and I would start to rapidly work through every possible outcome, the worst-case scenarios, and then unrelated scenarios, then get it twisted up with something I had seen on TV. I could be lost in my own thoughts for minutes at a time, leaving whoever I was speaking with feeling awkward as my eyes glazed over.
I clicked my fingers and a large roll of paper appeared on the granite between us all and began to unravel. It was the blueprints to the event hall in Sucré, we needed Arnie to tell us where we needed to go. I sent the cats into another room as their constant interruptions were exhausting. Arnie showed us on the blueprints were the animals would be held, where each RVs were parked out the back and who would be sleeping in each one. He told us that they never got hotel rooms as they didn’t want to get too far away from their captives.
After forty-five minutes of explanations, navigation and notes, the blueprint was now covered in pencil markings and arrows. I could sense that Jen was restless, she just wanted to get there and release her nephew by any means necessary.
“I think I should call my brother, his wife, maybe my sister…we could get my mom to come too but she is a little too aggressive, even for this,” Jen pondered aloud.
“I don’t think we need any more people,” I replied. “I’m already worried that we have too many to sneak in and out. Our priority is to get the crystal and release the animals with minimal conflict. Once they are free then they can help us too, they all have magic remember. When they are back in their human form, they will be safer. If we get the authorities involved too soon and spook the bad guys, then they could do something awful. Let’s just get these people back home shall we.”
I said all this with confidence, but I feared that it wasn’t going to be straight forward. It’s all very well having a dog give you directions, but these people could have moved things around. They could have built up a line of defense after hearing that the guy they sent after us was unsuccessful. I don’t know what these people are willing to do to protect themselves.
But wait…I did know. They were willing to kill, that’s
what happened to Joseph.
“Why so many people?” Justin asked. We all turned our heads towards him. He was sat opposite me at the kitchen island and started to look at each of us for a response. No one spoke. “Why do they take so many? They kidnap a few people from every town every year? That should mean they have hundreds now, right?”
He had a point. Where were all these people now? We all looked at Arnie for an answer.
“They escape, but they are too frightened to go home because they worry that if they are followed that their family will be harmed as a punishment. I’ve heard a rumor that there is a community of them in the forest about an hour away from here. They wait until the tour reaches this area, then make a break for it. As far as I know, no one has ever done what I have done and gotten help. Or if they have…they haven’t been successful.
“The show must go on though, so they take more witches and wizards to keep the numbers up. Entering into contests for cash prizes and building their empire. It’s wild, but it is what it is.”
Sunrise would begin in a couple of hours and our ‘under cover of darkness’ idea would be null and void when light was flooding the sky. After one last glance at the blueprint we had annotated, I waved my hand over the paper and it began to fold, and fold, and fold again until it was crafted into a two-inch-tall paper swan which flew onto my upwards facing palm.
We were ready, or as ready as we could be for whatever was about to come our way. It felt wise that the cats stayed at the house, Arnie would come with us as he knew where we needed to go, and my Professor was keen on joining in on what she had deemed ‘the most exciting adventure she had been on since she was a student.’ It occurred to me briefly that once all this was said and done, I had an exam to complete. The fun never stopped.
“Nora, can you transport us there?” Ryan asked. “You managed to get across town and right into your own house with a passenger. Best I’ve ever managed was about two miles North of my destination.”
“I’ve never tried it,” Justin said.
“Tried and failed!” Amber and Jen chimed together.
“This could count as partial credit in your assessment dear,” Professor Eastey smiled.
I had only ever magically transported myself anywhere once, by accident, out of desperation. Now I had to take five tag-a-longs plus a dog, and it was being graded. I tried to point out my inexperience and apprehension over the whole idea but before I knew it, we were standing in a circle in the entryway of my house holding one another’s hands. I was standing next to the Professor who whispered out of the corner of her mouth, “Just focus on the location, picture the blueprint in your mind.”
I closed my eyes and tried to draw out the map of where I was trying to take us. I imagined myself standing there with the whole group, I remembered the building from when I had been there with Quin and suddenly, I felt that both of my hands were empty. I didn’t dare open my eyes and break my concentration but the hands I had been holding hadn’t let go, they had disappeared. The entryway was silent. Then I felt myself fall backwards quickly but I didn’t land. I wasn’t in my house anymore.
17
Air was rushing past my face and I was tumbling in free fall with no parachute. My eyes were open now and everything was black with brief bursts of color as if I was flying past paintings on the walls of an endless tunnel. I couldn’t catch my breath enough to scream and I feared for everyone else that I had thrown into this oblivion. I closed my eyes briefly to shield them from the wind and then felt grass on my cheek, then on my hand. I was lying on the ground somewhere outside. There had been no calamitous impact with the earth, I had been in my home, then nowhere, then here.
I opened my eyes and looked around for the others. Where was I? I had been trying to focus so intently on the parking lot of the events hall that I hoped I was at least within walking range of it, but this could be anywhere. The snapping of branches behind me alerted me to the presence of someone else and prompted me to clamber to my feet.
“Hey, are you okay?” Ryan asked. The moonlight filtering through the leafy canopy above enabled me to see a few dry leaves that had gotten caught up in his hair.
“I’m fine, where is everyone?” I asked, looking around the dusty ground.
“Everyone is over there; I came to find you. For your second ever transport spell, this was surprisingly successful you know. I didn’t want to say anything as you were really our only hope, but I was not convinced you could pull this off!” he laughed. “Ideally we would have landed upright, but you can’t win them all.”
I followed him to a small clearing where the others were stood waiting. Each of them a little muddier than they had been before. Arnie gestured with his snout to a gap in the trees, the event hall was in sight. The wooded area I had taken us all too was a natural barrier between two parking lots. On one side was the parking lot we needed to get to, on the other was one for an office supplies store. We were now only a hundred yards or so from where I had parked my car during the event, and I could see the door that we planned to enter through to get to the animals.
I hadn’t noticed it when I had been here previously, but due to the angle we were viewing the hall from, I could now see an army of RVs behind the building. They were all exactly where Arnie had said they would be. There was one that had a golden crown painted on the outside above the logo for The Top Dog. That was the RV of the woman wearing the crystal necklace.
“Well that’s one hard part out of the way, time for the next challenge,” Amber said as she looked at the sheer number of vehicles surrounding the RV we needed to access. Arnie had told us that it was unlikely that a freeze spell would work, that we couldn’t transport directly into the woman’s bedroom and that we couldn’t simply summon the crystal necklace. He had started to explain why we couldn’t do these things, but it was becoming a long description about sacred salts and something or other and I suggested we just take his word for it.
“Did you want to split then? Half of us get the animals out and the others take a shot at getting this crystal?” Arnie asked. We had been discussing it back at the house and we hadn’t been able to decide for sure.
“We split,” Ryan declared. “Nora, Arnie, and the Professor are all with me. Jen, Amber and Justin you guys get the animals out. They will need to sneak out of there quietly, if there is barking or mooing at the wrong time then we could get ourselves killed. Shall we?” Ryan smiled and the group stepped apart into the two teams.
My mind took me back quickly to when I had worked in a café and how the level of risk I was now exposed to was wildly different. The memories of trying to carry a tray of drinks steadily to a customer’s table slowly morphed into the memories of the premonition. Was this the wooded area from the vision?
Jen’s group took off down the grass slope onto the tarmac of the parking lot and broke into a hunched jog towards the area where the animals were held. We all assumed that there would be someone on guard, I hoped they would be okay. Ryan went first down the grass slope and the rest of us followed. We stuck to the shadows around the edge of the tarmac until we were close enough to begin approaching the cluster of RVs’.
The motorhomes were quite large, and each was connected to the main building with some sort of electrical cable so that the owners could watch TV or turn on their lights. Thankfully, no lights or sounds were coming from any of them, everyone must have been asleep.
The vehicles were parked in a cluster with the owner of the crystal necklace at the center. I remembered some documentary about old English castles that I had watched at Quin’s insistence last year, they would put the most important part of the castle in the center and this usually housed the royal family member or a lord or something. The whole structure was built outwards from this important central point, each layer of the castle provided a residential space for progressively less important people as well as protection for the queen in the middle.
We were now in the area that, according to that ancient English mode
l, housed the least important members of this organization. When we had been up on the grass verge it had been easier to see the layout, as if looking at a corn maze from above. Now that we were at ground level things were a little more difficult. I pressed my back against the RV, as did Ryan and the Professor. Arnie sniffed at the air and started to guide us through the metal maze.
My strides were almost comical as I lifted my feet as high as possible before taking a step, I knew that if anyone was going to trip over a cable and headbutt a motor home loudly, it would be me. The silly walking style was my insurance against that. A cough from inside a vehicle brought us to a standstill. A light flickered on inside and a silhouette moved across a curtained window. Someone was awake.
We were pressed up against an RV that was directly opposite the activity, if the person inside moved the drapes aside and took a peek into the night air then they would see us. It felt like an eternity until the light cut out and darkness was restored. We began to move again, following Arnie around one vehicle, then the next. I turned around to whisper to the Professor “Well that was a close one!” in my softest voice, but I had taken my eyes off the ground in front of me. My left foot didn’t step high enough to make it over the power cable before me and I stumbled, slapping my hand against the closest aluminum wall. The deep collective intake of breath from the group was almost as loud as the echo of the metal ringing out.
The light that had just gone out shone bright again in an instant. Another light sprung to life, then another, until every RV on the lot was glowing from the inside. What now? They would start scuttling down their retractable steps any second now, should we hide underneath something? Run? Make a break for it in the direction we needed to go? The castle design of their parking had paid off, they were protecting their queen.