by Simon Archer
“What happened to you?” Vila sounded panicked.
“I just flashed through a bunch of different visions,” I told her. “I think I know where Tobin is.” The sky cracked again, even though there was still no sign of a storm cloud.
“Well, let’s go,” Andi called out. “One of the cars is outside. We can take it.”
“We don’t need to,” I told her. “Tobin is at the cave with the lightning stones.” Suddenly, you could have heard a pin drop in the house as terror crossed their faces.
“What would he want to do with the lightning stones,” Vila asked, finally.
“He wants to take control of them,” I started. “Right now, good magic controls them. You see, all the pieces have been here the whole time, I just wasn’t putting them together.” I was getting excited about finally knowing what I’d been missing.
“Do you maybe want to put them together for the room?” Andi sniped sarcastically.
“I’m with her,” Jack added.
“Vila, Gisele told you that magic was neutral and that perhaps I should study something like the sun, yes?”
“She did, yes,” Vila answered.
“She didn’t mean the sun was the same as the mystery energy. She meant that man can manipulate this force as well. The sun isn’t good or bad. It’s just the sun. The ‘good’ and ‘bad’ about the sun’s power comes from what man chooses to do with it. Some people use it to power homes to save the earth, while others use it for dreadful weaponry. Gisele was simply pointing out, in a very cryptic manner, which I will ask you to yell at her about later, that the lightning stones and the book are only as good or bad as the people controlling them.”
“Ok, so Gisele is cryptic, and I will yell at her,” Vila replied sarcastically. “What does that have to do with Tobin being at the cave?”
“Bad magic can’t control the lightning stones unless that same bad magic built the wall protecting them, like staking a claim on them,” I answered. “Remember, I told you I had fallen through a wall of sand when Lottie and I first found the cave?”
“Yeah,” Andi acknowledged.
“That wall was only sand because I possess good magic, somehow. For anyone who isn’t good, it would’ve looked like, and felt like, stone. As of right now, the wall is down because I knocked it down, but bad magic still can’t enter the cave. As soon as evil puts its own wall up, though, good won’t be able to enter.”
“Tobin has to put a wall up so he can knock it down to get in the cave?” Jack asked innocently.
“Very simply put, yes,” I answered. I wished I’d thought of such an easy explanation to begin with.
“One last question,” Andi added, tipping her head to the side. “Why does anyone want in the cave? What do the damn stones do?”
“They perpetuate magic,” I told her. “The stones slowly feed the earth magic as it is used up. When good magic controls the stones, they feed the earth good magic and vice versa. Everything in nature has to have a balance, though, so the spell in the book is the only known way to change the magic of the stones from good, to bad.”
“So, the energy you saw in the weather events?” Jack asked.
“Good magic balancing the destruction of the tornados with life-giving precipitation,” I answered plainly.
“Hmm, clever one, that mother nature,” Jack replied nonchalantly. “One more thing, though. If magic isn’t good or bad, how is the book evil consistently?”
“That was a bit difficult to figure out until I saw the way it disintegrated when the book was buried, and a tree, along with plants, grew in its place. I thought because the plants were poisonous to humans that they were evil. Not the case. The plants were protecting the magical tree. It was the humans that kept getting to the tree who put the evil in their hearts into the book they’d craft from it.” I stared at the three of them, waiting for a response.
“But they always made an evil book from the tree. How does that point to anything other than the tree being evil?” Andi asked finally.
“Once the book had been crafted, the true evil was the intent passed from one generation to the next. People were literally looking for the book with evil intentions, and when they found it, those intentions was swayed the book toward evil.” Another loud crack of thunder sounded overhead.
“I’m all for knowing the history of magic, but if what you say is true, we can’t let Tobin in the cave!” Vila called out over yet another roll of thunder.
Without another word, the four of us turned, ran out the front door of the house, and started down the beach. We were three hundred yards from the spot that could make the world’s future evil if we didn’t find a way to stop it.
24
Dry lightning struck the beach more and more consistently as we got closer to the hole that would lead us to the cave. A couple of times, I could feel the buzz of electricity zip up my legs when a strike was too close. The lightning was only striking in a fifty-yard radius around the hole, but you could hear the thunder for miles. One by one, Andi, Vila, Jack, and I dodged the strikes and made it into the hole. We had to crawl the first twenty yards before we could start to straighten up. When the passageway began to widen, we saw the glow of a lantern in front of us. A few more steps and we walked up behind Tobin.
“You aren’t getting that wall up,” I called out to him. The thunder from the beach was so loud, I could barely hear myself, even though we were underground. Tobin spun around and raised his hand in the air. A lightning bolt materialized and struck the ground directly in front of me, knocking me backward. I flew into Vila, and the two of us landed on our asses five feet back.
“What was that you said?” Tobin sneered. He raised his other hand to show that he had the book. “Did you see my little experiment last night, with the tornados? I figured they’d come across your desk at some point. I told you, Anders, I could get the book anytime I wanted.”
“Yes, you did,” I replied, getting to my feet and helping Vila up. “What do you plan on doing with it, Tobin? Making yourself a warlock?” I was hoping he didn’t know that the book captured the souls of those who tried to take its power for themselves.
“I’m not an idiot, Anders,” Tobin snapped. “I don’t have any intention of becoming one of the souls trapped in the book! I’m going to use the souls trapped in the book to take control of the most powerful magic in the world!”
“You really don’t want to do that,” I spat out, not sure what to say next. I also wasn’t sure just how well he had a handle on controlling lightning and wasn’t looking to get struck.
“Oh, yes, I do,” Tobin laughed. “I’ve kept magic a secret and waited for this day my entire life, and I’m going to savor watching your face as you see me take control of the stones!” His laugh was evil and twisted. He lifted his hand in the air. I expected another lightning strike to come, but the wind kicked up instead.
It started as a breeze but quickly grew in intensity. Tobin was controlling exactly where the wind was because the book’s pages, in his hand, weren’t moving at all. I put a hand out to steady myself on the passageway wall.
“Can you do anything about this?” I yelled to Vila and Andi over the howling of the wind. Every second that passed, the strength with which the air was moving was making it harder to stay upright.
“I keep trying, and nothing is happening!” Vila yelled. “I can stay steady, but I can’t stop it!”
“Same here!” Andi hollered.
“Problem with the breeze?” Tobin taunted us and kicked up the velocity. Jack started sliding backward.
“Jack!” I yelled back to him. “Get out of here!”
Jack looked around, hoping to find something to hold on to. When he saw that there was nothing, he hung his head against the wind and slowly backed down the passageway. I knew it hurt his pride to not be able to help, but I’d rather his pride hurt than have him be injured in a fight he had no chance of winning.
“Aww, too bad, he’s going to miss the fun,” Tobin sn
eered sarcastically. He turned toward the cave and looked down at the book. His lips were moving, but the wind was so loud that I couldn’t hear what he was saying.
I struggled to take a step towards him, but then slid three feet backward with the wind. I watched in horror as the sand at Tobin’s feet began to move. It started to stack itself. He was doing the spell to build a wall for evil. As the sand stacked itself, it turned to stone, and it reminded me of the visions I’d had. I anchored myself between the walls of the passage and turned my head over my shoulder.
“Andi! Vila!” I yelled to be certain they could hear me.
“Yeah,” they replied in unison.
“We need to get you out of here!” Vila yelled forward to me. “We can’t stop him if he pulls out the lightning again.”
“At least outside, we can protect you!” Andi added. Their throats almost sounded hoarse with how hard they had to yell just to be heard.
“No!” I yelled back. “I’m staying! I need you to do something for me and then get out of here!” I could barely hear myself over the howl in the tunnel. I had an idea, and while I wasn’t sure if it would work, with the genies’ powers so unpredictable around the stones, I wanted to try.
“What are you talking about?” Vila yelled. She was a couple of feet closer to me, so I could hear her a little better.
“Andi, Vila, I wish to be a genie!” I screamed out to make sure they heard me clearly. I slid another foot backward as another foot of the wall built up in front of me. “Hurry!”
“Are you sure?” Vila yelled forward to me. I couldn’t see her face, but I imagined it was a mixture of ‘what the hell are you thinking?’ and ‘really?’.
“Now? You pick now to question my wish?” I yelled, truly shocked.
“No, it’s just that—”
“I wish to be a genie!” I cut her off. I was losing my hold on the walls and was in fear of being flung out of the passageway altogether. I glanced behind me to see both Vila and Andi raise their hands in the air and snap their fingers.
Nothing changed, though, and that convinced me that their magic was completely down for the moment. I watched the wall erect itself in front of me, and helplessness washed over me. For the first time since I’d discovered magic, I saw sadness in it, and that sadness coursed through my veins. I couldn’t battle the wind and get to Tobin, and I didn’t want to stay and watch the tragedy of evil controlling the world’s magical source, so I decided to let the wind blow me back down the passageway. I turned to warn the girls, so I didn’t just bowl them over, and my hands slipped off the wall.
“Ahh!” I yelled out, squeezing my eyes shut and preparing to collide with the girls. The collision never came, however. I slowly opened my eyes and looked from left to right. I no longer had a hold of the walls, but I was able to stay in one place without being pushed back by the wind. I looked behind me, and the girls were standing side-by-side, braced against the wind with worried looks on their faces.
“How do you feel?” Vila yelled.
“Like it didn’t work, other than I suddenly don’t have to hold on to the walls,” I hollered back to her.
“You might want to take another look at yourself,” Andi said, one note below screaming. She turned and left the cave, leaving Vila and me behind.
“Where is she going?” I asked Vila, thinking it was more than a bit odd that Andi would just leave.
“No clue! Now, how do you feel?” Vila repeated.
I shrugged my shoulders and looked to see what was anchoring my feet to the ground so solidly that I didn’t have to hold on to the walls any longer. My mouth fell open when I saw that I no longer had feet. Underneath me was a red and purple trail of mist whipping around in the wind.
“Oh my, shit!” I screamed, surprised. I must’ve startled myself because I flew sideways and hit one of the walls. The wall scared me, so I hurled towards the other side of the passageway until I hit that wall. Before I knew it, I was literally bouncing off the walls and had no idea how to stop it. “Vila!”
“Deep breath, Bennett! Just take a deep breath and go where you want to go!” I swore I heard a note of amusement in her voice. I sucked in a huge gulp of air and held it in my lungs.
The only place I could think of that I wanted to go was over to the windless part of the passageway where Tobin was building the wall. The moment the thought formed in my mind, I whizzed right over. Tobin jumped backward when I flew in front of him and almost dropped the spellbook.
“How did you…?” he stammered, fear flowing across his face. His head dropped, and he saw my trail of mist. When he lifted his face again, he was white as a ghost.
“You may have kept magic a secret your whole life, Tobin, but I’ve had a little magical secret all my own for a while now.” I looked at Vila and winked. She smiled back at me.
“What… what are you?” Tobin managed to get out through his slack jaw.
“What I am, is keeping you from building this wall,” I told him.
I thought of the wall crumbling, and that is what it did. When it was a loose mound of sand on the passage floor, I reached out and thought of the book in my hand, and then it was. I stopped the wind and tied Tobin’s arms behind his back, all with my mind. No matter what I thought, it would happen! Once I had the book, and Tobin wasn’t going anywhere, Vila floated up next to me, no longer wearing her legs.
“Nice trail you’ve got there,” she complimented me.
“Nice pick on the colors,” I replied, admiring the red and purple.
“Oh, I didn’t pick them. They are just kind of assigned by ourselves. It’s hard to explain,” she laughed. “What are you going to do with this guy?” She crossed her arms and looked down at Tobin.
“I’m not sure yet. I’m trying not to think of anything too dramatic because my thoughts keep coming true!” I told her.
“Oh, you’ll get used to that. Don’t worry,” she assured me. “I would suggest wiping his memory while you still can.”
“I can do that?” It was one thing that hadn’t crossed my mind.
“In some cases, yes,” Vila explained. “When someone has been in such close contact with magic as strong as he has, there is a window during which you can rob them of their memory of it. It’s like a little safeguard put in place to keep magic generally hidden.”
“Would you mind taking care of that this time?” I asked her. “I might accidentally erase his ability to remember how to walk, or eat, or something.”
Vila busted out laughing. “Yeah, you make a good point. I’ll take care of it this time.” She raised her hand in the air, snapped her fingers, and Tobin disappeared in a puff of magic.
“Did you erase him?” I asked, horrified that something had gone wrong.
“No,” she started, laughing. “I just put him back at home. He’ll wake up as a news anchor who is late for work with a pounding headache in the morning, and the urge to make a public apology to the new technology developer in town that he slammed on a broadcast earlier.” She smiled sweetly. She looked at the spellbook then up at me.
“Time to get rid of this,” I said. I threw the book into the cave and marveled at the fact that when it landed, it looked just like the visions the stones had given me.
Actually, I had received not just a vision but a premonition, in that case. I started thinking about the wall being built by good, and the sand started swirling around and stacking itself again. Within a minute, the wall rose, and good magic protected the cave once again. That sealed the book inside, so until it disintegrated, spread itself into the earth, and grew as a tree somewhere else, evil had no chance at accessing the stones. I looked a Vila, and then down at my lack of legs.
“So, at the risk of sounding like a broken record,” Vila said timidly, “how do you feel?” She’d seen me checking out my genie-self.
“I feel fine, for the most part,” I told her. “It’s almost like having to write with your non-dominant hand, though. I have to do everything so deliberately to g
et anything to work!”
“You’ll get used to that,” she laughed. “First things first, though. We need you to put your legs on before you walk out of here.”
“How do I do that? Do I just think about it?” I started spinning around in circles, looking at the trail of mist that followed me. Before Vila had a chance to answer, Andi’s voice came echoing down the passageway. When she came into view, she ran to me and threw her arms around my neck.
“I’m so happy you are ok!” she yelled.
When she let me go, I saw that Lottie had walked in behind her, and I suddenly felt extremely self-conscious. I looked at Andi, and then over to Vila. Lottie stopped walking and stared at me without saying a word. The last time I remembered feeling that exposed was the first time I’d had to get naked in the locker room after gym class. Finally, she started walking toward me again. She paused, bent down, and picked something up off the ground, then continued on until she was standing directly in front of me. Her face was serious, but not upset.
“Andi came and got me because she figured you might need someone to take care of this,” she said, holding up her hand. She was holding the money clip. It had apparently fallen onto the ground when my pants and legs disappeared. It was no longer mine as it had now become my new home.
“We have a lot to talk about, I know,” I started. “The whole thing was—”
“We do have a lot to talk about,” Lottie interrupted me. “Like how much freakin’ fun it must be to float around like that!” She broke out a huge smile and threw her arms around my neck. My heart pounded with relief. Marrying a guy with a couple of magical genies was one thing. Marrying a guy who was a genie himself could’ve been something different entirely.