Awakening Magic
Page 6
“Want to help me with my homework?” As usual, she’s wearing a thick knit sweater and a pair of dark jeans.
“I’m listening. What’s your homework?”
“A lot of the students in my personal development class got the same assignment: take something you remember from your home that was at least sort of good, or, like, a tradition or something, and do it with people you care about to create a new and positive memory.
I was wondering… perhaps you’d like to go fake hunting with me. Like, foraging. “She smiles brightly.”We’d look for edible plants! I’ve been looking at a wilderness guidebook, and, as far as I know, none of the mushrooms in the forest here are poisonous. Plus, there are wildflowers that would be incredibly delectable in a salad.” Her vocabulary always seems to get larger when she’s talking about food and cooking, and you know she’s thinking back to her training. To be honest, it’s adorable.
The forest connecting the Academy and the Academe Magia curves around the city in a sort of crecent shape, only without the pointy bits. Although you’ve strolled through it in the past—as part of a workshop on herbs with useful properties, and to attend a cookout at the Academe—never before have you explored it the way you’re doing now.
It’s full of wonderful surprises—such as a large fallen tree, its roots spreading like a sunburst, that’s toppled in the perfect spot to form an impromptu bridge over a lake as clear as crystal.
Abby coaxes a deer to eat leaves from your hand. Its face is soft, its tongue rough like a cat’s. Squirrels let you pet them, and birds fly down from the trees to rest on your shoulders.
The sun filters down through the trees and everything suddenly seems vivid and emerald.
“We are wild girls,” Abby murmurs, half to herself. Together, you run through the forest.
That evening, there’s a beautiful wildflower-petal salad at dinner, and it’s all thanks to the two of you.
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Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe
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You’re hanging out in the common room, brushing your hair, when Chant enters, breathless and smiling. Her dark green dress has sweetly puffed sleeves. “Can you help me with one of my assignments?”
“Sure, what?”
“It’s to take something that our upbringing has given us and make something positive out of it. The nature of the assignment is up for interpretation, I suppose. But, anyway, there was this thing we used to do at home—one of the few things that made me happy. So, now, I’m trying to figure out how to turn it into something I don’t hate.”
“What’s the thing?”
“The harvest songs were the only good thing about where I came from. They weren’t technically religious, but the village had been singing them for so long that the priests had no choice but to go ahead and permit it.
Sometimes one of the older woman would tell my Ma that even if I was only a girl, I did have a pretty voice, and that maybe I’d be a priest’s wife someday, and sing to him."
She fiddles with her hair. Then: “Can I sing to you?”
“Sure. Go ahead, Chant.”
It’s the sort of song they sing in places where there are a lot of sheep and mountains and verdant meadows. You feel yourself bending over a cast-iron pot set above a smoky wood fire, stirring a thick soup with a wooden ladle, harvesting corn until your hands are red. Sitting on haybales in the back of a horse-drawn wagon on a cold autumn evening, laughing and joking with other girls your age as the wagon rattles over each bump in the dirt road, exceptionally large jolts making you whoop or clap or giggle..
There’s a sense of community, and you could feel how easily such closeness, such isolation, could turn painfully stifling. Constricting, even. But Chant’s protecting you, letting you feel only the good things—and, in doing so, she’s comforting herself as well.
As the song ends, you feel yourself returning to your body.
“Chant, did you know you just-“
She nods shyly.
“When did you figure out you could do that?”
She smiles and hides behind her hair. “Today, in choir. We were singing a song about a mountain, and I pictured something I’d seen in a book once—a mountaintop in springtime, covered with blooming red roses, and sunlight and wildflowers in the valley. When the song ended, everyone said they’d heard something, or seen something, or smelled rose petals, or felt sunlight.”
I had a special extra private lesson right after that, and I worked with my teacher until I could control whether or not I transmitted what I was vizualizing.”
“Do you have any idea how amazing that is?”
She shrugs, clutches her hair, giggles.
“You could heal, you could help people, you could—I don’t know, but—Oh, Chant, you’re extraordinary!”
“I could help people. Maybe, someday, when I’m older… I could even go home and help my sisters. Help them learn to see things the way I do, and that being female doesn’t make them worthless. The place I came from…it got everything sort of tangled up in my head. Loving someone because I want to and loving someone because I’ve been told to. Being silent out of politeness and being silent cause I’ll be beaten if anyone hears me. But I’m working on it. I want to get better, so I will."
“Oh, Chant…” You spread your arms; Chant curls into your embrace, and you give her an enormous hug. She buries her face in your shoulder and hugs you back.
After a while, she lifts her head. “I’ll teach you the harvest songs, if you’d like.”
Chant ends up needing to get her pitch pipe to slow down the faster runs of a call-and-response song, one where the higher voice sings something and the lower voices sing it back to her; still, she’s pleasantly surprised at how fast you pick everything up.
It’s fun to sing with a friend.
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Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe
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A few days later, after a tough obstacle course and a long, hot shower,
Magda drums the beat of a popular song on your bedroom door. Once you’ve let her in, she explains why she’s there.
“I happened to be looking over the semester packing list to see if there was anything I’d forgotten to purchase, and I saw that it said ‘one party dress.’ I don’t own a party dress, and I refuse to feel underdressed in any circumstances—plus, there’s a splendid used bookstore in Miraga. Will you go shopping with me? I’d appreciate it ever so much.”
Shopping in the city, plus an excursion to the small, charming town of Miraga? There’s no way you’re turning that down.
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(1/1) Go shopping with Magda.
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Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe
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A few days later, after a tough obstacle course and a long, hot shower,
you’re sitting on your bed, reading, and Abby enters so stealthily and soundlessly that, when she speaks, you’re startled into giggles.
“I only brought long-sleeved shirts, and since it’s starting to get warm out, I have nothing to wear under my sweaters. Plus, according to a girl in my art class, the galleries in Miraga are magnificent. What say you to a day trip?”
Shopping in the city, plus an excursion to the small, charming town of Mi
raga? There’s no way you’re turning that down.
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(1/1) Go shopping with Abby.
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Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe
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Magda loves brightly patterned dresses that look as if they could be from the 1950s. She buys several new frocks and a hat trimmed with a riotous spray of bright flowers. Her style tends to attract attention. She’s so unique, and she always wears exactly what she wants to. That’s something you admire about her.
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Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe
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First, you go into the city to buy clothes.
Abby’s style is subtly elegant. Nothing uncomfortable, nothing frilly, nothing too of-the-moment—everything’s well-crafted and timeless and practical, with subtle ornamentation.
You’ve brought plenty of clothes from home that are perfect for the weather. Still, you’ve already given several outfits to students on your hall who admired your style, so you decide to get some new ensembles. They’re all ultra-cute on you. Of course, you have a great body and a wonderful smile—why wouldn’t clothes look cute on you?
Abby made macarons, and you share them on the hovertrain ride to Miraga. At one point, when you reach for the same flower-flavored macaron, your fingers meet hers, and you find yourself blushing. What’s with you? Hmm… maybe a huge crush on your pale, lanky squadmate. No matter how it turns out, though, you’re sure that your strong friendship and the teamwork dynamic of your squad will be able to survive anything.
You end up breaking the pastel treat into two pieces and each eating one, and Abby promises to make you more the next time she’s in the kitchen.
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Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe
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You take a hovertrain to Miraga, a tiny, artsy town near the city. Together with Magda, you stroll through tiny stores and amazing art galleries filled with beautiful objects: a lamp shaped like a lily-of-the-valley, paper fans small enough to wear as earrings, a telescope small enough to use as a keychain, a stark painting of leafless trees in winter. (Abby would like that, you decide, and have it wrapped up and sent to her. ) On the ride home, you sit in companionable silence, reading different books from the same series.
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Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe
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You take a hover train to Miraga, a tiny, artsy town right outside the city. With Abby beside you, you stroll from a beautiful art gallery to a tiny jewelery store that seems like a well-kept secret, to a resteraunt that’s right next to the riverbend docks; while you’re waiting for your food, you transform your school outfits into bathing suits and go for a dip in the water! There, you discover a new power: creating air bubbles that function like divers’ helmets. You also discover that Abby doesn’t know how to swim; so, like the good friend you are, you volunteer to teach her. When she doggie-paddles a tentative circle around you, you’re so proud of her—and, of course, of yourself. Before taking the hover train back to Magi Town, you buy two more presents for your squadmates: a paperback novel for Magda, and a necklace made of tiny metal ginko leaves for Chant.
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(1/1) In Magi Town, though, you encounter something completely unexpected…
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Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe
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You’ve reached Magi Town, and you’re walking towards the hovershuttle station where you can get a ride back to the Academy when you see a large man leaning against a doorframe, having an aimless conversation with five or so other men, all formidably bulky. You glance at him, but pay him no mind and keep walking. After all, you’re a Magical Girl—what reason do you have to be scared of anything?
But then one of the men glances at you and says “I wouldn’t hit that.”
Another one wrinkles his nose. “Really? I think I’d bang that.”
Okay, so that’s the height of rudeness, but whatever. Just keep walking.
And then you realize that they’re following you.
“So are you bitchy to everybody, or just to people cooler than you?”
“Why are you acting like men? A real woman wouldn’t even want to be a magical girl. She’d want to take care of her husband and children.”
“Pfft. Females.”
When you shoot an aggravated glance back at the men, there’s strange aura around them, one which you recognize at once from your textbooks. These are no ordinary men—they’re people who’ve been possessed by monsters.
“We absolutely need to get them to a less populated area of town—get them far away from any bystanders who might be injured in combat,” Magda says quietly, yet decicively.
You nod. “Right!”
When you turn a corner, you see a dead end blocked by a brick wall. Okay, there’s no one there—that counts as less populated, right?
You’re about to transform when one of the monster-men grabs your hands. In an instant, you surround your body with a shield of white light. Even though your hands are still pinned behind your back, the shield will prevent anything from hurting you—for now, at least. In order to fight back, though, you’ll need to transform.
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Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe
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A large man leans against a doorframe, having an aimless conversation with five or so other men, all formidably bulky. You glance at him, but keep walking. After all, you’re a Magical Girl—what reason do you have to be scared of anything. But then “Hey, cuties.” the man leaning against the doorframe says. “Wanna smile for us?”
“Leave us alone, please,” you say casually, and just keep walking.
But, shortly afterward, you realize that the men are following you, and they’re definitely still talking to you.
“Girls like you should be kept in their place!”
“Which one of you is the designated ugly friend? Or is it both of you?”
“Did you know that a misogynist is a man who hates women almost as much as women hate each other?”
There’s a strange aura around them, one which you recognize at once from your textbooks. These are no ordinary people—they’re men who’ve been possessed by monsters.
“We need to get them to a less populated area of town—get them away from bystanders who might be injured in combat,” Abby says quietly, and you nod.
When you turn a corner, you see a dead end blocked by a brick wall. Okay, there’s no one there—that counts as less populated, right?