The Magical Book of Wands

by Raven M. Williams

  He couldn’t resist it.

  He turned toward it.

  Over the forests and into the mountains he flew, the sun seeming to draw dimmer and redder as he went, like a blood moon over Hell. He almost didn’t see it when he came near, a pinprick among the verdant forest, and when he reached it, the colors shifted from living green to sepulchral bone yellow. He skimmed over the yellowed treetops, where the needles from the trees had fallen as if they died so suddenly they didn’t realize they were dead. And not just the trees; he sensed no life in the leaves below; no animals, no worms, no bacteria, no life of any kind. A hole. A hole in the life-net of the planet, and it anguished him.

  A hissing sound drew him on, and over the top of a hill, in the center of a clearing with her arms outstretched, hovered a nude woman just off the ground with her back to him.

  The hissing sound was something being pulled from the trees as they blackened, he wasn’t sure what, and along with it, bits of singed bark large and small flew and molded to her body, her chestnut hair waving in the wind created by the chaos. More and more it gathered, becoming molten as it touched her, flowing as a living thing and becoming part of her body... a living, black, form-fitting armor.

  The maelstrom subsided as she flexed her limbs and giggled, trying out her new clothes of living and dead as she alighted to the ground.

  Naia? he thought to himself, disbelieving.

  The figure paused, pulling her hair back, and if Rylan had any hopes about who it was, they were dashed. Her nose, her chin, her lips ... the arch of her eyebrows.

  Naia!

  She turned fully toward him, the pendant a blazing red star, and though he had no body, somehow her eyes found him. “Rylan? How? Ah, she’s teaching you.” She gestured to the devastation around her. “I have also been learning.”

  He swept closer. “Naia, stop! Look around. You’re killing everything around you.”

  She shrugged. “Not everything. It’s a big planet ... and once I’ve learned, I can reshape it.”

  His blood ran cold. “What are you talking about?”

  She rose into the air, a dust devil swirling at her feet. “Do you realize you and I are the only magical people on the planet? We can make it what we want, and no one will dare touch us!” She drifted in a lazy circle around him, keeping her eyes on his.

  He wanted to go to her, but didn’t dare. “You don’t want to do that, Naia. The world is fine as it is.”

  “Is it? Even you are not that naive.” She stopped and stretched, languid, looking down at herself as if at a new body. “I’ll let you in on a secret. You think I’m fearless, but the truth is I’m terrified ... of people having power over me, of taking advantage of me. Now I’ve been given this gift, and I don’t have to be! Now, no one can. No one would dare! I’m free.”

  Rylan floated up to her. “That’s crazy, Naia! People only have power over you if you let them. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. And what you’re doing with Toth—fight him, Naia! Fight him, before it’s too late!”

  She laughed, her arms outstretched with abandon. “Even if I could, why would I? His knowledge spans five thousand years! It’s only the beginning.”

  “Our family is here because of Toth, did he tell you that? Our ancestor, Marakath, thought he destroyed him, but turned him into something worse. He’s not even human, a thing, he lives outside the world. Bound his life with magic somehow, but where magic is connected to life, he brings only death—”

  “We are Naia’Toth!” she erupted in a demonic voice, the pendant an angry hungry eye. “Do not try to separate us, we are joined. We are Magen! But we are still Naia, brother. Kill the bitch, Elwen, and stand by our side.”

  “Kill Elwen?” he asked, forced back by the force of her words.

  And despite his desperate fear for Naia, what she was becoming, his mind went to the image of Elwen sitting on that rock in the sun, gossamer silver-green hair shining, staring at her toes while she basically told him his destiny. He thought of her odd mix of ruthless competence and naive innocence, and the feel of her cool soft hands on his face when she saved his life. He thought of her strange laugh, and the look of wonder on her face when she’d tried pizza for the first time.

  “No,” he replied, and screamed.

  Chapter 18

  Rylan sat up frantically in bed, jolting Elwen awake.

  She sat up next to him. “What happened?” she asked, a cool hand sliding into the crook of his elbow.

  He turned to her, and did a double-take; her eyes glowed like a cat’s in the dim light.

  “She attacked me!” he said, using the bed sheet to wipe sweat from his brow. “I think so, anyway. I just felt cold, like something crawling around inside—”

  “Wait, you saw her?”

  “Yes ... the whole forest around her was dead ... she was doing something, drawing energy, killing everything around her. And she said, ‘We are Magen.’ What’s that?”

  Her brow furrowed. “Very old word. First Age, for ‘magic.’ Also mean ‘wizard.’ This is bad; she is stronger than I thought.” She rolled out of bed to put on her clothes over the pale shift she’d worn to bed. “Ekt’kahl! We have run out of time.”

  Rylan followed her, putting on his clothes. They had nothing to pack and he’d already paid, so the only problem was transportation ... at 4am, they could no longer wait for the next bus.

  Stealing a vehicle frankly was the best option, but he didn’t know how to hotwire a car and the most complex traveling machine Elwen had ever magically driven was a hay wagon. It seemed hopeless until Rylan realized all they needed to do was put a manual-transmission car in neutral and run it like an enchanted wagon. It worked beautifully.

  On the way out of the town, Elwen asked if there was a weapons master who would sell her a bow, so Rylan found her Dick’s Sporting Goods.

  “I thought you did only the knives,” he said once they were on their way again.

  “Because I ran out of arrows,” she said, testing the steel points with her fingers.

  Rylan frowned. “You don’t mean to stick one of those in my sister, do you?”

  “I do not mean to,” she said neutrally.

  “What are they for, then?” he asked with suspicion.

  “Toth can bend creatures to his will, we will find ... terrible things.”

  Rylan swallowed. “You mean, he makes things that didn’t exist before.”

  “Ché,” she said, and put her hand on his knee as he fretted. “You can fight. They are only creatures, no magic.”

  That was the first time Elwen had ever complimented him, which felt good though he wished he shared her confidence. “What was it like? For Jolon?” he asked.

  “Jolon a leader of our people, a true strong maché’na. But Toth like a fungus, becomes what it eats ... same shape as old, but all Toth.”

  That made Rylan lose all interest in discussing that anymore, and Elwen left him to his thoughts.

  She zeroed in on pizza yet again when she insisted he stop to eat to keep his strength up. He made her eat a turkey sandwich and silently cursed her for turning him into his mother.

  Her militant mood brightened a bit when a three-year-old girl in the next booth fell in love with Elwen’s ears, and for the bribe of a French fry Elwen leaned in to let the little girl play with them. The girl’s name was Stephanie and she giggled like a mad thing while Elwen gibbered away and teased her in Elvish.

  Rylan was amazed; Elwen seemed relaxed and happy in the moment, and he felt a warmth bloom in his heart he had never felt before.

  Chapter 19

  Rylan figured they were about an hour out from Naia’s location when they slowed for traffic and came to a quarter-mile-long bridge over a gorge; it flowed from a mountain waterfall rising to Rylan’s left to the deep gorge below and to the right.

  “I do not like this place,” Elwen announced out of the blue.

  “Why?”

  “Sounds are wrong,” she said, looking like she w
anted to crawl out of her skin.

  He gripped the wand in his pocket and reached out for the life around them, something that was second-nature to him now. “There is something odd ... more life on the walls behind than in front ... maybe moss?”

  Just then, the car bounced. It was subtle, like going over a bump.

  “What was that?” asked Elwen.

  “I––” was all Rylan was able to get out when the roadbed of the bridge dropped six feet with a deafening metallic screech, followed by the muffled screams of the people in the cars around them.

  Once he’d got his heart back out of his throat, they ran to the side of the bridge to see what was going on. The water of the fall was landing in the pool as it should, but then taking a sharp turn up the wall like gravity had rotated ninety degrees and flowed past the abutments that held the bridge to the cliff face. The bridge had come to rest on rocks six feet below the eroded moorings and bits of rock were still being excavated by the rush of water.

  The bridge dropped another four feet and tons of fast-moving water poured over the roadbed, blasting away the people who’d arrived first, throwing them to their deaths hundreds of feet below. Three dozen others who had just missed that fate skidded to a stop.

  “We’ve got to help them!” Rylan yelled.

  “We cannot stay!” Elwen shouted back. “Naia’Toth––”

  “She can wait! I’m not leaving these people to die!”

  She glared at him but nodded, returning to the car to retrieve her bow, and they sprinted together to where the water was washing over.

  Rylan went as close as he dared to the rushing water then raised the wand; Elwen had shown him how to do this, but it never occurred to him to use it this way and he prayed it would work.

  “Ama’marona,” he said.

  An amber ball of brick-hard air, an air hammer, appeared in front of him, and he spread it into a wall, channeling more magic to make it grow in size and strength. The river hissed like a living thing when he pressed it into the water, as if annoyed at the interruption and kicking the wall back toward him.

  He redoubled his effort, a burning sensation in his chest as he pushed the air hammer through the water to solid rock. The bridge lurched again and Rylan saw his life pass before his eyes as he almost lost concentration, but held when Elwen’s hands clamped to his shoulders to steady him.

  “Is there a way to tie it off?” he asked her.

  “What?” she said, over the din of the water.

  “Is there a way to keep the magic going even if I’m not standing here?” he clarified.

  She brought her mouth close to his ear. “Split your mind, your spirit ... do not forget or it will stop!”

  Multitasking...

  With a silent here goes, he compartmented the feel of the flow of maché into a corner of his mind and lowered the wand. To his utter relief, the amber wall held fast and strong.

  “Thank you,” he said to Elwen, and hugged her, then turned to the others. “Let’s go!”

  They hesitated at first, looking at Rylan and Elwen like they were aliens, but the screaming sounds of the bridge beneath their feet got them moving. Rylan helped the adults up the rocks, and Elwen did the same once she’d helped the small children, firing them up to solid ground like a blond howitzer.

  Rylan breathed a sigh of relief once all were safe; he could tell that at the other end of the bridge everyone had got off safely. He was about to let the air hammer go when he noticed the small family climbing out of a collapsed portion of the bridge deck.

  Elwen gasped in horror. “Stephanie!”

  Chapter 20

  “Wait!” Rylan screamed impotently at Elwen’s back as she leapt to the bridge, silver-green hair flying. He pursued, almost thrown off the bridge as it tilted at a crazy angle.

  The family was thrown back into the hole by the movement of the bridge. Elwen was desperately trying to reach them but there was no good way to do it; they had slid all the way to the front of their car in the collapsed hole, and there was scarcely any room between its roof and the bridge deck above it.

  “We’ll hand her up to you!” the father said.

  He directed his wife onto the hood, her feet braced by his chest. Then he told Stephanie to be a brave girl has he handed her up to his wife, who pushed her up the roof of the car toward Elwen.

  “It’s okay,” Elwen said, her fingertips inches from the girl’s. “Eyes on me. That’s it.”

  With a terrible sound, the understructure gave way, and the family was tossed into mid-air, screams ceasing only as they struck the rocks below.

  “No!” Elwen screamed, nearly going after them.

  It took all of Rylan’s physical strength to restrain her. “Elwen, stop! We have to go!” he shouted at her, tugging at her clothing as she stared into the space where the family had been a moment ago. “Elwen!” he said, striking her in the back.

  She looked back at him with rage and tears, but relented and they ran back to the end of the bridge. At this angle, the water no longer rushed over the top and they were able to climb onto the rocks to pull themselves up. Just as Rylan’s foot left the span, the bridge gave way, twisting itself into scrap metal on the way down.

  They had no respite. Sirens were coming and Rylan had no interest in explaining themselves to the cops. They struck out into the forest, not slowing until they couldn’t hear the sirens anymore.

  Elwen was inconsolable and Rylan guided her as best he could, his arm across her shoulders. When she had no more tears, they walked several more miles until the fading light forced them to put down for the night. Elwen distracted herself preparing their bed of loam and leaves. When it was done, Rylan had to admit it was pretty comfortable and said so, hoping that would cheer her up.

  It didn’t.

  Elwen curled on her side in front of him. Rylan watched her, listening to her breathing as he wished he could rest so easily, so was shocked when she backed into him and pulled his arm around her. He scooched up so her head was just below his chin and pulled her close, realizing how tiny she really was when his thighs nestled beneath hers perfectly.

  She sniffed. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she said in a thin voice that didn’t sound meant for him.

  He spoke up anyway, lifting his head and kissing the hair at her temple. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry about, you did everything you could. No one could have saved her.”

  She turned her head to look at him. “I let him come to your world.” She said it like a confession.

  Rylan squeezed her hand in his. “That wasn’t you. That was me. I opened the portal; you can’t take every blame for yourself.”

  She laid her head back down and stared into space, her voice cracking. “Thousands of years ago, when he took Jolon, I could have stopped him.”

  Chapter 21

  A chill ran down Rylan’s spine and he propped himself up on an elbow. “You could have stopped him? Why didn’t you?”

  She sighed. “Because Jolon was my husband.”

  Rylan tried to reconcile this with the guy who’d come through the portal. “The guy I killed was your husband? When exactly were you planning to tell me that?”

  She turned flat on her back to look at him, his hand still in hers, her white hair spread around her like a halo. She gave him an enigmatic smile and searched his eyes. “You released Jolon, and I thank you. He was a shell ... nothing but Toth, a shadow of what Jolon was and wearing his face.” She looked away. “And now Toth is here, killing your people. Innocents who had nothing to do with him. Killing children.”

  It struck Rylan why Stephanie’s death hit Elwen so hard. Even with all her special abilities, Elwen couldn’t save her ... all because Elwen hadn’t had the strength four thousand years ago to murder what she loved most in the world.

  A tear formed at the side of her eye and Rylan wanted to wipe it away but didn’t have an available hand so he kissed it, its salt bitter on his lips. He smiled, wanting to reassure her. “Don’t ever fe
el guilty. You chose hope over death. I can’t think of anything more brave.”

  She turned her head to look at him, a strange look on her face, then cradled his face with her right hand, her long fingers entangling in his hair. She coaxed his lips to meet hers, and in a few moments, her lips moistened, and he kissed her back, his heart pounding as their mouths joined.

  Her hand slid from his cheek down his body to the hem of his shirt to come up under, her fingertips like lightning to him, studying like braille the scars she’d given him.

  He moved his hand to the bottom of her tunic, but it was tight-fitting and he didn’t get anywhere fast; his first time with a girl, and he realized with mortification he had no idea how her clothes worked.

  She took care of that and stood, turning toward him and loosening the leather cord that held the tunic closed and pulled the whole thing over her head, revealing the pale green shift he’d seen her wear earlier that morning.

  With excitement and terror, he watched her remove her knife belt, pants and boots, and with shaking hands he removed his own clothes, every piece except one, and awaited her, half scared to death.

  She lay on top of him, kissing him again as she set every nerve on fire, then moved down to hook her fingers under the last barrier between them to slide it off his legs. Returning to his mouth, she slid her hips to complete their intimacy with a shudder.

  Moving with him, she sat up and removed her shift, exposing herself completely. His hands fell upon her naked body for the first time, and he paused, shocked. From her torso to her legs, as far as his hands could reach, more of her body was covered in scars than unblemished skin.

  He took her hands in his and coaxed her down, taking her mouth passionately in his and hugging her to him, wanting to take away some of her anguish and pain, to give a part of his strength to her and become a part of her. She seemed to understand and returned his passion, whimpering and shaking as they reached their heights together.

  Afterwards, she lay next to him, her hand on his chest. They listened to the crickets together for a long while.