by CM Raymond
“He’s not a lizard, Hannah. What once was, is no longer. You changed him. The entity that you first encountered in the market is a different being now.”
“Um… OK. What the hell do you want me to do to him?”
“That’s not up to me. It’s between the two of you. I don’t have a connection with your friend. To me, he is just another creature. Once you bound yourself to Sal, the possibility of me connecting with him became, well, impossible—as far as I know. The two of you are connected through a thick covenant that will not easily be broken or overtaken.”
“All right.” She looked down at Sal and inspected the spikes protruding from his vertebrae. Hannah wasn’t sure, but she thought they had grown slightly since the day she took him in.
She imagined what else she might do to him. Make him grow? Change his color? Give him opposable thumbs? None of it seemed right. She locked eyes with the creature, trying to read his thoughts.
Then it came to her, the perfect image of what Sal was to become.
“I think I’ve got the picture in my mind. Now, what do I do?” she asked, keeping the image primary.
Ezekiel gave her a gentle smile. “I haven’t the slightest. This is your magic, not mine. We’re in new territory here.”
“Not. Very. Helpful.”
“Like all magic, it is a matter of focus. Focus on the image inside of you. Maybe that will work?”
She snorted, “OK, but if something goes wrong and I start growing spikes, please stop me.”
Hannah closed her eyes and began the work. She pushed Ezekiel, the sound of the River Wren, and even Sal out of her mind as she found her center. Everything faded into the background, and all that remained was her and the power flowing through her body.
She doubted that she could make it happen for a moment, and then set aside the doubt as well. Hannah was a magician. As far as her mentor knew, she had done something no one else had ever accomplished. She reminded herself of this several times, building her confidence along the way.
Then she set that aside, too.
All that remained was her and the power. She opened her eyes and focused on her pet at her feet. Sal sat still. Their connection was strong, and he knew exactly what she was up to. He was a willing lump of clay. Ready, asking to be molded according to her plan.
Considering that transmogrification was something akin to physical magic, she brought her hands in front of her and started a series of complicated motions—none of which she had ever considered or practiced. But she fell into a routine with it, repeating the same motion again and again. As her digits and hands twisted faster and faster, she tried to push the energy under her skin toward her hands and out into the lizard. But it wouldn’t budge. It was as if there was a barrier between her and Sal.
After what felt like hours, Hannah’s arms, heavy as lead, dropped to her side. She slumped on the rock and looked up at Ezekiel.
“Nothing.” She told him, wiping sweat out of her eyes, “It’s not working.”
He nodded, “No one said this would be easy, Hannah. Try again. Please. The fate of Arcadia may depend on it.”
She nodded, then grit her teeth and tried to refocus. She closed her eyes and pushed away failure and disappointment. Ezekiel’s expectations came before her mind’s eye, and she pushed them away.
Once empty, she chose the path of nature magic. She turned her palms upward toward the sky and entered into something like a trance. All of her mental and emotional energy flowed, trying to connect with the creature, begging his body to do precisely what she wanted him to do, but Sal was unresponsive.
Finally, exhausted, she bent over at the waist and rested on the rock. This time she didn’t care what he thought, she just wanted to go away. To sleep for a year. Arcadia be damned. Let Adrien have it. Magic was too hard, and she was far too weak.
Ezekiel had made a terrible mistake choosing her.
“You can do this, Hannah,” he said, terser than she had heard him before. “Damn it, you have to.”
She fought back. “I can’t! It’s not in me. I didn’t do this before; it just happened.”
His reply was whip crack, “Don’t be a damned child. Magic doesn’t just happen. Magicians are magic. You are a magician. You are magic.” The old man was nearly screaming in her ear pushing her feelings over the brink.
Hannah lashed out. “Leave me the hell alone, you freak. I’m just a bloody kid!”
His answer was unambiguous. “You’re not a kid. You’re a magician. You were made for this. Stop wasting your life.”
Her anger flared. “I can’t!”
“You can!” he screamed. And with the scream came a crash of thunder. “Let it out!”
Lightning hit the water, the whiteness blinding her for a moment.
Hannah collapsed around Sal and covered him with her arms. All the fear and frustration that she had been setting aside for hours came pouring out of her. But as those emotions washed over her, she felt something else among them. She felt Sal’s presence, as if they were connected, one with the other.
There was no telling where her body ended and his began. “Please,” she wept, picturing the animal’s potential. “Do this. For me.”
Her mind began to swim and she lost track of where she was. In the back of her mind, she thought she felt the world shaking and an intense heat. But she couldn’t focus on that.
All she could feel was the animal twitching beneath her chest. Something jabbed at her stomach and chest, and Hannah jumped, afraid she was hurting him. Looking down, she saw the skin on Sal’s back begin to bulge like two balls were trying to push through. Sal looked at her. She could feel his pain, but also his desire to please her, to do her bidding.
Hannah sobbed as she saw the pain she had caused him. The animal wanted nothing more than to end the torment—she could feel it—but he refused to give up. Sal screeched as finally, his scales could hold it in no longer. The balls burst through his skin, but they weren’t balls at all. Instead, something long and bony emerged.
The bones pushed up and out of Sal’s back as his screech continued across the waters. Extending an arm’s length on either side of him, they expanded into two glorious wings.
The last thing Hannah saw before losing consciousness was her pet lizard pushing from the ground, wings stretching toward the sky.
But I’m wrong, she thought as she hit the ground. He’s not a lizard at all.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ezekiel cracked the door and peered in on Hannah, the brave young girl who had quickly become the best pupil he had ever had. He beamed with delight. The magician who had seen more of the paranormal than anyone else living on Irth just witnessed the impossible. Hannah had just reached into the etheric and pulled out power like Ezekiel had never before beheld.
As she unleashed her frustrations, the ground beneath her began to shake. The trees and grass around them leaned in as if she was calling out to all of them. Fire bubbled beneath her skin. And then, in the midst of that terrifying sight, something beautiful happened. Hannah’s pet, the creature that was once nothing more than a common lizard, become something far more majestic.
Hannah pulled an image from her mind and created something brand new. And now that thing was curled up on his master’s legs. Sal continued to stretch its new wings as if trying to convince itself that they were real.
Nodding his head silently, Ezekiel whispered, “You are new magic, little creature.”
The lizard whipped out its tongue and nestled closer to the girl. The movement stirred her, and she cracked open her eyes.
“Ezekiel,” she moaned, “was it a dream?”
“It was more real than anything,” he replied in a gentle hush. “And it was amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it in my considerably long life.”
A tired smile washed over her face, and her eyes closed. As Ezekiel stared at his sleeping student, he realized that what he said may not have been true. While he had never seen a creature change like that, he’d seen magicians
expend all of their energy like Hannah had.
Perhaps that was the connection.
But it was a question that Ezekiel was unprepared to answer.
He needed help, and there was only one place he knew where to get it.
Once he had reached the idea, it took him mere seconds to make up his mind.
“I need to take care of something important. Dire even. You stay here. Stay safe.”
She opened her eyes, and Ezekiel was gone.
****
Recovery from whatever the hell happened between Sal and her took a full day and a half. Hannah spent the entire time in bed, feeling as if she had the flu. Her body ached and her energy level was next to nothing. Casting before had exhausted her, but it was more like being sleepy after a long day of hustling the streets with Parker.
This was something altogether different, and it scared her more than a little. She wondered what would happen if her body reacted like this in the heat of battle. She’d be a sitting duck, and the Hunters would have their way with her—or worse, Adrien would.
Either way, she’d need to talk with Ezekiel about how one defends herself in an exhausted state.
Glancing over, she found a plate of food on the bedside table. Touching the meat, she could feel that it was still warm. It was the third meal she had awoken to. Before she had dropped into slumber, the magician had told her that he had to go and attend to something important.
The food appearing by her bed was strange, but she had to admit, it was nothing more unusual than any of the other shit she had experienced since making it to the tower.
She reached down and scratched Sal’s back. Her fingers struck his wings, and she sat up in surprise. Somehow, she had forgotten the magic that had taken her energy away for the past thirty-six hours.
The creature stood and slowly moved the wings, clearly showing off his new accessories to her. The spikes running down his back had grown, and his scales reflected a darker shade of green. But the wings... the wings were like nothing she had ever seen—except in her imagination. They were long and thin, and yet Hannah could sense a strength within them.
Hannah wondered how far they could take him.
“Looks good, you little creep,” she said. “Learn to use them yet?”
In response, Sal waddled to the side of the bed and started to vigorously flap the wings. Hannah’s hair blew back as his little body levitated over the surface of her bed. He hung a few feet in the air before tumbling off the bed and onto the floor. Sal looked up at her and whipped his tongue in and back out.
Hannah could swear he was trying to smile.
“Not bad. Looks like we are both going to take some time getting used to our new powers.”
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, grabbed the plate of food, and made her way out of the room and into the great hall.
The meal helped immensely, but she was still feeling woozy from her use of magic. She also knew it was time to get back to work. Arcadia wasn’t going to save itself, and if she were going to have a hand in its redemption, she would need to be ready for the fight.
Pushing her head back, she realized it was time to practice nature magic. Ezekiel was still nowhere to be found, but she didn’t need him to practice her forms. She quickly made her way outside.
The air felt refreshing on her face, and it was invigorating to get outside of the tower. She made her way to the stream, where the forest met the short band of grass between it and their home.
She looked down at her usual spot, the place had changed somehow. The large tree that loomed overhead seemed to lean a little more today. And where Hannah usually sat was a ring of dead grass that looked like it had been burned. Hannah thought for a moment about the power that it had taken to transform Sal, and she wondered what else she was capable of.
Dropping into a cross-legged sitting position, she closed her eyes and focused. An hour passed in a heartbeat, and she opened her eyes and felt for her pulse.
Slower than ever, she thought.
Taking a few minutes, she ran through some of the simpler spells that she’d mastered during her first week under the tutelage of Ezekiel. Pleased to find that they all still came easily and that she expended little energy on them, she stood, deciding to try something a bit more intense.
Her mind wandered, trying to imagine what the next step would have been if the magician had been with her. The sun bleated down on Hannah, and her body started to sweat under the folds of her cloak.
“Wish we had some shade,” she said to Sal, who was flapping around in the grass practicing his own skills. He looked like an awkward toddler just after learning to walk.
She couldn’t help but laugh at his difficulty. The animal looked up at her and then curled into a tight ball in the grass. “Some shade,” she repeated as she looked up at the cobalt blue sky. There wasn’t a cloud in sight, and she knew exactly what she was going to try.
She held her hands out to her sides, palms up. She pictured a storm cloud roll in overhead and nothing happened. The other arts were making some sense of how they worked.
Even the work of connecting outward with the physical things of nature—the trees, the river, and even Sal—made some sense to her, but she had no idea how to connect with the weather. Imagining herself raising up into the sky and spreading clouds overhead didn’t work. She tried saying some simple words, thinking that mixing with mind magic might help. Nothing.
“Looks like you might need a staff,” a voice said behind her.
“Zeke!” Hannah shouted with joy as she turned around. She didn’t expect to have missed him as much as she had. “You’re back.”
“Indeed. And you’re practicing. I’m glad to see it, but weather control is a significant jump from what you’ve done so far.”
She smiled. “I look terrible with a sunburn. Just trying to protect my doll-like complexion.” Hannah winked at her teacher. “Wasn’t sure how long you’d be gone, and I didn’t want to fall behind.”
“Very wise. Discipline is the key to mastery. Keep it up. And… it looks like little Sal has been working on his own discipline.”
She laughed. “Yeah, poor guy. Not sure he knows what happened to him.”
“Well,” Ezekiel said. “He knows about as much as you do, which is a good start. Your dragon will figure it out soon enough.”
“Dragon?” She looked down at Sal who looked back at her.
Then his tongue whipped out and back in. “What the hell?”
The old man chuckled. “Look at him. You want to keep calling him a lizard. I guess that’s fine, but we both know what we have here. And if Sal is to grow into what he now is, it is going to take you nurturing him. The first step is to admit and name his new nature.”
“Holy shit. I have a dragon!” She crowed.
“Yes, you do.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Kind of little for what I expected dragons to look like. Wait, does this mean they actually exist? I mean other than Sal?”
The magician shrugged. “I don’t think so. At least none that I’ve ever seen. But that’s the power of your new magic. You have truly created something, brought something to life that once only existed in dreams as far as I know. The mystics devote their lives to accomplish only a shadow of what you have with Sal here. You connected with him during his changing. He’ll do your bidding forever, I suspect.”
She looked fondly at him. “And I his.”