Protagonist Bound

by Geanna Culbertson

  Suddenly I understood. This was her wand. She had given it me on my birthday nearly ten years ago. Right about the time she was fired . . .

  “A dear friend of mine, Paige Tomkins, used to head the Magical Transfers, Tracking, and Recalls Department at headquarters,” Emma said. “That was the department in charge of overseeing and managing all transfers of magic between people and objects.”

  “I saw her name on the door of an office when we were at Fairy Godmother HQ,” I abruptly remembered.

  Emma blinked. ”When were you children at headquarters?”

  “Oh, that’s sort of a long story,” I said quickly. “Sorry to interrupt,” I added as I tried to redirect the conversation away from telling my godmother about our recent breaking- and-entering exploits. “You were telling us about your friend. Paige, was it?”

  “Well, yes,” Emma continued as she looked at me skeptically. “As I was saying, all magical transfers used to have to go through Paige. We were very close, she and I, and when I got the feeling I was going to be fired I asked two favors of her. The first was to enchant my wand, but of course not catalog this transfer.

  “As I said, a wand is useless without that unique Godmother’s power to operate it. However, by relocating some other enchanted object’s magic into it—like I explained with the example of the mirror and the teacup—a wand can potentially conduct magic in other ways if proper criteria is met by the wielder.”

  Emma turned a bit so that she was looking directly at me as she continued.

  “With me no longer able to protect you when I was stripped of duty, Crisanta, I wanted you to have something you could use to protect yourself—something versatile and powerful, but that no one would suspect you had. And since I knew that once my own powers were removed no one would come searching for my wand because it should’ve been useless by that point, it seemed like the best choice.

  “Paige ended up finding the perfect magical object for us to use for the transfer. In one of her trips around the realm cataloging and collecting unauthorized enchanted objects, she came across a special dagger that hosted a unique and very intriguing, weaponry-based power. After presenting it to me, we decided to transfer its enchanted abilities into my wand. From there we simple faked some paperwork, smuggled the wand out of headquarters, and that, Crisanta my dear, is the short version of how your wand came to be.”

  Jason raised his hand awkwardly. “Clarification, please,” he said.

  “About what?” Emma asked.

  “The wand,” interjected Daniel. “What does it do exactly?”

  “Would you like to show them?” Emma said as she handed it back to me.

  I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about it at first; I’d never considered revealing the wand’s hidden abilities to anyone other than Blue and SJ. But the way Emma looked at me reassuringly and with full approval helped diffuse some of the uncertainty.

  Dissuading my nerves and disinclination as best I could, I took a deep breath, held the wand up before the others, and transformed it.

  “Spear,” I commanded aloud.

  The staff expanded in my hand, its sheen catching the light pouring in from one of the windows. Jason and Daniel were stunned.

  Emma proceeded to explain on my behalf how the wand was enchanted to take the shape of absolutely whatever weapon I willed it into.

  “I suppose the spear is your favorite form since that is what you chose to show them first,” Emma commented.

  I nodded. “It’s surprisingly user friendly and, even more surprisingly, in the brief time since I’ve been practicing with it I’ve gotten pretty good.”

  “Good? She’s great!” Blue said supportively. “Her fighting skills have been totally epic since she made the switch.”

  I smiled slightly at Daniel. “Yeah, well, sword fighting was never really my thing.”

  He smirked in return, remembering our first meeting.

  “Can we have a go with it, Crisa?” Jason asked.

  I raised my eyebrows, unsure of how to respond. “Uhhh, well . . .”

  “It won’t work for you, dear,” Emma interceded. “The wand will only respond to Crisanta. Go ahead and see for yourself.”

  I was hesitant. That wand was my most treasured possession. I may have grown up with two older brothers who’d forced me to learn how to share, but this was one thing I’d definitely never wanted anyone else to become privy to.

  Still, I acknowledged that circumstances had changed. The boys now knew about my wand and what it could do, so I no longer needed to keep it a secret. In addition, I was genuinely curious to see if Emma’s assertion was true. Could the wand work for no one else but me?

  For the first time I conceded to placing the wand in the hands of someone other than Emma and myself. Having morphed it back to its original state, I decided to hand it off to Blue first. She grasped it eagerly, but carefully, and focused all her concentration on it.

  “Knife,” she commanded.

  The wand did not change.

  “Knife,” she said again.

  Still nothing.

  They all passed it around and tried. I flinched a bit when it came into Daniel’s hands, but allowed the experiment to continue nonetheless. In the end, just as Emma had claimed, it didn’t work for any of them. Once the wand came back to me I tested it to make sure it hadn’t broken.

  Shield.

  Sure enough, it transformed into a thick handle that went on to sprout the round, silver shield I was so familiar with.

  Wand.

  Returned to its normal form, I looked over my magical weapon as if seeing it for the first time. I then tried to hand it back to Emma so that she could have a proper go, but she refused to take it.

  “I’m afraid it won’t work for me either, dear,” she said. “I don’t have my Fairy Godmother magic anymore and, enchanted object or not, that is all my wand will respond to. It’s the same reason why it does not work for your friends.”

  This time it was Blue’s turn to raise her hand in confusion. “Hold up a sec,” she said. “So why does the wand work for Crisa exactly? I mean, if your wand can only respond to your magic, and all your magic was put into the In and Out Spell, then even with that dagger’s abilities transferred inside of it, it shouldn’t be able to work at all, right?”

  It was a good question. The wand was just another enchanted object and I was just another human. If it didn’t respond to Emma or any of the others because of its inherent Godmother restrictions, why should I have been any different?

  Instead of answering Blue’s question right away, Emma picked up her teacup and took a long, pensive sip—clearly parched from so much exposition. It was only when she sensed the silence had become too severe to endure did she furrow her brow and set the cup back within its saucer.

  I tried to read her expression, but it was an enigmatic one. From what I could gather, she was trying to decide how to tell me something important and not freak me out in the process.

  “Crisanta,” she said slowly. “Bear in mind that I could have asked Paige to enchant any object. But aside from the reasons I’ve already mentioned, I picked this one because I wanted to make sure it would only work in the hands of someone I trusted completely.”

  I didn’t follow. After all, how could she have made sure that the wand would only function for me?

  Her glasses had almost slipped off her nose by then, so I was able to look straight into her eyes. When I did, I found the answer I was searching for—my heart finally registering something that my brain was having trouble admitting.

  You know when a small part of you figures something out, but the rest of you is too weirded out to say it out loud because that would make it real? It’s like that.

  “The second favor you asked of Paige,” I began hesitantly, “it was me. You asked her to transfer some of your magic . . . into me? So I could make the wand work?”

  “Yes, Crisanta.” Emma nodded. “I did.”

  “That’s so cool!” Blue gushe
d, totally dissolving the tension in the room. “Crisa, you have magical powers!”

  “No way,” Jason said, doubt infesting his tone. “If she had magical powers I think she would have noticed by now.”

  “But she’s been using magic to operate the wand; she just didn’t know it. If she can do that, she can totally do other stuff too,” Blue countered.

  SJ cleared her throat loudly to get them to stop bickering. Blue and Jason relinquished the argument and turned back toward my godmother, hoping she would set the record straight and settle their disagreement.

  “Any amount of my magic will allow someone to operate my wand,” Emma told them. “I had Paige transfer a sole spark of it into Crisanta—enough for her to sustain a single power. That is all it would take, and all that I could afford to give without the other Godmothers noticing.”

  “So what is it then?” SJ asked. “What is Crisa’s power?”

  “To be honest, I don’t know,” Emma admitted. “Magic, particularly Fairy Godmother magic, takes to people in different ways and I’m not sure how hers ended up manifesting. There aren’t really finite ways to figure it out either. All I can say is that when she discovers what her power is she’ll just sort of . . . know.”

  “Wait, hold on,” I said firmly. “Emma, there’s gotta be some other way to find out besides, well, time and gut instinct.”

  “Yes, in theory there might be.”

  “Great.”

  “But I am not going to tell you. For the same reason that I’m going to discourage you from pursuing the matter on your own after you leave here today. Holding magic is dangerous, Crisanta, in more ways than you currently realize. Therefore, I believe that for your own sake it is best that you not find out what your power is until it is absolutely necessary.”

  I was frustrated with my godmother’s response, and the others seemed just as disappointed. We continued to pry Emma for information about my power for a while longer—pleading with her and attempting to appeal to her reason. Alas, she remained unmoved. Despite our persistence, she refused to change her mind no matter the argument, saying that it was for the good of my own protection.

  She reminded us then that the reason Fairy Godmother HQ was always moving and so well hidden was to protect the Godmothers from magic hunters. And she also had us recall that magic hunters tracked magic by its scent.

  We already knew both of these things. However, then Emma informed us of something we didn’t. Apparently people that had magic gave off a much stronger scent than objects with magic. Even with my small dose of Fairy Godmother power, Emma warned that in close proximity both it and I would be detectable to magic hunters.

  As recollection washed over me, I knew she was right. I remembered that magic hunter in the prison transport we’d run into on our way to Adelaide last month. I’d tried my best to reassure myself and the others at the time that he truly hadn’t been looking at me. But, deep down, I think we all knew he had been. And now we understood why. He must’ve sensed what I’d only just learned—that I had magic.

  Sitting there, the memory of his intense, cognac-colored eyes—studying me through the bars of his transport as he inhaled what I assumed must’ve been my magic scent—gave me the shivers. As such, I began to take Emma’s warning more seriously.

  My godmother went on to tell us that a person’s magic scent was considerably weaker when the holder was unaware of the power they possessed or how to use it. So a hunter would, in fact, have to be fairly close in range to pick it up. On the contrary, when a magic carrier did become aware of their abilities and how to use them, their scent would be amplified tenfold.

  In other words, once I discovered my power and began using it intentionally, my magic scent might as well have been a red flare because magic hunters everywhere would subsequently be able to sense me from a great distance.

  Based on this understanding, while I was still itching to know the nature of my mystery magical ability, I finally agreed not to pursue the issue for now. I definitely didn’t want to worsen my already unfavorable fate by painting a large target on my back. Magic may not have been able to be destroyed, but I sure as heck could, and sure as heck would if one of those hunters ever got a hold of me.

  Furthermore, if it wasn’t necessary to know what my power was in order to operate my wand, I supposed it didn’t matter for the time being anyways.

  I placed my wand back within my satchel, putting a close on the subject.

  Emma got up from her chair and picked up the tray of used cups and nibbled snacks from the coffee table. She carried it back to the kitchen while the others and I got up from the couch and followed her there.

  Without being asked we began to help her clean up. Blue started washing dishes as Daniel and Jason dried. SJ opened one of the windows and sang a short melody to call for more assistance. A few moments later, three robins flew inside and aided her and I with putting away the adorable china.

  Our conversation having been so stuffed with information, I’d nearly forgotten why we’d come there in the first place. This didn’t matter though, because Emma, somehow, already knew that too. When the last cup was in the cupboard and the final bird had flown away, my godmother put her hands on her hips and readdressed us.

  “So isn’t someone going to ask me how to break the In and Out Spell around the Indexlands so you can go and visit the Author?”

  We all looked at one another.

  “How’d you know?” Daniel asked.

  “Because I know Crisanta,” Emma said, winking at me. “So I knew this visit was only a matter of time.”

  She walked over to the counter and found a loose scrap of paper and a quill and began to write. “Now in good conscious, I must say that for your own safety I truly do not recommend you take this journey. That being said,” she continued, “if you really insist on going, know that the only way to get past the In and Out Spell around the Indexlands is to use a potion made from three special ingredients.

  “You see, my dears, the In and Out Spell is a shifting enchantment, which means that the ingredients required to break it change every few years. Although—as with all shifting enchantments—the theme for these ingredients remains the same. In this case that would be: ‘Something Strong, Something Pure, and Something One of a Kind.’

  “Now, normally there would be no way of knowing what specific three objects the spell would accept to fill this theme’s requirements on a given year. But luckily, my friends who remain at the agency still keep me in the loop so I am up-to-date on such important matters. Be warned though. There is, of course, a reason that these particular items were chosen. So believe me when I tell you that attempting to acquire them will be extremely dangerous and nearly, if not utterly, impossible. I am not even sure how to go about gathering them myself. But . . . here they are nevertheless.”

  She held up the paper she’d written. Blue accepted it and read the contents aloud:

  “A Quill with the Might of Twenty-Six Swords,

  The Heart of the Lost Princess,

  And a Mysterious Flower Beneath the Valley of Strife.”

  My friend grimaced as she folded up the tall order list and stuck it in her pocket. A gust of wind came through the window at that moment and blew several of the chimes around like a well-timed signal for us to depart.

  “Well, at least we know where we’re going next,” Daniel said as he wrung his hands together with uncharacteristic apprehension.

  “Where?” Jason asked.

  SJ and I looked at each other.

  “Century City,” we replied in unison.

  An Hour in Century City

  etting into our realm’s capital was easy enough. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until later on that we realized getting out would be the tricky part.

  We’d said our goodbyes and thank yous to Emma and flown straight to Century City, the beautiful metropolis that was our realm’s capital. I myself had only ever been there a couple of times on official royal goodwill tours with the rest of
my family. But seeing it from the sky as we approached was an entirely new experience.

  Unlike most kingdoms, which were populated by quaint cottages and traditional architecture, Century City was a majesty of incredibly mighty, glistening skyscrapers. Their compilation was a geometry teacher’s dreamland. Tall tetrahedral compounds sat around the city’s outer limits like enormous spikes. Apartment complexes in odd, almost fluid shapes twisted into the air like giant, metallic pieces of seaweed. Huge high rises with translucent dodecahedral offices interspersed within them like bubbles were everywhere in sight. And shooting up like contradicting reminders of the past amongst all this modernism were fairytale-esque, cylindrical towers that came to a swirl at their tops like freshly whipped cream.

  Equally varied were the shades the buildings came in. Powder blue, bright yellow, lime green, pink, even orange creamsicle could be found decorating the city’s rich, rainbow-colored skyline. In addition, these colors were made even more surreal by the metallic structures in their midst that reflected their pigmentations in the striking rays of sunshine.

  When nearing our arrival of the utopia, we agreed to park the Pegasi and carriage outside the city so as not to call any unnecessary attention to ourselves.

  In terms of species, Pegasi were not all that common. Typically they were only used for Twenty-Three Skidd tournaments and their players, royalty, and important diplomats. So, five teenagers with five Pegasi flying into midtown during rush hour would have been a bit more conspicuous an entrance than what we were going for.

  Having landed within the concealment of a small forest just outside of the city, a few dozen downhill slopes, alleyway shortcuts, and cobblestone pathways later and our group was making its way through the streets of the capital—navigating northward toward the city center.

  It was pretty easy to find our way; all the streets of the capital were designed to rotate traffic in a counterclockwise direction that matched the circular shape of the metropolis’s overall layout.

  Even so, the physical trek was nothing if not slow-moving.