Magic, Madness, and Mischief

by Kelly McCullough

But the hare didn’t answer. Instead, he shook his head and sighed. “What are the freaking odds, man? What are the odds?”

  I leaned against the nearest wall and slid to the floor, putting my chin on my knees rather numbly. “I don’t understand this at all.” This was it—I was going crazy.

  “Clearly!” Then he sighed again and his expression softened. “Here’s what I think happened. I think you came in here like an idiot and stuck a nail in an electrical fixture like a complete moron and then you got electrocuted, as any sane person would know to expect.”

  “So, this is all just a hallucination?” I asked rather hopefully—it shouldn’t count as going crazy if you’d just electrocuted yourself, right?

  “Sadly for both of us, no. If you were an everyday sort of human they’d probably be packing you off to the emergency room about now … well, assuming you survived the experience, and that you had the sense to make your way out to someplace they’d notice you before you passed out. Which, I might add, I wouldn’t bet a flash or a flicker on.”

  “I don’t understand again.”

  “Well, of course not. I’m a long way from finished, and I’ll never get there if you keep interrupting me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You should be, and not just for that. This predicament I’m in is all your fault. Now, as I was saying. Idiot, complete moron, insanity, and Luck’s fool.”

  “Luck’s fool…” The hare gave me a sharp look and I snapped my mouth closed.

  “Electricity is fire’s tricksy sibling. You might be a young fire lord in the making, cousin, but you’ve no business messing with the lightning even if you’ve a limited sort of affinity. And that’s exactly what you’ve done. When you took that shock it not only threw you down the stairs, it also must have caused you to convulse pretty badly. I’m guessing you shouted mid-convulsion and by the hand of Luck or Fate you blurted out my true name in the shout.”

  “I … okay. But how? And why?”

  “Well, if it was Luck, I’m guessing I’ve irritated her somehow and you’re my punishment. Wouldn’t be the first time. And if it’s Fate, well, I don’t like to think about that at all. Not here in the deeps of the fall fallow. In either case, I’m stuck here on your word, and it’s you who’ll need to get me loose.”

  “How?”

  “This again? What’s wrong with you? I’m the one who’s pinned up here by my ears with a blinding headache. Conjure and abjure me, of course. Then you can free me.”

  “All right, how?”

  “Am I really going to have to hold your hand through the whole thing? No, don’t answer that. It’s obvious.” He sighed heavily. “Say, ‘I conjure and abjure thee, insert my true name here, and—’”

  I held up a hand. “Wait a second, I don’t know your true name. You’ll have to tell me what it is if you want me to do that.”

  He looked positively scandalized. “I am NOT telling you anything of the kind. If I did, you could command me to serve you for the rest of your life.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Sure, you say that now, but once you had the power in your hands? I do not trust you half so far as I could fling you.”

  “All right, then, how do I get you loose?”

  “Conjure and … oh. Drat. That is a conundrum. And it’s ALL YOUR FAULT.” The hare crossed his forelegs angrily again and clenched his jaw tightly shut.

  My stomach growled then and I remembered the food in my pack, which was … ah, there, at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Where are you going?” demanded the hare.

  “To grab my snack.”

  “Without getting me loose?”

  “I haven’t any idea how to, and even if I did, I’m not entirely certain you’re real. If you come up with something, let me know. Until then…” I shrugged. I was hungry. Besides, food was good. Food was normal. Food didn’t tell you that you were some kind of child of fire.

  A few moments later I settled down against the wall again. “Banana?”

  The hare sighed. “No, but thank you.… Wait. Yes.” As I proffered the banana, the hare suddenly froze mid-reach. “Noooo, that’d never work. Would it? It wouldn’t obviate the summoning or cut me loose of you, that’s sure. But it might get me down off this wall, which solves the immediate problem. What do you know about use names?”

  “Not a single thing.”

  “Good. You’re about to learn the bits I think you need to know. Given the way this all started … hmm. Yes, that will do nicely. Call me Sparx.”

  “Sparx?” I nodded. “All right.”

  There was a long silence before the hare put his face in his paws and shook his head as well as his pinned ears would allow. Finally, he said, “Repeat after me: ‘I conjure and abjure thee, Sparx. By fire and smoke, by ash and oak, by the flame in the darkness and the powers it awoke.’”

  “All right.” If it worked, the stupid hare would be out of my life and I could go back to pretending I’d never met him.

  So I did. Nothing happened. Before I could speak, though, he angrily held up one paw. “‘I conjure and abjure thee, Sparx. Come now and do my bidding.’”

  I repeated that as well, and with a flash and a pop the hare vanished from the wall and reappeared on the floor in front of me.

  “Oh, hallelujah, it worked.” Then he took off like all the hounds of hell were after him, racing headfirst into the nearest wall. He hit with a THUD I could feel through my feet before bouncing off and landing on his back on the floor. He looked so stunned I half expected little cartoon birds to appear and fly around his head.

  “Are you all right?” I knelt and reached out toward him, though I didn’t quite dare touch him.

  “What in the ever-loving fires of blame just happened?”

  “You ran face-first into a wall like an idiot and bounced off it like a complete moron, as any sane person would have known to expect.”

  “That sounds vaguely familiar,” replied the hare. “Also, touché. However, and for the record, I’m a spirit of fire and I am not, under normal circumstances, subject to the rules of the material world.”

  “So, what happened with the wall, then, smart guy?”

  “I have no freaking clue.”

  “Do you need a hand getting up?”

  “No!” With a sudden twist the hare was back on his feet.

  “Maybe we should go talk this out.” I pointed toward the gym.

  “Sure, why not? There’s nothing in the world I’d like better than to spend more time with someone who conjured and abjured me into magical servitude. We spirits of the elements absolutely adore us some bringers and binders. It’s just all love and…” He ran down and gave me a bit of a sheepish look. “Over the top?”

  “A little, maybe. After all, it was an ACCIDENT!”

  The hare rocked back onto his hind feet and held his paws up placatingly. “Hey, no reason to get all yelly about it. Yeesh. All right, let’s go talk.”

  There was another eight feet or so of hallway at the bottom of the stairs, ending at the next steel door. I pulled the door open and was just starting to step through when a blur of red went past my ankles and shot away into the hall.

  “See ya, suck—URK!” About thirty feet down the hall the hare came to an abrupt halt like a yap dog hitting the end of its leash, as he once again ended up flat on his back.

  When I caught up to him he was swearing in that strange crackly language full of hisses and sizzles and sharp popping sounds. After a while he spat out one last fiery word so pungent that it actually flared briefly in the air in front of his face before it puffed into smoke.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “No. I am not okay.” The hare’s voice sounded husky and harsh, as though he really had been yanked back by a collar around his throat. “Nor am I all right, or any other human inanity. I am, in point of fact, bound to a mortal sorcerer, burn and blight you.”

  “I’m not, you know.”

  “Bound?” he growled. “Of co
urse not!”

  “No. A sorcerer. Not by any means or measure.” Nope, I was just going slowly mad.

  “Not even, say, the binding of spirits of fire? Because your binding is what just kept me from making my exit stage right.”

  “I … Well, when you put it that way, I don’t know what to say.”

  He raised a paw like a student in class.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Say yes. Because, in the only way that matters from my point of view, you are definitely a sorcerer, and not the good kind.”

  “I’m sorry! I’d release you if you’d just tell me your true name and how to do it.”

  “Not happening, kid. Look, can we try an experiment? Because this has been a really crappy day for me and I’d like to know exactly how bad it’s going to get.”

  “Sure, what do you want to do?”

  “I’m going to lie here on the floor and try to get my throat to stop feeling like I swallowed a hedgehog, and you are going to walk back up the hall to that door and a little bit past it. But not far past and not very fast. Do you understand?”

  “Sure. But—”

  “Just go, please.”

  I shrugged and went. When I got to the door I turned around so I could see Sparx, and then I began slowly backing up. As I passed the edge of the frame I felt a faint tugging sensation in the hand with the char marks from the nail. I also noticed that Sparx seemed to be moving with me, though at this distance it was hard to be sure.

  “Stop,” called the hare. “Come back.” As I got closer I could hear him mumbling to himself. “Right, I’m in hell. And it looks exactly like an American high school. Is anyone surprised? Yeah, didn’t think so.”

  I squatted on the tile beside him. “Now do you want to talk about it?”

  “Fine. Whatever. I can’t see what good it’ll do, but we’re stuck with each other for the moment, so we might as well chatter away like a couple of airheaded sprites.”

  “My teachers all say communication can solve a lot of problems if you give it a chance.”

  “Of course they do,” said the hare. “They’re liberal, crunchy-granola tree huggers. They probably use words like dialoguing and want you to be in touch with your feelings. Barf!”

  I didn’t bother to answer. Instead, I headed to the far end of the hall, where someone had parked an old desk and some big metal shelves in a corner. Climbing them got me up to ceiling height, where I was able to push aside one of the tiles in the drop ceiling and go from there to the top of the wall between the hall and the locker rooms. Sparx followed me up as nimbly as a cat.

  Putting the tile back in place left us in complete darkness. I had added a little LED flashlight to my bag after the incident under the capitol, but I didn’t bother getting it out. We weren’t going to be there long. Past exploration had told me everything I needed to know about the area. It was full of dust and cobwebs, and the top of the wall was the only solid footing. Which was too bad, because the narrow space between the true ceiling and the tiles was pretty cool in other ways. Tight and secret and protected. I’d always loved places like that—closets, the hidden space behind the drawers under my bed, the low tunnels through the underbrush on the hill above the school.

  I raised a ceiling tile on the other side and climbed down to the top of the lockers. The first had had its door ripped off by some previous student, and it made a dandy ladder. The gym beyond was dimly lit by a few high and filthy clerestory windows, so I didn’t turn the lights on, just climbed to the top of the bleachers, where the windows normally gave me enough light to read.

  Going up there also made it dead easy to hide by ducking between the benches if someone did poke a nose into the gym—no teacher ever bothered to climb all the way to the top to check. Setting my jacket on the floor between the top two benches as a pad, I settled in and put my back against the side wall.

  Sparx perched himself on a bench a few feet away. “It’s your nickel.”

  “What? I’m confused again.”

  The hare sighed. “About a million years ago, in the days before cellphones stalked the earth, there used to be these things called pay phones that allowed you to make calls from public places by putting coins into them and … Forget it. You’re too young for that to even be funny anymore. You wanted to talk. Talk.” He settled back on his haunches and crossed his front legs impatiently.

  “I … uh … That is…” What did you say to a magic hare that you didn’t entirely believe in?

  “Very enlightening. Do you always make this much sense? Or is it my lucky day? I have lots of those, you know. I’ve got four lucky rabbit feet. Ba-dum-tsh!” When I didn’t respond, he shook his head. “Come on, kid, that was a joke—you can tell by the rim-shot noise—work with me. Laugh.”

  “I’m not really in a laughing mood.”

  “Why’s that? I’m the one who’s bound in durance vile, and you’re the wicked sorcerer who put me there. Oh, and there’s clearly something wrong with my powers since I can’t seem to walk through walls to save my fuzzy soul. I’m the one who ought to be down in the dumps, not you.”

  It was my turn to sigh. “Well, one of two things is true. Either I’m going crazy like my mom”—but then I shook my head—“which, at this point I’m going to put aside, because I’m pretty sure I’m not clever enough to hallucinate something as simultaneously sarcastic and preposterous as you.”

  “Or?” The hare cocked one ear forward.

  “Or, you’re for real and magic is for real.”

  “I’d think you’d be all over that. I mean, you kids love Harry Potter, right? And this makes you a boy wizard.”

  I snorted. “Those are more my mom’s books than mine, though she did make me read them and I like them well enough. It’s more that if magic is real, I’m going to have to believe in a bunch of other stuff besides you, and some of that’s pretty scary.” I thought of the presence in the tunnels under the capitol with a shiver.

  Sparx nodded. “Oh, sure, there’s all kinds of nastiness in the world—delvers and drowners and devourers galore. But they’ve always been there whether you believed in them or not. At least this way you can see them coming and maybe do something about it—though it’s more likely you’ll simply have a bit more time to think about what’s about to happen to you than the magic-blind get.”

  “Not helping.” Because if magic was real, my little “adventure” in the tunnel wasn’t anything like my books and movies and games, the ones where the good guys always win in the end. It meant I’d been taking risks far beyond what I could have imagined.

  The hare shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  “I— Hang on, is that the time?” I shot to my feet as I read the clock on the far wall.

  I must have been out for longer than I’d thought after my shock. Class change was going to ring in about five minutes, and it would take most of that to retrace the path I’d taken to get here. I had math next, which was one of the few classes where I was doing badly enough that I didn’t dare skip very often, and I needed to hustle to beat the second-hour bell. I didn’t want anyone seeing me coming out of the gym right now. Not with that melted nail and the giant scorch mark on the wall to explain.

  Snatching up my bag, I bounced down the bleachers with Sparx leaping after me. “Hang on, kid. Weren’t we supposed to talk this out? What’s the rush?”

  “Later. Got to get to class now!”

  I slipped and nearly fell as I slithered down the pile of furniture in the hall outside the locker room, but I landed running. When I hit the steps up to the main building I felt a sudden sharp tug on my pants leg.

  It was Sparx. “Kid, kid, wait up!”

  “I told you, I don’t have time right now. I can’t afford to make a scene coming out of the gym. Oh, and my name’s Kalvan, not kid!”

  “All right, chill. But if you don’t want to make a scene, what do you think is going to happen when you hit the hall out there with a flaming-red bunny trailing you?”

  I
stopped halfway up the stairs. “I … Wait, what now? Aren’t you invisible to most people?” He hadn’t ever said it explicitly, but that had pretty clearly been the implication of some of the stuff he’d talked about.

  “Normally, yes, mostly. But normally, I can walk through walls, and get more than ten yards away from my summoner. We won’t know if I’m visible to mortals now until we test it out. Do you want to do that the hard way?”

  “No.” Though it would be further proof this was all real … “No. Definitely no. Good point.” I opened my backpack and set it on the floor. “Get in.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “Look, I don’t have time to argue. We need to go now.” I made a shooing motion and he reluctantly poked his head and forepaws into the bag. That was enough for me. Though I suspected he was going to make me regret it later, I put one hand on his butt and shoved him the rest of the way in.

  “HEY!” But I was already zipping it closed.

  “Hush, you can yell at me all you want once school’s over. Until then, if you don’t want to find out the hard way if you’re visible to everybody, you might want to shut it.”

  “You’re going to pay for this, kid, I promise you that.”

  “Surprise, surprise, you’re—” But the bell rang just then and I bolted up the last few steps and through the door, praying I didn’t come out in front of any—

  Oh, crap. Josh Reiner, one of Free’s few bullies.

  4

  Elementally Yours

  “HEY, KALBELLS, WHATCHA doing in the gym all by your lonesome?” Josh asked. “Figure that’s the only way you can win at dodgeball?”

  I bit back the impulse to argue about rhyming my name with bell instead of pal; it wouldn’t get me anywhere, and it would let Josh know he’d scored. I hated that name, and I really didn’t want Josh to have any idea how much.

  I was still trying to think of a suitable comeback when Josh stepped in closer and dropped his voice. “What’s in the backpack, Kalbells?”

  “Huh?” Argh, that’ll show him. I was sooo not good at the snappy-comeback thing today.

  He grabbed at my bag. “The backpack, Chuckles. I saw it move. Whatcha got in there? You bringing your mom to school to protect you?”