Death Never Dies

by Milton Garby

  At the same time, Sara pushed more of her magic into the raccoon, causing the orbs of black-purple-green in her hands to grow bigger for a moment. Green electricity flashed around the 'giant', and then raccoon went still. "Nooo!" she roared. "I am defeated! Bleh!" she said with a giggle. The squirrels danced around, cheering about having saved Acornwind... and Sara yawned.

  "Haa... hmm." She blinked. She'd better get back home. She let go of the squirrels, and they immediately ran away from her; apparently they had to go home too. "Bye squirrels!" she said, turning around and heading to the left of the setting sun. She had school tomorrow, so she had to go to sleep early.

  The next day they had recess and lunch at the same time, which meant she got to sit outside under the sun and find what Mommy had packed for lunch today.

  Off to the side Mrs. Bracepin, the teacher for the second grade, sat on a bench and watched everyone playing and eating. She was about as old as Mommy, with brown hair and... clothes. That was about all she knew; she didn't really care about the teachers other than what they looked like.

  "Hmm," she said, opening her lunch box while a bunch of other kids decided 'lunch later' and played around in a large, dumb crowd. Sara looked inside and groaned. A ham sandwich and milk again? This was the second day in a row!

  "Hey Sara!" she heard Leira say as she sat next to her on the bench with her own lunch.

  "Hi," she said gloomily as Leira opened her own lunch.

  "What's wrong?" the draenei asked.

  "Mommy gave me the same lunch again," she pouted. "I was hoping it'd be something different!"

  Leira laughed. "You big baby."

  "Am not! I was just hoping. Doesn't make me a baby."

  "Uh huh. Want to swap with some of mine? My mom made me waffles."

  Sara looked over. Sure enough, Leira had some waffles. No syrup though, which was sad... but on the other hand waffles! "Sure." She pinched off a bit of her sandwich and traded it with Leira for a bit of her own food. "Thanks," she said before taking a bite of her sandwich.

  "You're welcome."

  No sooner had Sara finished up her next bite than Leira had a question. "So, wanna play orcs and humans today?"

  "Nah," she said. She didn't like that game; more often than not she ended up as the orc, because Leira really didn't like being it. "I just kinda wanna sit around today."

  "Aww, please? What if we play tag?"

  She raised an eyebrow. "We played tag yesterday."

  "Did not!" she said.

  "Did too."

  "Well then..." Leira screwed up her face. "... how about we play hide and seek?"

  "Okay, I guess," she said before taking a bite of her ham sandwich.

  "Yay! Maybe after we can play sword and board?"

  "What about mages and warlocks?" Sara asked in return. "We haven't played that in forever."

  "Ugh," Leira said, tilting her head back. "Fine. Whatever, let's just finish lunch so we can play!"

  That's what I was doing! she thought. But Sara decided not to say anything about it, and instead kept eating until her sandwich and waffle were gone, leaving only her milk.

  Then Sara heard a lot of kids her age talking a lot and turned her head over to look at what was going on. Everyone else had crowded around the edge of the school's fence, looking at something.

  Leira stood up from the bench, leaving her lunch. "Come on, let's go see!"

  But I don't wanna! "Fine," Sara grumbled as she followed after the draenei, running through the grass.

  She and Leira pushed forward through the crowd to see what everyone was looking at. Some of the girls and one of the boys looked a little green, which was weird. In the middle of the ring was one of the boys - she thought his name was Jaron - poking at something with a stick.

  Leira gasped and held her hands to her mouth. "Ew, ew ew ew. It's a frog."

  "A frog?" Sara asked, stepping forward and crouching. Sure enough, Jaron was poking a frog. The little thing was on its back, with a large red injury, and it was too tired to move at all. "A frog!" she said excitedly.

  "It's dead!" Jaron said. "I found it like this. See?" he asked, using his stick to roll the frog over onto its front.

  Huh? But before Sara could ask her questions, one of the girls in the crowd asked it first. "What do you mean dead?"

  Someone else answered. "It means it's not alive anymore! It can't do anything." His voice became dramatic. "Ever. Again."

  While the girl who'd asked started to cry and ran away, Sara just frowned. Never again? That was stupid. She decided to say as much. "That's stupid. It's just tired."

  "Nuh uh!" Jaron said. "Look, it's dead!"

  He thinks he knows better than me?! "Betcha I can make it move again!" she challenged with her hands on her hips.

  "Nuh uh!" he said, poking it again.

  "Uh huh!"

  "Oh yeah?" he asked, standing up. "Prove it."

  "I will!" she said testily as she stomped up to him. She pushed Jaron out of the way - 'Hey!' - and looked down at the frog. Mommy and Daddy had said not to show the other kids her magic, cause it would make them jealous, but Sara really didn't care if they were jealous. In fact, it sounded kinda nice. They'd know that she could do something they couldn't. And... this was at school. Mommy and Daddy wouldn't know. She began to focus, and her hands lit up with magic.

  Everyone around her gasped, and began whispering. "Sara can do magic."

  "Sara can do magic?"

  "Sara can do magic!"

  She focused on the frog, hard enough that its skin began to shimmer with green fog. But... this was hard. The longer something was 'dead' the harder it was for her to make it want to play again, so this froggy must've been tired for a loooong time. Maybe even overnight. She growled, making the black-green-purple glow around her hands grow larger and slightly more purple as she tugged the froggy's ability-to-move and dragged it aaall the way back to its body. The green light around its skin flowed off, the red injury closed up and...

  Ribbit!

  Everyone around Sara and the frog backed away when it hopped around erratically, ribbiting wildly. A few of the girls screamed. "Cool!" Leira shouted.

  "See?" she told a pale-looking Jaron as she let her magic relax, settling for keeping the frog in one place. "It wasn't dead, it was just tired!" She looked at the frog and made it move, hopping towards Jaron. Everyone the frog got close to - including him - backed up from it, and some of the other kids screamed as they ran away.

  Then Sara heard a new voice. A much, much older voice. "What's going on - by the Light!"

  Sara's eyes widened and her magic flickered out. Now that she wasn't controlling it, the frog ran out of her sight. "Uh oh."

  Katherine Smithers

  "Add in ten percent tax," she muttered to herself, scratching numbers on the paper.

  It was late at night, and Sara had gone to bed with less fuss than normal. The day had been relatively uninteresting; her husband had come from his job at the forge, Sara said nothing interesting happened at school, and then she played some puzzle-solving games with her daughter until it came time for dinner. Then after that Sara had gone to bed, Alex went to the living room to read the paper, and Katherine locked herself away to do the bills.

  All in all, a pretty average day.

  She scribbled down a few more numbers, frowned when the end result was smaller than expected, then smiled again when she went back over and found a mistake. Katherine fixed it, and the number was the proper size; their budget was still well in place.

  Her work room was no larger than it had to be, which was to say not large at all. She could lay down and almost reach from one wall to the other, and there was no window so the only lighting came from her lantern. Not exactly the most inspired room of her home, but it was good enough for doing paperwork.

  "Alright, so he purchased the new hammer, that was fifty seven silver, um, and that becomes sixty two silver and seventy copper..."

  Knock knock knock!

&nbs
p; Katherine's head looked up. Someone was at the door? This late? She frowned and stood, heading out of her little room to reach the door. However her husband had gotten there first and opened it before her, so she got an eyeful of their visitor.

  The man was, next to her giant of a husband, absolutely dwarfed. He wore dark blue robes with gray highlights, indicating he was a spellcaster of some kind. He was also quite old, and his white hair was being engulfed by a large bald spot. His eyes were baggy, his skin wrinkled, and he leaned heavily on a staff of gently glowing wood. He was in the midst of talking " - representing the Stormwind Academy of Arcane Arts and Sciences. May I come in?"

  "Sure, please. I'm sorry but we just had dinner, so I'm afraid - "

  As the man hobbled inside, he held up the hand that wasn't clutching the staff. "Oh no, no worries. I ate on the way here, no need to work yourselves up over me." He looked around when the door closed behind him. "Lovely place."

  "Thank you, sir... ?" Katherine asked, trailing off.

  "Magister Halwin, pleased to meet you. You must be Alexander and Katherine Smithers." He held out his hand and they both shook it in turn. For his age, he had a surprisingly tough grip. "Now, I feel I should get to the point. Did a Mrs. Bracepin speak to you two, some time this week?"

  "No," Alex said.

  "Not to me," she replied.

  "Oh, well that figures." He moved into their living room. There was a couch and two chairs facing said couch, creating a triangle of furniture in the midst of a green carpet and tan walls.

  He took a seat on the couch, resting his staff along his lap. Katherine and her husband also each took a seat next to each other. "See, apparently a week ago she saw your daughter, Sara I believe, using magic during recess." Katherine's heart leaped into her throat. That had been a week ago? And Sara hadn't told them? Now people knew that she could use shadow magics even at such a young age? Her skin turned clammy and her hands shook.

  "Oh," she whispered.

  "Oh," the Magister said in his weary voice. "And then Mrs. Bracepin sent a letter to us describing her abilities, and she sent it along the wrong channels, so there was a big headache trying to figure out where her letter was supposed to go, and then my colleagues voted to send me, an old man, to come talk to you about your daughter's future in magical education." He held up both hands and gave them a little shake. "Logic! Oh, but I shouldn't be ranting to you, you've done absolutely nothing to deserve that. Um, where was I?"

  "What's this about Sara showing off her magic?" Katherine asked. Alex elbowed her gently, and she looked at him. "Well he knows, doesn't he?"

  "Yes, that's right. Mr. and Mrs. Smithers, are you aware of just what sort of magic your daughter performed?"

  "Well," Alex said nervously. "She performs some form of shadow magic, she'd been doing it since she was old enough to walk. We take her out into the park and she uses her shadow magic on ants, or small animals, and kills them."

  Magister Halwin nodded. "Kills them, hmm. Interesting, because the letter Mrs. Bracepin sent describes just the opposite. Apparently during recess, one of the kids had found a dead frog, and the teacher says that your daughter brought it back to life. Not undead or anything, just straight up resurrected."

  Katherine blinked and leaned forward. "Pardon me, Mr. Halwin, but what do you mean resurrected? I don't think I've ever seen Sara do that."

  He shrugged. "Eh, that's possible. Whatever the reason, her teacher said in no uncertain terms that your daughter brought the frog back from the dead with relatively little effort." They stared at him in silence while Katherine's mind reeled. Sara could resurrect things? They'd known for a while that she could use shadow magic to slowly kill animals, of course. She'd been doing it for nearly five years now. But they'd never actually seen Sara bring the dead back to life. What else could their daughter do that they didn't know about?

  "I see you can understand the enormity of this. Resurrection is a feat and a half; those who wield the Holy Light itself can only return life to the dead in the most particular of cases, and even then it usually comes at great cost. If your daughter is capable, at so young an age, to do this, then we at the Academy of Arcane Arts and Sciences feel we would mutually benefit by having her come to study with us. I reviewed her grades in school, they're astounding. Now clearly she's still very young, so they may not be indicative of the future, but if she keeps this up she'd be great to have. Not right now of course, when she grows up obviously."

  She and Alex looked at each other, passing a conversation between their eyes. They looked back at the Magister, and it was her husband who spoke. "Don't get me wrong, but this is all very, very sudden."

  He smirked and barked a quick laugh. "Yes, the important things in life usually are."

  "I suppose, but I thought that the Academy was for mages," Alex explained. "Regardless of Sara's abilities, she uses shadow magic instead. Even if we were to somehow get her accepted, I'm really worried about how her peers would look upon her, or if she would indeed benefit at all."

  He nodded. "Perfectly understandable, perfectly understandable. However, I should inform you that the Academy is undergoing major reforms. I don't know how it is out here, but back in Stormwind public opinion of shadow magic is at an all time high thanks to the Kingslayers employing warlocks and priests of the Cult of Forgotten Shadow. They've been pressing for a change to the way Stormwind's magic education functions." His voice hardened ever so slightly. "Officially, I think this is a splendid idea if it results in the Alliance having a stronger and more diverse range of spellcasters to combat threats and research the workings of magic." His voice lightened. "The reforms are not complete yet, obviously, it takes time to do so. But by the time your daughter's grown up and ready to pursue magical education, the Academy will be more, ahem, accepting of teaching the workings of shadow magic. Also, the naga war will be over by then, so she won't need to worry about being drafted into being a battlemage."

  "I see," Katherine said. So if Sara did end up deciding she wanted to learn magic, there was that option. "Precisely how much would this cost, should we decide to go through with this?"

  The mage waved off her concerns. "Not a copper, not a copper. The Alliance considers magic users to be an investment, one that usually pays off. Consider the following for your daughter. She is seven, and she can bring dead animals back to life. Not only is she far, far younger than most first-time magic users and the youngest I have personally seen, she is capable of magic that casually defies a fundamental principle of nature. I would place good money on her being able to revive larger things than animals in the future, if you know what I mean. She could save thousands and thousands of lives with that ability, if she wishes to improve it."

  Alex let out a long breath. "This is... quite something to think about. I mean, she's still eleven years off from that. And she might not even want to learn magic."

  "Well, this offer is entirely optional, of course." He chuckled dryly. "After all, you're not paying us or anything. Nobody is going to force your daughter to come to the Academy, however I really do think it would be highly beneficial to her. Self-taught magic tends to be very..." He held up a hand and turned it side to side. "Very eh."

  "We'll keep it in mind, Magister," she said.

  "Right! Well, now that we've got that all sorted out and... eh, wait a second. You didn't know she resurrected the frog?"

  "Sara never told us," Alex said. "Neither did her teacher."

  The mage scoffed. "Figures. Little kids don't want their parents to know, and teacher wants the guys in charge all the way in Stormwind to do her work." He stood, using his staff to help himself up. "Well, I don't want to be keeping you two up."

  "Oh no, it's okay," Katherine said.

  "Well thank you anyway for your time. Do speak to your daughter about this when she wakes up, will you? We'd love to have someone as talented as her, after all."

  "Do you have any place to stay for the night?" she asked.

  Magister Halwin sm
iled at them. "Thank you for the concern dear, but I'll just teleport on home." He hobbled his way out of the living room and towards the door. "I hope you all have a good night," he said once at the door. Alex sprang up and held it open for the old mage, who made his way out. "Thank you, thank you. Please consider what I've said." Then the mage held up the hand not clutching the staff. Both hands were wrapped in pulsing, bright blue orbs. They sent out a sound like chimes. Then there was a brilliant flash, and when it faded the only thing left of the mage was the sharp smell of ozone.

  Alex closed the door, and looked at her. "Sara lied to us."

  "She did. I thought something was bothering her that day, but I just figured she was being teased by someone."

  "You know, we're going to have to punish her for disobeying us. Any idea?" he asked as they made their way back to the living room.

  "No dessert for a week," she said right away. "Also, she's grounded for three days, so no going over to Leira's house."

  Her husband shifted in the chair and nodded. "That sounds reasonable for showing off shadow magic in front of her class. So... do you think this is a good idea?"

  She leaned back and placed a hand over her face. "I don't know, honey. I mean, sure it sounds great, and it'd be great for Sara to learn to use her magic for something productive, instead of torturing animals to death. But on the other hand, I'm not so sure about these 'reforms'. They can't be that long in development if we haven't heard of them, they may not even go through." She groaned and dragged the hand down her face. "We've still got eleven years before we have to make that decision, though. There's just too much that could change between now and then."

  "True, true. More immediately though, I think tomorrow I'm going to go have a little chat with Mrs. Bracepin. See why she thought we shouldn't know that our daughter can bring animals back from the dead." He shook his head. "Scary to think of."