by Lucia Ashta
Of course, Wren being a tree and all made for an entirely one-sided conversation. I chuckled. “Right. I guess I have to wait for you to shift back for answers, huh? You really do look incredible though. Your bark is so rich looking, and your leaves are super green and shiny.” Wren was always so encouraging with me, but I was reaching for things to say. After all, she was a tree that didn’t move and—
Wren’s willow tree creaked mightily as it lifted its expansive roots two inches from the floor and seemed to hop itself a few inches across the floor toward me. The trunk and its full canopy of hanging, hair-like leaves wobbled precariously, until Wren tilted alarmingly in my direction.
“Professor!” I squeaked. “I think we might need a little help over here.”
Wren started wobbling like a pendulum, seeking stability, but the arc of her motion didn’t shorten. It appeared, instead, that the rocking motion was gaining momentum.
“Professor!” I called again.
“I’m here, I’m here,” he said from right behind me. After a few moments of assessing the situation, he shouted out to the rest of the class—without removing his eyes from Wren’s tree. “All of you in human form who have significant shifter strength, I need you here with me, right now. And if you’re in your shifter form now, and ya can help hold up a tree, get over here too.”
Wren was swinging back and forth, completing a circuit of about forty-five degrees, and accelerating.
“She’s going to topple,” one of the new shifter girls exclaimed as she drew up next to McGinty.
I had no idea how seriously Wren would injure herself if she toppled, but I suspected at least some. Even at a height of perhaps fifty feet, that was a long way up for a girl to crash to the ground, and despite the fact that Wren was currently a tree, she was still a gentle girl inside.
“Everyone now,” McGinty shouted, “get in position all around her trunk.”
But even though a handful of students, human and animal, had heeded his call, it wasn’t exactly easy to gather around a moving shaft as wide as a car. However, they managed it to some degree, and though I didn’t have the enhanced strength many shifters possessed, I squeezed in between a smallish bear ready to pop onto its hind legs and push, and the new girl, who was even thinner than I was—but I’d learned long ago not to judge a magical creature by its appearances. If magic was predictable in any way, it was in that it almost always surprised in one way or another.
Wren’s trunk leaned in one direction, picking up speed as it went, and when her trunk reached the point at which it should have begun its tilt back in the opposite direction, it didn’t. Wren appeared suspended at the critical point. The entire class held its breath, waiting to see if she’d continue with her attempts to regain balance and stability, or topple entirely.
“Now!” McGinty roared, and those already positioned under the weight of her tilted trunk heaved. The rest of us scrambled to line up behind them and pushed against the trunk where we could, or against the shifter in front of us to lend our strength. I placed both hands against the bear’s back, tilted my body forward, and shoved with all I had.
The tree trunk leaned above our heads, meaning that if we couldn’t stop its topple, we’d be lucky to get out from under it without being crushed. We grunted and heaved … and the tree trunk stilled.
“More,” McGinty said. “Give it all ya’ve got.”
With a chorus of ferocious groans, grunts, and animal snarls and roars, we pushed hard enough that we shifted the momentum.
The tree trunk began its trajectory in the opposite direction, gaining speed as it went. My heart started thudding before my brain caught up with the reversed danger.
“Run to the other side,” McGinty hollered. “Hurry, or she’ll topple. We pushed too hard.” But we really hadn’t; we’d barely managed to halt her fall. It wasn’t like we could do some quick physics on the fly, calculating the exact force needed to stop—and not make the problem worse.
In a few harried and chaotic seconds, as we all scrambled to get out of each others’ way, we positioned ourselves to bear the weight of her trunk as it fell. Unwilling to take my eyes from Wren, I noticed the rest of the class scrambling behind us to bolster our efforts. Even if all they contributed was normal human strength, it’d be something.
“Be ready,” McGinty grunted as the first of the willow leaves extended to brush the floor forty some feet behind us.
When the entirety of the weight settled on us, we slid backward as a group. Her weight was too great. Being magical and all, her trunk was wide enough that it took four people linked at the hands to circle her girth when she was at her tallest.
“O-kay,” McGinty wheezed. He was at the front of all of us, taking on more weight than any one of us. “Change … of plans.” He panted. “Let’s set ‘er down.”
Sweat beaded across my forehead and trailed down the small of my back while I changed tactics, shifting my hands from pushing to setting down gently—a near impossibility in this circumstance.
As we all rearranged, the trunk rushed downward—too fast.
“Slowly!” McGinty yelled, but it couldn’t be helped. Wren was a runaway train barreling down the tracks.
“Get out of the way. Let go and get out!” He sounded panicked, and I hadn’t heard him panicked even when the Shifter Alliance had invaded the academy. But I understood. No one wanted to be the professor that had to explain that students died, crushed by a massive willow tree, and the gentlest of all the shifters.
I bumped into the bear as we both ran to get out of the way. I tripped and sent him flying, but at least he was clear. With a final glance above, I dove out of range … and just managed to get free before a crack rang through the gymnasium that was loud enough to leave my ears ringing.
Oh God. Wren.
McGinty’s eyes were wide with shock and he raced around Wren’s root system to her other side.
A girl wailed. So not all of us had gotten clear…
I swallowed hard while following slowly in McGinty’s trail. When I looked up at Wren, even though the width of her trunk was wider than I was tall, I could make out a single, rending crack right down her entire middle, heaving her trunk in two.
When I rounded her roots, I looked inside, hoping it wasn’t the equivalent of looking up my friend’s skirt, and a sob caught in my throat. Wren was split all the way inside.
We needed to get Melinda here immediately. I refused to entertain the possibility that even the skilled healer might not be able to bring Wren back from this one. With my hand pressed to my mouth, I ran for the professor … and stilled in mid-stride when I saw who was trapped beneath Wren.
10
“Jas!” I exclaimed on a panicked rush of breath, running toward her. One of her legs was trapped beneath Wren’s massive trunk, from the thigh down. “Oh God.” I swallowed an unpleasant mixture of bile and fear. Sure, Jas was a shifter with superior strength and healing, but she wasn’t the most powerful of us shifters—damn, of them. Her skunk was three times the size of a normal skunk, but she was far from the strongest or more advanced in healing of the magical creatures at the school. Even with Melinda’s healing magic, I wasn’t sure she’d recover entirely. There was simply too much effing blood.
When my attention settled on her face, I could tell she was thinking the same thing. Pain and fear warred for supremacy, contorting her pleasant features into a full-faced grimace.
Chaos consumed the gymnasium, and I registered several things at once as I raced to Jas’ side. McGinty had his hand pressed against what appeared to be a random brick in one of the walls. After my experience with him last term, when I’d first manifested my mage magic, I knew it was a Brick Bam, and that he was almost certainly delivering an urgent message requesting assistance. The Brick Bam illuminated from behind, a swirling rainbow of lights seeping through the grout between the bricks. But as the light built, and just as it appeared to have reached its pinnacle of completion, delivering the professor’s messag
e, it faded in a snap, as if someone had cut the power to the magical element.
“No, no, no!” McGinty slapped the brick again, so hard that I jumped at the sound of his flesh hitting the solid surface. This time, the Brick Bam didn’t light up at all.
McGinty whacked the brick repeatedly, and when still nothing happened, he punched the wall, cracking the Brick Bam straight down the middle in a jagged line.
He growled low and deep, and spun to face the rest of the gymnasium. Pointing to a few nearby students who’d stopped what they were doing to stare at him, he called out, “You, find Fianna or Nessa. You, find Sir Lancelot. You, get Melinda here ASAP. And you, find Nancy the witch.”
When the students gawked at him and his bloody knuckles, which were already healing, he yelled, “Now! Please. Two pupils need urgent help, and I can’t leave them.”
That got through to the shocked students, and they pushed open the door with a loud snap, bolting through it at a run. McGinty was already moving to Jas’ side, the rest of the undergrads watching and fidgeting, looking for a window to help.
I squeezed Jas’ hand; Dave squeezed the other, kneeling at her opposite side. But she was no longer alert. She didn’t move or make a sound.
“She isn’t responding,” I said to McGinty the moment he crouched at her head.
“Jasmine,” McGinty said, shaking her shoulders gently. Her head rolled to one side and then the other. With a visible gulp, he pressed two fingers to her carotid artery at her neck.
He exhaled in relief. “She’s still alive. The pain must’ve knocked her out.”
I turned to look, examining the damage. Jas’ short skirt ended where the trunk of Wren’s tree began. The skunk shifter’s leg was pressed under who-knew how many tons of weight. Her knee, her ankle … they’d be shattered, especially with the force of impact when the tree had fallen, hard enough to rend the massive trunk in half.
Turning back to Jas, Dave met my gaze. His kind, brown eyes were wide. He chewed at his lips without pause. “This is really bad,” he whispered.
I nodded.
“Where are Melinda and Nancy?” McGinty shouted out, apparently asking no one in particular. “We have to get Wren off Jas now or she might lose the limb entirely. Not even a shifter can survive something like this for much longer.” He spun, taking in the entirety of the gym. I imagined he was looking for something that would aid us, but there was nothing here beyond a stack of smelly, padded mats.
“All right, everyone. We’re going to have to try to get Jas free. Everyone but Rina, get on either side of the bottom end here. Be prepared to heave like ya’ve never heaved before.”
The remaining students, including Dave, rushed to get in position.
“And me, Professor?” I asked.
“You stay with her. The second ya think ya can pull her free without causing more damage, ya pull. Got it?”
“Absolutely.” I nodded. I was the best choice for the job since I was the only non-shifter there. Even the weakest shifter had some extra strength.
McGinty scooped his hands beneath the trunk immediately next to where it squashed Jas’ leg. He squatted, his thigh muscles bulging through his jeans, his arm muscles popping as he prepared to give all his strength to freeing the skunk shifter.
“On the count a three,” he grumbled. “Remember, give it all ya’ve got. One. Two. Three!”
Every muscle bulged and strained. His face reddened until he began to tremble.
Grunts and groans once more punctuated the tension within the gymnasium while I squeezed my hands beneath Jas’ armpits, ready to pull with everything I had, just waiting for my opportunity.
It never came.
When it became apparent that they wouldn’t manage to move Wren’s massive trunk at all, McGinty growled ferociously, heaving until I thought he might burst a vein in his head or something. Finally, he released his hands with an exasperated cry. “Ya can let go, everyone. It’s no use. We need to wait for help to arrive.”
He growled again as he knelt next to Jas’ head. “The Brick Bam should’ve worked.” He slapped the mat next to Jas’ head so hard that it split the blue fabric, exposing the stuffing beneath. “And Fianna and Nessa should be here by now. They’re so attuned to the school and its magic … they’re linked in to the Academy Spell.”
Dave and I exchanged a look. That was the first I’d heard of that, but it would explain how they were almost always the first to respond to any problem.
“Professor, should some more of us try to go get help?” one of the new girls asked while she fiddled nervously with a short braid.
McGinty pursed his lips together, and finally nodded, his shabby auburn hair sliding everywhere. “Yes, that’s a good idea at this point. Just grab the first useful creature you see and bring them here. One of you go to the dining hall and get some of the trolls. They’re stronger than ya think.”
Though McGinty didn’t tell them all to go, the rest of the students took off at a run, probably relieved to have something to do other than stare helplessly at our two injured shifters.
But five minutes passed and no one returned. Jas’ breathing had grown shallower, and Wren had started to creak in a moaning way that reminded me of haunted houses and the disembodied cries of tortured ghosts. Wren might not be bleeding as Jas was, but she was certainly suffering. I felt torn between helping both of my friends—and I couldn’t do a damn thing to help either one of them.
“What the hell is going on?” McGinty exclaimed out of the heavy silence he, Dave, and I had settled into. “Where is everyone?” He rose from where he knelt behind Jas’ head and jogged over to the double doors to the gymnasium, popping down the kickstand of one and propping it open. Disappearing from view for a few moments, I could hear him muttering his complaints.
He walked back across the large gym, which had never seemed so small as when it had a giant tree trapped within it. It was a good thing the school kept the space completely open. No bleachers lined the sides, as was common in Berry Bramble High.
McGinty ran a hand roughly through his hair, leaving it standing. “I have to go get help, or Jasmine might die. Maybe Wren too, I don’t know.” He rubbed at his beard, scratching at it. “You two stay put. Keep them company. I’ll be back as soon as I can, I promise.”
“Yeah, no problem, man,” Dave said. In moments such as these, the separation between student and teacher dissolved. We were all just searching for the way to survive this crazy life. “Just do what you can to hurry.”
McGinty looked from Dave to me and nodded. Then, with a final lingering look at Wren, and then Jas, he turned on his heel, barreled through the doors, and disappeared from sight.
“Why do I get the feeling he isn’t coming back?” Dave asked. “It feels like we’re stuck in some stupid horror movie, where everyone that leaves gets eaten or something, and never returns.”
In a school for creatures, the comparison was a little too close for comfort. “He’ll be back,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I believed it myself. “Where do you think the others went?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“I don’t know, Rina, but something’s wrong. I can feel it. Can’t you?”
The willow tree moaned and creaked some more, and I finally nodded. “Yeah, something’s definitely messed up. But what could it be? We’re in a school for supes, where everything is controlled by magic. What could possibly go wrong?”
Dave didn’t answer, and my imagination took off.
“Dave.”
He looked from Jas to me. “Yeah?”
“What if there’s something amiss with the magic? I mean, is that possible? Could the Academy Spell have gone wonky or something?”
“No, for sure not. The original founders of the Magical Arts Academy set up the spell a hundred some years ago. Mordecai and Albacus are supposed to have been the best of the best. There’s no way it could mess up.” But he bit his lip again and flicked at his leg with his free hand in a mindless movement.
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“So you don’t believe what you’re saying either?” I eventually asked.
“No.” His shoulders slumped. “At the very least Fianna and Nessa should have been here by now. They’re super nosy. They’d be all up in this.” His eyes widened for a second. “Don’t tell them I said they were nosy.”
I chuckled. “I won’t, I promise. I like you in one piece.”
“With all the kids that rushed off to get help, one of them should’ve come back.”
I nodded gloomily. “For sure. And I was with McGinty the last time he used the Brick Bam. It worked right away. The fairies were here in no time.”
“I say let’s give McGinty and the others five more minutes to get here, and then we do something.”
Together, we stared down at Jas. Five more minutes would be a really long time for her. Blood had pooled around her thighs, soaking into her skirt, spreading toward Dave and me, kneeling alongside her.
“And if he doesn’t come back,” I said, “what do we do? Your shifter powers aren’t enough to help, and I’m not even a shifter anymore.”
“True, but from what Adalia tells, you definitely have some fancy mage powers.”
“I managed to hurl some kind of ball of … magic or something, but that won’t help either one of them, unless I’m trying to set Wren on fire.” I winced at my terrible joke. “I’m just trying to say … I have no idea how to get my mage powers to help them.”
“So we wait. Five minutes,” Dave said. “And then we figure shit out.”
I sighed heavily. “That’s a terrible plan.”
“Yep. Too bad it’s the only one we’ve got.”
Five minutes flew by and no one returned, not even Professor McGinty.
“She’s not doing so well,” I whispered to Dave, staring down at Jas. “We’ve got to do something.” Her snow-white face was paler than usual, pasty and coated in a cold sweat. Her raven hair stuck to her forehead. I brushed it away.