Miraclist

by P B Hughes

Jude’s expression darkened, his black eyebrows knitting as the reminder of Daniel’s words settled. He pulled open the desk drawer by his bed and removed an oily handkerchief. “How fortunate they discovered our abilities,” he said picking up a boot and swirling the cloth over the leather, “or else we might have remained caged in there with the rest of the rats.”

  “Don’t call them rats,” Daniel objected. “They’re people, just like you and me.”

  “They are people. We are Miraclists.”

  Daniel felt a tinge of guilt. It was true; the only reason he was brought to Littleton was for his display of Miraclism. At the age of five he stole an apple from the desk of Mr. Underland, the old snaggletoothed orphanage headmaster. He was discovered mid-bite, blinded by the ruthless crack of a cane across his knuckles. Then again across his shins, back, and arms. He was herded into the corner and pinned to the ground as the old man bellowed furious curses. Daniel bit him on the hand, fleeing past him as fast as his battered legs would move, out the door and down the road, Mr. Underland at his heels. Underland was no cripple. He only pretended to hunch over his cane to garner sympathy and a beggar’s copper from travelers, and to break the fingers of troublesome boys and girls.

  Daniel ran until he saw the river. The river was safe—his friend. He could not swim, but the river would not let him drown. The locket around his neck burned like fire. He did not slow; in fact, he sprinted directly across the water’s surface as if he were a skipping rock, leaving the wide-eyed old goat of a man at the edge of the bank.

  That was the last time Mr. Underland hurt him. A few days later, a band of officials came for Daniel and Mr. Underland collected his reward of eighty gold pieces for the discovery of a Sapphire Miraclist. He left the others behind, poor ragged children without hope, traveling across plains and woods until he found himself at Littleton’s gate. It was the place they sent orphaned Miraclists. No less than a year later Jude, arrived.

  “I’ll go back for them someday,” promised Daniel as Jude began to oil his second boot. “Maybe not for the ones I left, but for those who replaced them.”

  “And why would you do that?”

  “To give them a family.”

  Jude stiffened. “It’s pathetic how you constantly try to build for yourself a familial substitute. We have no family and never will. We’re orphans.”

  Daniel remained silent. He sat, staring down at the ripples of smoothed wooden floor.

  Jude studied him for a moment, and then narrowed his eyes. “You’re going to have to accept the fact that you’re alone sooner or later, Daniel.” He dropped his boot to the floor. “Once you do, then you can get what every person wants.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “Autonomy; to be completely and utterly independent, needing no one. You are the only person you can count on. No one really cares about you. They only care about what they can gain from you.”

  Daniel allowed Jude’s words to seep into his soul. His mind began to war with itself. Did anyone really care? His parents abandoned him—that’s what Mr. Underland said. They had left him to die outside the city gate wearing nothing but a silver locket around his neck. The old man stole the locket from him, but as soon as Daniel grew old enough to understand the word ‘abandoned,’ the necklace appeared on his cot. He asked Mr. Underland if he had left it for him, but that got his ears boxed and the necklace confiscated. The next night the necklace reappeared. Afraid, Daniel hid it beneath the floorboard. Oddly enough, the man never asked about it again, so after a few weeks Daniel put it around his neck, hidden beneath his rags, and he never took it off.

  Daniel’s thoughts flit to Mordecai and his wife Deborah. Mordecai always treated him with kindness, and Deborah had been as gentle as a lamb, holding Daniel during terrified nights in his new world. They were the only parents he had ever known, teaching him to read and write and helping him discover his powers.

  “Close your eyes,” Mordecai’s voice said in Daniel’s ears, echoing as if far away. “What do you feel?”

  “Nothing,” Daniel’s young voice replied. “I feel nothing.”

  He could still feel Mordecai’s shadow over him, a massive structure over his tiny frame.

  “Do you not feel the grass between your toes? The sunlight upon your skin?”

  “Yes. I feel those.”

  “What else do you feel? What do you hear? Empty your thoughts. Feel the world around you.”

  Daniel stood a long time, trying his best to empty his mind. But the only thing he could think of was how angry he felt at his own incompetence. What if he wasn’t what they thought he was? What if it was a mistake? Fear began to grip him. They might send him away. Or worse, back to the orphanage, back to Mr. Underland’s grimy cells. A picture of the old man’s brown smile and the smell of his foul breath flashed across Daniel’s memory. No—he wouldn’t let them send him back. He would run away—take a ship across the sea, far away. Yes, the sea. The sea was at his command. He would become a pirate and ride across the ocean. Across the waves…His waves.

  Then he sensed it. He swirled his hand through the air—it was all around him.

  “I feel…I feel the air,” he said. “It’s heavy. It feels…It feels wet.”

  “Yes, Daniel!” Mordecai encouraged. “Yes—what else?”

  “I can move it. I can move the moisture.”

  “Do it, Daniel,” Mordecai said, his voice rumbling low like a waterfall. “Move it.”

  And that was when, for the first time, Daniel materialized water. He opened his eyes, and there was a shimmering drop of water, no bigger than his fingernail. But it was something no other Sapphire Miraclist had done under Mordecai’s tutelage. Mordecai looked down at Daniel with a bright smile.

  “That’s my boy,” he said.

  But Mordecai and Deborah never officially adopted Daniel, and that left him with a gnawing doubt. Deborah passed away when Daniel was seven and with her his hopes of ever belonging to a family. Mordecai’s jovial spirit fell dark for several years. And it was only recently that joy began to creep back into his heart, ever since his three eldest students began to show promise of becoming Guardians. But deep down Daniel thought he knew…no, Daniel knew for sure that Deborah loved him, and Mordecai did as well.

  “You’re wrong,” Daniel said to Jude. “Mordecai cares about me, and Deborah cared too.”

  Jude sneered. “Mordecai runs a school for gifted Miraclists. Do you honestly think that if you were normal he would have taken you in?” Jude snatched the candle from his bedside, his green eyes shining in the amber glow. “The only thing that separated you from the other rats is that you were born with sharper claws.” He blew the candle’s flame out with a puff.

  Darkness flooded the room like a curtain of thick smoke, and Daniel sat a moment, blinking away stinging tears. Finally, he lay his head down upon his pillow, allowing the silence to engulf him.

  “It was painful at first when I came to realize that no one in the world cares about me,” said Jude, his voice rough, breaking through the shadows. “But then I concluded: if no one cares about me, why should I ever care about them? I don’t. And that sets me free. And it’s the greatest feeling in the world.”

  With that, Jude turned over and said no more, leaving Daniel to drift into his dreams.

  Chapter 4

  Daniel awoke to the grey hours of morning, a gnawing uneasiness in his stomach. Something pulled him from his sleep, a frightful feeling he could not place. He sat up in bed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, surveying their bedroom in search of a source of alarm.

  Nothing. Everything was as it should be. Jude still slept soundly in the bed next to him, his chest rising and falling as he twitched beneath the weight of his dreams. But then there was a sound—a bluster of wind pounding outside their dormitory. A storm must be on its way, Daniel mused, cocking his head to listen as he tried to make sense of the noise. Rather odd, it seemed, that the sky outside was completely clear. Even stranger was the noise itself�
��more of a thump than a rush, and distant, yet growing louder with each passing second. So loud, it was as if it was right over his head.

  Suddenly, the dormitory shook violently; a cloud of dust plummeted from the rafters, peppering Daniel’s head. A tremor passed through the walls, creaking and moaning as it went.

  “—the devil?” rattled Jude sleepily, starting up from his bed. “Earthquake?”

  “I—I don’t know,” said Daniel as the dormitory shook a second time. Daniel leapt out of bed and threw the door open to the hallway. He heard the muffled cries of children from inside the other rooms.

  Daniel scrambled forward, flinging each student’s door open as he went. “Get out!” he cried. “Everyone—make for the front door!”

  The rest of the children poured out, scrambling over one another, pushing-shoving-squeezing as they pressed through the hall toward the stairs. Daniel slid to a stop at the end of the hall and counted heads. All there. Jude brought up the rear, his black hair flying wildly about.

  The dormitory trembled again. A terrible screech blasted above them. Daniel flew down the stairwell.

  “Daniel, what’s going on?” yelled Gregory at the base of the stairs, holding a small child by the hand, Martha behind.

  Several pictures fell from the wall, smashing against the floor.

  “Get outside,” Daniel ordered. “Now!”

  They did not question him, but fled to the front door, yanked it open and rushed out onto the grassy lawn. Daniel’s heart pounded inside his chest as though it might burst, but what he saw atop the dormitory made it catch inside his throat. What shook their home was no earthquake.

  There, on the roof, hulked a sinister creature—a wyvern as black as coal, a wicked reptilian head leering down as its long, willowy neck guided it to and fro. Its lips curled at them, baring slender fangs, a red tongue flicking out between its teeth. A pair of scaly wings spread out from its sides like a vampire-bat, claws digging into the rooftop. Yellow drool oozed from its mouth, and dripped to the ground with a sizzle.

  The creature raised its pointed nose into the air and sniffed with deliberate, rasping inhales. It leaned its head back and let out a shrill, gargled shriek.

  Daniel wished for a staff.

  Suddenly, the ground beneath them rumbled, though not from the wyvern’s weight.

  “Return to the heights, foul one,” boomed the voice of Mordecai. He stood several yards away from them, his eyes glowing like two spheres of earthy amber, the orb at the top of his enormous staff blazing. “You have no business here.”

  The wyvern turned its attention from the children, glowering down at Mordecai with malice. Its tail shot up and coiled over its head like a scorpion, ready to strike.

  Mordecai slowly moved toward the dormitory, then raised his heavy boot and stomped. The earth rippled in front of him; a large stone tore from the ground and flew at the monster, whirring past its head, shattering against the cliff behind.

  “Next time I won’t miss!” he bellowed. “Now be gone!”

  The wyvern gave another furious cry and whipped its tail forward with the blinding speed of a viper’s-strike, snapping Mordecai’s leg as if it were a tree branch. Daniel pushed his way through the screaming children, shouting words he could not remember as he sprinted toward his headmaster, who lay crumpled on the ground. Before Daniel could reach him, Mordecai rolled to his back, his face burning crimson with anger.

  “Vile lizard!” he cried. Up from the ground ripped a dozen stones the size of cannonballs that swirled above him. “You’ll pay for that!”

  Mordecai thrust his staff forward. One after the other the boulders flew, the first cracking against the wyvern’s head; the beast blinked stupidly, stunned from the blow as the remaining stones met its flinching chest, wings, and legs. The wyvern beat its wings, deflecting the last of the volley. Up it rose, tearing shingles from the roof as it flew into the air, sending them scattering below. Higher it soared until it caught a current and glided up and over the cliff.

  Mordecai watched, panting heavily as it disappeared.

  “Sir!” exclaimed Martha, rushing to his side. “Sir, are you all right? My goodness! Does it hurt?”

  “Just shaken up, that’s all,” said Mordecai, trying to sit up.

  “I can mend you, sir! Let me go get a staff; stay right there!”

  “I won’t be going anywhere,” Mordecai grimaced.

  The shock of the incident began to wear off, and the younger children began to wail.

  Jude whirled around impatiently. “Shut up! Your tears are only making matters worse!”

  The children only wept louder.

  “Have some compassion, Jude!” Mordecai remonstrated. “Come here children, sit down next to me. Ouch—not on me!”

  “Mordecai,” said Daniel. “What was that thing?”

  “That,” he said as the children huddled around him, “was a wyvern.”

  “A wyvern?” replied Daniel. “Why would a wyvern come here?”

  "It was searching for something," interjected Jude, staring at the spot where the wyvern disappeared.

  “Yeah, searching for breakfast,” said Gregory.

  "No,” replied Jude, “not food. Did you see the way it sniffed the air? It was as if it was focused—not on us, but on a smell entirely elsewhere.”

  Jude closed his eyes, deep in thought.

  Daniel cocked his ear suddenly. “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” said Gregory. “I don’t hear—”

  “Shh!”

  The sound of breaking glass came from inside the open cellar door beneath the dormitory.

  “Gregory,” grunted Mordecai. “I thought I told you to close that cellar door. If I’ve told you once, I told you a thousand times: we can’t afford to have chickens in there flying about; if they knock the bottles over we could have an explo—”

  KABOOM!

  A cloud of green smoke billowed out from inside the basement, covering them all in a dense fog.

  Martha’s voice echoed through the dissipating smoke. “What on earth! Gregory, what did you do?” She carried a training staff in her hand.

  “Me? I didn’t do anything! Some chickens must have escaped from the barnyard and got into the basement and knocked over the vials.”

  “Look!” exclaimed Daniel, pointing to the side of the cliff. There, a dark figure scrambled upward. It spread a pair of black wings, and launched itself into the sky. Then it disappeared, up and into the forest.

  “Well there you have it,” said Jude victoriously, “that thing must have been what the wyvern was after.”

  Martha ignored their talk and knelt down on the grass next to Mordecai. "Permission to use energy, sir?" she asked as the fog cleared.

  “Yes—yes, permission granted,” said Mordecai impatiently.

  Martha's eyes shone bright blue. A soft mist poured out from the glowing staff and onto Mordecai’s broken leg. “This could take several hours, sir. The break is really bad.”

  Mordecai groaned and placed a hand over his face. “We don’t have several hours—what terrible fortune. Ouch!”

  “I’m sorry, sir!” said Martha, “Please try not to move. It makes it harder to repair.”

  “Yet another thing that needs repairing—the roof, the cellar, my leg.” Mordecai sat a moment in silence, with his eyes closed. “We do not have the time. Daniel, Jude, Gregory—you three will have to make the trip to purchase the mana-crystals alone. My leg is in no shape for travel.”

  “You can’t mean that,” said Gregory. “How are we supposed to navigate the forest without you?”

  “Me,” Jude answered. “Give me the map and I’ll navigate the forest with ease.”

  Gregory let out a scoffing laugh. “Great—Jude the Explorer leading us to our doom. What if that wyvern attacks us, then what?”

  “Unlikely,” Jude replied. “Wyverns prefer to eat larger animals—cows, horses, sheep and the like. They only eat humans if they’re especially hungry.”


  “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?” Gregory replied. “And since when are you an expert on a wyvern’s eating habits?”

  “Do you ever read? The Extensive list of Frightening Winged Creatures, fifth edition, by—”

  “Regardless,” Daniel interjected, “we have to get those crystals and Mordecai’s in no condition to lead us.”

  Mordecai motioned to Martha to stop. He lifted himself up using his good leg and staff, balancing precariously. “It’s settled then. Your packs are already made. The sooner you leave the better. Martha, we’ll take this inside.”

  Chapter 5

  Jude studied the tattered map with keen eyes. The Mordread Forest was at his fingertips, vast and sprawling. Finally, after years of residing beneath the army of vegetation he would re-visit its insides. As a child, he was never allowed to venture beneath the canopy by himself; no, that would be too dangerous. The trees would murder him. That is what Mordecai had told him when he arrived at the school so many years ago. For that, Jude immediately distrusted the old man. How could the trees, the very thing that rescued him from the orphanage, wish him dead?

  Jude had no friends at the orphanage for he spoke to no one. The only person he chose to grace with his few words was a bent old beggar woman outside the city gate. She offered to teach him to read. How a cripple like her knew how to read and write he never knew. Nor did he care. But she kept persisting:

  “A smart boy like you ought to learn to read,” she would say, giving him a toothless smile. “Come, sit awhile and I’ll fill your mind with knowledge.”

  Knowledge was it? Jude was five. He had no interest in knowledge—only in picking the fat pockets of the merchants stumbling on the poorly lit streets late at night. Still, every time he passed she crowed at him to learn.

  It wasn’t until a cool fall evening that he paid her any attention. In her hand she clutched a book, beautiful and rimmed with gold. It had to be worth something, Jude contemplated. So perhaps he’d humor her and swipe it when she wasn’t looking.

  But he didn’t.

  At first he eyed her. Shriveled as a raisin, she was. And weak. Jude was surprised she could even lift the book. He could just snatch it right out of her hands and be off. But when she opened the pages and read to him, the words jumped up and grabbed his heart.