We were headed deep into the forest down a side road I’d never been on before. It wasn’t the same one I’d taken with Maci, Jace, and Mitchell the night we’d gone to Evergreen Academy together, but I assumed it led to the same place.
After about twenty minutes on the road, we pulled up to the large gate that connected the tall brick wall on either side. Professor East had done a bit of off-roading to get us there, but the van seemed unscathed.
I took in the logo on the gate immediately, which was much easier to see in the daytime. There was the symbol of the academy, a cursiveEAsurrounded by curling leaves. It was identical to the logo I’d seen online during my mostly unfruitful research.
We stopped before the gate, and Professor East nodded to Callan. “Go ahead.”
Callan opened the front door of the van, and my eyes tracked him as I wondered what was going on. Then he pulled open the sliding door on my side. “What’s your birthstone?”
“What?” I sputtered, the question catching me completely off guard.
“What month were you born?”
“Emerald,” I said quickly, realizing he thought I didn’t know my birthstone. “But why?—"
“A May birthday, then.” He paused for half a second, and there was a slight look of annoyance on his face that I wanted to question, but I was soon distracted by the small bag of gemstones he had pulled from his pocket and begun to sift through. Who carried a bag of gemstones in their pocket? Those couldn’t be real, could they?
When he found an emerald—imitation, it had to be—Callan walked a few paces away and stepped into the circle of rounded stones on the ground.
I suppressed a gasp. It was the same circle I’d seen with my friends. The one Maci had referred to as a “fairy ring.” The one Callan had warned me to stay out of.
I continued to watch as Callan knelt, held the emerald against the earth, said a few words I couldn’t hear, then stood up again and made his way back to the van, stride even and assured, like what he’d done wasn’t anything unusual.
What on earth had just happened? I glanced at Professor East, but he was staring casually at his phone. It appeared that the rule about no cell phones on campus didn’t apply to the instructors.
“Do you prefer a necklace or a ring? I only have one emerald, so we can’t do earrings.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t understand,” I said, struggling to comprehend whatever was going on here as my attention snapped back to Callan. Was Callan making mejewelry?
Professor East turned from the front seat. “Everyone needs a charged gemstone to fully experience the academy.”
Achargedgemstone? I was now full of more questions than ever before, but Callan was looking at me expectantly.
“Ring, I guess,” I said meekly. I watched as Callan easily set the brilliant green gem into a basic gold ring with some small tools, as if he were an expert jeweler, then he handed it to me.
My eyes went to his forearms and were immediately drawn to the tattoos again. I realized I’d been wrong about the ink in the dark. They weren’t all black but a mixture of shades of onyx, gray, dark green, and deep blue. It was a work of art.
I pulled my eyes from the stunning design and to the ring he was holding out. I slipped it on my index finger, and it fit perfectly. “This isn’t real, right?”
I looked up at Callan to see his eyebrows drawn together, but he quickly relaxed them and smirked a little. He closed the sliding door without saying anything and climbed back into the front seat.
“Of course it is real. Fake gemstone can’t hold an earth charge.” Professor East’s voice was perfectly serious, as if we were still back in class, discussing photosynthesis. What the heck was an earth charge? I’d heard of crystals being charged but… gemstones? Maci was going to lose her mind when I told her about all of this.
As the van rolled up to the gate, Professor East tugged a braided necklace from underneath his suit and held it up to something that must have been a scanner. I couldn’t see anything against the brick wall, though. Wherever the scanner was, it was covered in thick tendrils of trailing ivy.
I felt a vibrating pulse around my finger and looked down in alarm, but the feeling was gone. A second later, the gates swung open inward, and he inched the van forward.
We drove a few dozen more yards through the forest, and then my breath caught in my throat at the sight that appeared before me.
“There’s no way…” I whispered to myself.
A beautiful building the size of a small castle lay ahead of us down the trail, with glass-paneled floor-to-ceiling windows lining each of its multiple stories. Green vines snaked up the corners and between each panel of glass. A sprawling field of flowers—composed of more colors than I’d ever seen in one place, so vibrant it could have been a painting—lined the entire front garden leading to the building.
In the distance, I spotted a few white gazebos, each overflowing with flowering vines. And the trickle of water drew my attention to a fountain that looked like it belonged in Italy.
I sucked in a breath. This was no abandoned facility. This was the enchanted garden of childhood stories with a diversity of plant life that I knew couldn’t possibly grow in this Northern California climate.
We climbed out of the van, and I stood there, staring at the greenhouse-like castle before me, so encased with plants that I thought it might be living itself. I caught Callan watching me, what looked like a genuine smile on his face, but his expression switched back to neutral the moment I met his eyes.
