Fifteen branches jutting from the trunk of that beech. Twelve from that oak. Twenty-three from the pine.
Seven squirrel nests within my view. Nine ghostly towers of birches, their pale white bark standing out amid the brown and green.
The cool early-evening air fills my lungs, thick with a loamy, evergreen smell. Neither it nor my rituals are easing the pressure clamped around my chest.
That’s why I came out here. When no other strategy works, there’s one thing that always does.
I need to decide what to do about Elodie Devine, and I can’t decide anything when I can’t eventhink.
The drone of the car’s engine has totally faded away. I stride into the forest, picking my way between the jutting roots along a rough path most people wouldn’t even notice.
The rustle of the leaves overhead and the trill of an occasional bird are my only company. These acres of land not far from the edges of the city belong to the Worth family, but as an investment rather than anything we’ve bothered to make use of. Dad showed me the place several years ago when my parents sold off a small portion of it to developers for a nice payday.
I’m not sure what I’d do if they gave up the whole thing. I’d rather drown in my problems than tell my family what I’ve been using the property for.
After ten minutes of walking, the forest peters out at the top of a hill. A grassy expanse stretches across the slope and over a clearing the size of a football field. A few sprigs of flowers and spindly shrubs poke up amid erratic tufts of grass.
I haven’t been out here since before the winter snows. It’s turned into a mess.
Time to start over from scratch.
The breath I drag in brings a swell of relief with my anticipation of the act to come. My pulse races frantically onward, urging me to get on with it.
I raise my arms as if I’m welcoming the scene in front of me into an embrace. The faint tickle of ephemera—all the energies of every living thing that’s grown and passed through this place,all the ways those things have brushed up against each other—responds to my summons.
In a matter of seconds, the tickle has expanded into a torrent. I call on more and more energy, gathering it in my chest and gut and in the air around me. It licks over my skin and whispers through my hair.
I keep drawing in more until every particle of my body is resonating with the vibrations, until the thrum of it overwhelms every other sensation. Then, with a grin I can’t hold back, I heave the mass of magic across the field.
I don’t shape it. I don’t direct it other than casting it out in front of me with the vague command to nourish and flourish.
The wild energy gushes across the field, and vegetation surges into being in its wake. Flowers burst into full bloom, flooding the breeze with their perfume. Bushes puff up in leafy clusters. A few saplings sprout to my own height, brilliantly green leaves already unfurling from the buds on their branches.
A breathless laugh tumbles from my mouth. In that first moment, there’s nothing left inside me but a vast exhilaration.
This is real magic. This is how I like it best. Not molding and twisting our surroundings to our own ends, but seeing what will emerge when we let the world choose.
My family wouldn’t agree. They’d see what I just did as a ridiculous waste of time and energy at best and destructive carelessness at worst, useless excess they’ll need to spend more time culling.
But they aren’t here right now. For a few fleeting minutes, I don’t have to care what they think.
The sense of lightness sweeps through me. My smile lingers on my lips.
Then the image of Elodie’s face, gazing up at me defiantly while I glared through her illusion, wipes it all away.
I might have unloaded the pressure in my chest, but my impressions on that one subject don’t come together any clearer than they did before. A shaky heat spreads through my ribs with the memory.
The reassuring comments she made while she was hidden behind her disguise… Drawing out admissions I’d never have wanted to make to a classmate, to acompetitor… Searching for a vulnerability she could exploit against me…
But even as those furious thoughts pass through my head, I find myself thinking back to the first time I spoke with Elodie in her attendant guise.
It must have been her on Saturday too, mustn’t it? I’ve never noticed that attendant before… I’ve never asked one of the staff to join me for a game before.
Something about “him” snagged my interest in a way I couldn’t explain and tugged at me to find out more.
Haven’t I been feeling the same draw to Elodie in class in the past week? I just haven’t given in. I tuned it out.
Because I was prepared to be on guard.
