Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Zelda literally dragged me out of bed.
“Rise and shine, chaos queen! Today, we're teaching you to aim!”
“It's dawn,” I groaned. “Dawn is for roosters and masochists.”
“And witches who need to learn control before they accidentally turn the town into a demented musical. Again.”
That got me up. “That was one time!”
“Once was more than enough. Poor Randy still can't stop humming 'Let's Get Physical.’ Martha’s about this close”—she put her pointer finger and thumb within a hair’s breadth of touching each other—”to filing a restraining order.”
She dragged me outside, where the entire town had gathered. They'd set up what looked like a makeshift training ground in Baz's backyard. Targets, barriers, and what appeared to be a scoreboard.
“Taking bets!” someone shouted. “Two to one, she turns something into food!”
“Three to one on more accidental nudity!”
“Even odds on more of those butterfly daggers! Protect your eyes!”
“Can she try for mason bees instead? Mabel needs to be pollinated.”
“My petunias would love that, too. That’d make them really sing!”
“Are they seriously betting on my magical failures?” I asked incredulously.
“It's a small town,” Dee Dee said, setting up a folding chair. “Good entertainment’s somewhat limited.”
Baz emerged from the house, and my magic immediately tried to rip his shirt off. I managed to stop it at “artistically torn.”
You’re such a one-trick pony. At least go for the pants again.
“Progress!” Zelda said cheerfully. “Yesterday, you would have set it on fire.”
“Yesterday, I did set it on fire.”
“Exactly. Today it's just torn. That's what I call improvement!”
She positioned me in front of a row of targets. Three scarecrows dressed in what looked like hand-me-downs from a 1980s yard sale.
Where they got so many jelly shoes and legwarmers, I’ll never know.
“Now,” she said, “we're going to practice directional hexing. Aim for the scarecrow on the left.”
I focused, gathering my magic, trying to push it toward the left scarecrow. I released the hex and…
The lower half of the scarecrow on the right exploded into candy like a busted pinata. The middle one started dancing the tango with a six-foot-tall weed. The one on the left, the one I was aiming at, remained completely untouched.
“Interesting,” Zelda made a note. “Your magic seems to go everywhere except where you aim.”
“I could have told you that.”
“Then we'll use it to our advantage. Aim for the right scarecrow.”
I aimed right. The left scarecrow vaporized. A nanosecond after the blast hit, there wasn’t a single speck left. It was like he’d never existed at all.
“Pattern confirmed,” Zelda said. “Your magic’s contrarian.”
“My magic’s a raging asshole. No, the hemorrhoid on the asshole.”
“Your magic is unique. We just need to learn its language.”
For the next two hours, we practiced reverse aiming. If I wanted to hit something, I aimed in the opposite direction. It worked about sixty percent of the time, which was better than my usual zero percent.
“Now let's try emotional hexing,” Zelda announced.
“That sounds dangerous.”
“Everything you do is dangerous. Might as well make it useful.”
She had townspeople volunteer as “emotional targets.” They stood in a line, each holding a sign with an emotion written on it: HAPPY, SAD, ANGRY, AFRAID, LOVED.
“Transform their signs based on the emotion,” Zelda instructed.
I looked at the HAPPY sign and tried to focus on happiness. I smiled, thinking about what made me happy. As soon as I pictured Baz, the curse sent its stupid shooting pains again. My magic reacted since I was midcast. Which resulted in the sign snapping itself in half and falling to the ground.
“Ooookay. So, happiness is…complicated,” Zelda said. “Try anger.”
Anger was easier. The curse didn't mind anger. The ANGRY sign transformed into a tiny thundercloud that rained miniature lightning bolts.
“Good! Now sadness.”
The SAD sign became a puddle that reflected memories of better times. Everyone who looked at it teared up a little.
“Fear?”
The AFRAID sign crumpled itself into a teeny, tiny ball and blew away. We watched it disappear into the forest.
“That's…actually appropriate,” Zelda said. “Now try love.”
I looked at the LOVE sign. The curse went ballistic, sending waves of pure agony through me. My magic exploded outward, and suddenly, everything anywhere, even remotely near me, was covered in roses. Real roses. Rosa multiflora, with big-ass thorns…and lots of ’em.
“Ow!” came from multiple directions as people extracted themselves from the impromptu insta-garden.
“Love is also complicated, I guess,” I gasped, doubling over from the pain.
“But powerful,” Baz said, pulling a rose from his hair.
“That's because love isn't directional,” Gary observed from his safe spot on the porch. “It radiates.”
“That's unexpectedly profound,” I said.
“I have depths.”
The training continued with mixed results.
I successfully turned a boulder into a snail spa with miniature steam vents, which made Gary’s eyes light up, enchanted a knot of vines that wouldn’t stop braiding themselves into my hair (and anyone else that was dumb enough to get close to it), and made it rain molasses for ten sticky, miserable minutes.
Until Zelda waved a hand and made that fresh hell of a bazillion wasps, bees, flies, and ants attacking us for a sweet, sweet taste, disappear.
“Your magic’s becoming more predictable,” Zelda announced. “It follows emotional patterns.”
“Great. I'm predictably unpredictable.”
“That's better than unpredictably unpredictable.”
“Now for the real test,” she said. Something in her tone made everyone’s eyes go wide. Their reaction made me hella suspicious.
“What real test?”
“Combat application.”
Before I could protest or even ask what she was talking about, she threw a hex at me.
Not a friendly training hex. It was an honest-to-goodness attack.
My magic reacted instinctively, creating a shield made of shiny metal colanders that reflected her hex in seventeen zillion different directions at once.
Everyone dove for cover as hex fragments bounced everywhere, turning the inanimate objects they hit into soap bubbles, jam, and one very confused polka-dotted flamingo.
“Good!” Zelda said, already casting another attack. “But can you counter while defending?”
I tried to hex her back while maintaining the colander shield. My magic split, creating mason bees that dive-bombed her while the shield held. But the effort made the curse flare, and I stumbled from the shock of it all.
At least I’d made two people’s dreams come true. There would be pollination, but I sure was going to suffer for it.
Baz moved to help, but Zelda held up a hand. “She needs to learn to fight through the pain.”
“But the curse.”
“Will always be there until it's broken. She needs to function despite it.”
She was right. I couldn't collapse every time I was hurt. I gritted my teeth, pushed through the discomfort, and sent a hex that turned Zelda's hair into snakes.
Tiny, harmless garter snakes, but still.
“Excellent!” she said, as one snake flawlessly recited, “There once was a witch from Nantucket,” before she managed to reverse the spell.
We sparred for another twenty minutes. By the end, I was exhausted, covered in sweat, and had some tiger stripes I accidentally gave myself that wouldn't seem to go away. But I'd also successfully defended against every attack and landed several counters.
Not half bad, if I do say so, myself.
“You're ready,” Zelda announced.
“Ready for what?”
“For whatever comes next.”
* * *
Later that night, exhaustion from the training session finally caught up with me. I was nodding off while reading a particularly juicy romance novel when I was startled by what sounded like thunder, but not quite. It was too rhythmic. Too deliberate.
“What is that?” I asked.
Baz went very still, his nostrils flaring. “Dragons. Plural.”
“But Illanya left.”
“Not Illanya.” His eyes had gone gold. “Someone else.”
The blood drained from my face. “Okay, seriously? This is getting ridiculous. Is this area the dragon magnet capital of the south or something?”
The thunderous sound grew closer. Through the trees, I saw shapes approaching. Huge shapes. Multiple dragons, and they weren't bothering with a basic-bitch sneak attack.
“How many?” Zelda asked, her magic already flaring.
“Three,” Baz said. “Maybe four.”
“We barely survived one!”
“Then we'll have to be creative.”
The townspeople were already assembling. The house grew spikes.
But I could feel it in my bones: We weren't ready for this.
All of us had used up too much energy in training, and the curse was weighing me down like lead chains.
“We should run,” I said.
“No,” Baz said firmly. “Running makes you prey. We’re not weak. We stand and fight.”
The first dragon cleared the tree line. Male, bigger than Illanya, scales like black iron. His human form was devastatingly beautiful in that otherworldly way dragons had, all sharp angles, sinew, and strength.
The other dragons emerged behind him. All male, all massive, all looking at me like I was a particularly interesting collectible.
“This is bad,” Gary said. “This is very, very bad.”
“Any helpful suggestions?” I asked.
“Die quickly?”
“Gary!”
“What? I'm being practical. We're outnumbered, outpowered, and you're cursed. The odds are not in our favor.”
He was right. But as I looked around at the townspeople ready to fight for me again, at Baz standing between me and danger, at our ridiculous odds, I felt something I hadn't expected.
Hope.
“Well,” I said, “good thing I don't believe in odds.”
The lead dragon laughed. “You're going to fight us? You can barely stand.”
He was right. This was all too much, too soon, and everything hurt. But pain was just another sensation, and I'd been living with it for what already felt like three lifetimes now.
Time to put on my big girl panties and do this.