Chapter 30: 35. The Incident

Pak

 

I’m in the school courtyard, on the stone bench, hypnotized by patterns in the dirt, the stories only I can see:

 

Scores of people line up outside a city, marching to war,

(topsoil and minerals shimmering in the sun)

mingling senselessly, swords clashing against swords.

The soldiers encroach on a crumbling castle (an anthill),

a proud nation, ready to defend what is theirs…

 

It isn’t real. I know it isn’t real. But it keeps me away from this place.

Behind me, footsteps crunch in the dirt, multiple sets. Someone hesitates, someone else pushes them along. The hairs on my neck stand up. Shadows darken the ground, cast by people who darken the air, three or four of them, hovering behind me. One of them stomps around the bench, his sandal grazing the top of the ant hill. It scatters. I hope for fire ants, but they don’t come.

“Hey, kid,” the boy in front of me says. “Want to play a game?”

I hear wickedness in his voice. He doesn’t want to play. I say nothing.

“Answer him!”

The voice behind me shocks my neck, making my shoulders jump. They try to shove me off the bench, but I resist, heels planted in the dirt. Someone kicks me in the back. It knocks the breath from my lungs, and I stumble forward, landing on my knees, my heart flooding my veins with pain and panic. The boy in front takes a step back. I try to disappear…

He grips my wrists and pulls, lifting me partway. My fingers curl from the pressure he puts on my tendons. I flail, and he drops me. My chest thuds into the stonework, and my chin follows, teeth colliding with teeth. I whimper and scramble to gain footing, but someone pins me down with their knees and twists my arms behind my back.

“Stop!” I plead, but they’re pressing my neck, and the sound comes out weak and gurgled. I thrash about uselessly, eating dirt with bloody cheeks.

Two clammy hands grab my face from behind, and cold fingers press into my eyes. I hear crackling. The one in front crows the name of this horrible, horrible game…

“Guess who!”

 

*******

 

When a student graduates to a certain grade, they’re offered the chance to enroll in magic classes. The lessons begin with innocuous things – lighting and extinguishing candles, opening and closing doors – but not everyone is capable of even that. Those who show aptitude may progress into more advanced practices, at the teacher’s discretion. Magic is powerful. Not all can be trusted.

They never gave me the option, of course, but I sneak into the library all the time, and I’ve taught myself as best as I can. I know the different methods and their different applications, but the strength of any magic relies on one’s ability to evoke. It’s never been my strong suit, even with all my practice. For some, it comes as natural talent, no different from singing or painting, though singing and painting rarely have the potential to kill.

My favorite book describes it like this:

 

To Evoke is to master one’s internal river, the sacred waters that feed all that lives.

To Evoke is to let it drip into the world, to find those who thirst and that which shrivels, and give.

 

Most rivers manage themselves, steady and cool, neither overflowing nor drying up. But, every once in a while, a child is born with a river that moves like whitewater. You can’t reason with a river. You can’t command it, can’t scold it, can’t bribe it to do your bidding. Mastery over the river requires an understanding of its path, curves and dips, divergences, waterfalls… Because it is not the river that one controls.

It’s the dirt beneath.

 

*******

 

“NO!”

I scream, but it’s too late. The cold fingers combust.

 

BA-DUM BA-DUM BA-DUM BA-DUM

 

The heartbeat fills my ears as the fire fills the space around my eye. My scream paints the schoolyard air black. It echoes through the city, to the Wall, and beyond.

My skin sizzles. My hair burns. My ear is melting. I can’t see. My spirit jerks away. I have no control over my body. I am an animal, fighting for life.

I still feel the heartbeat and the sickness in my stomach, but the sounds fade as if I were covering my ears, and the world around me becomes distant and hazy. From somewhere far above, somewhere outside of my body, I watch the scene unfold:

 

“Get him off of her! Get him off!”

 

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Children scramble in slow-motion, wrestling the screaming boy.

 

“Goddammit! What did you do?!”

 

He knocks them away, rolls over,

and pins down the girl with the burning hands.

A delicate gray ribbon ascends from his face – smoke.

 

pip

 

Fear glistens on the surface of her eyes.

 

“Stop! Please, stop!”

 

shwick

 

She screams. She sobs.

She goes terribly silent.

The boy is gripping something shiny in his hand.

His arms shake. He drips with sweat and tears.

 

BA-DUM BA-DUM BA-DUM BA-DUM

 

Pip.

I phase back into my skin, panting. Dozens of eyes stick to me, unable to look away. My hand feels warm and wet. With what little vision I have left, I see the faint shimmer of the girl’s silver skin, the girl I have pinned to the ground. She chokes on her spit. Her breathing goes in – and out – and in – and in – and…

Blood weeps from her side, where the weapon carved into her, pooling beneath us. It stains my hand, my knees, my toes, her clothes. Warm. Wet. The world darkens around me. I can’t breathe anymore.

As I fall, I remember her voice. I remember her name.

 

You have stars on your face.

 

Lilia.

 

(This was the first time it ever happened. I still had no control. I didn’t mean to do it. I hadn’t even seen the weapon since I pricked my finger on it as a child. And Lilia… she didn’t mean to do it, either. They made her. I’m sure of it. We weren’t exactly friends, but we shared that rainbow classroom for so long. She wouldn’t do that to me on purpose. She wouldn’t…)

 

*******

 

I awake with a jolt in the infirmary bed. The adult supervising me jumps and drops his book. The pain returns fast, hot and relentless, gripping my eye, my cheek, my ear. They bandaged me up, but it only contains the heat. It cooks me from inside, turning my flesh to crisped meat.

The pressure builds. I groan and focus everything I have into holding back the painful tears, but they still leak out, salting my wound. I dig my fingers into the sheets and ball them up in my hands, sweating. My heart warbles, sending waves of fire into my head, boiling my brain. Crying makes it worse, so much worse. I scream. I feel my eye bubbling, spitting, shrieking like meat in a hot pan. I tear at the bandage, pleading for help, begging the pain to go away. The adult calls for reinforcements. They hold me down by my wrists and shoulders and watch me thrash and scream, until some unknown spirit takes pity on me, and I drift back to sleep.

So my recovery goes, in and out of consciousness, fire, sweat and shrieking, until the day finally comes when my pain is mostly gone and they send me back to class. They never find the weapon, of course. They have nothing to confiscate, no evidence to condemn or expel me by. Later, they tell me the fire was just supposed to be a trick, an illusion meant to scare me, nothing more. Just magic gone wrong. My attackers stay in school. Lilia transfers elsewhere, they say. I never see her again.

My classmates give me a wide berth, staring and whispering from a safe distance…

Except for that redheaded boy.

 

That scar is pretty badass.

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