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Answers
Eliza unlocked the door to her room and she and Pal entered quickly. She closed the door behind her and strode across the room to her single bed. Eliza reached underneath for the wooden trunk where she kept the tools that had been essential to her magic before she arrived at Kentree. She grabbed her runes, some candles, and a handful of crystals. Thanks to Energy Amplification she now had a deeper understanding of what each of the crystals was capable of; they were the first materials they had studied at the beginning of the year.
Eliza spread the runes out in front of her, created a circle of candles which she lit with just a wave of her hand. It was true what Melissa had preached; practice did indeed make perfect. She had practiced this spell so many times she hardly needed to think about it anymore, it was becoming second nature.
Pal laid across her legs where she sat on the floor. Eliza began swirling the downward facing runes in clockwise fashion.
“What happened to my father?”
He searches for you.
“Are either of my parents from North America?”
No.
“Are they both from Europe?”
Yes.
“Did they participate in the war Professor Kent told me about?”
They were unhappy with their situation and desired to change it. They took destiny into their own hands. They lost control of the situation, and the full force of the consequences came down upon them. They should have stopped. They believed they were above all.
Eliza asked Pal what he thought the answer meant. In the end they decided to interpret it as a confirmation. It was the same war.
“Were they from the UK, then?”
Yes.
“Is my father still there now?”
No.
Eliza looked down at Pal and wondered if there was a faster way of determining where her father was without having to ask each country in the world one at a time. Just then, Pal leapt from her legs and ran across the room toward the desk. He pawed at a drawer.
“Isn’t there a map in here?”
“Oh! Yes!” Eliza followed the cat and began searching through the loose papers she had thrown into the bottom drawer until she found a yellowed map of the world. It was sadly outdated, labels indicated countries that no longer existed and others that had not yet been divided. Witching folk were so out of touch with the political rumblings of the mundane world that they didn’t bother to update their maps. Eliza brought the map back to the spot on the floor she had prepared and found that Pal had already extracted a crystal pendulum from the bowl of crystals. She sat cross-legged again and held the pendulum over the map.
“Where is my father now?” asked Eliza, holding her breath.
The crystal spun around the map a few times before stopping still above Northern Quebec. “He’s close,” said Pal. “And searching for you... I wonder if he is on his way to Kentree right now.”
Eliza threw the map to one side and pulled out a spirit board that she had begun crafting for Energy Amplification and held the crystal pendulum over it. The board had numbers and letters and allowed for more specific answers than the runes. The downside of using the spirit board is that it can easily be influenced by what one wants to hear. Runes are more difficult to interpret, but the pendulum can respond to the users’ subliminal desires, instead of the truth. Eliza tried to clear her mind of expectation.
“Why is my father searching for me?”
Nothing happened. Eliza tried a few more times, but the pendulum did not move.
“What was my mother’s last name?”
It was no use. The point of the pendulum kept swinging between consonants with no clear pattern and certainly was not spelling any names. She tried a few more times, asking her father’s name, too, but each time the pendulum refused to give a clear answer.
“You’re too emotional for this,” said Pal. “You could ask someone else to do the reading for you.”
“What, and risk someone else having control of how my parentage comes to light? You and Kent were right. My mother was probably trying to protect me from the prejudice of being born on the wrong side of a war.” Eliza extinguished the candles with a wave of her hand and moved toward her bed, “No, I think if my mother was a murderer and wanted to see herself as a god among mortals then the best thing to do would be to let her rest and write my own story.” After putting her tools away, Eliza slumped tiredly down on the bed and squirmed into the covers.
“What about your father? He isn’t resting. He’s still looking for you. He’s not so far away,” probed Pal.
“He can’t be looking that hard, he’s had three decades to find me—with access to magic! He could have found me ages ago," grumbled Eliza.
Pal persisted, “Could he? Until October you had a shield that protected you from discovery.”
It was a good point. Eliza refused to answer, though it troubled her.
The cat leapt up and began kneading the blanket next to her, “I thought you found your story too dull. Maybe this is the kind of drama you wanted in your life.”
Eliza gave the cat a playful shove, “Shut up! I don’t want drama.” She looked up at the ceiling and the smile slowly melted from her face as she remembered how meaningless her life had been before coming to Kentree. “Or maybe I do, what would be so bad with a little excitement?”
“You don’t sound all that different from your parents,” Pal blinked slowly and settled himself down in a bread loaf position. “You want more than an ordinary life, just like they wanted to be more than ordinary. What would satisfy your desires? What do you imagine would be the best version of your life?”
Eliza closed her eyes to imagine what that could look like. She saw herself sitting on a throne in a huge castle, with a dragon, and an army of devoted followers. She was beautiful and powerful, and in the best shape of her life. Everyone recognized her as wisdom itself. She would spend her days creating new, more impressive spells to protect her kingdom and expand its borders. Controlling more and more of the planet. The outdated map that lay on the floor would be changed to reflect her growing empire, her queendom, expanding all over the globe. She would remove all the stupid parking lots and strip malls and return land to ancient, overgrown forests, grasslands and wetlands. People would live in balance with nature, not as its conquerors. Whether by choice or by force.
“In my perfect world,” Eliza smiled, “I’m a Disney princess.” She stroked Pal’s head for a moment and fell asleep, dreaming of a world without industry.