4

Splintered

IT WAS DARK WHEN THE two larks returned to the village. Calla looked up to see speckled stars above.

So much for that cellowood, she thought. The shop was long shuttered and closed now.

Tiny bright orbs weaved around the old wooden fence post beside them, leaving a dizzying trail of lights. As Mischief and Pye chased and nipped at them, the gleamwattle-flies vanished into the bright red clusters of wild red heath flowers, growing from the brush surrounding them.

Soon, they came upon Leigh’s grassy thatched cottage. Calla leaned against the fence post as Leigh spoke.

“It’s just so awful,” Leigh said, gazing up at the sky. “That poor wisteria-winged-moose.” She looked at Calla, distraught. “I mean, imagine the type of wilder that must have killed it.”

Calla was skeptical. “It could have been old or ill,” she pointed out again.

Leigh’s eyes widened. “What if it’s pestilence? You don’t think we stood too close, do you? What if it’s the start of a plague? Oh dear. We should warn the village folk about this.”

At that, Calla had to give her friend a sympathetic look. Leigh still had the mindset of the lark who lived in Knot-rest. Unlike Leigh’s family, who had moved into Red Heath two years ago, Calla had lived in the Dark Agrestal her whole life. Such misfortune wasn’t too uncommon for wilders and larks alike. Even here in the Awlt—the safest, most heavily guarded, and livable part of the Dark Agrestal—such horrid things often happened. She doubted a villager would even blink at if they were told such news. They may be lucky to get a shrug.

Calla forced a yawn. Tonight was a study night for the trial. She handed her mottled-bell bag to Leigh. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Leigh took the bag and began up the paved path to her cottage. She tried to wave, her arms now full. “Do take care,” she said, her voice still tinged with worry.

Calla waved back. “See you tomorrow,” she promised.

The flower-elf then turned back and called to the twig-trots who ran and weaved across the grassy glen.

“Mischief! Pye!” she called.

Pye ran up, hopping in excitement.

Mischief followed a tad slower. He coughed and hacked, spitting out a cloud of glowing gleamwattle-flies.

Calla scrunched her nose at him as he gave a sharp, toothy grin. “Gross, Mischief.”

FOCUS CALLA, FOCUS!

Calla sat cross-legged on the woven green rug of her room, surrounded by an assortment of dried herbs of every shape and color. On her right was a large, open blue book with a weathered gold trim. On her left was her staff. A red flame flickered from an old lantern she’d placed on her bed.

She took a breath, as she looked over the collection of plants. There’s so much to memorize. It didn’t help that the leaves of spotted-oak looked like the leaves of fettered-elm, or that the roots of curled-sassafras had such a different effect than the dappled-sassafras. She didn’t even want to think about twigs. The whole chapter made her head spin.

Calla nervously flittered through the pages of the book. All the chapters were filled with the herbs and spells she had yet to memorize.

I wish I had more time. Her academy trials were three mere months away. Frankly, she didn’t feel much closer to nailing herb-based magic.

I’ll just have to push harder. After all, Brindlebeard’s Academy of the Westward Wisps only held their trials once every ninth spring. If she failed, she’d have to wait season after season for another chance. Failure was not an option.

Calla turned back to her book and began to read aloud.

“To complete this spell of mending, take a small bit of thorned-acacia root and mix well with dried leaves of sorrow’s sorrel.”

She reached across to the neatly laid piles of herbs, picking up a red thorned-root and the gray dried leaves.

Okay add a thorn of ire and sorrow’s sorrel … easy enough. She scanned the page and read on.

“…remember not to cast downwind of spell, nor in proximity of a flame—”

Calla yanked up her book as Mischief and Pye ran past her, she glowered at the two bush-like wilders as they hopped up on the vine-patterned covers of her bed. The lantern wobbled as they scrambled around it.

“Mischief! Pye!” Calla scolded.

The two twig-trots looked up curiously.

“Why can’t you be quieter like Thimble?” She pointed over to the corner of her room. On a large striped cushion sat an older twig-trot with small syrup-colored leaves. She closed her eyes and gently dozed, her small head tendril swaying with each breath. “If you can’t behave, you’ll have to sleep outside my room, you hear?”

They merely blinked at her, as they often did.

Calla looked at them, befuddled. Even after today the two still had tons of energy. It had to be double what she now had. She yawned. They ought to share some with me.

She wearily returned to her spot on her rug and began to read.

“Now, where was I…”

When she couldn’t find the page with the spell, she shrugged. I think I understand enough of it.

She closed the book.

Calla placed the two chosen herbs in front of her and picked up her wooden staff. She stood still and concentrated. The tip of her staff began to glow silver.

As she raised her staff to cast, Mischief and Pye darted across the room, chasing and nipping each other, trampling and kicking the herb pairing she’d placed out.

Calla grew hot.

“Enough!” Calla yelled.

Mischief and Pye paused to look up.

Calla marched over to her wooden door, yanked the ring handle, and pointed outward.

“Out,” she said sternly.

The twig-trots lowered their heads and shuffled out. Thimble yawned and closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

Calla muttered as she tracked down the strewn pieces of her herb mixture and placed them back in her spot. She paused as she noticed an overturned small jar of black hook-like roots on the ground.

She frowned. Grimwattle.

Grimwattle was not an herb to be messed with. Used wrongfully, it could wound a caster for weeks, and in some cases, months—utterly stopping them from casting magic till their injury healed. Calla carefully picked up the jar and scooped up the roots. When she was certain not a single one was missing, she tucked the jar away on a low wooden shelf.

With that addressed, the flower-elf turned back to her herb mixture. The leaves were slightly torn, and the root a bit crooked.

It’ll have to do, she thought crossly. She raised her staff and once more it began to glow. She closed her eyes.

Okay, just a swift motion forward.

Calla opened her eyes and quickly slashed her staff forward.

Nothing.

She blinked and tried again.

There was a slight sizzling noise as a tiny wisp of silver rose from the mixture, then poofed out of existence.

Maybe I’m too close.

Calla stepped further back from the herbs. She took a breath and tried again, adding more force as she swung to the left.

Crackle… Fwoosh!

There was a bright flash of silver as her staff splintered into pieces.

Calla stopped and stared at the wooden fragment she still held in her right hand. All around her room sat bits of smoldering bark and magic-singed tendrils.

Pye whimpered from the other side of the door while Thimble hopped up from her spot, waddled across the room, and squeezed under Calla’s bed. In seconds she began to snore again.

Calla sighed and let her head droop.