WE HAD BARELY started the walk home when something smacked the soles of my feet like the shock wave of some distant explosion transmitted through the earth. “Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?” Sparx gave me a funny look.
“It was a sort of foomph feeling, like when the fires flared up all green and brown at the end of our scrying session last night.”
Sparx’s expression went even funnier as his eyebrows rose and his ears cocked forward. “Foomph, you say? And green and brown?”
“Yeah, right before that vision of me beside the grave. The one that made me bolt.”
“Pretend for a moment that I wasn’t there with you, and describe exactly what happened.”
“All right.” I quickly talked him through the explosion, the visions that followed, and how scared I had been that I might somehow hurt Dave. “… and that’s when I ran away.” By the end, Sparx’s eyebrows had nearly vanished over the top of his skull. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because I saw none of that. Not the flare, not the weird colors, not the visions, none of it. Neither did I feel any foomph, as you put it.”
“I … Wait, what now?”
“Exactly!” said Sparx. Then his face went very thoughtful. “That’s a very different sort of vision than anything you’d gotten earlier. But put that aside for the moment and answer me this: What has really happened to your spell journal?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. I haven’t been able to find it anywhere, but I didn’t want to admit I’d lost it.”
“When was the last time you saw it?”
I thought back. “The night I turned into a dragon, I think. I reviewed the spell I was supposed to practice on the tracks and then tucked it into my bag before taking a nap.”
“Don’t ‘think’; be certain. Was that truly the last time?” I considered it for a little while and then nodded. “You’re sure?” I nodded again. “You’re positive you put it away in your bag?” One more nod. “When was the next time you saw your bag?”
“When Dave handed it to me before school the next … oh no!” I quickly reviewed everything that had passed between Dave and me since the night he’d wished for magic of his own, and I suddenly knew that part of my vision from last night had been true. “Dave took my journal.”
I should have been mad, but he wanted powers so desperately. Besides, I remembered with a sort of sick dread the vision where I’d cut off his hand—I couldn’t bear the idea of that coming true. But maybe I’d interpreted it wrong last night and it wasn’t me who was going to hurt him directly. Maybe it was my journal.
Sparx’s face was grim. “I fear you are right.”
“And the foomph? What was that about?”
“I felt nothing.”
“But why would … oh.”
Another piece fell into place. Sparx hadn’t felt the blast just now for the same reason he hadn’t seen my visions—because they had come from my earth powers. It wasn’t a physical effect at all; it was the earth speaking to me. I hated the idea, but that didn’t matter nearly as much as the possibility my best friend was in trouble, which both the explosion and the vision strongly suggested.
“We’ve got to get to Dave’s!” I ran for home, where we stopped only long enough to try the phone. But his cell went straight to voicemail and no one answered the landline.
With all the transfers, it could easily take two hours to get to Dave’s on the bus, and even longer on foot. So it was a good thing I’d gotten a new bicycle for Christmas. The lean road racer with its twenty-one speeds was at least twice as fast as my old BMX-style kid’s bike. My new helmet was a lot nicer than the old one, too, as was the heavy-duty U-bar lock mounted to the frame.
I pushed hard as I took the combination of park trails and bike routes that led to Dave’s. The speedometer hovered around sixteen for much of the ride, and I broke twenty twice on the downhills. Sparx had a grand time, poking his head over my shoulder and grinning like a maniac, but I was out of breath and very thirsty by the time I got to Dave’s house—like an idiot, I’d forgotten to fill my bottle.
I couldn’t see anything obviously wrong as I locked my bike to the fence in his backyard, but that didn’t mean everything was all right. No one had answered the house phone when I called, but I went around the side of the house to our secret entrance anyway. I didn’t want to have to try to explain to Dave’s mom or sisters why I was showing up unannounced on the off chance they were home.
For no obvious reason a toy phone lay near the base of the big old maple tree. I poked at it with a toe before climbing onto the fence. From there I was able to jump and catch the lowest branch and move up through the tree to a limb that overhung the screen porch. Lowering myself onto the roof left only a short scramble up a steep strip of shingles to get to Dave’s attic window. Which was, rather surprisingly given the weather, open.
The lights were off and the room was dim, so I didn’t immediately see my friend when I poked my head over the sash. “Dave?”
“Kalvan?” Dave sounded exhausted and worried, and even with his voice to guide me it took a moment to spot him. “Oh man, am I glad to see you and Sparx. I tried to call but…”
He trailed off as I slipped in over the sill and caught my first look at him. Dave was sitting on the floor with his back firmly wedged against the bedroom door and his feet braced against the leg of his desk. The family’s small black-and-white cat, Meglet, was snuggled in his arms with her head tucked firmly under his chin. He was petting her with a sort of maniacal intensity. Their other cat, a huge black pillow of a thing named Jordan, was curled up against his hip. He was also wearing …
“Is that a dress?” I asked. “Not that I’m judging.” We had a couple of trans kids at Free, and everyone was cool with that. “I’m just asking becau—”
He cut me off. “Yes, and just … don’t. It’ll be simpler if you let me explain the key bits first.”
“All right.”
“I’m wearing a dress for the same reason I’m wedged against this door.”
There was a long pause. “I’m listening…”
“I did something stupid, and now I can’t get anything to stay closed. Not the latch on my door. Not the window. Not even the fly on my jeans. This”—he tugged at the tight neckline of the blue sweater dress—“was the only thing I could find that wouldn’t fall off. Well, my T-shirts stay on just fine, but they don’t cover everything that needs covering.”
“Oh.” Sparx inserted himself into the conversation for the first time. “I think I may begin to understand what has happened.”
“I’m glad one of us does,” said Dave, “because I sure as heck don’t, and it’s me it’s happening to.”
I shook my head. “I know I’m lost.”
“Tell me exactly what you did,” said Sparx, “and we’ll see if we can help.”
“Okay, but please don’t be angry.” Dave looked at me rather imploringly. “Well, first, you have to know how bad I want my own magic.”
I nodded. “I’ve gotten that sense, yeah, though I’m not sure I’d have opted into the whole business if I’d had any choice.” I thought about the feeling of stone tugging at my heartstrings and shuddered.
“That’s bullpucky, Kalvan, and you’d know that if you were being honest with yourself. Yes, the crap with your stepdad was awful, and so was what it did to your mom. But be real. You love all the cool stuff you can do with fire … and that dragon thing? That was AWESOME!”
“Incredibly dangerous,” interjected Sparx.
“But still awesome.” Dave looked me straight in the eyes. “Come on, if someone offered to take your magic away tomorrow, would you really say yes?”
I considered that. There were so many times in the last couple of months where I had wished for a normal life and the freedom to be just a regular kid with boring parents. But I couldn’t deny how incredible it felt to pull fire from my heart when I was cold, or to shoot flames from the palms of my hands. Even the stuff that had been hurtful or dangerous was pretty amazing.
Finally, I shook my head. “No, I don’t think I would let it go if I could.” Not the fire stuff anyway. The earth magic was a whole ’nother story, and one that scared the devil out of me.
Dave took a deep breath and seemed to let go of some of the tension I could see in every line of his body. “Thank you for being honest. That’s going to make this at least a little bit easier to tell. You know I’ve been down and kind of avoiding you, right?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t exactly subtle.” I wanted to ask him about my journal then, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not with the vision of me cutting off his hand so fresh in my memory. Whatever happened, I had to avoid that!
Dave winced anyway. “I’m sorry, man. It’s not you. It’s me.”
“I know, that wasn’t meant to make you feel bad.” I held up a hand. “We’re good.”
“Thanks.” He looked at his feet. “Where do I start … I guess with that thing Sparx said about being careful about magic and what I wish for because my involvement with all this means my wishes might come true. I’ve been going over and over that in my head, trying to figure out exactly what I would want to ask the universe to give me. I kept thinking about those stories where the genie gives you exactly what you ask for and it turns out horribly.”
I nodded. It was a pretty common feature in the kinds of books we both liked to read. “So, you started writing down different variations and trying to come up with the perfect one.”
“No. I wanted to, but I thought even writing down a test message might count as me asking the magical universe for whatever I happened to write down first.”
“Smart,” said Sparx. “That’s very much the sort of thing my fellow spirits and the greater powers go in for.”
“Good to know I did something right. Instead, I started trying to figure out the perfect phrase in my head, but I could never make it work right. So, finally I decided that maybe my best bet was to kind of throw myself on the mercy of the court.”
“That sounds like it has about fifteen million ways to go wrong,” I said.
“So did all the other options, and I was getting desperate. Especially after seeing you chatting with Lisa or exchanging knowing glances in the hall with Morgan, or even when I’d catch Josh staring cold death at your back. It seemed like everybody had magic but me. Finally, I cracked. I went down to the storeroom and drew a big magic circle like I’ve seen you make, climbed into the middle of it, and lit some candles. Then I asked any power out there that had my best interests and happiness at heart to give me whatever magic it thought I would most want or need.”
Sparx put his face in his paws. “Oh, child, that was rashly done.”
“Tell me about it. No sooner had I finished asking than the candles all blew over and out, sending wax trails across the lines of circle. Two seconds after that, the door sprang open. When I jumped up to close the door, all my buttons and zippers popped at once and I landed on my face when my jeans fell down around my ankles.”
“When did all this happen?” asked Sparx.
Meanwhile I bit my tongue to keep from laughing at the image. It was pretty funny to think about, but Dave was my best friend and it would have been cruel to laugh at him. Maybe, someday, if he came to see it as funny, too, but not now.
“A couple hours ago. I tried to pretend I had things under control for a little while, but I finally panicked and started trying to call you. That was a nightmare, too.”
“What?” I asked. “Why? And where’s your phone?”
Dave blushed. “It’s in the storeroom in the basement with the sim card pulled out. Turns out this opening thing extends to connections between phone lines. Right after my pants fell down, my phone sprang out of my pocket and the screen lit up on its own. By the time I was able to pick it up, there was some dude on the other end speaking a language I’d never heard before.”
“Scary,” I said.
“Tell me about it. The cancel button wouldn’t work and I was terrified my mom was going to get a giant cell bill for me calling Abu Dhabi or something, so I pulled the card and left it there along with my jeans.”
“I thought you said you spent a bunch of time trying to call me? If you tossed your phone, how did that work? I can’t imagine you sitting in the kitchen and calmly dialing the landline with a dress on.”
Dave snorted. “Nope. I used my baby sister’s toy phone.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“And you turning into a dragon does?”
I had to nod at that. “Fair point. What made you think of it?”
“I tripped over it in the basement and then it rang. When I answered it sounded like the guy from my cell phone again, but it hung up when I put the handset back on the hook. It rang again a few seconds later, but at least there was a different person on the other end. Later, I found if I hung up and then picked up again before it could ring on my end, it let me call out, though who I got was pretty random and I never managed to get through to you. Eventually, when I got sick of the ringing, I chucked it out the window.”
Sparx hopped to the door. “We’d better look at this magic circle. It might tell us something about what’s happened to you.”
“Not that way,” said Dave. “I don’t want to try to explain the dress or any of this to my family. Not if I don’t have to. We can go down the roof and in through one of the basement windows. They were painted shut years ago, but they open up just fine for me now.”
“All right,” said Sparx. “But aren’t you worried your mom will have found your magic circle in the basement?”
Dave shook his head. “That’s why I put it in the storeroom. We’re not supposed to be in there. It’s where Mom stuck all my dad’s stuff when she first had to kick him out. It’s been a couple of years, but he’s still got a few things tucked away and she won’t let us use it until it’s empty.”
“Isn’t the door hanging open?” I asked.
“Nope. I used the drill gun to screw it shut and got clear before it could finish unscrewing itself. It should be good. Here, Kalvan, can you hold this door shut until I’m out the window? Once I get far enough away it’ll stop trying to slam itself open.”
I braced the door with the bottom of my foot as Dave set the cat aside and headed for the window. The dress clearly belonged to his older sister, who was about the same size as Dave, because it almost fit him and he didn’t actually look half bad.
“What about sweat pants?” I asked as he stepped up onto the dresser in front of the window.
He shook his head. “No luck so far. They slide right off. I’m pretty sure the only reason the dress stays on is gravity and the fact it doesn’t have any buttons or zippers or anything.”
I cracked the door open for the cats as he slipped onto the roof, and I followed him out.
A few minutes later we were standing outside the storeroom. A padlock hanging off the open hasp twisted and dropped to the floor as we arrived. A moment later a pair of screws started slowly twisting their way out of the plank door. Dave’s basement was dark and damp and creepy, with concrete block walls and a rough cement floor where patches of red showed here and there from when someone painted it about a million years ago. It had probably made the space more inviting when it was new, but now it looked rather like spattered blood.
The screws fell to the floor with a jingle and the door creaked open. Beyond was a small room walled with rough planks and lit only by a bare bulb. A carefully drawn chalk circle enclosed much of the freshly swept floor, though its perfection was marred in three places by spilled wax that had also wiped out several ideograms. Whatever magic had animated the circle was broken or in abeyance now. We slipped inside and closed the door behind us.
“Hang on.” Sparx touched the door and said something fast in the language of fire. I didn’t catch all the words, but it sounded like a spell of closing. “There. I don’t know how long it will last in the face of Dave’s newfound talents, but it should keep the door shut for a little while at least.”
“I don’t suppose it works on pants?” Dave poked at his abandoned jeans with a toe, shifting them off to one side of the circle.
“It might,” replied Sparx. “Or, it might just start them on fire.”
He sighed. “I guess I’ll stick with the dress for a little longer.”
Sparx snorted and then hopped around the circle, examining the ideograms one by one. “This isn’t half bad, Dave. You must have had a good teacher.” He tapped his foot on the nearest.
Dave blushed. “Yeah, about that. Kalvan showed me the journal where he keeps his magic homework, and I … kind of took it.” He pointed at a high shelf. “It’s up there. I’m so sorry, Kalvan.”
“Dave…” Even though I’d known we had to get to this eventually, I didn’t know what to say. The idea that my best friend had been riffling through my bag without my permission made me angry and a little sick to my stomach. But that wasn’t half as bad as I felt about the vision of him losing his hand—I had to keep this from going wrong.
“I know,” he said. “I’m not proud of myself, and I’m really sorry. It … I just wanted my own magic so bad.”
“I guess I can understand,” I said after a moment. “But that was super dangerous.”
Dave actually laughed. “Yeah, I kind of figured that out. Are you mad?”
“No. Not really. Not being able to find the journal got me in a lot of trouble with Tanya, but it’s okay, I guess.”
Sparx coughed sharply. “Can we save the half-hearted recriminations and inevitable reconciliation for some later conversation? We have more important things to deal with. Dave has already inflicted on himself a more appropriate punishment for opening other people’s things without permission than any you or I could ever hope to devise. Don’t you think?”
I had to nod. “True enough.”
“More like too true by half.” Dave glumly poked at his jeans again. “But yeah, I guess I earned the mess I’m in. I hope you can both forgive me someday.”
“No worries, man.” I turned to Sparx. “Have you figured out what he did to himself?”
The hare snorted. “I haven’t even finished figuring out how he did it. Dave, why did you choose this set of ideograms? It’s not quite like any spell I’ve ever seen, and that’s not a good thing.”
“Well, first, Kalvan takes lousy notes.”
“Conceded.”
“Hey!” I barked.
“Be quiet, child, I need answers.” Sparx flicked an ear at Dave. “Go on.”
“So I’m not sure which of these ought to go together. I mean, I was able to figure out a couple of combinations that looked like they might be attached to specific spells, but all I knew about the spells themselves was their names and some very cryptic and badly penned things: ‘BIG boom, protects against unintelligible garble,’ or ‘watch out for hellmites!’”
“Hey!” I said again.
Sparx snorted. “Hush. I’m impressed he got that much out of your scribbles. What else?”
“A lot of the ideograms were labeled with two or three words, such as ash or char, and summoning? or protects. I know from what Kalvan has said in the past that some of it is specific to his family, or to fire powers generally. So, I looked for things that might be more broadly applied, and for words that seemed like they might help in what I wanted to do. Things like open and friend and safe.”
Sparx inclined his ears forward in a gesture I’d come to think of as a combination of huh and not bad. “That’s not actually as bizarre a method for creating this mess as I expected. So, you picked out things you thought might work, and then what?”
“Well, I can’t speak the language of fire, or any of the other magical tongues you guys use, and I was pretty sure butchering the pronunciation wouldn’t go well, so I just chalked them in and thought about what I wanted them to mean in my head.”
Sparx’s eyes widened. “You know, it’s a miracle you’re alive, human shaped, and in the right dimension.”
Dave winced, but continued. “After that, I lit the candles. Then I gave a little speech asking whatever benevolent powers that might be listening to help a guy out. That’s when everything went all ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’ on me.”
“Wait, what now?” I was confused.
Dave grinned. “You know, all that ‘OPEN SESAME!’ stu—”
Dave’s voice started out deep and far away and echoey, like something from a movie with a serious sound budget and weird ideas about magic. But it cut off abruptly when the circle on the floor suddenly dropped away beneath us.