By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
—William Shakespeare
In the chill air, Nightwing scrabbled across the sky. The stars rode through the heavens above, while dark forests seethed below. He could still sense Amber's spell. After-fires from it could be seen in the west, a glowing column of magical purple flame. As he flew, he sang:
Hear the tolling of the bells—
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monopoly compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!—"
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"Quiet," Darwin screamed. "Not that poem again!" He buried his head deep in the flesh of Nightwing's armpit and tried to shut the sound out by wrapping all eight legs over his ears. "Do any poem but that one. My head is ringing. I can't take it anymore." He went from pleading to a more dangerous tone. "One more verse, and I swear by my mother's proboscis, I'll sever your jugular!"
"You palavering parasite," Nightwing said. "You can no more appreciate the genius of poetry than a sow can appreciate a Van Gogh. Edgar Allen Poe was the greatest human poet of all time. Compared to him, Dante Alighieri spouted drivel, and Shakespeare's verses are but the scribblings of a hack."
Nightwing fluttered toward a house, squeaking in his loudest voice,
And the people—ah, the people—
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
Darwin gouged his proboscis into Nightwing's side, and threatened, "I smell a gizzard!"
"Look," Nightwing shouted. "The source of the spells, spells, spells! Keeping time, time, time, in a sort of runic rhyme!"
He wheeled gleefully above a house in a dark neighborhood at the edge of a town. The streetlight below glowed forlornly, and only a few cars crawled upon the road. But the light from magic spells sputtered below with an eerie purple gleam, pulsing on and off, like a candle that gutters from lack of air as it suffocates.
Nightwing dropped low, searching for animals that had a magical aura. A pair of cats hunted behind the house, but they were nothing special. In front of the house, a police car was parked, its lights flashing
The residue of the magical spell was centered within the house.
Nightwing dipped toward the source, circling. His enormous ears picked up human voices in an upper chamber. "We came up here, and found Ben's clothes draped across the floor," (a man said)
"It's like he popped," (a woman's voice insisted.) Ben's mother added. " Like he was a big balloon, and he just popped, and all of his clothes dropped to the floor."
The police officer said in a bored tone, "We'll, if he'd popped, his skin would be here, too. I think he just ran off."
"But," the woman asked, "where would he go without his clothes?"
YOU ARE READING
Of Mice & Magic: Book 1 Ravenspell
Teen FictionMore than anything, Benjamin Ravenspell wants a pet. But when he buys a mouse named Amber, he gets more than he bargained for. No sooner does Ben take her home, than Amber turns him into a mouse too. You see, Amber has magical abilities, and...
