Sometime in the middle of the night, out of necessity to do something, I had decided to write down another entry.
Day 8 of Spirit Season: It isn’t dawn yet. We met with a group of men who called themselves the “Brothers” and met their elder, the “Shepherd”. They’re werewolves. We didn’t get out by night like the legend had warned us to and were trapped in a room with one. Carson and I killed it with a silver sword that held the Moonstone in its hilt.
Before he turned he told us to go left down every fork in the road to get to our next task. The gift of natural fibers is a rope. It was woven thousands of years ago by a single mage. I don’t quite know what we could use it for yet, but any help matters. At dawn we will get as far away from this village as possible. The growling is torturing. We are surrounded by wolves; and the only reason they aren’t in the room with us is because the wood is infused with mistletoe, which the wolves hate, apparently.
The first rays of sunlight came through the small window in the ceiling. I sighed, ready to leave.
A knock sounded through the room.
“Travelers, are you still in there?” a human voice asked. I stood up.
“Yes, we will be right out,” I replied. Everyone got up, eager to get out of this place. I pulled the doors open and the brother that we had first met was standing out there, waiting for us. He looked at me and smiled.
“I am glad that you are still here, Sage,” he simpered.
“Shut up and show us the way out of this stinking village,” I snapped. “Oh, and you need a new elder.” The brother’s smile faded.
“You killed our alpha?” he asked.
“Yes, because he tried to eat us. Now, show us out or get out of our way.”
“It is our instinct to feed when we are in our wolf skin, and it is our instinct to mate when we see a female,” the brother defended.
“Well, he didn’t eat and you won’t mate,” I barked. I was done with this place. Even the men looked wolfish now, and I was sick of it. It was only the first task and I was already sick of it.
Sure, during the night I had contemplated going back to the circular clearing and trying to go back home and dealing with my life, but then I remembered my father, the reason I was here. Magicians needed proper treatment, and I would make sure Talisman granted my wish. I didn’t care if I’d have to fight dragons, I would get my wish granted.
And at least dragons wouldn’t turn into humans once they were stabbed through the heart.
I had never coped well with death. In the Hole people were dying left and right. The guards were allowed to brutally beat the magicians. Somehow no magic would work in the Hole. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t conjure so much as a flicker of light in the dark, mildewed cells. At least once a week they had taken me out of my cell to question me. They would shove me down the long hallway and into a large room. There I would be strapped onto two wooden planks and interrogated. If the answers I gave weren’t what the guards wanted to hear I would be tortured.
It wouldn’t just be me in the room, either. Sometimes ten people were interrogated at once. It got so packed that sometimes you didn’t know which screams were yours. Sometimes you would be conscious enough to see a man actually drown in the Dunk, or actually bleed out from the Lashes, or actually get run through by the Lance. Sometimes you would be conscious enough to understand what was happening, and you would recognize the person who tortured you as they patrolled the halls. Sometimes you got your revenge.
Maybe my anger was written all over my face, because none of the brothers tried to stop us on our way out. Even the young boys playing in the streets got out of my way. Once we were all out of the gates a fork in the road was in front of us. I took the left road and followed it into the forest. We walked for nearly half the day before someone spoke up.
“Gyps, we’re all tired and hungry,” Peter said. “I think we should stop and rest.”
“Okay,” I agreed. My voice came out like a croak. I cleared my throat and pulled my pack off. “Okay, we can start moving again tomorrow. I think we should camp right on the path, since the forest isn’t safe.”
“Sage,” Heather whispered. She stepped in front of me, looking me over. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered. I opened a jug and took a long gulp. The cold water, since a spell was on the jug, felt nice against my scratchy throat. Emily, who had promised to help with the cooking, had started a fire and was boiling water. Everyone had sat down in a sort of elongated oval along the sides of the trail.
“You know what I never understood?” Heather asked me, sitting down between me and Peter. “Why do you magicians use wands sometimes, but then you don’t other times?”
“Wands help channel magic into a more specific area, and they are crafted to help aid the mage,” Landon told her.
“How do you make a wand?” Jae, who was sitting right beside me, asked. “Do you have to go to some special wand-maker and buy it?”
“Oh, no, everyone makes their own wands,” Pete chuckled. “I mean, how else can a wand truly work for you if you don’t put your own time and effort into it?”
“So you all have a story about making your wand?” Heather asked.
“Yeah, it takes a while, actually,” Serenity nodded. “And a lot of forethought, I suppose. You have to use things that matter to you personally. There are three main factors to put into a wand. You must choose the wood, the core, and the look. It takes a lot of magic to make a wand properly. If you do it right you have about a three day recuperating period because you are so drained of magic.”
“So, a wand can tell a lot about a person,” Jae observed. We all nodded, excluding Jae, Heather, Michal and Jason.
“Well, what’s your story, Peter?” Heather asked, nudging him.
“My wand is made from the wood from the tree my parents carved their initials into; it’s a walnut. The core is, um, a silk ribbon from my, uh, old blanket.” Peter coughed here, looking embarrassed.
“Aw, you’re a family man,” Heather giggled.
“Yeah, yeah,” he scoffed. “The manly bit is the week it took me to whittle the branch down. It’s an old tradition to live in the wild as you make your wand. It’s just you, your magic, a knife and the wild. I swear I had to scare off, like, three bears.”
“No food?” Jason asked.
“Of course you pack food,” Pete laughed.
“Only if you’re too much of a whimp,” Serenity said. “I went out in the middle of the night. You see, I didn’t have a special attachment to any tree, so I vowed that I would walk until I was too weak to go on. The tree I collapsed under would be my wand tree. My old juniper has never let me down. I lived on the berries as I cut it down. I had my core with me, you see. I had the chain to my grandpa’s old pocket watch.” She pulled her long wand out of her sleeve and showed it to everyone.
“That was dangerous, Serenity,” Landon gaped. “You just passed out on the forest floor? I was much more careful. I found a tree that had a random carving in it. The carving was that of an owl, known for being a symbol of wisdom, and I took a branch of that. My core is a wire from my very first toy train.” Landon turned very pink after this statement. “I had every protection with me when I was in the forest. I had food, and a tent, and a sleeping bag, and everything.”
“What’s the wood?” Austin asked.
“It’s hazel.”
“I ‘ear haz’l makes weaker wan’s,” Argus grunted. “I go’ me a ash wan’ ‘ere. Same tree my ma’s wan’ is made of. Go’ my pa’s hair for a core. He died, see, when I was nutt’n butta small chap.”
“What about you, Emily?” Serenity asked. “I noticed your wand was very smooth.”
“It’s made from my first wooden spoon,” Emily confided. “I have a twin, and we both loved cooking from a very young age. We had to share everything in the kitchen, but we each got our own wooden spoon. It’s still burnt in a few places, but I like it. Hardly had to cut anything, really. I just rounded off the spoon part. The core is my sister’s hair. She did the same thing as me, only with my hair in her spoon.”
“So you didn’t have to go out into the woods or anything?” Austin asked. “Man, you got off easy. I went into the woods and the first thing I did was walk right into a beehive. Can you believe it? Thankfully I’m not allergic. I had my heart set on a chestnut wand, because that’s what my dad has, and it turned out that the one bee I managed to kill was against a chestnut tree. I had chosen a silver necklace as my core. I found in the middle of the street, and because I stopped to pick it up I missed the bus to go home. Apparently that day the bus driver snapped and the kids were stuck on the bus for three hours. I was always glad I wasn’t on it.”
“Please, my core saved my life,” Carson snorted. “I had to get to my aunt’s house because my parents were out and I stopped for twenty minutes because some dummy need help untying some twine. I, being a properly raised kid, helped him and the twine snapped. I don’t know why, but I put the twine in my pocket and went to my aunt’s house. It was up in flames. If I had arrived on time I would’ve been in the bathroom, because she always makes me take a bath in her house, and I would’ve been dead. That twine is the core of my wand. The actual wand is from my aunt’s house, too. You can still smell the smoke. My aunt did make it out okay, by the way. You looked worried, Emily.”
“Oh, that’s good to hear,” Emily sighed. “Who hasn’t shared their story yet? Oh, Sage, you still have to tell us. Maybe by the time you’re done our food will be as well.”
“Okay,” I shrugged. I pulled my wand out of my boot and fingered it. The cuts were uneven and left many edges in the wood. “My wand is made of the tree over my mother’s grave. When she died she was buried deep in the woods. Apparently she had the tree picked out already and my father buried her according to her wishes. It’s an old rune tree, ancient, I mean. It was huge and gnarled, way over fifty feet. Oh, by ‘rune tree’ I mean rowan. Rowan is a great tree, you know. Fairies love rowan trees; there were tons up there. I slept in the tree while I made my wand. I actually had to bargain with the fairy in charge to cut a branch off.”
“Wait, you actually saw fairies?” Serenity asked. “I heard they don’t like people at all.”
“Normally they don’t, but gypsies are in tune with nature,” I explained. “You’d probably be fine, Serenity, with your nature magic and all, but anyone else they’d hate. Rowan wood is actually said to prevent Black magics, but that’s all myth. Rowan is so strong that it really enhances my magics. They do protect, when the right enchantment is put on them, but they make much better wands and staffs, in the gypsy perspective.”
“What did the fairies look like?” Landon interrupted.
“They were the colors of nature with wings the perfectly blended into the scene. Some had leaves for wings, others had flower petals, and others had glittering wings that looked like a glimmer of light. My favorite one had bark as wings. She was quite snippy. She even bit me when I sat on her branch wrong.
“But, anyway, I was living in that tree for the week when I made my wand. My core is a bone from…”
“A bone!” several people exclaimed.
“Well, several bones,” I corrected. “Listen, I know it sounds crazy, but it’s actually very traditional for me. I grew up hearing gypsy lore. Frog bones, when cleaned by ants, can be used in several magical ways. The bones on the left side will promote hatred between people, and bones on the right side promote love. I have three of each, six ribs, in my wand, lined end to end to create my core. The bones are even more potent because I had them cleaned over a fire of rune, juniper, and elder, all three of which are powerful woods. The fire, too, was an ice fire, which isn’t that easy or common but my father helped me create it.”
“What special attachment do you have to your core?” Landon asked.
“It was my pet frog,” I told him. “He died and I took advantage of his passing to further my knowledge in my heritage.”
“Wait, so you made your wand based entirely off of gypsy tradition?” Jason asked.
“Yes, and my wand has never failed, never faltered, and it is covered in runes, if you care to look closer.” I held out my want closer towards the center. “Strength, power, protection, wisdom, magic,” I recited. Each rune lit up as I said its power.
“There is no rune for magic,” Landon snorted.
“This rune would only work for a rowan, since rowan is used to store unlimited magic,” I told him. “Heather could pick this up and create a city from nothing using the magic stored in this wand.”
“That’s insane,” Carson muttered. I shrugged and slid my wand back into my boot.
“Um, Sage, this isn’t really about your wand, but I thought gypsies were, like, fortune tellers, not tree people,” Jae said.
“Gypsies have a whole lot of magic that most people don’t really know about. From a young age gypsies usually get in touch with the nature around them. I’m kind of behind on that part, but I get the gist of it. The fortune tellers, or those who practice divination, are very skilled in the Voodoo magic.
“Voodoo is not controlling the body. Voodoo is about the soul, the very essence of a person. Blood magic can be used to control the body, no matter how much a person doesn’t want to do something. Voodoo makes them want to do it. Voodoo changes their very core, which is why it is the blackest of magics. The thing is, a skilled gypsy in the art of Voodoo can peer into a soul. The soul is separate from the body, you see. It is not just in the present, but also in the past and the future. A skilled gypsy can peer into the soul and listen to all it has to say. The soul is not just on the inside of the body, either.
“The soul can be seen through a person’s appearance. The eyes, the face, the hands, they all tell the story of your life. That is why palm reading are usually a person’s first thought when they think of gypsies. It’d be weird to just stare at the person’s face, right?”
“Can you see the future?” Jae asked.
“I, I’ve tried, but I’m no expert,” I stammered.
“Can you try?” Heather asked eagerly. She held out her hand to me. I blushed and took it.
“I’m telling you, this is not my strong suit,” I warned her. I traced her palm with my ring finger, listening to the faint whispers it provided me. “Strength,” I finally interpreted. “You will find strength in the very near future. You will find it in… in…” I paused. It didn’t make sense. “You will find strength in the… the bay.”
“What?” Heather giggled. “I think you need more practice.”
“I told you,” I laughed.
“Soup’s on,” Emily told us. She had somehow made a stew to rival Matron’s. Beef chunks and veggies were bobbing on the surface of my bowl; the broth was thick and tasty. Everyone lapsed into silence as we ate second helpings. The rest of the day was dedicated to trying to mentally prepare ourselves for whatever was next.