The bright glow of morning pierced through Mara’s eyelids bringing her into consciousness. She stretched away the sleepy feeling in her body and rolled onto her side to face the clock that sat on the table next to her bed. Groggily, Mara rubbed her eyes trying to make them focus on the red numbers staring back at her.
“Eleven thirty,” Mara’s voice croaked still raspy from sleep. When the time finally sank in to her fog-filled brain her eyes shot open and she nearly tumbled onto the floor.
“Eleven thirty? How can it be eleven thirty? I’m beyond late for school!” Mara ran to her closet grabbing the first thing her hands touched and ran around her room like a mad woman. She tugged the t-shirt trying to get it to cooperate as she ran to her dresser.
“I can’t believe I overslept, I even had an alarm set. How could this possibly happen?” Mara yelled mostly to herself. She tried to fight with her hair until she decided yesterday’s ponytail was good enough.
Mara quickly swept eyeliner on her lower lid to hide the dark smears around her eyes from the black river that had been her makeup the day before. She then ran over to her bed and picked up her jeans as she tried to tug them on.
She hopped across the floor on one foot as she battled with her jeans before running down the stairs to see her aunt sitting in the kitchen; her cat perched on a stool next to Natalie.
Natalie regarded Mara with a tense smile. “There you are. How are you feeling?”
“Not so good. I’m late for school,” Mara replied obviously perplexed. “It’s eleven thirty. Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“I called you in today, you didn’t seem that well last night,” Natalie said as she tiptoed around the real reason. She had already revealed the magical world to Mara; it was now Mara’s turn to accept it on her own. “Are you feeling better?”
Mara sighed with relief and took up a spot on the last vacant stool at the counter. “Yeah, I’m fine. But I had a weird dream last night,” Mara said as she twirled a glass of orange juice that had been waiting for her on the counter. She watched the liquid slosh around and up the walls of the glass.
“What do you mean you had a weird dream?” Natalie asked, and Sasha’s head tilted to the side as if she were wondering the same thing.
Mara looked at her cat oddly before shaking her head. “Well, you were tying to tell me that I was a witch and that there’s this Magical Realm or something. You said instead of living in Europe, you had actually been there the whole time.” Mara smiled as she thought about how ridiculous all of it was sounding to her own ears.
“You said you came back when you heard about all of the accidents that happened around me, you even said I was the one who caused them with my powers. Oh, and this all happened after I apparently started a fire down here at the stove.”
Mara’s words died off as she turned towards the stove to her right. Her mouth hung wide open as she noticed the scorch marks that matched the ones she had believed were in her dream.
“And Sasha… Talked-“ Mara’s voice trailed off as she turned back toward her aunt again.
Sasha’s tail twitched and she saw the cat’s mouth begin to move as if they were trying to form words.
“Well dear, that wasn’t a dream at all, in fact, everything you said actually did happen yesterday.”
Mara stared blankly at her cat. There was no way her cat could have just talked to her again, that couldn’t be possible. That dream couldn’t have been real; she must still be in the dream. That had to be it, she was still asleep and still dreaming because there was no way magic and talking cats could exist.
Mara’s face began to feel warm and the entire kitchen turned into a swirling mass of colors as her vision began to darken. Unable to keep upright, Mara fell from the stool, crashing to the kitchen floor.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Mara blinked hard, shutting her eyes tightly against the blinding lights of the living room. She sat up on the large floral print couch disoriented, seeing her cat’s large yellow-green eyes just inches from her face.
“Are you going to stay with me now, or are you going to pass out again?” There was a hint of mockery leaking through Sasha’s voice.
Mara screamed and jumped off the couch, sliding to a painful, crashing halt on the wooden floor.
“Get that thing out of here! I don’t want to see it. Lock it in the bathroom or something I don’t care. Just get it away from me.”
“Now excuse me,” Sasha said aghast. “I have been with you through everything, all of those families and homes. You have always talked to me, come to me for comfort, and now when I finally talk back you scream and push me away? What if cats screamed when humans talked? How would that make all of you humans feel? When I found you in that alley, I saved you. I saved you from years of being alone, and now you’re turning away from me?”
Sasha kept shouting, lashing out at Mara with her words, thoroughly enraged by Mara’s reaction toward her. Sasha had waited years in hopes of finally being able to talk to Mara, to finally be able to partake in the conversation and help Mara when she was feeling sad. She hadn’t wanted to be silent all those years, but she had no other choice at the time. Sasha had been forced into silence until they were certain Mara was indeed a witch.
Natalie sighed and went to pick Sasha up, but she had unleashed her claws, imbedding them deep into the arm of the chair. She fought Natalie every step of the way.
“Come on now Sasha, Mara needs space, she needs time to adjust. And you are ruining my couch,” Natalie said calmly yet firmly trying to get the cat to retract her claws. When she had finally detached Sasha from the couch, she hissed and growled all the way up the stairs.
Mara had a hard time identifying the horrid sound that came from the mouth of that cat. It was so animalistic and yet, so human. It made her cringe.
Sasha continued to screech and yell at both Natalie and Mara, even after she was long out of sight. Sasha was enraged, it was her duty to help Mara through this time. It was part of the reason Sasha had been sent to her. She was supposed to be the one to explain the new world Mara was about to step into, and yet there she was, being put off to the side. Unwanted.
Mara closed her eyes and covered her ears trying to flush out the sound of her cat’s voice from her mind. Sasha had been with Mara since she was seven years old. She had found the kitten all alone an alley near her uncle’s house at the time. That cat had saved Mara as much as she had saved it. Sasha had gone everywhere with Mara, she had gone to all the different homes. They had never been separated; Mara would never have let that happen.
Had Sasha really gone down that alley on purpose knowing that Mara would have wandered down there, as she implied had happened? The only thing Mara knew was that she couldn’t handle what that cat had turned into. No, it wasn’t what Sasha had turned into; it was what she had always been. Sasha was, and always had been a talking cat.
It was the proof that magic really did exist, and that thought scared Mara. If magic could really exist, then she could really be a witch. If that was true, then perhaps her aunt had told the truth, and she had been the one to cause all of the accidents.
Natalie went back down the stairs alone and held her hands out in an offering to help Mara up from the ground. Mara looked up into the brown eyes of her aunt and shrugged her off, getting up on her own. “I don’t need your help. I’m fine,” her voice was armed with ice.
“Mara hunny, please try to control your emotions. You could cause another accident, and I know you don’t want that to happen.”
As Mara went on, her voice got colder. “Why should I listen to you? You’ve lied to me from the very beginning, lied to me about everything. The past eleven years of my life I have thought there was something wrong with me.” The air in the room began to respond to Mara’s mood, the temperature dropped and the atmosphere became thicker. Natalie tried to soothe her, to calm her down before things got out of control.
“Look, I’m really sorry, but I couldn’t say anything about magic to you before. We have very specific rules in place for these types of situations. Rules that can’t be broken.”
“But if you would have told me about these powers when I was younger, then all of this could have been avoided! I could have learned how to control my powers sooner. At least then I wouldn’t have lived my life thinking I was an unwanted freak!”
The sound of shattering glass broke through Mara’s rampage. Everything happened before either of them had the chance to realize what had even happened.
Mara felt a burning sensation on her arm and looked down to see a stream of blood flowing down, dripping from her fingers. A large gash ran the length of her forearm. Both Natalie and Mara looked to the side, seeing the remains of a floor lamp near the corner of the room.
The shock brought Mara out of her cold anger, returning the room to its previous state as she placed her hand tightly over the wound. Natalie rushed Mara into the kitchen to clean up the gash, and Mara watched as the bright, ruby-red splotches landed on the white tiled floor of the kitchen. Each drop holding Mara’s gaze as Natalie searched through for a rag and first aid kit.
“Natalie, what’s wrong with me?”
Natalie hurried back over to Mara with a towel, pressing it tightly to the wound. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re powers are just growing much faster. I think you may have taken the safety off so to speak,” Natalie’s lips pulled up in a small smile before going serious again.
“You need to make sure you keep a handle on your emotions, they seem to be closely linked to your magical outbursts.”
Natalie paused for a moment, and Mara could tell she was thinking carefully about her next words. “I think you need to go to Shadow’s Edge.”
Mara shot her aunt a quizzical look. “And just what exactly is Shadow’s Edge?”
“It’s an institute for supernatural beings. A place where you won’t have to be afraid to be yourself,” Natalie explained. “They have people there who can help you through this transition, probably better than I could. And they will be able to teach you to control your powers.”
“You mean you want me to transfer schools? You want me to leave my friends and go somewhere else where there isn’t a single person I know.” Mara couldn’t hide how horribly wrong that idea was to her. She had arrived at her current school as a freshman and had been lucky enough to find two people she loved to no end. People she could share every part of her life with, or so she had thought. Now her aunt was talking about her switching schools and leaving Matt and Sarah behind.
“Do I have to go? Is there a way I can just stop being a witch, to just shut off my powers? I want to stay here,” Mara said with a note of desperation.
“I’m not going to force you to leave, the decision is entirely your own. However, it would be better for you to go to this school. There is no way you can turn this off Mara, I know the thought of leaving your friends seems scary, but the thought of endangering your friends should scare you more. The adjustment period for witches is difficult under normal circumstances, and your case is far from normal.
“I will caution you, if you do choose to stay here and you refuse to learn about your abilities, you will not be able to control them,” she paused giving Mara a pointed look. “If you fail to control your powers, they will consume you and incidents like that will be the least of your problems.”
Mara had kept silent; she hadn’t been sure what to say back to her aunt after that. Once the bleeding had slowed, Natalie covered the gash with her hands and closed her eyes. Mara felt a warm tingling sensation running along her skin where just a second ago she had felt pain. When Natalie had pulled her hands back, Mara looked down to see the wound completely healed.
“And next time, it could be Matt, Sarah, or some random stranger that suffers instead of yourself.”
With those parting words, Natalie left the kitchen and went upstairs, leaving Mara alone in silence.
Mara went over to the fridge where the broom and dustpan were hidden, and took them into the living room where the lamp’s shattered pieces littered the ground. She started to sweep up the glass as she thought about her aunt’s words.
As much as she dreaded the thought of leaving Matt and Sarah, she knew she would never be able to live with herself if she ever hurt them. Or any other person for that matter. She couldn’t be the cause of someone else’s suffering, but she had a hard time believing there wasn’t another way.
There had to be a way she could learn to control her powers and still stay with her friends. Though how would she be able to see them every day and know that she was keeping such a big secret from them? They had told each other everything, how would she be able to keep something so big from her friends?
If there really was no other option for controlling her magic then what choice did Mara have? To leave her life behind and learn control in the hopes that she may return one day, or stay and every day live with the possibility of hurting someone, or worse?
There really was no choice. There was no way she could take the chance when it came to the safety of her friends and others around her. Mara had to go to Shadow’s Edge.
When everything had been cleaned up, Mara sent a text to Matt and Sarah to meet at the café after school so they could talk. After sending the messages, with a feeling of defeat, she trudged up the stairs stopping just shy of her aunt’s door.
Mara stood just outside the door, biting her lip as she wondered what to say to her aunt. She finally took a deep breath and knocked on the door, waiting just a moment before finally speaking up. “Natalie, I’ve decided to go to this Shadow’s Edge place you were talking about.”
Mara waited outside the door for something to come from the other end, but she was only met with silence. She was about to turn around thinking that maybe her aunt wasn’t in her room when the doorknob squeaked and the door opened.
“I’m glad to hear you made the right choice.”
“I just don’t want to hurt anyone,” Mara replied slightly irritated. She quickly caught herself and put her emotions in check before she ended up breaking something else of Natalie’s. Perhaps something not as easily dismissible as a cheap lamp.
“I asked Sarah and Matt to meet me at the café so I could talk to them-“
“You can’t tell them any of this Mara. You can’t tell anyone,” Natalie interjected.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell them. Who would really believe me anyways? I know I wouldn’t,” Mara said. “I need to tell them that I’m leaving, they have a right to know that. When will I be going to this new school anyways?”
“You will go tomorrow morning, I already made the arrangements.”
“How did you know I would choose to go there, what made you so certain I wouldn’t stay here?”
Natalie looked at her niece knowingly. “I saw the look of fear in your eyes when you realized what you had done. I was in the same position when I was your age. I didn’t want to leave my friends either, but in the end it was the right choice and I knew it.”
“Can we talk more about this later? Matt and Sarah should be on their way by now. I don’t want to be late.”
Natalie smiled softly at Mara. “Sure thing, good luck.”
The entire drive, Mara thought about what she could possibly say to her friends. How would she explain to them that not only was she transferring schools, but that she was leaving the next morning? She knew they would be able to tell that something was wrong right away. They knew her too well not to notice. Mara just hoped she would be able to give them enough of the truth to appease their curiosity. The trick would be to reassure them so they wouldn’t be as upset as she was.
By the time Mara parked her car, she was nearly shaking, her nerves had finally caught up to her. She glanced around the parking lot looking for Matt’s car, but it was nowhere to be found. Mara decided to go on in and wait get a table while she waited for her friends to show up. She ordered a pop and sat at the table watching the door.
Mara started to rehearse what she was going to say in her head when Matt and Sarah walked into the restaurant together, spotting her immediately. They both smiled and waved as they made a beeline through all the other tables and customers going straight towards her table.
“Mara! We were wondering about you all day today. It isn’t like you to miss school. Is everything alright? Are you okay? Did something happen?” Sarah started to shoot out questions one after another before she even made it all the way to the table. She ran right up to Mara, hugging her so tight she could barely breathe.
“I’m fine. Well, that’s not actually one hundred percent true. I have some news to tell you both,” Mara said, as she looked down at the table, suddenly unable to meet either of their gazes. If she were to look into their faces it would have only made telling them more difficult.
“What is it? Did something happen?” Matt asked with concern.
“Kind of. I’m transferring schools.”
“Transferring schools?” They asked in unison.
“What do you mean you’re transferring schools?” Sarah asked, astonishment clear in her voice.
“I mean I won’t be going to West anymore. My aunt told me today that I’ll be going to a new school.”
“When are you leaving? Why? Where are you going?” Again, Sarah asked any and every question she could possibly think of without giving Mara any time to answer.
“I leave tomorrow, and I don’t really remember where it is. It’s some private boarding school type school though. It’s nowhere close to here. Natalie said she believes it could help me in regards to my future,” Mara rolled her eyes like she didn’t quite agree. “She said it was a great school and she went there when she was my age or something like that.”
“Just because she went there and it worked for her doesn’t mean that it will be a good fit for you too. You aren’t the same person. You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” Matt chimed in. “I mean, you don’t want to go. Do you?” He asked more quietly.
“No, I don’t want to leave you gu-“
“Then don’t! Stay here with us. Tell Natalie you want to stay here.” Matt cut her off.
Mara wanted to burst into tears right then. She wanted nothing more than to tell her aunt that she wanted to stay with her friends. She wanted nothing more than to be able to go to school with them and live a normal life, but normal just wasn’t in her deck of cards. There were so many things she didn’t understand, so many different things she had yet to learn herself, and she couldn’t learn any of it by staying where she was.
“I told Natalie I would try it. If I really give the place a shot and I don’t like it after a couple months, then she said I could come back. I don’t want to leave you guys, but she really seems to think this could help me.” Mara looked back down at the table, trying to bite back the tears that were threatening to escape.
When she finally looked back up, Sarah already had tears streaming down her face, and the look on Matt’s face was so devastating that she could no longer contain her own.
Mara finally choked back her tears enough to speak up again. “I promise both of you that I will come back and visit as often as I can. We can talk on the phone and video chat.” Mara looked between the two of them. “We will not grow apart just because I’m leaving. You’re both like a part of my family, the only constant thing I have been able to count on. Don’t either of you ever change.”
The three of them all stood from the table. Mara pulled out money and laid it on the table to pay for her pop before she walked around and hugged both of her friends tightly. She whispered her goodbyes as the tears flowed once more before she turned around and left her best friends behind to go back to her aunt’s house.
*****************
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Today's dedication is to the wonderful SarahBensonBooks, another friendly, helpful Wattpadder. Sarah has been encouraging and supportive and has always given some wonderful feedback. I am completely in love with her fantastic adventure story Born of Shadow, a fun exciting, well written story of a girl's first time in Egypt. But you better not believe that's all that's in store ;)