Fourteen-year-old Kimmie Blanco gasped at what she’d done.
Her Basset Hound, Pedro, was frozen in mid-jump as he hopped up onto her aunt and uncle’s bed. He literally hung in the air, his short fur unmoving, his long tongue hanging out of his mouth, a drop of slobber perpetually trapped at the edge of the dog’s mouth.
She backed up against the dresser, gripping the edges. Pedro wasn’t the only thing that had stopped moving. The annoying cuckoo clock on the wall no longer ticked. The TV in the living room was eerily silent, cut off in the middle of a noisy commercial. The creaks in the wooden frame of the house that came with every gust of wind were no more. The entire world had gone still and mute. Nothing stirred, or breathed, or lived.
Except for her.
She approached the window and stared out at the cows and the pigs in the backyard pen, each of the animals caught in a surreal pose instead of showing any sign of life. Tree branches bent at weird angles, pushed by a brisk wind and unable to straighten. She noticed a flower petal hanging in mid-air a few yards away. She stepped closer to the window, gawking at the petal as it hung gracefully above the ground. Everywhere she looked she saw a still photo instead of real life.
Her breath sped up and her mind raced, frantically wondering what terrible, and amazing, thing she’d done and wanting nothing more than to undo it. She wanted the world to go back to the way it was. Back to normal. But she didn’t know how.
“Stop it,” she whispered. Nothing moved. “Stop it,” she said again. The entire world ignored her request. She panicked, fearing that she’d somehow broken reality. She shouted with all the ferocity she could muster.
“STOP IT!”
The dog landed on the bed and sniffed the comforter. The clock ticked and the TV started back up in the other room, the commercial picking up right where it left off. She looked out the window and saw life returned to normal, as if nothing had happened. The cows lowered their heads, munching on grass and the pigs waddled around near their trough.
She blinked. Had she imagined the entire thing?
Her stomach lurched, and she ran to the bathroom. She reached the toilet just as she vomited up every last trace of her lunch, and then some. She slid to the cold, tiled floor and lay there for a long while, her head spinning, her limbs tingly and weak. She shouldn’t have done that. She’d get in trouble for this, so much trouble. Grounded for a year, at least.
And she couldn’t even say what she’d done.
She lost track of time, her mind receding into some blurry void that crept in at the edge of her consciousness. Pedro barked, and Kimmie shot up from the bathroom floor, jolted back to reality. Her aunt and uncle were home. They’d discover what had happened. She flushed the toilet and quickly wiped up the nearby area. She hurried outside and grabbed the magic book from the top of the dresser, the same book she’d been secretly reading and studying for almost three months. She slammed it shut and stuck it back in the secret space under the bottom drawer, replacing the false bottom and throwing Auntie Belle’s hosiery on top. She slid the drawer shut and ran out of the room, closing the door behind her. She leapt onto the couch, picking up the remote and pretending to watch whatever was on the TV, even as sweat still beaded on her forehead.
The front door opened and Kimmie glanced up at the woman who walked in, hoping she didn’t look as sick as she felt.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Hey, Auntie Belle!” she smiled.
*
Kimmie held her breath as a wave of dizziness washed over her. The worst had already passed, but her skin was flush and sweaty, and her stomach still roiled. The telltale signs of magic, which always seemed to want to kill her.
She hadn’t vomited, but that was only because she hadn’t eaten all day. The goblins thoroughly enjoyed watching her dry heave, though, giggling each time like schoolchildren. Let them laugh. She’d show them.
Somehow.
The injured goblins wheezed and groaned next to her. Kranka had ordered that she be left alone, so they’d tied her wrists and dragged her off to sit with the convalescents, along with Buka, whom the other goblins gave a wide berth. None of them wanted to be associated with the exile, not after what Kranka had threatened to do.
She took a few deep breaths and leaned against the wall at the edge of the cave, drained. Despite her sickness, the magic still called to her, beckoning like a diabolical siren. After her experience with it as a kid, and then seeing what it had done to her family, she’d sworn never to mess with it again. But now… things were starting to make sense.
Her dream wasn’t a dream. It was a vision. This whole time, she’d been watching some guy in Japan get attacked by a spirit or a demon. But why? She didn’t know him. She didn’t know the temple. She’d never been to Japan in her life. She didn’t even know if she was seeing something about to happen, or something that had already happened. Her only clue was the guy’s clothes, which seem old-fashioned to her.
It had to be tied to the magic. It was Japanese in origin. She had to say variations on Japanese words to trigger it, so maybe that tied her to old memories or events. A longshot, but she would accept any kind of plausible explanation right now.
She studied the lair. Twelve goblins that she could see. Another one had retreated down a back tunnel with Kranka. A few more were outside somewhere. They’d never make it out of here without help. Not unless she was willing to embrace the little magic she knew. The thought of it sent her stomach lurching, but she fought back the urge to heave. She thought of her mom for the first time in a while, and imagined her feeling this way, addicted in more ways than one.
“My fault. Again…”
Buka rocked back and forth beside her.
“Buka.” She slid over a couple inches. “This isn’t your fault. They did this to us.”
Buka shook his head. “I did this. I didn’t want to stay away.” He buried his head in his large hands. “I wanted friends.”
Kimmie felt a pang of guilt. Her reservations melted away. She had to give it a try, if not for her, then at least for Buka, who didn’t deserve what was coming.
“Listen,” she whispered. “We’re gonna get out of this. I know a trick we can use to escape, but I need to remember how it works.” Buka gave her a questioning look. “It’s been a while since I tried it. But I’ll get it. Just be ready to run.”
Buka’s eyes widened. He watched the back of the cave.
“Kranka will hurt us. If you don’t become his queen–”
“That is not happening. It’s revolting, on a lot of levels. I’m telling him no, I just need some time before I do that. I need to practice something.”
Buka shifted around to get his legs underneath him, literally getting ready to run. Kimmie waved him back down.
“Act casual.” When Buka stared at her she pointed at the ground. “Sit down. Don’t give them any reason to get suspicious.”
Buka sat down, a little uneasy. A few goblins sitting near the entrance perked up at the same time, and at first Kimmie thought they were on to her escape plan. Instead, they looked at each other and then scampered out of the cave. A couple more followed, and Kimmie tensed, wondering if something was about to happen. None of the other goblins moved, though, and Kranka hadn’t come out of his hovel, so she ignored the noise around her and tried to focus on the spell she’d once used. The only spell she knew.
Kimmie tried to picture the book in her head, the words on that one particular page. It was all in Japanese, which she was only barely fluent in. She could speak about as much as a tourist could, but reading it was an entirely different matter. She’d become very intimate with her Japanese-English dictionary book back in the day, but that was over ten years ago. She’d forgotten a LOT of things in that time.
One word came back to her, Shikai. Shikai-something. She grit her teeth. What was the other part of the spell?
A goblin bounced into the cave, full of glee.
“Boss!” He yelled, waving everyone over. “Boss! You won’t believe this!”