Molly’s stomach dropped. She was falling. Eyes wide, limbs flailing, she tried to grab onto something, but her arm only brushed velvet as her stomach lurched. Then her head hit something hard and unforgiving.

She groaned, rolling onto all fours. She closed her eyes to retreat back into darkness, then rested her forehead against a soft fabric ground that smelled of fresh mint.

“Careful,” someone said with no humor or care in their voice. She recognized that voice when everything rushed back to her. She remembered hanging out with her friends, the unicorn horn drinks they were drinking, the spirits, the mini-trolls, being attacked, and dying…

Dying?

Molly lifted her head, only to have it hit something again. She grimaced.

Now a pounding pulse was swimming in her head.

From the floor rug she found herself lying on, she tilted her head a little and saw that what she kept hitting was a sturdy wooden coffee table.

She kept her head away from it this time as she leaned against what she must have fallen off of earlier, which was a couch, to stare at Kren, who had a drink in his large hands and was studying her. His brown eyes carried no emotion, just like his voice hadn’t. He was in a chair built just for him. A small wooden one where he could set his feet on the ground.

Molly was hesitant to move. To make a sound. She had seen him do things that she had not known were possible.

She waited for him to say something. To explain himself. Explain why he had taken her away from her friends and her family.

The words slipped off her tongue. “You…killed me.” She stared at him, waiting for him to blink. He did not. Then she forced herself to pat her chest with her palms and then her arms.

She couldn’t be dead. She didn’t think she was dead. But she had heard him say….

“Did not kill you. Friends only think that.”

Her friends. What happened to them when everything had gone black? Had they run for help? Had they called the magickal police who worked for the magickal society? Did they even have the number for the Magickal Division of Officers? Were there magickal officers near her town since they didn’t live in a city? She had never needed to look before.

“What about my family?”

“I’m sure they too.” Kren nodded then took a sip from the deep violet mug he was holding. The slurp was noisy in the quiet room.

“But why? Why would you…how did you get me here?”

Molly tore her eyes away from him and looked around. Her brain was so frantic, she didn’t know if she was looking for an exit or just wanting to take in her surroundings. Her heart was pounding so fast that her breathing couldn’t keep up. The room was small. Too small. It was definitely an apartment. She could tell because of the balcony door to the right of the yellow-flowered couch she was sitting against, but something was wrong with the sliding glass door. It was not a door at all. It was not a way to escape. It had a handle. It had a track. But no outline that showed it could open.

She looked down. The rug under her was striped dark green and orange. She followed it with her eyes to the wooden floors and then up the walls that were painted a cool green. There were shelves upon shelves on the walls filled with different kinds of mugs. There was a bookshelf, what looked like a small kitchen off the room they were in, and then a door. The door. The door that had to lead to the outside. But something was wrong with it. It also had no outline. It had only a handle and no way to escape.

“Transformation magick bring you here,” Kren said, taking another sip as he watched her. Then he waved to the doors and said, “Transformation magick also,” as if to explain those.

“But why?” Her heart was pounding harder. What was she supposed to do against someone who knew magick? Her hands slid to the pockets of her pants in search of her phone, but then she remembered he had broken it.

“For you to live,” Kren said and shook his head. He looked agitated. His green hair brushed across his large forehead as he set his mug down on the short side table next to him. “Stupid Trennly.”

Trennly had attacked her. He tried to take her over like other spirits had tried to do, but why?

“You brought me here to protect me from Trennly?”

“Brought you here to protect you from self.” Kren looked disgusted with her. “Cell magick, trends, spirits, Trennly. Need to learn to protect self.”

“By making the world think that I’m dead?”

Kren shrugged. “Easiest way. You tell me. In this town. Are parents accepting of changes of magick? Would they let you go to Lockdrest?”

She didn’t know what Lockdrest was.

This was a horrifying mess that Molly would have to clean up. This was embarrassing. Now, it would also be harder for her parents to allow her to do anything relating to cell witches or cell magick if she found her way back.

“But what about your shop? How are you supposed to go back to that if they think you killed me? Doesn’t anyone know where you live?”

“Doesn’t matter. No-Jitters doing bad anyway. I don’t use magick like Trennly. Only magick for calming or energy. Not trends. Trennly’s Drinks was ruining No-Jitters. Trennly…ACK! Trennly…” Kren seized his mug again, sloshing its contents.

“But why did…why would he…” Trennly had never done anything to her before, and he had always seemed like a nice guy. She had trusted him because her friends had trusted him.

She felt the sudden urge to run away. Dizziness overtook her as she recalled how that spirit hand had reached for her and had come out of a physical body like her own. She felt sick. It had been someone she thought she knew. Someone she thought she trusted. But they had tried to take advantage of her.

“Sit,” Kren commanded as he rose from his seat and disappeared into the kitchen.

She scrambled up and fell into the too-small couch. The yellow velvet with the threaded flowers rubbed against her arm, making her skin feel all wrong.

Kren returned with a small green trash can that he set beside her foot, then pulled a box of tissues from it that he handed her. From his other hand, he gave her a multi-shaded blue mug that reminded her of the ocean. It was heavy in her hands even though it was empty.

“You are empty vessel,” he stated as he turned and walked back to the kitchen.

This time she watched the back of his brown button-up, which looked worn, like it had lost some color over time. It crinkled and released with each step as she sat there in shock.

What was an empty vessel? Did it mean that she was empty inside? That she did not have a soul?

“Wait! What does that mean?” she yelled after him.

He returned with a clear kettle of steaming light blue liquid and motioned to her to hold out her cup. She did, and he poured carefully, then headed back to the kitchen to put it away.

Should she drink it? He had saved her. Now he was giving her a drink? What did that mean? Maybe he did want to help her. Maybe he did want to teach her to protect herself.

The steam from the liquid rose to her cheek, warming her face until she felt it turning damp. She shifted the mug in her lap so the aroma could rise straight to her nose instead. Even with panic muddling her senses, she could smell some kind of exotic flower in a mystic mist. Or maybe it was fruit trees growing bountifully in a fog.

The steam was calming, dazing, and guarding.

“Take sip.”

Kren was back. She instinctively did what he said. She had the desire to trust him and please him and she hated herself for it. She was always falling into those patterns with her friends, her teachers, and her family.

The hot blue liquid touched her lips first, and she took in a blooming feeling of wellness. It was like three liquid petals were set individually on her tongue before they dissolved into a foggy candy-like vapor that steamed up through her nose, calming her nerves.

“Oh, wow.”

Kren nodded, satisfied, and then asked, “You see spirits?”

Molly nodded. “Ever since I was little.” At first, she thought that everyone did. When she was a baby, apparently, her parents took her to every non-magickal doctor they could think of, trying to figure out what was wrong with her since she screamed and cried all the time. The day she was finally old enough to yell out at a preschool, of all places, and say what was wrong with her, was when she realized that no one else saw spirits. After that, she shut up about it and always kept it to herself, embarrassed. She did not want her parents to be disappointed in her or send her somewhere far away. It wasn’t until she got older, after doing research and forming a bond with her friends, that she told her friends what she saw. They initially thought it was cool until they found it annoying, but it was better than them thinking she was weird when things happened to her that they could not see or understand.

“Not normal,” Kren stated.

She nodded and looked out the window. She wished she could see the busy street. She could almost hear it below. She knew it wasn’t normal to see spirits. It was one of the things she hated about it—besides having to be on guard all the time.

A question formed in her mind and snapped her attention back to him. “Can you see them? And Trennly? Can mini-trolls see them too?” No. That couldn’t be it, either. She had done the research. More people had to have seen them. Otherwise, there would have been nothing on the subject.

He recoiled and motioned for her to take another drink. She could tell that her sudden outburst startled him. Folding his hands in his lap, he took a deep breath. “Beings who work with and have studied spirit magick can see them too.”

Spirit magick? “But I haven’t studied any magick. Well, not really. Especially not when I was a child.”

He looked to her mug and nodded to it. Annoyed, she took another sip and let the mystic fog fill her lungs and slow her heartbeat.

“Empty vessels. You are different.”

“How?”

“Not much known. Not empty. Bad term. But rare. From what known, bodies easily ready to take magick or anything else. But spirit won’t leave own body. You won’t be able to astral project or do spirit ejection. Mind too ready to sink somewhere else and let others take over. Soul just wants to fall into self. Spirits see this, then want to take over. Want body because alive body better than dead. Spirit then can keep body alive.”

Molly wished she had her phone to look up what some of those terms meant.

She took another long slurp of the liquid that Kren had given her. Why was her soul so different than others?

Kren cleared his throat and asked, “Where do you go when a spirit takes over? Or tries?”

She didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to go back to that place of ice. She didn’t understand why she went there.

He noticed her hesitancy. “You don’t fight back?”

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Her voice broke. “I can’t.”

He nodded and took another sip, looking out the sliding glass door. “You had bad incident?”

She did. When she was in middle school, she had been on a subway with her parents one day in a city when a spirit tried to take her. It was so crowded that she couldn’t move or get away, and then she had woken up in the hospital. Her parents had said she was having seizures on the subway. She imagined that the spirit had lost its hold on her during the commotion.

After that, she had tried researching on her own and trying to find some way to protect herself, while trying not to look weird, trying to keep up with her friends, and trying not to go against her parents’ wishes and beliefs. It was exhausting.

Kren seemed to realize she wasn’t going to tell him about the incident, so he moved on. “Tell me where you go. I tell you why Trennly tried.”

She took a deep breath and put the mug on the floor. She didn’t want to start shaking and spill its contents. “I go to someplace under a dark blue sky on a thin sheet of purple ice. Sometimes the ice cracks and I fall through.”

With a nod, Kren put his mug down and went to the sliding glass door. She was thankful that he didn’t ask any more about the place. “Trennly has had problem for long time since he was changed. He has been—Is desperate to not be troll any longer.”

Molly watched as Kren lifted his hand to the side of the door and closed his hand into a fist. The lines that were supposed to outline the door came back. Her shoulders relaxed. She wasn’t entirely trapped anymore. There was a way out if she wanted to take it.

“Trennly wasn’t always a troll?” she asked.

Kren shook his head as he headed to the main door and made his hand into a fist again. Dark lines grew around the door, forming its outline. “He was always a troll, not always a mini-troll.”

“But why would he not want to be a troll? Wouldn’t he want to go back to being a normal-sized troll?” After she and her friends had first run into Trennly and Kren when they opened their shops, they hit the internet to research trolls because they had never seen mini-trolls before. They could find nothing on mini-trolls but found that normal-sized trolls were huge—basically giants. Most lived in caves on Troulo, which was the island closest to where they lived, but desert trolls and ice trolls lived in other places.

“No. Trennly hates trolls. He hates self.”

Trennly hated trolls in general? He hated his own people? Why? Molly felt bad for him. She despised herself sometimes, but she didn’t mind the body she was in. She couldn’t imagine being trapped in a body she hated or hating being human in general. It wasn’t fair that he did. “Why does he not use magick?” She pointed to the door as she said this. She also thought of the horns that could grow on their heads with a simple drink. The drinks that Trennly himself had made them numerous times.

“Trennly took all transformation classes could at Lockdrest. Even if transform briefly into something, still in same body. Not like trans humans who can change bodies to fit genders in this world. Not enough study for creatures to change into other creatures. One day, something will be found for him.” Kren had his hands behind his back and was staring out the window. She wondered if he felt as bad for Trennly as she did, even though he had attacked her. “But now, is trying magick. Trying to take your body. Become human.”

Molly gasped. He had been trying to take her over? Become her? And then Kren had saved her…. Why?

“How do you know him? And how are you both…” she couldn’t bring herself to say it and hoped she didn’t have to. She hoped he knew what she meant so she didn’t sound rude.

“One day, kid-witch picking on me. I try to stop him. I knocked kid-witch down into tree. I young. Mother of kid, mom-witch, saw and turned me to mini-troll. I went back to my parents. They tried to stomp and kill new me. Days later found Trennly, mini-troll also,” Kren said.

Molly’s heart squeezed tight. He still wouldn’t look at her.

So, Kren had been trying to protect himself and was turned into something different? Still a troll? But smaller? What kind of magick did that? And by trying to stomp and kill him, did that mean that his parents didn’t want him just because he was different?

“How was Trennly…” She wondered if Trennly was changed in the same way.

“Trennly did not want to be troll before mini-troll. When six, found mother beating father to his death, then eat him.”

Molly didn’t mean to gasp in horror, but when she did, Kren turned and looked at her with only one eye before waving her off. “Way of most trolls. But Trennly disgusted. Tried stealing magick from same witch. Witch cursed him into mini-troll. I then followed Trennly to school. Followed him every day since. Not trust him. Know will do something stupid.” He turned and looked at her critically.

Did he blame her for causing his friend to do something stupid?

Kren plopped down in his short chair and started taking off his shoes and socks. His feet were huge, his toes misshapen and curved with bulbs at the end, and the middle of his foot was wide. She wondered where he found shoes and socks that fit him. He also had a swipe of a scar on the top of his left foot. She wondered where that was from.

Setting his shoes neatly beside his chair, Kren picked up his mug and took another slurp. “You can leave if want. But suggest stay. Learn.”

“Learn what? And stay for how long?”

“Magick. Protection. Sense.” The last word was said as if he wanted to spit it in her face. “Stay for basics of school, then go home. After knowing how to protect self.”

She had always wanted to know how to protect herself and had tried to learn how. If she could do that, would she be able to live a somewhat normal life? Would she be able to hide the fact that she was different from people and hide the fact that she could see ghosts from her friends?

To her, it might be worth it to take time away from her home, school, and social life to learn how to blend into society better.

But if she did, would she be able to jump right back in? Or would she fall behind in what was popular or trendy? Would her friends be willing to catch her up if she came back? Would they still even be her friends after she chose to leave them to go to another school? Even if it was to learn to protect herself from the spirits that tried to take her over so often, she honestly didn’t know if they would understand.

“Will I be allowed to talk to my family or friends while I’m away?”

“No.”

Her heart sank. “But why can’t I…why can’t I just let them know that I’m—” tears were forming in her eyes. She wanted to grab a tissue, but she couldn’t move to get one.

“Because what would world do if know kid was stolen. Taken. Forced to go to magick school. Problems.” He paused, thinking, “If come back alive. Will be okay. Just learn fast.”

But what if she was not able to learn fast? She had never done magick before. Not old magick. “But I don’t know any magick. I don’t know how to freeze people like you did or transform anything. I didn’t even know transformation magick was a thing.”

“Freezing is freezing souls. Spirit magick. Need symbols in own spirit. Anyone can do magick, if learn. I will teach you easiest spell. For amateurs, but will help.”

He got up then, his large feet squishing into the carpet. He put his mug back on the table and strolled over to sit beside her. Sitting, his head was as high as her armpit, but his body was as wide as her shoulders.

He took her mug from her hands and held it in only one of his. He squinted, scrutinizing it, his brown eyes losing focus for a moment before he straightened out his other hand.

She saw a thin purple film coming out of the mug like a snake toward Kren’s hand. It swayed to the rhythm of its own essence and connected to a similar pink wisp that was coming from Kren’s hand. Kren put his hand into his hair, scratched his thumbnail on one of his green strands, then returned his hand to swipe that same nail across the skin of his finger with a snap.

In an instant, the mug turned green.

And then the purple smoky veil was gone, returning into the mug.

“Transformation magick. Hard to do. Not hard to de-transform.” He handed the now-green mug to her. It still felt the same. It was just as heavy with the same blue liquid inside, but it somehow made Molly nervous holding it. There was also a small glimmer to it if she looked closely enough. “Call to mug’s essence. Everything has a soul. Like calls to like. Use your soul. Find how you are like mug. Call, it will come. Then, when connected, close hand in fist.” He demonstrated, squeezing his hand tightly in front of her. “Crush bonds. Will fall away. Easy.”

It didn’t sound easy, but she was willing to try. She had always wanted to try but had been scared to because none of her friends wanted anything to do with old magick.

At first, she tried to call or feel her soul like he had said, but felt nothing. It was like nothing was there. Like she was empty.

Her heart raced again.

She heard Kren sigh. “Focus,” he said as he got up. He left the room to let her be.

She tried again, but she only began to feel anything in herself when she thought of the place by the lake. It was then that her mind started slipping. She was not willing to go there. She pulled back.

If she wasn’t able to de-transform the color of the mug, how was she supposed to learn how to protect herself against spirits wanting to take her over?

She decided to skip to the second step instead. He said that like calls to like. The mug… she didn’t think she was heavy or dense like it was. She was blue sometimes if that meant sad, but did that even matter now if the mug was green? Ugh! She was getting annoyed, which wasn’t helping her focus.

She decided to take a sip from the mug instead, hoping it would calm her nerves. The gentle fog washed over her mind and did just that.

A gentle fog... It was like almost nothing, almost like her in a sense. A follower. Except the mug wasn’t a follower. What was she thinking? No. She looked to her hands, one holding the handle and the other wrapped around the smooth green surface of the mug where the warmth was dying out. She was the follower. She needed her friends to feel like she was something. She needed her friends to guide her and lift her up, just like the mug needed someone to guide it and lift it to their lips.

There. She felt a tiny spark of something within herself. A small part of her was reaching out, as if she had found something similar to her in the mug. It was calling to her soul.

Then she saw it. Her own essence of spirit. A small shimmer. The color of the body of water under that layer of purple ice. It was trying to reach for something.

Like called to like.

She thought again on how the mug needed her as much as she needed someone else. How functionality didn’t exist without another set of hands or a mind.

That purple veil was coming out of the mug just like before. It was darker than hers, but it was searching for and reaching for her. She guided her hand to it until the two purples touched, then she closed her hand into a fist.

And watched as the mug turned back to blue.

“Good job.”

Molly nearly dropped the mug when she flinched. Kren held out a plate of what looked like garlic bread. She could smell it on his breath. It reeked, curdling the emptiness of her stomach.

She shook her head.

He rolled his eyes. “Have strawberry strudel too. Will get phone and clothes tomorrow. Will take you to school. You sleep here.” He motioned to the couch.

She smiled, looking to the mug again. She was almost tempted to ask him to turn it back to another color so she could do it once more.

“I’ll take a strudel.” She couldn’t believe that she would finally learn how to protect herself. She couldn’t believe that she could do old magick. And she couldn’t believe that she had learned what was wrong with her, what made her different. She had a term to define herself now: an empty vessel. Although she still wasn’t entirely sure what that meant.

She felt guilty for leaving her mom and dad, of course. But they never wanted anything to do with her problem anyway. This was a chance for her to fix it and get back to them and her life without having to worry about ghosts or magick.

***

The next morning had been a rush. Kren had used visionary magick on her mixed with transformation magick, which tickled her skin the entire time that she wore the persona of the blonde extra-tall woman, which was the opposite of her short and brunette stature. He said that there may a slight glimmer to her since it was a more complicated transformation spell but that she wouldn’t be in it for long. Kren took her to get a week’s worth of clothes and then a new phone while she was in that form and didn’t let her drop the disguise until they had entered the airport. She had felt bad that he was spending his money on her, especially since he was closing his shop, but then she remembered that he had kidnapped her and had smashed her phone in the first place. She felt worse though, while they were waiting at the airport. After Kren had her input his phone number, she downloaded a few of the apps that she had liked from before. Not her social media. She knew that wouldn’t have been allowed, but certain cell-witch apps.

She didn’t plan to use them unless she needed them. She just figured that she shouldn’t go into a magickal school without any type of knowledge or protection. And she was sure that other students would have the same apps, too.

Over the years, the apps had become a comfort, especially in case she ran into another spirit, which the airport was surprisingly full of. Also, if she couldn’t fall asleep, she usually needed the rain to drip on her all night. As her friends had said, a couple of pixels of her soul was nothing. And Kren hadn’t elaborated anymore on that. He also seemed old with his mannerisms. She was sure he wouldn’t understand. She pocketed the call card with only a certain number of minutes.

While Kren was getting their tickets, she tried to research empty vessels but couldn’t find anything on the internet. So, maybe it was true that being an empty vessel was rare, or perhaps that wasn’t the right term.

Kren was nice enough, though, to help her avoid the airport spirits. Trying not to make a scene, since magick wasn’t allowed in airports, he steered her away from the spirits until they could find a magickal airline worker to tell them they were being harassed.

Another magickal worker then led them to their plane after Kren showed them their tickets and a fake magickal ID for Molly that no one seemed to care about. A big religious company that had sworn off magick had taken over and rebranded the non-magickal airlines. Ever since the change, thanks to technology and magick emerging, non-magikcal people could travel on magickal airlines, but magickal people could not travel on non-magickal ones, which didn’t seem to bother the magickal people that much.

Molly had traveled by plane a few times before on vacations, so she was thrilled to finally be allowed on a magickal airline to see how it was different. To her dismay, though, they were not heading to those airlines. They were going to another section where the private planes were held, past the TSA, straight to a smaller plane with golden letters glittering on the side that said ‘Lockdrest’. Next to it were two other smaller planes with the words ‘Opendrest’ and ‘Closedrest’.

“Need certain ticket,” Kren explained as they followed the worker. “Pathons owns it. Will take us to school. Use to have one plane to take to all schools. Then two. Now three. Use to have no names on sides.”

Molly didn’t know what Pathons were, but excitement was rushing through her, especially when they climbed up the stairs to what felt like a private jet. The seats were soft and grey, and there were far fewer seats than she had seen on most planes. And there were only three passengers on it, every single one of them kids. Two girls and a boy. They had to be students.

Kren walked down the aisle ahead of her then sat near a boy with deep tan skin and straight black hair. The boy’s brown eyes glanced away from a picture of a girl he was staring at to Kren. For a moment, he looked shocked but then composed himself and tucked the picture away in his bag as if he were trying to hide it. He then stared straight ahead.

“Is everyone on this plane students who are going to Lockdrest?” Molly asked Kren as she sat down next to him.

Kren nodded, closing his eyes as if he wanted to sleep.

She sighed and then turned to the boy they sat next to. She didn’t want to go into the school completely blind.

“Hey,” she said, trying to get his attention. “I’m Molly. Have you been to Lockdrest before? I just want to know if there is—”

He gave her a look of such annoyance that it made her stop talking. “This is my first year. I plan to only learn what I need to so I can get back. I have no answers for you.”

Molly’s voice was smaller this time, echoing her confidence. “It’s…my first time too.”

“Cool,” he said, turning his head away from her.

He refused to look at her again.