After a broken night’s sleep in addition to the zero sleep she had gotten the night before, Saffie woke feeling sick to the bottom of her stomach. The first thing she did was phone the hospital in the hope that the counterspell had taken time to work, and Dax had woken up in the middle of the night, but the receptionist told her he had made no improvement. Saffie couldn’t understand it. She had performed the spell correctly, she was sure of it.

She stared out of her window. There was a late summer rainstorm raging away outside, but she didn’t care. She had to go to the Mage’s Guild and take another look at the Great Spellbook. There had to be some small print she had missed, or some extra information of some kind that would explain why the spell hadn’t worked.

“Don’t tell me you’re thinking of going out in this weather,” Holly said as Saffie bounded down the stairs.

“I have to,” Saffie said. “It’s important.”

Now that Saffie knew her mum wasn’t going to turn Dax’s life support off for at least another month due to the reputation it would give her with the neighbours, she no longer felt like she had to walk on eggshells.

“Giving you permission to visit Dax yesterday doesn’t automatically mean that your grounded status has been lifted,” Holly said.

“You can’t keep me locked up forever, mum,” Saffie replied, making for the front door. She glanced back before opening it to see if Holly was going to physically restrain her, but all Saffie got was a stinking glare, so she opened the door and stepped out into the rain.

By the time she arrived at the Mage’s Guild she was sodden from head to toe, and found the main hall to be practically empty, most likely due to the weather. Without stopping, she strode through it with echoing footsteps and entered the room that housed the Great Spellbook.

“Turn to Dark Magic,” she ordered, and the huge tome creaked open, its pages whipping to the left until it landed on the correct section.

As Acorn shivered by her feet, Saffie scoured the pages for anything she could have missed. Anything. But there was nothing. And Unburdened Mind was the only spell that was listed as a counterspell for Vulture’s Weep.

“It doesn’t WORK!” Saffie yelled, her voice reverberating in the stone chamber.

“Here, take this,” came a deep voice behind her.

Saffie turned around to see Grand Mage Keith and his panion Sabre standing in the arched entrance. In his outstretched hand he was holding a fluffy white towel.

“It’s a real towel, by the way,” he said. “Overworld can do many things, but it cannot soak up rainwater.”

“It didn’t work,” Saffie said meekly as she gratefully took the towel and rubbed it through her hair, which was now twice its usual volume. “I cast Unburdened Mind on my uncle and he didn’t wake up.”

Keith took a deep breath.

“Come,” he said. “I was just about to have some orc ox soup. Would you care for a bowl? It tastes better than its name suggests.”

Saffie followed the Grand Mage into his office, where a cauldron was bubbling away, giving off the most delicious aroma of stewing vegetables and freshly baked bread. He ladled a dollop into a well worn wooden bowl and placed it on his desk in front of Saffie, then he tore off a chunk of the fluffiest bread she had ever seen and rested it against the side of the steaming soup.

Saffie sat down and sipped it cautiously, but she had to admit it did taste delicious. It was rich, meaty, and just the right warmth as to tingle her throat without scolding her.

“Absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever,” said Keith, “but by gosh does it do wonders for one’s mood.”

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Keith was right. Saffie did instantly feel a little better, though she still had so many questions.

“Why do you think it didn’t work?” she said after her fifth mouthful.

Keith sipped from his own spoon thoughtfully.

“As much as I hate to say it, Saffie, there is a possibility the original spell that was cast on your uncle did irreversible damage to him. Or, as unlikely as this may sound, the coma may have been caused by an underlying health condition that had nothing to do with Overworld.”

Saffie desperately wanted to tell Keith that was impossible, but that wouldn’t have been true. Dax hadn’t been the healthiest of people. He pretty much lived off fast food and energy drinks, and had never set foot in a gym. Maybe the scuff marks on Oakley were just from an animal like her mum had insisted, and the whisper had been nothing more than a whisper of the wind, completely unrelated to the game and Dax having possession of the Onyx.

The thought left her feeling so empty and lost that she just couldn’t accept it, and she forced herself to come to a different conclusion.

“It’s because I’m still not powerful enough,” she said. “I need to train harder, starting today. I need to up my experien-”

“Saffie,” Keith cut in. “Do you know what I used to do before I retired and joined Overworld?”

Saffie shook her head. She couldn’t imagine Keith as anything other than the Grand Mage of the Mage’s Guild.

“I was a professor of religious education at Bishop Hill Catholic School in Brixton.”

“You were a teacher?” Saffie said curiously, and Keith nodded.

“For many years. And you remind me of a young girl I used to teach. She was incredibly bright, but she would often work herself to the bone, with little regard for her own wellbeing, and ultimately her grades suffered because of this. I would hate to see the same happen to you, and I strongly believe that if you carry on undertaking errands at the rate that you have been recently, you’ll end up doing more damage to yourself than good, not just in Overworld, but in real life also.”

Saffie knew Keith was right; she already felt ill from lack of sleep, but the urge to carry on was overpowering.

“Did that girl ever learn how to slow down?” she asked, hoping to get some practical advice, but a strange expression washed over Keith’s face, and for a moment he seemed lost in thought.

“I’m afraid I don’t know, Saffie. She left school after an incident and didn’t return.”

“What happened?” Saffie knew she was being nosy, but it felt good to distract her mind from anything other than the thought of Dax being stuck in his coma.

“She came to me one day in floods of tears,” Keith said, “worried that her father was in danger. He had gotten involved with some kind of gang, and she had reason to believe they wanted him dead. I comforted her by praying with her, and I told her that her father would be absolutely fine because God would protect him. I wholeheartedly believed it, but the following day the girl didn’t turn up to class, and I found out from the headmistress that her father had been killed.”

“Whoah,” Saffie whispered.

“I sent her many letters afterwards,” Keith continued. “But they all went unanswered. She never forgave me, and in all honesty… I never forgave myself. I lost my faith that day, and I decided to resign shortly after. Thank goodness I did, or I might never have discovered Overworld.”

Saffie had never been certain if she believed in God or not, but the very real prospect of Dax dying had certainly been making her contemplate it more lately. The idea of her uncle simply ceasing to exist was heartbreakingly more painful than the idea of him existing in Heaven.

“Do you believe there’s a Heaven?” Saffie asked, hoping she wasn’t prying too much.

“I used to, of course,” Keith said, raising his bushy eyebrows. “For many, many years I believed there was a grand kingdom above the clouds. These days, I struggle to believe there’s anything. But I like to think that if I’m wrong, and there is something beyond this mortal life, we each have our own personal Heaven.”

Keith turned around slowly to face the large picture of himself and his wife.

“The pearly gates of Heaven for me are no longer gates, but the singular, small gate in that photograph right there. That was the home my wife Janet and I shared for thirty two years.”

He paused for a moment, and when he started speaking again, it was the first time Saffie had ever heard a hint of vulnerability in his voice.

“Janet passed away three years ago. I like to think that when I die, she will be waiting for me at that gate, holding her hand out for me to take and welcoming me home.”

After Saffie had finished every last drop of her soup, she thanked Keith and headed back to her house, mercifully during a break in the storm, and under Keith’s recommendation she spent the next few days doing not a lot of anything, getting more and more depressed about the failed counterspell and her helplessness.

On Saturday morning, Saffie couldn’t even bring herself to get out of bed, so she just lay there staring at her ceiling and stroking Acorn, until her mum burst in and screwed up her face.

“Saffie, this room stinks even more than your attitude!”

She pulled a can of air freshener from her back pocket and released about half of its contents with a waving motion, making Saffie choke.

“Get dressed,” Holly ordered. “We’re leaving in thirty minutes.”

“Where are we going?” said Saffie through coughs.

But Holly just sprayed a final burst of air freshener and left the bedroom without another word.