Very little input was required from me for the party, which was good, because I hadn’t been sleeping well.

At first I blamed being hot and itchy a lot of the time, which was unsurprising on testosterone. (When did I get the beard, huh? And easier muscle building? Why couldn’t it all be beard and muscles?) But when I awoke after yet another dream I couldn’t remember, with a thundering heart and only three hours of sleep, I decided that enough was enough. I wasn’t going to let myself be incapacitated by, by dreams of all things. Certainly not creepy dreams about something that was in the past and I had no reason to still be scared of.

Not that I was scared. Just… thinking about it, in my sleep, for no reason.

Stupid dreams. They didn’t mean anything. I was just… still unsettled, from the Initiation, and my subconscious was acting up. Hell, I only remembered a scrap of one of the dreams; maybe the other dreams were about completely different things. Maybe starting after the Initiation was a coincidence. Maybe it was just a sleep disorder or something, something I could get tablets for and go on with my life.

I should probably keep ignoring it. Everyone else had gotten through the trial fine, so there was no reason for me to be a sook about mine. But I wasn’t going to get back to sleep that night, so I showered, made myself a good strong coffee, and headed out to Agreabla Insulo.

I stepped out of the limestone cave to be greeted by the sight of gentle waves in the moonlight. The sun wouldn’t rise on the island for a couple more hours. The moonlight was strong enough to see the beach, but would be useless to me in the trees, and I couldn’t tell if the clouds above threatened rain. I turned on the light on my tablet.

The cliff wall looked different. Someone had pulled off the moss and plants around the cave entrance and dug into the stone. Some new initiate doing an experiment like I had last semester? If so, they’d picked a much more dangerous method than I had; I’d dug a hole in the cliff a good foot away from the cave, whereas this person was chipping into the edge of the cave itself. What if they broke the runes or enchanted objects or whatever was embedded in there to make the portal? They’d be stranded on an island in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps I’d run into them at some point and we could talk methodology – it was nice to know that someone was using the island other than Mae, Terry, and the people I brought there.

I was stalling.

I headed into the trees. Towards the cottage. The dream of the spellthing had asked if I’d remembered what it had said, and I was pretty sure I had, but it was mostly a load of nonsense. Perhaps the cottage would jog my memory.

Not that there was anything to jog. It was just a stupid dream. But if I couldn’t sleep anyway…

The cottage was in slightly better repair every time I saw it. The roof was technically an entire roof, and the door hinges were clean and let me pull the door open all the way. One of the windows was still broken and unshuttered, and I checked that my body could squeeze through it before returning back to the door.

It had been raining. The spellthing had invited me in. I’d come inside.

“Look at it,” the spellthing had said. “It’s a whole bunch of cells bound up together, behaving like a person.”

I shut the door behind myself, then tested it to make sure it could open again before taking in the room.

The surfaces all looked too stark in the harsh light of my tablet. The kettle on the shelf, where Terry and Mae and Talbot took it down to make tea on the little stove. It was one shelf lower than the empty shelf which, in the Pit, had contained the kettle that the spellthing had taken down and set on its own stove.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Nobody ever gets anywhere walking in a straight line!” the spellthing had said. “What do you do when you reach a barrier?”

I’d sat down at the table. A broader, cleaner table, with two real chairs instead of a collection of boxes and barrels. On this table, I had set down a pot of tea before passionately kissing Magistus in a room of glowing flowers. On this table, Talbot had poured tea and explained to me the nature of his curse. On that other table, the one that didn’t exist, the spellthing had steeped tea with an object I had handed it of my own free will, to make a concoction to trap me forever.

“Did you bring anything that might be holding you back?”

Here, at this table, Talbot had taken my wrist and refused to let go while he guided my finger along the lines of his mage mark, teaching me to read the symbols. There, on a table that didn’t exist, the spellthing had grabbed my wrist and refused to let go while it traced one of its misshapen fingers across the lines on my palm.

“Well, it appears that you’re the Chosen One! Isn’t that neat?”

It was raining outside. A thundering torrent of water, it sounded like. Where had that sprung up from?

“It seems that you will be the Chosen One.”

That rain was really coming down. I should get out of there. I should check on the garden. Terry and Mae would be upset if it washed away their garden.

I grabbed at the door handle. It wouldn’t open.

“You can’t leave if you haven’t finished entering yet,” it had explained.

“It’s not a fun game if I don’t have a chance,” I’d said.

“If you can answer three riddles, you can leave,” it had told me.

I yanked on the door. Stuck in the damp, it was just the damp, it wasn’t that important, and even if it was somehow stuck forever I could fit through the window, there was no need to panic –

The spellthing had laughed. “I suppose you must be going, but how about a kiss to remember me by?”

I yanked on the door and tore it open. Not even pausing long enough to close it, I dashed outside into the heavy rain, which… was a light drizzle, apparently. It had sounded a lot louder from inside the cabin.

“Koala? Are you okay?”

Shit.

“What are you doing on an island in the rain in the middle of the night?” I snapped at Mae, who just blinked at me.

“It’s an hour until sunrise, not the middle of the night, and I could ask you the same thing. What’s wrong? You look like you’re not having a fantastic time.”

“I’m fine. Just out here clearing my head and stuff.” And now I was wet. From the stupid rain, that might be light but wouldn’t stop. I was going to need another shower. “I’ll, uh, see you later,” I said, shoving my tablet into my bag, turning around and immediately smacking into a tree branch I hadn’t seen in the feeble moonlight, slipping on a patch of mud and landing heavily on my butt.

I couldn’t see Mae’s expression in the darkness, but she reached a hand down to help me up. I reached up, she grasped my forearm, and I instinctively pulled away, landing in the mud again.

“I’m fine,” I said again when she opened her mouth. “I… might have hurt my ankle a bit.” Meaning that unless I wanted to strap it up myself and hobble around until it healed, I was going to have to see Malas. Ugh. And I’d done such a good job of avoiding him. “I’ll get up in a few minutes.”

“Well, let’s get you out of the rain at least,” Mae said, offering her hand again.

“This tree is sheltered enough,” I lied, skirting back against the trunk. I didn’t want to go back to the cabin.

“Right.” Mae sat next to me, dragged a lock of rapidly wettening hair out of her face, and took out a cigarette. She lit it with her fingertips and offered it to me.

“I’m fourteen,” I reminded her.

“You can make your own decisions.”

“My decision is not to smoke. Thanks all the same.”

She shrugged and stuck it between her own lips. “As you like. Though I think you should be looking into some kind of stress relief. The school has counsellors – ”

“I’m not going to a counsellor to whine about having one bad morning.”

“Uh-huh.” She took a drag on her cigarette and blew out a long stream of smoke that was instantly broken up by raindrops. “Is it one morning? Or is it about four months?”

She knew. “It’s fine.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“I really don’t.”

“Okay. Then can I tell you about mine?”

“… Sure.”