The Champion

Chapter 6 — Testing the Waters

“See you Monday, guys.”

“Okay, and call if you need anything…”

Hope smiled, looking back at them over the shoulder that wasn’t weighted down by her backpack. “Thanks. Seriously.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Alyssa, also smiling, as she leaned on the doorframe. “See ya’.”

Alyssa and Tara watched the redhead’s retreating back from the doorway to Tara’s house, each absorbed in thoughts that the other could have tapped into but didn’t, because they knew they had the same thing on their minds.

“What are we going to do about Hope?” asked Alyssa finally, voicing the two’s shared thought. “I mean, now that it’s both of us keeping a secret from her… She’s gonna feel left out, like she’s missing something. She’s not stupid, Tara.”

Tara sighed. “I know that. She’s probably going to notice something…” She let the sentence hang there, and walked out into the sunlight.

Now it looked like spring. The weather was warm—short sleeve, no-jacket weather—with an azure sky above, its blue punctuated by bright white, cottony clouds.

“We’ll work something out,” said Alyssa after a moment. “With Hope. We’ll deal with it. We did before.”

“Well, yeah,” said Tara, still unconvinced. “But then it wasn’t two of us going behind her back, it was both of us individually…”

Alyssa heaved a sigh. “Let’s just worry about it when we have to. But for now…” Without any warning, Alyssa flung a hand out at Tara, who was hit in the face by a fistful of water.

Tara coughed and spluttered, somehow managing to smile and glare at Alyssa at the same time. “Alyssa,” Tara groaned, “what was that for?” Her voice was muffled as she used her T-shirt to mop her face dry.

“Just because,” said Alyssa, smiling stupidly. She too stepped out from the doorway, shutting the door behind her, and twirled in the bright sunlight. She caught sight of Tara’s raised eyebrows and she broke off her spinning. “Seriously, though,” she said, “we said we were going to look at each other’s magic today…”

Tara gave a half-smile. “Okay, but no more water-throwing.” Alyssa laughed. “Except,” continued Tara, “we should go somewhere a little more private.”

---

The two girls sat on a rock by the stream, listening to the gentle burbling of running water. It was a favorite spot of theirs, and Hope’s too, and not many people knew about it. It was a good place to go to be alone, or do something you didn’t want other people to see. For instance, magic.

Alyssa lowered her hand into the stream, letting the cool water to flow around it. “So?” she asked.

Tara shrugged. “I don’t actually know,” she said with a slight laugh, blushing just a bit. “I just figured we’d… I don’t know. Just show me something.”

Alyssa raised her hand from the stream, and an inch-wide column of water followed it, stretching up and up, maybe to two feet, until she stopped moving her hand. Another gesture, and the rod of water was floating horizontally in the air.

“Cool,” said Tara appreciatively, studying the hovering liquid, marveling at how the sunlight filtered through it to illuminate the ground below.

“Oh, and…” Alyssa passed a hand over the water, and it slowly began to frost over, with an audible crackling as spiderwebs of ice spread up its length. “Take it,” she said to Tara.

Tara reached out and gingerly closed a hand over the ice, feeling the cold bite into her skin. Wonderingly, she turned it over in her hand. It was a rod of ice, yes, perfectly formed, perfectly smooth, perfectly round, not a blemish or a missing chip.

“Like it?” asked Alyssa, grinning.

“It’s… wow.”

Alyssa laughed, taking the rod back from Tara. “Manipulating water, obviously,” she said, speaking a mental checklist aloud. “I can work with it in basically any form, so, ice…” Putting a hand on either end of the rod, she brought her arms together, the ice turning back to water between her hands and dropping back into the stream with a splash. “Not real useful most of the time, mostly just fun. But ice shards make handy weapons. And of course, I can do the same stuff if I create the water myself.”

Tara grinned. “Awesome,” she said.

“Now it’s your turn,” said Alyssa, elbowing her friend good-naturedly.

“What do I do?”

Alyssa shrugged. “Just do whatever. I mean, that was just me goofing off, so, yeah.”

“Okay…” Tara thought for a moment. Pensively, she laid a hand flat on the ground, feeling the hard-packed earth under her fingers. She was acutely aware of every particle of the dirt, and could have delved into each and every one of them, if she opened herself up. But she had learned how to rein in her power very early on, and now she could control it. If she did let her magic loose, she would be bombarded with a million separate demi-consciousnesses that would tear her mind in a million different directions. The first time she had made that mistake, she had actually fainted. She knew better now than to try it again.

“I don’t have too much in the way of flashy… Well, besides standard-issue stuff like telekinesis, telepathy… So, unless you want to hear the exciting tale of—” she held up a pebble—“the asteroid that this rock came from…” She broke off as an idea occurred to her. “On second thought… Watch this.” Dropping the pebble, Tara held her hand a few inches above the ground, palm-down. She summoned her power, brought it into her hand, projected it downwards as she saw, with her inner eye, her magic soaking through the ground. “Grow,” she murmured, barely making any sound at all, as she concentrated intently.

“Look,” she said softly after a moment, nodding at the patch of earth filled with her magic, as she drew her hand slowly upwards.

A small green shoot broke through the dirt, and grew slowly but surely upwards. Leaves began to form, and within a minute, a small plant stood, almost a foot and a half high.

“Wow,” said Alyssa, awestruck. “How did—well, that’s a stupid question, but how…?”

“I grow things,” said Tara with a modest shrug. “And anyway, it wouldn’t help much in a fight…”

The sentence dangled, unfinished, and the two lapsed into a silence, but a comfortable one, basking in the sunlight filtering through the trees, listening to the chirping of birds and the burbling of the stream.

“‘Lyssa?”

“Yeah, Tara?”

“Does the Champion… die?”

Biting her lip, Alyssa took Tara’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “Maybe,” she said softly after a moment, not meeting Tara’s eyes. “It’s fuzzy, the way it’s phrased, though, and prophecies can be interpreted… Maybe it means that she just fulfills her responsibility and doesn’t have the title of ‘Champion’ anymore, or…”

“Alyssa?” Alyssa looked up. “‘Lyssa,” said Tara in barely more than a whisper, as if it was too painful to say the words any louder, “I don’t wanna die.”

Alyssa’s grip on Tara’s hand tightened. “I know,” she said, her voice thick.

Tara met her crystal-blue eyes, and saw them shining, as a barrage of emotions assaulted her. For the barest second, Tara felt what Alyssa was feeling as, as often happened with something as unpredictable as magic, she accidentally read her friend’s mind, picking up concepts and emotions too raw to put into coherent thoughts. A horrible anger and sense of injustice, stoicism, love, confusion. And grief. Grief and loss so powerful that even that split second’s contact with them made Tara jerk backwards. With emotions this powerful roiling through her, it was a wonder that Alyssa could still sit up straight. Their intensity shook Tara to the core, and it suddenly struck her how much Alyssa cared. About her.

“That might not be what it means,” said Tara after taking a moment to compose herself, continuing as if she hadn’t had that brief glimpse of Alyssa’s mind. When she spoke, she had the tone of someone trying to convince themselves, who don’t really believe what they’re saying. “I—she—might not die. Maybe it’s what you said, that her job’s just done, and…”

“Tara,” said Alyssa firmly, cutting her friend off, and even though her eyes shone, her voice was full of steely determination. What she spoke was a promise, an oath. “I swear it isn’t going to turn out like that. I have no idea what is going to happen, but I will not let you die. As your Guardian.”

“But we don’t know that I’m—” I keep trying to deny that I’m the Champion, thought Tara. But I have to stop. I have to stop giving myself a safety net, stop saying that someone else can worry about it.

And… Wow, what did Alyssa just do? Tara thought back to the chill that had run down her spine when Alyssa had spoken, one completely independent of the weather. That was an oath… Not just, like, a personal one, but a real oath… That she might have to defy a prophecy for… A witch’s oath was not something to be taken lightly. It was the ultimate promise, where magic was the binding, and when an oath was broken…

Fatal. Nearly always. And always with dire consequences.

Alyssa has power I’ve never seen before. And I’ve got a powerful witch, my Guardian, who’s just sworn an oath to protect me. My best friend, who’s just sworn an oath to protect me. Amazingly—she hadn’t thought it possible three minutes earlier—Tara felt comforted, safer.

“Thanks,” she said. “Seriously. It means so much… can’t even tell you…” She squeezed Alyssa’s hand once in a futile attempt to convey her gratitude, and let her hand slip out of her friend’s.

There was a long silence.

“We still don’t know who the other Guardian is, though,” said Tara finally.

“This kind of thing usually reveals itself,” said Alyssa, letting her hand dangle into the stream. “But if you want, I could scry for her, or something.”

“If you could, yeah,” said Tara appreciatively. “I just… I want to have our team together. I want to be ready, you know?”

Alyssa nodded. “I know what you mean. If you wanna go back to my place, I’ll give it a shot.”

“Why not here?” asked Tara.

“No supplies. I need a reflector, and a focuser, and I usually have some aids, too…

“That’s all?” Tara looked a bit bemused. “No problem. You can use water as a reflector, right?”

“Yeah,” said Alyssa uncertainly. “I’ve never tried it in running water before, though.”

“Put some water in here,” said Tara, pointing to a spot on the ground. Curiously, Alyssa put her arm out, and a stream of water poured out of her hand.

Tara had her hands palm-down on the ground on either side of the area she had gestured at. Focusing, she manipulated the earth, pulling tiny fragments of rock from within the dirt and fusing them together, while pushing the soil out of the way, forming a hollow.

After a moment, she looked up; set into the ground was a stone basin, filled with clear blue water.

“Neat,” said Alyssa, smiling. “But, I still need supplies.”

“What sort of supplies?”

Alyssa shrugged. “A focuser, some divination herbs…”

Tara She closed her eyes for a moment, throwing out a net of her magic. “There’s a ton of quartz around here. Would that work?”

“As a focuser?” Alyssa thought for a moment. “A quartz crystal, yeah.”

“I can probably whip something up,” said Tara, a grin beginning to spread across her face. “We’re showing each other our magic, aren’t we?” She held out her hand once more, a foot or so above the ground, facing down. She took a deep breath, bringing her consciousness in tight about herself so that she could concentrate on her magic. After that, it was a simple matter to summon the quartz in the earth to her. Quartz had its own distinctive… flavor, almost, texture, feel. It was easy to sense. But then again, almost any stone—any mundane stone, at least—was easy to sense, if you knew what you were doing and what you were looking for.

Small bits of the rock wormed their way up through the dirt and into Tara’s hand. When she held enough, she made a fist, sending her power again down her arm and into her hand.

This part was a bit more tricky. She had to align the tiny pieces of quartz with her mind, and knit them together with new shards of crystal. Her arm and hand tingled with heat as she saw, from behind her eyes, the many tiny crystals becoming one.

She opened her hand. Sitting in her palm was an egg-length faceted quartz crystal, She held it out to Alyssa, who took it, wonderingly, turning it over and over in front of her eyes and watching it catch the sunlight. “This has a different feel to it,” she said after a moment. “I’m not much for stones, but I can tell.”

“I made it myself,” said Tara, shrugging. “Well, not really,” she amended, “but it isn’t its own. It’s a bunch of crystal fused together. It’s not…” She searched for a word. “Cohesive.”

“N-no,” said Alyssa slowly. “That’s the weird thing. It feels whole.”

There was an awkward pause, with Tara not knowing quite how to respond to Alyssa’s last statement. Finally, she drew a black drawstring pouch from her jeans pocket and tossed it to Alyssa. “I’ve got a few basic herbs in there, and some stones too. But if it doesn’t have what you need, we might have to go back to your place after all.”

“Damn, and after all that work?” said Alyssa jokingly as she willingly dropped the previous subject, catching the velvet pouch and opening it. “You carry an herb pouch? I suddenly feel all slacker-witch.”

Tara chuckled, and her laughter redoubled as she watched Alyssa trying to sort through the pile of herbs and stones in her hand. “Here, let me,” she said through giggles, scooching over to Alyssa’s side so she was sitting next to her friend. “What do you need?”

“Let me think…” Alyssa stared at nothing in particular as she worked to remember what she was looking for. “Meadowsweet,” she said finally, “and goldenrod. Also orris root, if you’ve got it, but I don’t really need it.”

Tara grimaced. “No, no orris root, sorry. But I do have some goldenrod. That’s that golden-looking thing,” she added, pointing, and Alyssa sheepishly took the stem of yellow flowers from her other hand. “Meadowsweet, meadowsweet,” Tara muttered to herself, stirring the herbs on Alyssa’s palm with her finger as she searched. “Here we go.” With a flourish, she plucked the clump of white blossoms away from the other herbs and handed it to Alyssa.

“Thanks,” Alyssa said with a giggle, taking the proffered flowers and placing them next to the goldenrod, and emptying the rest of the herbs from her palm into Tara’s pouch.

“What now?” asked Tara curiously, pocketing her herb pouch again.

“Well, we burn the meadowsweet. Then, because we’re using water here, we float the goldenrod in it. Although,” continued Alyssa with a grimace, “it should be dried and powdered.”

Tara rolled her eyes. “Sheesh, I’ll powder it for you,” she said, grinning, as she took back the plant and held it in her fist for a moment, imagining its moisture being pulled away from it as it crumbled into powder.

“There,” she said, opening her hand to reveal a small pile of fine golden dust. “In the water?”

“Yeah,” said Alyssa gratefully, carefully clearing a patch of ground of leaf litter and anything else that might be flammable as Tara emptied her palm into the water basin set into the ground. “Could you light that?” Alyssa asked, placing the meadowsweet upon the little square of dirt that she had cleared.

Tara raised one eyebrow. “I’m not good with fire,” said Alyssa apologetically.

Tara shrugged. “That makes sense,” she said. “I mean, I’m not amazing with fire either…”

“Still, probably easier for you than for a water-type.”

With another shrug, Tara turned and focused on the meadowsweet. “Ready?” she asked Alyssa, her previous levity fading now that they were back to work figuring out the prophecy, and the fate of the world.

Alyssa nodded.

She projected the thought of flames from behind her eyes at the herb, allowing her magic to flow. It came with nowhere near the same ease as manipulating the earth; Tara narrowed her eyes in concentration. Finally, with a crackling noise, the meadowsweet caught and began to burn. A light, sweet-smelling silvery smoke began to rise, and Tara saw Alyssa’s chest expand as she took a deep breath, inhaling the vapors. Alyssa’s eyes closed and she crossed her legs, laying her hands on her knees.

The quartz crystal rose, seemingly of its own accord, to hover a few inches away from Alyssa’s forehead—Tara could sense Alyssa’s power manipulating it.

“Show me,” murmured Alyssa, power in her words. “Show me the undiscovered Guardian.”

It was one of the simpler divinations, Tara knew, and much faster—and less risky—than a full-out trance. An informal, verbal request, she thought to herself, reviewing what she knew of the process, and the magic takes it and does what it will with it, and you channel it into your focuser and project it onto your reflector.

Too engaged now to even fan away the smoke from the meadowsweet as she had been doing, Tara watched as a beam of pure white light projected itself from the center of Alyssa’s forehead, and into the crystal.

For a moment, it seemed as if nothing beyond that was happening. But Tara could sense the growing tension in the air, the power filling the quartz slowly but surely, a steadily mounting pressure. Alyssa’s breathing became shallower, and Tara could feel it, feel her chest contracting as it was pushed upon by an unseen force, until it was almost unbearable in its silent intensity, and then—

Abruptly, the barrier Alyssa was forcing her magic through had broken, the pressure was gone, and with the release of the tension, the power Alyssa had been feeding into the floating crystal burst through, enveloping the crystal in a white glow and lancing downwards from one of the quartz’ facets into the basin of water.

The water took on a silvery sheen, bathed in the spotlight that was the magic projected through the quartz crystal. Its soft glow was fuzzy through the thin layer of silver meadowsweet smoke that hung over it like early-morning fog. The smoke crept slowly away, lingering around the edges of the basin and leaving the center clear, as the water was stirred by an unseen wind, and then settled, becoming as smooth as glass. The water—almost liquid silver—was broken only by the tiniest specks of powdered goldenrod floating in it, and in the light of Alyssa’s magic, they looked less like yellow flower and more like real gold.

Tara leaned closer, staring intently at the water. Any noises had faded away, unimportant, and Tara felt herself tense in anticipation.

There was an image in the water, suddenly, a silhouette, that came closer.

A confused blur of shapes and colors, red, yellow, blue, brown, and green melting together into meaninglessness, and there was a sound like a thunderclap—

The light emanating from Alyssa vanished, the crystal fell with a ‘plunk’ into the water. Wind resumed its influence on the place, and the meadowsweet smoke began to scatter. And all the magic dissolved, leaving Tara and Alyssa staring dumbfounded at their own reflections.

“What was that?” asked Tara after a moment.

“I have no idea,” said Alyssa, bewildered and dismayed. “Tare, the spell didn’t work.”

“I know,” said Tara quietly, staring at nothing as she sorted out her jumble of reactions.

Maybe Alyssa muffed the spell, said one part of her mind. No, you saw her, Tara. She did it exactly right.

As far as I know. But since when do I know divination?

Maybe her power’s been weakened, somehow? But no, she realized, I felt what she was pushing into the crystal. Not weak at all.

So something else.

“Was it blocked?” Tara asked tentatively.

“That’s what I thought too,” said Alyssa slowly.

“But?” prompted Tara, hearing the hesitation in her friend’s voice.

“It didn’t feel like it at all. Like it was being blocked. It felt like it worked.”

“That can’t have been it working,” protested Tara.

“Maybe it was,” said Alyssa suddenly. “Maybe that’s just all we were meant to see. Or maybe the magic interpreted what I said in some bizarre way… it does that sometimes.

“I don’t know.” That statement seemed to describe everything Tara was feeling at the moment—about Alyssa being a witch, about being the Champion, about the looming, epic battle between Good and Evil, about finding the other Guardian and preparing themselves for whatever was coming…

With a sigh, Tara put her hand inside the stone basin. With a little mental nod, the stone disintegrated and scattered inside the earth, leaving only a patch of wet soil. “It’d be bad if someone saw that,” she said.

Alyssa nodded in agreement, still lost in thought.

The two sat in silence for a moment.

“I’m kinda tired,” said Alyssa. “The past few days’ve been kind of hectic.”

“Tell me about it,” muttered Tara wryly.

Alyssa actually cracked a smile. “I’m going home,” she said, standing. “We’ll talk more later. About…” she waved her hand in an all-encompassing gesture that still did nothing to capture the enormity of what she was talking about. “All this.”

Tara stood. “Your stuff’s at my house,” she reminded Alyssa.

“Okay, your house, then home,” Alyssa amended, a slight smile back on her face. The two started to walk away.

“One sec,” said Alyssa, suddenly, stopping and twisting around to face the spot where they had been sitting. Tara turned, curiously, to watch, as Alyssa held out an arm, and the quartz crystal that Tara had made zipped into her hand. She pocketed it and continued to walk.

A few quick steps and Tara had caught up with her longer-legged friend. She shot Alyssa a questioning look.

Alyssa shrugged. “I just wanted to keep it.”

Tara’s eyebrows rose into her bangs, but she said nothing except, “Okay.”

As the two walked on, the only sounds in the clearing were the crunching of footsteps on twigs and stone, and the gurgling of the stream.