Ordinary Magic (2 page)

Alexa appeared just as Dad and Mom called me out of the house to start the procession. She ran through the crowd, her royal red skirts streaking behind her, her hair twisted up in a formal knot that makes her look all grown up and mature and makes you forget that she’s only twenty-four—which Mom and Dad insist is very young but I do not get it because she’s, like, an adult. She caught me up in a tight hug, twenty pounds of dress and all, and my nervousness leaked away. It was enough just seeing her, hugging her, breathing in the scent that always clung to Alexa’s clothes and skin, like fresh air and fizzy soda. “Look at you! You’re so pretty! I’m so, so proud of you!” she exclaimed in between smacking kisses.

“She hasn’t been Judged yet,” Gil said. He looked goofy and completely un-Gil-like in his colorful formals—the high-collared shirt, the frilly neck cloth, and nothing looking rumpled or slept in. His gleaming gold hair was combed (for once) and tied back into a stubby little ponytail.

“Doesn’t matter. I know she’s going to be amazing. Better
than me, I promise,” Alexa said. I laughed, and she amended it to, “Better than Gilbert, at least.”

Gil rubbed his hands together, grinning. “Care to put money on it? We started a pool.”

“I’ll put fifty on a Level Six, minimum,” Alexa said.

As we headed out, Gil punched my arm. “Don’t mess anything up, Abs.”

It is only a ten-minute walk to the Guild. We wound down the sandstone streets, past the light stucco buildings, and through the maze of market stalls with their brightly colored umbrellas stretching overhead. It hadn’t rained in forever and we kicked up red clay as we walked. It shimmered away from everyone else’s magically shielded clothes and stuck to the hem of my unprotected skirts.

As far as processions go, it was not that fancy or long. People barely stopped what they were doing to watch. Some paused to look or to wave, but most just went about their business. There are too many kids in town for one more Judging to garner interest.

The toughest part was keeping at that steady, calm, processional pace. I wanted this to be over and done with. I wanted to finally be able to do things myself, and not have to beg Mom or Dad or anyone else for help with the simplest little chore. I wanted to hitch up my skirts and flat out run—straight down the street, all the way to the Guild. The want was like an itch under my skin.

When we finally reached the Guild, four of the oldest, wrinkliest mages were standing outside on the steps, wearing
deep-blue formal colors, gold skullcaps, and bored expressions. An apprentice in much less ostentatious colors rushed down the steps to meet us. He barely glanced up from the crystal hovering in his palm. “You’re the ten thirty?”

“That’s right,” Mom said. “The name is Hale.”

“Right. Hale. Perfect. This is the young lady?” he asked, hurrying toward me, his robes flapping around his skinny legs.

I nodded. My mouth had suddenly gone dry.

“Wonderful, perfect. You come right here.” He dragged me forward, then jerked me to a stop on the first step. “Hands down at your sides, please, not at your hips. Stand up straight. Smile, please. Very good, very lovely. You’re happy, everybody’s happy.” He called out to the rest of the crowd, “Everybody smile, please.” Olivia flashed the apprentice a smile and he blinked, dazed, and derailed into “Wonderful … it’s wonderful … I, um, I”—he cleared his throat—“everybody looks … wonderful.” He dashed woozily up the stairs to the mages, straightened his clothes, zapped his crystal away, and nodded to Mr. Graidy, the ancient head of the Guild.

Mr. Graidy spoke in a booming voice that hurt my ears. “Who comes before us to be Judged this day? Let her come forward and be named.”

We’d rehearsed everything the day before, so I knew what to do. I started walking up the steps, speaking as loud as I could. “My name is Abigail Hale. I come today to be Judged.” Staying steady was an out-and-out fight now. Excitement prickled under my skin with little jumps and jolts, urging me to race right up those steps and get this started.

The doors behind the cluster of mages opened on cue. The Guild is a tan blob of a building, one of the oldest in Lennox. No one is sure if it was actually built from stone and brick or if it was called up straight out of the ground, like the royal palace in Rothermere. What catches your eye—first, last, always—is the doors. They are almost as tall as the building and slicked a deep, menacing brown, with big stone rivets. They’re the kind of doors you expect to see guarding a secret fortress; they’re only missing the skeletons and cobwebs. When these doors opened it was without a murmur, revealing nothing but pitch black beyond.

I’d seen this happen a bunch of times before, for other kids in town, and never cared, but now it felt more important. Something icy shivered down my spine.

“Enter then these portals, Abigail Hale,” Mr. Graidy intoned. “So that you may be tested, so that you may be Judged, so that we here present may know your true worth.”

My family burst into cheers behind me, and we all followed the mages into the Guild. The doors swung shut behind us, cutting off noise and light.

My family was served refreshments in the reception room while they waited. Not the good stuff, but I couldn’t help wishing I were with them, choking down dusty peanut butter cookies, instead of stuck in a dark room with a bunch of creepy mages and a handful of candles. My eyes adjusted to the dim light, and I made out a huge stone hallway with massive carved pillars forming neat rows on either side. The hallway was much too big
to be contained in that small building, but then, magic is like that. We had a similar spell at work at our house, so there’s enough room for all of us to live together without driving each other crazy.

There were two pillars, much bigger than the rest, that curved together to form a strange archway. The archway had spells carved into it, and it buzzed with a funny kind of magic. This wasn’t the everyday stuff your parents know and you see on the street. It made the archway move and flicker, and it was fuzzy to look at, like my eyes couldn’t focus.

“Abigail Hale,” Mr. Graidy announced in his “at work” voice. When I ran into him on the street, he just called me Abby, like everybody else. “Are you ready to begin this grueling test of yourself?”

“Yes, I am ready to begin,” I said. Finally—
finally
—I was so ready.

“Very well, then, Abigail Hale. Your first test stands before you. You must pass through the Barrier of Fortitude!” He gestured to the archway.

I glanced at the others, but they were all watching me. I stepped up to the arch, took a deep breath (I couldn’t dig that shiver out from where it had wormed down into my spine), and stepped through.

Nothing.

Okay, that was … strange. I expected something. I’m not sure what, but I expected
something
. For a second I wondered if it was one of those “test of character” things you read about in books—where it’s not about what happens but how the hero
reacts to it, which really means the author didn’t want to write all the interesting stuff—only then I saw the mages talking.

They were huddled together, whispering among themselves with startled little pinpricks of sound. The apprentice was scanning his crystal furiously. They drew apart, and Mr. Graidy cleared his throat. “Would you mind, my dear—stepping through again?”

I stepped back through. Nothing. Again.

When I looked back, they were all staring at me in dumbfounded amazement. Mr. Graidy held up a hand. “Once more, please.”

I did. Then again. And again. And then they had me hop back and forth on either foot, until I tripped over the long skirt of my gown and crashed into one of the mages. He squealed and bounded to his feet, swatting at his robes as if they were on fire, screaming, “She touched me!
She touched me!
”

Mr. Graidy rolled his eyes, then clapped his hands and muttered something. With a cinnamony smell, the lights came up.

I had never been this far inside the Guild before. They try to maintain an air of mystery about the place so the only people who really know it are the mages, a couple of repairmen, and the ladies who come to set up for bake sales. The sudden light revealed a large welcoming hall done in cream and beige with several potted plants and a dark floor polished like a mirror. Along one side was a row of cushioned benches under a series of portraits of serious gray-haired men and women with matching sour expressions, as if they’d all been sucking on lemons.

Mr. Graidy glared at me and pointed to the benches. “Sit,” he
commanded. I didn’t, I couldn’t (something was
wrong
), but Mr. Graidy immediately turned away and ordered the apprentice, “Please go to the reception area and get this girl’s parents.”

I heard Mom coming down the hall well before she charged through the door, questions pouring out of her. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? You didn’t blow up anything, did you? What happened? Are you hurt? You don’t look hurt. What happened?” she snapped at the mages. Two jumped back and the one I had crashed into burst into tears.

Dad, on the other hand, strolled in with a cup of lemonade and a sugar cookie.

Mr. Graidy cleared his throat again. “No one was hurt.” He paused for a moment. “Mr. Hale, Mrs. Hale. I fear I have some unfortunate tidings. It pains me to have to tell this to anyone, let alone to a distinguished couple such as yourselves, whom I have always regarded as pillars of our fine commun—”

“Get to the point,” Mom exploded.

“She’s an ord.”

“Beg your pardon?” Dad asked. Only Dad could sound totally relaxed and totally serious at the same time, while eating a cookie.

“She didn’t even make it past the first stage,” said Mr. Graidy. “She has nothing. She
is
nothing. She’s an ord.”

Ord.
Oh no, he did not just say that. He did not. It wasn’t real.

“Come here, Ab—chil—you, come here.” Mr. Graidy reached out to take my arm, then stopped and just waved me toward the barrier.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, willing it to work this time,
please work, please.
I wasn’t kidding around. My parents were watching.

I stepped through. Nothing.

I turned back, needing to see my parents’ faces, yet not wanting to at all. They were holding hands, looking … I couldn’t tell. I wanted to scream or cry or smash something. It felt like rug burn in my chest.

Then Mom said, “Oh, my baby,” and stepped forward, arms out. I rushed to her, and she caught me in a hug right at the barrier. When she passed through the arch, it sparked and popped, and the air in the room rumbled against the walls like fireworks.

Mom brought me back to Dad. My parents looked at each
other, sharing the Secret Parent Look, where they kind of do this telepathic thing, even though they’re not. Dad swallowed the last of his lemonade and shrugged. “Okay, now what?”

“You will have to get rid of her,” Mr. Graidy said, and not nicely.

“That’s ridiculous,” Dad said.

“I can’t even believe I’m hearing this,” Mom said, her arms still tight around me. “Are you seriously saying, Martin, that we should ‘get rid of’ our daughter?”

“There’s no use getting defensive, Mrs. Hale,” Mr. Graidy said. “It is the plain truth. There are few options available to the families of ords. It is a shame there are so few, but it’s not as if it can be changed.” At this point he offered Mom and Dad some “literature” on the subject, reassuring them that he had several more brochures, still sealed in the boxes. It seems that, until me, there hadn’t been a need to unpack them.

Mom stepped forward, face flushed, blue crackles of magic snapping around her. Dad put a hand on her shoulder and she took a hard breath, in and out.

Mr. Graidy nodded sympathetically and sent the apprentice off to get a few pamphlets. “I want you to know,” he continued, “I sympathize with the frustration you must be feeling. The tragedy of realizing that one of your own is …” He sighed. “This must be very hard. I understand that many families experience difficulty in deciding what to do. I believe a few occasionally decide to keep their … their …”

“Children,” Mom cut in.

“Their children, yes. Traveling families, that sort of thing,
who don’t have to live with … normal society. But in most cases, in situations like
yours
, well, you cannot be carried away by sentiment and emotion at such a time as this. You must consider what is best for the child, as well as what is best for you,” Mr. Graidy said, his words smooth and professional.

“And what, exactly, would be best for
us
?” Dad asked. His voice was smooth too. Smooth and very quiet.

“Surely you must see, Mr. Hale,” Mr. Graidy said, his face a mixture of suspicion and disbelief, “that this touches not only your family, but each and every person associated with you. The town is affected by this. The entire town—”

“Stop. Now.”

“Mr. Hale—”

“I’m not going to give you another chance,” Dad replied, and his tone was so hard and cold and final that Mr. Graidy stopped.

The apprentice reappeared with a few glossy pamphlets in his hand. Our fingers brushed as he passed me the bundle. His face got all tight, and he snatched his hand back and started rubbing it on his robes. He was still at it when we left.