The Conjuring Glass (10 page)

Zoe turned, looking a little alarmed, but relaxed into a smile when she saw Penny. “Hey Little …” she started, but must have seen the dismay that Penny felt. “Hey Penny!”

Penny had seen Zoe only in passing for the past week, as Susan and Zoe’s grandma, a sour woman with thin and tightly curled gray hair, deep-set wrinkles, and a perpetual grimace, took them on their separate courses around town and out of it to Centralia, the nearest small city. These back to school shopping trips had left Penny feeling anxious and a little sick to her stomach.

Penny parked her bike, and they compared schedules. She was disappointed that they only had two of the same classes together, the one before lunch, and the second to last of the day.

“Susan said I could go to the shop for lunch,” Penny said as they wound their way through the thickening crowd streaming through the school building’s front door. “Wanna come?”

“Yeah,” Zoe said, with some excitement.

Zoe could, and had, browsed the bookshelves in Susan’s store for hours. More than once Penny had had to drag her out the door.

“I’d rather eat road kill than the school lunch,” Zoe said, and Penny’s already queasy stomach seemed to roll over.

The first half of that first day was an exercise in self-control for Penny. The overly curious looks, the talking behind hands, and the pointing fingers were uncomfortable enough, but she could handle them. The giggles from the town girls when she passed them in the halls and the occasional mockingly shouted “Hi
Little Red
” from Rooster and his friends turned a merely uncomfortable experience into an excruciating one.

She didn’t have to wonder how that now hated nickname had spread so far so quickly, since only three people in Dogwood had known it, and the only one of the three who didn’t like her was a teacher at the school.

Her third period, math with Miss Riggs, was the worst of the morning, and her fourth, English with Mr. Cole, who looked a bit like a scarecrow but seemed very nice, was the easiest because Zoe sat next to her.

Penny’s hopes of outrunning that old nickname had vanished by lunchtime, as the previously silent mockery became a cappella chorus of “Hi
Little Red
” whenever she passed an unfriendly group. The taunts followed her through the halls, then outside, where they were able to escape to Susan’s shop.

They arrived at Sullivan’s in moody silence, and Penny was not forthcoming when Susan asked how her first day at school was going. She grunted, shrugged, and mumbled something around a mouthful of glazed doughnut.

“It’s a small town,” Susan said, as if that explained it. “They don’t get many new faces here is all. They’ll warm up to you.”

Penny’s eyes found Zoe, who had escaped the inquisition by ducking into the nonfiction aisle to browse, and was not encouraged. Zoe already had a few months on Penny, and most of the kids were just as indifferent or outright nasty to her.

Maybe they were slow warmers.

It didn’t occur to Penny until halfway through the last class of the day that the way things were going, she wouldn’t make any new friends, and without at least one new friend, The Phoenix Girls were just words in an old book.

After school they walked to Zoe’s house, and Penny endured several uncomfortable minutes in her grandmother’s company. Then they rode toward Penny’s house, and Zoe mentioned The Phoenix Girls for the first time that day.

“I don’t think we’ll find another friend for the circle.”

Penny made no comment, and Zoe said no more on the subject.

They peddled through the tall green blades and pushed their bikes up the hill to the higher, wilder field, then laid them down in the high grass before the drop into the hollow.

They practiced the spells they already knew, giving the old tricks new twists out of boredom. Penny discovering, while conjuring a wind, one of the first tricks she had mastered, that she could heat or cool it at will. She made a warm wind spin and spiral around the hollow like a mini-tornado.

Zoe practiced directing her shield, making it move farther away from her, closer to her, or directing it over her head like an invisible umbrella.

The atmosphere of oppressive glumness departed when Zoe chased Penny around the fire pit, giving her little static shock zaps with the wand. Their moods lifted even further when they heard Ronan, who had snuck out of his cave and perched himself on a high limb of the strange tree to watch them, laughing heartily in his weird accent.

“Had a tough day at school, did’ja ladies?” Ronan asked when his laughter had subsided.

This stunned them into silence for a moment.

“Yeah,” Penny said. “How did you know?”

“I have my sources,” Ronan said, and offered his toothy grin. “Don’t worry. Things’ll turn around. They always do.”

“I don’t think so,” Zoe said, her mood turning dour again. “The kids here are awful.”

Ronan cocked his head to the side and hunched his front shoulders in an almost comic imitation of a shrug. “All kids are awful,” he said.

“Hey,” Penny said, taking offense. “I’m nice!”

Ronan gave her a look, and she could almost read the expression on his furry face.

Who you trying to kid, missy
?

Then he broke into that toothy grin again and said, “Just because you’re awful doesn’t mean you can’t be nice. It’s a matter of perspective.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Zoe asked.

Ronan shook his head. “Now if I explain it all to you, what is left for you to learn?”

“You’re not being very helpful,” Penny said, crossing her arms and shooting Ronan an irritated look.

“Of course I am,” Ronan said, rising on his high limb and stretching, then scurrying down the tree trunk and leaping across the stream onto the little outcropping of rock in front of his cave. “I’m exceedingly helpful. You’re just too busy sulking to recognize it.”

Ronan disappeared into his cave then, and when the girls tried to call him out, he did not reappear.

“Fuzzy little pain in the butt,” Zoe muttered a few minutes later as they climbed the slope out of the hollow.

Penny did not respond. She was too busy trying to decipher the meaning of Ronan’s words.

Just because you’re awful doesn’t mean you can’t be nice. It’s a matter of perspective
.

Though she couldn’t grasp the significance of the comment, she was sure Ronan hadn’t just made it in passing.

When Penny went to bed that night, it was with a new determination to stop sulking, as Ronan had put it, and try to find out how her classmates could be awful and nice at the same time.

It’s a matter of perspective
.

She’d have to change her perspective, she supposed, but still wasn’t sure how she was supposed to do that, or even what Ronan meant by it.

The next morning went much the same as the first, the turned heads, giggles, and pointed fingers as she and Zoe chained their bikes up and went inside the school building. After parting ways with Zoe, Penny passed the library on her way to her homeroom, and saw Rooster eyeing a little girl as she walked by with a stack of books in her arms. As she passed him, Rooster reached out and swung a fisted hand upward between her clutching hands, knocking her stack of books flying.

Penny froze in shock and anger, watching as Rooster and a few of his ever-present friends burst into laughter.

The girl’s face burned red in embarrassment as she bent down to gather her books and Rooster kicked one away from her reaching hand.

Penny was moving through the library door toward him before she knew she meant to do it, her trembling fists swinging at her sides.

Rooster grinned in surprise and mischief at her approach, but his smile melted into a wide-eyed look of shock as his eyes flicked over her shoulder.

Someone pushed Penny rudely aside.

“Hey!”

The girl who’d shoved her aside ignored her and stalked toward Rooster, a half
‐
dozen friends following in her wake. She stepped up to him without hesitation and shoved him.

“Hey, stop it,” Rooster cried, managing to sound like the victim. “C’mon!”

“Make me stop it,” she said, and Penny recognized her as the girl who’d given Zoe’s bike a distasteful look the morning before. “Come on big man.”

She shoved him again, and with a gaggle of her friends backing her up, Rooster and his few friends didn’t quite dare to do anything.

“Geez, Katie, I was just having a little fun,” Rooster grumbled, and slunk away toward the exit at the other end of the library.

Laughing at Rooster’s retreat, Katie’s friends began to gather the younger girl’s books for her.

Penny’s initial shock and anger had turned to happy surprise as she watched this.

Guess they aren’t all jerks
, she thought, and stepped forward to help.

“What are you looking at, Little Red?” Katie caught Penny’s eye and rose to face her, her eyes narrowing.

Penny stopped short, stung. “I just wanted to help.”

Katie apparently thought this unworthy of a reply, and handed the book in her hand to the now smiling young girl.

“Scram, Little Red,” one of the others said.

Fighting back the tears that pushed and stung the corners of her eyes, Penny scrammed.

By the end of the first week, the jeering and teasing had mostly subsided, and with a few exceptions, the local kids turned their efforts in other directions.

Penny could deal with that, she supposed. The indifference most of the other students treated her with wasn’t what she had hoped for, but it beat the constant teasing. A few of the town kids even started being nice to her, but none made any effort to befriend her.

Katie and her small group of friends treated her with the same contempt as before, yet at least they left her alone.

Rooster and his friends taunted her whenever chance allowed.

By Friday afternoon, Penny and Zoe had fallen into a bearable routine: trudging through their morning classes, lunch at Susan’s shop, and spending their afternoon classes looking forward to the few hours they’d spend at the hollow after school.

Late Friday evening, the coals of Penny and Zoe’s fire in the hollow had cooled from orange to a dead and powdery gray. However enough of their spent magic lingered to make the still air hum softly. It was a sound too low for Penny or Zoe to hear. Yet the animals that lived near Little Canyon Creek felt it and responded, converging on the spot that had been theirs alone for years, and which had only recently seen people again.

A squirrel leapt from branch to branch in the upper boughs of the willows, catching more air than it normally would have, almost seeming to hover in the open space between branches. A flock of sparrows circled, twittering madly until an owl hooted them away. A long snake cut wild, swirling wakes in the calm water near the shore of the creek.

Predators cavorted alongside their natural prey in the boundaries of Aurora Hollow, their interest in meat temporarily eclipsed by the buzzing residue of magic.

Sometimes Ronan was there too. The other animals recognized him for what he was, but trusted and helped him whenever he asked something of them.

He was there that Friday night, curled up and sleeping in the mouth of his cave.

A discordant buzz drove away the peaceful hum, a sound that set Ronan’s teeth on edge and made him whimper in momentary discomfort. His fur began to rise, as if with static.

The other animals scattered in every direction, the owl giving a disconsolate hoot as it abandoned its perch.

A thin glowing line like a thread of violet fire cut the dark—slashing downward from a height of ten feet until it touched the ground. For a few moments the line only buzzed and flickered in the dark. Then two sets of fingers pushed through it, widening it into a crack. The fingers forced themselves into the hollow from behind the widening crack, became hands—one holding something slender and dark—then a pair of cloak-draped arms followed the hands.

Ronan stood, his ears perking up as he turned to face the crack in reality.

The opening wavered and groaned as a tall man pushed through it; and for only a moment, another place was visible behind him. It could have been a wide cavern or the dungeon of some medieval castle.

Then he was through, the slender black wand in his hand held out before him. He searched around as the rough oval shape with the crackling violet outline contracted, then slammed closed and vanished with a
snap
like a firecracker.

Ronan growled, an uncharacteristic sound coming from him, his teeth now bared in threat rather than humor, and rose, his fur bushing up.

The man whirled on his boots, wand whipping around toward the growling fox, and a bright red flash lit Aurora Hollow like high noon.

The man’s spell hit Ronan as he leapt from the mouth of his cave.

With a yelp, Ronan smashed back against the granite wall. His form faded, became a crackling outline in the darkness, and he was gone before he could hit the ground.

The man was still for a moment, watchful, and then turned back to the empty clearing. He muttered, jabbed the slender black object into the air over his head, and a globe of light bloomed from its tip, floating lazily toward the canopy of leaves.