The Prophecy of Shadows (10 page)

Maybe I was in shock.

Not wanting to bring more attention to myself than I already had, I lowered my arm under the desk so no one could see. Homeroom was almost over. After the bell rang I could walk quietly to the nurse’s office and get cleaned up. There was no need to cause more of a commotion.

Then the pain hit, like a swarm of bees gathering around the cut and stinging at the same time. Not knowing what else to do, I closed my eyes and yanked the glass out of my arm, biting my lower lip to stop myself from screaming. Once it was out, I dropped it on the floor and held my hand over the wound to slow the bleeding. It burned so badly, like someone had set my arm on fire.

My head spun, and I pressed harder on the cut, trying to hold the skin together. What good was being a witch if I couldn’t fix this?

Maybe I
could
fix it. I didn’t know the limits of what I could do. And so, remembering what Blake had told me about white energy and how it could fix things, I gathered as many colors as I could, pictured them combining to form white, and directed them towards the cut. I let the light flow out of my palm and into my arm, imagining my skin stitching and melding back together.

Soon the throbbing calmed, and I lifted my hand, forcing myself to look.

My skin was now perfectly smooth.

I had no time to think about what I’d done. Instead, I grabbed a wet paper towel and rubbed it over my arm, cleaning off the blood. There wasn’t too much, but it was enough that people would ask questions when they couldn’t find an obvious wound. After cleaning up, I put the bloodied towel in my bag, which was gross, but I needed to hide the evidence. I was about to slide on my hoodie when Kate grabbed my arm.

“Let me see that.” She rotated it to search for the cut. When she saw that it wasn’t there, she stared at me, her eyes wide in question.

“See what?” I tilted my head, trying to play it off like everything was fine. Others had gathered around to help clean up, and I didn’t want them to know what had happened. They didn’t need
another
reason to think I was a freak. Hopefully Kate understood that I would tell her later, and wouldn’t say anything now.

She dropped my arm and frowned. “Nothing,” she mumbled, gathering the wet towels and taking them to the trash.

Once she was gone, Chris scooted his chair closer to mine. “How did you do that?” he asked, nearly bouncing out of his seat.

“Do what?” My brain felt like it was in a haze. I looked at the clock to see how long it had been. Only a minute had passed.

How could all of that have happened in such a short amount of time?

“Your glass looked like it spontaneously combusted.” He laughed and pushed some hair off his forehead.

I relaxed, realizing he was talking about the glass exploding and not the cut on my arm. “It didn’t spontaneously combust,” I said, trying to laugh it off. “I knocked it over, and it broke.”

“You must have knocked it over pretty hard.” He looked at the place where the shards had been and shook his head.

I shrugged, since that wasn’t what had happened, and Chris seemed to know it, too.

Darius stepped to the front of the room and cleared his throat. “I’m going to let you all leave early today,” he said, and everyone cheered. Then he turned to me, his eyes sharp. “Nicole, please meet with me here after school. I’d like to go over some of the material you need to catch up on.”

I nodded, since I didn’t have much of a choice. I also didn’t know how much Darius had seen.

All I knew was that what had just happened to me definitely wasn’t normal.

And that he was the only one who might have answers.

The rest of the day passed in a haze. It was like there was cotton in my brain and I was watching everything happen around me instead of being there myself. I was more than ready for the weekend, so when the final bell rang, all I wanted was to go home. But I couldn’t skip the meeting with Darius.

The door to the library classroom was open when I arrived. Darius sat at his desk, reading something from a piece of paper. He looked up when he heard me enter.

“Nicole,” he said, removing his glasses and placing them down. “Thank you for meeting with me. I had hoped to talk with you one-on-one before now, but things have been rather hectic since you arrived.”

I felt bad that I hadn’t come to him sooner. It just seemed weird to talk to a teacher when I had friends like Kate, Chris, and Blake to help me along. Of course Darius wasn’t a
normal
teacher, but maybe I’d avoided talking with him because it would mean admitting that all of this was real.

But at this point, did I really have a choice?

“Sorry,” I apologized, shoving my hands into the back pockets of my jeans. “Things have been really crazy with moving and all.”

“It must be difficult to adjust to so many changes,” he said, gesturing to the chair next to his desk. “Please sit. I’d like to show you something.”

I made my way across the room and sat in the chair, crossing my legs and waiting for him to continue. But instead of saying anything, he pushed the paper he was reading towards me. I leaned forward to get a better look.

It wasn’t actually paper. It was more like parchment—ancient and yellowed—and it only had a paragraph of writing on it in thick black ink. I ran my finger along the bottom of it, surprised by how rough it felt under my skin, and skimmed the perfect calligraphy:

In the beginning of the new year, the Olympian comet will cross the sky and the wall will grow thin. Five representing each part of the world will work together to restore the balance, the power of the Aether igniting them. The Journey will lead them East on the path to the Shadows, which will serve as their guide.

It made no sense, and re-reading it didn’t help. Only the comet had any relevance. The rest might as well have been written in Ancient Greek.

I looked back up at Darius and shrugged. “I don’t understand what this means.”

He picked it up, locked it into a drawer, and pulled out a piece of paper that looked like it was from this century. It had the same thing written on it. “A girl named Abigail Goode wrote this a little more than three hundred years ago,” he said. “She was a witch who lived in Kinsley, and this is believed to be a prophecy. The Elder in charge of the Kinsley area—which would be myself—keeps watch over the original. This is a copy.” He placed the newer looking version in front of me. “I want you to hold onto it for now.”

“What?” I did a double take and sat back. “Why me?”

He studied me and folded his hands over his desk. “You’ve exemplified extreme natural ability with your power,” he said simply. “In just over a week you’ve mastered what takes most students months to learn. And what you did in class today…” His eyes lingered on the spot on my arm where the cut had been, and I covered it with my other hand. “Like I told you on your first day, our powers are mental, not physical. But you made that glass explode. Which shouldn’t be possible, but you did it.”

I opened my mouth to protest—to give him the same excuse I’d given to Chris—but he held a hand up to stop me.

“I saw what happened, and it won’t do either of us any good for you to deny it,” he said kindly. “I hope you know that I want to help you. I’ve talked with a few of the Head Elders, and while they have their theories, I believe you’re the key to deciphering this prophecy.”

“Hold on.” My eyes widened at the possibility. “You think
I
can figure that out?”

He nodded, his expression serious. “Yes, I think you can figure it out,” he said. “Because I believe you’re the one spoken of in the prophecy.”

I pointed to the paper. “There’s no person mentioned here.”

“I’ll let you figure that out for yourself,” he said. “But I have to leave and take care of some business at home. Good luck, Nicole.” He gathered his briefcase and left the room, leaving me alone with the paper.

“Thanks,” I muttered, shaking my head and picking up the supposed prophecy.

Only a week and a half into a new school, and not only was I a freaky super-witch who made a glass explode in class, but I also had extra homework.

Re-reading the prophecy didn’t help me understand it, and I left the room after about five minutes of failed attempts. The library was nearly empty except for a few scattered students. I headed for the doors, but the sight of one person in particular made me stop in place.

Blake sat at a nearby table, absorbed in his history textbook. He leaned back in the chair, one knee propped against the edge of the table to balance the book on his leg. In the week and a half that I’d known him, I’d never seen him look so focused. Maybe he’d put yellow energy into his water that morning and had chugged it to help him study.

Which might have made sense, except that we shared the same history class, and we didn’t
have
any tests or papers due in the near future. So he had no reason to be here.

Unless he was waiting to talk to me.

Feeling braver than usual—perhaps because of the orange energy I’d gathered this morning—I slid into the seat next to him. “You didn’t strike me as a ‘stay after school on a Friday to do homework’ type of guy,” I said, leaning back and making myself comfortable.

He smirked and placed his textbook down on the table. “How do you know I’m not trying to get ahead on the paper that’s due…” He looked up at the ceiling, scrunching his eyebrows as though in deep thought. “In a month?”

“Because no one starts papers that far in advance.” I shook my head and laughed. “Unless they’re super uptight about school, and you don’t seem like you are.” I looked around the library to make sure no one was close enough to hear us, and lowered my voice. “Plus, why spend so much time studying when we can put an energy boost into our drinks and get our work done in double-time?”

“Or quadruple-time if we’re talking about you,” he said, holding my gaze. “Speaking of energy boosts in drinks, what happened in homeroom this morning?”

He certainly knew how to get to the point. And with Blake, I was quickly learning what that point always was—to get information about my abilities. He loved power.

And apparently I was bursting with it.

“I have no idea.” I shook my head, my thoughts returning to the prophecy. Maybe I should show it to Blake and get his opinion. After all, he’d shown me his secret with the fire. Which meant he owed it to me to keep my secret about this.

I took out the paper and placed it on the table. “Darius gave me this,” I told him, scanning over the short paragraph again. “He says it’s a prophecy. A girl in Kinsley wrote it more than three hundred years ago, and Darius thinks I can figure out what it means. So far I haven’t had any luck.”

Blake read it over, scrunching his eyebrows as he soaked it in. “What’s an aether?” he asked, rubbing the back of his neck as he read it again.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “The whole thing makes no sense.”

“So let’s look it up.” He pulled out his phone, and I rolled my eyes, feeling like an idiot for not thinking of doing online research myself. I guess I’d thought the answers would come to me, like magic.

He opened the web browser and typed “Aether” into the search engine. The first link that showed up led to the global encyclopedia. He clicked it, and the entry was huge.

“It says here that aether’s the fifth element, also called spirit, and it’s thought to be heavenly and not of the material world,” he read out loud. He picked up the paper and held it next to his phone, as if trying to connect the information. “The prophecy says ‘five representing each part of the world. That sounds like it could be related.”

I took the phone and scrolled through the entry. A circular diagram listed all of the elements, each in a different color. “Air, fire, earth, and water,” I said, “with aether in the middle.” I stared at it for a few more seconds, the pieces coming together. “There are five elements, and five of us were in the group under the comet. You can control fire. Danielle might be water. Kate mentioned something about her plants in biology growing more than they should have—maybe she’s earth. Then there’s Chris and me. I haven’t noticed anything about the air, but maybe Chris and I are either air or aether.”

“The prophecy could mean that something happened on the night of the comet to set this all into motion,” Blake continued, scrolling down and reading more. “Which would make sense, since I didn’t get my power over fire until after the comet.”

I picked up the paper and re-read the prophecy. “So some sort of wall grew thin when the comet passed through the sky, our powers were ignited, and we need to restore the balance. But that still makes no sense. What does it mean that a wall is growing thin? And what sort of ‘balance?’”

“I don’t know.” He sat back in his chair and scanned the page again, his brow wrinkled in thought.

“The five of us need to meet,” I decided. “Because if we’re right, it looks like we’re going to have to work together in order to ‘restore the balance’—whatever that means. We have to tell them about this as soon as possible so we can start brainstorming.”

“Let’s call them and meet at my house tonight,” he said. “It’s time we figure out some answers.”