Katie trudged into the house feeling guilty and selfish. She was uncomfortable with the way the conversation with Hercule had ended. She could not shake the feeling that she had hurt him. The memory of his brave-faced acceptance of her rejection did nothing to console her. Why had she been in such a hurry to turn him down? Did she fear that being his heartfriend would somehow interfere with her dreams of being a hero? Were those dreams so important to her that she could not allow herself to dream of anything else?

The questions hammered at her as she entered the kitchen. Her parents were already seated at the table. Morga, her stepmother, she noticed, wore a particularly irritable expression, which made her look even more fearsome than usual. Morga was an attractive woman—sometimes stunningly so, when she put effort into it—with smooth features, raven-black hair, and the most stunning green eyes Katie had ever seen. But it was her overbearing personality and her almost cruel contempt for her stepdaughter that made her hideous in Katie’s eyes.

“Your shadow delivered your message,” Morga said accusingly as Katie slid into her chair. “But it didn’t explain why you took your sweet time coming home.”

“Today was graduation, Morga,” Katie replied, speaking the name as if she detested the very sound of it (which she did). “Surely you can make allowances for that?”

Her father blinked as if snapping out of a daydream. He was leggy and ruggedly handsome, with a scar tracing an ugly trail across his left eye, which was milky white and unseeing. He was a haunted man and often ate staring into the distance, chewing his food mechanically as if eating held no pleasure for him. “Graduation?” he said, sounding mystified. “My goodness! We completely forgot!”

“Yeah,” said Katie in a wounded tone. “I noticed.”

“In the end it’s only another day,” Morga said dismissively, adding, “Like all the rest.”

“So you say,” Katie shot back.

Morga’s hand paused in mid-reach over the loaf of tea bread sitting before her. She studied Katie with cold, insolent eyes. “I take it you received an application for the contest?” she said.

“Of course,” said Katie. “All the seniors did.”

“I would like to see it.” Morga extended a hand. She wiggled her fingers in impatience as Katie hesitated. 

Shooting a confused look at her father, who was oblivious to all else except for the chunk of mutton he was intent on eating, Katie drew the envelope from her pocket and placed it on the table. Morga plucked it into her hand, studied it with hungry eyes, and set it down again on the far side of the table, beyond Katie’s reach.

“What do you want with it?” Katie asked, feeling a sudden panic wash over her.

Morga did not answer immediately. She raked her fork through the mound of mashed taters on her plate, grinning at the scar it carved in the sickly white paste. Katie decided that whatever Morga intended to say, it wouldn’t be pleasant. Nothing she said ever was.

“Well?” Katie said impatiently.

Morga regarded her with a smug look. “Your father and I think it best that you attend Common College instead of Derring-Do University.”

Katie sat there, blank, amazed, and very shaken. “Attend Common College?” she eventually managed to stammer. “Why would you even suggest such a thing? You know how long I’ve waited to apply to Derring-Do.”

“Yes, we do,” Morga said. “But we just don’t think it’s the right choice for you.”
“Well, I think it’s the right choice!” Katie cried.

“Katie, being a hero is a tough job,” her father said quietly, almost beneath his breath. “If your mother were alive, she’d be the first to tell you that heroism isn’t as glorious as you think it is.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” Katie muttered. “She loved being a hero.”

“Well, yes, that’s true,” he replied. “But she hated all the wandering about…and the fighting most of all. It was a hard life, and it…killed…her.” The word seemed to make his good eye lose focus.
“Some sorceress killed her,” Katie pointedly reminded him.

He seemed not to have heard her. “After her death,” he continued, “you threw yourself into this hero business pretty hard. I thought it was a phase that you’d outgrow, but now….”
“But now it is time to wake up from your fantasies,” interjected Morga. She turned a taunting eye on Katie. “Face facts: you’re just not hero material.”

Katie bristled at the comment. “I believe that I am.”

“Such a bold statement coming from the girl who cried for three weeks because her dog ran away.” Morga punctuated the insult with a contemptuous snort.

“I loved that dog,” Katie said, swallowing the urge to accuse Morga of frightening off the animal. “And that was years ago. In case you haven’t noticed, Morga, I’m not a little girl anymore.”

“Then why are you acting like one?” Morga countered.

“I’m defending my right to decide which college I attend, and I intend to choose Derring-Do.”
 
“You have no right to decide anything while you are living under my roof,” Morga said, taking up the envelope. The silver dragons attacked her fingers with tendrils of angry, red-gold fire. Morga did not seem to notice, if she felt anything at all.

“This is father’s house,” Katie corrected her. “You are just an unwelcome guest.”

The comment surprised Katie. She had stood up to Morga before, but not like this. This fight smacked of a showdown, and she was surprised to find that she was ready for it. Morga’s dark eyebrows arched mischievously. She toyed with the envelope in a way that made Katie suddenly nervous.

“I’ve tried very hard over the years to reach out to you, Katie,” Morga said wearily. “Yet you’ve done nothing but spurn me at every turn. I’ve made my allowances for your behavior—more times than I care to remember. But that is about to change. I’ve always believed that a harsh lesson would be just the thing to straighten you out, and that is exactly what I intend to give you.”

Katie stared in muted horror as Morga seized the envelope in both hands and tore it in half. She flung the scraps onto the table with a look of triumph and settled back into her chair to soak in the stunned, pained expression on Katie’s face. “Happy graduation,” she added in a patronizing whisper.

Katie shot to her feet. She fought hard against the tears of indignation she refused to let fall.

“You wicked woman!” she cried. “I’m tired of having you ruin everything good in my life! You ruined my childhood and now you’re trying to ruin my future! But I won’t stand for it any longer!” She swept the remnants of the envelope off the table and brandished them before her. “Do you think this will stop me from applying to Derring-Do? If so, then you’re mistaken. I’ll find a way to get accepted, even if I have to walk all the way back to Pickleberry to demand another application!”

Morga’s satisfied expression died on her face. She glared at Katie’s father. “Are you going to sit there and let this little shrew defy me, Abner?” she growled.

“Don’t defy your mother, Katie,” he said distractedly, stuffing a limp turnip sprig into his mouth.
“She’s not my mother,” Katie replied angrily. “She’s just a snake in the woodpile.”

Morga sprang from her chair and leveled a gnarled finger at the kitchen door. “Remove yourself from my sight this instant!” she demanded, nodding her head so hard her hair flew in all directions.

Katie planted her feet, matching Morga’s enraged stare dagger for dagger. “I’ll go when I choose to,” she said.

Morga’s hands flamed with the halo of magick. Realizing she was about to be enchanted by a manipulation spell, Katie summoned a warding hex, which reflected the attack back upon Morga.
Morga reeled and collapsed into her chair, the victim of her own enchantment. Stunned, she merely stared at Katie, her jaw flapping without a sound.

Flashing a smile of triumph, Katie stalked from the kitchen and climbed the stairs to her room, slamming the door behind her with such force the walls shook. She flung herself onto her bed and stared woefully at the torn envelope, feeling that her hopes were forever dashed. Overwhelmed at last by Morga’s cruelty, she buried her face in the lap of the stuffed bear leaning against her pillow (Bonks was always there for her in her time of need) and sobbed.

Oh, how she wished her father had never married that woman! What could he have possibly seen in her that day in the marketplace all those years ago? What was it about a wandering honeycomb peddler that he had found so irresistible it made him forsake the memory of one wife for the companionship of one far inferior?

If only I could somehow travel back to that day, Katie thought, and not for the first time either. I’d fix it so that they would never meet! And then Father and me would live the life we should have lived.

When at last she ran out of tears, Katie flopped onto her stomach and stared at the remains of the envelope. The dragons flapped about dejectedly, pausing now and then to stare up at her with wide, pleading eyes.

“Oh, Bonks,” she said to the bear in a wistful tone. “What have I done?” She fitted the two pieces together so that the envelope appeared whole once again. “I’ll never be a hero now.”

To her surprise, the dragons raced to the ragged tear and began spraying jets of silvery fire along it. Almost instantly, a dazzling white glow began to pulse beneath the surface of the paper. The more fire the tiny dragons added to it, the brighter it shone. Katie had to cast aside her gaze to keep from being blinded. Within seconds, the strange light ebbed, and to her utter astonishment, all trace of the tear vanished completely. Katie gaped at the new envelope, feeling a sudden thrill of amazement skip along her spine.

“Of course!” she whispered, barely able to contain her excitement. “I forgot you were magickal!”

The dragons spiraled over and around her name with renewed vigor, as if they too were excited by the magick they had wrought. Her hopes renewed, Katie sat up, carefully slipped a finger beneath the loosely glued flap, and worked it open, revealing the creamy tan color of the application card hidden beneath. She drew it out of the envelope and placed it gingerly in her lap. On its face glittered a single sentence written in yellow-gold ink, which she read aloud:

If you had the power to change anything in your life, what would it be?

She snorted, amused by the question. “How about Morga’s attitude toward me?” she muttered wryly.

Suddenly the card flashed, and to her dismay she saw a single sentence materialize beneath the question as if she had written it in her own hand:

I would change Morga’s attitude toward me.

“No!” she cried. She shook the card, as if doing so would knock the letters away. “That’s not what I wanted to answer at all! Honestly! What I really meant to say was…”

But it was too late. Even before she finished speaking, the card began to vanish. Within seconds, it had evaporated entirely, leaving her clutching nothing but air.

She stared at the empty space between her fingers, her thoughts in a panic. She had submitted the wrong response! What was she to do? Was it possible to get the card back? Could she get another one somehow? Remembering the envelope, she swept it into her hands and tapped it to attract the dragons’ attention. “Please use your magick to bring back my card,” she pleaded with them. “I wasn’t ready. I was just being sarcastic. I didn’t mean…”

Trailing flame, four of the dragons spelled:

Your answer has been received.

With a groan, Katie collapsed onto the bed, her dreams once again crumbling around her. This was, without doubt, the worst night of her life. She felt cheated. It just wasn’t fair for the application to select its own answer like that. If anything, it was a lousy trick, one that she did not appreciate in the slightest. It smacked of something Morga would do.

Feeling a nauseating sinking of despair, Katie retrieved the pair of Dark-Glass glasses from her nightstand and put them on. Instantly her room vanished. In its place appeared a desolate landscape dominated by the crumbling walls and towers of some long-forgotten castle. A strange sort of half-light, like twilight, lay upon the place, casting odd shadows about her. In the distance, a rolling plain, eerie and desolate, spanned the horizon in all directions.

This place, of course, was merely an illusion projected onto her room by the magick powering the glasses. Although she could still feel the soft fluffiness of her bed beneath her, to her eyes it had taken the unlikely guise of a fallen pillar etched with strange runes and the coarse, flaky patches of old gray moss. Her floor was now littered with gravel and tufts of ragged mountain grass, while her desk became a boulder pitted by the elements and the long march of time.

Katie stood and paced the floor, recalling the night she and Chani had enchanted the glasses using a forbidden spell stolen from one of Chani’s grandmother’s outlawed books. The spell had warned against enchanting any sort of glass with the Dark-Glass spell, but the lure had been too great. Although they only used these glasses for late-night conversations and quick get-togethers during study hall, Katie had a feeling there was more to them than either she or Chani suspected. There were times when she could sense a lurking presence watching her from the shadows at the edge of her vision. And on several occasions she thought she heard a strange, pleading whisper issuing from the glasses as they rested on her nightstand. But as much as the idea intrigued her, Katie had little interest in exploring the limits of their powers. Some things, she told herself, were better left ignored.

Suddenly Chani appeared from out of nowhere, a similar pair of Dark-Glass glasses perched on the tip of her nose. Upon seeing Katie, the wide smile that spanned her face faltered and collapsed into a suspicious line.

“You’ve been crying,” she said.

“Gee, what gave you that impression?” Katie said.

Chani sat upon the lichen-matted bolder that was really her bed. “Care to tell me what happened?” Chani replied.

Heaving a sigh, Katie agreed. As her story unfolded, Chani’s expression grew almost as dark as the surface of her glasses.

“And to top it all off,” Katie finished, “Hercule asked me to be his heartfriend!”

“Ew!” Chani said, as if she had just swallowed something rotten. “I hoped you turned him down.”

Katie nodded. “But I didn’t want to,” she added. “He’s really rather…lovely.”

“EW!”

“Really, Chani!” Katie said. “Just because you hate him doesn’t mean that everyone you know has to hate him, too.”

“He smells like pigs,” muttered Chani.

“I don’t care what he smells like!” Katie said. “And besides, Hercule’s the least of my worries right now. I sent in the wrong response, Chani! What am I going to do?”

“We’ll figure something out, Katie. Don’t worry. But I think speaking with Principal Abercrombie is a good place to start.”

“Do you think she would give me a new application?”

“Spooked if I know,” said Chani with a shrug. Her eyebrows jittered mischievous above the rim of her glasses. “But if there’s anyone who could tell you the answer to that, it would be Dame Lizbet.”

“Your grandmother! Of course!” cried Katie. “What a great idea!”

“She’s been itching to do a bit of fortune telling, now that’s she’s retired,” said Chani. “It’s right up her alley, you know.”

“What isn’t?” chuckled Katie. Although they had never met, Katie knew almost everything about Dame Lizbet Vambrace. Besides being a Banshee of great renown, Lizbet was also an Archaeomagi, a sorceress skilled in the knowledge of all sorts of ancient magickal and supernatural arts—particularly the dangerous and forbidden ones. Most of the spells that Katie and Chani had recently learned had been stolen from one of the banned books in her collection, which Chani had unlimited access to ever since Lizbet’s recent move to Willow Valley, the Banshee community where Chani lived. Lizbet was eccentric, reclusive, and generally ignored by everyone in Willow Valley. And from what Katie understood, that fit Lizbet just fine.

“Tell you what,” said Chani. “Tomorrow we’ll go see her. She lives in the forest on the other side of Switchback Swamp, and that makes for quite a walk, so plan on being at my house first thing in the morning.”

“I will,” said Katie energetically.

“And take the barrow stone this time. It’s much faster than walking.”

Katie made a face. “Do I have to?” she said. “You know how I dislike using it…”

“Yes, you have to,” said Chani. “Or else it will take you all day to cross the valley.”

“All right,” said Katie. “I haven’t used it in a while, so I’ll have to re-enchant it tonight, after my parents are asleep.”

“Right,” said Chani.

“By the way,” Katie said curiously. “Have you noticed a presence lurking in your glasses lately?”
Chani frowned. “Now that you mention it, I have. Just yesterday I thought I saw the face of a very old woman staring out at me as I was dressing for school, but it vanished as soon as I noticed it.”

“These glasses are becoming much too active all of a sudden,” Katie said, scratching her head. “Why is that I wonder?”

Chani shrugged. “It’s a good question to ask Dame Lizbet. If there is anyone who can tell you about Dark-Glass spells, it’s her. See you tomorrow, Katie. Keep your hopes up.”

Katie said her good-byes and slipped off the glasses. She returned them to the nightstand, crossed the room to her desk, and spent the rest of the evening thumbing through a copy of Understreet’s Offical Guide to Mysterious Spells and Artifacts on a hopeless quest to solve the mystery behind the strange behavior of the Dark-Glass glasses.

At a little past midnight, Katie slipped out her window and shimmied down the rusty gutter pipe to the yard. The first full moon of summer was riding high in the star dappled sky, its monochrome light casting shadows in her path as she struck out across the fields.

The air was still, the night silent. Nothing stirred save for a few ghostly wisps of fog hovering above the slumbering meadows. As she slogged her way along a cart path overgrown with spiny bracken, an odd feeling settled over her. Normally she feared neither the dark nor the thought of traveling alone in the wild, open spaces of the uplands, but tonight something was different. It seemed as if the night, and everything hidden within it, was holding its breath. She tried to dismiss the feeling as a product of her imagination, but failed. There was something different about this night, and as she quickened her pace, she prayed that it had nothing to do with her.

At last the barrow stone loomed before her, an ancient pillar marking the solitary grave of some long forgotten soul. It jutted from the top of the barrow mound like a crooked black tooth, its face scoured smooth by the elements. Katie scrambled up to it, loathing every step. Using someone’s gravestone as a means of transportation did not settle well with her. It seemed rude. But since Chani insisted that gravestones made the best Way Stones, she did not argue the point…much.

Summoning her magick, she touched the stone and was surprised to find that it was already charged. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as she drew away from it. It had been months since she last used the stone, and there was no way it could have retained its charge for all that time. Any lingering energies would have dissipated long since then. A full charge meant that someone was planning to use it, and very soon at that. But who, she wondered.

“His name was Azareth,” said a voice, suddenly, and quite near.

Katie spun to see a hooded figure emerge from the shadows on the far side of the mound. In sudden panic, she summoned her warding hex and held her hands at the ready. “Who are you?” she demanded.

The figure drew back its hood with a pair of gnarled hands, revealing the long, gaunt face of a woman aged long beyond her years. She leered up at Katie, her blunted teeth glinting in the moonlight. “Who I am is of no consequence to you…yet,” she replied.

Their eyes met, and suddenly Katie was taken aback. There was something in the old crone’s gaze that seemed familiar, though Katie was quite certain she had never met the woman before. The crone tossed back her head and cackled, revealing wisps of silver-white hair that clung to her skull like the ragged remnants of a spider’s web. She returned her gaze to the burial mound and shook her head.

“Azareth,” she said in a saddened tone.

“Who is that?” said Katie, quite confused by the old woman’s rambling.

“The man whose grave you’re standing on, of course,” the crone snapped.

Katie risked a glance at the gravestone, feeling suddenly queasy. Now that the unknown soul had a name, she felt more disrespectful than ever. “How…how can you possibly know who is buried here?” she said. “This grave is old and forgotten.”

“One thousand years old, to be exact,” said the crone. “But never forgotten, no. I am surprised that it yet remains. But then again, a great many things have surprised me of late. He was a great hero, brave Azareth, even though he was as mad as a March hare.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” said Katie.

“Of course you haven’t,” the crone snapped. “History only remembers heroes who return from their quests. But I can tell you: Azareth succeeded in doing what all the heroes that came before him failed to do.”

“Which was…?” said Katie.

The crone smiled at her slyly and tapped the side of her nose with a finger. “He stole the fangs from the greatest she-snake that ever lived,” she replied. “And the she-snake killed him for it.”

“I don’t understand,” said Katie with a shake of her head.

“You will…in time,” the crone said.

Once again her strangely familiar eyes regarded Katie. They flashed in the moonlight with intense loathing. Katie repositioned her hands in front of her, the warding hex throbbing in her fingers. She had never held a hex in check this long, and it was beginning to cause her pain.

“You don’t recognize me, do you?” the crone asked suddenly.

“I’ve never seen you before in my life,” said Katie.

The crone’s expression darkened suddenly and her eyes became nuggets of forge fire. “A pity,” she said with deadly calm. Shooting Katie a threatening smile, she drew the hood over her head and began to back away from the barrow mound. The shadows seemed to leap up and surround her as she walked.

“I had come here hoping to settle the score between us,” she said, her voice growing oddly fainter as she drew away. “But I have miscalculated. This is not the right time. Soon, yes, but not now. Not here.”

“What are you talking about?” Katie said. “What score? I’ve never done anything to you.”

“That is a matter of perspective.” The old crone smiled knowingly. “Prepare yourself, Katie Frost. When next we meet, I will most certainly kill you.”

Katie’s blood ran cold as she watched the crone vanish in a flurry of shadowy wisps, leaving nothing behind save a chilling laugh that chased Katie as she fled across the dew-gilded meadows toward home.

When she returned to the Way Stone the following morning, Katie found no trace to prove the crone had ever been there.

Excerpt Copyright © 2008 by Kevin Scott Munnings
“The Book of All Things” ISBN-13: 978-1-4276-1874-0
All Rights Reserved.