Water and Ghosts

Chapter 6

Nigel and I hole up in my office, bringing in a chair for him to use. When I walk in with the extra chair, I see Nigel looking at my hourglass and my Magic Compass.

“What are those?” He asks curiously but cautiously. Testing the waters, so to speak.

I set the chair down next to him. “The hourglass obviously holds ocean water in it. My parents and I made it together. My dad made the glass when he went to a workshop. One day, my mom brought me to the beach, along with a cup she filled with water. I added the seashells and sand you see at the bottom.” I smile at the memory.

I don’t tell Nigel Mom played with the water— making shapes with her mind and amusing me— before putting it in the cup.

Nigel smiles even wider than me, happy that I’m answering his questions. “And that?” He points at the Magic Compass.

I debate, for a moment, keeping it a secret. In the end, I decide that it does have a password.

“That,” I say quietly as I sit down in my own chair, “is what I call a Magic Compass. It’s a family heirloom, you see. You use a password to open it, and then it becomes… anything. A compass, a dictionary, anything. It talks in my mother’s voice, and responds to whatever I ask it.”

Nigel is in awe. “That’s so cool.”

“Thank you,” I say, smiling, as I stare into his brown eyes.

I’m still staring, and he’s staring right back.

The second stretches on for an infinity, and then another.

I break eye contact and rummage around in my backpack. “What subject should we do first?” I ask, only slightly breathless.

I don’t know what just happened.

“Math,” Nigel says, pulling his own work out. I lean across the desk and start helping him on the questions he didn’t understand.

All the while I’m aware that something just happened. I don’t know what, but I do know this:

We both trust and understand each other more

I won’t ever be able to forget it.

Once Nigel has gone home for dinner, and Grandma Colette and I have eaten dinner ourselves, I pull out the permission slip and show it to Grandma Colette. She doesn’t even hesitate with her response. 

“Absolutely not.”

I snap my head to look back at her, surprised. I thought she would say yes immediately. “What? Why not?” I need this trip. I need the knowledge. That’s why I signed up for the class.

“You would be unprotected,” Grandma Colette says, like it’s obvious.

“Protected?” I repeat, so confused. 

“What, you think we don’t have spells and protections placed over not only this house alone, but the entire town?”

I blink, trying to understand.

“Aqua, there are multiple enchantments over my house. I have to do one of them once a month, and I redo the others at least once a year.”

“Then teach them to me,” I say, grasping onto this thread. “If you teach me, then I can place those over my tent and I’d be fine. And besides that, I have the Shielding Sugar—”

“No.”

She doesn’t even consider it, and that is what provokes me the most.

“You’re not even going to think about it?” I ask, faking calmness.

“I already have, dear.”

I inhale sharply. I hate being trapped— I want to go, and yet I won’t be able to because someone else controls me.

I hate that.

“But I am going to teach you something else,” Grandma Colette says, completely oblivious to my fury. “Segreti nascosti.”

“Huh?” I ask, my anger fading to make room for my never ending curiosity.

Grandma Colette smiles knowingly. “Segreti nascosti. Hidden secrets. Say it.”

I do.

“Good,” she approves as she sits down on the couch, closing her eyes and leaning her head back. “Now you know the password to the locked door.”

It only takes a minute for me to understand, and the second I do I’m bolting up the stairs.

Grandma Colette chuckles. “Enjoy, my dear granddaughter.”

I have no doubt that I will.

I run up to the door and push the button. I repeat the wired words in a different tongue, and a satisfying click echoes.

The door opens easily at my touch.

My mouth drops when I enter.

The walls are all lined with bookshelves, with a comfortable looking chair right in the middle. I close the door quietly behind me and grab the only book on the back shelf, on the middle shelf. As I walk towards it, I think to myself I will totally miss the camping trip if I get to read all of this.

The cover is worn. It’s a fading blue, with the title scrawled on the top in a handwriting I recognize.

Ara’s Magical Discoveries.

This was my Mom’s.

Mom wrote in this. 

Completely aware of the treasure that I’ve found, I sink into the chair and begin to read.

About an hour later, I flip the page yet again, but this page is one of the most important to me… even if I don’t know it. It’s not as worn as the others, which means she discovered it later.

I was researching today when I came across a flower in the mountains. It’s unlike any I have ever seen. It grew on a cactus, but it was not a cactus flower— I would know. No, it was an anemone growing on a cactus. There was a whole sea of cacti and cactus flowers, all pink, except for this one red one.

I took it home for further inspection and consulted with the biology books and the books of our ancestors. I happened across a page that described the CACTONE FLOWER. “A combination of a cactus flower and an anemone, the Cactone Flower allows a person to take the powers away from an Elemental”.

Could this be the answer? Could I find a way to slip this to Cyra so that she is weaker and cannot get her revenge in the way she wants?

Next to the words is a really good sketch of the flower on the cactus. 

I can’t breathe.

For three months I looked for this. This missing piece. This thing that could help me take down Cyra.

That could give me my revenge against her for killing first my mom, then my dad. Something to make her topple.

This is it. The Cactone flower.

And mom found it in the Merstip Mountains, which is where the camping trip is going.

There is absolutely no way I’m missing that.

Confident that Grandma Colette is asleep, I close the book and put it back on the shelf. I go to my room, grabbing the permission form, then through the bathroom and back downstairs.

Spotting it on the counter, I grab her favorite pen, then the paper with her signature already on it. I don’t know what it’s for and I honestly don’t care. Just know it was there before dinner. I copy her signature onto the permission form before putting everything back in its place.

I did say that I had secret intentions.

I’m reading like normal in the commons when the bell rings, startling me. I grab my stuff quickly and hurry to class.

I have a full bag of pancakes and eggs and bacon, and a bunch of other stuff I consider ‘breakfast foods’. Glenden is already at his desk when I enter the room.

I’m confused; he didn’t come talk to me. But since I’m embarrassed to admit that I noticed and that I wanted him to, or rather expected him to, I pretend nothing is out of the ordinary.

I plop the bag onto the desk, smiling. “One order of breakfast, coming up.”

Glenden barely smiles, and hardly looks up. “Good. Let’s get to work.”

Okay. I am so confused. What happened to the funny, flirting guy who has greeted me the past two days?

I sit down warily, studying him. He digs through my back and pulls everything out. I watch as he puts it all on the plate… and smashes it.

“Wha—” I start.

“Just trust me, Aqua,” he says, looking at me for the first time. There’s a deeper meaning to his words; I can tell by the intensity in his eyes.

He’s starting to freak me out.

I nod, realing. Total personality one-eighty.

Glenden adds magic to the food and the plate, and then smashes it again. I help by adding a white sheet of paper, magiced of course, and covering the food. Together, we weld the paper to the plate.

It looks like a normal plate.

Glenden puts the cover over it and mutters an enchantment. He looks up at me, meeting my gaze.

He still hasn’t smiled.

“Would you like to do the honors?” He asks.

I startle. “Honors of what?”

He cracks a small grin, turning away so that I barely see it. By the time he turns back, he’s just as cold and distant. “Ordering the food.”

“Oh,” I say, frowning. “Yes, right.” I clear my throat. “Give me pancakes?”

Glenden snorts but doesn’t smile. He pulls off the lid.

Nothing.

“I’ll keep working on it,” he says quietly, and I look at him sharply.

I’ll. Not ‘we’ll’.

I’m so annoyed and frustrated instantly. He acted like a friend, like someone who was trying to make me feel at home in someplace new, for all of two days. He talked to me and I helped him with his self making fire thing. And then, once I consider him kind-of a friend, he pulls away? Grows distant and quiet and ignores me?

I don’t have time for games, especially by a boy I don’t even know.

So I leave him to it and I walk over to where Nigel is working with his partner. I talk with both of them and laugh, watching as they work on… I don’t even know what.

I only look back at Glenden once. I manage to catch a glimpse of him staring at me wistfully before he turns back to his work.

And then I force myself to forget all about him.