Redeemed - Heather Fledderus (accelerated reader books TXT) 📗

I’m dead. Finally. It’s about time. I’ve waited long enough for this day. The darkness is finally different, no warmth, no gray…

                Aw, Graemons. The gray is fading in now, even if it is slower than usual. For a moment there, I really believed that this was the end of it all. I mean, am I supposed to live until the whole world goes up in flames? And speaking of flames, I can feel the warmth spreading to my limbs now. Nuisance really, all this dying just to come back to life again.

                What should I do this time around? I’m an old soul that has outlived the usefulness designed for it. And it’s not like being an immortal is getting any easier, what with how quickly the world has decided to explore every aspect of itself.

                One thing’s for sure. I’m no longer dead. I can hear the birds cheerfully squawking, so I must still be outside. There’s no other sounds, really, just the rustle of grass in the wind. No other signs of life then. I feel cold, but comfortably so. I sniff the air and decide where and when I am. Meadow, near a cattle farm, under the shade of an old oak tree, early summer. I can tell without even opening my eyes that the sky is clear, and that there are baby sparrows in a nest ten feet at an angle of elevation of 30 degrees to the left of my current position.

                My chest rises again, and I flinch at the stabbing pain that still hasn’t left. I really shouldn’t let people assassinate me with a knife to the kidneys.

                Oh well, might as well get up and face the life. You can’t fake death by ignoring life. The two are too attached together for that. Besides, lying about will just make me tired.

“Life and death are one thread,” August read aloud, her 12 year-old voice unusually solemn, “The same line viewed from different sides.” She snapped the heavy tome shut and tossed it casually on the bed beside her. “Just what kind of school is this?”

                Candace was busy picking off the last few cat hairs on her uniform’s blazer to shoot her sister a glare for mistreating the book. “You had all summer to read up on it.”

                “Yeah well, I had all summer to say goodbye to my Muggle friends.”

                “Your what?”

                “Muggle friends.”

                “August, this isn’t some Harry Potter book. Heck, this isn’t even remotely like that. Who gave you that sort of idea?”

                “You told me that you learned spells there. And that accidents happened a lot. Other than it being an all-girls school, there’s nothing that I can think of that keeps it from being just like Hogwarts.”

                Candace folded the blazer and placed it neatly in her trunk, on top of the freshly ironed skirt and shirt, both emblazoned with the school’s initials. “It’s not like Hogwarts because there’s no such thing as Mud-bloods or Muggles. There are wizards and then there are people. Either you have magic or you don’t.”

                She closed the trunk and dragged it towards the front of her pristine room. “Did you finish packing yet?”

                August flopped back on the bed. “Why would I? I’m not going.”

                Candace whirled to face her sister, her pony-tail whipping about her shoulder. “Yeah you are. Or do you think that Mom and Dad are going to let you skip out on the scholarship that the school gave you?”

                “That thing’s bogus, you of all people should understand that. They just want to sucker me into their school, collect another witch or mage of whatever it is you call female wizards.”

                “Mom and Dad don’t see it that way. Besides, think about it. Do you really think that the incidents are just going to go away? That if you ignore them long enough, they’ll stop and you can pretend to be normal, ordinary, ungifted? I thought Grandma taught you better than that.”

                “I’ve done fine on my own. I don’t need some stuffy teachers and snotty girls to show me how to control my powers.”

                So that was it. Candace sighed and sat down beside her sister, who slowly sat back up. “Hey, it’s gonna be alright. The school’s actually really awesome. The pictures can’t do it justice, especially since the public relations committee doesn’t know how to work a normal camera to save their lives. Besides, there’s Faunae there.”

                August’s eyebrows shot up, “Faunae? Actual Faunae? Like, real talking plants?”

                Candace nodded. “I mean, I’ve never heard of anyone who can actually communicate with them, but the firsties always try. And there’s not just Faunae. There’s like, a billion things in the Forest that no one sees. And everyone tries to spot the groundskeeper. And the food is awesome, and the snack shack has so many amazing candies that I’m not even allowed to bring home because they have magic in them.”

                “I’m going to be the worst in my class. Everyone else has grown up around magic their whole life.”

                “Come on, you know that’s not true. No one’s allowed to learn magic outside of school, and there are no magic schools for anyone younger than you. You’ll be starting out on the same page as everyone else. Heck, I’m top of my class in everything ever since first year.”

                “Everything except battle class, which you still suck at, by the way.”

                Candace jerked back from her sister. “How do you know that?”

                August shrugged and grinned, “Wild guess. There’s all those monsters out there, and you said that battle class was required learning so that wizards stood a chance of defending themselves. And you definitely are not the monster-slaying type.”

                Candace laughed. “Nope, and I never will be. I don’t have to be either. I plan on working in the Research and Development division of the Parliament when I graduate in a few years. I won’t have to worry about being attacked by Grimwore and Graemons.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was almost midnight. Six hours before dawn, before the Bus was due to pick the two of them up. She hissed a sigh as her thoughts turned to the infirmary at the school.

                August stood up and started to head for the door. She hesitated with one foot in the hallway. “Are you going to be okay going back?” she asked suddenly.

                “No,” Candace answered automatically. She blinked and tried to cover, “I’ll be better than okay.” She forced a smile, but could feel how fake it was.

                August saw right through her. “Maybe you should take the year off. I mean, it’s only been three months.”

                “Plenty of time for me to get over it,” Candace said stiffly. She changed the subject quickly, “Mom’s gonna kill your allowance if you leave your room a mess. Say goodbye to those floating jute balls.”

                August raced out of the room as the realization hit her. Candace forced herself to walk steadily to the door, to close it slowly and quietly. She even made it back to her bed before the tears broke out. She tried to keep it quiet, brushing the tears away angrily. She should be over it by now. It had been three months.

                Three months since her only friends had left her behind and gotten trapped in an ancient spell in the dungeons of the school. Fitz, her boyfriend, and Jason had been killed in the explosion that had collapsed a section of the building. The memorial service had been private, and Candace had been excused from her exams to go home.

                Sylvia, the only survivor of the accident, was still in the school’s infirmary, in a coma. Candace had made several trips to the school, as often as she could get away, but there had been no signs of improvement. Dr Claude Knight, the most renowned wizarding medical doctor in the world and Sylvia’s father, couldn’t make sense of it. By all accounts, he said that she was in perfect health, and that he couldn’t find the cause was baffling. Candace was fairly certain that he hadn’t been by the Academy half as much as she had.

                She sighed once the tears had all dried up. Dammit, she wasn’t supposed to cry anymore. Fitz was gone, dead and gone. She was going to have to start living with that some time, and she might as well get used to the idea.

                She didn’t even remember falling asleep.

                The bus ride to the Academy was uneventful and quiet. Other than her and August, there were only three other students on the coach bus. There weren’t very many wizard students between Pennsylvania and Boston, but the trip was short enough not to warrant plane tickets.

                Candace leaned back in her chair and tried to sleep. August, oblivious to what the other students were doing, was stretched out on the floor, wrapped in a blanket that she had decided at the last moment to take with her. The two boys at the back of the bus were going to St. Malcolm’s Institute of Sorcery while the girl who kept on glancing over at Candace was in her second year at Belladonna Academy, along with Candace and August.

                The two schools were practically neighbours, with a few acres of the Forest of Mysteries separating them, connected by tunnels so old and forgotten that only four people knew about them. Candace grimaced as she forced herself to correct that. Only two people knew about them. And even she didn’t really count. Sylvia and the others had only just introduced her to the mysterious tunnels the previous year, when she had started dating Fitz.

                She closed her eyes, but Fitz’s smile kept her from dozing off. She settled for staring out the window. Last year, at the banquet after the day’s Welcome Back activities, she and Fitz had fallen into talking. With Jamie being gone on as an exchange student to the Canadian wizarding school Jillian’s, he had noticed her sitting alone. At first, Candace had been wary of some sort of prank of the type that he and Jason were known for, but she had discovered a serious side to Fitz and they had spent the night