The Adventures of the Junior Phoenixes, Part 5: The Last Pendant

Chapter 28: Over Hill and Under Water

Chapter 28

     The group walked up the great sloping hill. At first they walked with a quick pace but that soon stopped. The slope continued at a forty degree angle but once they had walked a great distance up the hill it began to steepen.
     “Ugh,” Star complained. “I wish we had brought the brooms. Who planned this thing?”
     Shade shook his head. “Next time, we’ll bring brooms.”
     The group, still covered in the White Worm’s goo, bloodied, with torn coats and ripped pants, continued upwards. The hill was covered in snow. The clouds above them began to clear and sunlight poured down upon them. The snow turned to slush and made it harder for them to climb. The climb got so steep that they were crawling upwards on all fours at certain points, clawing their way upwards.
     “Keep going,” Shade urged the group.
     They slipped and sloshed their way upwards. The higher they got the worse the incline seemed to be. They reached a certain point where a mist came upon them. The mist was thick; thick as butter. It enveloped the group like a cloak, wrapping them up against their will.
     “I can’t see anything!” Sam said aloud.
     “Me, neither!” Bria added.
     Star reached out and grabbed hold of their hands. “Hold on to me, okay?”
     Star walked along, with Sam’s hand trailing behind her. Sam held on to Bria’s hand. Star reached out and grabbed onto Echo.
     “Get a hold of the person in front of you, Echo,” Star told Echo.
     “Why?” Echo asked.
     “Because we don’t want to get lost up here, right?” Star replied.
     “Right,” Echo said. She took Star’s hand and reached out to Sky Heart, who was in front of her. Echo passed the message on to Sky Heart, who took hold of Shade’s hand, who then took hold of Rain Fox’s. Rain Fox led them upwards, through the thick mist and up the steep slope. It was a long time before anyone else spoke another word. After a long silence and many difficult steps up the slope they came to an odd clearing in the mist.
     “Look,” Star pointed out, “Another tablet over there!”
     The group walked to it. Shade wiped the ice and snow from the tablet. The runes on the stone tablet were in a strange language at first but, just as the first tablet had done, the writing changed into plain English on its own.
     “Pay me the fruit of your labors,” Shade read aloud. “Just like in the book.”
     “What are we supposed to fight now?” Echo asked.
     “Nothing, really,” Shade answered, “We’re supposed to sweat and let the sweat drop onto the hillside. At least, that’s what happened in the story.”
     “Well, that sucks,” Star said, “Because vampires don’t sweat.”
     “It’s too cold to sweat,” Sky Heart said.
     “I’m getting’ a little’ sweaty myself, to be honest,” Sam said. She reached into her jacket and shirt, rubbed her hand inside of her armpit, pulled it out of her shirt, and rubbed her hand on the ground. “Oh! My hand’s a little chilly! That should do it. Kinda been sweaty in there for a little bit. Hope that works!”
     The others looked at Sam with funny expressions.
     “You have to be the strangest girl I’ve ever met,” Bria chuckled.
     “Well, let’s get a move on, shall we?” Sam suggested. She reached out to grab Star’s hand again but Star recoiled.
     “Ew! No!” Star complained. “I’m not touching your hand after you wiped your stinky sweat with it!”
     “Oh, grow up, vampire!” Sam retorted.
     The group resumed their walking. The hill’s steepness lessened for a short while but then steepened again. They climbed for a long, long while, into the mist once more, until they came to another clearing. The mist cleared up and the sun came down around them.
     “Ahoy,” Sky Heart said, “What’s that?”
     The group approached what Sky Heart had pointed out: It was another stone tablet.
     “Pay me the fruit of your labors,” Rain Fox said.
     “That’s what the other tablet said,” Sky Heart noted.
     Rain Fox drew her blade and swung it down upon the stone tablet. It chipped a piece off of the top of the tablet.
     “Why did you do that?” Bria asked.
     “Curiosity,” Rain Fox answered.
     “I wonder how many of these tablets there are!” Sky Heart wondered.
     “No way to tell ‘til we get to the top,” Shade said.
     “Indeed,” Rain Fox said.
     The group resumed their climb once again and stepped into another thick batch of mist. They kept holding hands (though Star had taken to holding Sam’s wrist instead of her sweaty hand) and continued to climb. As it did before, the incline lessened at first but then increased and steepened. After a good while they came to another clearing in the mist. To their dismay, another tablet was upon the hillside.
     “Another one!” Sky Heart said.
     Rain Fox stepped to the tablet and sighed. “No,” she said, “It’s not another one.”
     “Is it a new one?” Star asked.
     “No,” Rain Fox answered, “It’s the same one. Look. There’s the notch I made with my blade.”
     The others looked at her, then at one another.
     “Are we going in circles?” Echo asked.
     “We can’t be going in circles,” Shade said.
     “We keep goin’ up,” Sam said, “How could we be goin’ in circles?”
     “You sure we’re going up?” Sky Heart asked.
     “Hey,” Star said, “I’ve been watching my Pendant’s light. I’m sure we’re still going the right direction. We keep following it! We’re not going in circles!”
     “Then how do you explain this?” Rain Fox asked.
     “Are you blaming me for this?” Star asked. “I’m going the right way!”
     “You don’t even know if it is the right way!” Sky Heart barked.
     “Leave her alone!” Echo snapped. “She’s led us this far! I’d like to see you lead us!”
     “I’d do a better job than her!” Sky Heart shouted. “I got us here, remember?”
     “Only because I was navigating us!” Star yelled, “Or did you forget who was holding your stupid maps?”
     “They’re called ‘Charts’, you ninny!” Sky Heart corrected her.
     “This is not helping!” Bria complained. “Stop this fighting!”
     “Let ‘em get their rocks out, girl,” Sam said, “Appears none of these dummies got a clue where we’re goin’ anyhoo.”
     “Hey!” the four yelled.
     “Ladies,” Shade said, “This is supposed to happen.”
     The group shut up and looked at him.
     “What’s that?” Echo asked.
     “In the story,” Shade explained, “The Four Companions walked up the hill but made little progress along the way. It took them hours to figure out how to overcome the hill.”
     “Well, what do we do, then?” Sky Heart asked.
     “We keep going,” Rain Fox suggested.
     “Or we just stay here for a while,” Star said, “My legs are killing me! I feel like I’ve walked up ten of the Iron Mountain’s staircases!”
     “We can’t just sit here and wait for the Fountain to come to us!” Sky Heart complained.
     “I didn’t say that!” Star bellowed.
     Shade rolled his eyes. He took a deep breath. When he exhaled, he felt the pain in his side flare up. The pain made him double over. He fell to one knee. It was hard to breathe again for him. He fought to get his breathing back to normal but the pain was almost too much for him.
     “Look at you,” a cruel voice spoke, “You’re a broken, worthless wizard who should have stayed in the land of the dead.”
     “You’re just wasting everyone’s time being back,” a second voice added to the first.
     Shade got to his feet and drew his wand. The girls stopped their bickering as the mist rolled over them and swallowed them.
     “What was the point of coming back here in the first place?” the first voice asked. “Didn’t you fail enough already? You needed to come back and fail some more?”
     Out of the mist, from opposite directions, appeared two men with pale complexions. One wore a long black cloak with silver markings; he growled and looked fierce. The other wore sharp clothing, dapperly dressed, and had an evil grin.
     It was Oberon Stagg and Vitellius Antipater.
     “Stagg?” Echo asked. “I saw you die!”
     “And I killed you!” Star said to Antipater.
     “I killed you first, little one,” Antipater grinned.
     “Such delicious and succulent little morsels,” a third voice spoke from the mist, “Such tantalizing morsels of tomfoolery and naïveté. What luck they have shown to have made it this far. All the better; wine tastes more robust and full-bodied when it is aged.” A cloaked, hideous figure emerged. Shade didn’t know him but Rain Fox and Echo did: Maltheus Grond, the other servant of Antipater.
     Grond, Stagg, and Antipater, the three vampires, walked around the group with licked lips and fangs bare. As they spoke, the mist thickened. From out of the mist emerged more figures. The group huddled close together and drew their wands. Rain Fox and Shade had their blades drawn, the sword and the curved blade, and kept them warily held up to defend themselves against the figures. The figures growled and snarled lowly: The Vampiri, the true form of vampires without human souls to anchor themselves to.
     “No good,” Sam mumbled, “This ain’t no good.”
     “What a feast!” Maltheus Grond whispered.
     “Don’t get so excited, Grond,” Antipater said, “The big one and the small one are tainted. The others are not worth the effort. They will come to ruin soon enough.”
     “Ruin this!” Star shouted. She threw a curse at Antipater but the curse shot through him. The mist moved with the curse but the curse didn’t have an effect on Antipater.
     “See?” Antipater taunted, “They’re a waste of our time.”
     “Pity,” Grond growled, “A terrible waste of flesh.”
     “That’s exactly what they are,” Stagg laughed, “A waste of flesh.”
     “Dude,” Star dismissed them, “I’m not gonna let a bunch of loser ghost-things get to me. C’mon, guys, let’s keep walking.”
     “Stupefy!” Antipater shouted. The spectral vampire had raised a wand and tossed his spell at Star. The spell hit her in the chest. It knocked the wind out of her and she fell. “I’d sing a different tune, if I were you,” Antipater laughed.
     “Didn’t expect that, did you?” Stagg asked with laughter.
     Star got up, aided by Sky Heart. “What are they?” Star asked Shade.
     “I don’t know,” Shade answered.
     “Of course you don’t,” Antipater remarked, “You’ve wobbled your way this far by luck. How you idiots have managed to stay alive is mind-boggling.”
     “Oh, but don’t forget,” Stagg added, “The quasi-vampire is technically dead and the boy is going to die before they reach the Fountain. As for the others, they will be dead soon.”
     The group huddled closer together, their backs inward and their wands stretched out.
     “You’re nothing but cowards!” Rain Fox shouted. “Face us like wizards!”
     The Vampiri were about to pounce but Antipater waved them off. “Don’t bother, my pets,” he told the horde of beasts, “They aren’t worth the effort. Look at them. They cower in our presence. They are powerless against us.”
     “Dude, didn’t I just say that I killed you already?” Star asked.
     “Please,” Antipater laughed, “You think that was enough to kill my soul? As long as that girl stays alive, I stay tethered to this world. She will always be my anchor.” He pointed to Sam. “Or have you forgotten that part of how Anchoring works?”
     “What?” Sam asked. “But we severed your soul from mine!”
     “Did you?” Antipater asked with a grin.
     “You’re lying,” Echo said.
     “Is that so?” Antipater replied. “You’ll never be rid of the threat of my kind, nor of me. My legacy is embedded in the hundreds of people I’ve bitten and the thousands more that have come about all from the kiss of my curse. You can never defeat us and you never will. Try as you will, but it will never happen. The same goes for your futile attempt to stop Easter. Seriously, just give up already. He has dear daddy Cloudstorm and the Old Pup hostage. He’s taken over the school and is poised to take over all of Salem. He’s going to succeed and your boy there is going to die. Our kind need only wait for you to fail and flourish under Leech’s new world once the Ministry abdicates. They’re fools, the Six Nations are fools, the Muggles are fools. We are the future of this world. While those Pendants hang around your necks you can do nothing to stop us. You’ve floundered like fish on a beach for years now. You’re as threatening to him as a crippled Puffskein. Whatever it is you think you’re doing, you’re going to fail at it. We just need only to wait for you to do so, and then we shall sink our teeth into your flesh and drink. Next time, my dear little Samantha, you won’t have your little boyfriend to defend you.”
     “We will bathe in your blood and intoxicate ourselves in the misery of your anguish,” Grond spoke.
     “And there will be nothing you can do to stop us,” Stagg added. The vampires laughed and disappeared into the mist.
     “See you soon,” the vampires said as they vanished.
     The group lowered their wands as the Vampiri followed Stagg, Grond, and Antipater into the mist. Shade sheathed his sword, as did Rain Fox.
     “Was he serious?” Sam asked the others. “Is he still stuck to me? I mean, his soul: Is his soul still stuck to me?”
     “No way, dude,” Star answered. “We got rid of that thing, right?”
     “I don’t actually know,” Shade said, “I don’t know enough about vampires to answer that.”
     “But I can’t be walkin’ ‘round with his soul still attached to me!” Sam hollered. “I can’t! I don’t know- Please tell me that wasn’t real! They were just ghosts or somethin’, right?”
     “I don’t know what they were,” Shade said, “Neither Altheda nor Morgan le Fay said anything about this hill.”
     “He wasn’t real,” Echo said, “I couldn’t smell them at all.”
     “But he hit me!” Star said.
     “We should keep on going,” Sky Heart said, “Before it gets later than it already is.”
     The group resumed their trek upwards. After a long and tiresome walk they came to another clearing in the mist. To their dismay they found the tablet again, the very same one with the notch Rain Fox had made on the top.
     “This is getting tedious,” Rain Fox said.
     “It’s annoying,” Echo complained.
     “It’s stupid,” Star muttered.
     Shade took a deep breath laboriously. He was struggling for breath. He wrapped his arms around his belly and knelt down.
     “Are you alright?” Bria asked.
     “I wish you girls would stop asking me that question,” Shade answered.
     “Sorry, Shade,” Bria apologized.
     “We can’t stop,” Shade said. He stood up again and kept walking. “Keep going.”
     Echo and Sky Heart pushed on Shade’s shoulders to keep him going. The fog thickened again and they kept walking.
     “Where do you think you’re going?” an angry man’s voice asked. “I told you before you were gonna get yourself into trouble! Look at you now! You never listen!”
     The group watched as a man with an unbuttoned flannel shirt emerged from the mist. He sauntered towards the group and snickered at them.
     “Dad?” Star asked. “What are you doing here?”
     “You tell me!” Star’s dad replied. “I came to take you home before you get yourself killed again!”
     “That’s not your dad,” Shade told Star.
     “You shut your mouth, you stupid bastard!” Star’s dad hollered. “This is your fault: You and these stupid kids!”
     “Hey!” Sky Heart said in protest.
     “Hey what?” Star’s dad asked. “I’m absolutely right! This is your fault why my little girl’s a vampire! Y’all let a little girl go runnin’ ‘round town with a bunch of older kids and look! You got her bitten! Weren’t you an Auror? Weren’t some of you Aurors? None of you had the frame of mind to protect the youngest person in your little troupe? Huh? Was that too much to ask?”
     “I went with them on my own, dad!” Star defended the others. “It isn’t their fault!”
     “Of course it is!” Star’s dad barked. “That school’s supposed to protect the kids! That guy right there? He’s supposed to protect people! Who have you protected, guy? Who have you saved? Far as I know, you kids haven’t saved anyone! How many people gonna have to die before you figure that out?”
     “We’ve saved a lot of people,” Echo said, “This is just another ghost trying to get us down.”
     “Is that what you call me now?” another voice, a woman’s voice with a British accent asked. “You ship me away and never speak of me again?”
     Echo turned on the spot. She saw a tall woman emerge from the mist. “Mom,” Echo said under her breath. “Right: You’re my mother.”
     “Not anymore,” the spirit of Keleigh Turan responded, “Because you’ve tucked me far away so you don’t have to deal with me. I could die at any moment and you’ve have no way of even knowing about it until it was too late. You’re all alike, every single one of you: Self-absorbed, selfish, and self-serving. Not a single one of you has thought about the dire consequences of your actions here, none of you. You have worried your parents and thrown away your education. People have died because of your selfish actions. Echo, I thought I taught you better than this. You’re such a disappointment. You’re just like your father: Your actions are nearly criminal and you are stubborn!”
     Echo was taken aback. “I-“ She tried to reason things out.
     “I don’t care to hear your excuses,” Keleigh Turan complained.
     “You couldn’t even protect my child,” Star’s dad said to the others. “How do you think the other parents feel about you dragging our children everywhere in this ridiculous, clandestine, dangerous quest of yours, huh? You think we LIKE our kids being killed? I was at home, minding my business, when she comes home and tells us she died and became a vampire! She died! You know what that’s like for a parent to hear? Do you even care? Have you ever considered just how worried and anxious it makes us every time we let our children go out the door? Now we have a daughter that can never grow up! We always have to make sure she has her medications and she always has to eat meat on the rare side! What if she doesn’t keep that up? What if we run out of money? What if she bites one of her siblings? You don’t know what it’s like to be a parent. You never will, Shade. You’re going to die and our children will be left to fend for themselves again! You’re the worst wizard I’ve ever seen!”
     “I told him as much to his face,” Keleigh Turan spoke. “I told him that my daughter was my world and look what happened? She doesn’t even visit me anymore.”
     “That’s not true!” Echo said with tears in her eyes.
     “Of course it’s true,” Keleigh said, “He remembers when I told him.”
     “We trusted you, Shade,” Star’s dad said. “We all trusted you.”
     From the mist others emerged, the parents of other children. Nymphara’s dad, Luminara’s parents, Iggy’s aunt, Sam’s dad, and Mrs. Cloudstorm: They berated Shade on how inadequate he was at protecting their children.
     “Don’t listen to them, Shade!” Bria whispered into his ear.
     “You think we like you being this reckless?” a pair of voices asked. It was Bria’s parents who had arrived. “You’ve learned terrible habits from these Americans! We should never have let you participate in that exchange program!”
     “Mum! Dad!” Bria said with surprise. “These are my friends! I love them!”
     “You want to die with them, Bria?” her dad asked. “You want us to grieve over you like that poor Dan’s father is going to grieve for his son?”
     Bria cried at the mention of Dan’s name.
     Another woman emerged from the mist. All the others became silent as she approached Shade. “You killed my son,” the woman said. She had blonde hair, blue eyes, and spoke with a British accent. “If you had only done as you were told and left Hogwarts with the rest of the students, my Collin would still be alive.”
     “Oh God,” Shade said. He fell to his knees in pain and overcome with anguish. “Mrs. Creevey?”
     “You broke the rules and he died as a result!” Mrs. Creevey yelled. “Are you proud of yourself, Mr. Richards? You’re nothing more than a child killer! You poisoned these children just like you poisoned my son! You should have died that night, not my boy!”
     “Worthless!” someone else yelled.
     “Murderer!” another said.
     “Stop it!” Sky Heart yelled. She grabbed Shade and yelled at the others. “Keep going! We have to keep going!”
     Sky Heart kept a hold of Shade’s coat and rushed up the slope of the hill. The snow under their feet was slushy and getting harder to tread. The others followed. The parents kept yelling out at the group with wounding and hurtful words.
     The group was in tears at the words of the parents; all except Rain Fox. She had enough. She unsheathed her blade and swung it at the parents. The parents were unharmed by her blade; it swiped through them like a knife in the fog and had no effect. They kept murmuring and shouting at the group. Finally she had enough. She stuck her blade in the ground, withdrew her wand, and shouted, “Ventus Victor!” Her wand whipped the mist into a frenzied whirlwind. It blew the parents away and cleared the area around them. The voices continued their taunting, however. Instead the voices got louder, shouting over the howling of the wind.
     “Run!” Bria shouted as the whirlwind Rain Fox conjured spun out of control. It began to tear up the ground and spun violently. The voices started to scream. The group ran as fast as they could up the hill. The mist consumed then again as the hill became steep once more. It was a little while before they came to a clearing in the mist. The voices suddenly silenced when they stepped into the clearing. The air was quiet and the sun was nearly in the center of the sky. Before them, as before, was the same stone tablet.
     The group was short of breath. Everyone surrounded the tablet and tried to catch their breath. Shade struggled the most; he was in excruciating pain.
     “My legs are killing me!” Bria bemoaned. “This hill is worse than the worm! How are we supposed to get off of this hill?”
     “We don’t,” Rain Fox said. She sat near the tablet and had poked at the ground. She began to dig into the ground and, to her horror, she found a skull in the hillside.
     “Dear Lord!” Sky Heart yelled. “Are there more of them?”
     “Yeah,” Sam answered. “There’s another one over here!”
     “Booker and Madam Altheda said that people had gone in and never come out,” Star said, “Remember that pit filled with bones? There’s only one story of anyone ever coming out of here alive.”
     “What if we don’t make it?” Bria asked. “What if we do die here? Oh, my poor parents! I can’t do that to them!”
     “Get a grip, dude,” Star said.
     “All those things your father said,” Bria said, “Were they true?”
     Star nodded. “Yeah, kinda.”
     “These things are saying true things to us,” Bria said, “Oh, I should never have come!”
     “Why are you here?” Rain Fox asked. She walked up to Bria and grabbed her by the shirt. “Why did you come here in the first place?”
     “Leave her alone!” both Star and Echo shouted.
     “I will not!” Rain Fox barked back. “I want her to answer! Why are you here, Bria Brightwater? Answer me!”
     “I don’t know!” Bria answered with tears in her eyes. “I came because Sam and Star are my best friends, and so is Echo! I couldn’t bear leaving them to this task alone!”
     “Do you love them?” Rain Fox asked.
     “Yes!” Bria shouted tearfully.
     “Good,” Rain Fox said. She let go of Bria. Bria fell to the ground in a tearful heap. “Don’t forget that.”
     Shade got up and spoke through winced eyes and intense pain.
     “You won’t make it, son,” a voice spoke. “This is the end for you. Give up. You can’t make it up this hill, even if the clouds were to fade and the peak was just a few yards away. You’re finished, just like I told you before.”
     Out of the mist walked a man none had seen in years except for Rain Fox. He was gray and fearsome. He had silver hair and silver eyes. He walked with a black cane with a silver tip and a wolf’s head made of silver at the handle. He wore a black cloak lined with wolf’s hair. He almost strolled with his proud stride, the Dragon Rider of the Ancient Days, the Chief Werewolf, the bloodthirsty and vicious wizard in his original form: Leech de Bauch.
     Both Rain Fox and Echo immediately raised their wands and aimed them at the old werewolf.
     “You’ve figured out by now that I’m not really here,” Leech said, “You see, I’m not here to delude you or lie to you. I’m here to tell you the truth. The truth is: You’ve wasted your time. You, Shade, will die. The poison is close to claiming you. The power of your Pendant wanes in this land. The magic here is too much for your Pendant to handle. You will die within sight of the Fountain.”
     Shade leered at Leech.
     Another figure stepped out of the mist. It was the womanly figure of Temperance Graves, the poor woman whose body was taken over by Leech’s evil soul. “The others will be trapped here forever,” Graves spoke. “I guess we should thank you for bringing them here so that they will never interfere with our plans again.”
     Out of the mist emerged a third figure. The figure was cloaked and hooded, tall, enigmatic, with a golden mask on his face that had a sun on the forehead. It was the Masked One, the form that Leech used in the cursed body of Easter.
     “Look,” Star complained, “Since you’re not real, you don’t matter. Why don’t you just go away? Nobody cares what you have to say.”
     Graves laughed. “As if your opinion counts for anything,” Graves said, “You’re a half-breed mutant who doesn’t belong anywhere: Death won’t have you, vampires don’t care for you, and your friends treat you like a disabled person. You don’t belong in either realm, living or dead. You’re an anomaly. You’re a freak. You contribute nothing to this group.”
     Star wanted to reach out and take the old Leech by the throat but she knew it was only a waste of time.
     “As for you, Samantha Meadows,” the old Leech spoke, “You’re even worse. You loved the Titan boy but held on to your schoolgirl crush and missed your chance to feel true love. You will never love in your life. You’re doomed to always be torn in two.”
     Sam lowered her head at the mention of Dan’s name.
     “Echo, Echo, Echo,” Graves said tauntingly, “Such a disappointment you turned out to be. Lost in your selfish ego. You’re an emotional wreck and you have neglected the man you claim to love. You failed to save your brother and failed to save your mother. You failed to save your friends and you’ll fail to save Shade. Of all the members of this group, you’re the most cursed one. How the Pendant of Darkness stays around your neck is beyond me.”
     Echo fumed and growled.
     “Bria Brightwater,” Leech said, “Why are you here? All you contribute to this group is another body to be waylaid by the horrors that await you. You’re a lesser child of a greater lineage. You’re a disgrace to the name of Brightwater.”
     Bria looked upset.
     “And you two,” the Masked One spoke, “You are two sides of the same coin. Yet, with all that you’ve encountered, you have learned nothing. Your father will die. Your mother will die. You will die. You came all this way to find yourself a serene tomb to be settled into. Neither one of you deserves to be labeled part of the Six Nations. Neither one of you is worthy of the Pendants. Neither one of you will escape the doom that awaits you. Neither one of you has learned that you have no power, no strength, no skill, and no hope for tomorrow. You’re a divided mass of flesh squandered and wasted. It is a pity you were not killed in that first encounter in the little park in Salem. If it weren’t for you, Arielle Cloudstorm, none of this would have happened. All of this can be laid at your doorstep. Your stubbornness and rebelliousness has caused all of your friends to suffer a grief that could have been prevented in the first place. Now they will all be depraved further when Shade finally dies. Apropos that it will happen here, among the former paradise of his kin.”
     Sky Heart began to weep while Rain Fox tightened the grip on her wand.
     “Such a shame,” Leech spoke, “Considering that your lineage will wither and die. Too bad Easter will never know the truth.”
     “What truth?” Star asked.
     Leech grinned. “The truth about Shade’s lineage,” he answered. “The truth that he is a son of Easter; Easter is his forefather. Once upon a time, Easter and Morgan le Fay conceived a son. Only he never knew it; he still doesn’t know it. He’s a fool and his foolish crusade will fall into ruin, along with his ridiculous legacy. I know what he really thought of me and it mattered not. I simply used his ambitious crusade to further my own.”
     “Which is what?” Star asked.
     “The destruction of the Muggle and Magical government system and the implementation of a new world order,” Leech answered.
     “We are nearly finished,” Graves spoke. “Once we decimate the Ministry, the Muggle government will have no one to protect them.”
     “We will dispatch the Six Nations afterwards,” the Masked One added. “Once we have the Americas, the world will follow.”
     “You have nothing to stop us with,” Leech laughed. “The Ministry will fall. You will all die. On your bones I will build my world. Then again, I’m not telling you anything new. This isn’t news to you. You’ve known these things deep in your hearts. Most of you are adults now. You have figured this out by now. What real chance did you think you had? You had a child’s hope in stopping our efforts. Tomorrow we shall take the sickle and reap the ripened fruit. You are powerless to stop us. You might as well sit here and let the hill claim you. Forever you shall remain here, another bag of bones to add to the landscape.”
     Everyone in the group paused and sat on the hillside; everyone except Rain Fox. She stood. She took a deep breath and walked into the mist in front of her.
     “What a fool,” Leech chuckled as she ran off into the mist. “She will only prove my point: You are all useless.”
     The others stewed in the harsh words of Leech de Bauch and his various forms. It was a long while before Rain Fox emerged from the opposite side of the mist that she had entered. She came up, huffing and puffing. She paused and grunted when she saw the group and the tablet again.
     “I warned you,” Leech taunted.
     Rain Fox shook her head and ran headlong into the mist again. Again, after a long while, she emerged from the opposite side of where she entered. This time, though, she did not stop. She paused for a brief second before she resumed her run into the mist and up the hill. She emerged a third time, endured the taunting of Leech, and kept going. This time her sister joined her. When they emerged from the mist again, Leech laughed.
     “What did I tell you?” Leech bellowed. “You have learned nothing!”
     This time, as the twins were about to run, Echo joined them. Sam followed Echo as the four ran headlong into the mist. Bria and Star followed. Shade looked at the Leeches and chuckled. “You don’t get it, Leech,” Shade said. He struggled to get on his feet. He finally stood up and looked at the three forms of Leech and chuckled through gritted teeth. “Those crazy girls will never stop and never give up. I gave up. I ran like a coward but you know what? They didn’t. They never gave up, not even on me. They went to the ends of the Earth and never gave up. They’re the ones who will stop you. They will save me. They won’t stop until you’re toast and dead in the water. You don’t have a chance against them. They’re not going to fall down and die on this hill like the people who left those bones did. They can’t; it isn’t in their blood. You can’t say anything to them that will change their mind. They’re stubborn. They’re relentless. They’re downright annoying sometimes. But I love them. They’re my girls. They’re my sisters and my students and my friends. They will never break, never bend, and never bow to you and your kind. They’re incorruptible. Face it, Leech-Lady: You can’t win. Guys like you never win. There’s too much real light in this world to ever be extinguished by the frail darkness you represent.”
     The other two Leeches, Graves and the Masked One, faded away. The old Leech stared at Shade with angry eyes.
     “Savor this little moment,” he whispered to Shade. “This is the last victory you will ever enjoy, and there are none here now to enjoy it with. Say goodbye to them, Shade. You’ll be joining Morgan le Fay very soon.” He stepped away from Shade and, like a phantom, he faded into smoke and was no more.
     Rain Fox came upon Shade as he leaned against the tablet. “You alright?” She asked through labored breaths.
     “No,” he replied, “I’m dying. I can barely breathe.”
     The others arrived. They surrounded Shade and watched as he struggled to breathe.
     “Listen to me,” Shade told the group, “Get going. Don’t give up. Keep on going and you’ll make it. I believe in you. Don’t stop.”
     “No,” Rain Fox commanded, “No. Get him up! Grab him!”
     Echo and Sky Heart got Shade to his feet.
     “No more visits to the Realm Beyond,” Rain Fox said, “You can’t die. You understand? I won’t let you die! I have the Pendant of Death. I won’t let you die, you hear me? You’re with us now! I don’t care if Easter can hear me and he’s plotting our destruction! I won’t let you die! Now, come on! Bring him with us! Move it!”
     Echo and Sky Heart carried Shade with them. The others pushed them along. Rain Fox led the way as they entered the mist once more. They walked along the hill as the slope first leveled, then steepened until they got to the clearing and the tablet again.
     “Don’t stop!” Sky Heart shouted. “We can do this!”
     “My legs are going to fall off!” Bria complained.
     “I got you, Tree Lady!” Star said. She took Bria’s hand and didn’t let it go. Sam took the other one. Rain Fox kept walking ahead of the group. The mist began to thicken once again.
     “Keep it up!” Sky Heart shouted again. “We can do this!” She hoisted Shade up as he nearly fell to the ground, overcome by the poison within him. “You could lose a few pounds, mate,” she laughed.
     Shade laughed with her. “Thanks, Sky Heart,” he said with a painful chuckle.
     “Don’t mention it!” she replied. She shook her head. She felt tired and exhausted. From her brow a bead of sweat dropped to the ground. It fell between the snow patches, caught in the grass below. Suddenly the ground shook violently. The mist swirled and whirled about. The group fell on their bottoms and held on to one another. The mist was blown away and, before them, the sunlight illuminated the summit above. They could make out the crown of the hill.
     “We did it!” Sky Heart cheered. “I knew we could!”
     The group got back on their feet and made a valiant effort to the top. As they ran the sunlight poured down and the snow began to melt quicker. They made it to the top and stood in awe. The hill was not so much a hill as it was a plateau. In the center of the plateau was a raised island that was greener and lusher than any garden human eyes have ever seen. The raised island was surrounded by a fast-moving stream, almost like a whirlpool. It looked deep and perilous; it was too wide to jump across and the whirling waters made it impossible to take a boat or craft across.
     “Now I wish we had brooms,” Sam said.
     “Look,” Rain Fox pointed out. A stone tablet, flat and level with the ground, was embedded into the bank on the land’s edge. “There’s another tablet.” Upon the smooth stone tablet were strange runes.
     “There it is!” Bria shouted. “I see it!”
     In the center of the raised island, glittering and shining like a beacon of light upon the summit of the great hill, was the Fountain of Fair Fortune, the fountain of legend. It was surrounded by trees and flowers of all kinds.
     “Almost there, Shade,” Echo said to him.
     The tablet’s runes shifted, like the other two had, and turned into plain English.
     “Pay me the treasure of your past,” Rain Fox read.
     “This one,” Shade said, “This one is tricky. In the story, one of the witches took the memories of her former lover and poured them into the water.”
     “How do you do that?” Bria asked.
     “You take your wand,” Shade instructed them, “And you put it to your temple. Then you think of a memory and it will attach itself to your wand. You then pull the memory from your head and let it fall into the water.”
     “So we just give it a memory?” Echo asked.
     “Not just any memory,” Shade clarified, “A treasured memory. It has to be something very important, very close to your heart.”
     “Okay, then,” Star said, “All of us?”
     Shade shrugged. “That might work,” he said.
     The entire group gathered at the bank and stood at the edge. Each one took their wand and put it to their temple.
     “I’m thinking about Quidditch!” Star said, “That time we beat Putnam Ward and smashed them!”
     “I was in Putnam, Star,” Echo chided her.
     They each withdrew a memory from their head with their wand. The memory looked like a liquid-like, almost feathery silver substance. It floated to the ground like a piece of parchment and fell into the water.
     “Is that it?” Sky Heart asked. “What happens now?”
     “Some stepping stones are supposed to appear,” Shade said.
     “Look over there!” Star pointed out. A group of humps started to float towards the group. “Are those the stepping stones?”
     “They don’t look like stones,” Sam announced.
     “What are they?” Bria asked.
     The humps sticking out of the water approached as the water they had dumped their memories into turned black. The stream rushed faster and licked at the bank. The humps rose and neighed ferociously.
     “Kelpies!” Bria and Sky Heart shouted.
     The Kelpie was a water demon of the magical world. They were shape-changing creatures who dragged their prey under the water and devoured them. The Kelpies jumped from the stream and landed on the shore in several big splashes. The water did not splash and settle; instead it gathered itself up and took the form of a humanoid man-horse: A man’s body with a hideous horse head.
     Echo and Sam cast curses at the Kelpies but the creatures were unaffected by their magical efforts. Rain Fox drew her blade and tried to cut them to no avail. Bria and Star were grabbed and nearly dragged into the water. Shade and Sky Heart managed to free them from the grasp of the Kelpies. More Kelpies floated near the shore and emerged from the black water. The group fought as best as they could against the creatures.
     “What went wrong?” Echo asked. “I gave it a treasured memory!”
     “You need to sacrifice something into it,” Shade hollered, “Something more than just a happy memory. It needs to be something you’re willing to give up!”
     The Kelpies attacked in greater numbers. Echo was grabbed and was nearly dragged under when she used her ice magic to freeze the Kelpies. The creatures were frozen solid by her ice curses. She froze the others around her, yelling “Glaceus!” several times. She hit her targets and froze all the Kelpies on the land.
     “That was easy,” Echo said.
     Suddenly the iced Kelpies broke free. Echo watched in horror as they changed forms: Dragons, Centaurs, and serpents.
     “Ah!” Bria shouted. One had coiled itself around her. Star managed to break her free by blasting a hole into the water of the creature.
     Sam walked to the shore and looked into the stream just as more Kelpies appeared and were heading towards the group. She took off her coat, her jacket, her boots, her scarf, and her gloves. She stood barefoot on the shore and held only her wand.
     “What are you doing?” Star asked her.
     Sam looked back at Star. Sam took a deep breath and jumped into the black water.
     “Hey!” Star shouted. She fought her way to the water’s edge and looked at the stream with worried eyes. “Where is she? Where did she go?”
     The water rushed at the shore. The Kelpies enclosed the group and encircled them. Shade fell to one knee after he had failed to dispatch two Kelpies near him. Bria blew several away with a strong wind jinx. The water turned from black to a bright blue, like an illuminated sapphire. Light shone in the depths of the stream. The Kelpies fell; they collapsed into themselves and became puddles of water.
     From the stream emerged Sam. She was coughing and struggled to float.
     “Levicorpus!” Echo yelled. She lifted Sam out of the water and levitated her towards the shore. “Liberacorpus!” she said. Sam fell to the ground, nearly on top of Star. Star caught her and the two fell to the ground.
     “What did you do?” Sky Heart asked. “You stopped those things from drowning us!”
     “I thought you were crazy for jumping into that stream!” Star said as she picked Sam up and cleaned her off. Bria brought Sam her jacket and other clothing.
     “It’s cold in that water,” Sam said with a shiver.
     “I bet,” Star remarked. “What did you do?”
     Sam walked up to Shade and stood in front of him. “I gave it something I had treasured,” she told the group. She looked at Shade and did not turn from him. “I gave it you.”
     “Me?” Shade asked.
     “Yeah,” Sam replied. “I did love Dan. That Leech-ghost-thingy was right. I loved Dan but I was kinda stuck on you. You could never love me the right way. You don’t know how and that’s okay. I kinda hated you for it but I kept on holdin’ on like a dummy. I wish I hadn’t been so stuck on you; otherwise I would have noticed just how much I loved Dan. I took him for granted an’ now I’ll never get a chance to find out just what kinda thing we could’ve had. So I jumped into that water over there and I gave it all the memories I had of you, all the memories of me pining for you an’ being hurt by you. I don’t hate you no more, Shade. I’m not angry with you and I’m sorry for the whole darn thing. But it helped us. It helped me. I feel free. I feel good. I just wish I had done this sooner.”
     Shade took a deep breath. “Really?”
     Sam put her hand to Shade’s face and smiled. “Someday you’ll find out what true love is. You’ve been in pain for a lot longer than this poison’s done you in for. Someday I hope you love someone the way Dan loved me. You and me, Shade: We’ll always be friends. Is that okay?”
     Shade sighed. “That’s perfectly fine,” he said. “You’re amazing, Sam.”
     “Bless your heart,” Sam laughed, “Like I don’t know that already, boy.”
     “Look at the stream!” Sky Heart announced.
     The stream ceased to whirl and became calm. From the stream emerged a set of stone steps, paced at a footstep apart, which ran from the bank of the stream to the raised island at the center. The group cheered before they began to walk across the stream and towards the Fountain of Fair Fortune on the raised island.
     “No more Kelpies or worms or Leeches, right?” Star asked as she skipped from stone to stone. “I’m not sure how much more fighting I can handle. Besides, I’m thirstier than a dog.”