The Stars of My Heart [Completed]

Chapter Eighteen

Luckily, Mika is in Crista's room. She stands observing all the ingredients that line the shelves. When I burst through the door, her shoulders flinch.

"It looks as though you have had a fright."

Still catching my breath she walks over to me placing her hand on my shoulder. "Are you okay, Zaria?"

For a while, it takes me a moment to come back to reality. My head spins like a tornado, unable to process all the information that just keeps being uncovered.

"Maybe now isn't the best time..." she starts.

"No!"

I need a distraction. If I am sent back to my room, the only thing that I will be able to do is stare blankly at the wall. I have made up enough scenarios the past couple of days, I don't need another one.

"Now is a perfect time." Trying to force a smile to my face, I look at Mika.

"Are you sure?" She looks at me puzzled, cupping her hands together.

"Positive. What is the first lesson?"

With wary eyes she takes one last look at me before looking into her spell book. Her frail fingers frill through the pages, looking for the right one. It seems as though Crista's love for jewelry came from her mother. Dainty golden rings wrap around her fingers giving her a fantastical look. Starting from the back, she shifts to the front. Once the page is found, she opens the book to me. It is a leather-bound book, the rustic aroma immediately giving it away. The pages have been yellowed over the years, each page brittle and thin. The script inside is almost impossible to read, I have to squint my eyes to even make out the letters.

"Was this all handwritten?"

A smirk appears on her face. "Indeed. Passed down from generation to generation."

I take another look, getting lost in the faded inky letters. It is truly amazing. Magic seems so tight-knit, like a family. Someone had taken the time to write down every spell they knew, just to pass it down to their children to learn as well.

"Where do we start?"

"We start at the beginning," she says tapping the page to my left.

Too busy flipping through the middle pages, her sentence catches me off guard. "The beginning is so boring though." I start rolling my head back. When my eyes come back up, I am greeted with two stern eyes. Tilting her head, she continues to glare.

I change my attitude, knowing it's time for me to shut up. "On the other hand, starting at the beginning sounds like fun," I quickly flip back to the page she had chosen. "Lesson number one."

Finishing her glare, she finally releases me from her death trap. "Lesson number one," she repeats after me. "Vocalization techniques."

Pointing to the page again, her finger hovers over a drawing of a little girl saying a spell. "Vocalizing your spell makes it a whole lot easier to concentrate. All beginners start out by using their speech."

"What's the difference between just doing the spell in your head?"

"Zaria, your mind can become a dark place, and by the looks of things when you came into the door, your mind is in no place to be reciting spells."

She nods her head at the page, filling a glass of water, setting it on the table. "Well, let's see what you can do."

"You mean..."

"Mmhhm."

"Right now?"

"Isn't that why we are here?"