This Enchanting New World

Chapter 26

I needed to get everything I was feeling off my chest.

I needed to find someone who could understand.

I needed someone who knew what it was like constantly having to be someone you're not and struggling with your own self-worth.

And I knew just the person.

Luckily, I had a way to get a hold of her. 

I ducked into a bathroom stall and began my spell.

I pictured my soul malleable and flowing, cascading and dripping out in waves and ebbing to hidden places, and, concentrating as hard as I could on that image, I incanted the words "may her psyche flow like a river to a place that shows a true reflection," three times under my breath.

There was a ripple in the air, and a shift in the energy was thrumming in my ear like an electric pulse.

I felt the presence of strength, assured control, and a darkness that came from somewhere close to the heart. I felt the presence of the soul of a dragon. I felt a life force that started as a slow funeral march, quiet and weak, as if waiting for someone else to sing the melody, and grew louder and faster until it beat like war drums.

None of it came from me; It all radiated outward in ripples from the person I had manifested. They weren't here, but their soul was.

Mal's pale face, framed by thick tendrils of violet hair, appeared gradually in the pool of water that had taken shape in the sink.

Feeling Mal's spirit take shape and solidify all around me, I wished to no avail that her power, her confidence, her place in the royal court, her role as 'Queen of the Isle," could all be mine as well. I wished our souls could merge. 

It would solve everything. I could live happily ever after, eternally bonded with my sister in soul and blood. 

I wondered if things could be that easy. Could I cut out the boys from my story and live without any of that turnmoil, choosing a girl platonically instead?

Mal's green eyes flashed in the vision I was seeing in the water, and they darted in nerves and confusion. She blinked three times, like a fish taken to land, and felt the ends of her hair, the feathers of her eyelashes, and the bones of her cheeks as if to make sure she was real. She kept gasping softly, and it reminded me of right before she transformed into a dragon at the Royal Cotillion (I saw the coverage on Auradon News Network.)

"Please!," I said, holding my arms in front of me. "Don't freak out. I know what happens when you do better than anyone. It's me, Clarissa. Your friend."

Now Mal's breath stopped completely. "A...a..." She struggled to form the words. "Are you real? Am I hallucinating? I know I'm in the Royal Gardens, behind a bush (don't ask), but my spirit feels...absent. Like I'm somewhere else. I hear your voice, but you're not here. Clarissa, what's happening? Am I going crazy?," she pleaded, throwing her head back while her eyes still glowed a deep emerald.

"Mal, please. Breathe. You're fine. You're not going crazy. I cast a spell to manifest your spirit into water in the form of your face. That's why you feel like your soul is elsewhere. It lets us talk to each other. All of this is supposed to happen. Just trust me," I explained.

"So it's all a spell?," Mal realized.

"Yes," I confirmed. "It's like magical FaceTime."

Mal's eyes dimmed gradually, until the final fading ember dissipated away.

"I don't think anyone told you, but we're not actually supposed to use magic in Auradon," she said.

I threw my hands in the air.

"Well, we're not really Auradonian. Magic lets me have control over my environment. It makes me feel like power is surging through my veins, and I desperately need to feel that way. It's the only way I ever feel like that. I've spent 15 years without it- power and magic- and I'm going to use magic now, sister." 

Mal laughed. "I don't follow the magic ban, either," she confessed. 

"So I summoned you because I was wondering if you wanted to meet in my dorm room tomorrow and practice magic together," I offered.

Mal's eyes lit up, and her whole face seemed to brighten with them, as if someone had flicked a switch.

"Yes, please. Oh my gosh, I had to give my spellbook to the Museum of Cultural History, and I feel like I'm being tortured when I look to its usual spot on my nightstand and there's a big empty space," Mal vented, moving her hands in violent motions.

"And then Uma took it."

We burst out laughing.

"So....," I thought of the best way to phrase it, "What would you say if I told you that I was doing kind of the same thing she did afterwards?"

Mal gasped, eyes blazing.

"You're stealing Ben?," she accused, anger, confusion, and betrayal written into her shattering voice.

"What?," I screamed, laughing. "No, of course not."

I told her everything: how I would never be queen, how badly I wanted to and why, and about Ryder. Everything.

"I would tell you not to act like someone you're not, and that being in the royal court..isn't all it's cracked up to be, trust me. Most of all, I'd tell you that I didn't realize you were such a megalomaniac."

The word resounded like echoes off a cliff face, traveling and repeating in my mind like ripples in a smooth pond. Megalomaniac. It meant "someone with an obsessive desire for power." Megalomania was a mental disorder producing delusions of grandeur, and a passion for grandiose schemes.

Visions flashed before my eyes, taking shape all around me in my mind palace: how desperately I wanted to be queen,  and even more than that, to be powerful. It was almost all I cared about my revelation. How desperately I had wanted to be in Auradon, because I believed, against all logic and reason, that I was meant for a life of luxury and grandeur, and how no one I knew dressed in the same elegant but powerful fashion as I. My delusions of people bowing at my feet. The elaborate and overly grand/complicated trick I played on Edward. The plot I was carrying out at this very moment in order to become a queen.

Megalomaniac. It slowly dawned on me that Mal had described exactly what I was. However, a fast beating in a space of my heart told me that moreover, it was who I was.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Clarissa, but please, call off your plan with Ryder," Mal advised, tugging on her bangs in a show of passion.

"You're right," I replied in a soft, submissive voice, batting my dark, feathery eyelashes. Then I curled into a crafty, wicked grin, narrowing my eyes and slowly turning up my head. "And that's exactly why I won't."

I whispered, "May a piece of herself return from its mindscape," and Mal's shocked face vanished from the water as I left the stall and slammed the door behind me.

The spell was over.