“That’s . . . that’s terrible,” I said. “I guess this is perfect timing for me to go home then.”
“But you can’t go now.” Grunt’s frown made his beard bushier. “If we don’t fight, they’ll steal and burn everything. And you’re our best chance to beat them. I mean, you are an Old Hollower.”
A New Hollower, I thought. And New Hollow had as much magic as cold oatmeal.
Forge was frowning. “Wait, what’s all this about Old Holl—”
I backhanded Forge in the stomach. “Not now, we’ve got a crisis,” I said. “Grunt, how many armed fighters in Bendy Stream?”
“Two dozen.”
Would that be enough? I’d wanted an adventure. I’d wanted a dramatic and glorious battle. But I didn’t figure I’d find one so soon, or one quite so dramatic and glorious.
“You won’t stand alone against the raiders,” said Forge. “Count my sword among your own. That is, as soon as Spark gives it back to me.”
“That’s nice, but . . .” Grunt blushed. “Everyone voted at the Grinning Goat. They’re mighty afraid of the Ash Raiders, and they’d all just rather you fought them yourself, Mistress Spark. You and your Hollower brother.”
I stared at Grunt so hard he took a step back, covering his head with his hands as if afraid I’d fry off the black fuzz that was just growing back. The lot of them were planning to throw me and Forge at the raiders? We’d be slaughtered!
I marched back into the tavern, stood on the landing, and with my hands on my hips, I shouted, “Quiet down! Do you hear me talking to you? I said QUIET DOWN!”
I sounded so much like my mama I gave myself chills. All I needed was a wooden spoon to smack a few bottoms.
“You expect me and my brother to stop the Ash Raiders alone?” I said. “You bunch of lazy, spoiled, good-for-nothing louses. I’m ashamed of the lot of you. Ashamed!”
A few heads hung down. I nodded, satisfied.
“I know you’d like us to magically make them go away, but we can’t. We’ll stand beside you, but you’ll need to fight like mad. So let’s get to work or by my left toe, some heads will roll.”
And I followed up with some serious pointing.
There was no way everyone was more afraid of little me than of the Ash Raiders. At my most fearsome I’d shined a light in a few eyes. The Ash Raiders had burned dozens of towns to the ground, stolen livestock, and run the people off to starve in the wilderness. But the townsfolk listened to me anyway. What nice folk they were. I really didn’t want to see their town burned.
I was going to need more than a lucky rock and a couple darkease leaves. Defeating the Ash Raiders called for some serious tricks. With Churn and Forge’s help, I assigned everyone a task: gathering weapons and tools, digging ditches, wrapping arrows with ale-dipped cloth, building a barricade on the north side of the town’s main road.
We gathered the outlying farm families in and for two days all Bendy Streamers stayed in the center of town, taking turns at cooking, cleaning, digging, prepping, and watching.
It was morning when a girl appropriately named Scout came running from her scouting post.
“They’re here!” she said, out of breath. “They’re—”
That was all the warning we got. Over the horizon flowed the Ash Raiders.
They rode horses and bulls. Their clothes were black. Their hair and faces were smeared with the ashes of towns they’d razed. Sunlight glinted off swords and hammers, axes and arrow points. I tried to count them all but I got dizzy.
The townsfolk huddled behind our barricade of stacked wagons. I’m certain I wasn’t the only one shivering under the bright sun.
“Is this an adventure?” I whispered to Forge.
“Yes,” he said.
“Is it supposed to be fun?” I asked.
“Not at the moment,” he said.
“Good,” I said. “I was afraid I was doing it wrong.”
I stepped out in front.
“I’m an Old Hollower!” I shouted. “Retreat while you can!”
They kept coming. Well, it had been worth a try.
A raider on horseback disappeared into the middle of the street. I pointed at him as if I’d made him disappear with my spectacular mage powers. Actually I’d asked Grunt and others to dig random ditches all down the street, fill them with water, and sprinkle dirt on top for camouflage. Another rider plunged into a water hole. And another. I pointed. I pointed.
The raiders didn’t seem fooled. They kept coming.
Our longbowmen lit their arrows on fire and shot them in high arcs.
“Ha-ha!” I shouted. “Fear the light magic of Old Hollow!”
Some of our arrows hit the raiders, black clothing catching fire. But the rest of the raiders kept coming.
I had only one trick left. I motioned to Forge and several others and we lifted metal shields. I’d assigned the children of the town to polish them till they were extra shiny. We tilted the shields, reflecting sunlight into the eyes of the Ash Raiders’ front line.
“I blind you!” I shouted. “I blind you with my mage powers!”
Several broke off and fled. But the rest were not afraid. They shielded their eyes and kept coming.
“Mistress Spark?” Grunt looked hopefully at me, his eyes small in his huge face. “Let me have a go.”
I didn’t want to say yes. I wanted to be a real Hollower and win the day! But I nodded.
Grunt lifted his hammer and shouted. His two dozen warriors ran forward, meeting the first line. Grunt took out two raiders in one swipe. But there were so many.
I felt a tug on my shirt. (Forge’s shirt, actually.) Scout was beside me, her big eyes pleading.
“That’s my papa,” she said, pointing to a thin, grizzly-bearded man with a rake, standing with the nonfighters. “He says he’ll have to fight since your powers weren’t enough. But you won’t make him, right? You’ll stop the raiders yourself because you’re a Hollower, right?”
Why can’t some lies be true?
I gazed at the black wall of killers marching at us and my gaze got lost in their vastness. Grunt’s warriors would never be enough.
“We have to retreat!” I shouted back at the village. The warriors would give us time to get the rest of the townsfolk away. We had no choice but to abandon Bendy Stream.
We started to run away from the raiders, but suddenly we were running toward them. Because more raiders were entering town from the other side. We were surrounded by a sea of black, pushing us in. They wouldn’t only steal all the goods and burn the town, they’d burn the townsfolk inside it.
I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t. I had to do something, something, something. . . .
I gripped my lucky rock in my pocket. I felt the sun above, so hot, the heat a slap on the top of my head.
Forge ran back to me from the fighting. “I promised Mama I’d bring you home. Come on. We can’t win here, Spark. They’re as big as the night.”
Nothing can stop night but the sun.
I climbed atop the barricade of wagons. I climbed and I climbed and I lifted my lucky rock up. Could I make a lie real?
“Spark!” I could hear Forge calling. It was nice that he was afraid for me, but I didn’t look down. The sun had always felt like kin, and I followed the hot, crazy nagging that the sun could help. I imagined not just reflecting the light but pulling it into my rock. My fingers and palms burned, but it felt good, like clutching a mug of warm milk after playing in the snow.
“Spark! Get down!”
The black rock brightened.
A group of raider bowmen galloped toward the barricade, a glint of arrows, bowstrings pulled back, aiming at me.
“Leave!” I shouted.
They didn’t leave. The raiders loosed their arrows.
I loosed the sun.
Light exploded from the rock and shot from my fingers. My white, too-bright burst met the arrows midway, swallowing them up. The burst kept sizzling down the road and rolled over the r
aider bowmen. I heard screeches of fear, their mounts screaming and stamping. Smoke rose from the raiders’ black clothes, the ash fizzled from their hair. The first group fled.
“Grunt, get back!” I shouted.
He and his men retreated, and I pulled sunlight into the rock and shot it at the raider swordsmen. The burst crackled over their heads and chased them away.
I aimed now for the raiders who were hedging in the townsfolk.
“Leave!” I said. By the time my white burst reached the remaining Ash Raiders, they were already fleeing. In moments the last one had disappeared under the horizon.
My eyes were dazzled. I blinked several times and looked down. The whole town was staring at me.
“Yep,” said Grunt, “that’s what I saw Hollowers do in the Southern Wars.”
Forge had climbed up beside me. His mouth was as wide open as his eyes.
“Before I left, Mama said she named you Spark because you had the spark. At the time, I didn’t know what she meant.”
This was all feeling right, the waking world moving just like it did in my dreams.
Forge and I didn’t linger another day in Bendy Stream. I hugged and kissed all the Grinning Goat regulars. Churn sniffled as he gave me a week’s worth of travel food. Grunt followed us to the edge of town and waved till I could no longer make out his fuzzy black head.
Forge and I were going home. I couldn’t stand to make Mama sad. But on the way, we would pass through Old Hollow. Just to say hello. And maybe ask them about my lucky rock and how I was able to hold the sun.
THE SCOUT
BY D. J. MACHALE
Kit was on his own.
That was his first mistake.
He was the kind of guy who didn’t follow the rules, especially if he saw no good reason to. He wasn’t a troublemaker, but unlike most of his friends, who blindly bowed to authority, he made his decisions based on what common sense told him was right . . . even when he was the only one who felt that way.
His latest misadventure began innocently enough on a camping trip with his Scout troop. The plan was to leave their base with a group of thirteen Scouts and two Leaders on a two-day excursion through rocky, desertlike terrain to practice survival skills. Kit didn’t see the point other than to earn a badge that he couldn’t have cared less about. He laughed at the Scouts who proudly displayed their awards on a sash that proved they could swim a mile or treat wounds or repeatedly hit a bull’s-eye. Kit could do all those things, better than most. He just didn’t feel the need to show off his accomplishments by sporting colorful badges. He knew what he was capable of and that was good enough for him.
The Scout Leaders didn’t agree. They wanted their young charges to compete with one another, which was why Kit found himself trudging across the blazing desert with a light backpack along with twelve other sweaty Scouts. He wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else, but with two Leaders keeping a watchful eye on every move they made there was no way he could dodge what was sure to be a grueling, pointless couple of days.
It was hot. Torturous, nasty, pass-out hot. That didn’t stop the Leaders from driving the boys deep into the desert. Five miles, ten miles. They passed towering cliffs and crossed bone-dry riverbeds. Rationing water was crucial. Each Scout started off with a small bottle of water that had to last until they found resources in the desert, which wasn’t easy. The Leaders instructed them to keep their mouths moist by sucking on small pebbles to activate their salivary glands. Kit was way ahead of them. He had been working on a couple of pebbles long before the Leaders offered the tip. He wanted to point out that if this were a true survival situation they wouldn’t be hiking, like idiots, during the heat of the day. Instead they would be resting in the shade to conserve energy and reduce their sweat output. But this wasn’t his show, so he quietly went along.
He made a point of veering into the shade whenever possible, even if it meant adding a few extra steps. He didn’t talk, unlike the others, who were laughing and joking from the get-go. Kit wondered if the Leaders realized how much precious energy they were wasting. It seemed to him that they were driving the Scouts hard and letting them make dumb mistakes. But why? Was it another test? Another competition? Or did they just want to push them to the brink of dehydration and exhaustion for fun? It sure seemed that way. Or maybe the Leaders were just as clueless as the Scouts. Whatever the case, Kit wasn’t about to do anything that would make the adventure any worse than it already was, so he kept his mouth shu