Chapter Six

Amber panted, breath coming in great lung-filling gasps as her legs pumped and she pushed herself to run faster than she ever had before.

It would have been exhilarating were she anywhere else.

Wait, no, this is kind of awesome. It’s just that there are scarier things to worry about.

At any moment, a kindly old man could step out from behind a tree, and Amber knew that that would be the end of her. She’d be cut up into so many bits and stuffed into a bag. It wasn’t how she intended to end the evening.

It was two minutes to eight according to her internal clock when she burst out of the woods and came to a running stop in a large clearing.

The glade was atop a vast hill, with only one massive tree in its middle to break up an otherwise clear space that was filled with knee-high grass. Amber had felt hounded in the woods; in this open space, she felt exposed.

The compass pointed to the tree in the middle. Taking a few steps to the side made the needle shift unerringly back towards the tree. “Magic compass does magic things. Noted,” she said before looking for a pocket to tuck the compass away in. There weren’t any.

Amber groaned and held onto the compass as she stomped her way over to the tree. She reached it just as her internal clock hit eight.

She expected something to happen, but for the first minute or two she just stood around and waited. Then the forest started to come to life. Birds took flight, zipping up into the rapidly darkening sky, and insects started to hum and buzz.

A few daring squirrels darted out from between the trees, and she even caught sight of a wild cat slinking in the shadows.

It felt as if the whole world was decompressing. She leaned back against the huge tree, then let herself slide down until she was sitting between two of its bigger roots.

The day was over, and she was starting to feel it. The constant cramping had reduced a bit with the running, but now that she was resting it returned, though not as badly as before. So, I can absorb magic, or something, and it messes me up if I take too much. But I can’t control the amount I take, so I’m screwed no matter what?

She felt her eyes grow heavy, and her breathing started to still. The fresh, cool air rustling by, the soft music of leaves dancing above, the crash from finally stopping after so much panicked activity. It was dragging her down into slumber.

Distant thumping woke her up.

It sounded, at first, like someone beating a carpet at an insane pace, but as soon as she focused on it and started to come awake a little more, she recognized the sound from TV and the movies. A helicopter.

She looked up just in time to see a black smear appearing over the treeline, the branches around it swaying back under the force of the wind being shifted beneath.

The helicopter circled around the clearing, disappearing from her sight for a moment, even if she could still hear it clearly. And then it returned, and from the dark four bright lights descended.

They crashed into the ground with dull thumps that sent a shiver through the dirt beneath her.

“Area check!” the shortest among them shouted. She looked around, her sword, which was nearly as long as she was, held by her side like a banner.

A girl. All four of them were girls, in elaborate costumes and with weapons held casually by their side.

“Clear!” said one to the left. She had a wand which was aiming down as if it was a gun, the top glowing the same purple as the girl’s dress.

“Nothing,” said the one to the right. She sighed and leaned a spike mace onto her shoulder. “Boring,” she added.

The one at the back, a white-haired girl in a blue dress, made a humming noise.

The one nearest Amber, sighed and ran a hand through short-cropped blonde hair. “Seriously? We’re supposed to be professional.”

“Just a pick up,” the one with the mace said. She tucked her weapon away under the coat-tails of her orange costume and looked up before making big, expansive gestures.

Four ropes fell down around them from the helicopter.

Amber pushed herself up and off the tree. “H-hey!” she said.

“There she is!” the short blond girl said. “Jess, Emilia, cover. Oli, you’re with me.”

The mace girl grumbled and followed the blonde girl and they both jogged over to where Amber was standing up.

“Are you okay?” the girl asked. “I’m Cecilia, team leader of Glasir.”

Amber nodded. “I’m fine?” she said. She didn’t sound certain, even to herself.

Cecilia smiled. “Good work surviving this long out here. But no need to worry, we’ll get you to Norumbega in one piece. Oli, wanna grab her?”

“I don’t need to be grabbed,” Amber began.

Before she knew it, the orange-costumed girl was next to her and her feet were swung out from under her. She was pressed up against the girl’s chest as if she weighed no more than a child. “Come on,” Oli said. “Get to the choppa!”

“Is that from Predator?” Cecilia asked.

“Yeah! Arnold said it.”

Cecilia sighed. “You moron. You’d better hope we don’t get ambushed by a Nalusa Falaya or else we’re leaving you down here as a distraction.”

“It’s not dark enough for that,” Oli said.

They approached the other girls without much fanfare, that was, until the purple one, Jess, huffed. “Hey, new girl. Why don’t you let Cecilia carry you? I’m the only one that Oli should be princess carrying.”

“Um,” Amber said. She started to notice just how compromising her position was. “I can stand, sorry!”

“Jess, leave the new girl alone,” Cecilia said.

“I’ll carry you to your room later,” Oli said. There was so much implication in her voice that even Amber caught on. She felt her cheeks warming up. Wait, are they doing this just to distract me?

Despite the banter all four girls were scanning the woods and most still had a weapon in hand.

“Grapple up,” Cecilia said.

“New girl doesn’t have a belt,” Oli said while lifting Amber up a bit. How strong is this girl?

“Then hug her close,” Cecilia replied.

“Hey!” Jess shot her team leader a glare.

There were hooks near the bottom of the ropes dangling from the helicopter, and the very bottom had stirrups just big enough to place one foot in. Amber found herself held close to Oli as the girl clipped herself to the cord. “Don’t worry. I’m not about to drop you,” Oli muttered just loud enough for Amber to hear.

The ropes went taut and they were yanked up and into the sky.

Amber squeaked and hung onto Oli a bit tighter until the magical girl swung forwards and all of a sudden Amber was sitting on a cloth chair at the back of a helicopter. The noise was intense, a constant thumping that she felt through her whole body. Somehow, she was still able to hear and see perfectly fine as the others got aboard and undid their harnesses, none of them seeming to care that there was a hundred foot drop next to them.

“Yo!” Cecilia called out. “VIP secured! Bring us back home.” She thumped the wall behind the seats at the front of the helicopter.

The man Amber assumed was the pilot gave them a thumb’s up and the entire craft tilted and started to accelerate away.

“Ever been on a Black Hawk before?” Jess asked as she plopped herself down next to Amber.

Amber shook her head.

“You’ll get used to it! The academy has a fleet of these things.”

“Shouldn’t we be buckled in?” Amber asked.

Oli barked a laugh. “We’re magical girls. A little thing like a helicopter crash shouldn’t bother us.”

“You muscle-brained idiot, she’s new,” Jess said. She turned towards Amber and eyed her up. “How new are you anyway? The Seelie just said ‘new’ and left it at that. Couple of weeks?”

“Uh,” Amber said. “A few hours? I think?”

Jess whistled. “Damn. You are one unlucky girl.”

“I’d say she’s pretty lucky if she survived this long,” Cecilia said. “Good work, by the way. I guess you just had to keep your head down, but still. Some new girls can’t resist playing with their magic. Right Jess?”

“That was two years ago!”

Amber relaxed a little. The girls seemed to have a lot of familiar banter going on between them. The one called Emilia didn’t join in, but she was smiling a little from her corner of the cabin as she watched the others. Amber guessed that Jess and Oli were an item. They had that kind of closeness to them that she’d seen couples in school share. The occasional touch, the way they stood next to each other.

It was a little strange, but it was also reassuring. These girls weren’t nervous about being in a military helicopter over a dark and ominous forest.

Maybe that was deserved.

“So, first day on Agartha and you get to see the big wild,” Jess said. She was looking at Amber, who jumped a bit in her seat at being addressed. “See anything fun?”

“Um,” Amber said. “There was a lizard headed thing, with... hooves?”

“Did it have wings?” Cecilia asked. “Like a bat?”

Amber nodded.

“That’s a Jersey Devil,” she said. “Class two, not a big deal.”

“Class two?” Amber asked.

“Means that normies have a hard time with it,” Jess said.

Oli thumped her on the head. “You’re not supposed to use that kind of language Jess.”

The purple-costumed girl rubbed her head. “If you’re going to spank me at least buy me dinner first.”

“There was another thing,” Amber said. “An old man. He... had a bag. And he seemed nice but, I wasn’t sure.”

Cecilia snapped around to stare at Amber. “You saw a Seventh Hour Man?”

“M-maybe?” Amber said. The girl’s stare was pinning her in place with its intensity. “He... uh, found the Jersey Devil and cut it up, put it in a bag?”

“Dangerous,” Emilia said. Her first words since Amber had met her.

“You got any magic that protects your mind?” Cecilia asked. “That could be why you still have bones.”

“No? I don’t think so?”

“She’s a newbie,” Jess said. “Wouldn’t know if she does, I figure.”

“Hmm,” Cecilia agreed. “Well, count yourself lucky.”

“What did you mean about bones?” Amber asked.

The blonde girl made a circling gesture with her hand. “Seventh Hour Men don’t eat people. Well, they do, but it’s not why they hunt. They want bones. They build their burrows with the bones they collect. Sometimes they won’t take all of something or someone’s bones and leave them alive.”

“It’s why we didn’t get to you faster,” Oli said. “We like our bones.”

With that wonderful image in mind, Amber leaned back into her seat and tried to relax a little. It had grown considerably harder to do so. What kind of nightmare world is this?

“Norumbega tower this is Black Hawk Golf-Lima-Alpha-Sierra zero-one, permission to enter airspace?” The pilot said. His voice came from a few speakers tucked into the ceiling.

Amber didn’t hear any reply for anyone on the ground, but the pilot did nod and shift their flight path a little.

“Affirmative. Glasir oh-one, heading for Norumbega Academy pad five. Over.”

Amber reached out and tugged Cecilia’s sleeve until the girl looked over to her. “Um, where are we going?”

“Norumbega,” Cecilia said. “It’s pretty much the only city around here, and it’s where the American Academy is located. We’ll be dropping you off at the infirmary, just to be safe. I can tell that you’re overloaded from here. Then, I guess that depends on the dean and on you.”

Amber looked out the window to her side to see a large city sprawled out below. Hundreds of lights twinkling in the night in a vast void. For better or worse, she had arrived.

***