So why does he feel—even now, even as they drive—like he’s giving something else up? He’s supposed to be excited...and he is. He just didn’t realize how excited he could be while feeling terrified at the same time.
He stares out the passenger window as the cornfields roll into evergreen forests and the air stops smelling like pollution and starts to smell, well, green. It makes his heart swell a little bit. It’s also a reminder that even the scents here will be new and different.
“You’re going to love it out here,” Mom says. She reaches over and puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Mom?” he asks. His voice sounds small in the silent car. Why does it sound so small? He has the opportunity to learn magic.
“Yeah, sweetie?”
“Do you think I’m making the wrong decision?”
She glances over at him, then looks back to the road. She doesn’t take her hand away.
“I think you’re making the best possible decision you can.” She pauses, considering her words. He glances at her and tries to memorize the lines of her face, the way the light catches on her hair in the sunset. Even now, it makes him miss her. “There’s nothing back home for you. This is your chance to make something big out of your life. I know you. You’d never forgive yourself if you let it pass by. You’re meant for bigger things.”
He sighs. Bigger things. He can’t think of anything bigger than being one of the first students at Silveron, being among the first to learn how to use magic. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime, the promise of an exciting career and a ticket out of his backwoods town. He knows she’s right: there isn’t anything back home for him.
Besides, this is his chance to make her proud. That, perhaps, is the most important thing of all.
I will do something great with my life, he thinks. That will make this worth it.
He goes back to staring out the window. He tries to find the stirrings of excitement he’d had at discovering his acceptance. Instead, he finds only the fear. He knows he will accept Silveron’s offer. He knows he will spend his high school years here.
He knows that whatever they find when they reach the Academy will be his future. He just hopes it’s one worth the struggle.
With a furious wrench, Tenn pushed Water back down into submission. It seemed to squirm against his concentration. Silveron was still a hundred miles and a few hours away, but that didn’t calm the memories. The closer they got to that cursed Academy, the more Water wanted out. It recognized home. It recognized the beginning of his pain. He gritted his teeth and didn’t relax until the Sphere finally died down.
“You okay?” Jarrett asked, squeezing Tenn’s thigh.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just...memories.”
Jarrett nodded like he understood, but Tenn knew he didn’t. Jarrett was an Air user: for him, memories and emotions weren’t tactile things. That wasn’t what scared him, though. He’d thought that Jarrett’s presence could calm Water’s raging, but Water wasn’t giving in. He should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.
“We are going to have to park soon,” Dreya said. “We are nearly out of gas, and the roads are becoming impassible.”
Jarrett nodded.
“Any towns nearby?”
“Yes.” Air glowed faintly in her throat as she searched—just enough to see, but not enough to be seen from far away. “We will come to one in a few minutes. It is deserted.”
“Good. Let’s find a place there and settle in for the night. No use being outside in the snow if we don’t have to.”
Dreya nodded and turned back to quietly confer with Devon. They pulled off at the next exit and drove into town.
Tenn couldn’t see anything in the darkness, just the snow slashing through their headlamps, so he opened to Earth and pushed his senses out like sonar. The place was small, barely a handful of houses and commercial buildings. Podunk, his mother would have called it. Much like his own hometown.
They pulled to a stop in front of an old farmhouse at the end of a winding drive, the tangled path and fading facade illuminated in the headlights. The house was huge—three stories tall with peeling whitewashed siding and large picture windows. A wraparound porch stuck out from the front, complete with broken rocking chairs and a swing. Something about it made Tenn’s gut twist: a familiarity, a call. Even though he was positive he’d never been there before.
“This’ll work,” Jarrett said. Air glowed in his throat as well, and Tenn had no doubt he was scanning the interior, making sure the place really was as abandoned as expected. The fact that they hadn’t run into any wayward Howls was unusual. The cold must have driven them to shelter, whatever that was to the undead, and he couldn’t imagine any necromancers traipsing around in this weather.
The first snow. When Tenn was younger, it would have been cause to run around outside, catching snowflakes on his tongue. He’d long since outgrown that, but staring at the snow-coated house through the beams of their headlights brought a little bit back. Some trace of antiquity, of perfection, even if his gut was saying the place was eerie. If not for the obvious disrepair, the scene could have been from a greeting card.
Devon killed the engine and they got out, grabbed their things and then trudged through the snow up to the front door. Tiny orbs of light hovered around Devon as he opened to Fire, snow hissing against their glow. Everything was white and black, and it made Tenn feel like they were in some vintage fairy-tale film. Or noir horror.
The front porch creaked under their combined weight. Definitely noir horror.
Jarrett pushed the door open, the hinges shrill, the only sounds beyond the gusting wind. The air inside smelled stale from years of neglect.
As they walked in, Devon shot lights into every room, upstairs and down. Dreya and Jarrett went off to investigate the kitchen and bedrooms and to scavenge for provisions, while Tenn stalked down another hall alone. In here, sheltered from the wind and snow, he could hear every shudder of the house, every throb of his blood. He paused by a door, listening to whistling on the other side. Pressing his hand to the ice-encrusted knob, he opened the door and stepped inside.
Immediately, he knew he didn’t want to be in there. He’d never really liked abandoned places. To him, they smelled like ghosts. This room especially. Mainly because it howled like one.
Two orbs of light hovered up near the crystal chandelier, making everything in the dining room a pallid grayscale. The air was even colder: with the great picture windows in the far wall shattered, a frigid breeze gusted in, billowing the long drapes in perfect horror-story undulations. What he had first mistaken for ice on the carpet was actually shards of glass, all glittering in the half-light like crystal knives. Everything was broken or flung about, from the overturned dining table to the chairs reduced to kindling to the plates and cups dashed to pieces as fine as snow.
His fingers shook, and not from the cold. The air in here just felt wrong. Like it carried the rawness of an old wound, a scab peeled back from flesh.
Almost against his will, his fingers trailed along the overturned table.