A Magical Bond | 6

Cassie's only plan for Winterfest Break: to spend it as far away from Sione as humanly possible. When her mom offered to pay for her plane ticket back to Sulani for the holidays (a generous offer, considering Malia was hardly raking in a fortune as a part-time yoga instructor and massage therapist), she eagerly accepted. The weather in Ohan'ali Town was as immaculately warm and sunny as ever, and she was relieved to escape the bitter onset of a Britechester winter. It would serve as exactly the sort of relaxing environment she needed to forget all about...

"When are you and that boy finally going to make things official?" Malia demanded salaciously nearly as soon as she and Cassie got themselves settled in front of the barbecue pit.

"What boy?" Cassie asked, feigning ignorance. "Sione?" She could barely force herself to say his name.

Malia chuckled indulgently. "Who else? I suspected he'd start chasing you the second I left San Myshuno. What's the big hold-up been?"

"Mom, ew. We're just... friends." Her heart sunk as she realized even that probably wasn't true anymore. "We're more like brother and sister, really. It'd just be wrong."

To Malia's credit, she didn't pry for further details beyond that first day, despite clearly being able to tell there was more to the story. In fact, she seemed far more laid-back these days in general, which Cassie hoped meant she'd long put to rest whatever irrational fears she'd once had about Cassie growing up safely and successfully. After all, here she was now, grown up and still very much alive, though the success part was still up in the air.

"And you were so obsessed with magic," Malia exclaimed through tears of laughter as they swapped nostalgic memories. "For a couple years, I thought you might never shut up about it! I was so afraid you would spend your whole life with your head in the clouds, trying to uncover some nonexistent divine truth. Thank God you've gotten over that."

Cassie smiled back uncomfortably. Her mom had no idea that magic was still what her heart most desired. Of course, only a tiny sliver of her now believed she would ever find it, but she had never let go of that hope entirely, just learned to keep it to herself since no one else seemed capable of understanding it. "It was that damn Henry Puffer!" she replied now, doing her best embarrassed eye-roll. "I was too young to know any better."

"There are some things we as humans just aren't meant to know," Malia continued sagely. "It was foolish of me to keep attempting to communicate with our ancestors for as long as I did. They only ever spoke in riddles and vague threats that have had no bearing on reality whatsoever as far as I can tell! Some days, I'm convinced it was all just a fabrication of my own imagination."

"But, Mom, I remember seeing them, too."

"Oh, you were just a baby. You don't know what you saw." Malia's tone was definitive. She'd made up her mind to stop believing, and that was that.

Meanwhile, in San Myshuno, Sione was on a mission to scarf down as much home cooking as his stomach could handle. One of Foxbury's few weaknesses was its cafeteria food, which was so disappointingly tasteless that the first bite of Nani's Winterfest roast tasted like heaven itself. He polished his first plate off in record time and ravenously dug in for a second helping.

"Do they not feed you at that school?" Nani asked, her eyebrows furrowed in faux concern. "If I knew you'd been eating so poorly, I'd have been smuggling breakfast, lunch, and dinner into your care packages all along! We'll load you up with any leftovers so long as you promise to share the wealth with Cassie."

"Speaking of Cassie," Noelani added, almost but not quite managing to disguise the insinuating undertone in their voice, "she hasn't called us in ages! How are you two getting on in that big old house all by yourselves anyway?"

Sione rolled his eyes. "Oh, God, don't even start with that crap," he groaned. "You know I already have a girlfriend. Besides, we don't even have all that much in common anymore." He picked at his food, feigning indifference. "To be honest, we're both been so busy we barely see each other."

As far as he was concerned, after that, the conversation was closed. The less opportunity he was given to dwell on his complicated feelings for Cassie, the better. He'd been terrible to her for years now. Of course he knew that, and of course he knew she didn't deserve it. But, still, he couldn't seem to help himself. It was a defense mechanism that had now become automatic. Even though he'd long outgrown his teenage snobbishness and insecurity (or at least thought he had), their relationship felt too long gone to salvage. What was the point in trying, when he wasn't even sure he deserved her forgiveness - that is, if she would even be willing to offer it?

Luckily, all thoughts of Cassie flew out of his head when he opened his parents' Winterfest gift, a hefty sum of cash cleverly disguised in an oversized gift box. "Aw, you guys really didn't have to. I already feel guilty enough that you're covering so much of the rent."

"Nonsense," Nani exclaimed. "What kind of parents would we be if we didn't take every available opportunity to spoil our only child?"

"Besides, we have to do something with that college fund of yours, since you had to go and get a full-ride scholarship on us." Noelani ruffled Sione's hair tenderly, their eyes shining with pride.

Soon enough, it was back to Britechester, with its snow-covered sidewalks and frozen-over ponds. No one dared brave the blustery chill unless they had to, which made the town feel even sleepier than usual, despite classes resuming on both campuses. Sione and Cassie hadn't spoken once over the holidays, but they had somehow come to an unstated agreement that they would continue living together anyway. It wasn't so intolerable, as long as they did everything in their power to avoid reminding themselves of each other's presence.

Sione was going to be a new man this trimester, he'd decided. Although his parents assumed he'd passed his fall classes with flying colors, he felt like he'd survived them by the skin of his teeth. He'd been too lazy, too arrogant. His attention had been too easily diverted by pointless distractions. But now he would recommit himself to academics with laser-sharp focus. After all, the lab was where his real passion had lain since he'd first stepped foot inside it as an awestruck high-schooler. He'd lost his way last trimester, but it wasn't too late to steer himself back onto the straight and narrow path.

It didn't take long for him to get back into the groove. He quickly became entirely absorbed in engineering the utili-bot of his dreams, wired with the sort of precision and complexity he only could have imagined possessing the skills and resources to pull off a few short years ago. If all went well, it would not only earn him a top grade but also nab first place in the next utili-bot contest and dazzle all of his fellow Bot Savants with its flawless construction. Most nights, he got so caught up in the thrill of it all that he had to sprint straight from the lab to his 8:00 AM class with wrinkled clothes and greasy hair.

When he was lucky, he finished the night's work with time to spare for a quick vending machine breakfast before heading off to the lecture hall. It would still be dark outside, the cafeteria a complete ghost town, and there Sione sat, wired on caffeine and frantically jotting down notes for what he had to do next. It was rare that he ran into anyone else at such an early hour. One morning, he heard a girl's voice from behind and nearly jumped out of his seat. He'd been so absorbed he hadn't even heard her footsteps on the stairs. "If it isn't Foxbury's prized prankster himself," she was saying. He turned around and recognized her as someone who'd always been hanging around in the margins but whose name he'd shamefully never bothered to learn. "What on earth are you doing here so early?" she continued. "You always struck me as the sleeping-off-a-hangover-till-noon type."

Sione laughed. "Actually, I'm trying to avoid the bar these days," he replied as smoothly as he could manage after pulling an all-nighter. "I've got too much time and money invested in this school to party it all away, you know?"

"Yeah, I got a little carried away first trimester, too," she admitted sheepishly. "All that newfound freedom makes it hard to say no to anything, even when you know you probably should."

Suddenly, Sione felt his heart flutter, and he didn't think the sensation could be entirely attributed to his coffee addiction. This girl was cute, there was no denying it. But he was still with Amanda, even though lately they'd barely spent any time together. "Are you in the computer science program, too?" he asked.

"God, no! Psychology, and most days I barely feel smart enough for that."

He couldn't help himself from flirting, just a little bit. "Ah, come on! You've got the beauty part down, so you must have the brains to go along with it."

"I'm Britta," she told him, visibly blushing. "If you ever have time to hang, I practically live in the library." Then she glided ethereally out the door. Shit, he thought, watching her figure slowly recede into the distance. I'm screwed.

Then again, he had so many other things sucking up his brainpower now that maybe he wouldn't have any room left in his mind to lust after cute girls who weren't his actual girlfriend. Besides his engineering classes, he had also decided on a whim to pick up a guitar elective, even though he'd never touched the instrument before in his life. Somehow, it was harder for him to wrap his head around than even the most intricate line of code or tricky bit of circuiting. As much as it frustrated him not to immediately excel at something, he also couldn't deny the cathartic power of strumming out a few off-tune power chords whenever his brain started to feel like it was shorting out.

Cassie hadn't the faintest idea what Sione was up to these days, and, frankly, she couldn't care less (or so she told herself every time the thought of him rose unbidden to the top of her mind). After failing to find a part-time job that worked with her class schedule, she had taken to shilling last trimester's paintings on her off-hours to make enough money to cover her share of the rent. Most people power-walked right past, refusing to even make eye contact, but she managed to snag a few buyers - though if she thought too hard about how little her pieces sold for, she would surely fall into a black hole of hopelessness and never find her way back out.

It didn't help that she, too, was learning an instrument this trimester, though, in her case, it was hardly by choice. For some godforsaken reason, whatever sadistic steering committee that had established the requirements for a fine arts degree had decided the program should include a compulsory music unit. It made no sense to Cassie why she, a visual artist, should be forced to become a musician, too. She would never pick up a violin again in her life, so what good was all this screeching doing her in the long run? It felt like nothing but an extended exercise in humiliation.

More often than not, she found her attention drifting away from her terrible violin classes and even her tolerable but dull and rudimentary photography classes toward more inspiring pursuits. She passed the ruins every day on her way to campus but still hadn't gotten around to painting or even exploring them. She was almost too intimidated to go near them. The sight alone sent an odd shiver up her spine whenever she glanced them out of the corner of her eye.

Near the end of winter, the temperature unseasonably skyrocketed, completely melting the blanket of snow that had been stubbornly covering every inch of Britechester for what felt like forever. Determined to take advantage of the turn in the weather, Cassie managed to lug her easel out to the ruins all by herself, where she discovered the perfect spot for painting. In fact, it was almost too perfect. She couldn't decide if it was man-made or natural, the way the mushrooms (which surely shouldn't even be in bloom this early) so symmetrically framed the large, flat-topped stone that stood altar-like at their center. Perhaps their eerily ritualistic arrangement could even be... supernatural.

Whatever it was, there was certainly something indescribable about the place and what it did to one's mind. As Cassie painted, she seemed to enter some strange sort of trance. It felt as though, in the blink of an eye, the canvas went from blank to entirely finished. She hadn't even been aware of what she was painting until she saw the end result and gasped. It was the forest from her childhood dreams, rushing waterfall in the distance, at the top of which stood, though it looked like a mere pinprick in her painting, what she recognized instantly as a mysterious portal into a magical world. Had she been compelled by some force beyond herself to paint this, or was it only her subconscious mind attempting to draw parallels where there were none?

Soon enough, the snow returned, and Sione was tempted by central heating - and perhaps his own subconscious mind - into the quiet, cozy stacks of the library. He only half-expected to find Britta there, but, sure enough, he turned a corner to see her bright turquoise hair bobbing like a beacon from a table in the back of the room. He was drawn to her like a moth to a flame. She lit up at the sight of him, and he knew then and there he was done for. Although he pretended for a while to be buried in his homework, her bubbly energy was infectious, and they soon found themselves talking and laughing so loud that the passing librarian scowled in their direction and threatened to throw them out.

They left of their own accord before they found themselves permanently banned from the premises. The snow blanketing the lawn was crunchy and firm beneath their feet. Perfect snowball consistency, Sione thought idly. Then he smirked to himself and crouched to pack a handful of snow together, which he promptly launched in Britta's direction before she could anticipate what was coming. They threw snowballs at one another until they were soaked and shivering. "You want to come to my place and dry off?" he found himself asking without a moment's hesitation.

They had only just peeled off their wet winter clothes when Amanda waltzed through the front door unannounced. To her, it looked like her boyfriend was in the middle of that movie moment where the two lovebirds-to-be intensely gaze into each other's eyes for several agonizingly long seconds before launching slow-motion into a passionate first kiss with another girl - and Sione couldn't exactly claim innocence, even if he hadn't decided whether he would actually go through with the kiss or not.

"Mandy, please," Sione blurted, immediately sobered by the crestfallen expression on her face. "Just let me explain. This isn't what it looks like, I swear!"

Britta's eyebrows knotted in confusion and disappointment. "You didn't tell me you had a girlfriend..."

"I'll just... be in the bathroom," she said slowly, and Sione could tell she was embarrassed by the way her entire body flushed red. He felt guilty for putting her in such an awful position. Even if he hadn't anticipated it now, he should've realized a moment like this would come eventually.

"Baby," he began in a shaky voice after Britta had left the room.

"I don't want to hear it!" Amanda interrupted immediately. "We've barely even seen each other all trimester, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt because I thought you were busy with school, not trying to hook up with other girls!"

"We were just studying, I swear. It's been totally innocent!"

Amanda scoffed bitterly. "Maybe it's innocent now, but I doubt it would've stayed that way for long. I could tell by the way you were looking at her. Well, I'll make it easy for you: we're done."

"Amanda-"

"Maybe you want her or maybe you don't. I don't care. But it's clear you have no time for me anymore, and I refuse to stay with someone who's so clearly checked out for even a second longer. I won't disrespect myself like that." She pulled the spare key to the house he had given her out of her pocket and slapped it firmly into his palm then slammed the front door behind her before he could even react.

Nearly 20 minutes later, Britta finally emerged from the bathroom, teary-eyed and timid, and he offered to split the leftover takeout in the fridge with her as a pathetic but genuine apology. "I'm sorry you had to hear all that," he told her. "I didn't know she was coming over, but that's no excuse. I shouldn't have led you on. The thing is, though, I didn't exactly mean to. It just happened, I guess because I... like you. I really like you."

Britta couldn't hide the smile creeping slowly across her lips. "I really like you, too," she said, her words deliberate and measured. "But we haven't exactly gotten off to the best start. How do I know I can trust you, that you won't just turn around and betray me for another... me?"

Sione made a show of pondering her question carefully. "I guess we just have no choice but to spend every waking moment together so you can keep an eye on me at all times." She raised a dubious eyebrow. "No, seriously, I can't deny I've been a selfish asshole in the past - the very recent past. But I'm trying to be better. I guess that's all I can promise. I'm trying. Do you think that'll be enough?"

"I'll have to get back to you on that," she said noncommittally, but her eyes sparkled in a way that told him she was in.

Ever since discovering the strange circle of mushrooms, Cassie had taken to riding her bike to the ruins as frequently as possible. Some small part of her hoped she would stumble upon a sign of new activity - magical or otherwise - and she was disappointed every time to find the clearing empty and undisturbed. But one sleepless night she rode out later than usual and was rewarded for her insomnia by the sight of three cloaked figures clustered around the central rock, murmuring amongst themselves in low, rhythmic voices. To be honest, they freaked her out. But her curiosity got the better of her, and she crept closer and closer.

The words they repeated in unison, like an incantation, were in a language Cassie didn't recognize as anything she'd ever heard before. As their chanting rose in volume, seemingly building to some sort of mystical and wondrous conjuring, they abruptly stopped, finally noticing Cassie, who by now was gaping at them entirely without regard for self-preservation or stealth. "What are you doing?" she demanded bluntly.

"Oh, um..." One of the disguised women fumbled to respond, the others seeming to have silently elected her as their official spokesperson. "Haven't you ever heard of the Midnight Gardening Society?" she asked in a way that made it sound as though Cassie was an idiot for so much as daring to question their motives. "If you knew anything about mushrooms at all, you'd know that this particular breed is best harvested in darkness. It's got a finicky temperament, you know, just wilts into nothing if you pluck it at the wrong time!"

"What can we say?" another woman added unconvincingly. "We're all just crazy about fungi!"

Cassie narrowed her eyes at them. "And since when does harvesting mushrooms involve weird culty costumes and even weirder, even cultier chanting?"

The lead woman laughed dismissively. "So what if we have a flair for the dramatic? It's just a bit of fun. Besides, it scares people like you away from our territory." She brushed past Cassie then, followed by her costumed companions, but slowly enough to whisper a few parting words into Cassie's ear: "If you truly deserve to be here, you'll know soon enough. But most people don't, so I suggest you move along."

There was no way those women belonged to a gardening club of all things, but who were they really: bored drama majors honing their acting skills by freaking out the locals or members of some ancient (potentially mushroom-worshiping) secret society? The next day, Cassie dug into Laurel Library's extensive historical archives, desperate to track down some answers. She tried dozens of keyword combinations but came up largely empty-handed - until she struck upon an interesting snippet of Britechester lore in a discontinued edition of the student handbook: "There's a popular superstition about the University of Britechester's iconic statue. It's rumored that if students offer the right kind of gifts to the statue, it could improve their luck with grades and academic success. There's no perfect science to it, but high quality or rare offerings of crystals, harvestables, metals, or desserts seem to be the best bet if you're looking to up your academic mojo."

Well, I don't know about rare crystals or metals, but desserts? Desserts I can definitely do, Cassie thought as she pondered the (perpetually vandalized) statue she'd barely given a second thought to before now. It didn't seem like a direct connection to the midnight ritual at the ruins, but they did share one important aspect in common: an offering. She couldn't prove it, of course, but the way those women stood hunched over that stone, with its perfectly smooth table-like surface, had offering written all over it. If the lore about the statue was true, maybe both rituals invoked the same kind of magic - and maybe if she harnessed it, it would somehow lead her directly to the elusive portal she'd been chasing for so long.