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Grade
11

The oaken wand had lain forgotten in the back of the closet for nearly a decade. This wasn't the first time it had existed lost or abandoned, without someone to properly wield it, and it was far from the longest stretch of time, but it was the time with the least dignity. It had been passed down generation to generation, lost on epic adventures, and then picked up years later by unsuspecting people who used it to do great things. It had seen the world over, been banished, locked up, and sought after. It had never been casually cast aside. The wand was disappointed, to be sure, but it never resented its wielder. The girl who owned the closet it lived in fascinated it.

     Right outside the confines of its very closet doors existed Sarah Shilman, a girl who'd been given the wand as a gift when she turned eight, who'd had it confiscated by her mother, who'd snuck into her mother's sock drawer when she wasn't looking and stole it back, who'd been able to work magic on her first try, and who had stopped after she almost got caught. Who used to take the wand out at night and look at it, and imagine using it, but who’d slowly stopped. The wand had never been ignored before, but it had never been wielded so effortlessly. What could make a girl both so ready to believe in magic and so able to resist it?

***

     The shoes were shiny and new, and they knew Veronica Shilman loved them. They were unaware that the other shoes in the mudroom, who they lorded their privilege over, had once been in their position. They were an arrogant duo, but such is the way with shoes.

      The shoes were feeling the grass on their soles, trying to decide if they liked the sensation, as they were moved across the yard. Then they were stopped. Before them, the grass didn't grow. A patch of dirt formed an odd shape in the ground. The shoes had thought they knew feet - they were worn by a pair of them after all - but they had never seen feet in the shape of the imprint on the grass, three toed and massive. Still, they recognized a foot when they saw one. Such is the way of shoes.

     The pair felt themselves being lifted from and pounded back into the dirt. They were being rushed back into the house.

***

     The phone had never seen Veronica so desperate, and it had seen Veronica a lot of ways. Veronica was pounding her finger frantically into the phones screen, pressing the backspace arrow hard every time she hit a wrong digit. Finally, she typed the correct number. The phone heard its brother on the other side of the state ring once, twice. 

     "Hello?" a voice said through the brother phone. The phone felt Veronica's fingers tightened around it as she recognized her own brother's voice.

     "Hi, Charlie."

     " Veronica! To what do I owe the pleasure?"

     The phone could recognize  forced cheerfulness. What puzzled it was that the cheerfulness wasn't meant to hide annoyance.

     "Charlie. It's serious."

     "Veronica- Oh my goodness, did something happen to Sarah?"

     "She's fine. We’re both fine. For now, I think. But there's something in the yard. I want you to come look at it."

         " You want me to come to your house?"

    "I need you to look at my yard. I think it might be dangerous." Her voice grew quieter as she said the last sentence.

     "What is it?"

     "A footprint. Three toed, and the size of the dinner plate."

     The phone strained its ear, but Charlie didn't speak for a moment.

     "I'll be over soon," he finally said. The estranged siblings hung up.

***

     The Volkswagon bug was too old for these kinds of trips. It'd been driven for hours, through country roads and freeway traffic. Even in its glory days, it hadn't enjoyed the long road trips, and now that it was almost fifty years old, it resented them even more. To distract itself from its rattling engine, it turned its attention to its occupant. The man who had owned it for the majority of its years looked nervous. He gripped the steering wheel a little tighter than normal. He wasn't singing along with the radio as loud as he normally did. He lacked his easy confidence. The bug thought it knew why. He hadn't driven this way in six years, and that time he had driven away bristling about what his sister had said to him. This had the potential to get interesting.

***

Windows are cursed with the unfortunate phenomenon that people always look through them, but no one ever looks at them. At least this particular window was being used for spying, a pursuit the window found to be a worthy one. On one side, Sarah crouched, eyes just visible to the glass pane. On the other, an important conversation was going on. Two people, one woman, one man, one familiar, the other not, stood on the driveway, closer than strangers but not as close as friends. Their voices were hushed. The window felt Sarah's ear press against its glass, but it could tell she still couldn't hear. It tried to amplify the sound for her, but it was only a sheet of glass, and it could only do so much. The man on the driveway looked up and made eye contact with Sarah for a moment. He smiled knowingly. Sarah ducked below the window. She walked away for a moment and rummaged around in her closet, then came back holding a stick of wood, one the window had seen a few times long ago. She pointed the stick at the window, face scrunched in concentration. That's when the window realized. She had finally seen it. And suddenly, the window could amplify the conversations below for her, and it could obscure her from the eyes of mother and uncle below as well. 

     "Don't bring Sarah into this. She deserves a life free from magic," Veronica was saying.

     "If the print is what I think it is, we'll need something powerful to defeat the beast. That wand is the most powerful in the known world, and Sarah is the Mage who wields it. She has to fight it."

     "But it's dangerous! Forget magic, if she fights that thing, she could die."

     " Sarah has extraordinary natural talent as a magician. Trust me, I can sense it."

     Behind the window Sarah fidgeted. The window watched her try to process the information. It thought she looked... confused. And surprised. On the other side of the glass, below Sarah and the window, the conversation continued.

     "She doesn't have any experience," Sarah's mom said. The two people looked at each other for a moment, unsure what to say.

     "I'll go, then. I would have preferred to go at her side, coaching her through it. It would have been better for her confidence that way, but if you don't want her to go, I'll go by myself. I'll need her wand, though."

     "Your wand is in my closet. I wasn't going to let her keep it."

     " You took it away? But she's a magician. She needs to practice magic. You can't change that."

     "No one needs magic, and no one needs a wand. You know I'm just trying to protect her."

     The uncle sighed and took a deep breath. "Fine. Let's go look at the footprint, to make sure I'm right. Then get me her wand."

***

     The bond between wand and Mage is a strong one, and Sarah's wand could tell she was worried. The wand felt Sarah's hand gripping it strongly as she carried it into her parents’ room, where it knew she was checking to see that the imitation she'd made of it was still there. That had been the first magic they'd done, the wand remembered.

     As soon as Sarah was sure the fake was still there, she left. Air whipped past the wand as it was rushed down the stairs and out the door. The wand hadn't felt fresh air on its wood in a long time. Clandestine magic couldn't very easily be practiced under the light of the sun, after all. The wand heard Sarah's footsteps on the grass, as silent as she could make them, as she snuck away.

 ***

     The socks were being searched for the second time today. It wasn't a comfortable process, and they hoped it didn't become a regular one. An expertly manicured hand reached through them and pulled something out of the drawer.

    "Here it is,” the socks heard a familiar female voice say.

    "Let me look at it," said a male voice. 

     The socks waited for a few moments, then the male voice said, "This isn't the real wand. It's a decoy."

     "Where's Sarah?" said the female. 

***

The old street lamp felt a bit like a guardian of the park. It had been here longer than the park itself, and the way things were looking, it might be here after. The park was in danger. The lamp thanked its lucky stars that no kids were on the playground, but that didn't change the fact that so many would be heartbroken if the park were destroyed. The children loved the park almost as fiercely as the lamp post did.

     A beast was ravaging the park. Giant and ugly, it was invisible to normal eyes, but the lamp was a Thing, and the Things could see everything. Right now, it was just destroying the grass, but soon it would go on to the playground, the fairy garden, the path through the woods. The lamp wished it could do something, but it was a Thing, and Thing were cursed to be stationary, unless they were manipulated by a person. Or a Mage enchanted them.

     There used to be a Mage who came here, back when she was too young to know her talents. The lamp could just make her out in the distance, running towards the park.

***

     A lightbulb flickered in the Shilman house. It needed to be replaced, but it was glad it hadn't been yet. If it had, it wouldn't have been able to see Veronica and her brother, panicked but working together, as they rushed out the door.

***

     Sarah was getting close to the beast. She could sense her wand telling her that. She slowed to a walk, catching her breath. The beast was in the park, she was sure of that now. She heard its growls. Sarah rounded the corner, and she saw it. Illuminated by the old street lamp, with an aura of magic about it. The grass at the front of the park was already torn up. She crept closer. The beast saw her. It growled and crouched, readying itself for a charge in her direction. Sarah blanked. She was going to die. In a last ditch effort, she pointed her wand at a nearby street lamp, willing it to fall on the beast. The beast began its charge. What had she been thinking? The beast got closer. Sarah needed to run. She heard a deep groaning noise. The street lamp was moving. It hadn't fallen; it swung itself in wide circles, keeping its base rooted to the ground. The beast had paused to watch it, too. It took a few steps towards the lamp, it's massive claws making prints on the earth. A few steps was all the lamp needed. With a horrible, twanging snap, the old street lamp of Bellar Park fell, crushing the beast with one blow.

     Sarah stood there in shock, breathing deeply, trying to process what had happened, and how much of it had been her fault. What was the beast? Where had it even come from? Had anyone seen? Somehow, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d done something wrong, not in fighting the beast but in using her magic in the first place. Sarah took a few steps towards the beast, trying to decide whether it was killed or just injured. She didn't know which she wanted. Footsteps approached behind her. Sarah turned around. Her mother and uncle were running toward her. Before she knew it, her mom had enveloped her in a hug, and her uncle was telling what a good job she'd done, and there was a strange sort of harmony.