The rain hammered down, the path an unrecognizable, muddy mess. A cold wind gusted past, blowing back the hood of Lewis’s dark orange robes. It was too late to hide. The three bandits backed away, their eyes wide.

  “What is he?” the older woman at the front muttered, her words barely audible over the rain.

  Lewis reached out to the magic in the rain, the magic all around them. He tried to do it slowly, carefully, but it was hard to focus with the bandits staring at him like they’d seen a monster. The rain swirled around them, the edge of a watery blast catching a bandit in the shoulder. He fell to the muddy ground, stumbling to his feet quickly and running. The other two mercenaries were close behind. Lewis tried to let go of the magic in the rain, but the water continued to swirl and flow around him. He closed his eyes tightly, fighting for control.

  The water hit him in the chest, throwing him against a pine tree at the edge of the road, knocking all the air out of him. He opened his eyes with a gasp. The impact had at least stopped his magic. Something he should have been able to do on his own. The rain was falling normally now. Lewis leaned on the tree for a moment, catching his breath. After a year of practicing his strange new magic at Birch Hall, he still couldn’t control it. He didn’t know if he was going about it wrong, and no one at Birch Hall knew, since his magic wasn’t that of mages.

  The rain made it only worse. The water falling around him rippled and stirred, even though he wasn’t trying to manipulate it. As soaked as he was, his spirit magic had affected him fully. His skin was black and rubbery, with a few streaks of pale brown. The skin of a salamander. His eyes would be entirely black. Other than that, his shape was entirely human, and his short light brown hair was still there, tied back as usual. His appearance alone would have been enough to scare off the bandits, but he hadn’t meant for them to see that. The rain had started suddenly, had taken him by surprise.

  He sighed heavily, stepping back onto the muddy path. He raised his sodden hood and set off back the way he came, toward the border of Betula. When the rain finally stopped, it was late at night and he was exhausted from his wild magic, but he didn’t stop. The ground was too wet and the forest was too cold. He wasn’t far from home. By morning, the pine trees had given way to birch. The air was warmer, but not much. It was only the beginning of the season of Harvest, but they’d had unseasonably cold days.

  Now that he’d dried off, he looked fully human again. He stopped to rest and eat around midday, before continuing on his way. The sun had only just begun to set when he reached Birch Hall. A tension had been building inside of him on the walk back, and it was only worse now that he saw the sprawling, pale stone building among the birch trees. There was a tower at the center. Lewis stopped and stared up at the hall, how he had the first time he’d seen it. That felt like forever ago, but it had only been just over a year. And this time he was seeing it from the back.

  The garden was full of vegetables and fruits, ready for harvesting. Lorna wasn’t out there this late. Lewis went in through the back door and up to his room. With Dale having become an Adept and left the hall to travel, Lewis had moved to a room of his own, with one bed and a desk. He put clean robes on, still not used to wearing Adept orange, nor feeling like he’d earned it. He wasn’t a mage. The salamander spirit, Amnis, had told him that when he gave him the last of his essence and magic. Lewis wasn’t a mage, wasn’t human, and wasn’t a spirit. So what was he? This question had been haunting him more and more over the last year.

  He put it out of his mind as best he could and went down to the dining hall, where dinner had just started. He sat at the end of the table closer to the doors, across from the twins, Priya and Tanya. They had both grown a lot in the last year and were now fifteen. They had also become Apprentices and wore brown robes. The two looked surprised to see him. They both had long light brown hair, dark brown eyes, and the same face.

  “Back already?” Tanya asked.

  Lewis nodded. “It didn’t take long to find the bandits.” He hadn’t expected them to come after him on the road, but he suspected they hadn’t realized he was a mage until they had already accosted him.

  “How did it go?” Lorna asked from further along the table. Like him, she was an Adept. She was also twenty, the same age as him.

  “It went alright,” Lewis said, not wanting to think about what had happened, let alone talk about it.

  Miriam, further down the table, frowned but said nothing. She was the only Elder Mage there, wearing dark blue robes. Curtis was away on a request, and Blake had gone to visit his mother in Elnestine, the main city of Conlis. Stewart, the High Mage, Lewis’s father, was also away on a request. No one said much more during dinner. Lewis thought he was going to get away without having to talk about what happened until Miriam cornered him in the front hall, at the end of the stairs. Priya and Tanya had gone to the library, and Lorna had gone out to the garden.

  The Elder Mage frowned at him. She did that a lot lately. At fifty-nine, she was the oldest at the hall. Her long black hair, threaded with gray, was tied in a bun. Her dark blue eyes narrowed. “What happened? You’re terrible at hiding things.”

  “Maybe I’m not hiding anything,” Lewis said, but his voice shook.

  She raised a brow.

  Lewis sighed. “It rained. It took me by surprise.”

  Miriam cleared her throat. “You didn’t kill the bandits, did you?”

  “No!” he said quickly. Did she think his lack of control was that bad? “I just scared them. I lost control of my magic and I was soaking wet, so they saw me.”

  “They saw you?” Miriam took a step closer and lowered her voice. “We agreed you would avoid anyone outside the hall seeing what happens when you use magic.”

  “The wind blew my hood back,” Lewis said. “There was nothing I could do.”

  “If the court of Betula hears about this…” Miriam shook her head.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “I’m sorry,” Lewis said, feeling worse by the moment. But what could he do about it? “Do you think they’ll believe the bandits?”

  Miriam sighed. “We’ll have to hope they won’t, or the court of Betula is going to wonder. When Martin told them you were an Afflicted Mage, he told them what you looked like. The court believed Curtis and I that it was a curse and they believe we broke it, but if they hear about what happens when you use magic, there will be questions.”

  “We could just tell them the curse had lasting effects,” Lewis said.

  Miriam’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Perhaps…” She turned away. “We will have to wait and see. With any luck, no one will believe the bandits. Perhaps the court of Conlis will believe you just did an excellent job of scaring them off.” She walked away without another word.

  Lewis went upstairs to his room, dreading what Curtis and Stewart would say when they heard about this. He wasn’t getting any better at controlling his magic, and he knew his fear of what would happen with it wasn’t helping. It had gotten to the point he tensed up every time he used it, which made it even harder to control it. Despite all that had happened, all that he feared would happen, he was exhausted from the journey and went straight to sleep.

  At breakfast in the morning, Stewart was back, but not Curtis. Blake had said he would be gone for a while. His mother was ill and he wanted to spend time with her. He might be gone for an entire season or more, depending on how she was doing. Miriam was already talking to Stewart quietly when Lewis sat at the table in the dining hall. Were they talking about how his father’s request had gone, or was Miriam telling Stewart what had happened with the bandits? When Stewart glanced at Lewis, looking worried, he knew the answer.

  Lewis ate quickly and left the hall, going outside to the garden. He stopped at the towering fruit tree, staring up at it. He remembered when it had been just a little taller than him. That had only been a year ago. Lorna’s nature magic really was potent. The rest of the garden was thriving as well, several ivy plants having grown up the back wall of Birch Hall, giving it some color.

  “Soon it’ll be time to pick the fruit,” Lorna said, coming to stand beside him. The morning sun made her long red, braided hair look even redder. There was worry in her eyes when she looked at him. “Things didn’t go well with the bandits, did they?”

  “No,” Lewis said, looking back at the tree. “It went bad enough there might be trouble with the court of Betula if it gets back to them.”

  Lorna’s shoulders tensed. “Miriam has gotten…” She frowned. “Maybe I just don’t want it to be true, but I don’t think things are so precarious as she’s convinced they are. Bandits have made all sorts of rumors about mages that have gone after them. We are sent to scare them off, so a lot of mages have gotten creative about it over the years. I don’t think anyone will think anything of it if they tell people what they saw.”

  “The problem is that the court of Betula will wonder when they hear about it,” Lewis said. “If the bandits say I looked like a humanoid salamander, the court is going to think of what Martin said.”

  Lorna groaned quietly. “There is that.” She glanced back at the hall, at the window that looked into the classroom. “Still, we don’t know yet that there will be a problem. Worrying about it won’t help. There’s nothing we can do about it right now.”

  Lewis looked at the classroom. Miriam was teaching Priya and Tanya, a practical lesson on using their magic. Priya was levitating a large rock with her wind magic, while Tanya had leaves swirling all around her with hers.

  “They’ve come a long way in just a year,” Lewis said.

  Lorna smiled. “Haven’t they? It always feels lonely here at the hall when we don’t have students. I like watching them grow.” She laughed. “Much like my garden.”

  “I think your garden grew even more than Tanya and Priya,” Lewis said.

  “I may have given that ivy a little too much of a boost with my magic,” Lorna said, staring up at the greenery covered back wall. Her smile faltered as she looked at him. “I’ve been thinking…” Before she could say more, the back door of the hall opened and Stewart joined them in the garden.

  What had she been thinking about?

  Lorna nodded to Stewart with a nervous smile before looking back at Lewis. “I’ll see you later. I’ll be teaching the next class, and it looks like Miriam is almost done.” She went back inside.

  “Did I interrupt something?” Stewart asked, coming closer. He absently tightened the ribbon holding back his long blond hair. His eyes were the same dark brown as Lewis’s. “Sorry about that.”

  “We were just talking,” Lewis said, feeling his face turning red despite the fact this was the truth.

  Stewart smiled. “Curtis suspected you liked Lorna from the moment you saw her.”

  Lewis looked away, knowing he was blushing even more now. “How did your request go?” He looked at his father again when he didn’t answer.

  Stewart was staring at the tree. He tightened the loose black ribbon that went around his dark green robes. The same black ribbon they all wore. “Conlis hadn’t been getting enough rain.” His shoulders slumped. “At least, until you were there and needed it to not rain. I watered the crops in Pine. Thankfully not too much considering the downpour that followed. I think a few of the townspeople thought the storm was my doing.” He looked at Lewis. “Miriam told me what happened with the bandits.”

  “It might cause trouble,” Lewis said. “I’m sorry.”

  Stewart shook his head. “I think it will be fine. Bandits say all sorts of things about mages. What I’m worried about is your magic.”

  “I haven’t made any progress in controlling it,” Lewis said.

  “You have made progress,” Stewart said. “That’s why you’re an Adept now.”

  “I’m an Adept because my magic doesn’t fit the structure for how a mage’s magic should be,” Lewis said before he could think better of it. He didn’t want his father to worry even more.

  Stewart took a deep breath, looking at the tree again. “Perhaps you need more time, or maybe we’re going about it wrong.” He put a hand on Lewis’s shoulder. “We’ll figure it out. Are you ready to practice this morning, or do you need more rest after your trip?”

  “I’m ready,” Lewis said, with no hope things would be any better this time.

  With a heavy heart, he followed his father back inside Birch Hall.