It’s much larger than the control field on campus, but it reminds me of Eastern. I relax a little.
“The problem with Eastern is that there’s no sense of urgency driving you to get stronger,” says Mr. Burrows.
“Other than the fact that you keep insisting my magic won’t hurt anyone else if I do,” I say flatly.
“It’s not enough. You’ve spent your entire life resigned to the fact that people will die because of your magic. Somewhere deep down, you’ve gotten comfortable with it.”
“To hell with what you think. It haunts me.” My anger mixes with the heat and sweat, my breaths coming as if I’ve just run a marathon.
Mr. Burrows holds up his hands. “Save your energy, Clara.”
The way he says it makes the hairs on my arms stand on end. “What kind of test is this?”
“You don’t respect magic, and you’ve never had to—you’re too sheltered at Eastern. When the only thing left is your magic, when that’s all you have to rely on, you’ll learn to respect it. And that respect will propel you forward and make you far stronger than any kind of training you receive on campus.”
“I don’t understand. No one else has to train like this.”
“No one else is an Ever.” Mr. Burrows wipes his brow and shoves the handkerchief back in his pocket. He looks off into the distance and nods, a small movement I almost miss. I turn and follow his gaze. There’s a woman on the far side of the field coming toward us, pulling two children with her. Given how frantic she looks, I’m guessing they’re shaders who got caught in the heat. I can’t make out many details from here, and I turn back to Mr. Burrows.
“Should we get them out of here before we start the test?”
“No,” he says quickly, hardly considering my words. Then he curses and shakes his head. “I left my bag in the car; I have to go back for it. Wait here and get acquainted with the area; send out small pulses of energy and see how it responds. Once I get back, we’ll begin.”
I gladly take the break. He pauses when he gets to the trail, looking back at me, then at the shaders. I hear one of them yell something, but Mr. Burrows is gone. I need to calm down and clear my head so I can get through this. But nothing feels right. My mind is racing, and the heat is making me light-headed. My shirt clings to my skin, and my legs are weak.
I take several deep breaths.
Mr. Burrows’s methods don’t have to be traditional; they just have to work. As long as I learn to control my magic without hurting anyone else, that’s all I care about.
And I would never admit this out loud, but it isn’t just about making sure no one else dies. It’s about the possibility that comes with having complete control over who I am.
I pace around the field, waiting for Mr. Burrows. The shaders get closer, and I can now make out the word the woman is saying: “Help.”
I rush over to her, and I know what’s wrong before she begins speaking. They all have heat exhaustion, her kids worse than her. They’re sweating profusely, and their breaths are shallow. Their skin is red, and there’s vomit on her little boy’s T-shirt.
“How long have you been out here?” I ask, wincing when my words come out sounding more accusatory than I mean.
“We got stuck early this morning. I wasn’t expecting it to get so hot so early. They’re too weak to hike down,” she says, each word slamming into the next. “I can’t carry them both, and my phone doesn’t have any service.”
“Okay, we’ll get you out of here,” I say. “Wait here.”
A car engine starts in the distance.
I whip around to face the trailhead. Mr. Burrows is nowhere in sight.
“Stop!” I yell, rushing to the trail, but I stumble back when a small glimmer catches my eye. I look closely, and the glimmer gets bigger and bigger, distorting the area it covers, almost like a wall of water reflecting sunlight.
That’s when I realize what Mr. Burrows is doing. He’s creating a sunbar, a tool we only ever use in summer as a warm-up before we train. It’s a concentrated wall of sunlight a shader could never get through. It would burn them instantly.
I survey the field. Walls of rocks rise up around the far end, so steep we’d need climbing equipment to scale them.
He trapped us here.
But I question myself as soon as I think it. There’s no way he’d leave me here, and certainly not with innocent people.
The sunbar gets wider and higher, rays of sunlight sparkling on its surface. Soon, it’s blocking not only the trail but the entire south side of the field. I look at it in wonder. Mr. Burrows is a winter; there’s no way he’d be able to command this much sunlight. Even a summer would have a hard time creating a sunbar that large.
There have to be other witches involved, but I can’t imagine anyone going along with this awful plan. There’s no way Ms. Suntile would sign off on it, no way Sang would help.
I’m sure of it.
Almost.
The sound of Mr. Burrows’s engine fades into the distance.
There’s just silence.
I pull my cell phone from my pocket, but I know even before looking that I have no service. I lost reception an hour into the drive.
My breathing gets faster, and the world spins around me. I sink to the ground.
The midday sun is unrelenting, stagnant, heavy air that suffocates. Every part of me feels the rising temperature—105, 110, 115 degrees.
Mr. Burrows trapped a family and left me here to deal with it alone
