But she shook when she tried cupping her hands.
The curves through the air came out juddering, awkward, not as symmetrical as they needed to be. The sides of her hands met in the middle offset. One slid awkwardly over the other. And after this first failure, she made the mistake of looking up, down that narrow lane, to her tormentor.
She could see him grinning now.
All teeth, in the electrically bright light that was gathering in his palms.
It made her even clumsier. For a second she couldn’t even remember what she was supposed to do. She stood there, paralyzed, hearing the wordcuppedin her head but not the action that went with it. Then she finally tried, and it was too frantic. It was too fast. Her hands smashed together, hard enough that it hurt. A little sound of pain escaped her, even as she went to do it again. And again. And again.
Like someone trying to make a flame spurt out of a faulty lighter. Worse than that, really, because she wasn’t getting so much as aspark. There was nothing happening, nothing at all—as if there’d been some mistake. She didn’t have any magic in her after all. She was ordinary, and now she was going to die for it, courtesy of a fireball so big and bright she could see it without even looking up.
It lit the whole of this dark lane. It bloomed through her eyelids when she squeezed them tight shut. She could almost feel the heat before he hurled it, yet still she kept at that busted lighter. That match that wouldn’t strike. Right to the last second, right to the point of him jeering as he went to throw.
And that was when she heard it. Above her, someone hissing through the dark and the quiet. “Hey, hey, hey,” she made out. And she looked, and there the speaker was. The girl from the line, all liquid eyes and one reaching hand. “Grab it,” the girl said the second Mina saw her. She even shook it frantically. Stretched down further, like she’d never been more desperate for anything to happen in her life.
It made Mina get hold before she’d even had a chance to doubt.
Though she didn’t expect it to work. The girl hadn’t looked particularly strong. Thin and barely an inch taller than Mina’s five foot three. Yet somehow the moment their hands connected, her feet left the floor. She scrambled, searching for purchase, finding it and then not, finding it, then not. Then that light suddenly boiled bright, and she felt heat blooming against her lower legs, and she yanked them up. She tucked them to her stomach and pulled with her arms.
And suddenly she was on top of a great bristle of twigs and leaves.
On her back, breathing hard, unable to believe what had just happened.
But there was proof it had. She could feel it on the backs ofher legs. And when she finally caught her breath enough to twist around and look, she could see it, too. Two perfectly shaped ovals burned through her woolen tights. Then in the center of each, a lot of suddenly too-pink skin. Like she’d been very weirdly sunburned.
Though she didn’t understand how she could make out that part in the darkness. Until she looked up at the girl crouching over her, and saw what she had in her hand. A little ball of magic light, sputtering a little but never to the point of going out. And it seemed to be getting stronger, too. More sure.
“Yeah,” the girl said, half a grin visible in the glow. “That’s because of you.”
But Mina didn’t have time to be happy about that. Or relieved. The asshole who had just almost burned her legs off was now apparently trying to aim lightning up at them. And though he wasn’t succeeding, the crackle and spit of it wasn’t doing the hedge beneath them any good. The acrid scent of burning leaves filled the air. Embers glowed too close to her hand.
She had to scuttle away over something that wasn’t meant to be scuttled over. Twigs bit into her palms, hard enough to hurt. And when she went to get on her knees, her hand sunk into a gap between the branches, right up to the elbow. She almost face-planted—and probably would have, if it were not for the girl.
The one who got a hand under her left arm and heaved.
The one whose name she didn’t even know.
“I’m Mina,” she gasped out, as they stumbled and fumbled their way down the top of the hedge to some dark and entirely deserted corner.No one wants to linger where they might end up in last place, she thought, once they were huddled there, huggingthemselves, burned and breathless, but still in one piece enough for the girl to answer her.
“Anaya,” she said, and Mina felt a hand clasp hers. For a shake, it seemed like. Though her new friend held on long past the usual point for a greeting. Like she needed the comfort of it.
But who could have blamed her?
They had just almost been murdered. And now they stood with nothing but strange black behind them, like the world simply cut off beyond the hedge. And in front, the view was even more disturbing. Pure carnage, of a kind that sent a jolt through Anaya the moment she took it in.
Mina felt it through their still linked hands.
She squeezed that hand back, as the Brawl hit her, too. Someone somewhere was screaming that their eyes were on the wrong way. In the distance, what looked like a set of horns were peeking just over the top of the hedge. Then this horned thing moved, and when they did, the ground shook.
Like they belonged to some mammoth thing.
“A minotaur,” Anaya whispered, seemingly awed and terrified at the same time. And Mina understood that. It was one thing to read in the guidebook that mythical and supernatural creatures could be encountered here. It was quite another to see them. To know that they could possibly be summoned or maybe transformed into, and then kill you.
And there was more than that, so much more.
Tears in the sky above various places around the maze that disgorged hungry, searching tentacles. Followed by multiple hapless students obviously trying to seal them back up. They saw one jagged mouth zip closed, and the great gooey tendril that hademerged got cleanly snapped in two. It tumbled down into one of the lanes where they couldn’t see.
But they could hear.
