Page 44 of Magic Blooms
I leaned closer still and reached out a tentative hand to feel for any sign of life. My fingers shook as I placed them to her neck in search of a pulse.
WHOOSH! The moment I made contact, Fawn shot up from the swamp, gasping for air as the bespelled swamp water shot up in high waves.
I leapt back in fright. Now that I knew she was fine, I definitely wanted to run.
She spun from side to side until her eyes landed on me.
I watched in frozen horror as her previously all-white eyes returned to their normal blue.
“You,” she said, her voice dripping with menace. Her lip curled up in disgust.
I took another step back. “Glad y-you’re okay,” I stuttered as she continued to glare at me. “I really need to be going now, so I?—”
“No,” Fawn screamed so loud it caught me off guard. She took another step toward me and pointed at me with a shaking finger. “You don’t belong here.”
I swallowed nervously as the wind picked up and started to billow around us. “You wanted me to come, but okay. I’ll go now.”
I rushed to the edge, moving my legs as fast as I could in the heavy water. The moment I reached land, Fawn was upon me again.
The water flowed off her in rivulets, and she was so pale that she might as well have been a ghost. How had she moved so fast? I broke into a run, but she used her magic to drag me back to the swamp, to toss me into it with a might splash.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she raged, stepping in to join me once more. “My vision revealed all, the destruction you bring with you, the suffering. The end of magic.”
I took another step back, stumbling over some root under the water and losing my balance. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
My fear connected with nature, and thunder cracked above me, the wind twisting even harder. She was wrong, wrong about everything but especially me.
Fawn remained unbothered by the storm building around us. “It was you all along. Always you.”
I managed to jump out of the way right as she unleashed a plume of crackling blue flame in my direction. Its searing heat barely missed me, and she immediately sent a second blast my way.
This time the only way I could escape was by falling completely into the black water and hoping the murky depths would protect me.
But for how long? I’d have to surface eventually.
And when I did, Fawn would be there.
She grabbed the back of my dress and lifted me out of the water as though I weighed nothing.
“I can stop it, but first I have to stop you,” she growled from behind me. “Permanently.”
I should have made a run for it when I had the chance, shouldn’t have checked to make sure she was okay. Now I would never get back to my friends, to my home.
I kicked and writhed in Fawn’s grasp, but nothing deterred her as she readied the death blow. “No! Please!” I cried.
Fawn began to mumble a curse comprised of words in a language I hadn’t yet heard, didn’t yet know. Then suddenly her grip on me loosened and she disappeared beneath the water.
Now she was the one thrashing, screaming for help.
Had I done that? But how?
Her desperate screams rang in my ears as the winds raged and the skies opened up to dump buckets of fresh water into the swamp.
SPLASH!
A great blackish-green tail rose from the water and splashed down again.
Spinning, spinning with Fawn’s leg clamped between its massive jaws.
