Page 119 of The Demon's Spell

Talia’s jaw dropped. “Of course! I’m so stupid.”

“No, you’re not,” Grant protested.

“It was a dumb mistake. Let me try again.” Talia splayed her hand over the boulder and closed her eyes. Nobody moved for several minutes, so she could concentrate. When Talia’s eyes began to shake beneath her lids, I knew she was having a vision. She must’ve found something.

Her eyes shot open, startling me a bit. “It’s not here.”

Miles’s shoulders slumped. “We came down here for nothing?”

“No, I mean, not here at this rock,” Talia said. “I can see your grandpa in my mind, but he walked straight past this rock. He didn’t stop here. He went that way.”

Talia pointed, and we all got to our feet to hurry in that direction, though none of us moved quickly. We’d been up all night and were all exhausted. Grant shoved down the last of his granola bar and followed behind us, stepping over the deep holes we’d dug.

Talia stopped at a huge tree and ran her fingers over the bark. She furrowed her brow as the vision passed, like she couldn’t quite make sense of it. “The visions are hazy,” she told us. “It was so long ago, only the oldest trees remember. I see a shadow… going that way.”

Talia pointed forward, and we continued through the forest. She kept stopping at big trees and small rocks, following the path my grandfather had taken so many years ago. Finally, she stopped at one of the largest trees in the forest. Above us, thick branches twisted in a way that reminded me of the Protection Tree. Talia leaned against it, splaying her palm wide. Several silent moments passed as she contemplated the vision.

“This is it,” she finally said, opening her eyes. “The tree was much smaller back then, but it remembers. Your grandfather placed the Wand in the tree. He said he was giving it back to the earth, where it had come from.”

“Of course.” I joined her to run my hand over the trunk. “The Wands came from a branch of the Protection Tree. It seems fitting to graft it back into an oak.”

“Is the Wand part of the tree now?” Grant asked.

I shook my head. “The Wands can’t be destroyed. The magic is faint, but there’s definitely a supernatural energy pulsing through this tree. The Wand is in there, but the tree grew around it.”

“Let’s blast this tree apart and get that Wand, then.” Grant drew his arm back and tossed a battle orb at the tree. It bounced off, and the five of us ducked as it came back in our direction. The orb went flying into the forest and exploded against the ground. Grant winced.

Lucas walked around the tree, inspecting it from every angle. He aimed a few battle spells at it, but they just bounced right off. He tried wrapping a shield around the middle of the tree, trying to reverse-engineer the spell to slice through it. He gritted his teeth, and the spell backfired, knocking him off his feet.

“Looks like we’re going to have to use brute force.” Lucas conjured his scythe, but he frowned. “That’s not going to work. We need an ax.”

“Or a chainsaw would be nice.” Grant forced a chuckle.

“Yes, let me just conjure my chainsaw,” I said sarcastically.

“I have an idea,” Talia said. She began walking around, picking up sticks and tossing aside the ones she didn’t like. After a few minutes, she’d gathered a thick stick and a flat rock that was sharp on one end.

“Can I use that?” she asked Lucas, gesturing to the scythe he was still holding. She used the blade to slice her stick down the middle, splitting it less than a quarter of the way down. She wedged one end of her rock into the slice, then secured the top ends of the stick together with the hair tie around her wrist. She held up her makeshift ax triumphantly, and I was impressed with the quality.

“Let’s see what it can do,” Lucas said. Talia handed him her ax, and he stepped up to the tree. “Where’s the Wand at?”

I ran my hands up and down the bark, until I noticed an area that seemed to buzz at a higher frequency than the rest. It was higher than my head, about as tall as Lucas. “Here,” I said, smacking the tree.

Lucas took my arm and guided me far behind him. “Stand back.”

He swung the ax at the tree as hard as he could, but it merely bounced off. A piece of bark flew off, but that was it. Lucas tried a few more times, but it became clear fairly quickly that this wasn’t going to work.

Talia frowned. “It was worth a shot.”

“It was creative,” I encouraged. “We’ll just have to think of something else.”

“What if we burn our way through?” Talia wondered.

“A green tree this big isn’t going to burn down,” Miles pointed out. “Plus, we could end up burning down the whole forest before we get out of here.”

“We don’t have to burn the whole thing down,” Talia said. “We can contain the fire, burn a hole to the center. It might take some time with it being so big and green, but it may be the best chance we’ve got.”

“That could work,” Lucas agreed. “Let’s get started.”

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