Page 126 of The Tribes of Magic
I flipped through the pages. “He’s keeping a very close eye on us. Some of this stuff…he really shouldn’t know. He knows about the Paragons’ spellbook, but not what it is. He knows I seemed to be chatting with an invisible someone at Miss Christie’s on Tuesday, and he rightly assumes it was Conner… he’s also been tracking my meal choices, whatever that’s all about. And here…” I looked at Kato and Conner. “He knows Kylie’s still alive.”
“May I see that file?”
I handed Kato the folder. “The General knows Kylie isn’t dead. How?”
“Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it?” Conner said. “He knows Kylie is alive because he’s working with the people who took her.”
“We haven’t found any evidence he is working with the kidnappers.”
“Oh, come on, Kato. What will it take before you accept it?”
“I don’t know, Conner. Maybe, um, some actual evidence? We can’t go around accusing the General without…” His eyes froze. They’d clearly caught on something he’d been reading.
“Kato?” I asked. “What is it?”
“The General has a whole folder dedicated to just you, Seven.”
Conner snatched the folder out of Kato’s hands. “He’s tallying up your abilities. There are test reports going back years. And pictures too.” He looked at Kato. “You know what this is, right? The General has created a whole brief on Savannah, like he’s preparing for someone to kidnap her.”
“You don’t know that.” But a shadow fell over Kato’s face. A part of him didn’t believe his own words. I could hear it in his voice.
Conner must have heard it too. He punched one of the filing cabinets with his bare fist. A drawer popped open. Conner yanked out the first file he saw and buried his anger in its pages.
“We don’t know that the General wants to sell me to the Order of Kings. We don’t even know if he’s working with them. All we know is he’s watching me, but that’s hardly surprising, is it? From the day he met me, the General didn’t like me and didn’t trust me. And he told me himself that he’s watching my every mood.”
It was pretty clear he had a spy in the Castle, reporting back to him, but there was nothing here to indicatewhothat spy might be.
“I’ve found something,” Kato said.
“The name of the spy at the Castle?” I asked.
“Evidence of his shady alliance with the Order of Kings?” Conner added.
“No, something else.” Kato began reading from the file he was holding. “December 6th, 2028. Two weeks ago, the tree spontaneously appeared in California, south of San Francisco. The tree is like nothing anyone on Earth has ever seen. Its branches seem to glow from within, pulsing with an unnatural kind of light. Strange colored balls of lights orbit around the tree. It started with just a couple, then a few more, and more and more and more. By now, the glowing balls number in the thousands, and no one has any idea what they are or what they mean. The scientists could find no source for the tree lights and no pattern to the pulsing.”
I squeezed in closer. “You’ve found an account of the first Spirit Tree appearing on Gaia.”
“Indeed.” Kato continued reading. “A box was found buried beside the ‘Spirit Tree’, the tree’s name according to the instructions in the box. The instructions also explained the tree’s purpose. It’s a gateway to other realms, powered by the magic of the ‘spirits’. The scientists protest that there’s no such thing as magic, but as of yet, they’ve been unable to explain the tree’s sudden arrival or its glowing lights.
“February 14th, 2029: The First Expedition. After months of preparations and negotiations with other world governments, today we sent the first team through the Spirit Tree, a collection of the world’s brightest scientific minds, escorted by elite soldiers.
“May 2nd, 2029. The expedition team returned to Earth five days ago…”
Kato looked up from the page.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The team brought back the Curse.”
“I know. Everyone knows. It’s in all the history books.”
“Thisisn’t in any history book.” Kato handed me the file.
“The Curse wasn’t a mistake. The Spirit Tree brought the expedition team to another realm, where they…stole magic.” I glanced up from the page at Kato and Conner. “There was a sacred tree with some magic apples. The team picked the apples and brought them back to Earth. That was the whole point of the expedition. It wasn’t to explore or learn. It wasn’t a scientific endeavor. It was a military operation. They stole magic to make weapons. And when the people of that other realm found out what the humans had done, they cursed us.
“Do you know what this means? It means the Government, or the precursor to it at least, caused the Curse. They brought this plague upon our world.”
CHAPTER 8
