The Skinwalker's Apprentice
Read The Skinwalker's Apprentice Online
Authors: Claribel Ortega
Tags: #Teen & Young Adult, #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Sword & Sorcery
THE
SKINWALKER’S APPRENTICE
An Emerald Kipp Novella
Claribel Ortega
Kindle Edition
Copyright © 2014
Claribel Ortega
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Dedication
For
anyone who has ever felt misunderstood, but most of all for my brother Pablo
New York, NY
October 5, 1984
T
oday was Emerald Kipp’s sixteenth birthday, but she was anything
but
sweet. In fact, half of her body was currently hanging outside her principal’s window, while the other half rummaged through his partially open desk. Her Walkman had been confiscated, and she needed it back. Her black, high top sneakers flailed in the air as she opened each wooden drawer, shoving papers, pencils, and folders aside. No sign of her Walkman yet, and she only had one more drawer to go through. She opened it up with a smile, expecting the slick black case to be shining back at her. But the drawer was empty.
“Damn it,” she whispered, closing the door carefully. Her stomach was beginning to hurt from being folded over the window ledge. Luckily for her, Principal Grossman didn’t have enough sense to move his desk further away from the window. Had anyone walked in, it would’ve been much easier for her to slide out without being noticed.
Her eyes searched the tidy room for her Walkman. It wasn’t anywhere in or on his desk, or on the file cabinet. Maybe it was inside one of the locked drawers on the far end of the room? Emerald was just about to give up, when she spotted it peeking from the highest shelf on a weathered-looking bookcase.
“Bingo,” she celebrated quietly. She would have to risk climbing into the office completely, and she would have to be fast about it. Before she could swing her legs inside, she heard Principal Grossman talking to his secretary, Sheryl.
“Make sure you give me that report, Sheryl. I need it before the end of the day,” he said hotly. He was already mad about something, and finding Emerald hanging inside his office wasn’t going to help his mood. She could practically see the sweat gathering on his bowling ball of a head, his ears chili red, and his horn-rimmed glasses sliding off his bulbous nose.
She looked at the door and at her Walkman. He was going to walk in any minute, and she had to decide what to do. She thought of the mix tape in there that her best friend Seneka Belling had made her, and she decided it was worth the risk.
Just as Principal Grossman’s hand closed around the doorknob, Emerald pointed one finger at the Walkman, and the black box flew into her hand. She quickly slipped out of the window and shut it silently with a wave of her hand. Principal Grossman walked in without noticing a thing.
Aunt Nora’s going to kill me
, Emerald thought to herself as she slipped the Walkman into her jacket pocket. But her aunt would have to deal with it, she decided. Emerald was not going to lose another one of her cassette players to her principal. Being a witch had its advantages, and she didn’t mind taking them whenever she could.
Jackson Darcantel was on his skateboard, heading towards the front entrance of Upperten High School, when he spotted a blue head of hair crawling out of the bushes.
“Emerald?”
She looked up as if it was perfectly normal to be crawling out of the shrubbery and smiled.
“Hey, Jackson, how’s it going?” Emerald popped up and wiped her jeans clean, patting the Walkman on the inside of her oversized army jacket for good measure.
“Are you sneaking out of Principal Grossman’s office already? Sheesh, Emerald, it’s only been THREE weeks.”
“Technically, I wasn’t sneaking out since I was never
really
inside,” she rationalized, squinting as she said the word ‘really’. “I was only sort of inside.”
“I’m not even gonna ask what that means. I just know it was something illegal and probably dangerous.”
Emerald smiled. Jackson was one of her oldest friends, and he was used to her getting into trouble at every turn. He was a smooth talker, which came in handy when she was trying to weasel her way out of something. Jackson picked his skateboard up and carried it under his arm, and the two friends walked together. He was much taller than Emerald, almost six feet to her barely five and a half. He wore a cap turned towards the side and a black windbreaker jacket over his dark blue tee shirt and jeans. He looked like a younger version of Denzel Washington. Even Emerald, who thought of him as a brother, had to admit he was pretty good looking. Aside from being nice to look at, Jackson was also incredibly smart and Emerald had no idea why he hung around her. He was everybody’s favorite high school senior, and she was on a fast track towards juvie. But they had been friends since first grade, and Jackson saw a side of Emerald that her classmates never got to see. There was more to her than just being the school troublemaker.
Emerald pulled an apple out of her other pocket and took a big bite.
“Where’s Seny?” she asked with her mouth full, a juicy chunk of the fruit flying from her mouth as she spoke.
“Call me that again and I’ll beat the blue out of your hair,” said a monotone voice behind her.
Seneka Belling was Emerald’s best and oldest friend. Where Jackson was usually the one trying to get them out of trouble, Seneka took great joy in participating in Emerald’s schemes. Today, Emerald and Seneka had something colossal in the works: the senior prank that would live in infamy. Jackson had wanted no part of it, but he rarely got his way when Seneka and Emerald put their heads together.
“Jackson, come on,” Emerald had pleaded, “it’s our senior year. We HAVE to do this together, or it won’t be the same.”
“I’m not budging. You won’t get me in trouble again, so just forget it.”
Charlie Woo rounded out their group of friends. He went to school in Brooklyn and was, luckily for him, excluded from participating in the senior prank.
“Stop being such a baby, Jackson, just do it,” he teased.
“Easy for YOU to say, Charlie. You don’t have to deal with Grossman’s breath if you get caught.”
Emerald and Charlie both grimaced. Principal Grossman’s halitosis was known far and wide.
“What kind of friend are you?” asked Seneka calmly as she stared Jackson down. She could be really scary when she wanted to be. Where Emerald was a flash of bright colors with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, Seneka’s raven hair and dark clothes, in combination with her somber attitude, made the two girls seem like polar opposites.
“Is the kid going
to
or coming
from
a funeral?” Emerald’s Aunt Nora asked in her sharp New York accent whenever she saw Seneka.
Jackson was skittish whenever it came to breaking the rules, but after weeks of being worn down, he finally gave in. He would help Emerald and Seneka plan and carry out the senior prank that no one at Upperten High School would ever forget.
“Don’t forget to be at your places by twelve,” Emerald reminded them.
“We won’t,” sighed Jackson, tiny sweat beads forming on his forehead just beneath his cap.
“Oh, and by the way,” smirked Seneka, tossing a small bag towards Emerald. “Happy birthday.”
Easthampton, New York
October 1657
The trees surrounding the small English settlement of Easthampton were brilliant hues of red and orange. The villagers were preparing for what was to be a harsh winter, and although the evening was only just approaching, everyone was already tucked away in their homes. One young girl, Margo Pennyfeather, was running with all her might through the woods alongside Market Street, the village’s only street, where a row of houses sat nestled between a cemetery and a Presbyterian church. It would not be proper for a young girl to run, and Margo could not call attention to herself, especially not now. She had just received the most wonderful news of her life. She had been sitting on the banks of the river, letting her tired mind wander for a change. At sixteen she was already a woman and had to do her part to help her family stay afloat. The family was badly indebted to her father’s employer, Lion Gardner, the founder and most important man in Easthampton. With six mouths to feed, it seemed no matter how hard she and her parents worked, there was never enough for everyone. Most families in Easthampton lived off the land, but the Pennyfeathers were never any good at making things grow, at least not using conventional methods. Margo was especially exhausted that day, as her five-year-old sister Hannah had been up all night with a terrible cough. It was difficult to avoid such things when sharing one big bedroom. While they were preparing what little food they had for dinner, Margo’s mother Elisabeth had noticed her daughter struggling to keep her eyes open. She had patted her on the hand sympathetically.
“Go,” Elisabeth had said with a smile, “get some air and take a rest from this work. I can manage on my own.”
“I would not leave you to work on your own, Mother. I am fine,” said Margo stubbornly, continuing to knead the dough she had been working over.
Elisabeth’s smile faded and she had looked at her daughter sternly.
“I was not asking you, dear. Now go before I decide to keep you here indefinitely.”
Margo smiled weakly and nodded at her mother. How long had it been since she’d had an evening to herself, free of chores, she could not tell.
Margo barely got to go outside for leisure, much less by the water, and alone! How delicious it would be, she thought. She spent her days tending to her elderly grandparents, Mary and Thomas, and her sister Hannah, as well as helping her mother with the housework. By the time she was done cleaning, preparing meals, giving baths, and attempting to repair whatever damage had been done to their rickety house that day, she was too exhausted for words. Usually she collapsed in a heap on the straw bed she shared with Hannah, snoring loudly until she was up at four the next morning to do it all again. And she did all this on an almost empty stomach.
Margo was careful to take a hidden path as she went for a walk that evening, lest the neighbors see her alone. The Pennyfeathers were already thought of as unusual, and lately the rumors were getting worse. They were never well liked in England. Their unusual clothing, their absence at Sunday services combined with their rebellion against tradition, didn’t do much to endear them to the population of Kent, where they were from. The year before, they had been the talk of the town after Margo had very publicly rejected the proposal of a respectable farmer’s son, Jacob Davys. It was unheard of that she should be so bold, whispered the village gossips. Who did she think she was? She was lucky to have
any
proposal of marriage, let alone one from an upstanding young man. Thankfully for Margo, her own family didn’t see it that way.
“You’ll marry whom you want, and when you’re ready,” her father had said, spitting on the grass outside their home for emphasis. Nathanial Pennyfeather wouldn’t be bullied by anyone.
“You should have seen when we were engaged,” said her grandmother Mary, slapping one knee with a chuckle. “I took Thomas here by the collar,” she said, pointing a thumb at Margo’s grandfather, “and I told him he’d marry me or be sorry.”
Grandpa Tom, as he was called, had blushed and nodded.
“It’s true. And I’m not sorry, not one bit.” The two old lovebirds went on like that all day. Margo thought it was delightful, and she adored her grandparents.
When they left England for Easthampton, the Pennyfeathers thought they’d have a fresh start, with neighbors who didn’t treat them like a disease. Unfortunately for them, their reputation followed them the more than three thousand miles across the Atlantic, and all thanks to Jacob Davys’s great aunt Prudence Davys. She had been on the same boat as they were coming to the settlement and was still incensed about her nephew’s public humiliation at Margo’s hand. She yapped to everyone on the ship about how awful the Pennyfeathers were. Reaching the settlement did nothing to slow Prudence’s gossiping, and she went on being the flibbertigibbet of the town. Things stayed more or less the same for the Pennyfeathers in Easthampton, except they were poorer. All but one of the thirty-four other families on the settlement never so much as gave them a sideways glance. They did have one friend at least; not that that helped much. The one villager who didn’t treat them like lepers, a fifty-year-old nursemaid named Goody Garlick, was not well-liked herself.
Margo didn’t blame the town folk, since their suspicions were actually warranted. After all, she came from a family of witches and wizards. Her mother, father, and grandparents all had magical powers. Even her sister Hannah was able to summon her toys from across the room. Margo didn’t see what was so bad about what she was. In fact, she was sure there were no kinder souls than those of her family. Yet she understood.
“The fear of the unknown is a terrible torture on the minds of men,” her grandmother had once told her.
She reached the shore and looked around carefully. To be on the safe side, she had brought a small basket of clothes. She could always pretend she was washing the linens if someone did catch her there. As she sat on a large rock, breathing in the fresh air, a small blue bird flew to her side. Chirping happily, the bird hopped closer and closer until Margo could see the tiniest of scrolls tied to its leg.
“Oh,” she exclaimed happily, reaching for the bird. To her surprise, the fledgling did not flinch. Instead, she hopped straight into Margo’s hand and stood waiting. Margo took a closer look at the bird and noticed its feathers were all multicolored. Iridescent reds, purples and yellows, danced off the tiny bird’s plumage as she stood patiently, looking at Margo as if to say, “go on then.”
Margo smiled softly. She had never seen this sort of magic before.
Every witch and wizard in the magic world had one special power, a gift, the thing that made them special and gave them a purpose. The Pennyfeathers had always been Seers, with the power to peer into the future. Margo was not used to seeing animals being controlled by magic, and she herself had not yet discovered her own gift.
She untied the small ribbon holding the scroll, and the bird flew away.
A bewildered Margo watched as the scroll grew in her hands, the brown parchment stretching to a more conventional size, until Margo could read the once miniscule letters clearly. She looked around nervously. Had anyone seen that, it would spell trouble for the Pennyfeathers. The villagers, she knew, were just waiting for a reason to incriminate them, and accusations of witchcraft were common in those days. Just then, the most unusual thing Margo had ever seen happened.
The scroll began to speak. Rather, a voice read the message out loud to her in an old woman’s gravelly voice.
Margo Pennyfeather of the Easthampton Pennyfeathers, you have been chosen by the coven to be the student of our holiness, the high priestess of The Coven. You are to report to this location in precisely twenty-one days at 8 a.m. sharp. Please only bring your wand. Congratulations.
P.S. DO NOT BE LATE.
Margo’s head spun. Only the best witches were chosen to be a coven apprentice, and only the exceptional studied under the high priestess. It was the highest honor a young witch could receive. And witches of her … background were not usually chosen. She welled with emotion. If she was a successful apprentice, and learned the magic of The Coven, her life would be forever changed. It was well known that aside from learning the purest and most powerful magic, a coven apprentice would be able to secure a high-ranking position within The Coven itself, or at the very least one of its branches. A position like that would provide the kind of money that Margo and her family could only hope to make in a lifetime.
Her mind snapped to that summer. Margo had been putting her sister to sleep when her grandmother grabbed her by the shoulder, as she did whenever she had a vision. Mary Pennyfeather was small, at barely five feet tall, but she was as strong as an ox. Margo remembered feeling a slight twinge of pain as her elderly grandmother gripped her firmly. Mary’s face was centimeters away from her own, and Margo could see the wrinkles etched into every inch of her leathery skin. Her eyes, the same royal blue color as Margo’s, sat beneath two bushy black eyebrows and flickered in the moonlight that was streaming into their windows.
“Margo, follow me,” whispered Mary, letting go of her granddaughter and walking towards the back of their meager home. Margo massaged the spot where her grandmother’s hand had been, and followed her into the small washroom just to the right of their kitchen. Mary took her wand out from her shag of snow-white hair as the two witches cramped into the small room. The old witch closed the wooden door behind Margo with a flick of her wand, and Margo was thrust forward, nearly toppling her grandmother over. Mary didn’t seem to notice she’d been seconds away from falling into their wooden tub, and instead inspected the room around them. It was made of dark wood, and was empty besides their bath and a crate, which held a basin with water. Mary searched the walls with her wrinkled hands, her large, crooked nose almost flat against the wooden siding. Margo was beginning to think her grandmother had gone mad, when Mary’s eyes opened wide with excitement. The old woman turned and looked at Margo with a mischievous grin, before tapping her wand twice on the wall before her.
“Open, open, door I’ve chosen,” said Mary as the plain wall shook and a silver handle sprouted from its brown surface.
“What are we doing, Grandmother?” whispered Margo anxiously.
But Mary didn’t answer, and instead turned the doorknob, revealing a circular room made entirely of crystal. Mary walked in and sat down at a round purple table, the room around her twinkling like snow on a sunny day. Margo had seen this room before, but not since she was much younger back in England. It was her family’s seeing room, the room they used to predict the future, and decipher the past. They had little need of such things in Easthampton, as they knew no other witches, or anyone for that matter, who was in need of their very particular talents. Margo walked reluctantly to the table and sat down across from her grandmother, a large crystal ball with a golden base between them. She was tired, and wanted to get to bed. She’d have to be up quite early the next morning, but she was also curious what her grandmother was up to.
Mary picked a piece of lint from her shirt, and held it up to her eye for inspection. She nodded in approval, and then blowing on the lint, transformed it into a rose-colored handkerchief. She placed it over the orb and began to chant.
“Crystal ball, let me see, what my future just might be. Show me love, or show me hate, show what’s written, by the fates.” Mary took Margo’s hands and placed them on the sides of the orb.
At Margo’s touch, the cloth disappeared, and black smoke began to form within the crystal ball, swirling rapidly before coming to a stop, and revealing a vision of their village. Mary smiled happily at Margo, her yellowing teeth reflecting in the crystal around them. Margo smirked and looked back at the ball; what was her grandmother so excited about?
In the vision, Margo saw herself. She was taller, and her face had filled out, her black hair was piled atop her head in luxurious curls. She wore a sparkling gold dress with pearl buttons along the back, and a red fur shawl around her shoulders. She shook her head, for the clothes the apparition wore were not the kind she or her family could ever afford. She continued to watch as the Margo inside the crystal ball walked swiftly into a large mansion, holding onto her fur, and looking every bit a part of high society. The vision shifted, and inside the house Margo was speaking to a group of women. There were twelve women to be exact and all cloaked in black from head to toe. They looked distraught, but one of them got up and shook Margo’s hand as if she was congratulating her. The scene fizzled away, and a wax seal flashed before them. The seal had the letters MP on it, and beneath it were written a line of characters Margo could not understand. With that, the orb was wiped clean, leaving Margo slack-jawed across from her grandmother.
“What does it mean, Grandmother?”
Mary’s face brightened. “Didn’t you recognize those characters? Those are the seal of The Coven,” she enthused. Margo could hardly believe it, but her grandmother’s skill when it came to visions, and her knowledge of magical characters, were unparalleled.
“Could I really become part of The Coven, do you think it’s possible,” asked a wide-eyed Margo.
“Anything is possible,” said the old witch with a low cackle. “Now come, before your parents get suspicious. They don’t like me to use magic anymore,” she lamented. It was true, the Pennyfeathers had to be painstakingly careful that no one found out what they were. The two witches sealed the crystal room, and laid down to rest between their already sleeping family. Margo hadn’t slept much that night. She couldn’t stop thinking of the possibility of being part of The Coven. It was something she’d never thought she had a chance at.
