The Green Witch

Every morning, Cantella woke up to the smells of lavender, rain, and melted butter.

The rain had nothing to do with the weather, it was just that mist spirits tended to leave that pungent, earthy smell in their wake. Its sweet, natural scent relaxed her, so she let it be. The lavender was her own personal preference, circulating through her apartment via air fresheners, candles, soap and shampoo, fabric softener, and anything else she bought that came with a perfume. The melted butter seemed permanently ingrained in the boarded-up caverns below her, even though it had ceased to be a theater many years before.

Cantella could have thought about why this was so, but she knew that if she did, she would fixate on it uncomfortably for the rest of the day. Today was not a day where her mind could wander like that. Today, she needed focus. She needed to be able to narrow her eyes, drawing that ball into her brain, holding it there, wrapping her consciousness around it, and her rage... It though it was so cute, didn't it, with its glossy shimmer and its grinning little dimples. She had to get angry at it. It stood there, taunting her, high and mighty on its little pedestal... She had to find a reason to hate it; she superimposed that face over its melon-like body, his face, that murderous, self-appreciating, vicious scoundrel... She had to

WHACK!

"Woo!" Jed put his hand up to his face to shield his eyes, even though he was already wearing a visor. He watched the plastic ball scale the firmament. "Good one, Ellie! Nice drive. Good omen if ever I saw one!"

Cantella thought that Jed didn't know half as much about omens as he thought he did, but her creamy coffee-colored face went rosy with pride.  

There was a chunk of lawn by her sneakers, upset in her feckless attack. As per course etiquette, she put the divot back in its slot in the green. “I can only hope,” she said with her driving iron slung over her shoulder. “I really blew it last game. Over par—way over par—on every hole. I got—what, twelve strokes on Hole 9?”

Jed grinned knowingly. “That’s because you landed smack dab in the middle of the sand trap. You never were good at sand traps, El. You shoulda just taken the one-stroke penalty. At worst you probably woulda ended up with a bogie!”

“I know,” Cantella said with a tut to herself, “but you know me. Always optimistic. I had to try, for my pride’s sake!”

The heavyset golfer burst into a big, body-rocking belly laugh. “And it got served a big ol’ dish of fried crow! Next time, take my advice: Just take a penalty stroke. Your pride will thank you.”

Cantella peered out at him from beneath her bright hair. Jed was an old friend of hers, and knew her for what she really was, but the rest of the boys down at the links had some of the thickest mortal skulls she knew, so she dolled herself up in pretty glamours to disguise her many… oddities. At the country club, she was fair young Ellie, with bleach-blonde hair and flawless caramel skin, coupled with piercing Mother Nature-green eyes. Everything but the hair was natural. Her real hair was starlight white, but that would look so out of place on an otherwise young woman that she kept it bound up tight in her spells.

As always, Jed seemed to be able to tell what she was thinking just by leaning on his five iron and gazing at her cheek. “Oh, and by the way, El. We got a new boy playing with us this week. You remember Roddy, right? Well, his son, Patrick, just joined the country club. He’s really in it for the squash courts,” he said almost conspiratorially, “but I promised Rod we’d play a few rounds with him on the links. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Not at all,” Cantella said. “And let me guess: You wanted to hit me with the usual warnings against hocus pocus and magic tricks, right?”

“Sure enough. And even more so!” he added hurriedly. “Apparently the kid had some sort of childhood trauma involving a stage magician. Or something with the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz. Either way, he’s terribly afraid of witches, wizards, magicians—the whole kit and caboodle. Heck, he’s even afraid of Glinda, getting back to the Oz thing. He’s also very superstitious.”

Cantella listed with her moist, glistening finger held aloft in the wind, checking its direction. “Superstition is no problem,” she said, closing her eyes to the glare of the sun. “Like I’ve told you before, my kind are a very suspicious lot. My husband was—well, you know the story. He was trying to help a little boy who was being abused by his family because he was supposedly a cursed child.”

“A family of… magi?”

“’Magi’ is a bit more archaic of a word… Most of us go by ‘mage’ nowadays, but yes, magi works.”

Her braid was already swishing off with the rest of her toward the hills of the practice course, seeking her distinctive pale blue ball. Despite its unusual coloration, she was always loosing the things—but what golfer didn’t? She could always conjure a new one should it be well and truly lost. But that was a waste of perfectly good magic. If only her club wasn’t steel—its bulbous, shining head was the perfect Scrying surface! But that was why mages were fond of this sport, of course. Enough iron built into it to discourage magical cheaters.  

A nugget of blue suddenly struck her eyes out in the sea of endless green. Pale blue. But it was not in a place she would have liked to see it. Squinting through her lids, Cantella could see that it was definitely a golf ball, in her unique color, cradled like an under-ripe fruit in a fork in the branch of a tree. The wind teasing the rough rattled the leaves, but her ball did not come tumbling down.

Cantella’s good omen had quickly gone rancid.



After getting her ball down from the tree (she looked, squirrel-like, from left to right to make sure no one was around, then surreptitiously Orbed it back to her hand in a sulfurous yellow puff), she rejoined Jed and told him that she didn’t much feel like practicing any more. He shrugged and teased her about being cocky because of her far-flying shot, but she pressed her lips together and didn’t tell him about where her ball landed. They went to the club house at the head of the green to wait for their fellow golfers and Patrick.

Andre and June slid up the driveway in their fat little PT Cruiser only a few minutes later, but they looked slightly ill, as though their breakfasts were eating away at their stomachs and not the other way around. For a tiny, imperceptible second, Cantella closed her eyes—she might’ve been trying to shield them from the sun—to spy on their auras. Mortal auras generally looked like so much haze over the city to mages, but Cantella hoped her friendship with the young couple would make them slightly brighter beneath her eyes. A tenuous cloud of grayish green, like the residue of a bright light, swarmed fuzzily over Andre’s general area. June’s tepid orange blot seemed to be convulsing, as though the darkness behind her lids were wrestling with it. Cantella blinked back to the real world, and wondered whether it would be prudent to congratulate the couple. Evidently June was pregnant, unless mortal auras reacted differently than mages’ did. But did she even know?

Roddy’s wheezing, rusty monster rampaged in some time later, but nobody was angry at him. His intractable beast of a car always quit on him at the most inconvenient times. Not surprisingly, his first words on leaving the vehicle were, “Overheated off of Pearl. Sorry we’re late. Gang, meet my son, Patrick.”

A slick black wave of curly hair stepped out of vehicle. Cantella’s heart played the marimba on her ribcage. Fine, dexterous hands gripped the sides of the car to pull themselves into place. It was him, it was Radston, the murderer, the witch-hunter; Roddy had betrayed her; he was here for her; she was going to die—

An innocent young man’s face peered out at them from his impish mop, and Cantella sighed so audibly that Jed gave her a funny look. This boy was perhaps seventeen or eighteen; not a year older than her young friend Alexander Phoenix. She felt so silly for mistaking Roddy’s son for Radston Serpentine that she had to giggle at herself, earning another estranged look from Jed. He had the sweet, round face of a cherub; she would sooner have suspected him of drug-dealing or counterfeiting before she thought of him as a witch hunter! (Though she would make a point never to mention that to Roddy.) But with his curly black hair and fine form, he certainly looked like Radston.

“OK,” Roddy said warily. “Well then. Gang, this is my son, Patrick. Patrick, these are my golfing buddies. That’s Jed Marron over there, and Ella Scroll. And the couple are Andre and June Portside.

“Hello,” Patrick waved eagerly. “It’s nice to meet you all. I’m not very good at golf, though.”  

“Not a problem,” Andre said casually. “We take all sorts. We can be teachers. Just so long as you don’t mind being a student! Do ya, boy?”

Patrick shook his head. His bouncy, spring-loaded hair flew around him wildly. “I don’t know this sport very well,” he admitted. “I promised my father I’d join him for a few games, but to be perfectly honest I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Hit the ball,” Jed chortled. “Really, that’s all there is to it. Try to hit it far. And if it goes in the hole, good for you.”

Jed was of course attempting to be light and frivolous, but Patrick put his head down and considered Jed’s joking words very seriously. He slowly and ponderously replied, “…I see.”

“We’re none of us professionals, boy,” Jed coughed. “You don’t have to take this game too seriously. Just play a few rounds and try to enjoy yourself. Loosen up and have some fun.”

“I’m just a little tired is all,” Patrick replied, and as if for effect, he punctuated his words with a thick, syrupy yawn. “Go easy on me is all I ask. Up until now, most of my golfing experience has involved windmills, pendulums, and giant plaster alligators.”




If Cantella had been hoping for a peaceful morning on the links, however, she was in for a very jarring wake-up call.

This call would come relatively early on in the game, during Andre’s second stroke on the par 3 third hole, in the form of Cantella’s confidant Saradeana Falconer. Saradeana was eccentric in the fact that—well, to be truthful, there were a great many eccentric things about faithful Saradeana, but the most notably odd about her was that she did not live on Earth. For the past four hundred odd years, the tiny Falconer Family had lived in the world of Sidhe, a world soused in magic in comparison to the steel-choked world of Gaia. Saradeana, then, was quite clearly out of touch with the practices of ordinary human beings. Testament to this fact was that Saradeana made no effort to change out of her usual attire when she came calling on Cantella. She was dripping with several yards of crimson robe, embroidered with arabesque, legendary scenes, and the spray from the sprinkler she materialized on top of.

Now, Cantella knew that if you lifted the velvet hem of Saradeana’s robe, there would be a perfectly ordinary pair of Nikes beneath all that loopy, sparkling fabric, and plain denim jeans on top of that, but somehow she doubted that would be enough for Patrick. Cantella looked warily behind her at him. He was digging through a golf bag and asking his father the best club to use for the whole course, while Andre’s orange ball went CRACK over the hills.

Saradeana was gathering her train into her arms ungracefully to hustle off towards her friend. Cantella’s teeth set sharply. Her friend typically wore a sharp, irritated expression, but the speed in Saradeana’s step and the wrinkle around her mouth suggested a more pointed pique than usual. Again, Cantella checked on Patrick. He was blissfully unaware of the witchy-looking woman struggling towards them across the fairway. For that matter, no one else seemed to have noticed that an auburn-haired lady had suddenly appeared in the midst of the course’s sprinkler system. Cantella tried to concoct a quick plan of action.

She figured that it would be best to tip off Jed. Being one of the Knowing, she hoped he’d understand. Leaning over her golf bag, she said to him, “Ah, Jed? I have a bit of a problem. I’m going to go—check it out for a little while—do you think you could cover for me?”

Jed was leaning into his own bag, eyes scanning intently over the pages of a thick little book. He noticed that Cantella had said something to him, but he wasn’t completely sure of what. “Hmm? Wha?” He looked up briskly. “Come again, Ellie?”

Cantella suggested Jed’s gaze across the course, away from the red flag and in the direction of the rough. Saradeana stood out against the green like a lone berry on a bush. “Uh-oh.” It was clear enough from her garb that she meant magical trouble. “That can’t be good.”

“It’s Saradeana. Falconer,” Cantella clarified. “She doesn’t live in this dimension, so she’s a little… hmm, out of touch, I would say. I’m going to go speak with her, but please, Jed, do me a favor and try to keep Patrick distracted. Saradeana looks vexed enough, and Gods only know we don’t need Patrick loosing it either…”

“Will do, El,” Jed nodded. “But hurry back. Nobody wants to wait for you to move on to the next hole.”

This got a little smile out of Cantella, but she determinedly bustled off to meet Saradeana. The two sorceresses rendezvoused in the middle of a sand trap dipping into the landscape. Cantella had directed herself into it purposefully, in the hopes that Patrick wouldn’t bother to look into it.

Many people were overwhelmed when they came into close contact with Saradeana. She was a powerful mage, and even in the steel web of Earth, one could feel her vibrant pink aura broadcasting out of her. Her eyes were green as toxins, and her hair was a fire-colored corona around her face. But Cantella had known Saradeana for so long that the fierce woman no longer had much of an effect on her. So when Saradeana greeted her brusquely and shortly, Cantella replied politely instead of in kind. They had an understanding of one another’s moods, though in Saradeana’s case, she had no real regard for them.

“I certainly hope you have something important to say, Saradeana,” Cantella sighed submissively. “After all, I was in the middle of a game. But if you need something, really,” she said without a twinge of sarcasm, though she thought it. “I’m always here. Any time.”

“Thank you, Cantella. You know I really do appreciate this.” Similarly, Saradeana said this without any real, considered honesty. “Well, you know, I still need a liaison with the mayor of Evergreen Haven. I still can’t get him to admit to that Agency-themed glamour he used a few days ago on the periphery of the city. I can’t talk to people. You know I tend to beat them down a bit. You’re such a diplomat, Cantella.”

This was both unimportant and important at once. Politically incorrect glamours were normally nothing to get in a tizzy about—certainly nothing worth interrupting a golf game for. But Cantella knew it hadn’t been a glamour; real Agents had been there near the village of Evergreen Haven in Sidhe, and that alone should had elected its own particular breed of alarm—and Saradeana of all people should have known that, having lost one of her nearest and dearest to the Agency. Cantella certainly did; six years ago their foulest member, Radston Serpentine, had stolen her husband of thirty-nine years from her with a .33-caliber shotgun bullet. For all his magic, he couldn’t stop something as small as a 33-millimeter round of lead! (Not even iron!) This always seemed so profoundly wrong to Cantella, who—

“Cantella! Goodness sakes’, woman, are you even listening to me? It’s only a golf game, not the Mages’ Parliament!”

Cantella tried to wipe the unhappy memories off of her eyes. “Sorry. I was only thinking.”

“Sometimes you think too much. Well? What do you say?”

Talking to the mayor of Evergreen Haven would do nothing to alleviate the real problem. Cantella politely refused. “Perhaps some other time, Saradeana. But I’m in the middle of a game right now, and I’d really like to finish it. My friends are waiting.”

“What’s so important about this game? You came when we found Alexander.”

“Who had been presumed dead for the past fifteen and a half years,” Cantella lithely countered. “No offence to you, Saradeana, but I don’t think glamours are as—important as suddenly finding your best friend’s long-lost son alive. However, if you suddenly find a member of the Qi-Lin Family out wandering the streets of Juniper Falls, I’m more than happy to come and talk to you.”

Saradeana looked displeased—more so than usual, at any rate. Her eyes always looked a little on edge. “Oh, alright. Leave me to deal with this by myself, will you? Well, I suppose it’s good for my character, at any rate. But don’t blame me if I accidentally browbeat him.”

Cantella had no idea how you could “accidentally” browbeat anyone, but Saradeana wasn’t a lingerer. She was up the slippery sides of the sand trap in—not a flash, but as quick as she could go carting around the train of her robe. She slipped back into the cool mist raised by the sprinkler system, and as the moisture enfolded her, she winked back off to Sidhe without so much as a sound. (Well, besides the plastic-on-water click of the sprinklers.)

She’d already sunk her ball, so Cantella didn’t have to worry about making her friends wait on her for that. But certainly they were going to wonder where she’d slithered off to (though they, too, were used to her odd way of slinking off now and then), and if they’d all managed to hit the cup, they would be eager to press forward. She tried to melt back into the group nonchalantly.

If she hoped it was over, though, her hopes were for naught.     



Saradeana reappeared at Hole 7, much to Cantella’s consternation. She warned Jed of the situation again and headed off to meet her friend before she had time to cause a ruckus.

Cantella headed Saradeana off before she could come too far out of the rough. “Saradeana!” she grumbled. “Although I certainly have no objections to doing you favors, I already made it explicitly clear to you once this morning that I am busy! If you absolutely must find someone to negotiate for you, then I suppose I can do my best, but not now! I—am—in—the—middle—of—a—game!”

It was clear that Cantella was well and truly irritated, because she was very rarely that sharp with anyone, let alone Saradeana. She had a reputation for being exceptionally calm and composed, and she could take the worst possible news without so much as a twitch. But there was something about repeat offenses that particularly raised her ire.

Saradeana looked humbled. This was extremely rare. Cantella’s face twisted in vexation, even though Saradeana looked apologetic. Not even Cantella had the power to make Saradeana withdraw. Only two people Cantella knew of could have done that: Seamus Pearlback, a large white South American dragon who had been one of her ancestor’s closest friends, and Cosmo Foxglove, her physician and close accomplice. (At one point, there had been a third, but he too had long since perished at Agency hands…) And so Cantella supposed that one of the two must have given her a talking two. One of them was more likely than the other.

Seamus Pearlback was a bit of a recluse, even though he lived on Saradeana’s property, so it had to have been Cosmo. Sure enough, Saradeana began to blabber on about Cosmo this and Cosmo something that, and Cantella couldn’t even bother herself to listen.

There wasn’t any real need for her to. Although most people might have taken Cosmo’s status as a doctor and Saradeana’s stricken state and assumed that something was horribly afoul, Cantella knew a few things about Saradeana and Cosmo that most people didn’t. For one thing, Cosmo wasn’t merely Saradeana’s doctor, he was also a member of her staff: Saradeana was the dean of a large Academy in Sidhe, named after her ancestor James Falconer, and Cosmo headed its Infirmary. He also took care of the staff when they were ill. However, he and Saradeana had far more going on than a typical employer/employee relationship, which probably explained why he had such an otherwise unprecedented sway over her emotions.

Cantella polished the head of her club with her palm. “Saradeana,” she said curtly, and the sorceress stopped mopping her nose with the collar of her robe. “I haven’t been with a man for six years. Don’t come looking to me for relationship advice.”

“But—didn’t you hear what I said? Or what he said? Or what I said he said? Cantella, this is serious! What am I supposed to tell the staff about this?!”

To be entirely truthful, Cantella didn’t have the slightest idea what Saradeana had said, but Saradeana was a person it was not wise to be entirely truthful with. “Oh, plead insanity. I don’t know, Saradeana! I am in the middle of a golf game, it is most likely my turn to tee off, and by now my friends are bound to be wondering what I’m getting up to back he—“

Thinking of her friends, Cantella’s glance tripped over her shoulder. A youthful head full of curly black hair was inching across the green towards her, leaning curiously forward over the grip of his golf club.

“Oh no,” Cantella gulped. Cantella winced back towards her friend. “Ah, Saradeana, I know this is very important to you, but we have a bit of a situation here—“

Another the things Cantella knew about Saradeana that most people didn’t was that Saradeana was actually quite nearsighted, but declined to wear glasses out of vanity. So when she looked around Cantella’s head, she did not have the world’s clearest picture of the boy on the other side.

Unfortunately, Patrick shared his aversion for all things supernatural with another, darker individual. Radston Serpentine. Radston had that same curly black hair, twisting around his neck, and that was all that Saradeana could clearly make out inching towards them in the distance. It did not help that Patrick was also wearing tan, the traditional color of uniforms in the Agency, that witch-hunting group Radston spearheaded, making their likeness at a blurred distance even greater. Radston was not the sort of person you wanted to meet in a dark alleyway if you were a mage—he was a zealot who murdered mages without remorse, if only after toying with them as a cat toyed with a mouse. The greatest men and women of the mage world had crumpled like falling sacks at his feet, the air reeking with the stench of blood and gunfire.

In short, any appearance of Radston Serpentine was best met with panic. So, if Saradeana had been seeing properly, she uncharacteristically reacted in the best possible manner.

“Gah! Cantella! Behind you!”

When Cantella had said “Oh no,” she had of course been thinking about poor Patrick’s reaction when he saw Saradeana, velvety and pink and bubbling over with magic, but now, she had to admit, it fit Saradeana’s expression as well. Her flying red hair got frizzier and her robe seemed to curl away from her body in fear. “Cantella! It’s him! Dear Gods, its him, Cantella! Look behind you, woman!”

Resignedly, Cantella spun around on Saradeana’s orders. Saradeana frightfully babbled, “Almighty archons! Lords, kings and queens of Heaven! He’s come for us, Cantella! And—“ Saradeana caught the glitter of Patrick’s golf club, and her panic-skewed mind twisted it around maliciously. “Heavens to jet’vsabu, he’s got some kind of gun!”

Cantella sighed. Ahead of her, Patrick stalled, unsure of whether or not to approach. His hands seemed to be shaking. “Saradeana,” she sighed, “that’s—“

But much as Cantella had ignored Saradeana’s rant about Cosmo, Saradeana tuned out Cantella’s advisory on Patrick. “For goodness’ sake, woman, do something! Don’t just let him—he’s getting closer!”

Patrick flung his club up over his shoulder and started to pivot in place. Saradeana took this to mean that he was loading his gun and aiming to fire!

Saradeana shrieked a single loud wordless noise and flung her arms around erratically. A large pink dome like half a bubble gum bubble blew up around them. It was a ward, or magical force-field, and even were the real Radston Serpentine on the other side, Cantella would not have felt comforted. It took a truly solid ward to turn aside a bullet, and in her panicked state, Cantella doubted that Saradeana could have put very much effort into this one.

Expectedly, Patrick let out a similar howl, and through the stomach-medicine-y film, Cantella watched him stumble over backwards and bumble over himself as he dashed back to the group. Much to Cantella’s consternation, they were startled by Patrick’s sudden outburst, and all of them turned around. It was very difficult for them to miss the florid pink sphere sticking out of the ground.

A continuous ticker tape scrolled behind Cantella’s tightly-closed eyes: No, no, no, no, no, no, no…

“He’s falling!” Saradeana blurted! “Hold out here, Cantella! I’m going for reinforcements!”

Because there was no mist in the area, Saradeana couldn’t teleport in her usual manner—by stepping through fog. Instead, she decided to Orb, like most mages did—a sphere of bright purple-white light puffed out from her, blowing against Cantella’s exposed arms and sucking at her hair. As the ball pulled back into itself, it slurped the bright pink ward up with it, and it vanished with a crack not unlike someone snapping their gum.

Without the pink haze in her way anymore, Cantella saw all of her golfing buddies—all of them except Jed—shake their heads in disbelief. Patrick was hunched over into the grass; he looked over his shoulder and gaped. It was just Cantella, all by her lonesome, sighing deeply and pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Ellie,” June gawked as Cantella made her way back, “What on Earth…?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cantella said densely. However, she was still massaging her forehead. “I thought I saw a wolf or some other very large animal in the trees. I just went to check on it, is all. It’s nothing.”

“Sure took a long time…” Andre observed. “Been waiting on you. Go; we’re getting impatient!”

As Cantella steadied the ball on her tee, she whispered to Jed, “It’s not over yet.”

Cantella poised to swing. “Why can’t you just poof after her and talk to her?” Jed asked while she wiggled her hips in preparation.

The mage swung and the ball went thwack across a wide swipe of fairway. “Once Saradeana Falconer gets an idea in her head, there’s no stopping her.”

“But…” Unfortunately, Jed had to admit he knew next to nothing about magic or Saradeana Falconer, so he had no real rebuttal.

Patrick’s swing was next. His whole body was noticeably shaky. His eyes waved all over the green, and his shot landed him in the middle of a water hazard. The telling splunk was audible even from the distance. In the way mages felt things, Cantella felt as though it were a signal of something bigger, like the toll of a church bell.   

Sure enough, Cantella saw the telltale blossom of several Orbs in the perfectly-trimmed green ring around the hole.

Patrick halted, balancing unsteadily on the slope of the hill. The heavy glunk as his metal-flavored saliva hit his throat echoed through the wide field. Andre, June, and Roddy began to mumble amidst themselves. They had no idea what to make of the sudden lavender pearls popping up on the green, nor the body-armored figures they left behind when they evaporated.

The only mortal who had any idea what was going on was Jed, and even he was at a loss to the specifics of the situation. He could only presume that Cantella’s friend was to blame. Turning on the white-blonde witch, he sighed, “We can forget about getting in a decent game of golf today, can’t we?”

Then Andre pointed out that the uniformed figures out by the hole were heavily armed, and he went screaming past, shrieking, “Run for your lives!” Patrick simply collapsed, and his limp form slid down the hill like a rag doll.

Jed and Cantella were the only ones who didn’t budge. Briefly shutting her eyes to check her mage-sight, Cantella saw the sea of pink drowning the trooping fighters in their MPA—Mage’s Parliament Army—fatigues, and if she squinted, her real-world eyes could detect the velvety glitter of Saradeana’s robe against the stark blues of the soldier’s uniforms.

Straightly, Jed said, “Why is your friend Saradeana strong-arming our country club?”

Just as frankly, Cantella replied, “She believes that Patrick is a notorious mage murderer and is attempting to capture him. Or perhaps kill him, if she’s overzealous enough. The fact that she’s brought a SWAT team with her seems to indicate the latter.”

“You should probably talk to them,” Jed deadpanned as the armed contingent approached.

“Talking rarely works with Saradeana. Or the Mage’s Parliament’s fight squads. Or even worse, a combination of the two.”

At this moment, it seemed to have occurred to Roddy that his son wasn’t following him. He dug his heels into the thick grass, anchoring himself to turn around. His hands were wild as he whipped away from the rough and glanced back at the fairway. Patrick was lying in a crumpled, unraveled heap near the base of the hill, and poor Roddy couldn’t see him. The blue-suited, menacing looking soldiers marched away from the hole, mounting towards Jed and Ellie, who for some reason he couldn’t comprehend were doing nothing. They were padded all over with Kevlar, with pitch-colored, emotion-obscuring sunglasses over their eyes, and substantially-sized guns anchored on their shoulders. They were glued in a donut shape around a very red-looking individual, with ruby hair and a dark dress of some kind that so jarred with the rest of the troop that he almost wanted to laugh.

He wasn’t sure who they were, or where they’d come from, but somehow he could not bring himself to be afraid any more. Patrick needed him more than that. And what was that? Was Ellie moving down over the hill too? Yes, she was, and she did it so calmly and with such purpose that Roddy wondered what he was even worrying about. Despite everything those guns warned him of, he ran back up the crest of the hill and spilled over.  

Strangely, it took Cantella a few seconds to comprehend what Roddy was up to. Hissing to herself, she swore, “Oh, jet’vsabu,” and kneaded her forehead. “I guess I have no choice in the matter anymore! Roddy!”

“No time, Ellie!” Roddy called back. She saw his back disappear behind the bulge of the hill, and she heard his panicked urging as he tried to rouse his son. “Pat! Pat! C’mon, kid, wake up!”

Cresting the hill in her sprint, Cantella heard one of the soldiers over her labored pant: “Target the Agent first!” A small contingent of soldiers broke aside from the rest and readied their firearms. At first, Roddy was too concerned with his son’s welfare to notice anything peculiar, but when he heard a trio of hammers snap into place atop their barrels, he looked up with stunned, milky, far-away eyes.

Curse whoever saw her! Cantella mint-sharp whistle split the air. The air on either side of her split open, as though she’d undone a zipper, and clouds of foggy blueness spilled in vaporous cascades around her feet. Another demanding trill, and then, wincing slightly, Cantella gave another, more apologetic one. The azure mist swept under her feet, carting her into the air and zipping her down the hillside faster than her feet (or gravity) could carry her. A stream of condensing golden droplets formed a com-trail behind her as her glamour shattered, revealing the true pearly color of her hair once again.

About two-thirds of the soldiers faltered. She glided over the top of Roddy’s head and Patrick’s limp form and slid before them, her very presence a diplomatic shield. “Stop!” she commanded. “Stop this at once! You have no authority to be here. Leave before I forcibly make you!”

The same two-thirds of the soldiers drooped their heads and let their guns go limp. The remaining third seemed to be more stoic. Most of them did not budge. However, a few were downright reactionary. One fervent solider declared, “Cantella Scroll? Double-crosser! She’s defending Radston Serpentine! She’s gone Agency!”

A few of the soldiers (presumably the bold one’s friends) wailed in concord and cocked their weapons. An itchy finger near the front of the crowd twitched backwards, sending the unfortunate soldier on the end of it stumbling backwards into the row behind her, and a pellet of lead screaming through the air. It was not too close to Cantella, but her foggy allies feinted her to the right anyway. She rushed a few words after it as it passed.

Down in the military crowd, someone hissed, very informally, “Susan! At least have some composure!”

“Sorry!” Susan whispered back.

“Hold on!” There was no mistaking Saradeana’s commanding squawk. “Everyone, stop this! And—“ Saradeana grunted. “Let—let me through! Oof!” Her velvet-draped elbows urged soldiers out of the way as Saradeana forced herself to the head of the party. “I’m certain there’s a perfectly good explanation for—Cantella! Have you gone out of your mind?”

Although the question wasn’t directed at him, Cantella heard Roddy mutter, “Lady, I’m beginning to wonder.”

Something fluttered in the mist by Cantella’s airborne feet. Patrick’s hair ruffled as he turned himself groggily over.

“Ooong. What the…?”

Patrick’s eyes batted as he tried to get himself abreast of the situation. His vision spun and went liquid. He shook his head, tried to sit up, and hit his head on the sole of someone’s golf shoe.

“What the he—OH MY GOD!” Patrick’s screams pealed across the course, wavering as he tried to pull himself backwards up the hill. “Arrrgggg! Getawaygetawaygetawaygetaway!” Roddy tried to sprint up after him, but pulling himself up on the slope of the hill was difficult. He awkwardly tumbled upwards as he tried to chase his son.

“Hey!” Saradeana cried. “Get him!”

“STOP!” Cantella tried to command, but her words spun around and were lost as she pivoted on her cloud, trying to follow Patrick.

“Leave my son alone, you homicidal maniacs!” Roddy screamed into the advancing crowd, but some nonchalant soldier turned the palm of his hand toward Roddy and spat something in Latin. Roddy found himself suddenly unable to stand up. He collapsed as his knees quivered like the liquid in a jostled glass.

Patrick wasn’t having such a good time of things, either. His behind landed, hard, on top of someone’s golf ball. It was Cantella’s. (And any mage who’d have noticed that would have nodded, tried to look wise, and parrot off that There Are No Coincidences.) But the pace of a few of the soldiers (those with perfect vision, or those who’d remembered to put their contacts in) had already begun to stammer. They’d finally begun to noticed, as they truly moved in, that something was not quite right about their “Radston Serpentine.”

Patrick shivered to a stop as the advancing militia loomed over him. He brought his arms up to cover his face and trembled out a few words in his defense. “Stop! Stop! I d-d-don’t know what I did, but p-p-please! D-d-don’t—d-d-don’t—stop! Please! Don’t hurt—leave me alone!”

Jittery, reactionary Susan seemed to have calmed down now. She peered down at the boy and gently pried back his arms. “Hey!” she exclaimed. “This isn’t Radston! This is just some kid!” Mysteriously (to Patrick, at least), she closed her eyes in a very slow blink, opening them with tut-tuts and a shake of her head. “Some poor little mortal boy, too. Non-Knowing, I’m gonna take a wild guess. Probably got the snot scared out of him, too. Hey, back off, guys!”

The barrels of a few dozen guns stabbed into the ground. Just as many heads turned inward to Saradeana.

A man with a row of multicolored badges along the right breast of his blue uniform scowled at Saradeana. His bristly black mustache twitched. “Saradeanaaaa! What is the meaning of this?!”

Of course, if he had thought he could somehow scream Saradeana Falconer into submission, he was sorely mistaken. Saradeana simply scoffed and discarded the rebuff like a piece of trash that had landed on her shoulder. “Well, I certainly don’t know! I certainly thought I saw Radston the last time I was here!” She jabbed her finger accusingly at Patrick and Roddy, who was now crouched protectively over his son. She seemed to be blaming him for his appearance.

As usual, it seemed to be up to Cantella to play the diplomat. She glided smoothly but swiftly between Saradeana’s soldiers and Roddy and Patrick.

“Sir,” Cantella sighed deeply, “I believe there’s been a misunderstanding.” Cantella looked between the two forces she was sandwiched between and sighed again. “A—very, very large misunderstanding.”

She gestured behind her. “That boy is my friend Roddy’s son. His name is Patrick, and I will not deny that his resemblance to Radston Serpentine is uncanny. However, he is an innocent, and an un-Knowing at that. He is also terrified by all things supernatural, so, yes, ma’am,” and she nodded to Susan, “you did indeed scare the living daylights out of him.”

“Cantella,” Susan choked, “I—I’m sorry—I—I—“

“At ease,” Cantella grinned tiredly. “I managed to put a slowing spell on it as it passed. It should have dropped harmlessly somewhere nearby. Either that, or it may have embedded itself in the hill somewhere behind me.”

Susan gulped and nodded, her arms slung rather unprofessionally around her gun.

The leader of the soldiers sidestepped Cantella and knelt in front of Roddy and Patrick. “I am extremely sorry, sir,” he said, and he knelt with his cap in his hands to prove he meant it. “I’m afraid there has been a terrible lack of communication here. The Mage’s Parliament owes you a full apology.”

“Mage’s—?!”

The leader reclaimed his height and tucked his hair back beneath his hat. “There are some things in this world that simply cannot be explained.” He toyed with his cap’s brim. “If you are interested in the whole story, I believe our good friend Cantella has gotten rather good at telling it as of late.” He smirked knowingly at her.

Both Roddy and Patrick cocked their heads toward Cantella. “Ellie…?” Roddy gulped disbelievingly.

Patrick, however, was looking glumly at the small blue sphere now resting beneath his palm.

“Um, Cantella…”

“Yes?” she said to him gently.

“I think I accidentally moved your ball. Do I have to take a penalty stroke?”

The End</b>