Navadia

• Madeleine Schmaltz
• Short Story
• 2011

Eloise sat by her window, watching the trees rustle impatiently and the faint music of night in the valleys and mountains beyond her own little home.
She pushed aside a strand of her brown hair, as she stared at the full moon as if in a trance. She fingered the lace end of her nightgown with her freshly washed fingers.
Eloise was no ordinary child. She had a Gift and a Destiny, and tonight was the night that she would complete her destiny.
Tonight was special. The fairies and Eloise new that, and that was why she was awake past her bedtime. It was the night everything changed.
The sorcerer Navadia was coming back, now stronger than ever. And even though Eloise didn’t know that she was about to risk her life, she still felt she belonged out there. In the forest, with the stars above her, and trees around her. The dewy grass between her toes and the wind in her hair. She needed to help.
She hovered by the window, and then raced downstairs. She sat on the bottom step and listened. She could hear the faint hum of the television, and her parents and older brother talking in the Conservatory. She tiptoed down the dark hallway to the front door. She turned the brass handle, and cautiously swung the door open. It creaked and moaned, but nobody noticed it. She stepped outside and closed the door with a ‘click’.
She crept down the driveway and past her neighbours’ perfectly mowed lawns and groomed flowerbeds, and into the wild woods, where thorny bushes grew wherever they pleased, and birds and animals roamed to their hearts content.
As she stepped into the forest, she knew there was no turning back.
She crept past trees and bushes, and through the feral forest. At every stick cracking, and every leaf crunching, she felt her heart jump a beat.
Suddenly, she felt a presence behind her. She turned around, her neatly combed hair flinging out in all directions. A cloaked figure stood under a hawthorn branch. Drops of water clung to the end of a leaf, before dropping down and splashing on his hood.
Without meaning to, she whipped her hands out at him. At the same time, his hands lashed out at her. Eloise’s bolt of blue magic and Navadia’s bolt of red magic met in the middle as a purple energy ball. It spun around, before splitting and lashing out at Eloise and the Dark Sorcerer. They went flying back, and Eloise crumpled at a tree. The Sorcerer laid in the weeds motionless. With a shudder, he turned to ashes and blew away with the wind.
Eloise was motionless, too. Her fragile hands had turned white, but with a heavy breath, she looked around her. If she was to pass on, she knew that this was the place she wanted to do it. She closed her eyes and sucked in her last breath.