Way of The Wand
Chapter 39

Jira’s students were greeted to two surprises in their next class. The first was the return of their beloved classmates, Tomi and Timi, a surprise to which the class reacted with celebration, converging around the two and swallowing them in a group hug.

The second, however, was less pleasant. After she announced the class for the day wouldn’t hold in her house, Jira had them all get on their broomsticks and fly after her.

Lila was the first to recognize where Jira was taking them.

As the Miran Forest loomed in the distance, its strikingly tall trees and foreboding nature called out to Lila, reminding her what happened the last time she flew through the forest. She had a flash of her broom getting caught in the vines, a flash of her body hitting the ground and the subsequent seduction of despair she had to overcome to get on that broom again.

“Jira,” Lila landed right behind her teacher at the mouth of the Miran Forest; the others were still several feet away and it would take them another minute or so to reach.

“Why are we here?”

“Best to save it till the others arrive.”

The Afolabi siblings showed up next, just a few seconds ahead of the remaining pupils.

Jira counted her pupils and made sure they were complete. Unsurprisingly, their whispers grew into a murmur. They were asking one another why Jira had brought them here. Of all the places to hold a class, this was the most unusual.

“We’ve come here to train Tomi,” Jira said, quelling the muttering. “Tomi, I thought for you to become strong enough to beat my sister, you had to train like a wizard, until you practically became one yourself; I was wrong. You don’t fight fire with fire if you’re trying to quench it.”

Tomi squeezed her face, not knowing how to take the news. After all the effort she’d put into her spars with the wizarding students from Thatchel, declaring all those hours of practice pointless wasn’t encouraging.

“If I don’t have to become a wizard to beat one, then what do I have to become.”

Jira smiled. “What you already are Tomi, a witch.” Jira took one of Tomi’s braids and traced it down. “I see now that my initial approach to your training was wrong. You have everything you need to beat Daila. You always have.”

Lila gestured to the thick trees surrounding them. “The question remains,” the young lady said, “what are we doing here?”

“I’ll get to that in a minute,” Jira responded, frowning at the interruption. “But first, I want you all to know, witches have always been powerful, always been great. Remember Edoh’s first queen, Queen Idiah?”

The pupils nodded.

“Well she was a witch, and under her reign Edoh knew nothing but peace and prosperity.”

“I didn’t know Queen Idiah was a witch,” Juwon admitted.

“She was,” Jira confirmed, “and so was the next queen after her, Queen Moremi.”

Jira paused before adding,” And they’re not the only great witches underappreciated in Edoh history. We have lots of them, forgotten and uncelebrated. There’s Luwa the old. A great witch from ancient times who calmed storms and stopped floods. Under his watch no natural disasters hit the kingdom. Akin the Mighty, a warrior witch during Edoh’s times of war who led an army so powerful it never once lost a battle. Jaja—”

“The healer,” Tomi interjected, “I read about him in a book once. People came from all over the world to be cured by his potions.”

Jira nodded proudly.

Lila was still lost. “Why are you telling us all this?”

The answer came in a soft and uplifting tone. “This Kingdom’s history is replete with examples of great witches, ignored and disregarded, but still there. When Tomi wins in the final task, all that will change. Witches will no longer be written off as side notes in Edoh history.”

A moment of silence passed as the pupils soaked in their teacher’s encouraging words.

“We don’t have to mimic the wizards in anything to be powerful. We don’t have to mimic their styles of fighting, copy their modes of dressing or their approach to training. We’re unique. We’re witches, and our ways are good enough.”

Jira had successfully fired up her pupils, all that was left to do was break it to them what they were going to do in this forest.

“Tomi,” she called, and Tomi responded by looking straight to her. “This is how we’re going to train you today—”

“We?” Tomi asked, wondering who the “we” signified.

“Yes,” Jira affirmed, “everyone here will participate in your training today. No passive spectators today.” She gestured to the foreboding forest. “Your task is simple. I want you to start here and make it out to the south exit of the forest.”

Tomi’s arms slid down to her waist. “Wait, just that? You want me to go through the forest?”

A sly smile hijacked the corners of Jira’s mouth. “Easy right? Just make it to the other side of the forest.”

Jira turned away from Tomi to the other students. “And your task today, is to make sure she doesn’t.”

Gasps and murmuring sputtered to life. The confident smirk on Tomi’s face withered.

“Oh,” one of the pupils exclaimed in excitement, “it’s like the game we played as kids, ‘guard and thief’.”

Jira chuckled. “It’s exactly like that. So, we know the rules. Tomi gets a minute head start, then we chase after her.”

“This isn’t fair,” Tomi complained, “I’m up against fourteen people.”

“Fifteen,” Jira corrected, “you’re forgetting one person–me.”

“How am I supposed to—”

“You have one minute,” Jira interrupted, not letting her finish.

“But—”

“Fifty-nine seconds.”

Tomi got herself together and stopped complaining. She slipped out her wand, faced the mass of towering trees and bolted into a run.

As Tomi crossed into the forest and descended into its ominous darkness, the first thing she thought to do was hide, but a band of fifteen people was bound to sniff her out in no time. She reevaluated and came up with a different idea– set traps for her classmates to hold them off as she made her way across the forest.

Tomi came pulling to a halt between two masquerade trees standing sentinel at either side of her. She pointed at the empty space between them and muttered, “Rope.”

A line of rope appeared, connecting one tree to the other a few inches above the forest carpet.

“Camouflage,” Tomi said next. The rope blinked, changed color and merged with the green of its surrounding environment, becoming undetectable.

Tomi smiled pleasantly to herself. Her classmates would no doubt run after her footprints and would trip over the invisible rope when they reached it.

She realized she could do more than just make them trip and pointed to the ground muttering, “Net.” An entrapping net materialized underneath the sheath of dead and rotting leaves that made up the forest carpet.

Should her trap work as intended, her classmates would trip over the line, fall face first into the ground and get ensnared by the net.

That ought to confuse them for a while and extend her head-start by a few more minutes.

She picked up the pace and braved further into the depths of the forest.

Tomi looked back in time to see her laid trap catch two of classmates. Just two, disappointing. She’d been hoping it would get more.

That wasn’t the only downside for her even. Her classmates became more conscious of their environment after that, believing if there was one trap, there was bound to be more.

Tomi’s classmates followed her footprints up until the point where the path split into three.

Here Tomi had made sure to wipe her prints to confuse her classmates so that they would have no choice but to split up.

It worked, and using the surrounding trees as cover, Tomi followed the group that had chosen to press ahead on the straight path.

Kiki, Juwon, Ike and Simi continued to jog ahead oblivious to her presence.

Tomi did not attack immediately, instead opting to let her prey travel further into the heart of the forest, so that when she finally pounced on them, their cries of help would be heard by none of their colleagues.

When they’d gone along enough, Tomi surged out from behind a mask of trees and fired a blast spell at the group, taking out two, before dashing out of sight behind the trees again.

“That was her!” Ike said, turning around to see Juwon’s and Simi’s unconscious bodies. He scoured the nearby trees with his eyes, his heart racing at the anticipation of action.

“She’s using the trees for cover,” Kiki, the other girl still standing, pointed out.

Tomi watched them scamper around from her hiding spot. She aimed at a branch of a tree over their heads and whispered, “Snap.”

The tree branch fell and missed them both by less than a foot.

They turned to examine the log of wood and raised their heads to check out where it had come from.

Tomi burst out then yelling “Wind.”

The gale of wind that suddenly appeared swept up Kiki and Ike and threw them against a tree stem.

“Sorry,” Tomi apologized as she ran past their squirming bodies, disappearing into another part of the forest before they could return to their feet.

A sudden chill hit the forest while Tomi was running, and the next thing she knew, she was skidding along an iced forest floor.

She tumbled, crashing into the ground now covered by a layer of glazed snow. When she managed to get back on her feet, she came face to face with Iman whose dark lips were curled in a smirk.

“Do you like my ice floor?” Iman asked, flaying out her arms as she prepared to strike with another spell.

Tomi threw out her arm yelling, “Fire,” a desperate attempt to reclaim the heat drying out from her bones.

“Were you even trying to hit me?” Iman asked when the vortex of fire that shot out of Tomi’s wand came nowhere near her.

“Nope,” Tomi answered, “this is me trying to hit you.”

She zapped out lightning from her wand, this time aiming at her opponent.

Iman slid gracefully on the ice, dodging Tomi’s attack in style. “You’ll need to do better than that,” she taunted before yelling, “Avalanche.”

An avalanche of snow from nowhere came cascading down the forest.

Tomi muttered out the word “shield” just in time.

When the snow cleared, she was still standing but everywhere else, the ground, the tree stems even some low hanging branches were covered under a thick blanket of snow.

“Iman!” Tomi scolded.

“Sorry,” Iman apologized, “was that too much?”

“No, no,” Tomi said chuckling, “that was actually pretty impressive.”

Iman blushed, but in her moment of distraction Tomi turned the block of ice under her feet to mud and dashed past her.

“Hey you cheat!” Iman screamed as she waded through the mud to get back on her feet.

Tomi was gone before her opponent could get up.

She had but only a minute to herself before she came upon yet another classmate.

Fola snuck up behind and shouted, “Stop thief!”

Tomi stopped, raised her hands in the air and turned around slowly.

Fola beamed with joy like a real guard who’d just apprehended a criminal. “I order you to surrender in the name of the king.”

“Fola I think you’re taking this guard and thief thing a little too seriously,” Tomi said.

Fola scratched his left cheek. “Really, you think so? I’m just rolling with it—”

“Condense!” Tomi cast the spell while he was still talking.

Fola felt the density of his clothes change. His shirt and pants outfit became heavier, making him feel like he was dressed in oversized armor.

“Try catching up in that,” Tomi teased as she left his there, helpless and immobile.

Tomi ran some more after that before realizing if she kept on, she would tire out before getting to the south exit. A much smarter approach would be flying through the forest, saving time and energy.

“Broom!” Tomi voiced out, holding out her wand in front of her chest.

A broomstick materialized in the air, levitating a few inches away. She jumped on it and cruised with care, knowing at any moment, she could run into yet another classmate.

Her prediction came through when, while darting between trees and dodging outlying branches, another rider zoomed at her out of the darkness.

Tomi dipped, escaping what would have been a crashing hit, and then peaked over her shoulder to see who it was.

Lila.

Of course, it was Lila.

Tomi smiled and sped up. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

When she got no, Tomi craned her neck again to check on Lila.

The other girl had disappeared.

“Did I lose her that easily?”

“Ah! You wish!” Lila emerged from behind a line of trees, leapt off her broom, tackled Tomi off hers, and sent them both crashing to the ground.

They rolled, turned and twisted on the dirt, crushing fallen leaves, uprooting cover vegetation and snapping several of the small twigs littering the forest floor.

“Are you okay?” Lila asked, wanting to make sure her friend was okay even though she was still squirming on the floor herself.

“Yeah, are you?”

Lila made a thumbs-up gesture to answer the question. She got up and stretched out her hand to help Tomi up.

“Sorry,” Lila apologized, “but Jira said to take this very seriously.”

Tomi held up a hand as she moved a few feet away. “It’s okay, I just need to catch my breath.”

Lila spotted a mess of vines snaking around a huge tree stem. “Ensnare,” she said, pointing to the thick green vines.

They clustered around Tomi and suspended her in the air.

“Hey!” Tomi protested. She had mistaken Lila’s outstretched hand for a truce.

Tomi yanked her right hand free and sprayed the vines around her with a stream of fire. She hit the ground with a thud, dusted herself and returned her attention to Lila.

“Well that wasn’t nice at all.”

Lila shrugged. “Watch your head.”

Tomi hadn’t realized she was standing under the shade of a mango tree, with several fruits hanging of its branches.

By the time she looked up and realized it, Lila had finished casting her spell.

“Fall.”

Mangoes rained down on Tomi. She protected her head with her left hand and rushed to cast a shield to defend herself from the barrage of raining mangoes.

When the last of the mangoes fell, Tomi knee deep in a harvest of mangoes.

“What a waste. I actually like mangoes.”

She pointed to the mangoes and yelled, “Blast.”

The explosion of energy sent several of the mangoes hurtling at Lila, but she danced away from the projectiles with ease. “We need need to work on your aim,” she teased.

“You’ll forgive me for this,” Tomi said and then inclined her wand so that it pointed at Lila’s feet. “Bugs!”

Tomi felt a little bad for using Lila’s entomophobia against her, but it was the only way to get rid of Lila at this point.

The mosquitoes were the first to appear, surging out from behind the surrounding trees like a pack of wild dogs. Other flying insects followed, and then came the crawlers sliming across the forest floor.

Lila gave a howling scream, covered her head with her arms and ran off.

“You’ll forgive me!” Tomi shouted after a fleeing Lila.

As Tomi continued to the forest’s south exit, she recalled in her head the faces of which classmates she had run into and defeated to anticipate those left to face.

It was hard to focus on anything with her senses everywhere, and so she tried to remember the sequence of the row call Jira took whenever she wanted to know who was absent.

The first name on the list was “Afolabi Timilehin,” and just as the name floated into her mind, a tall masquerade tree threw itself down to the floor in front of her.

Tomi froze like she hit a wall, then turned around slowly.

“Timi.”

“Hey little sis,” Timi greeted, twirling the wooden wand in his hand, “you don’t mind me stopping you, do you?”

Tomi broke into a sprint. Unlike with her other classmates, her chances of facing Timi head on and winning were slim.

A surprise move Timi hadn’t been expecting. He began after her, screaming for her to stop and face him.

Tomi stormed faster, her legs beating down on the forest carpet like a downpour of rain.

“Fall!” She heard Timi shriek behind her, and then another masquerade tree in her path came tumbling down.

Tomi dropped to the floor and rolled under it before it hit the ground. She scurried forward on all fours, pushed herself back up and kept running as fast as her legs would carry her.

She heard Timi scream out the same spell again, and this time Tomi did a cool slide under the falling tree as it sloped to the ground, then sprang back up and kept running.

With no shortages of trees to uproot, Timi tried and tried again, Tomi evading brilliantly each time.

“Fall!” He yelled out again, and this time Tomi aimed her wand at the falling tree and yelled back, “Float.”

The falling tree reversed its direction and surged into the air until it was swallowed up by the clouds.

Tomi stole a glance behind her to check how close behind her brother was. Her heart skipped a beat— too close. She couldn’t allow this end up a one on one face off.

“Disintegrate,” Tomi said at the next tree Timi made to fall. The tree burst into a cloud of dust and Tomi tore through it, diving off the path into the thicket of trees to her right.

Timi ran through the mist of the dust and screeched to a halt on the other side.

“Clever,” he hailed, knowing she was somewhere nearby. “You used the cloud of dust to obstruct my view and hide.”

He stepped around in a circle screening the trees, expecting Tomi to jump out from behind one of them.

As predicted, Tomi leapt out from a tree behind him. She had her wand trained on him and voiced out “blast” just as he made a dash to the left.

She missed; he laughed.

“I know you too well,” he said holding his wand to her face.

Having missed her shot, Tomi assessed her situation and concluded the only play she had left was to make another break for it. But as she made to move, Timi stopped her by saying “fall” yet again.

This time, instead of one tree falling, all the trees around, to their right and left, front and back, shook with unearthly force and caved to the ground.

“There’s nowhere for you to run now,” Timi told his sister, “you and I will have to duel this out.”

Tomi looked with distraught at the ring of fallen trees around her. If her predicament was bad before, it just got worse.

Again, her brain went to work, speeding through a slew of options. She could try to use “float” to free up some space. Except that wouldn’t work because Timi was just as fast as she was at casting spells.

Timi spread his arms out. “What are you going to do sis? You and me, one on one.”

Tomi clenched her jaws. Desperation made her think fast.

“This.” She waved her wand over the leaves of the trees around, fallen and standing, and then mouthed the word “animate.”

The leaves rushed to life, separating from their stalks in their thousands, then all at once, the enormous mass of leaves surged at Timi.

His counters failed him. The wind spell he tried out at first blew back only a small portion of the leaves and the fire spell he resorted to next was just as ineffective. He was swamped by their sheer number.

When the leaves came to rest, Timi was almost completely buried in leaves. He cleared a path out for himself, but by then, Tomi was long gone.

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