Irina Syromyatnikova - My Path to Magic

I tried to fight off nausea and think sensibly: the car, the boat, and the guards implied that the superiors of the expedition were not just after the money, they knew what kind of place the island was. I started wondering:

“What are we going to look for?”

Uncle just laughed in response: “I did not ask. Do not worry, nephew, we’ll be cautious.”

The students roared, welcoming the director of the expedition, a short, lean, and remarkably ugly woman. Hers was one of those cases when even a white magician would not be able to help: having proper facial features and smooth, ivory skin, she sported heavy eyelids of a habitual drunkard and a sardonic smile that would have scared a crocodile. The director was followed by a man a head taller than she, deliberately overdressed and bearing the obvious signs of a dark magician.

No surprise there; bringing a specialist in the supernatural to the island was a very wise decision, but we all knew how costly the services of a dark magician with military bearing were.

“Gentlemen,” the lady-crocodile began her greeting speech, referring mainly to the two of us, “I am your queen and god for the next four weeks. Please address me ‘Mrs. Clements’ and nothing short of it. Just so we are clear, I will not tolerate any drunken debauchery during our expedition,” she pierced me with a glare, though the flask was in the hands of the students, “and I am warning you: all that you will see or find on the island is the exclusive property of the expedition. Got it? Those who do not agree better stay on the mainland.”

“Everything is clear, Mrs. Clements!” Uncle sang in a tone that was typically used for courting an obstinate mare.

The lady-crocodile jerked her head in a rather horse-like manner, but the man who stood behind her coughed politely, and a scandal did not unfold.

“Next to me is Mr. Smith,” she said through her teeth, “he is our safety expert. Given the specificity of our place of work, I am asking you to report to him any oddities or unusual events immediately.”

All of us nodded, but I became a little disappointed. What, I wouldn’t be able to tell anyone about the island?! The trip was turning out to be somewhat schizophrenic from the outset.

A lifeboat with a crackling ethanol engine cast off from the ship. Local fishermen that gathered on the shore watched the boat with interest: would it stall or wouldn’t? If the alcohol was local, then it surely would; I tested it on my moped many times. Either the climate here was very humid, or vendors were particularly shameless, but I failed to achieve any stable engine operation. It would be dubious fun to get stuck in the middle of nowhere.

But on a bright sunny day the boat looked good, and it flew—not sailed—across the waves.

“Roll call!” Mrs. Clements captured my attention again. “Pierre Acleran…”

Students readily raised their hands, Mr. Smith and the two guards were accounted for too, and someone called Mermer was marked as being on a ship. Uncle and I were the last on the list.

“Gordon Ferro…”

“Present!”

“…and Thomas Tangor.”

“Here,” I raised my hand for clarity. Mr. Smith gave me an interested look.

“All aboard!”

Mrs. Clements was hasty, of course, when she commanded everyone to board: only four people and a couple of boxes at a time could fit onto the boat. Mrs. Clements and the students went first, but I did not envy them: the three of them would have to receive and arrange all of the expedition’s belongings. On the shore, Uncle was able to maneuver so that he involved everyone in the loading, including the guards and the driver of the truck. Naturally, we finished the job faster. The last boat (already free of its boxes) took to the ship those who lingered over on the shore. Mr. Smith sat down across from me and stared at me during the ride.

“Why have you joined the expedition, Mr. Tangor?” he asked finally.

“Money, sir!” I smiled broadly. A universal reason.

“What about you, Mr. Ferro?”

“Someone has to watch my nephew.”

“Hmm.”

“Why are you going there, Mr. Smith?” I could not restrain my curiosity.

He jerked his eyebrow in surprise. I wondered what his expectation was when he started a conversation with a dark mage.

“My job is to ensure the safety of this stupid expedition!” he admitted with surprising sincerity.

“I feel sorry for you,” Uncle intoned.

But Mr. Smith stubbornly shook his head: “Everything is under control. There won’t be any problems.”

As they say, Let us pray, Brothers and Sisters .

But perhaps that was a perfect example of a rational approach based on knowledge rather than on local superstitions. I have been pestered with safety rules since I was five; I knew about the supernatural manifestations so much that I could lecture at Redstone University. Yet in my memory, nothing occurred in our valley like what was depicted in old men’s stories. Well, a couple of imbeciles had been injured, of course… Cattle raged at night as well… But against Krauhard’s sinister reputation it was hardly noteworthy. Perhaps, rumors exaggerated the King’s Island’s danger too. It happened now and then!

It took us almost twenty-four hours to reach the place. Of course, we could have sailed faster, but nobody wanted to land on the island in the dark. I slept soundly under the quiet whistle of a steam turbine, the nausea was gone, and my mood could not be better. Time to look around—assess where exactly I ended up.

The ship slowly and cautiously made its way through the fog that was much thinner over the water and smelled subtly of the sea. There were no birds; the only sources of sound were the boat and the surf slowly roaring somewhere nearby. We had passed the beacon line at night, and now there were jagged cliffs and boulders, stretching to the right of the ship, protruding from the sea as if guarding some ancient fortresses. I idly watched seaweed floundering about in the foam between the rock teeth. The members of the team who were not struck down by seasickness woke up and got out on the deck. It was at that exact moment that the island chose to surprise us.

The shore cliffs snuggled close to the ground, revealing a large cleft: water and wind corroded stone, and the rock broke like a bad tooth. A metal castle appeared in the inner cavity. It was perfectly exposed before our eyes. My jaw dropped. Almost untouched by rust, massive metallic plates enclosed the structure from the outside; where the rocks had overcome the metal, the eye caught layers of inner levels in a jumble of steel construction. Years had stripped away the extra stuff, and whatever resisted belonged to the centuries, millennia, eternity. The castle seemed to be tired of solitude, and it leaned out of the rocks to look at us with its dark maw. Below the castle, a ledge sprinkled with crushed stone was sticking out above the shore line, and powerful steel trusses could be seen under the ledge. From the ship, it seemed like the cliffs were but a false front, lined with stone and hollow inside.

“A gorgeous place!” the words escaped my mouth unbidden. Indeed, if the expedition let at least one picture leak to the world at large, no enchanted beacons would hold people back.

The armored plates over a foot thick suggested such reliability and power that you just wanted to sink your teeth into them. Was there anything left inside?

“Get out of here! The place is ugly as hell,” one of the students gasped.

I raised my eyebrow unwittingly. I thought he was pale because of seasickness. Was he scared by the island?

“Ah,” it dawned on me, “you are the white, aren’t you? I got it.”

“What did you get?” his companion protested.