The Familiars: Secrets of the Crown. Adam Epstein

wing trembling. It was one of her illusions. They had been getting more and more lifelike with every attempt.

      Marianne summoned two more golden cages, and Dalton guided the ensnared hawks into their aerial prisons.

      Now three tremor hawks remained, each sending skyquakes through the air.

      “Aldwyn, reach into my pouch and pass me some blinding dust,” Jack instructed his familiar.

      Aldwyn grabbed Jack’s pouch in his teeth and was about to open it when a burst of green light flashed over the eastern horizon. For a blink, everything around them took on an emerald hue, as if it were reflected in an algae-covered pond. Suddenly, all three children were in freefall.

      “My wand’s not working,” cried Jack.

      “Neither is mine,” said Marianne.

      “Gustavius rescutium,” incanted Dalton, and Aldwyn could detect a hint of panic in his voice.

      It was a simple wind-gust spell. One that Aldwyn had heard him cast a hundred times. But nothing happened.

      Then, suddenly, the cages that had held the tremor hawks disappeared, allowing the dangerous birds to go free once more.

      Aldwyn watched as Sorceress Edna waved her arms frantically on the ground, but there was no ethereal helping hand to save them this time.

      As the wizards and their familiars continued to plunge downwards, gathering momentum with every second, Gilbert tumbled out of Marianne’s pocket.

      “Gilbert!” Marianne reached out to grab him just as a tremor hawk tried to snatch him out of the air with its beak. Fortunately, the bird mistimed its attack, and Gilbert landed on the hawk’s back, clutching its feathers in his webbed hands.

      “Ahhhhhhh,” he shrieked.

      Skylar seemed terrified as well, but if she was screaming, it must have been on the inside. She grabbed at Dalton’s shirt with her talons, trying in vain to slow his descent. Fortunately, her loyal was heading straight for the black ivy-covered hedge wall, which would spare him from a bone-shattering impact. Marianne looked to be headed for a safe landing too, as she was tumbling towards the reflecting pool. Jack and Aldwyn didn’t appear to be so lucky; they were on a collision course with the barren ground. Thinking fast, Aldwyn concentrated as best he could, given that he was hurtling towards his death, and focused on the nearby garden canopy.

      Move, move, move, Aldwyn repeated in his head. He wasn’t exactly an expert in this whole telekinesis thing yet. He had only recently discovered that he was a Maidenmere cat, one of the legendary black-and-white felines who had the power to move things with their minds. And while each day for the last four weeks he had continued to hone the skills born out of this revelation, he wasn’t in full control of his magical abilities yet.

      At the very last second, Aldwyn managed to make the entire canopy and the frame beneath it drag across the dirt, and he and Jack landed safely on the cloth top. The frame collapsed beneath their weight, and boy and cat rolled to the ground. A nearby splash signalled that Marianne had had her own fall softened by the reflecting pool. And Dalton was climbing out of the shrubs with nothing more than a few cuts and bruises. In the distance, Aldwyn could hear the faint sound of Gilbert screaming from the tremor hawk’s back.

      “What has happened to my magic?” wondered Sorceress Edna, who was hurrying, or rather waddling, towards them.

      There was no time to ponder the question, as the tremors were growing louder. All six hawks were in attack formation now, and they were flying lower, heading straight for the manor, with Gilbert flailing atop the one leading the way. The day’s exercise of capturing and releasing these normally reclusive creatures of the sky would have been routine – a simple and safe class lesson. But given the fact that the human wizards had suddenly been rendered powerless, the enraged birds had become deadly foes.

      As the sky-shaking predators swooped down over the reflecting pool, the columns that lined its sides began to vibrate, cracking from the base to the top. The fissures of dark energy left in the hawks’ wake finished the job, toppling large chunks of the pillars into the water. Marianne had to dive beneath the pool’s surface to avoid the crumbling debris.

      The bone-rattling birds flew over the group’s heads, and Aldwyn could see Gilbert still clinging to the neck feathers of the lead hawk.

      “Somebody get me off here!” Gilbert shrieked.

      “Without the ability to cast spells, we’re powerless to stop them,” said Edna.

      “We might be,” said Jack. “But Aldwyn’s not. His telekinesis moved the canopy.”

      “Yes,” Edna concurred. “It appears whatever curse has affected us human wizards has no hold over the familiars.” She turned to Aldwyn. “If you don’t do something quickly, they’ll destroy all of Black Ivy Manor.”

      Marianne had barely pulled herself out from the pool, and Dalton had only just dropped down from the hedge wall, when the tremor hawks came back around for another onslaught.

      “Don’t worry, we’ll handle this,” said Skylar.

      “What can we do to help?” asked Dalton.

      “Just stay back. It’s too dangerous for you,” replied the blue jay. Upon hearing Skylar’s words, Aldwyn couldn’t help but think how strange it was to see that the roles between humans and animals had been reversed yet again. Normally, it was the wizards telling their familiars to stay out of harm’s way. But now it was Dalton, Marianne, Jack and Sorceress Edna who were forced to take cover behind a tall topiary.

      In unison, the hawks let out another scream that sent a seismic blast reverberating through the air, causing the trees to bend and sway.

      “You need to get Gilbert off the back of that hawk,” said Skylar to Aldwyn. “I’ll see what I can do about our rude guests.”

      Aldwyn nodded and looked up at Gilbert, who had an expression of true terror on his face. His eyes were bulging even more than usual. Aldwyn glanced over at Jack, then back to Gilbert.

      “Gilbert, help is on the way,” Aldwyn called out. He used his telekinesis to rip the flight wand out of Jack’s hand and make it fly like an arrow towards Gilbert. “Catch it!”

      As the hawk made a sudden dip, all Gilbert could do to grab the wand was shoot out his tongue. He snatched it out of the air, and the wand magically jerked Gilbert upwards, off the tremor hawk’s back and into the sky.

      “How dugh I uthe thith thing?” screamed Gilbert, tongue-tied.

      “Don’t look at me,” Aldwyn shouted back. “I was just supposed to get you off that hawk.”

      Meanwhile, Skylar had perched herself on the edge of a garden fountain, her wings outstretched and trembling. That could only mean one thing: she was preparing to cast another illusion. And indeed, a second later, a baby lamb was limping across the grounds, stopping atop the fallen canopy. And like vampire leeches drawn irresistibly to a pool of blood, the tremor hawks came down, eyeing the feast in front of them. Once they converged, the lamb disappeared. The hawks screeched angrily, clearly confused.

      “Aldwyn!” shouted Skylar.

      He knew just what to do. Aldwyn turned to the canopy and narrowed his eyes. A moment later, the cloth fabric was ripped telekinetically from the collapsed metal frame and was quickly wrapped into a bundle, trapping the birds inside.

      Just then from above, Aldwyn heard Gilbert, whose tongue was still wrapped round the wand, shouting, “Looooo ouuuu!” Although his friend was difficult to understand, Aldwyn knew enough to get out of his way.

      Gilbert was coming in for a landing, and if he had any ambition to do it gracefully, he was failing miserably. The wand jerked him left and right, up and down. The tree frog smacked against shrubs and branches before hitting the ground, bouncing along the dirt as the wand magically dragged him to a stop.

      Gilbert coughed up a mouthful of mud and dust as his tongue