Autumn Rose. Abigail Gibbs

It was a Saturday morning ritual, and had been ever since Valerie Danvers had discovered the café was the perfect place to torment me.

      With my eyes closed I could almost see the short outline of a woman – my grandmother – growing older but still in her prime, with her head bowed towards a small child, half her height, and talking. Always talking.

       Sagean children are like ivy; you grow fast and live very long. Human children are like butterflies. They are ugly in their chrysalis, until the day they finally emerge, and become adults. The ugly chrysalis is jealous of the ivy, you see?

      I squeezed my eyelids tighter together. Breathe …

      Hammering on the other side of the door wrenched me back. The small room was still dark and I grabbed a cord, flooding the room with sterile white light.

      ‘Autumn, I know it’s you, get out of there now!’

      ‘Nathan,’ I groaned. He knew Valerie was a pain, why was he bothering me?

      ‘Something’s happening outside!’

      My skin began to heat and tingle as blood and magic raced to my hands. Walls ceased to be barriers … because from far away, I could hear a heartbeat, fast approaching and speeding up … and it wasn’t human.

      I unlocked the door and peeked out. A pale Nathan stood on the other side whilst the rest of the café was empty; stepping out I could see Valerie and her friends straining over the railings surrounding the harbour, watching a commotion across the water.

      I ran outside and the warmth on my skin was whipped away with the cold sea breeze; but my heart went cold too. A jetty opposite us was blanketed in a miniature patch of fog, like a fire had been lit and the smoke had engulfed the wall. Yet it lit up with flashes of light, and it screamed; it screamed for mercy … or the people trapped inside did.

      My body froze. The rational part of my brain knew I should help but my feet wouldn’t move.

      Suddenly, Nathan bolted away from my side and sprinted along the wall towards the screams. His action shut the fear off and I flung myself into the air and flew across the harbour, crumpling to the ground near the fog.

      I had no idea what the fog was – I was too afraid to send any magic towards it in case it hit anybody trapped inside … so instead I tentatively reached out with a finger, ball of fire ready just behind in the other hand.

      It seemed like fine drizzle from a couple of inches away yet as the tip of my finger touched it, no moisture collected …

      Like a sheet being torn apart, I felt the borders between dimensions rip open. You had to have magic to cross them – strong magic – and weak dark-beings and humans couldn’t open them.

      The dread in my heart only increased as I realized what kind of enemy I was facing: not one I could fight.

      The pull of the borders tried to yank me forward and I stumbled, trying to hold myself back until the white cloud abruptly disappeared into a closing black hole; it sealed before I could possibly see who had created it.

      The scene that was revealed was horrifying. There were maybe ten humans, most crouched or lying on the ground, some bleeding, all blinking and looking around bewildered at the sunlight. In the middle there was a man lying flat on his back, a pool of blood gathering around his head but not a scratch anywhere else on him.

      A woman was leaning over him and shaking his shoulders. Another had her fingers pressed to his wrists. She reached out and placed a hand on the arm of the other woman, shaking her head.

      ‘Autumn, do something!’ Nathan demanded having caught up with me.

      The humans looked up for the first time and noticed me.

      ‘No, Nathan, he’s gone, I can’t—’

      Nathan shoved me forwards, glaring. ‘You’re a Sage, of course you can. Sage can do anything.’

      I looked down at the man on the ground, shaking my head as tears brimmed. Why is he doing this? Nathan knows I can’t bring back the dead!

      ‘It’s your duty,’ Nathan continued.

      The woman managed to stop sobbing long enough to speak. ‘They had grey scars … two of them. Hit him with black light.’

       Grey scars – Extermino! And black light … That was a death curse!

      ‘I’m sorry, I really can’t—’

      I backed away. There was nothing I could do even if I hadn’t been paralyzed by fear of the Extermino … in Brixham. Attacking humans. It didn’t make sense, and something told me that their target had been a Sage … and I was the only Sage for miles.

      The woman screamed and kept shaking the man. I couldn’t watch any longer, and leaving a gaping Nathan, I took to the air again and fled the horror.

       CHAPTER TWO

       Autumn

       Coursework: Writing to Inform ‘My Life and Purpose’

       My name is Autumn Rose Al-Summers. I am almost sixteen years-old, and a Sage. As a guardian, I have one purpose in life: to defend humans, namely the students of Kable Community College, against the Extermino, a group of Sage who do not follow the rule of our monarch, and who commit such terrible acts their scars have turned to grey.

       My grandmother, whom I lived with for eight years at St. Sapphire’s School in London, is dead. Therefore, as a minor by human law, I am compelled to live with my parents in a sleepy seaside town on the south coast of Devon, possibly the most Sage-deprived place on Earth.

       My people, the Sage, are feared, ridiculed and held in awe by the humans of this dimension due to their self-administered wish to be ignorant of our culture. This is demonstrated quite perfectly by my experience of being a guardian: I started at Kable a year ago, and ever since have faced merciless bullying, with few friends to my name.

       Thankfully, I am about to embark upon my last year of compulsory education as far as humans are concerned, and all I have to do is endure ten more months of torture before I am free of the system and the required two years as a guardian. Yet despite my hate of the place, you insist on my continuing to A Level at Kable. But I assure you; the Damned will set down their knives before that occurs.

       Moving on. I have blonde hair. Auburn streaks. Natural, I might add. Liquid amber eyes. My legs are too short. My skin burns far too easily. (There, I will point out, are the simple sentences you complain my writing lacks).

       And the worst thing? (I have inserted a rhetorical question. Am I ticking the mark scheme boxes now?) The thing that means as a Sage, I can be singled out and targeted? The thing that means I am instantly identifiable as not belonging to the human race?

       My scars.

       All Sage bear them on their right side, and each Sage’s scars are different, like a fingerprint, serving as a reminder of what we are, what we possess and what we wield.

       There. That is my life.

       P.S. I refuse to type my work, so you, sir, and the examiner if my work is called for moderation, will have to, as you put it, ‘decipher’ the elegant, curling script I was tutored in from age six. Furthermore, I found this whole exercise to be offensive to my intelligence. In its entirety, the coursework could have been written in half a lesson; setting it as summer homework was unnecessary.

      I scanned through the sheet again, feeling my lips flatten. Drivel. It was drivel –