A Tale of Magic... by Brandon Dorman

through the bookcases. Brystal screamed as the phenomenon spread across the table in front of her and she jumped out of her seat when she felt flowers grow out from under the chair.
    “What… what… what just happened ?” she asked in disbelief.
    Brystal knew exactly what had happened; she just didn’t want to admit it. After reading a passage from a book about magic, she had unintentionally transformed the dull and windowless room into a vibrant and colorful floral wonderland. There was no other explanation for the change, but she rejected the implications with her entire being.
    “No, no, no—this isn’t real!” Brystal told herself. “This is just a hallucination caused by sleep deprivation. In a few seconds it’ll all disappear.”
    No matter how many deep breaths she took or how hard she rubbed her eyes, the flowers did not vanish. Brystal became dizzy and her hands trembled as the inconvenient reality began to sink in.
    “I… I… I can’t be !” she thought aloud. “Of all the people in the world, this can’t be happening to me .… This can’t be who I am.… I have enough working against me as it is. I can’t be magic on top of it all!”
    Brystal was desperate to destroy all the evidence that proved otherwise. She hurried to the ground level of the library and returned with the largest wastebaskets she could find. She frantically pulled all the flowers out of the walls and floor and furniture, and didn’t pause until every petal and leaf had been tossed away and the Justices’ room was back to normal. Brystal placed The Truth About Magic on its shelf and dragged the wastebaskets out of the private library. She closed the wide metal door behind her with the intention of never returning, as if she could keep the truth locked inside.

    For several days, Brystal pretended as if she had never found the secret room on the second floor. She told herself The Truth About Magic and the other BANNED books didn’t exist, and that she had never read the spell that manifested the flowers. In fact, Brystal was in such denial about the ordeal that she went straight home every night after cleaning without reading anything at all, afraid the very sight of another book would remind her of what she wanted to forget.
    Unfortunately, the more effort she put into erasing the event from her mind, the more she thought about it. And soon it was no longer an issue of if it had happened, but of why it had happened.
    “This all has to be a big misunderstanding,” she said to herself. “If I was magical—or a fairy , as the author put it—there would have been signs! A fairy would know they were different.… A fairy would have trouble blending in.… A fairy would spend their whole life feeling like they didn’t belong. Oh, shut up, Brystal! You’ve just described yourself! ”
    In many ways, having magic in her blood made sense. Brystal had always been so different from everyone she knew—perhaps magic was the source of her uniqueness? Perhaps she had always wanted more out of life because, deep down inside, she knew there was more to her life.
    “But why did it take me so long to find out?” she asked herself. “Was I completely oblivious, or has a part of me known all along? Then again, I live in a kingdom that keeps all forms of knowledge from young women. Maybe this just proves how efficiently the Justices are oppressing their people. And if I wasn’t a menace to society before, I certainly am now.”
    And now that she knew the truth, would it be easy for others to figure it out, too? Would her classmates smell it on her as easily as her other differences? Was it possible to hide magic, or would it inevitably resurface and expose her? And if it did, would it finally give her father the right to disown her and send her away for good? The dangers were endless.

    “Is everything okay, Brystal?” Barrie asked one morning before breakfast.
    “Yes, everything is fine,” Brystal was quick to respond.