The Magician's Dream (Oona Crate Mystery: book 3) by Shawn Thomas Odyssey

rather than reflect it; and yet Oona could see the story that the blood told quite well. This armor was battle tested, and battle proven . . . and she—a four-foot-five-inch-tall, thirteen-year-old girl—most certainly was not. She had a strange feeling that the armor itself wanted to bite her and chew her up. It was faerie-made armor, she realized, and just to look at it made her insides feel as if they had all shriveled up.
    She swallowed dryly, remembering how nearly five hundred years ago, Samuligan the Fay had been a powerful general in the Queen of Faerie’s royal army during the Great Faerie War. Looking at him now, in his daunting attire, she could see why even Oswald the Great had feared him; and why, when the faerie had been captured, the Magicians of Old had used their magic to trap Samuligan into a life of servitude to the members of Pendulum House.
    “But surely Samuligan is not allowed to harm me,” Oona said, and she could hear the nervousness in her own voice.
    Samuligan seemed to hear it, too. He grinned his horrible grin. His eyes sparkled with a kind of otherworldly delight beneath the brim of his hat, and though she loved the faerie servant very much, and trusted him with her very life, she shivered to have that look directed at her.
    “He will not harm you,” the Wizard tried to assure her, but Samuligan’s crescent moon of a smile suggested otherwise. “He’s just excited because he only gets to do this every new generation. No, he will not hurt you—not on purpose, that is—but what he will do is attempt to stop you from achieving your goal, from reaching the front gate. And he is very good at it, I can assure you. He tested me, and Armand Flirtensnickle before me, and all the apprentices going back for hundreds of years. He has always done so, for who better than an actual battle-hardened faerie to prepare an apprentice for battle against faeries?”
    Oona briefly wondered if Samuligan might take offense at the Wizard’s eagerness to defeat faeries in battle. But if Samuligan did take offense, he never showed it, and indeed, looking at him now, he seemed quite eager to start Oona’s training to do just that.
    “But first,” said the Wizard, and he held up a finger to make his point. “First you must tap into the source of every presiding Wizard’s magic. You must link with the house. I think you will need this,”
    He pulled from his pocket a slim black wand and handed it to Oona. It was not the Wizard’s own wand, for her uncle’s wand was brown and made of ornately carved oak. This wand was smooth, and glossy, and black as night. It was a wand that Oona had held before, months ago, when she had removed it from the black box at the top of the Magician’s Tower. It was Oswald the Great’s very own wand.
    It felt cold in her hand, like cool metal, though she knew it to be made of wood. Such great things this wand had done, remarkable feats that now resided in the history books. From her history lessons with Deacon she could name half a dozen off the top of her head, not the least of which included the permanent closing of the Glass Gates. It was said that this wand was the only key to opening those gates.
    It made her nervous just to hold it. Ever since her discovery of the wand, it had resided within its protective box and been hidden safely away within the house, its location known only to the Wizard.
    “You are no doubt wondering why I have given you Oswald’s wand,” the Wizard said.
    Oona considered him for only the briefest of moments before answering: “A link with the house must require a conductor. A wand or staff. But I already have my magnifying glass, which has proven just as competent as any wand.”
    In fact, the Wizard had offered to make a wand for her—a “proper wand” had been his precise words—but Oona had declined. She preferred the smooth wood handle and glossy golden ring of her magnifying glass, which held much more meaning for her than any silly bit