Cora

Cora split them into two teams. Adam, Moan, and Gen were given the job of booby-trapping all the classrooms along the ground floor, while Ridley and Cora did the main corridor. D block had a second storey, but no one suggested they should do that one as well.

It all felt terribly amateurish to Adam, like they were setting up for an elaborate game that would have rules and safeguards to protect them. But it would not be a game to the Nightmare. They wouldn’t be able to call timeout when things got dangerous. If the Nightmare started winning they wouldn’t be able to quit and walk away. Adam’s sour mood wasn’t helped by the fact that he’d been lumped in with Moan and Gen, while Ridley was the one staying with Cora. He was beginning to feel a strong dislike for Ridley, for no reason he could put his finger on. But the devil-may-care charm that had seemed so captivating at first just felt grating now, like fingernails scratching on a chalkboard. It also didn’t help that Ridley was older, taller, and objectively better looking than him. As Adam followed Moan and Gen into the first classroom to the left of the main entrance, he looked back to see Ridley and Cora talking rapidly together. Was it normal to stand that close to a friend? Adam didn’t know, but he didn’t like the sight of it.

“Allllrightyyy,” said Moan, rubbing his beefy hands together. “How we gonna do this?” He turned to face Adam, then Gen, who both stared back at him blankly.

“Uhh, aren’t you like, in charge, or…” Adam trailed off.

“Yeah, yeah, of course I am,” said Moan, hoisting his shorts up as if they’d been making a daring escape down his hefty backside. “I just meant have you lot got any ideas, that’s all.”

“Bees,” whispered Gen, her voice low and full of an eerie longing, like she’d slipped into some sort of trance.

“No bees!” Moan’s eyes flashed with panic. “You know you’re not allowed to do that anymore.” Gen just looked at him, her head tilted forward, eyes looking up, and Adam took an instinctive step away from her.

“Uhh, what do you mean she’s not allowed?”

Moan didn’t seem to want to take his eyes off Gen, but flashed Adam a worried sideways look. “Well, Gen here went through a bit of a - I guess you could call it a phase. She saw this video online about how all the bees were dying, you know, and well, she started making more of them. A lot more. Only I guess she didn’t want these ones to die so easily so they were more like supersized wasps, only interested in doing one thing - stabbing everything in sight with their inch-long stingers - caused all sorts of problems, Dorian Aetos himself had to step in to fix all the damage.”

“We need bees, they keep the plants alive,” said Gen, as if this settled the matter.

“Yeah, yeah we do, but real ones Gen, we’ve talked about this,” said Moan with forced patience. “Anyway, bees wouldn’t be a very good trap, they’d come after us as well.” He looked around the small room. There were about a dozen desks, an old whiteboard on wheels, and a low shelf with a few textbooks on it that looked like they’d been through hell. “Not much to work with in here, s’pose we could go for a classic haunting, what do you guys think?”

“A haunting?” Adam didn’t like the sound of that.

“Yeah it’s easy, even Flames like me can do it. You just imagine all the objects in the room can move around and attack people, like in those old ghost movies. Makers have been playing that prank on people for a hell of a long time, even done it once or twice myself.” He grinned sheepishly at Adam, who was looking mortified, imagining what he would have thought if the things in his house suddenly started attacking him. Probably that he had lost his mind. And Moan had called it a prank? “If we all do it together we can make it a real strong one, that Nightmare won’t know what hit it, come on you two.” Gen moved up to Moan’s side, but Adam stayed where he was. “Come on Wildfire, we need help.”

“But, I don’t know how.”

Silence descended. Moan and Gen looked at Adam like they didn’t know whether they were supposed to laugh at this. Adam felt like a worm squirming on a hook, wishing he could be anywhere else but here.

“What do you mean, you don’t know how?” asked Gen, her eyes suspicious slits, partially hidden behind the curls of her fringe.

“You did make the Nightmare, right?” Moan looked like a kid who’d just asked if Santa was real, terrified to hear that one, irreversible word - no.

“It was an accident. I didn’t mean to.” Adam felt on the verge of tears. He felt like he was admitting to some horrible sin, something that would immediately and permanently exclude him from being their friend. Something that would prove beyond any doubt that he was not like them, and would never be like them. So he was shocked when Moan’s whole body visibly relaxed, his face, shoulders, hips, and knees all seeming to droop downwards as the tension he was holding disappeared. He looked relieved.

“Don’t scare me like that! If it wasn’t you or Cora then we’d have absolutely zilch chances of stopping that thing. We’d be toast. Finito. Sayonara.” Moan placed his hands on his hips and let out an anxious laugh. “We were kinda counting on having a Wildfire around, you know what I mean.”

“But I told you, it was just an accident! I don’t know how to make things on purpose. I don’t know how to do anything!” Adam was more unsettled by Moan’s relief than he ever would have been by his anger. Being yelled at was something Adam understood, but this - what even was this?

“It’s always by accident,” declared Moan happily, “or I guess you could argue it never is. We’re makers, not magicians! There are no spells to learn, no rules to follow. Either you can believe in your own imagination, or you can’t.” He grinned at Adam like they were sharing an inside joke. “Guess it was a bit easier to believe in monsters while getting beat up by that douchebag Marcus Kirk, eh?” Adam didn’t grin back.

“Just pretend you’re in a daydream, that’s what I do,” said Gen. “It’s easier to believe that way.”

A daydream. That was something Adam knew how to do. No, scratch that, it was something he was great at doing. The only true talent he had. But could it really be that simple? Just pretend this was all a daydream, and it would become real?

Slowly, Adam made his way over to stand beside Moan and Gen.

“That’s the spirit! Now just imagine that all these desks are haunted, and they’ll come charging at anything that walks through those doors, okay?” Adam nodded to Moan that he understood, and the three of them faced the rows of desks, battered and heavily graffitied from lord knows how many years of abuse from students. “Alright, on three. One. Two. THREE.”

Adam imagined. He saw the desks, not as the silent fixtures that they were, but as the animated creatures they could become. Capable of movement, of defiance, of anger. Haunted and hungry. Dangerous and very much aware. Adam imagined. And Adam believed. Gen was right, it was just like daydreaming.

A thick mist covered the desks for a few brief moments, then it disappeared, and the desks began to float up into the air. Adam watched them with fascination, and swelling pride. He’d really done this. He’d changed reality. He’d imagined the world a different way and the world had responded. What else could he change, if he set his imagination loose on it? What would he be able to set right? Suddenly the possibilities threatened to overwhelm him. His mind raced ahead, far past this confrontation with the Nightmare, which seemed so insignificant now, and into his future, a place he did not like to think about because he struggled to imagine how anything could possibly get better. But not anymore. He saw his dilapidated house, restored, no - rebuilt - into something that resembled Cora’s. He saw his father, changed from the inside out, no longer in pain, but living every moment like the man he remembered from those happy nights at his bistro. Smiling, caring, loving. A father and a husband. And Mum! I could make mum come home…

“Uhh, guys?” said Gen, her voice a little squeaky.

Adam had been so absorbed by his thoughts that he hadn’t noticed the way the desks were all turning towards them, crowding in closer, beginning to look less like separate things, and more like a cohesive group, working together. Like a pack of wolves.

“Uhh, no one imagined them attacking us, right?” said Moan, edging backwards towards the door.

Adam came crashing back into the moment, disoriented, like he’d been dumped and tumbled by a huge wave. “Wait, I thought we were supposed to imagine them attacking anything?”

Moan’s face dropped into a horrified gawk that reminded Adam eerily of the Nightmare, and Gen let out a high-pitched shriek. Then the desks charged.

They wobbled as they flew through the air, crashing into each other and losing speed. If they hadn’t, Adam would’ve been crushed beneath them less than a second before he’d turned and sprinted towards the door. Gen had reached it first and fled into the corridor. Moan was close behind her, but he was too big to move quickly, and Adam ran right into the back of him, causing them both to go crashing onto the floor just outside the room. Adam turned to see the stampede of desks about to crash through the doorway after them, when a mist swept over it and the open door became a closed one. A thunderous crashing sound came from the other side of it. It felt like the whole building shook, and Adam heard the sound of wood splintering and metal snapping as the desks destroyed one another trying to get out.

“What - the hell - was that?” A sinking feeling came over Adam, and he realised who had made the door close. Cora was standing a few feet away with her arms crossed, looking down at Moan and Adam sprawled on the floor like a parent who’d just caught their kids trashing the house. Ridley was leaning on the wall behind her, looking thrilled to find them in such a mess. Adam jumped to his feet, his face flushing red with embarrassment. Moan picked himself up clumsily.

“Ask Wildfire over here - the idiot can’t seem to stop making things that want to kill him.”

Adam flinched at the aggression in Moan’s usually soft voice. “I just did what you told me to do.” He felt the beginnings of tears in the corners of his eyes and fought a furious internal battle to hold them back. He’d already embarrassed himself enough for one day.

“How hard is it to imagine something that won’t attack you and your friends huh?” He seemed to be asking the room at large, and Adam felt something stir deep inside him at the use of the word friends. “Did we really need to spell it out for you?” This he directed right at Adam.

“I’m sorry, alright. I told you - I don’t know what I’m doing.” Adam felt the tears begin to win the battle.

“I’ve never seen a haunting like that,” continued Moan, now speaking more to himself than any of them. “They were so… mean. So evil.” He looked at Adam, who felt like his heart was dropping into the pit of his stomach. It was the kind of look you’d give to a once loyal dog who’d just gone rabid and tried to bite you. A look teeming with disgust and betrayal, but also with sadness. It wasn’t until this moment, when Adam saw the loss in Moan’s eyes, that he realised the big guy had already thought of Adam as a friend. But he didn’t anymore.

“Alright, change of plans,” said Cora, like she was organising them for a group project. “Ridley, you help the Scooby-Doo gang set up hauntings in the other classrooms. Wildfire, you stick with me.”

Ridley let out a bored sigh. “Alright you two, let’s go destroy some more school property.” Cora glared at him, and he winked back at her as he led Moan and Gen off to a classroom further along the corridor. They disappeared inside, and Adam suddenly found himself alone with Cora.

She still had her arms crossed, and there was a sour look on her face like she’d just been told she’d have to babysit the neighbourhood’s worst kid. Adam didn’t know what to say. He wanted to leave, to run away from her and never see her again. Depending on what she said next, he thought he might do just that.

“Moan’s a Flame, and a weak one at that,” said Cora, not trying to be mean, but simply stating the facts. “He comes from a long line of makers, but the Tane family never rose far in our society. He’s a good guy, but his life’s been too easy. Never had much responsibility on those big shoulders. He doesn’t understand what it’s like to have dark thoughts you don’t want but can’t stop. The way they can creep into the things we imagine, without us even realising it.”

Adam stared at Cora, hardly daring to believe what he was hearing. No one had ever spoken to him like that before. Like they were trying to see things from his point of view, and actually succeeding. When he’d first met Cora in detention, he’d recognised something of himself in her. It made him dislike her, but after he’d seen her home and the family she came from, he thought he’d been wrong. That there was nothing similar about them at all. How could someone that came from so much ever be the same as someone who came from so little? It was the difference between them that made him feel drawn to her, that made him want her approval, her friendship, perhaps even her love. But the way she was talking now seemed to suggest that his first impression hadn’t been so wrong after all. Maybe they really did have something in common, deep beneath the surface.

“But you do - you understand?” asked Adam. It was a genuine question, filled with doubt.

Cora hesitated for a moment, seeming to teeter on the edge of a decision. Then the decision was made, and she spoke. “When I was little, I had this teddy bear called Scruffy. I took him with me everywhere, and when I got old enough to start kindergarten, I wanted to take him with me there too. Dad said no of course. He told me that toys were only for home, but Scruffy wasn’t a toy to me. He was a friend.” Cora hesitated again. Adam didn’t rush her. He was barely breathing, not daring to do anything that might cause Cora to stop telling her story. It felt like she was sharing something with him that she hadn’t shared with anybody else. Something that perhaps only he could understand. A thing that would bind them together in a way that Adam had never experienced before. And he marvelled at the thought that something as simple as a little story about yourself could be the spark that ignites something as infinitely complex as a friendship.

“I was only just learning how to make things, but I was already good at it,” continued Cora. “Dad hadn’t started pushing me just yet, but he was watching me closely, looking for signs that he finally had the child he’d always wanted. And when I brought Scruffy to life, he was happier than I’d ever seen him. But it was wrong. All wrong. Scruffy wasn’t my friend anymore - wasn’t really alive - just a ghost, like those desks. And he was mean too. I’d been angry when I made him - upset that I was being told to leave him behind, and I’d given all that anger to him. The best friend I’d had for as far back as I could remember started chasing me around the house while I screamed and screamed… Eventually dad turned it back the way it was, but he let it chase me for a while first. I don’t think he was trying to punish me, I just think he was curious to see what I’d made. How close I’d gotten to something real.” Cora trailed off, and was looking down at the floor between them. Adam knew she’d shared all she was willing to.

“What did you do - with Scruffy, after…”

Cora slowly looked up until their eyes met. A thin, joyless smile stretched across her face. “I tied him to a brick and threw him in the creek a few blocks up from my house. He could never be my friend again. He’d always be that thing I’d turned him into. I couldn’t stand it.”

Adam didn’t know what to say. He felt like Cora had opened up a window between them, and that this was his chance to open it up even wider. But as the seconds ticked by, he could feel the window closing. Panic gripped him, and he had the horrible sense of trying to hold onto something important while it was slipping through his fingers. The more he tried to tighten his grip on it, the faster it turned to dust. He had to say something. He had to say the right thing. But what was that? How could he let her know he understood her - that she was right to think that she understood him too…

“We better get moving,” said Cora, pulling away from him in more ways than one. “We don’t want this to take all night.”

“My dad’s a prick too,” Adam blurted out. He didn’t know why he said it, and was pretty sure it wasn’t the right thing to say, but in his panic to keep the window open he started sharing a story of his own. “One time I told dad I wanted to see the new Star Wars movie and he said he’d take me on the weekend. I was so excited about it, not because of the movie but because I’d get to spend time with him. Then the day came and we were driving to the cinema and I was so happy - the happiest I’d been since mum… since I was a lot younger. But then we went up to the ticket box together and he ordered only one ticket. I thought he’d made a mistake. I told him and he just looked at me like I was an idiot and said there’s no way he was going to sit through garbage like that and he’d pick me up when it was over… I barely remember the movie - couldn’t pay attention - but I think it was kinda garbage…”

Cora was looking at him with one eyebrow slightly raised. “So your dad leaves you alone? Sounds pretty great actually, want to trade?”

“Dad’s all I got, and he doesn’t want anything to do with me.” Adam fought to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “At least your dad loves you.”

Cora threw her head back and let out a cackling burst of laughter. “The only thing Dorian loves is Dorian. He’s had dozens of kids you know. And every time he’s convinced they’ll become the next Wildfire - to secure the Aetos legacy - but we all know he means his legacy. And every single time they end up disappointing him.” A shadow fell across Cora’s face. “I still want to be the first one that doesn’t. It’s pathetic, I know, but I can’t help it.”

Adam shook his head. “It’s not pathetic.” Despite everything his father had done, he still wanted his approval. He’d never been able to lose the feeling that it was all his fault. His mum leaving him, his dad neglecting him, all his fault… If he could’ve just been a better son…

“If I’m the one that kills the Nightmare, dad will have to admit I’m the strongest of all my siblings. Maybe not a Wildfire, but closer than they are. Closer than he is.”

Adam felt something stir within him, something he hadn’t felt since he’d last seen his mother. It was fear, but not for himself. “What if you can’t Cora? What if it does to you what it did to Marcus?”

Cora looked afraid, but only for a moment. Then she wiped it from her face, and seemingly from her mind, as easily as Adam might have done with a casual thought about the weather. “It won’t. Now come on, we’ve got work to do.”

Cora led Adam up to the frosted front doors of D block. They stopped a few feet shy of them, and Adam looked through the glass at the distorted view on the other side. The school grounds were a mosaic of grey concrete and patches of green grass and shrubs. But the sun was getting low, and there were long shadows stretching over everything. Through the glass, it was impossible to tell if someone, or something was out there amongst the shadows, watching them.

Cora turned to face Adam. “Usually it’s our families that teach us how to be makers. Just because you’re a Wildfire doesn’t mean you don’t need training. In fact I think it means you need it more than anyone. Your biggest problem is that you’re overthinking - letting too much in. Your imagination is powerful, but it’s unfocused. You’re used to letting it run wild, creating whole worlds inside your head, am I right? Well, making isn’t like that. You need to clear your mind of everything except what you’re trying to change.” Cora reached a hand out towards the doors, and small cracks of white light began to criss-cross around it, until they covered the entire surface. Then they spread to the walls, floor, and ceiling. They stopped just short of the point Cora and Adam were standing, and from within the cracks came the glinting points of icicles, thousands of them, thin, long, and impossibly sharp. Within seconds the entire entranceway was covered in them, making Adam think of the jaws of a shark. Rows upon rows of flesh-tearing teeth, coming from every angle. The entrance was impassable now. Anyone that tried to get inside would be cut to shreds. Or anyone that tried to get out.

“I don’t know how to clear my mind,” said Adam, and as if to prove him right, a flood of self-defeating thoughts started crashing around his head.

“Anyone can clear their mind. All they need is the right reason to do it. What do you care about Adam, more than anything in the world?”

Adam looked at Cora. How could he possibly answer a question like that? He supposed it had once been his mother, but that was a long time ago. Now Adam cared about nothing. About no one. But was that still true? So much had changed in a single day. Was it really possible that the emptiness Adam had been living with for two whole years had finally changed too?

Cora’s eyes didn’t waver. They stayed locked on Adam’s, almost as if they could see the inner turmoil unfolding behind them. Adam thought he’d never seen eyes so willing to see things for what they really are. His eyes were always trying to make him see only what he wanted to see, but Cora’s were only interested in the truth. He knew in that moment that he really did care about something again. He cared deeply.

“Come on, there’s lots of corridor left, time for a crash course on how to be a maker.” Cora smiled at him, and he smiled back. For the first time in his life, he thought that something had actually turned out better than the way he’d imagined it.

Beyond the icicle covered doors and across the empty courtyard was C block, and up on the second floor, Miss O’Connor had just finished grading her eleventh grade homework assignments. They’d done poorly, and she had given them no leniency. She couldn’t stand it when teachers let students get away with handing in work that was beneath their skill level. It was the ultimate sin for an educator, whose job was nothing short of helping kids reach their fullest potential. Mr Shockley was one of the worst offenders in the school, but there were others. Far too many. Miss O’Connor would fire the lot of them if she could, and as soon as she became Principal (the current one, Mrs Rochdale, was on the verge of retirement) that’s exactly what she planned on doing.

She shut down her laptop and packed it neatly away into her satchel bag. It was made from black leather and was beautifully crafted. She wore it over one shoulder like a handbag. She loved the simple elegance of it, because it reminded her of herself. There was no other bag like it in the world, she knew that with certainty, because she’d been the one who’d made it. Not with her hands, but with her mind. She’d made most of the things she owned; the stylish clothes, the rare jewellery, even her gorgeous townhouse, with its art deco furnishings that made all the other teachers jealous. She was not a powerful maker, not by a long shot. She was what the others called an Ember, though she hated that title and refused to use it herself. She was, however, exceptionally hard working, and patient. She made things slowly, piece by piece, more like a production line in an old factory. She paid meticulous attention to the details, and the end result was that she could make things just as beautiful as those elitist Infernos, even if it did take her ten times as long to do it.

Makers were almost always people with wealth, fame, or power (sometimes all three). The power to change reality was the ultimate advantage in life. But there were tiers to their society. The titles were more than just a yardstick for their abilities. They were a status symbol, used to create a glass ceiling between tiers that kept the balance of power firmly in the hands of the Infernos. An Ember like Miss O’Connor would never be invited into the inner circle of Dorian Aetos. Makers like her did not have much more of an advantage than all those poor mirrors. She owned more possessions than the average person, but the real advantage in life isn’t what you have, it’s who you know. Embers were simply not invited to sit at the right tables. She would always be one step removed from the life she truly wanted. The life she knew she deserved.

Miss O’Connor was just about to leave the room when something outside the window caught her eye. Across the courtyard, she had a clear view of the horrendous D block (another thing to remove once she was Principal). Just beyond the frosted front doors, she saw a blur of movement. Two blurs actually, now that she was paying close attention. Then something happened that caused her eyes to furrow into suspicious slits.

One moment, the frosted doors of D block looked as they always did, and the next the frost seemed to magnify, like the glass had suddenly grown three times thicker. The blurs behind them were impossible to distinguish anymore, but Miss O’Connor had seen all she needed to.

There were makers in D block.

She stood at the window for a few moments, putting it all together in her head, one piece at a time, patient and meticulous as always. There were five makers currently attending Wakehurst High. She knew all of their families by reputation, and was even a casual acquaintance of the Tanes. The Aetos girl was the most significant. Her father was the highest ranking Inferno in the entire state. The others were far less important. At least, they were, until the incident yesterday evening. Miss O’Connor had known the Ledger boy was a maker for months now. She’d seen the cracks that sometimes popped into the air around him whenever she made him too nervous, which was fairly often. She hadn’t thought much of it. He was a terrible student, from a family that couldn’t have been deeper in the Consensus if they tried. She hadn’t even considered him an Ember. Just an accidental spark, that would probably lose what little imagination he had as the weight of adulthood crushed him into the Consensus with all the rest. It happened more often than people realised. But then yesterday happened. She had not seen it, but word had spread between the makers of Wakehurst, even down to the Embers. Something impossible had been made. A Wildfire had returned.

The word was that Dorian Aetos would be handling the situation personally, and that of course has led everyone to assume the young daughter, Cora, was the Wildfire. But Miss O’Connor was one of the few teachers who paid attention to every little thing going on in her school. She’d heard the rumours that had fluttered around the halls all day. The outrageous and the logical. It had not been Cora’s name that came up over and over again.

The name on the tip of everyone’s tongue had been Adam Ledger.