4 Chapter 4: Catch a Hear

I had to meet with Beth Monday morning. My internship was officially over, but my job was about to begin. As an actual employee, there were new responsibilities and rules I had to abide by, but much of my first day as Beth's assistant was spent like any other. I ran a few errands, and we practiced writing spells.

I even wrote a new spell I called "Cannon Ball." I hated continually finding myself knocked around like a rag doll, so Cannon Ball was meant to make me tough as nails. At least then I wouldn't hurt as much. What it did was take away all the feeling in my body. It only lasted a few moments at a time, and after it wore off I'd feel any severe injuries like broken bones. Still, it was suitable for nullifying temporary pain I might take from my frequent accidents.

Unfortunately, that was my only major event that day. My dad, on the other hand, had a meeting with the owner of the drive-through that day. If everything went well, he would be the new owner by the time I made it home. The things my dad could have done with the Drive Through were boundless. For one, he could have started by giving it a better name than "The Drive Through." Honestly, how generic could you get?

Thanks to Velmer, I finally had a new phone, so I texted my dad all day, asking for updates. His only replies were short responses like "don't know yet," "tell you later," or my favorite "can't talk now."

As an employee, I only had to work 8 hours a day with Beth, so I got to head home earlier than expected.

I knew Dad would win. Who else would they give the drive-through to? He was the most loyal hard working person in town. If anyone deserved a break, he did. That made it all the more difficult when he finally made it home.

He didn't get it.

He didn't have to say as much. I knew he didn't get it because he didn't say anything at all. Sometimes no answer was the worst, but it was the most definitive answer a person could give. The light in his eyes was dim. His shoulders were heavy. Worst of all, he wouldn't admit it. I asked if he was ok, and all he could say was, "I'm fine, just another day. " It shouldn't have been just another day.

Tuesday morning. I didn't feel like going to the theater, but I forced myself. Like usual, Dad was already gone by the time I left my bedroom. I wanted to say something to him. I wanted to do something for him. My dad didn't ask for much. He was a simple man, but that made it matter more when he finally set his sights on something.

Working with Beth that day felt long and drawn out. My mind wasn't in it.

"What are the interns doing," I asked.

Beth was reading me the daily schedule letting me know what my responsibilities would be, but I couldn't pretend to be interested. It was rude to cut her off, but in my opinion, it would have been worse to fake how I felt at the moment. She sighed with exhaustion, likely realizing I hadn't been paying attention.

"There's been a leprechaun sighting in the woods," she said.

Creatures were a part of everyday life, but there were two that people recognized as rare, Unicorns and leprechauns. I perked up a little at the insinuation of one of the two being involved.

"A leprechaun? You mean a real leprechaun?" I questioned in disbelief.

"Yes, and your former peers have been tasked with capturing it."

"But why?"

"It's a leprechaun," she said as though the answer was obvious.

We were on our way outside to Beth's car, but I held us up at the main entrance until she continued.

"Leprechauns are unregistered creatures," she said.

"You make it sound like they're terrorists," I debated jokingly.

"As magicians, a part of our duties is to deal with creatures who are malevolent or inhuman."

"I thought we wrote spells," I said.

"And at times the public expects us to use those spells to combat problems of magical origin," she continued to say.

"It's just a leprechaun," I argued.

"Leprechauns can be extremely dangerous."

"So is a baby with a shotgun. If people were hunting me, I'd be more than dangerous myself," I said.

We finally walked outside. Beth didn't seem interested in continuing the conversation, but she continued to speak as she led the way.

"There are those who would do much worse than we plan to," she said.

"Worse how, and what are you going to do with it?"

"Leprechauns have to grant wishes for anyone who catches them."

"That's just a myth," I said.

"It's very true."

She got in her car, but I stood, waiting to hear more.

"We're needed across town to see a man about ordering my next spellbook," she said, waiting for me to get in.

"Would you mind if I helped search for the leprechaun," I asked.

"Pitch," she said in an almost disappointed tone.

"It'll help me learn more, and I can do field tests on my new spell."

She gave me a displeased look, but I could see she was thinking it over.

"If you'll be joining the search, then you should know it's not an average lesson. Finding the leprechaun is a challenge between the mentors."

"Ok," I said.

"If you involve yourself, I expect you to win but also that you be safe," she said, and that's when I understood.

Beth took me out of the internship. I was supposed to be better than just another intern, so involving myself in their trials was like taking a step back. Furthermore, if I lost to anyone else, it would prove I was no better than the rest.

"Sure, how hard could it be to find a leprechaun," I joked.

"Writing spells is one thing, but using them in the field is another," she stated.

There was a good bit of information on the leprechauns whereabouts. I knew it was in The Dead Woods. Unfortunately, there was the issue of the intern's having a head start. They started their search two days earlier than me, so there was no telling what kind of progress they made. I figured it would help make the situation more manageable if I had a bit of help.No one said I had to work alone after all.

"Why am I here again," Velmer asked as we stood at the edge of the wooded area.

"To help find a leprechaun," I said as unironically as possible.

"We're hunting leprechauns!" Wes exclaimed.

I didn't expect such an adverse reaction.

"I thought I told you," I said.

"Pitch, we can't be a part of a leprechaun hunt, it's wrong," Wes debated.

"We're not gonna hurt it, I just want to ask for a wish," I said.

"Pitch!" Wes exclaimed again.

"What?" I asked.

"This person is a person, not a wish-granting thing," he told me.

"I know, but I need this," I said.

"I can't help you with something like this," he said before starting to walk away.

I expected Velmer to be the one I'd have to convince to help me, not Wes.

"If any of the interns find it fist, there's no telling what they'll do, it's a competition to them," I said.

He stopped but stood with his back to me. Was I asking too much of him? Was I manipulative? I noticed he filled down his other horn to make it even with the one he broke at my mother's house. I didn't want to ask him to do anything outside his comfort zone.

"This is wrong," he said.

"I don't want to hurt it. I won't hurt it. If anything, I'd help it escape," I said.

"Pitch," Wes said, pleading with me.

"You know I would never hurt anyone," I tried to persuade him.

"You hurt Santa," Velmer chimed in.

"Santa was an asshole, but Wes, I could really use your help," I said.

He didn't say anything for a while, but he eventually turned back around. I felt shitty for pressuring him, but I guess that didn't stop me.

"I'll help, but only if this is a rescue," Wes said.

I could sense his hesitation.

"How do we know it's a guy," Velmer asked as if he were deaf to the tone of the moment.

Velmer didn't seem nearly as conflicted about the hunt as Wes did. He almost seemed happy to join in. Happy wasn't the right word, "indifferent" might have been. I didn't realize how much of an asset he was until we got into the search. His abundance of cellphones wasn't the full extent of his technological aptitude.

Velmer was a real tech-head. While Wes and I walked around aimlessly checking under bushes, he had a remote-controlled drone flying around.

"Where did you find this guy?" Wes asked.

"Velmer? He moved in next door to me a few days ago," I explained as we watched him pilot his machine with precision and tact.

It was easy to see magical creatures as people who relied on magic more than modern technology. Goblins and computers were far from synonymous in my mind, but that only made it all the more informative seeing Velmer us better search skills than I had. To be fair, in a world of magic, you'd expect everyone to read spellbooks more than chemistry books. Of course, that wasn't always the case. It varied from town to town; some places focused on magic while others developed science. Daybreak was more of a magic centered town, so seeing someone inept in science like Velmer was different.

Unfortunately, we weren't ten minutes into our search when out of nowhere, something like a fireball shot Velmer's drone out of the sky. It happened so quickly I almost missed it.

As Wes, Velmer, and I gathered around the charred bird to check its damage, something emerged from the bushes. Someone emerged from the bushes. It was the interns, Bj, Vista, and the elf Harmon.

Were they working together? Beth told me it was supposed to be a competition. As they came near, they seemed too coordinated for opposing parties. Regardless of their teaming up, one of them was responsible for Velmer's drone catching fire.

"One of you is paying for this, right?" Velmer asked with his drone in hand like a deceased pet.

His voice acted as the crack in the tense silence between parties.

"Why are you here, Pitch?" BJ asked.

It didn't surprise me; she acted as their leader at that moment.

"Looking for the leprechaun," I said.

"You're not an intern," she argued.

"I wanted to help," I said.

"We don't need your help, Vista added from behind BJ like a hype man.

"But you haven't found it yet, have you?" I questioned the opposition.

They wouldn't answer, and of course, that was an answer enough.

"Right, so we're going to find it," I said.

"We aren't allowed to have outside help. Last I checked Wes and your goblin friend aren't interns," BJ said.

"Neither am I, which means I don't have to play by your rules," I said.

I was more confrontational and abrasive than usual. Standing in teams that had no choice but to oppose one another gave me a pack mentality for the moment. Something about going back and forth with each other reminded me of fourth grade. BJ seemed to be afflicted by the same mindset.

"If you get in our way, we will put you down," she threatened.

"Put us down?"

"You guys, I don't mean to interrupt, but we've been out here a couple of days. Things are hard enough without fighting each other, so maybe we can just," Harmon tried to interject himself.

"Not now," BJ snapped at her allie.

The guys and I had already started walking away. I wished they would have jumped in more and backed me up, but it wasn't their fight.

"Don't get in our way, Pitch," BJ added in an attempt to get the last word in.

"Don't get in mine," I said before we were out of view.

Wes was happy to see I'd broken ties with BJ, but after seeing her in the woods, I still felt bad for what happened to our relationship. She was once one of my closest friends, but I couldn't help it if my being successful made her turn against me.

BJ wasn't wrong.

It was just as she predicted. My being better than the other interns convinced Beth to offer me a permanent position. Still, nothing was stopping BJ from leveling up herself and finding the same opportunities. I'm sure she would have debated I made her have to work harder to be seen, but she was the one who pushed me to get serious about magic in the first place.

I had a plan to find the leprechaun. Leprechauns kept their gold at the end of rainbows, at least rumors said they did. I wanted to make it rain over the woods. Then the guys and I could have followed the rainbow that would appear afterward.

"We have to use magic to do this?" Wes asked, but it felt like he wanted to argue against my plan.

"There's no other way to do this," I said.

"We could use a weather machine," Velmer suggested.

How smart was he exactly?

"Do you have a weather machine," Wes and I both asked curiously as to how something so whimsical was even a plausible possibility.

"I could build one, but I'd rather watch you make rain without one," my goblin friend joked.

I shrugged my shoulders, still unsure as to whether or not he was capable of building a weather machine or not.

"I have a zero-gravity spell, if I use it here and it gets enough water in the air it should act like rain," I said as I pulled the spell out of my back pocket.

"Won't we float too?" Wes questioned.

"As long as we hold on to something, I think we'll be ok," I said.

"What could go wrong," Velmer joked.

I didn't think it was possible, but there was someone more sarcastic than me in the world, and I invited him into my search party no less.

We each found a tree to hold on to while I recited the spell. As expected, anything that wasn't rooted to the ground flew into the air. Dirt, mud, bugs, and leaves populated the sky like brown clouds. There wasn't enough water to make rain, at least not while everything else was mixed in with it. Was it a bad idea, maybe, but then it wasn't. As we all tried to keep from floating away, I noticed the force had taken our rivals. BJ and the other interns were in the sky. I might have been concerned for their landing strategies had I not seen something more critical.

The leprechaun. It was completely exposed.

"You guys," I said, pointing out the little guy in the green suit wading through the forest floor as if it were a river.

The spell wouldn't last much longer, so I needed to figure out where the leprechaun would fall if I wanted to find him on the ground. Before I could chart out the distance between us, we ran out of time. Things were already beginning to pelt the ground. It was like a hell storm. Standing under our tree anchors, nothing hurt us too badly, but that didn't make it any less suspenseful. When it was finally over, the surrounding area was inconceivable. So much debris and land had shifted and moved. It was like we'd somehow teleported to a new location. Paths were gone entirely, and if not for the trees that held their spots, we might have been completely lost in the new layout of The Dead Woods. We couldn't be timid, though. I had a general idea of where the Leprechaun might have fallen, so we had to hurry before he could get away.

"It should be somewhere over here," I said as we rushed through bushes and around trees. The earth was so lose and muddy; our steps were made slick and sporadic. We might have run past our destination. Eventually, I stopped. Catching my breath, I turned around and found that my two teammates had disappeared. Had I ran too quickly, or did they give up on following me?

"Wes! Velmer!" I called out.

No one answered me. The silence was heavy, and in The Dead Woods, that was dangerous. Someone was around me. They had to be. I tried to ready myself. I used Cannon Ball, and it was exactly what I needed at that moment. From the shadows came the little green man sprinting straight at me with a knife in hand. I stumbled, trying to back away. For such a small guy, he moved like a bullet. Before I could process the danger hurtling toward me, he already made contact.

He stabbed me.

His knife went in my side, but I didn't feel it because of my spell. Had I felt the pain, I might not have had it in me to do what I did next. I caught his wrist before he could pull the blade back out, and I threw him at a tree. I only had a minute or so before my spell would wear off and I would feel just how bad of a wound I had. I tried to keep moving. He wasn't moving. He was still awake. Rather than trying to stand, he stayed at the root of the tree holding his blade out as if to keep me at bay.

"I'm not trying to hurt you!" I exclaimed.

"That's what they all say," he said.

I was surprised he didn't have an Irish accent.

"I just wanted to ask you for..." I said before he cut me off.

"A wish? They always want a wish," he said in a patronizing tone.

"Can you help me?" I pleaded.

"You can eat shit and die rabbit," he said.

My spell wore off, and suddenly, I could feel my body was cold. Blood was soaking through my shirt, and my legs were about to give out from under me. I felt my side, and it stung even just grazing over the spot where my flesh was open.

"Please, I just need," I said before I fell to my knees.

He stood up. I couldn't hide how badly I was hurt. He approached me with his knife still drawn, and I couldn't think of a way out.

"Please," I said as he stood eye to eye with me.

"What are you anyway," he asked with his blade to my throat.

His eyes examined me like a prize-winning pet. It was demeaning, but his curiosity gave me more time to think. Unfortunately, it didn't matter how much I thought.

"I just need," I tried to speak, but everything went black.

I was getting tired of waking up in strange places. The air was sterile but pungent. I heard the sound of heart monitors and drug names being called out. There was air blasting into the room from overhead. I knew where I was before I opened my eyes. That hospital bed was a first I hadn't expected to see. I suppose my impact resistance was no match for the deadly force of a simple pocket knife. As I sat up, I noticed that both my mom and dad were sitting in the corner of the room waiting for me to wake up. I tried to pretend I was still sleeping, but they knew I was awake. They both scolded me for putting myself in such danger. Dad wanted me to quit my job with Beth outright, and Mom vowed to find the leprechaun so she could do several things to it as penance.

My wound wasn't as bad as it seemed. I lost a lot of blood, but only because I ignored my damage for so long. Had I acted more carefully and gotten help sooner, I may not have passed out. Typical. I was unlucky enough to almost die but lucky enough to survive.

I owed my survival to someone.

I couldn't believe who they said found me. BJ was responsible for calling for help. Even with our feud going strong, I guess she was human enough to save me. But I wasn't the only person she saved.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"We almost died doing something we shouldn't have been doing in the first place. Do you want to be human so bad?" Wes said.

It seemed the leprechaun left the interns alone and only went after my team. Wes was strong, so he was stabbed at least three times before he went down. His body naturally healed faster than most, so by the time I walked down to his hospital room, I couldn't see any signs of what happened to him. He was getting ready to leave when I made it to his bedside.

"What?" I asked.

"Isn't that what all of this was for, so you could wish to be human again?" He suggested as he tossed off his medical gown before dawning his usual hoodie.

"No, I wanted to make a wish for my dad," I said.

I completely spaced out. It never occurred to me to use the wish to be human again. How did I not think of something so obvious? Did I not care anymore? Its possible, or maybe I was so focused on helping my dad that I prioritized myself last for once.

"Either way, this was stupid," he said.

He left the room, and I tried to follow him, but I still had pain. It was difficult keeping up with him while I worried about ripping my stitches.

"Wes I'm sorry," I said

"Why do you need magic so badly all of a sudden?"

"I'm good at it," I debated.

He was upset with me, but he still stopped between every few steps to let me catch up.

"You're good at other things, things that don't get you killed," he said.

"You never cared about stuff being dangerous before," I argued from behind his back until I caught up enough to step in front of him.

We were making a scene throughout the hospital. Doctors and nurses became our audience, but they appeared to be too busy to pay a couple of teenaged boys arguing any attention.

"Why are you so against magic?"

"I just don't think we need it," Wes said, but he wouldn't look at me when he said it.

"There's more to it, there has to be, or you wouldn't be so upset," I said.

"We almost died."

"But that's not why your mad, Wes."

He went silent, and before he would say another word, he pulled me into a stairwell. We were alone, but in that place, our voices echoed off the metal railings like a haunted audience.

"Do you know where enchanted paper comes from?"

"Magic shops," I said, and I was naive.

"I mean, do you know what it's made out of?" He reiterated.

Wes was never the one to be so serious. He was never so cloak and dagger. The closest thing I knew to what he was in that moment might have been his moments of activism, but even that was a stretch.

"I never really thought about it," I said.

"People like me used to hide from humans...," he started to say before he paused.

He swallowed something in his throat.

"...Because they killed us for our parts," he continued to say.

My eyes went wide. Was he serious? When he said "used to" how far back was he referring to? He made it seem like something recent.

"We had to beg to be seen as actual people just to get them to stop hunting us," he said.

"But they can't do that anymore, do they?" I asked, assuming he was referring to at least decades ago rather than anywhere close to the present.

"Not to those of us who live with humans. But creatures that choose to stay independent aren't citizens. They can be hunted to extinction," he said.

He said "can be," meaning it was still happening, but something like that couldn't be happening. Could it?

"That can't be right," I said.

He started to go on until a doctor walked into the stairwell. We held our tongues until we were alone again, but our echos were like a choir.

"It's not right, but it's true. Every time you use magic, you're using something that took the life of a person like you and me," he said definitively.

"Wes," I pleaded for something easier to swallow.

"Ask Velmer, goblins were being hunted like pigs until they came out of hiding," he said.

"But now," I started to say before Wes quickly cut me off.

"Pitch, living with humans means letting them know where we are at all times. No one is going to go after an elf, but my family has to worry constantly. And that doesn't begin to cover all the creatures who haven't agreed to live with humans yet."

"I didn't know," I said.

He took a breath, and I tried to. It was a lot to take in. It was a lot to process. My side was killing me, but my mind hurt worse. I leaned against a guard rail to take the weight off my feet. Wes let me stew over the dark waters he made me aware of, but the implications alone were enough to make me sick.

"Most of the creatures we saw at STR would be slaughtered if they ever came to a town like Daybreak," he said.

His tone was less harsh. His words weren't rushed anymore. He wasn't beating me over my head with my ignorance. He could have been worse. If what he said was true... why would he lie about something like that? He wouldn't. But it felt impossible.

"This wasn't a problem before. I thought you hated magic," he said as he took a spot beside me on the guardrail.

"I did, but now," I said, looking over at him only to find he was still looking back at me.