Blackthorn: In the Tween Read online

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  Several months earlier, Lin came to Blackthorn to work in the university’s museum. She wanted to study magic lore and artifacts. Her parents wanted her to stay and teach at the local college as a mortal. They warned her of the dangers of mixing with witches, calling them low class and malevolent, worse than humans because they were enlightened but chose to discriminate and hate. But Lin couldn’t stay away. She was tired of hiding her magic, and imagined living in a world where she could be open about who she was. In Blackthorn, she could live that way. Besides, mixing in wasn’t such a big deal. All she had to do was carry a rod and pretend to use it in a disconnected way. No one would ever see how the elements obeyed her; how wood was like a magnet to her flesh, and how nature bowed to her. Witches were shallow and superficial as humans were, near sighted, and not as enlightened as mother liked to think. A person can’t be enlightened when they are consumed with concern for a material and physical world.

  Work at the museum lead to her first teaching job just weeks after having arrived. Mother was extremely unhappy because she knew Lin wouldn’t return. She wanted her to become a healer and run the family business: An herbal apothecary that, to many unknown, had cured everything from their cancers to genetic ailments. Mother believed it was their duty, as Matrons and Patrons of the earth, to help others. But teaching was helping, was it not?

  She’d be safer at home under the guise of a mortal, her mother told her. The world was on the brink of war, but she just couldn’t listen. Lin needed to get out of her simple town and explore the world before she could settle.

  After she graduated college, Lin traveled, extensively, through many magical communities. None held her interest as much as Blackthorn. It had a history that included some of the most important witches and wizards of all time, the most important developments in magical relations, and rich family lines of witches dating back to the Middle Ages. Somehow, she felt like she could be as great as they, if she was near where their greatness once was.

  Common witches and wizards weren’t as bad as her mother said, though. They were just like anybody else, anywhere else with a small population. There were town snobs, town gossips, and small mindedness: nothing out of the ordinary.

  Invisibly nestled on a side of the Rocky Mountains, its summit lay at nearly 10,000 feet. Normal people didn’t know it was there, for it was camouflaged to look like trees and snow.

  What she loved most about the town was its old world architecture. The honored founder, Nicolas Blackthorn who died in the early 1600s, didn’t settle for new western design. He preferred castles of old; more specifically, the one he grew up in. Blackthorn Castle was now the post secondary school, Blackthorn academy. Later, those who came to town, built in brick rather than igneous stone like the castle, but they kept with the feel of sixteenth century architecture.

  To Lin, every day in Blackthorn felt like Christmas, for it never seemed to stop snowing. She wondered how that was, since when she looked out of her apartment’s tower window, she saw the bluest sky and sunshine. Surely, no witch or wizard could do such a powerful spell; even if they could, why would they want to? Not that it bothered her much, for she’d always preferred winter over summer. Her favorite thing to do was sip lattes on the patio of the Blackthorn Cafe, under the hazy yellow-orange light of the old fashioned, wrought iron street lamps. She’d watch the locals go in and out of the little shops, wrapped in luxury shawls and shearling jackets. Sometimes, she’d get lost in the beauty of the snowy mountain rise that towered right above their little settlement, right across the street from the café and behind Mara’s dress shop. In short, there was no place cozier than Blackthorn; only internet graphics could mimic the beauty.