The Secret of the Deranged

Chapter 5: The Secret of the Deranged

The whisper grows louder, soon becoming a roar inside my head: Diago. Diago. Diago. Diago. Diago. Diago. Diago. Diago. Diago. This is why I didn’t join the Wand Faction. This damned drumming is enough to make anyone deranged.

Nelle slides off the boulder, rounding herself into a ball on the sand. Her hands cover her ears, her eyes are closed. Her litany of “No no no no” starts up again, just as it did the day before.

I shake my head, try to force the drumming to subside.

“Nelle?”

No response. I lean down next to her, touch her gently.

“Nelle?”

Her litany continues. Grabbing her by the shoulders, I try to push her up.

That gets her attention, as she tries to fight me off.

“Nelle! It’s Capella, remember?”

She opens one eye warily and looks at me.

“It’s back, the voices are back…” Her whole body starts shaking.

Diago. Diago. Diago. Diago…

“Get up, Nelle, or you’ll regret it!” I thrust Liara at her in an effort to frighten her back into interacting with me. It works: she sits up slowly and stares at me.

“What are you hearing, Nelle?”

Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes still frantic.

“Diago. Diago.” She pauses and then voices the drumming I’ve been trying to suppress: “Diago. Diago. Diago.”

That’s what she’s hearing? But that means—

“Stand up and follow the word.”

Her eyes water.

“Nooo… I’m not a Deranged! I’m not, I’m not!”

“Nelle… please. Trust me. Stand up and follow the word.” I brandish my wand at her again. Sighing, she stands up slowly. Step.

“Don’t make me, Capella! Please don’t make me!”

“I hear it too, Nelle. The same word.”

She looks at me, suspicion plain on her face.

“You’re a Deranged! How could I have trusted you? You brought the voices back to me!”

“NELLE! I am NOT a Deranged! I’m a Wizard! You… What word did you hear last night? Just tell me this, and I won’t force you to take one more step.”

“I don’t know. Bur—bura—bu—I don’t remember!”

“Burago. Was that the word you heard?”

She narrows her eyes at me again. “That was it.”

This is giving me a headache. She’s not going to take this news well.

“Burago was the name of a wand, the wand I used up to calm you down.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nelle, please… trust me. You’re not a Deranged. I’m not a Deranged. Keep following the word and I’ll explain everything.”

“Will it stop if I do that?”

“I think so.”

She nods dejectedly and begins to walk. Each step takes us closer to the unusual tree growing in the sand, the tree that I now strongly suspect is a wand tree. How a wand tree could come to grow here, I don’t know.

Diago. Diago. The name gets louder. How long has this wand tree been here, for it to shout its name so desperately?

She leads us straight to the tree and bends down. Her fingers fall upon a stick: the wand Diago.

Silence.

“It… stopped.”

“Yes.”

“Why did it stop, Pel?” At least she’s beginning to trust me again… It’s been years since anyone’s called me Pel, and the sound makes me smile for a moment, before I remember what all this means.

“You’re a wizard.”

Shock slaps her face, making her eyes wide and her mouth open.

“What did you just say?”

There’s no way to break this to her gently. At least the possibility of being a Deranged was familiar to her. But to find out you’re a wizard, when you’ve failed all the standard Magic Tests? No, there is no way to ease her into this.

“Diago is the wand’s name, Marinelle. The stick you’re holding is a wand. It called to you, as it did to me, because you’re a wizard.”

“You’re kidding, right? This is some sort of elaborate joke you’re playing on me, isn’t it? Some sort of cruel Wizardry humor?”

“No.”

“No? But… how can I be a wizard? I failed the Magic Tests! I failed all of them!”

Her face twists as she desperately searches for a way to deny this. I can relate: I wasn’t happy to be named Wizard either, not when I’d been raised to distrust and insult them. But her question is valid: how can she be a wizard when she failed the Magic Tests?

“I don’t know. But this is what happens during a Magic Test. You’re left in a forest full of wand trees. You hear the name of the closest wand pounding in your head, until you find it and touch it. I don’t know how you can be a wizard, Nelle; but if you weren’t one, you wouldn’t have heard Diago, you wouldn’t have found Diago—you would just be a delusional Deranged.”

She looks down at Diago, shakes her head, and hands the wand to me.

“Prove to me that’s a wand.”

“Alright.” I close my eyes and focus my energy on Diago for a moment before my eyes snap open. Diago has more energy than any of the three wands I lost just the day before. (Has it really only been a day?) Diago is far more powerful than a wand from an uncultivated wand tree is supposed to be.

“Well?” Right. An easy, simple spell.

Pointing Diago at the sand, I verbally command, “Flower!” Green twists and turns as a bud sprouts and opens.

She bends down, touching the daisy as if to make sure it’s real.

“All this time, I’ve been running from the voices…” Her voice grows softer as she continues, “They told me I was Deranged. I thought I was Deranged. But all this time, all those words, they were wand names, weren’t they?”

“It sounds like it.”

“It’s true then: I am a wizard.”

“Yes.” Determination flashes through her green eyes.

“Then I don’t need to be here. None of us need to be here.”

It’s my turn to be confused.

“What do you mean, none of you?”

“We all heard the same words. That’s why I went to live on my own, hidden from the rest of them: I thought they were making me a Deranged, like them. But now… what if we’re all wizards?”

The impact of what she said hurts my mind. The Magic Tests stop at 18 because… why? I always assumed it was for a reason, but the Wizardry never told me what it was, even when I joined them. And if she’s right and the Deranged Military heard wand names, that means there’s more than just Diago waiting to be claimed on this supposedly worthless planet.

“Pel? Will you train me?”

I can’t help but smile as the beginnings of a plan form in my head. Maybe there is a way off of this planet after all.

“I will train you.”