Excerpts Witch & Wizard

Witch & Wizard

PROLOGUE
You’re Not in Kansas Anymore

ONE

WISTY

It’s overwhelming.  A city’s worth of angry faces staring up at me like I’m a wicked criminal—which I promise you, I’m not. The stadium is filled to capacity—past capacity. People are standing in the aisles, the stairwells, on the concrete ramparts, and a few extra thousand are camped out on the playing field. There are no football teams here today. They wouldn’t be able to get out of the locker-room tunnels if they tried.
This total abomination is being broadcast on TV and the Internet, too.  All the useless magazines are here, and the useless newspapers. Yep, I see the cameras and cameramen in their elevated roosts at intervals around the field.
There’s even one of those remote-controlled cameras that runs around on wires above the field. There it is—hovering just in front of the stage, bobbing slightly in the breeze.
So, there are undoubtedly millions more pairs of eyes watching than I can see. But it’s the ones here in the stadium that are breaking my heart. To be confronted with this many—tens, hundreds of thousands—curious, uncaring, or at least indifferent, faces . . . talk about frightening.
And there are no moist eyes, much less tears.
No words of protest.
No stomping feet.
No fists raised in solidarity.
No inkling that anybody’s even thinking to surge forward, overwhelm the security cordon, and carry my family to safety.
Clearly, this is not a good day for us Allgoods. 
In fact, as the countdown ticker flashes onto the giant video screens at either end of the stadium, it’s looking to be our last day.
It’s a point driven home by the very tall, bald man up in the tower they’ve erected at mid-field—the one who looks like a cross between a Supreme Court Chief Justice and Ming the Merciless. I know who he is—I’ve actually met him. He’s The One Who Is The One.
Directly behind his Oneness is a huge N.O. banner--the new order.
And then the crowd begins to chant, almost sing, “The One Who Is The One! The One Who Is The One!”
Imperiously, The One raises his hand and his hooded lackeys down on the stage push us forward, at least as far as the ropes around our necks will allow.
I see my brother, Whit, handsome and brave, looking down at the platform mechanism. Calculating if there’s any way to jam it, some way to keep it from unlatching and dropping us to our neck-snapping deaths.  Wondering if there’s some last-minute way out of this.
I see my mother crying quietly. Not for herself, of course, but for Whit and I.
I see my father, his tall frame stooped with resignation, but smiling at me and my brother—trying to keep our spirits elevated, and to remind us that there’s no point being miserable in our last moments on this planet.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m supposed to be providing an introduction here, not the details of our public execution.
So let’s go back a bit. . . .

PART ONE
No Crime, Just Punishment

By Order of the NEW ORDER,
and the Great Wind--
The One Who Is
THE ONE--
let it be known that as of
NOW, THIS MOMENT,
or TWELVE O’CLOCK MIDNIGHT,
whichever shall arrive first,
following the SWIFT TRIUMPH of
The ORDER of the ONES Who PROTECT,
who have obliterated the BLIND & DUMB FORCES of
passivity and complacency PLAGUING This World,
ALL CITIZENS must, shall, and will abide by
THESE THREE ORDERS for ORDER:

1. All behaviors NOT in keeping with N.O. law, logic, order and science (including but not limited to theology, philosophy,
   the creative and dark arts, et cetera)
   are hereby ABOLISHED.

2. ALL persons under eighteen years of age will be evaluated for

ORDERLINESS and MUST COMPLY
with the prescribed corrective actions.

3. The One Who Is THE ONE grants, appoints, decides, seizes and executes at will. All NOT complying shall be SEIZED and/or EXECUTED.

--As declared to the One Who Writes Decrees
by THE ONE WHO IS THE ONE

WHIT

Sometimes you wake up and the world is just plain different.
The noise of a circling helicopter is what made me open my eyes. A cold, blue-white light forced its way through the living room blinds and flooded the living room. Almost like it was day.
But it wasn’t.
I peered at the DVD player through blurry eyes: 2:10 a.m.
I become aware of a steady drub, drub, drub—like the sound of a heavy heartbeat—throbbing all around me. Pressing in. Getting closer.       
What’s going on?
I staggered to the window, forcing my body back to life after two hours’ passed out on the sofa, and pried apart the slats.
And then I stepped back and rubbed my eyes. Hard.
Because there’s no way I’d seen what I’d seen. And there was no way I’d heard what I heard.
Was it really the steady, relentless beat of hundreds of soldiers? Marching on my street in perfect unison?
My street wasn’t close enough to the center of town to be on any holiday parade routes, much less to have armed men in combat fatigues coursing down it in the dead of night.
I shook my head and bounced up and down a few times kind of like I do in my warm-ups. Wake up, Whit. I slapped myself a couple of times for good measure. And then I looked again.
But there they were. Soldiers marching up our street. Hundreds of them in the light of a half-dozen truck-mounted spotlights.
Just one thought was running laps inside my head: This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.
Then I remembered the signs. The elections, the new government, the ravings of my parents about the trouble the country was in, the special broadcasts on TV, the political petitions my classmates were circulating online, the heated debates between teachers at school. None of it meant anything to me until that second.
And before I could piece it all together, the vanguard of the formation stopped in front of my house.
Almost faster than I could comprehend, two armed squads detached themselves from the main body and sprinted across my lawn like commandos, one running around the back of the house, and the other taking position in front.
I jumped back from the window. I could tell they weren’t here to protect me and my family. I had to warn Mom, Dad, Wisty—
But just as I started to yell, the front door got knocked off its hinges.

WISTY

I woke to the chaotic crashing of overturning furniture, quickly followed by the sounds of splintering glass, possibly some of Mom’s china.
Oh, God, Whit, I thought, shaking my head sleepily. My older brother had grown four inches and gained thirty pounds of muscle in the last year. Which made him the biggest and fastest quarterback around, and I must say, the most intimidating player on our regional high school’s undefeated football team.
Off the playing field, though, Whit could be about as clumsy as your average bear—if your average bear was hopped up on a case of Red Bull and full of himself because he could bench-press three-twenty and every other girl in school thought he was the hunk of all hunks.
I rolled over and pulled my pillow around my head. Even before the drinking started, Whit couldn’t walk through our house without knocking something over. Total bull-in-the-china-shop syndrome.
But that wasn’t the real problem tonight, I knew.
Because three months ago, his girlfriend, Celia, had literally vanished without a trace. And by now everyone thought she was probably not coming back. Her parents were totally messed up about it, and so was Whit. To be honest, so was I..Celia was— is—very pretty, smart, not conceited at all… she’s this totally cool girl, even though she has money. Celia’s father owns the luxury car dealership in town and her mom had been a beauty queen. I couldn’t believe something like that could happen to someone like her.
I heard my parents’ bedroom door open and snuggled back down into my cozy, flannel-sheeted bed.
Next came dad’s booming voice, and it was and angry as I’ve ever heard him.
“This can’t be happening! You have no right to be here. Leave our house now!”  
I bolted upright, wide awake now. Next came more crashing sounds, and I thought I heard someone moan in pain. Had Whit fallen and cracked his head? Had my dad been hurt? 
Jeez, Louise, I thought, scrambling out of bed. “I’m coming, Dad! Are you all right? Dad?”
And then the nightmare to start a lifetime of nightmares truly began.
I gasped as my bedroom door crashed open. Two hulking men in dark gray uniforms burst in through my doorway, glaring at me as if I were a fugitive terrorist cell operative.
“It’s her! Wisteria Allgood!” one said, and a light bright enough to illuminate an airplane hangar obliterated the darkness.
I tried to shield my eyes as my heart kicked into overdrive. “Who are you?!” I squealed. “And what are you doing in my freaking bedroom?”