Briallen Bevin and the Snatcher's Cave

Chapter 1: How It Came to Be

Briallen Bevin was not a normal little girl, though one wouldn't know that just by looking at her. She looked like any other normal (and many would say plain) eleven-year-old girl and she lived a very normal life in a very normal town. However, that was all about to change.

Briallen was born and raised in the small hamlet of Dustum, Virginia, which was an ordinary farming community full of ordinary small-town folk. She even lived on a farm with cows, pigs, and horses. Her father also grew pine trees for landscapers and the Christmas season. She went to school and learned her times tables, the history of the under-ground railroad, the noble gases and alkali metals, and made lions and lambs out of cotton-balls every spring, just like every other child at Surry County Elementary. Every summer she rode her horse, Miko, in the rodeos that visited the county, fed her family's pigs for her weekly allowance, and helped sell carved-wood animals at her uncle Pete's booth at the annual Pork, Peanut and Pine Festival. This was the life she expected to lead right into old age.

What suddenly made Briallen different from everybody else in her community though, now that she was eleven, was not something that one would notice just by looking at her nor by even knowing her up to this point. Not even she noticed the difference just yet.

* * *

Briallen walked down the thin, fence-lined dirt road that connected her family's farmhouse to the wide, gravel road that eventually led to the never-very-busy Polk highway and the town of Dustum. Her bare feet barely made any sound in the dry, dusty dirt; not even enough to disturb the family of rabbits she passed resting under the shade of a clump of long-grass. Miko followed her, walking along the fence that kept him in one of the large fields that the Bevin's kept their cows in.

Briallen smiled at the horse. He was a large, blue roan Clydesdale given to her by her grandfather, Cal Bevin, three years ago for her eighth birthday. Cal also gave her an old-fashioned carriage that he had apparently used when Miko was his. Her parents, even her dad, Cal's son, thought the gift of the carriage was odd but Briallen loved it and frequently hooked Miko up to it and took her young cousins for rides around the farm.

An old nursery rhyme her grandfather taught her years ago came to her just then and she began to sing, "Bell-horses, bell-horses, what time of day? One o'clock, two o'clock, time to away!" With the last word of the song, she flew off to towards her house, Miko racing her along the fence. When they got to the end, Briallen skipped to the fence and stepped up onto the lowest of the three wood planks that supported the enclosure. Miko, knowing her well, approached her immediately so that she could stroke his nose and give him a handful of oats from her pocket.

"I concede this victory to you, Sir Miko. You run quite well but I shall win the tournament," she said, making her voice deep and doing her best to imitate her grandfather's northern English accent. Miko whinnied and Briallen hopped off the fence, tired of the game already, and walked to her house.

The Bevins lived in a small two-story farmhouse that Briallen knew was older than even her grandfather, who was very old. The white paint on the wood siding was either stained a dull brown from dirt and age or peeling off to reveal the pale yellow that the house had previously been painted. While the house didn't look like much it was one of the nicest in Dustum.

Many people did not consider Dustum to even be a town, including many of its own residents, who believed is was barely a village. It was more like a campsite, except the people there had decided to trade in their tents for small wood and brick buildings. There was no church, bank, school, or post office, not even a fast food restaurant, and it had to share a zip code with the neighboring town of Surry (which itself could hardly be called a town). The only reason Dustum still existed was to be a ferry port for Jamestown on the other side of the James river, shuffling tourists from the park to an old nearby plantation and castle. And even though Dustum was officially known as a tourist town, the amount of visitors it received every year wasn't a very large number, especially since a neighboring town also offered a ferry service.

The lack of tourists suited Briallen Bevin just fine, though. She enjoyed the quaint and quiet peace of Dustum, particularly on hot summer days. On those days she would walk to Dustum's Main Street (which was less than a mile from her home), buy a large waffle cone with two scoops of chocolate ice cream from the general store (no shoes required), and then make her way to the small beach on their side of the James River where she would finish her ice cream while watching the boats glide slowly up and down and across the water.

Outside of the school year, during which Briallen was bused to Surry County Elementary in Dendron, she enjoyed her life. It was simple, easy-going, and generally stress-free. On those rare occasions when her life was none of those things she would spend the day exploring the fields and forests with Miko or wading in Grays Creek with her cousins, collecting rocks and catching crawfish. Sometimes, when Briallen was able to convince her cousins to muster up enough courage, they'd ride their bikes down Polk highway to the town of Surry.

Briallen had never really had any close friends outside of her family. She had acquaintances, of course, and there were certain kids that she preferred to sit next to in class or play four-square with during recess, but she had never been close to anyone who was not related to her. It was because of this absence of close friends that Briallen had never been invited to a classmate's birthday party or a best friend's sleepover. Occasionally she allowed herself to be sad about the fact she had no real friends - especially when her eldest cousin was only just eight - but most of the time she liked being alone.

She also enjoyed spending time with her mother, Meda, who always let Briallen make the dessert for that night's dinner. Currently, she was deciding between chocolate or butterscotch pudding.

After a quick fight with an ornery screen door, she walked into the living room thinking about which pudding she wanted most, not bothering to clean her dirty feet. In her hands she clutched the stack of letters she had just retrieved from the mailbox.

"Hey, Ma!" shouted Briallen as loud as she could. She sat on the overstuffed sofa and began going through the letters to see if there were any for her. "I went down the road and got the mail! Mr Carter told me to tell you hello and that he loved the blueberry pie you sent him! Are you in the mood for chocolate or butterscotch pudding?"

Briallen's mother, Meda Bevin, appeared in the doorway silhouetted by the setting afternoon sun that filtered through sliding doors in the dining room behind her. Briallen had always thought her mother was very pretty but just then she thought her mom looked like a goddess and secretly wished she had inherited some of her mother's exotic beauty.

As she grew older and became more aware of the way boys and girls act around each other and how important personal appearance seemed to be in those situations, Briallen had become even more envious of her mother's bronze skin, ebony hair and multi-colored hazel eyes. Briallen had boring, murky gray eyes that she found disgusting and colorless. She sometimes thought that if she was just half as pretty as her mom she would have more friends and be more popular, even though her mom constantly told her that who she was on the inside was much more important than what she looked like on the outside.

"You alright, sweetie?" asked Meda. Briallen nodded, surprised to suddenly find her mom sitting next to her. She had lost herself in her thoughts and hadn't noticed her mother move from the doorway. Meda ran her fingers through her daughter's brown hair and smiled. "You want me to braid your hair before we start dinner?"

Briallen shook her head and then paused. "Can I get my hair cut tomorrow? I want it short, like yours."

"Why? You have such long, pretty hair! Mrs Macalister was just telling me the other day that Molly's jealous, you know. She wishes she had hair as pretty as yours."

"Mom - Molly is three years old. If she sees a Rainbow Bright doll she likes tomorrow then she'll want rainbow hair. What she thinks doesn't matter."

Meda frowned. She knew Briallen was no longer her little girl and that it was only a matter of time before she started comparing herself to the other girls at school. She had gone through the same thing herself, just twenty years earlier. "Do you want to cut your hair because you think you'll look prettier?"

"Won't I? I start middle school next year, Mom... they have dances at middle schools. What boy is going to want to ask me to a dance? With my ugly brown hair and ugly orange skin."

"You are not orange, Briallen. You're the same color as me and I'm not orange. And since when are you so concerned about what boys think of you?"

Briallen shook her head dramatically. "I'm not! I just don't want to be the only girl at the dance without a date. Girls are supposed to go to dances with boys. That's how it is in the movies."

"Honey, trust me, life is not like how it is in the movies. Not every girl at school will have a date to all the dances. Besides, I think your dad will be just fine with you not having a date to any dances next year. As a matter of fact, I'm sure your dad would be just fine with you not having any dates until you're at least thirty."

Briallen rolled her eyes at her mother.

"I'll be twelve in a few months; why won't you let me grow up? And in only a couple of years I'll be in high school, you know," said Briallen. She stared at the mail she still held in her hands. She had been expecting a letter from her grandfather for a while now. He was supposed to invite her to stay with him sometime that summer but now there were only two weeks until school began and she still hadn't received an invitation from him. She threw the mail onto the coffee table in anger. "And summer is almost over and Grandpa still hasn't invited me to visit him! It's not like he lives that far away. And how can he not have a phone? It's 1991, everybody has a phone!"

"Not that far? He lives on the other side of the state. That's almost a six hour drive," said a tall blonde man with the faintest hint of a foreign accent. He had just entered the living room and was wiping his dirty hands on a washcloth already stained with black streaks. He sat down on a chair next to the couch where his daughter and wife sat.

"But it's not like it's the other side of the country, Dad," began Briallen. "Grandma Apokni has me visit her all the time, even when she was living in Mississippi. He's the only grandfather I have. He could at least act like it sometimes."

"Don't be mean, Briallen. My father is a very busy man. He's in charge of an entire school full of hundreds of kids and dozens of teachers. He has meetings with boards of education, the PTA, government officials... He's expected to do a lot and get it done quickly. You know he loves you - he writes you all the time. He just doesn't have a lot of time for visits."

While Briallen and her father argued over how good of a grandfather Cal Bevin was and Meda tried to mediate, a dark red owl flew quietly through an open living room window and landed on an chair arm. A thick roll of papers were attached by a string to one of the owl's legs and dangled off the arm of the chair. The owl calmly watched the family argument for a few minutes before it began to hoot for attention. Its cry fell on deaf ears, however. Seconds later, two more owls carrying letters arrived and perched themselves on the same chair as the first. It was only after there were eight hooting owls that the fighting family noticed their presence.

The Bevins went silent and stared at the owls, each of which was staring right back at them. Living in the countryside meant there was an occasional stray animal in the house but eight owls, during the day, sitting peacefully on a chair in the living room was far from a normal occurrence.

"What on earth is wrong with those owls?" asked Will as he glanced at Meda.

"Are you asking me because you think I'm supposed to know about all of nature's creatures? Would you like me to answer in smoke signals or tribal dance?" snapped Meda.

Will, hurt and shocked by his wife's sudden viciousness, responded quickly. "Meda, love, you know that's not what I meant."

Briallen was the first to notice the rolls of paper attached to the owls. Cautiously, she reached towards one owl to remove its package. "Briallen, no! Don't touch it! It's a wild animal - it might bite you and then we'll have to take you to the hospital to get a shot," said Meda, ignoring Will. Their bickering had put her in a bad mood and even though she knew Will had said nothing wrong, she was still angry.

"It's okay. It has to be a trained owl or something because it has some paper tied to its leg, like a homing pigeon," said Briallen with excitement. She took the paper off the owl's foot and unrolled it. The owl flew away as soon as it was free of the letter. Her eyes grew wide with wonder as she read. "It's... it's a letter from the Rosewood Finishing School for Young Witches. It's an invitation for me to be a student there! And they sent a list of supplies like - oh! oh! - and there's a field trip to the Salem Witches Institute!"

Will was the first one to get over the initial shock of not only what he heard his daughter say but also her immediate acceptance of something as bizarre as a school for witches. He stood up and went to the chair with the owls, and removed another letter from a smallish gray owl. He cleared his throat, glanced at Meda who was now eyeing the owls warily, and read the invitation he had opened. "This one is from the Lawhorn Institute of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Texas... Someone is playing a practical joke on us. A very bizarre and unfunny practical joke. Meda - d'you think it might be the Byrnes?"

Briallen removed the letters from the rest of the owls and watched them fly out the window as she unrolled the first of the five that were left. Meda looked over the invitation to Lawhorn that Will had handed over, her brows furrowed in confusion.

"This is too over the top for the Byrnes. Besides, this is more along the lines of what they do at Halloween and unless they've experienced a sudden insanity, I'm sure they know it's still July," said Meda. "Look at this, it's written in calligraphy on parchment! Somebody took their time writing this... and the others as well. And the things listed on the supplies and book list... dragon hide gloves? A wand?"

Will glanced down at his hands, as if they might hold the answer. It was then, through his fingers, that he noticed on the coffee table the corner of an envelope with what looked like his father's handwriting on it. He pushed aside the bills and junk mail to see a letter marked urgent, but not by the post office. The urgent was written in the same handwriting as the address.

"Glen Haven School of Magic, Legerdemain School of Magic, Drachewald Institute for Witches and Wizards, Lambency Beacon Academy of Magic, and Bergamot Academy for the Magically Gifted," Briallen read off from the multiple envelopes in her hands.

"Bergamot Academy? My father's... no, just a coincidence," said Will, trailing off as he opened his father's supposedly urgent letter. He read through it quickly and shook his head. "Not a coincidence. According to my father. Here, Meda."

He tossed the letter on the table in front of his wife and left the room. Briallen had stopped reciting the supplies lists just in time to hear the front screen door snap shut and the sputtering of an engine as Will started his truck. Meda picked up the letter, skimmed it, and put her hand to her lips for just a second before rushing after Will, leaving Briallen alone. As soon as her mother was out of sight, Briallen eagerly reached for her grandfather's letter to see for herself what had finally set her parents off.

My Dearest William, Meda, and Briallen:

I only hope this letter arrives in time. I've sent it through the post so as not to immediately alarm you. Unfortunately, your post is not quite as fast as our delivery owls. I suppose it is my own fault, however, for not letting you all know sooner what I have known for some time and suspected for even longer: your daughter, my lovely granddaughter, Briallen, is a witch. And, sincerely, I mean this in the best possible way for as I'm sure you have all deduced by now, I myself am a wizard.

Shortly, she shall no doubt be inundated with acceptance letters from every school for magical learning in the country, including the very one I am in charge of, Bergamot Academy. The name of Bevin holds a certain prestige that will not be overlooked. And no, William, this is not a joke. You may not know everything about me son, but you know who I am - you know my character and that I am not one to joke about family or education.

I understand and expect that you will all have many questions and I promise that they will be answered in time. I will send my own owl, Leto, so that you may answer my letter soon. I would prefer to explain all of this in person, rather than through letters.

As Always, With Much Love, Cal Bevin

P.S. I'm not so cavalier as to assume Briallen will automatically attend Bergamot, of course. I expect and encourage her to review all of the invitations that she will receive. Where she is to spend the most crucial years of her education is a very important decision and I trust that she will know which is best for her.

Briallen folded the letter and closed her eyes. A small smile spread across her face. She had always known that she was different.