Chosen (9781742844657) Read Online Free Page A

Northern Ireland, after all. You’re one or the other, even if you’re neither, which is my category. I suppose someone in my family, way back, might have been a real one, but I didn’t think so.
    You don’t get many Protestant or Catholic witches.
    â€˜No worries,’ the driver said, waving once as she closed the doors behind me.
    The bus rumbled again, its ancient engine sputtering loudly as it continued on its journey. That’s what had woken me. No big deal. Nothing to be paranoid about. I looked up at the sky. I needed to get a grip. The clouds were grey and low, but harmless. The weather lady on the news had predicted rain this afternoon, but no storms. I could relax.
    Naturally, I’d forgotten my umbrella, despite the weather lady’s warning, so if I was to avoid being rained on I should probably hurry and get home. I zipped up my jacket and hurried along the quiet street.
    I’d lived in this neighbourhood for three years, but it still didn’t feel like home. I didn’t know any of my neighbours, not even the people in the houses right next to mine, whereas in my childhood home I’d known the whole street and heaps of kids living nearby. Other witch kids, mostly, because our old neighbourhood had been home to several witch families. Maybe that was the problem with this neighbourhood. No magic. Sorcerers just didn’t tend to live in secluded, dull North Irish suburbia, or at least not within like twenty kilometres of our place. You’d hardly think anyone lived around here, I reflected as I crossed the silent road. People just stayed inside their houses unless they were getting into their car to go somewhere more interesting.
    I turned a corner and kicked a stone. It clattered across the road and rolled into a puddle from yesterday’s rain. I felt that disappointment you get when your game ends prematurely. Oh, well. There would be other rocks, no doubt.
    As I passed the puddle, something compelled me to look down. My stone lay prone in the murky water amongst other stones. Was it a trick of the light, or was something glinting? I tilted my head, and saw again the glint of something shiny. A coin? The first drops of rain struck the surface of the water, marring my view, so I leaned down and scooped it out. At first, I felt nothing in my hand, and reached again, but noticed that my fingers had indeed closed around something.
    My prize was more of a river pebble, I saw now, smooth, round and flat. Bizarrely, weightless, like it was hollow. Unassuming, and unshiny, until I turned it in my hand and saw a silvery engraving on its other side. The design was of a roughly symmetrical tree, like a Celtic tree of life. I knew I’d seen it before, probably many times, but for a long moment couldn’t place where.
    It came to me suddenly.
    â€˜White Elm,’ I murmured, recognising the tree as the symbol of the magical world’s governing council. Thirteen of the world’s most gifted sorcerers worked together to regulate the use of magic, maintain secrecy of our kind from the non-magical community and monitor the goings-on of sorcerers everywhere. They were like our politicians, our judges, our police and our social workers all rolled into one entity. I’d never met any of them, but three years ago, immediately after the tragedy that had killed my parents and older brother, I’d received a letter from them, offering condolences and providing my sister with best contact details for emergencies now that she would be a teenager raising a minor on her own. Days later, we’d received another letter, congratulating my sister on coming of age on her twentieth birthday – the first day of adulthood in magical culture.
    We’d kept the second letter, but tossed out the first one in a clean-up five months ago when we’d realised that the directions we had for an emergency were to contact one Lisandro, a man who no longer even worked for the