01_-_The_Alchemyst

remember back to when you were fifteen?”
“Vividly,” Scathach said grimly. “Wasn’t that about the time I visited
you in Babylon and you tried to marry me off to King Nebuchadnezzar?”
“I’m sure you’re wrong,” Dora said happily. “I think that was later.
Though he would have made an excellent husband,” she added. She looked
up at Sophie and the girl found herself reflected in the mirrors that were the
Witch’s eyes. “There are two things I must teach you. To protect yourself—
that is simplicity itself. But instructing you in the magic of Air is a little
trickier. The last time I instructed a humani in Air magic, it took him sixty
years to master the basics, and even then he fell out of the sky on his first
flight.”
“Sixty years.” Sophie swallowed. Did that mean she was destined to
spend a lifetime trying to control this power?
“Gran, we haven’t got that sort of time. I doubt we’ve even got sixty
minutes.”
Dora glared into a mirror and her reflection looked out from the glass of
an empty picture frame. “So why don’t you do this, you’re such an expert,
eh?”
“Gran…” Scathach sighed.
“Don’t ‘Gran’ me in that tone of voice,” Dora said warningly. “I’ll do
this my way.”
“We don’t have time to do it the traditional way.”
“Don’t talk to me about tradition. What do the young know about
tradition? Trust me, when I’m finished, Sophie will know all that I know
about the elemental Air magic.” She turned back to Sophie. “First things first:
are your parents alive?”
“Yes,” she said, blinking in surprise, not sure where this was going.
“Good. And you talk to your mother?”
“Yes, almost every day.”