Chapter One

The day that everything changed for Nia started out like any other. Looking back, there was nothing distinctive about it that she could have pointed to.

The coach journey was taking forever, and with a class of bored sixteen-year-olds on board that would ordinarily be a recipe for chaos. But not with Mr Adeyemi in charge. He was that rarest of beasts: a teacher able to inspire a class of inner-city kids with his passion for history, and retain control over them without being an over the top disciplinarian.

“We’ll be there in half an hour or so” he said over the intercom, sitting at the front opposite the driver, half turned around in his seat “and so don’t forget the competitions! – I’ll be giving prizes for the best photo, best video and best printed presentation! I can answer any questions you might have and the deadline for all entries is midday on Monday.”

His prizes were not to be sniffed at – they were genuinely worth working for, but that was not the only reason he got and kept their attention. He was an adult that they knew they could go to with their problems and they also knew he would deal with them to the best of his ability and would do so in absolute privacy. He had coached and mentored a sizeable percentage of the class through pregnancy scares, being arrested by the police and gang related problems – not to mention the more usual school related issues of exam nerves and actually understanding the subject. He knew who to talk to on the estate to make the school – or at least his classroom – into neutral territory. His status in their eyes was what came from keeping the youngest half-brother of the local top man out of prison when the police came asking for character references.

Nia sat halfway down the left hand side of the bus amongst her usual friend group, rolling her eyes with all of them at his never-ending enthusiasm for his subject, but also huddling down with them as soon as he stopped talking to compare notes on which competition category they would all enter.

“I’m gonna go for the photo one, yeah? Seems like the best reward for the least work, you know?”

Shanice grinned at that “You making laziness into a virtue again?” Nia mock-punched her arm, “You know it! – and besides: as soon as I have the winning photo, I can get down to taking in the ambience of a globally significant cultural site” she said, doing a fair impression of Mr Adeyemi’s scouse accent. They all snorted with laughter at this, but without any malice in it; Adeyemi had earned affectionate teasing, compared to the usual vicious mockery that most of their teachers received.

Kayla told them “I am gonna go for the written presentation: I can use it as part of my application to Uni. You can include your photos if you want: I’ll give full credit.”

“You know damn well you’ll give full credit girlfriend!” Nia semi-growled to her, and then changed her tone for “you still thinking of going for the full uni route then?”

“Yeah. From what he said” with a quick flick of the gaze towards the front of the coach “it’s one of the best ways out of here. I’ll go for Aston or Brum uni and then live at home and there’s a load of grants and funding he’d help me apply for. So I wouldn’t have to be paying rent like I would if I left Brum, and mum would not need to contribute towards anything, I mean, I’d still be taking out loans and all that, and it’d be a lot of work” her eyes got unfocussed as she briefly envisioned how much work, both academic and part-time to support herself, and then snapped back “but – you know – you gotta work to get out, innit?”

The group nodded in unconscious unison. They were not ashamed of where they came from, but they knew at first hand exactly how hard life was in the Newtown suburb. Life choices were severely limited by the deprivation and pervasive crime, and any route to a better life would take a lot of work.

After several moments of pregnant silence, Nia consciously changed the subject to a far lighter one, in fact one of their favourite topics of speculation: “So… any news on whether he’s straight or gay?”

The common view was that no male teacher could be as empathetic and genuinely caring as he was, and still be straight. They found it endlessly fascinating to discus and obsessed about the smallest clue. The most recent item of evidence was the extremely stylish scarf he was wearing: even though it was the middle of summer, it was the middle of an English summer, and so everyone had come dressed in layers, fully prepared for anything from a thunderstorm to a heatwave. And possibly both, on the same day.

Leah piped up for the first time, dragging her nose out of her phone where she’d been involved in a very long beef session with her cousin over a TikTok video: “Well – I know for sure he looks at girls like a straight man does.”

All heads turned towards her at this pronouncement. Leah was one of the white girls in the class and had turned “not giving a fuck” into an art-form. She was very openly gay and also very, very goth. “Oh yeah – I have seen how he looks at the girls in the class, and it is definitely how a straight man looks at women.”

“But” and here she held up a stern finger and even waggled it at them all “just because he’s straight doesn’t mean he’s a perv!”

The god-tier delivery of this line had them all cracked up – exactly as Leah intended. She basked in their laughter for a long minute, and then continued “He might be attracted to women, but he ain’t ever gonna do anything dodgy – you get me? – trust me: I can tell these things, looking at the whole heterosexual thing from the outside, you know? He’s a proper gent that one.”

“Amen sister” came a much deeper voice from across the aisle: Amari Williams was one of the boys in the class that you did not mess with: his family were involved in lot of the local criminal activity and in person he was frankly intimidating: six foot two of well-built, athletic youngster. He held up his hand for a high-five from Leah. “He one of the good ones, yeah? Ain’t nobody messing with him while I’m around.”

They all silently digested this for a moment, until Amari’s strong features cracked into a grin, “And my money is with Leah on this one: he gon’ be a proper fancyman when he goes on a date: he gon’ be all posh and polite… - he gon’ be beatin’ them off with a cricket bat I tell ya!”

They all smiled at this image, and Amari concluded with a drop into his parents Jamaican accent “dat man deserve it all yuh know.”

Leah cracked a huge smile and turned to face Amari fully, putting out her finger to point at him – not poking him, never that with a kid like Amari – and said “Did you just say you wanted Mr Adeyemi” in her best, code-switched Received Pronunciation cut-glass accent “to get laid?”

Amari managed to maintain composure for a long breath, and them mirrored her code-switch and said in the tones of a BBC news reader “Yes. Yes I did.”

The note-perfect delivery of this line caused everyone within earshot to erupt into howls of laughter in the typical schoolkids on a field trip style, even to the point of drawing Mr Adeyemi’s attention. He looked down the aisle of the coach, and saw his students happy and laughing and very visibly beamed in pride back at them. He was not so insecure that he needed to lay down any kind of authority trip on them: avoiding pointless discipline was just one more of the many reasons they all appreciated him.

---

Five minutes out from Stonehenge and the thunderstorm that had been threatening all morning finally broke, and the heavens opened and the rain came down so hard they could hear it on the roof of the coach like gravel was being thrown onto it.

Mr Adeyemi came onto the intercom again, and announced “Well… - perhaps we’ll do the visitors centre first then…” eliciting a ripple of smiles with his excellent timing and delivery.

The coach pulled up into one of the extra long bays reserved for them, and Mr Adeyemi peered through the front window, getting his bearings and working out the most direct route to the visitor centre. He grabbed his coat from the overhead rack and started to pull it on, and said into the intercom “Now then ladies and gents: let’s show these… rural types… exactly how the inner-city elite from Birmingham behaves!”

Another light ripple of laughter, and then he added, in a more serious tone: “Don’t act up boys and girls or we will not be able to do these things any more… - you hear me?”

“No worries sir.”

“We gotchu fam.”

“We hear you Mr Adeyemi.”

They all started filing off the coach in that chaotic process that always seems to take five times as long as it should. As Nia finally got to the stairs and set foot into the cool, wet air, she threw her hand up in a straight-from-the-movies pose and channelled her inner thunder-god, and called out in a clear, firm voice “I summon the lightning!” and pointing to a tree at the side of the car park.

Even though this was a spur-of-the moment thing, she actually threw her will into the act, focusing it down to a diamond point of undeniable command, just as the books on Wicca said to do.

And the lightning obeyed her.

A massive bolt of actinic bright light slammed down from the sky into the tree, and for a long moment maintained the flow of lightning. The writhing snake of brilliantly white light thrust down through the body of the tree for a sliver of suspended eternity.

The sound hit them like a wall collapsing on them, battering them back with its force.

Everyone stood in stunned silence for long seconds, senses struggling to compensate from the sudden overwhelming overload. A single “holy shit” breathed in awe summed up the feelings of everyone as Mr Adeyemi stepped up and summoned up a voice that showed immense self control, as well as extensive theatre training. “Everyone on the coach! – stay there and don’t come out here! Sit on the floor, shut the door and don’t touch anything metal.”

“You hear me?”

“We hear you sir!” Amari boomed back, already shutting the door. “You heard the man! – everyone sit yo’ ass down NOW and keep hands off anything metal….”

Mr Adeyemi turned to the half of the class that had already exited, and boomed out “Into the building now the rest of you! – quick walk, don’t run but don’t faff!”

As he himself started to walk, he turned to say to Nia “and don’t do that again!” as a way of relieving the tension when he realised she was still standing in the exact same position, stock still and unmoving with a rictus of shock on her face. He put an arm around her shoulder and said to her in gentle tones “Nia – we need to get out of this storm now.”

He cast his eyes ahead through the torrential rain, and caught sight of Shanice and Leah, and called them over to help.

“I think she’s in shock girls: help me get her out of the rain.”

Leah took note that even in this emergency, his hands were up around her shoulders and not in any way inappropriate. “Proper gent” she thought to herself as she came up on Nia’s other side and started to get her walking.

Nia was in a fugue of utter disbelief: she had felt the lightning come down and knew it was in response to her actions… - she had cast an actual… spell for want of a better word. She had reached out with her will and used something within herself to pull the lightning down out of the storm, and there was just no better term for that than “magic”.

She was not able to respond to any external stimulus for long minutes. They got her into the visitor centre and sat her down and pressed the universal English solution to any disaster into her hands – a cup of hot, sweet tea. She sat cradling it for long moments and then in a reflexive action raised it to her mouth and took a sip that became a mouthful, and before she became aware of her actions she had downed the whole mug in several convulsive gulps.

Circling around in her head in an infinite loop was the absolute, utter impossibility of what she had just done, There was zero doubt whatsoever in her mind that she had just literally called down lightning from a storm using a spell to wield magic. She could not deny this to herself in her innermost thoughts where she was only ever honest with herself. She was as certain of what had happened as she was of her own name and identity.

That was not the problem that caused her current state.

The problem was that what had happened was impossible by all known law of physics. Oh, for sure – Wiccanism was based on the core concept of casting spells as an inherent part of its model of worship… - but everything she had read on the subject cautioned her to realise that the spells cast were more spiritual and symbolic than anything else and that actual physical effects “in the cold light of day” just did not happen. One book she’d read even used the specific example of “its not as if you will ever be able to call down lightning from the skies.”

And yet she had.

This was very far from spiritual or symbolic… - this was comic-book movie level of insanely intense actual real world physical effects from magic.

When her eyes focused again and she came back to herself she saw Leah, Shanice and Kayla sitting around her in a girl-support-huddle, and Mr Adeyemi standing over them with a look of worry on his face.

She took several deep breaths and struggled to calm herself down enough to talk coherently She raised the mug to her lips again, noting in a distant manner how most of her lipstick had come off and was now lined around the rim of the mug, and that she’d need to reapply it, and when she found that it was now empty she used it to stall for time and stared down dazedly into it until someone got the hint and procured another mug for her.

She took it and held it up to inhale its rich smell: the scent was proper, no-nonsense builders tea, hot enough to melt lead, strong enough for the spoon to stand up by itself and sweet enough to cause diabetes by just looking at it.

Her head wobbled groggily and she understood that this was only partially an act, and that she was almost exactly as shocked as she was letting on.

The caffeine and the sugar worked their way on her, and she focused her eyes in coming to a decision.

Tell no one about this.

No one.

Literally not one person on this earth. Not her best friends in the world, Shanice, Kayla and Leah. Not her mom or grandma. Absolutely, flat-out no one ever. This was so far beyond the bounds of what was normal and acceptable that her mother’s Jamaican conservatism was the only thing she could think of: “don’t be telling anyone our business” had been drummed into her since childhood. If anyone knew that this was anything other than a freak coincidence, if people knew she had done this on purpose then she knew, with total and absolute certainty that her life would be changed forever. It would be one of those defining “before and after” moments that divided your life into defined segments. And she would not be in control of anything if this got out: she could foresee she’d be national if not global news, hounded and pursued.

No: keep this secret and she would stay in control of her life.

She finally lifted her eyes from the dregs of tea in her mug, and met those of her friends, and quoted the words of the immortal bard: “holy FUCKING shit! – did you SEE that!”

As soon as the words left her mouth a spontaneous cheer erupted around her and she had to look up and refocus her eyes to see. The whole class was in the cafe with her, and had been huddling close, pretending to talk about something – anything – else, whilst shamelessly eavesdropping. As soon as she spoke, the relief that she was fine had erupted into the unplanned celebration that quickly overwhelmed her.

Every single person in their class had seen it, and every single person was now retelling the story of the – to them – amazing coincidence and immaculate timing – of her “calling down the lightning”.

Looking over to the back of the room she saw something she’ had literally never expected to see in her life: Amari and his closest mates were in animated, hand-waving conversation with two actual, uniformed police officers. Who were paying rapt attention as the young kid – at any other time their natural enemy – told them the story of her actions.

The police were wide-eyed and utterly caught up in the story, and she overheard Amari for a moment: “For real bruv: I saw it with my own eyes! – she put her hand out, just like Thor in the movies, said “I summon the lightning” and pointed to that tree and it actually came down and hit the tree! For real!”

Then her attention was caught by some movement from behind and to the left as another police officer came over to her, and she felt herself naturally bristle, used to nothing more than intimidation and apathy from the police. He came to a stop a polite distance from her and hooked his thumbs up into his hi-vis jacket, and said “Miss? – are you all good? – they been taking care of you?”

And all she could do was nod her head up at him. He beamed down at her confirmation and looked around the group in a conspiratorial way, and added “now then: who’d like to see the CCTV from the car-park cameras of it?”

Never in his life had he expected to get cheered to the rafters by a group of inner-city kids from Birmingham, but that’s what happened. They all went mad for the idea and he held up his finger in the universal “one second” gesture and waved over Mr Adeyemi. He tapped at his phone for a few seconds and then Mr Adeyemi looked down and forwarded it to Nia’s school email address only.

Nia looked down at the notification on her phone and immediately played it… and was simultaneously disappointed and relieved to see that it really didn’t show much detail and was in fact fairly blurred. You could see her as a figure doing the dramatic pose and pointing as she came down the stairs of the coach, and then the lightning came down and hit the tree and totally overwhelmed the camera sensors with its white light. She watched it a couple of times and called Mr Adeyemi over. She asked him a couple of questions and he disappeared and came back with a member of the visitor centre staff. He pointed a remote control at one of the flat screens hanging from the ceiling and Mr Adeyemi tapped at his phone and quickly connected to the screen and played the video on it.

There was an instant buzz of conversation at the absolute coolness of her “summoning the lightning” and the video was put on a loop. She saw Mr Adeyemi type another email to the whole class group and when she got it she saw him tell them all that she didn’t want to share the video with anyone as she was still shook up. Most of the class saw this and shrugged with a “fair enough” or “hells yeah – I’d be shook too!” level of equanimity and she flashed Mr Adeyemi a look of thanks with her eyes.

“Now then, now then! – I am awarding Nia Jones first prize in the video competition!” announced Mr Adeyemi, “as I do NOT think that anyone will take a better one!” to a ripple of laughter from the class.

“But – we did come here to learn about stuff apart from lightning and we still have two and a bit hours until we need to get back on the coach – and the rain has finally stopped, so let’s all go out and see what we came here to see!”

The man was an absolute master at the art of herding cats which is what it must be like to try and keep control over their class. Still buzzing with what had just happened, most of them wandered outside to inspect the actual monument and a member of staff held up one of those “I am here!” sticks and announced he was starting a guided tour for them.

Mr Adeyemi ambled along and stopped off at their table and told them “You four are free to do whatever you want. You can wait here until you’re ready to leave, or you can jump on a tour at any time. Don’t feel stressed to have to do anything – you hear? You three look after her and I will give you all one free “get out of any one homework assignment” card, OK?”

“OK sir!” they all chimed together, and they slumped down in their seats, all of them trying to process. After he’d left, Leah said to them all “see that? – he makes sure you’re OK but doesn’t take any risk of anything at all happening and makes sure it is us girls looking after you. Geezer is an absolute diamond!”

Nia realised she was right and was starting to clear her head, when an older member of staff came bustling over from behind the cafe counter, carrying a tray.

“Here you go my dears: a mug of hot chocolate for all of you and a nice slice of cake for you my love. You must have had a hell of a shock! We’ll be telling the story of this for years you know! You just sit there until you feel better, alright?”

They all sat in bemused but grateful surprise at the kindness of the random lady and inhaled their chocolate.

Before they had to leave, Nia was even able to go on one of the tours. It all helped to keep her mind busy and away from the ferocious mental chewing over of just what had happened here today, which she wanted to indulge in at the earliest possible opportunity, but which she also wanted quite solitude for.

The moment she got back onto the coach, she fell asleep as a reaction from the huge over-stimulation, and barely woke up when the coach pulled into the school car park back home in Newtown. The whole coach had had a whip-round and paid for an Uber for the three minute drive home that would otherwise gave been a ten minute walk. Before she knew it she was in her own bed and in a deep, restorative sleep.