Free The Alchemists Academy: Stones to Ashes Book 1 by Kailin Gow

occurred to him that, as a toad, he wouldn’t be able to do the same. He hopped after her as quickly as he could. He made it through just before Ms. Preville slammed it after herself. Wirt tried not to think about just how flat it would have made him had he moved a little slower, without a great deal of success.
    He sat there panting croakily until the teacher had disappeared down the hall and stepped into the transport tube. Now all he had to do was sit and wait for the spell to wear off…
    Except, had that been the version of the spell he had used? Wirt had, with Ender Paine coming in, instinctively said the first version of the spell that came to mind. He had a horrible feeling that it might have been the permanent one. In which case, with no vocal chords to undo it, he was stuck as a toad.
    No. He couldn’t be. Could he? He couldn’t really be condemned to a life of hopping about on lily pads, catching flies with his tongue, and keeping a careful eye out for the shape of herons in the air, not after everything he’d been through. There had to be some way of undoing it. Wirt cast his mind back to Ms. Genovia’s class, trying to recall everything she had said, while simultaneously trying to ignore the parts that had involved boots. Hadn’t she joked about having to spend years looking for a princess? At the time, it had seemed like a terrible thing to Wirt. All that effort, all that searching, and when it came to it, even if you did somehow find one, you probably wouldn’t get much further than the castle moat.
    He had one slight advantage there though, because Wirt already knew exactly where he was going to find his princess. With a happy croak, he hopped his way into the transport tube.
     

Chapter 9
     
    T he ride to the landing where Alana and Priscilla had their room was a terrifying one. The tubes were bad enough when you were human shaped, but at least then they had probably been designed with you in mind. The effects of the forces involved on an amphibian body meant that Wirt spent the whole journey wondering if he was about to become nothing more than a faint greenish stain on one of the walls. He shot out of the tube at the end like the contents of some kind of toad cannon, landing clumsily, before hopping his way to the door he recognized as the correct one.
    It was closed, which created some problems. Wirt tried staring at it and waiting, but he didn’t have the patience for it, so he tried hopping at it instead. It felt a bit like shoulder charging a cliff face, but he succeeded in giving the door a couple of solid thumps before settling back in front of it.
    “Who is it?” asked the voice of his potential savior. The door swung open to reveal Priscilla, dressed in a leaf green ball gown that almost matched Wirt’s current skin tone. She looked round, over Wirt’s head, before shrugging and shutting the door again. Wirt croaked angrily, before launching himself at the door again.
    “This isn’t funny!” Priscilla said, tearing the door open and scanning the hall. She looked like she was going to slam the door again, so Wirt decided to try croaking. Slowly, Priscilla looked down.
    “Eek! A toad! Well, Ms. Genovia told me what to do with you .”
    From Wirt’s perspective, it was a bit like startling King Kong, particularly since Priscilla brought her foot down onto the patch of ground he would have occupied had he not had the foresight to hop out of the way. It was like being in the middle of an earthquake. Wirt hopped this way and that, avoiding Priscilla as best he could, croaking at her reproachfully as he did so.
    “Priscilla, what are you doing?” Wirt had never been so relieved to hear someone’s voice as he was to hear Alana’s right then. Priscilla seemed almost as glad, pausing in her stomping long enough to give the other girl an imploring look.
    “Oh, Alana, it’s been terrible. There’s this… this toad . And it was knocking on my door. And I think I must not have the right