“Mama!” Nethan wept. Morrah dropped her staff and wiped his tears with her sleeve.
“There, now, dearest one,” she said. “We are safe again, do you see? Lift your eyes.”
The angry Troksir sought about them for the vanished intruders. The Margrave was berating his wizard for letting them go.
“All safe?” Nethan asked, his lip trembling.
“All safe.” She helped the trembling girl to her own deeply cushioned armchair and settled her in with a warm shawl tucked around her shoulders. “You are safe, too, my dear.”
“Thank you, Honorable,” the girl said, quietly. She was pale under the grime and bruises, but she had regained her dignity now that they were out of danger.
Morrah turned to Oakleaf and Tansy, who stood at the circle’s edge, their hands clasped tightly and their heads lowered in shame. “All is well. I am not angry. Tansy, take care of her highness. Oakleaf, take a message to the king. His daughter has been rescued. We await an escort to convey her safely home.”
“We obey, Honorable!” Oakleaf exclaimed, much relieved. The elves sprang to fulfill their duties. Oakleaf disappeared out the window, and Tansy flitted over to pour a glass of wine for their guest. Morrah turned to Nethan, who sat on the floor, his lower lip trembling.
“Now, I’ve told you and told you to stay away when I am performing the great works,” Morrah said, sitting down and gathering him onto her knee. “Why did you run into the circle? It was dangerous.”
Nethan pointed to the glittering faces of the Margrave and his court. “They pretty,” he said. “Fun watching.”
Morrah raised an eyebrow. Their brief appearance in the court had caused chaos to descend. The Troksir were rushing around, pushing one another and turning over furniture, looking for the escaped hostage. The Margrave shouted and jumped up and down, his golden face gleaming with fury. More guards rushed into the room, responding to their lord’s commands. They slipped on the bodies of their fallen comrades, landing with a loud crash on the floor. The wizard threw red balls of flame into corners, hoping to surprise invisible enemies. All he succeeded in doing was setting fire to the mismatched arrases that hung on the walls. More guards ran in with buckets of water, trying to extinguish the blaze, only to douse one another and the hapless wizard. The confusion caused the Margrave to become ever angrier. Morrah laughed, her face suddenly young. It was as good as a comedy play! It even elicited a low chuckle from the princess huddled in the armchair. Morrah embraced Nethan, enchanted once again by his own brand of magic.
“You know, my son,” she said, plumping him on her knee, “it is fun. Let us watch together.”
TOUCHING FAITH
Alexander B. Potter
Alexander B. Potter resides in the wilds of Vermont, editing anthologies and writing both fiction and nonfiction. His short stories have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies including the award-winning Bending the Landscape: Horror volume. He edited Assassin Fantastic and the award-winning Sirius: The Dog Star for DAW Books. A third anthology, Women of War, co-edited with Tanya Huff, was published by DAW in 2005.
SOMETHING TELLS ME to look up even before the whump of impact. Looking right at it, I still feel more than see the dark fluffy shape hit the kitchen window with a sound like it should break the glass. The tiny bird drops like a stone.
I jump up, heading for the front door at a run, but Mama calls me back from her place at the sink, washing dishes. “Don’t touch it, punkin’. Call the cats in if you want, but don’t touch it. It’s probably just stunned and you know the mother might reject it if you handle it.”
She’s right, I do know that. Nine years of Wild Kingdom and Animal Planet obsession hasn’t gone to waste on me. I also know she’s a lot more concerned about whatever bugs might be on a bird than if the baby might be rejected. She doesn’t even like me picking up old feathers off the ground. I have some hid under my bed anyway, but I never tell anyone because of the time Cat brought home a shoe box with salamanders in it and hid it under her bed and they got out and disappeared. Mama was convinced the things would get into the walls and grow bigger.
I actually sort of like the idea of giant salamanders living in our walls. I sometimes put my ear up to the wood paneling to listen for them, but I never hear anything. I think probably they hide from me. They know when I’m listening, and get all still and quiet.
The salamanders drop from my mind as I run down the front steps, hollering back “I’ll be careful.” I think I spend most of my life saying “I’ll be careful.” Well, that and “Yes, I washed my hands.” Bouncing off the steps, I round the corner of our trailer at a run, skidding to a stop and searching the side yard. No cats in sight, to my relief. But the bird? The little fluff ball almost disappears in the grass, and I kneel carefully beside it.
The lawn is cool under my knees. The sun doesn’t hit this side of the house, the western side, because of the tree line. I sit within touching distance, but just breathe. It’s so small. Definitely just a baby. The tiny eye I can see glitters at me, open. It’s aware, but the head is cocked off at a funny angle. I don’t think it’s just stunned.
I lean down, closer and closer, until the pointy green blades tickle my chin. The feathers on the puffy breast barely lift. My left fingers enter my field of vision and for a minute I almost think they’re someone else’s. I don’t remember giving them permission to move. But that hangnail on the thumb is definitely mine and then the feel of the downy feathers registers on my fingertips, in my brain.
A pulse of heat flares down my arm, the blood pounding in every one of my fingers. The two fingers resting against the bird almost sizzle, as if I’m touching coals like the one Jennifer picked up by accident when she was a baby, because it was so pretty and orange. Her first finger is still slightly bent with the scar tissue. Never did straighten out fully, after that. Red hot coals burn in my mind as I jerk back from the bird, surprised.
But not half so surprised as when those little wings suddenly twitch and spread, the tiny head realigning. The baby draws in on itself, then flutters into a takeoff, rising and falling down the lawn until it finally gets enough lift to stay in the air.
I push myself back to my feet, staring after it. It must have been just stunned after all, my brain says, like a good little soldier. It tries, my brain does. Doesn’t do much good though, because I always know when the brain is just lying to make everybody feel better.
That bird wasn’t stunned.
More to the point, I knew I could help before I ever touched it. I don’t know why I knew, I just did. Whatever it was drew me up and out of the house, got me onto the grass beside it in the first place, knew. And I believed it before I’d even thought about it. The same belief got my hand out and moving before my brain could tell me it wouldn’t do any good.
The same way I believe it now. I know what just happened. I know I healed a baby bird with my hand. No one else would believe me and everyone would say the little bird was just stunned and . . . well, that’s fine, really. Doesn’t much matter, the way I see it.
I stare down at my perfectly ordinary looking hand. Yep, it’s a hand. My hand. With red paint from the picture I’d been working on, the one with the wheelbarrow that was sort of ending up in the sky, for some reason. I flex my fingers. Nothing happens. No heat, no sizzle, no nothing.
And I just know. It’s right there. Inside. Waiting. It’ll be back. Because I believe in it.
Very, very cool.
I turn to go back into the house. Gherkin now sits a few feet away, staring up at me with accusing yellow eyes. Blames me for letting lunch get away, I suppose. On my way past I scoop him up and bury my face in his sun-warm grey fur. He purrs. Forgiven, I think.
I go back inside and seeing me with the cat, Mama asks me if the bird is still out there. “No,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s fine. It flew away.”
I don’t say anything else to her. I don’t say anything to anyone. Not even Cat. Not any of my sisters, or my dad. I know
it was . . . special. Somehow, I know it means I’m special.
People have called me special all my life.
I just don’t think this is what they meant.
At school “special” has a meaning all its own, and it’s not a good one. Nobody wants to be in the special group, or go to special classes, or special sessions with the reading tutor lady or the speech therapist or the school counselor.
I get to go to all of them, except for speech therapy. I talk okay, just a little slow.
After my latest discovery with the bird, school seems even less important. Just another month or so before summer vacation anyway. But since I’m here, I figure I might as well put the place to use. I need more information and that’s supposed to be what school is about. So I try to find out more from the library, about healing with your hands. About faith healers.
This is Vermont. There isn’t much. Yankee practicality gets in the way of this sort of thing. ’Round these parts, seeing is believing. The only thing we take on faith is weather, and we don’t trust that.
Of course, I am looking in a grade school library at a little country school. The pickings are slim by definition. Highlights and Ranger Rick and junior Time just aren’t going to cut it.
I need more and I use the quiet of the library to try to puzzle out how to get it. The television has been a mixed bag. Nothing on my favorites . . . Discovery doesn’t do much with faith healing, not even on Unexplained Mysteries. Animal Planet has weird stories every once in a while about animals who sense something wrong with their humans, like dogs who smell tumors or whatever, but I knew that wasn’t what I was after. Flipping through channels I ran across some guy laying on hands. He’d call up sick people out of all the rows and rows of watchers, and put his hands on them and heal them. It didn’t look exactly like what had happened to me, but it was the closest I’ve seen yet.
I made note of the channel number, and checked the other religious stations too. My sisters thought it was downright weird when they’d catch me watching TV preachers, but Mama told them to leave me alone. She didn’t think much of TV preachers and didn’t mind saying so, but all she said was “watch out who you let tell you what the Bible says.” I nodded and told her I wasn’t exactly watching for religious or Biblical reasons.
She paused, looked at me in that way she does when my two and two just doesn’t add up to four, and then nodded and handed me a piece of rolled up pie dough with cinnamon and sugar baked into it. And told my sisters to let me watch what I wanted, and that they could take over the programming at 8 o’clock.
My sisters made too much of a thing about it, anyway. Not like I’m always watching the religious channels. After all, they don’t always play the healing shows. Sometimes it’s a nun with an eye patch.
The few healing shows I did see had a weird similarity I was starting to clue in to. They were all grown men, in suits. They either did the “laying on of hands,” as they called it, and shouted out or prayed, asking for the person to be healed, or they put their hands on the person’s head and . . . well, pretty much it looked like the preacher man would smack the sick person on the forehead. They always seemed to fall over. The sick person, that is. The preacher man generally stayed on his feet.
I didn’t see how that could be good for a sick person, but I was willing to assume they knew something I didn’t. For the time being, anyway. I wondered if that’s what my life was going to be. Doesn’t inspire much in the way of job prospects, but I guess that’s what people do, what people are, who do what I do.
Oddest of all, though, they all talked southern. Heavy accents, one and all. I’ve been practicing and I think I’ve got that down. I watch the Golden Girls in reruns with Mama and Daddy, and Blanche is perfect. If I keep her in my head and think “how would Blanche say it?” then I can hold onto the accent no problem. It’s starting to be second nature.
But because all the preacher men doing television healing were so much the same, I knew I needed more information before I went out and got a suit and a . . . congregation, I guess. I’d been raised to not trust the television, in general, and I didn’t trust the religious shows, in specific. They just didn’t ring any of my bells, and felt a little sketchy besides.
Seems like the healers out there now all think it’s the Lord working through them. Not exactly what it feels like to me. I know about the Lord, but I’m not completely sold. We don’t go to church but Mama reads the Bible and, well, Daddy owns one. He gave it to me last year. Didn’t look like it had ever been opened and Mama joked about that.
I’ve read parts of it, when I can make the words hold still. There are even a couple healing people in there. Overall it doesn’t feel much like me, and I’m not so sure about this Lord. Mama doesn’t push it even though she quotes it. She pretty much goes her own way on the whole religion thing. Which is maybe why these big churches and preacher men don’t make much sense to me.
But I tend to think it’s just because the whole religion thing doesn’t make much sense to me. The fact that healing is so connected to religion for all these other people is starting to worry me, actually. If you have to be religious to do this . . . I don’t know.
So I’m standing in my tiny Guilford School Library realizing that none of the magazine subscriptions here are going to help me. Forget the books. The Hardy Boys I don’t need. A book on Bigfoot is fascinating and a little scary, but not exactly helpful. My eyes wander over to the row of computers lined against the right side of the room. But we can only touch those when we’re assigned to, and I’m not. And when I am assigned to, there will be someone looking over my shoulder.
A sigh rises and falls in my chest. Not for the first time I wish we had one of the magic machines in our house. But Mama and Daddy and computers don’t mix. We couldn’t afford one even if they would get one.
“Come on, Evan. You don’t want to spend another entire recess inside. You’ve been here three days this week already and your class has library tomorrow.” Ms. Marks, the librarian, pops up on my left. “It’s beautiful out.”
I jerk my eyes away from the computers and look up at her. She has really black hair, but what always make me stare are her nails. She’s got nails like no other teacher here. Every single one is perfect, and long, and bright red. She even handles books funny because of it.
“Evan? Don’t you want to go outside?”
I blink and force my attention away from her nails to her face. “No,” I answer truthfully, before I remember I’m not supposed to say things like that. Normal kids like recess best. Normal kids always want to go outside. I hate recess. It’s one of the worst parts of school.
Teachers are always going on about how we need exercise, and should go out and get fresh air. I don’t mind the fresh air so much, but I don’t need exercise when all it involves is me making sure I stay far enough away from some of the more . . . aggressive kids.
Besides, the teachers just want us to go outside so they can get a break from us. It occurs to me that probably Ms. Marks wants to eat lunch. She’s looking at me with that puzzled look adults get around me. “But, yeah. I’ll go outside now,” I mumble, and skitter out from under her gaze.
Out on the playground I look around carefully, analyzing the various clusters of kids for levels of safety. That one is a definite no—the group playing basketball. The ones around the swings are reasonably safe to at least walk near, and the girls on the jungle gym won’t bother me. Won’t talk to me, probably, but won’t bother me. My course plotted out, I start off the long way around for the jungle gym.
“Hey retard . . .”
The voice comes from the direction of the basketball hoop. Just great. I keep walking, ignoring it, but within seconds I can sense them closing in from the right. Dylan steps directly in front of me.
I don’t bother to try to get by him. My eyes flick left and right. The recess monitor isn’t within sight. She must be up the other end of the field. The kids on the swings are carefully ignoring us. Big surpri
se. I sigh and stare at Dylan silently. I just need to wait until the monitor gets back down here.
“Where you been, sped? Tying your shoelaces? Or practicing the alphabet . . .”
His friends laugh. I just stand there. Considering some of the grades I’ve seen on his social studies tests, you wouldn’t think Dylan would be in the business of calling other people stupid. Doesn’t take much to ignore him though, since I know I’m not. Stupid, I mean. The doctors that the school wanted Mama to take me to all said so. They couldn’t quite figure out what was wrong with me, but they all said I was perfectly intelligent, given enough time to work things out. They think I might have some “learning disabilities” but they don’t know exactly what.
“Playing dolls with the kindergartners?” chimes in Julie from beside Dylan. “That’s about your speed.”
I shift my eyes to her and continue the blank stare. I’ve had adults tell me to stop looking at them like that. I don’t know what it is exactly, but something about my stare makes some people a little jumpy. I figure I can use all the jumpy I can get at the moment. Inside I sort of wish I had dropped by the kindergarten room to play dolls. Sounds kind of fun.
A shadow falls across us and I immediately think with relief that the monitor finally noticed something. But when I look up, it’s not the monitor. It’s Cat, and Jennifer is standing behind her, arms crossed. The wash of happy feeling starts at my toes and floods up through me at the glares on my sisters’ faces and the way Dylan and Julie and their friends back up. I see other heads turning to watch us from the swings, and the jungle gym. When seventh and eighth graders show up down here on our playground, the third and fourth graders notice.
Children of Magic Page 4
