Inherited Magic

by Andrew Gordinier

  The second class John was taking—Owen had convinced him to start slow but not easy—was English. John had thought it couldn't be that bad, but as the syllabus was handed out he saw nothing but reading assignments and a steady flow of papers to turn in. Owen had convinced him that if he was going to get an education that he should cover all the bases and do it right. “Be a well-rounded person, a Renaissance man.” As John was lamenting listening to Owen, the same young woman who had been late to his math class darted in late to this class, again muttering apologies. The instructor (an older woman, who said she had been teaching for forty years) said nothing but gave her a dirty look. John noticed her more completely this time and was happy she was in both his classes.

  Her hair was not dark; it was black, a thick lustrous black so deep that it seemed unnatural. It was braided into a long thick pony tail that hung well past her shoulder blades. She had brilliant dark eyes that flashed from under her dark lashes; her features were gentle and elegant. He was drawn to her dark brown skin though; it was flawless and held a luminous quality that he had first thought was his imagination, the lighting, or makeup, but as he stared, he saw that it was just her natural appearance. She was dressed simply, slacks and a red shirt that was most likely a uniform for a local “big box” discount store nearby. She caught him looking at her and smiled shyly, normally this sort of moment would have been awkward for John, but it wasn't and he even remembered to smile back at her before they both turned their attention back to class.

  After class, John tried to find her, but she had vanished out the door well before he could gather his senses or his books.

  Chapter 37

  The shop was closed Sunday, no exceptions. So it was strange to John when Owen told him to be at the shop at noon on Sunday. It was even stranger when Owen was waiting out front for him, the door still locked and the steel gate drawn. Owen would only explain that he had a surprise, and they hailed a cab to what looked like an abandoned and rundown warehouse on the south side.

  “This place belongs to a friend of mine.” Owen opened a side door that was almost rusted shut. “He used to run a small import export business when we were younger. The company went under, but he hung on to this place, and I look in on it now and again for him. I think he keeps it in case he needs a place to hide, but who knows.”

  “A mage?”

  “Yeah, he lives in Quebec.”

  “Is this one of the guys that owes you a favor?”

  “No, I owe him, but we are on good terms.”

  There were no offices, no subsections; it was just one enormous warehouse almost large enough to play football in. At one end, large rusty windowless doors led to the loading dock. Overhead, skylights let in some dim light through dirty panes. Dust and debris covered the floor, but the building gave off no smell of mildew and showed no signs that people had broken in. It was as if the doors had been locked, and the place was truly forgotten. Owen locked the door behind them, walked to the far end, and made sure the dock doors were locked tight still. John followed him out of curiosity about this place.

  “When things were still good, we had some great parties here after work.” Owen looked around at the dust and emptiness with sadness. “We would clear the loading docks on a Friday night, set up a bar by the doors, and put a grill out in the parking lot. If it was a good week, it was ribs and steak; if it was terrible, we had burgers and dogs. There were twenty of us and everyone kicked in what they could. One group of guys usually had their guitars with them so they would sit around and drink and play. Conrad would always take a couple of the stock boys and go buy some beer. Somehow, he always managed to return with more people than he left with. It was one of those rare things, kid. No one felt like it had to happen or made it happen; it just did. We would drink, eat, and dance . . . Hell, it was nothing for us to be here till midnight.” The smile that had been growing on Owen’s face faded as he touched those memories. “Nothing lasts forever though.”

  “What happened?”

  “Things changed. Regulations got tougher on the business and politics among mages turned bad. People moved on, and that was that. Now, I just look in on the place from time to time for Conrad.”

  John had never heard Owen talk about the past. It was one of those things he was curious about, but was never able to bring up. He knew so little about Owen beyond what he saw day to day, and it had been easy to imagine a mysterious past. Hearing him talk about the parties and lost friends made John see Owen in a normal light: not as a mage but as an everyday person. It did not diminish John’s respect for Owen, but made him feel closer, as if he had learned some small secret no else knew.

  “Enough of that crap! Time to work!” Owen clapped his hands together loudly.

  “Just tell me we're not cleaning this mess up . . .” It seemed a huge undertaking and John was exhausted from the first week of classes and work.

  “Not today.” Owen chuckled. “What do you notice about the walls?”

  The walls looked aged but well built, as if they could withstand much more than just time. When he looked at the patterns, he saw why. The walls had been altered so that the bricks were very dense and fused together. The mortar was decoration to hide the fact that the building was essentially one continuous piece of stonework. There were also some other patterns embedded in the walls that looked like they would affect vibrations and temperature.

  “Magical air conditioning?”

  “That's part of it; the other pattern is to muffle the noises inside the building.”

  “Cool.” It was not something John had thought of, but it gave him ideas about how to deal with his new neighbors who were keeping him up.

  “It comes in handy for days like today.”

  “What are we doing?”

  “Practicing.” Owen opened a new pack of cigarettes as he talked. “I've got you started on the small stuff and theory. So, as much as you think you know, it's nothing other than enough to keep you from killing yourself. Today, we are going to start pulling it all together and start using some real magic.”

  For the first time ever, John watched Owen lit his cigarette without a lighter, smoke leaping from the end as if by its own accord. “Never use magic for piddly shit; you'll get in the habit of doing it and do something stupid eventually. Respect the power that it is and don't waste it. As the last mages, we are allowed to see things other people can't and won't. It is a privilege that we cannot abuse.” Owen started walking towards the center of the warehouse. “Yet, if we don't become proficient at it, we do it a disservice. Magic is, by its very nature, an elegant thing and to be clumsy and rough with it is a waste. Do you know what Tai Chi is?”

  “Yeah, it's a martial art.”

  “Right, but what makes it different is that it focuses on the flow of energy through your body as you practice. It takes a flow of energy and moves it from being clumsy to efficient because it works with the flow of energy, and rather than fighting it, it directs it. Magic is the same way. Fire will burn just fine if you provide the initial spark.” To demonstrate, Owen picked up an old paper bag off the floor and touched his cigarette to it till it slowly began to burn. “But knowing how fire works gives you an advantage. You can raise the temperature by altering the pattern, you can make the paper drier to burn faster, force air into the fire to speed up the process, even prevent heat from escaping. Alone, each pattern works fine, but all together, working with the natural flow of the fire is devastating.” To drive the point home, Owen tweaked the needed patterns and the paper bag all but exploded as he dropped it.

  “Sometimes the very small affects the very large. There is a line in the Kabala that says: ‘As above, so below and as below, so above.’ Let's try another one: pick me up by my arm.” Owen held his arm outstretched in front of him.

  John tried first without magic and got nowhere.

  “What are you thinking?” Owen prodded.

  “Alter your mass?”

  “You forgot something.”


  “I can't alter a living pattern, so how about your clothing?”

  “Clever but you'd have to do a lot to get me anywhere. Try gravity.”

  “I didn't know we could do that.”

  “It's a bad idea to go messing with it directly, but you can create shadows where gravity is weaker, or focus it so that it is crushing. Be careful though, because gravity affects a lot of other things.” Owen showed him how to see the pattern and how to alter it till he could lift him.

  As the afternoon progressed, things got bigger and more complicated. Throwing lightning from a static charge, and leaping across the room without effort. Fire tricks by the dozens and ways to stay alive in bad situations like fires. There were raging tornadoes that sent dust spiraling around the warehouse as it followed John’s every whim. The scariest for John was forcing air out of water to inflate a balloon; he was terrified that Owen would make him try breathing underwater for real. He didn't, but the idea stressed John out till he couldn't focus well enough to get it to work right.

  The thing that became apparent through the afternoon and early evening as they practiced was the profound gap in what was known about magic. Owen warned not to push patterns in certain ways or to attempt things that worked in “theory” because they produced dangerous or deadly results. He demonstrated this by trying to teleport a can of soda across the warehouse; it exploded half way to its destination and filled the air with the smell of burnt metal. It was all lost knowledge that had either been forgotten or never passed on to students. According to Owen, there had to be a way to do it but no one knew how anymore . . . Or at least they weren't sharing.

  “Part of it has to do with our so-called system of self-government.” Owen explained during their dinner break sandwiches warmed by magic. “Since there is no real way to make a mage comply with or follow laws, a lot of conflicts are solved by just killing those who are deemed dangerous by order of a conclave. If it's a conflict between two mages that can't be solved by a conclave, then one of them issues a challenge to a duel. The result is that teachers get killed before they can pass on their knowledge or students are left with incomplete educations and go off on their own to teach what little they know.”

  “It almost sounds post-apocalyptic, “John said. “Survivors trying to keep bits of technology and science alive, losing parts as time goes by.” He found it frustrating because he had at first thought magic to be all powerful. But here it was, all but dead, and limited by the destruction wrought by the faults of the people it had empowered. “What about peace?”

  “There was an effort at it after World War 2. The war was brutal on everyone and mages had suffered horrible losses everywhere. So many died trying to defend their territories from invaders; others died in hiding or helping various resistance groups, and still more died trying to take advantage of the situation. There was an effort to set up an alliance that would settle disputes and codify laws to keep things civilized and peaceful.”

  “What happened?”

  “Someone started killing off people who came out in support of the idea. It wasn't long before people started blaming each other and what good will there was vanished back into eternal feuding.”

  “And more got lost . . .”

  “More gets lost every year,” corrected Owen.

  Chapter 38

  John somehow still thought of school as, well, school. It didn't seem so much like college, more a glorified high school in many ways. The age range was better than he had first thought: he was not one of the oldest students, far from it. There were people there in their 50s and 60s, but most of the older students were there for evening classes and seldom turned up during the day. It made John feel better though.

  What really lifted his spirits and shocked him was his sudden realization that he was good at math. It had never been his worst subject, but he found that now he had a purpose and need for it things were different. That is not to say that he didn't have to work at it or spend time on the homework but that he learned it, and it stuck with him. It was basic stuff, and he hadn't made any connections with how mathematics would help with magic and patterns, but he couldn't shake the feeling that it would.

  There was something else that lifted his spirits about school: the women. They were young, pretty, and everywhere. He couldn't do his homework in the cafeteria because it was too distracting to have so many walking by and being well . . . Attractive. One was more distracting than the others and that was the young Indian woman who was always late to at least one of the two classes they had together. He had learned during attendance that her name was Radha, and it was difficult for him to not repeat the name over and over. It had a mysterious quality to it that he couldn't escape. It was also difficult for him to shake the feeling that he was being the creepy stalker that Sandra and others had been so comfortable making him out to be. John's self-esteem had much improved since then, but it had not yet faced the trial by fire that is a woman’s approval and affection.

  Then there was the mysterious tribesman that would often stand in the corner of the class or follow John around. He would show up out of nowhere, literally, but John never saw him appear or vanish. It always happened when he blinked or looked away for a split second; he was starting to suspect that this was timed so that John wouldn't see how he was doing it. For someone so thin, he did have a strange penchant for junk food that baffled John. Nachos, burgers, slushies, and fried food of every variety seemed to be as consistent as his spear.

  It is when the strange becomes every day that the mundane, the humdrum normalcy of an everyday life, takes on a romantic and appealing quality. Alice was confused by everything she saw down the rabbit hole, but how confusing was it when she got back and things were . . . Boring. It is the essence of a phrase that has become so common, and such an acceptance of defeat: “the new normal.”

  Chapter 39

  His grandfather was wearing a very old fashioned looking suit. It looked good on him, but it must have been murder wearing it out in the desert. John walked behind him, trying to keep up as they walked across dunes and past a lot of damn nothing. He kept stumbling in the soft sand, which made him envious of his grandfather’s walking stick. They marched on in silence all day, his grandfather Joseph and he, under the blazing sun. As it sank towards the edge of the sky, they came to a flat where the sand was packed hard, and littered with smooth stones. John could smell smoke and bread. They were expected.

  When they arrived at the fire pit, the Tribesman greeted them with wooden cups full of water that was cool, refreshing, and tasted of mint. There was a kettle to one side of the fire with coals heaped around its base, and there was bread of some kind frying in a pan next to it. They sat on weather scarred rocks, and no one spoke. No one had to. It simply was as it should be. They ate, drank tea, and watched the coals cool under the stars and moon. When the embers had almost gone totally dark, and the night sat among them, Joseph produced a pipe and tobacco from his vest pocket. He carefully packed the tobacco and lit it with a match. The smell of the smoke was pleasant compared to the menthols that Owen smoked; it had a civilized feel to it.

  “This was never meant to be this way, to learn in solitude without family, and a careful hand to guide you,” his grandfather said in a sad voice. “Magic and the power it brings is a burden to any God-fearing soul who seeks to understand it. To those without morals or scruples, it is the devil’s blessing, and they corrupt and devour at their leisure what takes lifetimes to build honestly.” He paused and smoked thoughtfully for a moment. “There are no easy challenges in life, make no mistake about that, but this one is exceptional. If you rise to the burden and meet the challenges that it brings, it may never bring you riches, but it will bring you great joy, and you will see wonders that few mortal eyes ever glimpse.” He paused as the tribesman passed around more cups with more strangely mint flavored water.

  “Rise to meet it, boy. Rise to meet the challenges or else they will hold you down.”

  John woke up to his
alarm, feeling disorientated and confused. He had never even seen a picture of his great grandfather, but the dream had been so vivid and total in its reality that he felt he would know him anywhere. He shouldn't complain though, it was better than dreaming about the fire and the factory again. He got the message too, he just didn't know if that message was from his subconscious, a long dead relative, or a strange tribesman. He ignored it though, and went about getting ready for his day. It wasn't that John didn't want to know, it was that he had come to a point where he knew what to ask and not ask. Some questions only brought doubt about reality and those were not the ones he could face.

  Chapter 40

  Thanksgiving loomed on the horizon, and it held a depressive quality for John; it was the first holiday that he would truly spend alone. He had not always been able to make it home to see his father, but he had called every year, and then Barb had been there with him to keep him company. They had tried their best to put together Thanksgiving dinners every year, with the first attempt being an utter disaster and every year improving slowly after that. He wanted to cook this year, but there didn't seem much point in doing it alone and that hurt.

  He tried to distract himself by studying for his midterms, but he found himself feeling surprisingly confident and prepared for the test in his math class. Things at the shop were surprisingly busy; Owen said that there was always a rush before and after the holidays, with a lull in the middle. So that helped a lot, but not enough. Perhaps it was the loneliness or his desperation to find something else to think about, but without thinking about it or realizing it, John found himself thinking of Radha more and more. Even today, as he waited his turn for a vending machine, he was thinking of her and looking forward to seeing her in class. He wanted to talk to her, dreamed of talking to her (and more), but he felt intimidated by her beauty, to say nothing of the intelligence she demonstrated in class. What you and I both know though, is that Radha also wanted to talk to him and when she saw him waiting his turn at the vending machine, she decided to bump into him, literally and very purposefully.