by Guy Antibes
He stood for inspection in front of Henni. “Do I smell better? We need a few towels.”
“I’ll get them. Don’t try to steal one, okay?”
Ricky nodded. Henni was getting too good at reading his mind. “Kela’s here?”
Henni pointed to the library, nodding.
She still sat close to where the sorcery texts had been.
“I suppose we don’t need to read about new spells for a bit?” she asked when he showed up.
“I want to learn how Siria shouts.”
“Shouting. My father was terrible at it, but Mother was rather good. She spent a lot of time practicing and needed to make sure her voice was in the best condition.”
“I can shout a spell, but don’t tell Siria. It has been my secret weapon.”
“You will teach me?”
“Not yet. Learn the technique from Siria.” He didn’t want to decline to teach Kela, but Ricky knew he needed some secrets that he wouldn’t share with anyone. “What did you want to talk about?”
“I’m afraid to use my magic,” she said. “When you drooped, I thought I had killed you. I, uh, became upset. Siria had to put my fingers on your throat to show me that your blood still pulsed through your neck.”
“That’s why sorcery takes a lot of practice. It’s all about control. You know that.”
“Knowing it and exercising control are different,” she said. “I was very afraid.”
“You’ll be less afraid tomorrow when we do our kitchen work.”
“Aren’t you concerned about using your magic on a live thing?”
“No,” Ricky said. “But I’ve lived a different life than you have before coming to the Home. I’ve had to fight my way for everything, especially in the last year. I’ve also had to fend for myself, including snaring edible critters in the forest. Using magic to do the same work as a snare doesn’t bother me.”
Kela shivered. “Killing bothers me. But I suppose one has to survive in this awful place…”
Ricky hated to hear that from Kela. He always thought of her as an innocent, but the notion of doing anything to survive told him she had lost a measure of the innocence she had undoubtedly brought in.
She lost her parents at a much later age than Ricky. He couldn’t remember a thing about them, only Gobble Bangatelli, who acted as his grandfather. Ricky had to survive at an early age, but he didn’t feel jaded, just experienced.
“Just think of it as something to experience. Something you can tell your children or your boyfriend after you leave the Home. Don’t think of doing unpleasant things as surviving. Think of what happened as unpleasant things that you don’t want to do when you leave here.”
Kela stared at him. Did he get his point across to the girl?
She broke her gaze with a shudder and looked past him at the books behind him. “You aren’t tainted by your experiences growing up?”
“Experiences, both good and bad, make up our lives. We can’t let the experiences rule us. We have to use them to become someone we like inside.” Ricky was surprised that he felt that way. He’d never expressed such a thing before, or thought of life that way, but as he rolled the words over in his mind, he accepted that as his code.
“I am not like you,” she said slowly, haltingly. “I suppose I feel my experiences stronger, and they affect me deeper.”
Ricky could see her searching for words and concepts as she talked. Her comment struck him as correct. He accepted life for what it was and didn’t look underneath as much as she did. Maybe that was a difference between girls and boys. He felt pretty shallow at that point. He reacted to whatever he faced, and Kela was affected by the emotion that surrounded her, that infused her. Ricky couldn’t understand that part of Kela and might never be able to.
“Then you’ll have to harden your heart just a bit when you kill that chicken tomorrow. It would be dying anyway to provide your roommates with food.” Ricky gasped. “I’m sorry to say that,” he said, realizing that he had contradicted his point. She had to bend her principles to survive, and the chicken’s death was part of that bending.
He put his hand over hers. “I’ll get you out of here sooner than later,” Ricky said hoarsely, not knowing how he’d do it, but he’d save this girl. Kela didn’t deserve to be at the Home. Even without the expected torture and pain, the Home still ground some of a person’s identity to shreds just by having to exist within its walls.
~
Ricky heard chickens clucking away long before he reached the classroom door. Kela sat on a chair, looking out the window at the bare tree branches in the courtyard of the Home. There was an exercise field there, but the weather had put those activities to bed weeks ago.
Siria walked out from behind her desk. “It looks like this won’t be an easy task for Kela,” she said to him, well within hearing distance of the girl.
“She will learn what she needs to,” Ricky said. His words prompted Kela to turn to him and give him a ghost of a smile framed in a sad face.
Siria rubbed her hands to put some energy in the room. “There are a few techniques that we can use. A strong version of the fainting spell will work.”
Ricky noticed Kela cringe at the notion of using the fainting spell. He remembered her account of melting down when she put Ricky to sleep.
“With the right amount of control, you can put fire into a body. The neck or inside the head will work the fastest. That requires some practice, and the time for such practice may not be available.”
“Something painless,” Kela said. “I want to learn something painless.”
“Fainting is best.”
She shook her head. “I cannot trust a spell to put to sleep or to kill. If I am excited, I will kill and not want to.”
Siria put her hand to her chin. Ricky didn’t think she knew quite how to handle Kela. “If you want to practice, you can put a dark cloud into a brain and make it solid,” Siria said. “I’ve tried it, but it was too hard for me to visualize. It’s something I tried in Duteria. Supposedly, the victim doesn’t know what happens. Perhaps a moment’s disorientation? Just how do you ask such things of a dead person?”
“It must be a tiny dark cloud,” Kela muttered.
Ricky laughed at her remark, but Kela gave him a dirty look.
“Do you freeze the dark cloud?” Kela asked.
Ricky’s heart flipped. The conversation came too close to the method he had employed in Franken Pestella’s death.
“I think the visualization was turning the dark cloud into a rock,” Siria said.
Ricky hoped she wouldn’t look at him, so he kept silent, although the concept intrigued him.
“Why don’t you try Ricky?”
“It sounds like two spells, creating the cloud and then materializing it. I combined spells when I learned about performance sorcery. It wasn’t as complex as working with disappearing smoke. Maybe we ought to try to create controlled smoke first.”
“Go ahead,” Siria said.
Ricky tried to visualize a dark cloud and ended up thinking of a thick smoke rather than a mist. He put the smell of a campfire into his brain and the smoke of green wood billowing out of the blaze. He didn’t expect to achieve any resonance, but it came at an odd pitch.
Ricky chanted and held out his hands, together with the palms to mimic the shape of a ball. He pushed out with his will, and a fist-sized ball of smoke appeared in front of him. He moved the ball around a bit until it seemed stable. By the time he visualized the smoke hardening, it had dissipated.
“Oh,” Siria said. “No wonder I couldn’t do it. Two-stage spells are beyond me.”
“I need to find the resonance for coalescing the smoke,” Ricky said. “If I have to visualize and find a resonance, I lose control of the ball.”
“How can I do that?” Kela said.
“Just like I did,” Ricky said. “I used the image of green wood put onto a campfire. We can duplicate such a thing outside. Maybe that will make it easier for both of you.”
“Are you asking me to do the same thing?” Siria seemed affronted by Ricky’s inclusion of her in learning the technique.
“Why not, Mistress Lonsi?”
“What about our chickens?”
Kela looked at the birds that had been cackling away during their conversation. “The cooks can still take care of these.”
Siria went to the window. “We will make a fire pit in the interior courtyard tomorrow.”
“I can take care of the chicken crate,” Ricky said.
“Do. Class dismissed.”
“I’ll help,” Kela said moving to the crate.
They didn’t have far to go, and the pair of them left the chickens to their pre-destined fate.
~~~
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
~
K ELA BURIED HER FACE IN HER HANDS as soon as she appeared at the library. “I don’t know what to do! I’m afraid of the power.”
“Maybe you can’t solidify the smoke?” Ricky said. “It’s a tricky process.”
She looked at him with distaste. “You didn’t have any difficulty creating a ball of darkness.”
“I didn’t solidify it. Maybe it is beyond all three of us. Don’t worry about your power. If you have the power, you also have the ability not to use it. No one is holding a knife to your throat.”
“Not yet,” she said, bursting into sobs.
Ricky didn’t know what else to do, so he put a hand on her shoulder. She grabbed it as she continued to cry.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were so afraid of practicing sorcery,” Ricky said, after letting her cry for a while.
“It’s not your fault,” Kela said sniffing. “I try not to think of it.”
“Then don’t. Just like you don’t have to learn the spells if you choose. You certainly don’t have to use them. If you do master such a thing, and someone threatens you, turn on the person who threatens.”
She looked into Ricky’s eyes. “You don’t have much fear, do you?”
“Yes, I do. I was scared mindless just thinking of coming to this place.”
“If you were mindless, how could you think of the Juvenile Home?” she said, with just a single sniff.
Ricky smiled. “I managed, just as I’ve managed my whole life. I always felt I had to do things to protect myself. I once had a shantyboat. It was my ultimate hideout, but someone found out where it was, and they burned down an entire section of shanty boats just to get to mine.”
“Were you injured?”
Ricky shook his head. “I hadn’t been there for months. My guardian has a townhouse that served the same purpose. He had a hideout within his hideout. We used it to save him from Lord Taranta’s men.”
“Is Lord Taranta an important man in Tossa?”
“Was. I had to kill Taranta to save my benefactor,” Ricky said.
Kela’s eyes bulged. “Was it difficult to kill a person?”
Ricky sighed. “More than one, but I didn’t initiate the fights. I had to protect my friends and myself.”
“I don’t know if I could do such a thing.”
Ricky shook his head. “I learned to kill because my life was at stake. I hope you don’t have to find out.”
Kela wiped her face. “I hate this place,” she said. “I don’t want to make such vile choices,” she said.
Ricky could only nod.
~
Siria met Ricky and Kela outside on a cold day. She had fashioned a ring of rocks on the bare, cold ground. Someone had stacked seasoned and green wood by the ring.
“Two tests. I want Kela to start the fire, using her magic. I’ll extinguish the flames, and then Ricky will do the same. Then we put the green wood on to gather more smoke that you will attempt to solidify. The purpose will be to find the resonance and the amount of will it takes to make the smoke fall to the ground. I’ve already talked to your third and fourth-hour teachers. We will work until lunchtime.”
The first part didn’t take much time. Kela easily ignited the fire. Siria knew a spell that drew away the air to extinguish the flames. Ricky re-started the fire with a stream of green and blue flame.
“It’s something I wondered about,” Ricky said. “I learned how to project colors at Doubli Academy, but those were illusions. It works for real, too.”
“Show-off,” Kela muttered under her breath.
“What did you visualize to stop the flame?” Ricky asked.
“It is an evacuation spell—” Siria said
Kela furrowed her brow. “Evacuation? I don’t know the word.”
“Evacuation means you remove something. Evacuating a building means you remove all the people inside it. She takes out the air. Right, Mistress Lonsi?”
“Ricky is correct.”
“So if you picture a bubble of air, you could place that over a person’s face and remove the air. Is that a killing technique?” Ricky asked.
“If your victim were tied to the bed, it would work, but if that’s the case, you might as well use a pillow.”
Ricky wondered if Siria was very creative because it hadn’t shown thus far. Bubbles could be made to stick to something. He’d learned that when he and Loria worked on their performance the previous summer.
Siria threw sapling wood on the fire. Smoke began to billow.
“Both of you…we three can try to find the resonance to solidify smoke at the same time.”
Ricky concentrated at the base of the smoke column. He still thought a chant would be best. Siria and Kela failed to find the right resonance, but Ricky might have discovered one. It nearly involved a growl.
He filled his body with the power and tried not to thrust out his hand. The smoke began to drop as ashes into the fire. “Maybe ashes will work inside a brain,” Ricky said. He chanted again and imposed stronger will. Tiny pellets dropped like peas into the fire.
“Can you connect that to your first spell?” Siria asked.
“Probably.” He called forth a ball of smoke and quickly followed it up with the pellet spell, as he thought of it. The little balls bounced on the path.
Siria picked one up and crushed it between her fingers. She gave Ricky a quizzical look. “Shall I get a chicken?”
Ricky looked at Kela. “Not until both of you can solidify smoke. My visualization is to make the smoke into these pellets. Think of that when you find a resonance.”
Siria made a face. “I suppose I can give it a try.”
Kela glanced at Siria and ran down a scale. Ricky could see when she found a resonant tone. She sang, crystal clear, and pointed to the cloud of smoke.
Little flakes fluttered down.
“Differences happen all the time,” Ricky said. “But you did it. Now remember the resonance, and you can concentrate on creating a ball of the kind of smoke that you see coming from the fire.” He tossed additional green branches on the flame.
“Siria?” Ricky said.
“Mistress Lonsi.” Siria corrected him, looking uncomfortable.
“Your turn, Mistress Lonsi,” Ricky said. Just how good a battle sorcerer was the woman?
Ricky heard her eke out a raspy tone. “You should have had Mirano Bespa look at your throat.”
“He gave me these.” She pulled out a thin cloth bag. She pulled a lozenge out and sucked at it for a bit. Siria cleared her throat. “Better.”
Now he heard a clearer sound. She found her resonance sooner than Kela. The smoke she solidified fell in pellets, just like Ricky’s. She tried it again, but her voice harshened, and she had a harder time drawing in power.
“An occupational hazard?” Ricky asked.
Siria glared at him. He had exposed what might be her greatest weakness.
“Forgive me,” Ricky said. The woman could have refused, he thought, but he also laid bare her pride.
Siria waved off his comment. “You are right. I’m not the first sorcerer who has lost her voice and with it, her power.”
“You can always teach like you are doing now.”
>
“Who would take me?” Siria said. She put her hand over her mouth. Her face hardened. “You didn’t hear me say that.” She took a deep breath. “Let me get some chickens.”
Kela glanced at Ricky. “Do you think I can do it?”
“Kill a chicken?” Ricky nodded. “Siria can, too. But it looks like she is only good for one or two spells at a time. She could never become a performance sorcerer with a singing voice like that. Maybe she shouts.”
A cook bearing a crate followed Siria when she returned.
“Ricky first.”
“I’ll see if I can make a small ball of smoke first.” He bent over and looked at the size of a chicken head. “Maybe grape-sized.”
Ricky quickly found the resonance and created a tiny smoke ball that spun slowly in the weak autumn sun. He changed to his pellet pitch, and tiny balls bounced on the pavement.
He leaned over and concentrated on a chicken. He sang the resonance to appear in the chicken’s head and quickly changed to his pellet pitch. The bird keeled over.
“Is it dead?” Siria asked the cook.
“Good as,” she said twisting the bird’s neck.
Kela gasped. “You want me to do that?” she said looking at Ricky.
“No, dearie,” the cook said. “I can handle the twisting.”
Ricky smiled and looked at Kela. “Give it a try. Create the tiny ball first and solidify it before you try it on the bird.”
She did as Ricky asked. The flakes were more solid than Ricky had initially thought. He had the confidence that Kela could do it.
“Concentrate on a bird’s head and create your ball inside.”
Kela tried, but couldn’t get her smoke ball inside the bird’s head. They appeared to the side.
“Good enough, for now, Kela,” Siria said. “My turn.”
Siria sucked for awhile on Bespa’s lozenges and created a tiny smoke ball and turned it into pellets, but she had the same problem that Kela had, not being able to create the darkness inside the chicken’s head. She looked at Ricky.
“How do you do it?”
“I wish I knew. I just can,” Ricky said. He knew Mirano Bespa would have no problem using that method with his medical training, but he thought the man would probably shrink from harming anybody.
