Shaman

by Chloe Garner

  Carson set a plate in front of Samantha.

  “Will you teach me?” he asked. Sam was pulled tight. He had known this was coming. She wondered, loudly for his benefit, why he was worried.

  “Kneel,” she said, turning in her chair to face Carson. He looked at her curiously.

  “You’re as tall as they are, and I don’t feel like standing up. I think I’m going back to bed after this. Humor me.”

  He knelt. She looked at his face seriously for almost a minute.

  “Yes,” she said. “For as much time as I have, very little of it can be for you, but I’ll give you what I can. A lot of this is a natural gift. I will measure your potential and I will tell you what I think you can accomplish, but if you don’t have the gift, all I’m going to be able to do is hone your skills using the spells you already know, and give you a few more. Do you understand?”

  He nodded.

  “I don’t believe that what you’re doing is right, but these two are brothers to me, and I can’t believe that it’s wrong, either. I want to understand.”

  Samantha glanced at Doris, who smiled pride.

  “No one understands curiosity like I do,” Samantha said. “I won’t teach you anything I wouldn’t do myself.”

  He stood.

  “I’m going to go finish the French toast,” he said. She grinned.

  “Good. Because this isn’t going to be enough.”

  Doris drew breath, and Samantha looked at her. She waved.

  “No. Eat. Eat. Please.”

  Samantha devoured the plate of food, and at some point sausage and orange juice showed up in front of her. The other four exchanged idle Ranger gossip while she ate.

  Finally, she waved Carson away with the next plateload of food.

  “How much did she eat?” Sam asked. Carson glanced back at the counter.

  “Loaf of bread, four eggs, and a pound of sausage,” he said. Samantha leaned back in her chair.

  “Definitely going back to bed.”

  “One more thing,” Doris said. Samantha nodded. Obviously. “Sam’s psychic.”

  “Yes.”

  “And a demon wants to possess him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Self-same demon who used Heather and Elizabeth as bait for you three.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you told the boys not to call it in.”

  “Yes.”

  Doris waited.

  “Where do you want me to start?” Samantha asked.

  “What do you plan on doing with him?”

  “Him?”

  “Sam.”

  “Nothing. I’ll train him. I’ll do my best to keep him alive. Jason, too. I haven’t got an agenda.”

  “That was what I was afraid of. You can’t just build a weapon and leave it to fate. You need to wield it, child.”

  Carson finished putting dishes in the dishwasher and came to sit at the table. Samantha took a moment to recover, and another moment to make sense of it.

  “That’s Ranger thinking,” she said. “Someone lining up missions, someone going out and doing them.”

  “We train. We plan. We execute,” Carson said. “Take one of the three out, you waste the other two.”

  Jason passed him the whiskey bottle and he poured himself a shot, then passed the bottle across to Sam.

  “This… was not… what I was expecting,” Samantha said.

  “You thought we’d run away from your dark, dangerous world?” Doris asked. Samantha opened her mouth to answer, but Doris didn’t give her a chance. “I raised three children into that world. Five, more like. No one thinks we know everything that’s out there. We train. We plan. We execute.”

  “You don’t run away,” Samantha said. She glanced at Sam. He made the connection.

  “No one thinks Heather was wrong for taking Elizabeth and letting her be normal,” he said. “You choose it or you choose not to see it. There’s nothing wrong with normal.”

  “He’s telling her that she shouldn’t feel bad for running away after her fiance died,” Jason said. He grinned at her. “Only he’s wrong. You should feel bad for not stabbing Carter in his sleep, true enough, but you’ve got to do what you were made to do. You know that. It’s why you came back.”

  Samantha glanced at Sam again. She had forgotten. Had he told Doris?

  “They told us why you were gone,” Doris said. “I figure that’s between the two of you. You don’t owe me an explanation.”

  “I wanna know,” Carson said. Samantha grinned at him.

  “Stick around long enough, we’ll get to that,” she said. She looked at Doris.

  “My being here puts you and your family at risk.”

  “About that. What exactly do you plan to do about it?”

  Samantha laughed. Doris winked at her.

  “We plan,” she said. “We don’t walk in blind.”

  The walls of the kitchen felt like they had been drifting away for some time. The sense of yawning space around her was dimming reality.

  “Tomorrow,” Sam said finally. “I got you up too early.”

  “No. I needed to eat. If it makes you feel any better, the protection spell at Heather’s was a lot stronger than I thought.” She looked at Carson. “If you’re still around in the morning, I’ll come find you and we can get started.”

  “I’m here until I decide not to be. I’m on bereavement,” he said, glancing at Doris. She glared out the corner of her eyes at him.

  “I’m not going to say I don’t like the company, but you don’t need to patronize me,” she said.

  Samantha stood and leaned against the back of her chair, foggy, cottony exhaustion making her limbs feel thick and numb.

  “Thank you for dinner,” she said.

  “Of course,” Doris said. “Sleep well.”

  “I’m headed up with you,” Sam said.

  “You don’t have to,” she told him.

  “If only to make sure you don’t fall downstairs, I do,” he said. If he hadn’t been there, she would have crawled. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. A little out of practice. I should be fine in the morning.”

  She leaned her head against his shoulder, letting him support more of her weight up the second half of the stairs, mind already wandering into waking dreams.

  “I’m fine,” she said again. And then she didn’t remember anything else.

  <><><>

  Jason was cleaning guns when she found him the next day after lunch. She had trained with Carson all morning in the next room, and Jason wasn’t convinced that Carson had what it took.

  “Can we talk?” Samantha asked.

  “What’s up?”

  “Walk with me?”

  He followed her outside, but she didn’t seem to have anything pressing to say.

  “Can I shower in this?” he asked, indicating his side. She nodded.

  “I should take a look at it tonight sometime. Water won’t hurt it.”

  There was more silence.

  “Sam says you’re covered in bruises,” she said after a while.

  “Not worse than I’ve been before,” he said.

  They came to a swingset at the back corner of the property that Jason and Sam had used long past the appropriate age, and she sat on a swing. He sat in the swing next to hers.

  “I didn’t like not being able to help you,” she said.

  “It’s done,” he answered.

  “No, not really. I worry about next time. I worry about you being possessed.”

  “Sweetheart, they’ve got to get through an awful lot of stubborn to possess me,” Jason told her. She smiled.

  “I honestly believe that. I do. It’s just… there’s not a lot I can do for you. I’ve gone through everything I know and I can’t come up with anything better than this.”

  “Than what?”

  She stood and faced him, grabbing hold of the swing chain and putting one foot through between his side and the chain.

  “Sam?”


  “I need you to remember this. Clearly,” she said, lifting herself up with the swing chains and getting her other foot through on the other side. He shifted out of the way as much to help as to avoid being kicked. “I figure I’m in competition with a lot of other intense memories.”

  She settled in his lap and he considered. Awkward, weird, intense. Check. But he had to agree she had a lot of competition.

  “Hey,” she said. He looked at her. “Remember this. This is important.” He frowned. She went on. “Hi. This is an alarm system. Jason is remembering this because you have triggered it. If you are in Jason’s head and you don’t belong there, this is the only invitation you’re going to get to leave, no hard feelings. I am Anadidd’na Anu’dd, {choking gurgle noise}, and I keep grudges. I was trained by Carter. I carry Lahn. I will hunt you here and beyond the boundary. I will reduce you to parasitic mist. This is my vow. Depart. Now.”

  “I’m supposed to remember that?” Jason asked.

  “Just that it happened,” Samantha said.

  “Will it actually work?” Jason asked.

  “I have a reputation as an idealist and a hothead. I destroyed the remains of the demon who killed Justin with a mortar and pestle on the other side. Scattered the dust. He’s a century, at least, on this side from making it back to sentient.”

  “You’re a hothead,” he said incredulously as she began the even more awkward process of disentangling herself. “Here,” he said, wrapping his arms around her waist and standing. She kicked the swing free and he set her on her feet.

  “You’ve never seen me angry.”

  “What about Carly?”

  “I’d have done something a lot more dramatic about her, if I could do it without attracting more attention. May still, yet. Finding a demon in hell is… You don’t want to know that.”

  He looked at her for a minute.

  “You want to take a cleaning day with me?” he asked.

  “I’m going to train with Sam for a few hours,” she said. “After that, yeah. I need to get caught up on a lot of chores.”

  They walked back up to the house.

  “Can I see?” she asked, motioning to his shirt. He put his elbow over his head and lifted up his shirt. He could pretend like, yeah, he hadn’t had a hard time getting his shirt on this morning, but only if she let him put his arm back down soon.

  “If I don’t scar, I’m going to make you cut me back open and do it right,” he said.

  “Not gonna happen,” she said. “Looks good.”

  He dropped his arm with perhaps a touch too much relief and she smirked at him.

  “You want to go out tonight?” he asked. “There are a couple of bars in town Sam and I know.”

  She grinned.

  “And risk you going home with some waitress? I’d never do that to you,” she said. He frowned and she grinned wider. “She’d try to pull your shirt off over your head and make you scream like a little girl. I’m looking out for you, here.”

  “All right. All right,” he said.

  “Tomorrow,” she said. “We’ll do it tomorrow.”

  <><><>

  She slept in Sam’s bed, then cooked breakfast the next morning with Carson, laughing and joking, giving him tips about magic and spells in between talking about cooking and feeding each other bites of food. It was surreal, but Sam was pointedly happy at her every time she felt self-conscious, from his seat at the table. He wanted her to feel at home here.

  She spent the next several hours with Carson, still trying to feel out what he was capable of.

  “You guys want to get measured in again?” she called, bringing her backpack in from the front room where it had been exiled. Sam appeared in the doorway.

  “You talking to us?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I’m going to measure him. And me. You want to get measured in again?”

  “Sure, I guess,” Sam said. “Jason, you want to drink bird ashes again?”

  “No,” Jason yelled back. “I’m reading a book.”

  “No,” Samantha said. “Nuh uh.”

  Sam grinned.

  “Sarcasm,” he said. “It’s what he says when he’s staring at a wall, too.”

  “Oh.” She paused. “Should I be offended?”

  “No. He doesn’t like that he doesn’t have any reaction. You’re light, I’m dark, he’s nothing.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with broad-spectrum,” Samantha said. “Very few people are…”

  Sam held up a hand.

  “No point arguing it with me,” he said. “You were in the middle of something?”

  She mixed the lightest of her stock light ingredients and sat.

  “This is the point where you have to decide if you believe in magic as a polarized idea or not. Either it’s always evil, or it’s not good or evil until you decide how to use it. I won’t ask you to do this unless you’re sure it isn’t evil to do it, but I can’t train you any further until I know where your aptitude is.”

  Carson looked at her for a long time, then the bowl. Sam sat patiently. He felt no urge to push Carson. She was impressed that he would let Carson make up his own mind.

  “You aren’t evil,” Carson said. “I think you know what you’re doing, and I think you care about right and wrong as much as my dad did.” Samantha felt Sam’s stab of grief. “I want to know.”

  She held the bowl out of his reach as he put his hand out, shaking her head.

  “This isn’t about faith in me, or curiosity. And I’m not punishing you for what you believe. One way or the other. This is about you knowing what you believe and me supporting it. Is magic evil?”

  He sat and thought some more.

  “God gave me a mind. To know. To think. To learn. I want to know. I don’t believe that’s wrong.”

  “I could use the same reasoning for sex or drugs,” Samantha said. “Just because it’s natural and it exists doesn’t mean it’s okay; just because you want to know doesn’t justify using it.”

  Sam was confused now. She focused on Carson.

  “Do you believe magic is wrong?”

  He was silent.

  “This isn’t about being part of a club or becoming more special,” Samantha said. “It’s more like learning to shoot a gun. It’s dangerous and lots of people do it who really shouldn’t. The fact that it’s supernatural and, okay, really cool, and really complicated, which makes it even more cool - I know - isn’t part of the decision. You believe that pointing a gun at a person and pulling the trigger to end their life is okay under some conditions. Other people don’t believe that. They believe that taking human life is always wrong. You don’t teach one of them to shoot a gun in self-defense. Is magic wrong?”

  “Where does magic come from?” he asked. She smiled. An excellent question.

  “Natural magic is here, the energy that came from creation itself. The world has boundaries around it, one to the paradise plane, one to the hell plane. These things I can prove to you pretty simply, given the right resources. The rest of what I know about the nature of magical energy… I can’t tell you, because it has been demonstrated to me…”

  “When you died,” he said. She nodded. Sam was a little concerned, and she shrugged. It didn’t bother her that they knew. It just impressed her that Sam and Jason trusted them that much.

  “When I died.”

  “Demons possess people. They walk in physical form.”

  “Manifestation,” Samantha said. “They cross by possession or manifestation.”

  “They come here. They hurt people. It isn’t wrong to use the tools available to stop them.”

  He looked at her with calm eyes.

  “Magic isn’t evil.”

  “It’s just very easy to decide to use it in evil ways. You always have to be careful,” she said, taking a swallow out of the bowl then handing it to Sam. He did the same, then handed it to Carson. Carson didn’t hesitate to drink the last of it.

  The warm surge of energy wasn’t as strong as it
had once been. It was an answer she had gotten before, and it troubled her deeply. Sam wanted to know what was wrong, but he still respected her silence enough not to ask.

  “How do you feel?” she asked Carson. He frowned, introspective.

  “It’s kind of… tart. Squeezed funny. I don’t know. Not bad.” He looked at her. “Am I supposed to feel weird?”

  “How you feel is how you feel. I feel empowered, calm, stable. Warm. Sam feels light, warm, serene, and wound like a spring.”

  “You know that?” Carson asked. She nodded. Reached for her bag and mixed another strength and, drinking part of it, handed it to Sam. They repeated the cycle several times. Sam had narrowed up just below her for lightness. He frowned at her at one point.

  “You’ve never had to test this many times for me or Jason,” he said.

  “You’re right.”

  “Why is he different?”

  “He isn’t at one end of the spectrum. I’m trying to find exactly where he is, but it isn’t easy like for you or me. Jason is just… everywhere.”

  “I heard that,” Jason yelled.

  “Is that bad?” Carson asked. She shook her head.

  “You prefer natural magic. There’s nothing wrong with that. I wouldn’t have trained you if you had been adept at dark. It’s more dangerous than it’s worth.”

  “What does Carter do?” Sam asked.

  “Moderate dark,” Samantha said. “Highly concentrated. Carson is spread across most of natural up to the moderate levels of light. It’s a good point to work from.” She looked at Carson. “There’s no guarantee your magical skills will line up with your native aptitudes. You’ll have magical aptitudes that are different. I’m broad spectrum, magically. I’m just as good at dark magic as light. Well, with equal practice, I would be, anyway. But most people are pretty close. If I had to guess, you’d make a slightly-higher-than-average witch.”

  “Wizard?”