Oh damn. Now that I think about it, maybe that’s why Daniel and I became such close friends.
When your world has been blown apart by loss; when death or illness or insanity have worn down the ones you love, you become different somehow. You look at the world differently. You feel things differently. Daniel knows what loss is, perhaps even more than I do. So I guess that’s what I saw in him during those painful sessions at the bereavement group. I recognized a kindred spirit, someone who knew that life wasn’t really as shiny and fresh and hopeful as everyone else seemed to think it was.
But anyway. To get back to the present.
It’s late afternoon and we’re in Daniel’s bedroom (which used to be the dining room, apparently). As far as I can tell, we’re the only people at home, but his mom must be obviously be upstairs somewhere, hiding among her papers.
Daniel is sitting on his bed, listening to me, and I’m sitting at his desk, trying to tell a story that I know makes me sound crazy. We’re eating Doritos straight from the bag.
I tell Daniel that some conspiracy theories are true. I tell him there’s been a huge conspiracy to hide the fact that magic exists. I tell him that I belong to a magical family, and that my mom made Ingrid and Gunn swear to keep this a secret from me. I tell him that the thing with the fire and the principal really happened. I tell him about Jonathan in the pool, and how we’re living in this town to be under the Pendragons’ protection. I tell him about staring at the grass with Gunn every afternoon, trying to find a way to hide my magic. I tell him about a strange man showing up out of the blue, and what he said about my mom not dying of cancer. I don’t tell any of this in any logical order though. Instead I flounder around, falling over my words and getting everything confused, until I eventually run out of steam when I realize how insane all of this must sound to him.
Daniel listens patiently. He doesn’t ask any questions, for which I’m grateful, but he does bite his lip every now and then, as if he’s actively preventing himself from interrupting me.
When I finally stop, I find him studying me, as serious as I’ve ever seen him. But he doesn’t say a word. Instead he shakes his head slowly before falling back on the bed, rubbing his face as if he’s trying to scrub away everything I’ve just told him.
“So, basically, Gunn is trying to convince you that you’re this super-special person with magic powers? The last of your kind in the world?” He lifts himself up onto his elbow and gives me a skeptical look. “The one?”
“Not just Gunn. Ingrid too. And this Deron guy. And my magic isn’t the only magic in the world,” I pull a face at him, “so I’m not the one. There’s also, like, the magic of the air, and the magic of the earth—”
“And once you learn firebending from Zuko and waterbending from Kitara you’ll be the master of all the elements and become the next Avatar.”
I roll my eyes, but I’m secretly grateful for his silliness. He can’t think I’m too crazy if he’s still cracking jokes.
“Gunn says real magic isn’t like that. He doesn’t even think there really are different types of magic; he says that all magic comes from the same source and that it’s only because of the clan system that people make distinctions between the different types of magic…” My words drain away when I see the shocked expression on Daniel’s face. “What?”
He sits up slowly. “The clan system?”
“Yeah, I know how it sounds, but it’s got nothing to do with that type of Klan. There’s this secret organization, right, the Order of Keepers, which consist of these clans that are basically, like, groups that specialize in different forms of magic, like skymagic and earthmagic or whatever. Oh, and you have to call them keepers instead of wizards for some reason.”
Daniel makes a strangled sound low in his throat. “Go on.”
“Apparently there are four keeper clans left in the world. Five, if you count Ingrid and Gunn, but let’s leave that for now. So, there’s the White Clan, also known as the Skykeepers, who can do skymagic and whose job it is to protect the magic of the sky. Or to draw from that magic, or whatever—I’m not quite clear on how it works exactly. But basically they’ve got very specific powers, like controlling wind and forcing people to speak the truth. Or something like that. It doesn’t make much sense. Then there’s the Green Clan, or Earthkeepers, who can do earthmagic and—”
“Jess, is this some kind of joke?”
“I know it sounds crazy, okay? That’s why I wanted to talk to you. It’s all so bizarre and unbelievable, but at the same time I can’t help believing it. It’s like when I found out about Santa and the Easter Bunny except, I guess, in reverse. On the one hand it’s this huge shock—how could everyone have lied to me for so long?—but on the other I just know it’s the truth, no matter what I’ve been told all my life.”
Daniel looks as if he’s seen a ghost. “You’re being serious, aren’t you.”
“Dude.”
“And that guy? The one I saw at your house? He said your mother didn’t die of cancer?”
I nod grimly. “I didn’t understand most of what he said, but he made it sound as if it had something to do with her magic.”
He blows out a long, shaking breath, and I finally realize that this story isn’t only about me anymore.
“Daniel. Are you okay?”
“Not really.” I notice that his hands are trembling lightly. “Let’s go outside so I can smoke.”
I walk with him to the back porch, where he lights his cigarette and takes a shaking drag.
“You know something about this?” I ask.
He inhales deeply before he answers, smoke drifting from his nostrils. “My mom always used to tell me about the Order of Keepers. You know, at night, before I went to bed.” He winces slightly as he says the words, as if the memory causes him actual physical pain. “She made up these magical worlds for me every night, telling me about the Seakeepers on their Island of Blue, the Skykeepers in their Castle of White, the Earthkeepers in their Forest of Green…”
An icy tingle runs down my spine.
“I loved those bedtime stories, and because my brother was so much older and not into stories anymore, it became, like, our thing.” He takes another deep pull, blows it out slowly. “Later, when I grew up, she obviously didn’t tell me bedtime stories anymore, but she’d still talk to me about the keepers every now and then, like it was our own private joke or something.”
We sit in silence for a while. When his cigarette is finished, he tries to take another out of the packet but his hands are shaking too much. I don’t say anything. He listened to me without questions or judgment, so I’m determined to hear him out.
“But then, after Sebastian died…” His voice breaks a little and he stops talking until he regains control. “She became obsessed, Jess. At first I thought it was just her way of coping, you know? Like maybe she was hiding from reality in this fantasy world she’d created? But it quickly spiraled out of control: she started to confuse her academic work with her own bedtime stories, believing that the truth about these ‘keepers’ could be found in ancient archeological sites, and she began researching far beyond her field, ordering academic journals and obscure books from libraries all over the world. For a long time I didn’t understand what she was looking for. And when I finally found out what she was doing, it made everything worse.”
“Why?” I ask gently after a few minutes of silence.
“Because I realized why she couldn’t stop, why she’ll never stop.” When he looks up at me, his liquid brown eyes are drowning in misery. “It’s because of Sebastian.”
“Your brother?”
“My mother is convinced that he found out some evil keeper secret, and that they killed him for it.”
My thoughts race wildly as I try to make sense of his words. “So, what does all this mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were Ingrid and your mother friends before she…”
“Before she went nuts?” He smiles sad
ly. “Not as far as I know.”
I feel my pulse beginning to race. “Then what if your mom isn’t nuts after all? What if it’s all true? What if there’s this great big conspiracy, and everyone’s in on it?” I bring my hands to my mouth, feel my eyes widening. “What if they really did kill your brother? How will we ever know?”
“There’s only one way I can think of.” He rubs a hand over his face. “We’ll have to ask my mother.”
Chapter 15
And thus, it is true that magic calls to magic. Those greatly gifted may sense the power of another even from a distance, and although the craftiest among us have been known to find ways to conceal their gifts, physical contact remains one of the most effective measures of determining the strength of another’s magic.
But beware, my friends! To touch someone who is brimming with power is to open oneself to forces few understand and fewer still can control.
From Orations of Aelius (1st Century CE);
translated from the original Latin by Sofia Rodriguez (1999)
“I need to warn you,” Daniel says, “it’s pretty bad up there.”
He’s leading me to the back of the house where his dad has constructed a drywall to separate the ground floor from his mother’s chaos upstairs. It looks weird, this unexpected wall with its makeshift door barricading the hallway from the staircase, but I’ve seen it before, so I just shrug, as if it’s completely normal. “That’s okay.”
“Brace yourself,” he says as he pushes open the door.
“Don’t worry about me.”
But the truth is I’m a little bit nervous. I’ve never been past this part of the house, never once met Daniel’s mom.
The door opens a few inches before it gets stuck. Daniel smiles reassuringly, and I smile back, trying to look reassured. Neither of us, I think, is fooling the other.
“This might take a bit of effort,” he says as he puts his shoulder to the door and starts pushing. It opens another few inches, slowly, and then something shifts on the other side and the door swings open so fast that Daniel almost falls as he stumbles inside.
“Wow,” I say as I step through the door behind him. Then I bite my lip, forcing myself not to say anything else.
The staircase is almost unrecognizable: every inch of space is brimming with mountains of papers, stacked floor to ceiling in untidy heaps. Looking up is confusing, almost dizzying, because thousands upon thousands of papers spiral crazily into the air in moldy yellow towers. There’s no way through the mess; not a stair to be seen, not a window, nothing.
“How are we going to get up there?” I try to keep my voice neutral.
“You’ll need to follow me very carefully. There is a way through but it’s narrow and very unstable.”
“Okay.”
My stomach makes a sick turn as I realize I’ll somehow have to squeeze through this mass of paper. I’ve always been extremely claustrophobic, and the mere idea of tunneling through this mess is enough to make my heart race and my palms sweat. But I can’t back down now. Not when Daniel is trusting me with his deepest hurt and shame.
I follow him closely as he navigates through the mounds, squeezing himself through a passageway so tiny he can only move sideways in small, deliberate steps.
“Try not to tip anything over. If these stacks collapse, you could get really hurt.”
“Okay.”
I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.
I ignore the crazy pounding of my heart as I inch my way behind him, putting my feet exactly where his were, burrowing through the stacks like a mole. The smell is overwhelming: old paper and mildew and something disturbingly yeasty. As the dusty mountains press against my body, I fight against a crushing sense of claustrophobia. The panic is so intense that I’m almost hyperventilating.
I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.
“We’re almost there,” Daniel says, reaching back to offer me his hand. “Let me pull you up. It’s better once you get to the top.”
I let him help me up, sighing with relief when I see that he’s right. Once you get to the top of the staircase, every inch of surface area is still covered in heaps of boxes, books, and journals, but at least there seems to be a clear path down the hall, and because the mess isn’t stacked so high, some natural light is seeping through the windows. For the first time since we passed through that door downstairs, I allow myself to take a deep breath.
“I’m sorry,” Daniel says, avoiding my eyes. “I know it’s a lot to handle.”
“I’ve handled worse,” I say, trying to keep my tone light and forcing a smile. “Or have you forgotten that I’m ‘the one’?”
He almost manages to smile back. “Tunneling through stacks of old papers must be a breeze for someone with a life as exciting as yours.”
“Like taking a holiday. The only thing missing is a hot shirtless guy serving cocktails.”
“I can do that later if you want.” This time he does manage a crooked smile.
“Don’t write checks you can’t cash, Rodriguez.”
“What? You think that Viking of yours is the only guy in this town who looks hot without his shirt on?” He points to his stomach. “Abs of steel.”
There’s a muffled sound from the back, a soft wail that comes from somewhere behind the mountains of books and papers and boxes that lie between us and the other end of the hall.
Daniel’s smile disappears, the look in his eyes so heart-breaking that I immediately feel thoughtless and insensitive. What kind of idiot makes jokes about hot guys and cocktails at a time like this?
The soft wail becomes louder until it begins to sound like an animal in pain, and I suddenly realize that this is a really stupid idea. What was I thinking? I have no right to intrude on Daniel’s family in this way. I should never have involved him in all this; he has enough issues of his own to deal with.
“I don’t know if this is a good idea,” I whisper as the wailing begins to die down.
“Nobody ever said it was a good idea.”
“I mean … I don’t have to come with you if you don’t want me to.”
His face hardens. “Reality is a bit messier than fairy tales, isn’t it?” He makes a motion with his head in the direction of the sound. “You scared?”
I hesitate, afraid of making another mistake.
“A bit,” I admit after a few seconds. (With Daniel, honesty is usually the way to go.) “I’m not sure how to handle this. You know I always say the wrong thing. What if I just make everything worse?”
“Nothing you can say can hurt her. She’s way beyond that.”
“I’m not scared of hurting her,” I say quietly. “I’m scared of hurting you.”
He gives me a guarded, measuring look. Then he sighs. “It’s alright. I’ve been dealing with this for a long time.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.” He shrugs, and the unfamiliar harshness leaves his face. “And I was being a jerk earlier; you don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to. I know this must be really disturbing if you’re not used to it.”
“No, I’ll come—it was my problems that got us here in the first place.”
“You sure?”
“I’ve never been less sure of anything in my life.”
“That’s okay then.” A faint half-smile. “Follow me. And try not to knock anything over. She gets crazy upset when her papers are ‘disturbed.’”
He leads me through a narrow passage walled with books and journals. The smell is still pretty bad, musty and stale, but not quite as unpleasant as when we were tunneling our way through from downstairs. We pass a room overflowing with newspapers and magazines, the place so stuffed you literally can’t take one step inside. Then a bathroom, of which only a toilet and one tap is visible through stacks of journals, and then another room, this one piled to the ceiling with old books. When we get to the last room, Daniel hesitates briefly before straightening his shoulders and knocking on the door.
Ther
e is no answer, but he turns around, gives me a tight little smile and motions for me to follow.
This room, like the others, is stockpiled with books and papers, but there is also a chair and a desk standing in a small square of open floor space. The room is dark, not because the curtains are closed but because enormous stacks of books are blocking the window. In the dim half-light I can make out a bed, but this too is almost completely covered with old maps and schematic drawings and what looks like architectural plans.
Daniel’s mother is sitting at the desk with her back to us: a small, shrunken figure dressed in black. She has dirty gray hair and she’s softly singing to herself in Spanish while studying a picture with a magnifying glass.
“Mama?” Daniel’s voice sounds like a little boy’s, lost and vulnerable.
His mother keeps on singing, swaying from side to side, giving no indication that she’s heard him. He reaches out to touch her shoulder but then hesitates and drops his hand. I glimpse the naked pain on his face and look away. In the silence that follows, I try to swallow a dry, painful lump in my throat.
“Hola mamá, soy yo, tu hijo.”
“Mi hijo está muerto.”
“Soy Daniel. Tu otro hijo.”
“No dejaré que se lleven a ningún otro de mis hijos.”
“I brought a friend today, Mama,” he says, switching to English. “Her name is Jess, and she has something to tell you.”
“That’s okay,” I say softly. “You can speak Spanish. I’m a bit rusty, but I remember enough.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know why, but she’s usually a bit more lucid when she speaks English,” he whispers in my ear.
“Do you really want me to talk to her?” I whisper back. “Maybe this isn’t a good time?”
Ordinary Girl (The Dark Dragon Chronicles Book 1) Page 15
