by LeRoy Clary
Kendra stepped from behind me to stand at my side. She took my hand. “He means no harm. I have tried to make him stop using magic.”
“We know that, child.”
“I am not a child,” Kendra retorted in the sharp manner of one who was recently a child and that now wished everyone to recognize her adulthood.
“Damon is not the reason I’m here. He touches the essence and occasionally draws so little of it for his nefarious uses that it is barely noticed or missed. No, I’m here because of you and your dangerous intrusions on the essence we all depend upon. Those ventures must be stopped or controlled.”
“Me?” Kendra wailed loud enough to wake any people sleeping on the other side of the mountain pass. “I don’t use magic! There is none in me.”
“Yes, my mission here is to come here and to speak with you. Your demands on essence the past day has drawn fear and loathing from those of us who monitor and require its use. The existence of enough essence for all of us is necessary, the supply is finite, and you demand a disproportionate amount. Your indiscretions allow the forces of darkness to emerge unchecked.”
“Who knows what that is, or who you are, or what we’re talking about,” Kendra said, her voice growing strained.
“Me neither,” I said, fully supporting my sister by admitting my ignorance in a strong, clear voice, not the first time I’d done that.
The woman wrapped in shimmering blue light waved her arms wide and threw her head back as if to laugh. Instead, she spoke to the night sky as she quoted a strange verse, “Essence is the very being of the world. Every egg that is fertilized, every seed that sprouts, the tangled roots under our feet, the air all lungs inhale to survive. Essence is the energy created by animals eating food or plants drawing nutrients from the soil. It is the very fabric of life.”
The aggressive stance of Kendra and the subtle jut of her chin told me she was getting angry. Before my fumbling hand could restrain her, she took three steps closer to the woman and said, “Me? Why are you accusing me of destroying all that?”
The blue woman lowered her head and faced my sister. “Those damned wyverns are the problem. We cannot seem to rid them from our world. We finally have those few remaining contained in one area of the world, and you call out to them, draw them with a waste of essence, and now you’re traveling to where they thrive, and the dragon is chained. Interference in the root of life may do irreparable harm to all of us. It cannot be ignored. It must be stopped.”
“Listen to me. Whenever dragons or wyverns or whatever they are fly near, they seem to do something to my mind. They shut it off.” Kendra said in a calmer voice, her actions restrained. “I do nothing intentional to them.”
“Or, more probable, you do something to them that is unconscious. You reach out to them with your mind. Call them. Force them to do your bidding. They cannot refuse your will because of the essence you draw and squander.” The shimmer of the blue dress increased in intensity as she spoke until it appeared to be made of blue fire.
I looked directly at the woman again and could almost make out the forest behind her as if she was half-real or made of glass. Seeing that scared me more than any words could. I moved to my sister’s side, and then took a tentative step closer to the old woman. My hand reached out to touch her. The world exploded in an orange flash in my mind—and all went dark.
I awoke with Kendra kneeling at my side, several steps away from the campfire—and away from where the woman in blue had been standing. She was no longer there. My body stung, from head to toe, tingling and hurting like a thousand pins were being inserted. It felt as if I’d fallen through the ice in the middle of winter and was thawing. I could only manage to say through lips that barely moved, “What happened?”
“You tried to touch the Blue Woman,” Kendra said. “Your hand went right through her body like she was a shadow. Then she burst into a ball of orange fire and disappeared. You were thrown into the air and landed over here. When I looked back, she was gone.”
I tried to sit and failed. My stomach turned, and my body was too weak. Tater, the dog, and Elizabeth slept on, unaware of what happened.
“Rest. Recover.”
My sister was right. I needed time to heal if that was the proper word. But with each passing moment, I felt better. “Was she real? Or a dream?”
“Real enough to do this to you,” Kendra said. “I saw everything you did. Do you need water or anything? A blanket?”
Sitting up with her help, I allowed the tingling to continue instead of fighting it. As it diminished, I reviewed the incident. The entire thing took less time to consider than it had happened in real time. But it didn’t seem tangible. It was more like a dream, and the time she had spent with us was brief, despite my thoughts.
“She thinks I’m responsible for attracting the dragons. Like I have a third kind of magic that calls them to me.”
I turned to Kendra and closed my eyes to think. That was an interesting statement, especially coming from her. A third kind of magic. It paralleled my reasoning but differed in that the image of how the Blue Woman who might be controlled by the third kind. The blue body she revealed was dissimilar to the intense magic of mages and sorceresses, and certainly different from mine. Yet, the woman had as much as accused Kendra of possessing another kind of magic, so that must be a fourth kind. I got lost in the multitude of possibilities.
Four magics? That concept came as a total surprise. For my entire life, we had assumed there were only two kinds, mine and that of real magicians. No, that was not entirely true. We had believed that there was one kind of magic and that I was only able to perform a fraction of that as if it was inferior to those of mages who served the king.
Maybe there are five kinds. The woman had mentioned the forces of darkness, whatever they were. If they came from the essence of the earth, what were they and what kind of magic did they possess? My mind now tingled and hurt, but not from what had happened, but from confusion. I couldn’t seem to follow my thoughts in a straight line without angling off to a different subject. Five kinds of magic?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
K endra might have magic powers? My mind shifted again to follow that line of thought as we sat beside the campfire after the visit from the Blue Lady. I still sat in the dirt and allowed my thoughts to stray further from our conversation. The idea Kendra might control magic had never occurred to me. I was used to thinking of her as my younger, weaker sister that needed my protection while I performed magic. Our relationship had been that way . . . always.
My memories strayed back to our childhood before Elizabeth had rescued us. We talked about “before” and remembered little. However, there was a vague image of a woman who remained in my mind, and a man standing silently at her side.
The man was tall, strong, and handsome. He reminded me of me. At least, that’s my recollection. The woman was less clear in appearance, but somehow more forceful. No, not forceful as in fighting, but as in being a leader with her personality. She led the man. She was in charge.
Then, perhaps he was not my father but a servant or soldier, both thoughts I’d never had in the past. The idea intrigued me. Since both of them had disappeared from our lives, Kendra and I had speculated almost daily as to what had happened.
Then came the hard times, the fights for scraps of food, the wet and cold, the beatings, and most of all the sense of being alone except for each other. As the eldest, I became the head of our household, which for a while was a damp space under the bottom floor of a boarding house. We removed a pair of boards behind a holly bush and crawled in after dark each night. There we kept all we owned, which were three tattered blankets, a few trinkets, and extra clothing.
Rats ate any food we left out, so we immediately devoured what we obtained through begging, theft, and guile. I used my small magic to divert merchant’s attention while we stole an apple or two. A coin spilled from a purse was left unseen due to me. Without it, we would not have survived, although we didn’t kno
w at the time it was a unique skill. What I did understand was that if anyone suspected or hinted at what magic was performed, I’d get a beating. That taught me to hide my crude abilities, such as they were.
However, not once in all that time had the idea that my sister might also have magic abilities crossed my mind. The revelation by the Blue Woman shook my beliefs to my core. Even if what she’s said was not true, she had given us plenty to think about.
I opened my eyes and found my sister. “Kendra?”
“Yes?” She was still kneeling beside me—waiting and concerned.
“Have you ever felt, or thought about, controlling magic?”
“Of course.”
My heart sank as I struggled to sit up. Again, I was caught unaware. “Tell me.”
“Well, it’s natural enough. You have magic abilities, and I wanted the same. If you’re asking if I ever believed it was possible, the simple answer is, no. When we were young, trying to imitate my big brother was expected. I tried to copy some of the magic things you did, but as we grew older, we realized and accepted that only you could do them.”
That seemed both reasonable and understandable. I went back to following the course of my previous thoughts. “Maybe magic abilities are inherited, not learned. I might have gotten them from our mother and father.”
“Meaning?” she asked, obviously not making the connections.
“If one or both of them controlled magic, or essence, as the Blue Woman called it, and since we know I can control it—it makes sense to me that you might, too.”
She didn’t immediately object or refute my statement. I still sat on the ground. Slowly standing, I worked my way to my feet and over to the pile of firewood, then idly placed a few more pieces on the fire, while waiting. Kendra would speak when she was ready.
“Damon, is that your real name? The one you were born with? Is Kendra mine?”
Like me, she was now questioning everything we believed we knew. Good. When she told me what she was thinking, I’d compare the information with mine, a task we’d performed a hundred times, always hoping to discover something new. “I’m not sure about my name, but I’ve only ever thought of you as Kendra. So, that is probably your real name.”
“You could be wrong.”
“Maybe. But, it is one of the few things I’m fairly sure about.”
She joined me beside the fire, taking my hand in hers. She shivered, not from the cold. “Only Damon for you, too.”
“She, the Blue Woman, accused you of controlling too much of the essence of the world. She might control magic of a different sort. Mine is different from hers and also different from that of mages and sorceresses. That makes at least four kinds of magic.”
Kendra shivered again, her fingers threatening to snap mine in her solid grip. “Agreed. Mine may be any of the others, or possibly even a fifth kind. Whatever that means. I’m so confused at all this my mind is swirling and unable to concentrate on anything.”
“Me, too.”
She paused, then went on as if with a new thought, “Still, all the magic she mentioned seem to come from a single source. If that is true, there is just one kind and different uses.”
Her assessment eased my mind instantly. Like various dancers to the same music. It was far easier to think of it in that sense than five different kinds of magic. “We’ve figured some of this out.”
“How can you say, we?” she wondered aloud. “But even if we have managed to figure out part of it, there is a lot more.”
I shut my eyes. The red/orange light of the campfire filtered through my eyelids, making it seem almost daylight. My unconscious mind seemed to creep forward and speak for me. “We are both near twenty-years-old, educated, and intelligent. We need to begin a discrete investigation into our backgrounds beyond what was done years ago. Who were our parents? Where did they come from? And why did they leave us at the same time? Did they die or abandon us?”
“If we both inherited magic,” Kendra continued as if she read my mind, “then it stands to reason they also controlled it. If they did, they probably used it to better their lives, and may have become prominent.”
“So, they would be remembered in some circles,” I finished for her. “Maybe feared in others.”
She said, “We should tell Elizabeth all we know.”
“All?” The word was out of my mouth before I could prevent it.
Kendra let loose of my hand and took a step back. Those simple actions spoke more than a conversation.
I said, trying to defend myself, “Yes, we should consider well before we tell her. If for no other reason than because the knowledge of what we’re discussing tonight might place her in danger.”
“How?” Kendra demanded, her face twisted in anger.
“I don’t know. What about the Blue Woman who was here? She controlled magic and hurt me when I touched her. She could do the same to Elizabeth.”
“There is more you haven’t said.”
I relented. “Did you get the impression that there are sides to using magic?”
Kendra nodded. “I think she might have used the word, evil.”
“Which side are we on?”
[PWE – Ruminations on the past seem lengthy] Kendra nodded, then said, “How do we make a discrete investigation? Just by asking questions will tell others what we’re interested in. You know that.”
I picked up a blanket and placed it on her shoulders, then another for me. This conversation might take a while. “First, a few assumptions. Since we were young when found by Elizabeth, we probably didn’t travel far to get there. I mean, we probably didn’t even travel from the next town or city. That means our family home was in Dire, near the Palace. With our parents.”
“We might have all traveled there from some far-off place.”
I considered and relented. “Okay, our parents’ home may have been, but when we were young it was probably in or near the palace. People do not usually become influential until after the age of thirty, so anyone who interacted with our parents are now aged over fifty. Agreed?”
“I don’t see how that helps.”
“We can assume our parents were about the same ages. How many upper-class, thirty-year-old people with a young boy and girl—who were not royalty—could there have been in Dire twenty years ago? Especially ones that look like you and me?”
“How can you possibly draw all that from the little we know?”
I said, “We can exclude any idea that they were royal. If they were, there would be rumors all over about them, their deaths, our abduction, or whatever. There would be questions about the children, and the king would have inquired about locating them. He would also remember meeting them—and us. Since none of that happened, we can assume our parents were lesser-born.”
“So, we begin our search by finding non-royal people over fifty who may have either known our parents or met them in the course of business.”
“We can narrow it down more. They were teaching us to read and do math, which is uncommon for peasants. We can assume they were not farmers, shopkeepers, or uneducated tradesmen. The one image I have retained has our mother dressed well, in a long gown, and the man standing beside her is our father. He looks wealthy and powerful.”
Kendra shrugged and remained quiet for a time. Finally, she said, “There are not a lot of wealthy people who are not part of the royal family. You can count those I know on one hand.”
“Exactly. There is the woman, Raven, who imports gemstones, and that spice merchant from Garland named Windsor. And the widow, Ella.”
“Her husband owned a fleet of trading ships before he was lost at sea, so she met a lot of travelers, which might have been what we did. And there are only a few more that I can think of. An investigation along those lines shouldn’t take long.”
I said, “And there are also Others. High-ranking priests, military officers, and a few importers who generally fit the category. Mages and sorceresses also come to mind. We have only to speak to p
erhaps twenty people. If our parents were affluent, at least one of those should have encountered them. If all that is true and so easy to find, why have none of them come forward?”
Kendra pulled the blanket around her tighter and avoided my eyes. I shut up and let her think because she was about to say something important. “Damon, that Blue Woman. Who was she, and why does she care if I use too much essence? How will that allow the forces of darkness to emerge?”
“It’s all a mystery.”
She continued, “In your mind, imagine a wine pitcher, tall, with a bulbous bottom and thin neck. When too much essence is poured from it, the dregs of wine at the bottom flow out. Those are forces of darkness.”
Kendra had subtly changed the subject and went to the heart of a problem in a way I hadn’t considered. “Do you remember all the Blue Woman said?”
“No. Do you?”
I hesitated. Was there a way to use my small-magic to recreate the visit? If so, I didn’t know how, but there was another way. “Get your writing kit and give me paper and pen. I’ll start at the beginning, recreating every sentence. You do the same. Then, we will compare. What one forgets, the other will remember.”
She liked the idea. No more talking to distract us or influencing each other with what we remembered. We sat with crossed knees, and I balanced paper in my lap while writing. It took half the night until satisfied I’d jotted down every detail. Kendra was sleeping, so I did too. The exercise hadn’t recalled any new information for me, but it might for Kendra. Besides, in the coming days we would want to review it again, and now we had it written down so our memories wouldn’t fog.
Tater woke us early. “Grab what you want to eat and carry it with you in the saddle. We gotta get over the pass before dark today, and worse, I think a storm’s comin’.”
