Aspect Of Winter

by Tom Early

  “Are you sure you’ll be all right?” My dad asked gently.

  I nodded, smiling as best I could at him. He patted me on the arm lightly and they filed out after the doctor, promising to visit soon with more books and to tell Sam that I was awake. I attempted to move as much as my IV tube and constraining bed would allow and settled in to read and maybe sleep. After reading for a couple hours, I was unconscious again.

  A few hours after that, my eyelids fluttered open. The room had gotten noticeably darker, but it didn’t have a window, so it wasn’t because of the time. The shadows of the various medical instruments were getting larger, and extending towards the far wall of the room. That couldn’t be good. As I watched, the shadows began to cast themselves onto the wall, and form an arch of darkness. When the arch was completed, the wall itself began to shimmer and distort. A few moments later, Aiden stepped through it with his right arm hanging limply by his side. Trailing shadowy smoke behind him, he came over to stand by the side of my bed. I did my best to wriggle as far away as I could, but there was nothing I could do to escape, and there wasn’t enough water for me to work with to form any sort of capable defense. I pressed the call button and nothing happened, which somehow I didn’t find at all surprising. I was completely at his mercy.

  Aiden looked at me impassively, his face giving away nothing. After a minute of uncomfortably staring at each other, he spoke, his voice containing not even the slightest hint of compassion.

  “Feayr Hanson, I fear I owe you my gravest apologies.”

  He said it like he was reading from a script. I didn’t believe him for a second.

  “Putting your life at risk as I have is utterly unacceptable behavior for me to display, as an instructor and guide for you and Samantha. I have been officially…. reprimanded, for my behavior.” He scratched at his cheek almost absentmindedly as he said this, and I saw what looked like a massive welt forming there. Good.

  “What?” I rasped, “You think apologizing is going to make this all better?”

  Aiden rolled his eyes at me. “No, I don’t think we’re going find all of our matters so suddenly settled. I’m also not interested in that. We had a good duel, and we’ll both be fine, given enough time. If you want to hold a grudge for a temporary situation, then you are more than welcome to it.” His eyes glinted. “I promise to accept your challenge any time.”

  “Your compassion warms me.”

  “And the sight of you lying weakly in bed is pathetic. Allow me to impart some words of advice. Get stronger, or be prepared to die.” Aiden eyed me dismissively. “I’ve seen your type at the University before. Too delighted at the prospect of finally belonging somewhere to see past their own noses. Fools. They get eaten alive. Sometimes literally.”

  Aiden leaned over my body, his face directly over mine. His eyes were once again pits of darkness.

  “You have the potential to be strong. I’ve seen it. You aren’t going to pass up this opportunity. There are those who are happy with a normal life, who strive for nothing more than waking up from a warm bed to the sight of a happy family. I respect those people, for I suspect they may be a great deal wiser than I. But you and I aren’t like that. Neither is Sam. We need more. Whether it is to know, to control, to explore or to be feared, we want more than is afforded to those who live simply.”

  Aiden tossed a small object at my chest, a leather-bound journal with no writing of any sort on the cover.

  “This is a gift from me to you and Samantha,” Aiden said. “We may not care much for each other, but it would be remiss of me to pass over such potential as the two of you possess. This holds information from the lesser tomes of Grammarie, the language of magic. Read it, and grow stronger. Your sleepy town may not remain as such for much longer.”

  He looked at me, his expression inscrutable. “This you must always remember. Magic does not tread lightly on this world. It leaves a mark.”

  I looked at the journal, sitting innocently on my throbbing ribcage, and then looked back up at him.

  “So, what now? If I decide that I’m interested in your special school, I just wait?”

  Aiden nodded, his face a mask again. “Yes, you wait. The University will contact you soon enough, I can tell you that. The final decision of whether to attend will be entirely up to you, but should you choose to, there will, regrettably, be more tests.”

  Aiden moved back to the door of shadows, and then glanced at me one more time.

  “It is likely that we'll not be seeing each other again for some time, Feayr. Give Samantha my regards, for I’ve not the time to make a second visit. She is a formidable woman. If the two of you wish to face me again, I will be only too happy to oblige.”

  With that, he strode through the darkness once more, the shadows embracing him as their own. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be getting much sleep tonight.

  **********************************************

  When I woke up the next morning, I felt considerably better. For one thing, I could actually speak without my throat declaring a vendetta against me. Doctor Grayson came in fairly soon after, checked my vitals, made pleased “harrumph” noise, and said that my IV could be removed. I still wasn’t allowed to walk, but I could request medication if the pain came back, so I was much better off than I was before. A nurse brought in a hospital breakfast tray of jello, and placed it on a small foldout table within my reach. I grabbed my latest book, and settled in for a much better morning. I figured I’d save the perusal of the journal for when Sam arrived. And I was definitely going to take a look. As crazy as Aiden was, he was right. I couldn’t just walk away from a chance like this, a chance to finally belong with people like me. If I had to spend the rest of my life pretending I was normal, I’d go insane.

  About an hour after that, I heard a familiar voice at the doorway. “The mighty polar bear has awoken, I see.” Sam walked over to me and enveloped me in a Sam-hug. Those things were deadly. She would tangle herself around me, but she always lost track of her elbows, causing the hug to be more painful than enjoyable. Considering I was currently bed-ridden from an excess of pain, her hug was that much worse. Still, it was the thought that counted. I did my best to awkwardly hug her back, holding back a shriek. Sam must have noticed, however, because her expression turned briefly apologetic and she let go of me.

  “How’s the hospital been, Fay? You look a lot better than the blood-covered corpse I dragged in here a couple days ago.”

  “Not bad,” I said, grinning from having her back with me. “You don’t have to kill anyone this time.”

  Sam’s face darkened. “Don’t be so sure about the ‘no killing’ request. Aiden’s still alive.”

  I sighed, tilting my head toward her imploringly. “Sam… you did break his arm.”

  “Yes, I did.” Sam said darkly. “And I’m not even close to done paying him back. The only reason I didn’t do more is because he helped me get you to the hospital. He did some freaky shadow portal thing to get us here. I drove the Jeep through it, which, incidentally, is now a spiffy black monochrome. I like it.”

  “Wow. Talk about weird side effects.” I hesitated, and then continued. “Sam, Aiden came to visit me last night.”

  Sam’s expression changed instantly. Her face tightened, and her eyes grew cold.

  I did my best to make a placating gesture, which is difficult when you can’t move your arms that much.

  “Don’t worry, Sam. He came here to apologize, not to threaten me.”

  I filled her in on what had happened, and she looked slightly mollified, especially when I showed her the journal.

  “Okay, that’s slightly better, but I’m still going to kill him if I see him again.”

  “And I’ll hold your coat while you do,” I said agreeably, “but for now, let’s see what we can get out of what he gave us and survive the rest of senior year, okay?”

  I edged over as far to the right of my bed as I could, and Sam climbed in next to me. Millions of jealous strai
ght boys swooned around the world without knowing why.

  We opened the journal.

  Chapter Six

  I was released on Monday, so Sam gleefully took the excuse to escape from school and come pick me up. One of the nurses wheeled me out of the hospital in a wheelchair. I was capable of walking, but the hospital had a rule about patients like me leaving wheelchair-bound.

  Sam waved at me cheerfully from the parking lot and took a special pleasure in wheeling me over to the Jeep. It was indeed looking snazzy with its new black coating. I glanced back to make sure the nurses weren’t there to yell at me, and stood up to climb into the car.

  I stopped cold. Sam’s hands were tinted more than slightly red.

  “Sam. Please, please, please, don’t tell me you killed someone while I was at the hospital.”

  She snorted. “No, dumbass. We were working with red clay in AP art today as an exercise. Now, where to? There’s got to be somewhere you want to be after being released.”

  I leaned the seat back and stretched out. “Honestly? I just kind of want to go home. Or to your house. Somewhere I can just escape from nosy people for a while. My parents are out of state again as usual anyway.”

  They’d been almost constant companions while I was at the hospital, which was nice, but weird. They were busy with work so often that I wasn’t used to spending so much time with them. I was almost relieved when they asked me if it was okay if they went back to work.

  Sam gunned it. “My house it is, then. We’re going to spend the day reminding you that you’re still a normal teenager… sorta. I’ll start whining at you about Aidan’s journal-thing tomorrow.”

  One hair-raising drive later, Sam pulled into her driveway, and we hopped out. Well, she hopped out. I stepped out gingerly, making sure my feet would support my weight.

  Sam went in to wash her hands while I settled down on the couch to wait. When Sam came back from the sink, I noticed that her knuckles looked raw. There were scabs covering each and every one of them. Sam caught me looking, and just smiled sadly and gave a tiny shake of her head. I knew better than to say anything.

  By the time it started to get dark out we were both full of pasta, had bickered about the relative attractiveness of several different celebrities (I had a fondness for the ones closer to my age, while Sam unabashedly reserved her love for the slightly older ones), and had generally goofed around. When her dad, David Gray, had come in, we were both passed out in the living room. I was gently rustled awake and told that I could sleep over as long as I called my parents. It turned out overprotective dads were fine with having their daughters’ male friends sleep over as long as they were gay.

  Mr. Gray was one of the few other adults I had revealed my sexuality to, and I never once regretted the decision. I cleared the matter with my parents, and Sam and I moved up to her room.

  Sam’s room was basically an extension of Sam. It was an unapologetic explosion of all the things she found interesting. One wall was devoted to the various belts and ranks of martial arts she’d added to her repertoire, another was covered in whatever were her favorite drawings at the time, and the part of her room above her bed was kept entirely clear for reasons I’ve never quite understood. There were also pictures of Sam practically covering the door. Every time I came in, dozens of pairs of warm brown eyes stared back at me. Sam had the knack of appearing beautiful at pretty much any point in time, but she didn’t care about it. I wasn’t even sure if she knew her phone could take pictures. Her dad did it for her.

  I pulled out my mattress from the customary position underneath her bed and set it up. When I finished and turned around Sam was staring at me, bouncing on her bed slightly, her face open, screaming of all the vulnerability she never showed.

  “Fay, do you remember what Aiden said?”

  I caught on immediately. “You mean about your mom being magic?”

  “Yeah.” Sam looked down at her hands, her slender fingers twining together nervously. “Why… why didn’t she ever tell me?”

  I swallowed thickly. I’d been thinking about this a little too.

  “Sam, you told me your mom died when you were only eight, right?” Sam nodded, still looking at her hands. “And she didn’t know she was going to die until almost right before?” She nodded again. “Well, considering how crazy both of our lives just got from learning about magic, maybe she thought you were too young.”

  “It still hurts,” she whispered. “Knowing that there was such a big part of her I never got to see.”

  She flexed her hand unconsciously as she said that, and I didn’t comment on the new indentations in the wall.

  I pulled her into an embrace, squeezing her tightly as her eyes grew suspiciously wet. She hugged me fiercely back, her body trembling silently. Some people only saw Sam as a violent, confrontational person, but that wasn’t her at all. For as long as I’d known her, Sam always had to win. I think it was her way of showing her mother she was an amazing daughter. She just did it in a different way than others do. I let Sam hold on to me, as I held on to her as well. It hurt to see her suffering.

  Sam had been my source of strength for as long as we’d been friends. I wasn’t able to just laugh at all the things that hurt me. I didn’t know how to put on a face and challenge the world like she did. So I depended on her to do it for me, to protect me. I loved her like the sister I never had.

  It was another few minutes before Sam spoke, her voice still slightly shaky.

  “I think I know how Aiden found us, by the way.”

  “Oh?”

  “The nurse, Fay. We were the only two kids to react to whatever it was she did. It makes sense.”

  It did make sense. I blamed being too busy fighting for my life to not have thought of it earlier. I nodded at Sam to show I agreed, and she continued.

  “Can we take a look at the journal now? It’s kind of hard to think about doing anything else when it’s right here.”

  I sighed. There wasn’t much point in trying to sleep now; Sam was going to keep bugging me if I didn’t cave in.

  “I guess there isn’t much harm in opening it, but we do need to sleep at some point, all right?”

  “Deal,” Sam said, locking her door.

  Sam’s dad didn’t know about my magic, and I wasn’t going to bring up the matter if Sam didn’t want to. Oh, and now Sam had magic to hide as well. It was going to take a while to wrap my head around that particular change. Though, come to think of it, if his wife was magical, he probably did know. I filed that away to bring up to Sam later, when she wasn’t already dealing with her mom’s secrets.

  We sat on her floor, and I pulled out the journal from the bag I’d been lugging around since the hospital. We had only just opened it back then before a nurse came in, and we promptly closed it and put it back. For all intents and purposes, this was the first look.

  I held out the journal. Sam sat next to me, both of us fidgeting slightly with excitement. The cover wasn’t anything too impressive, just bound leather. Opening it revealed page after page of creamy white paper, covered in remarkably neat writing and the occasional diagram. The first page was devoted to a brief personal entry of Aiden’s.

  “After being tested, it would seem that my ritual talent lies mainly in the field of summoning with a slight predilection towards illusion. I was hoping to have evocation talent, but it seems that it will not be so. I will be recording any summons I find in the Regent’s Archives in here, as well as some of the more minor spells that all casters are capable of using.” –Aiden Ombra, 19, Shade of the Ombra Family

  Sam bit her lip thoughtfully as she looked at the writing, her long legs absentmindedly stretched out in front of her.

  “Do you have any idea what these terms mean, Fay?”

  Looking at the words, I realized I did. Years of fantasy video games had introduced me to all sorts of weird words.

  “Will you laugh at me if I say yes, because of video games?”

  Sam snickered. “I gues
s being lazy actually did pay off for you.”

  I ignored her. “Uh, if they’re anything alike, summoning is pretty much what we saw Aiden do. Calling creatures from somewhere else to fight for you.”

  Sam tilted her head. “Somewhere else?”

  “You know, uh, like not Earth.”

  The implication of what I’d just said hit me a moment later. Could there be other places than Earth? That would definitely go a long way for explaining why nobody knew magic was real.

  Sam wrinkled her nose. “Okay, that’s way too much to think about right now. Let’s focus on smaller epiphanies and try and stay sane.” She tapped Aiden’s note. “Summoning, huh. I guess that’s all we’ll be learning too, then. I’m not sure I particularly want to learn how to call up a freaking demon-dog, though. That thing was really hard to kill.”

  I stared at her. “Sam, do you ever listen to what comes out of your mouth? You killed a hellhound, and your only problem with that is that it was really hard to kill.”

  Sam huffed at me. “I still don’t want to summon that, though. I like things with a bit more… style.”

  “Like your combat boots?” I asked dryly. Those things were pretty, with all their shining black leather and buckles, but again. Combat. Everything with Sam somehow involved that. That or art. Sam ignored me in favor of turning the page.

  The first spell described apparently was the summoning of… I frowned. Though Aiden had done a good job of translating whatever this originally was into English, it appears that the spell itself was an entirely different story. The only language I took in school was Latin, and I wasn’t anywhere near proficient in it. The harsh consonants the script contained indicated the spell was more likely to be closer to German.

  Whatever it was that this spell was summoning was called an… ercinee, or something. Judging by Sam’s baffled expression, she also had no idea what that was. The spell itself seemed pretty simple. To summon an ercinee, one needed to provide some source of light, as a token to be sacrificed to the spell. It also apparently worked best at night, so that the ercinee would know where to arrive. Beyond that, it was just a matter of pronouncing the weird-sounding words in the right way. There were also weird symbols at the bottom of the page with corresponding numbers, but I didn’t know what they were for.