“So the way I see it, you have three houses sitting empty and no rent coming in. And Hank is living alone in this one. Are you sure that it’s wise to plunge head-first into building that house near the node?” When he gave Ash a pointed look, Paul had a distinct impression that as much as Cooper was a problem child, or had been, Cooper’s parents viewed Ash as a source of chaos in their son’s life.
Their view was, by necessity, skewed. They weren’t here to see them cook side by side, or joke, or try and teach him how to ground and center as though he was still a little first-grader. No, all they saw was drama and issues, and the only person who fared even worse in Nikko Anneveinen’s eyes was Paul himself.
“We’re fine, Dad,” Cooper interjected. “We all have jobs outside of what we do here. I’m rebuilding a house and a shop for someone up north, and he’s flush with cash. He pays on time, too. Actually...,” he glanced at Ash uncertainly, as though this was an idea that just popped into his head, “I’m thinking of renting out some office space.”
“Don’t you two have enough space here?” Nikko said archly, with his eyebrows rising to his depleted hairline. “I’d have thought...”
“It’s me,” Paul blurted out. He couldn’t stand seeing Cooper and Ash under the fire of the family inquisition over something that was his doing alone. “I... maybe I should be the one to move. I keep messing up people’s electronics, tripping breakers and such. Two days ago was the worst so far.”
“Really?” Uncle Owen leaned in, with that pray, do go on expression of his. Even though Paul knew he’d eventually have to tell Uncle Owen everything, he had no desire to confess his lapse of control to the judgmental and strict uncle Nikko, especially not in front of everybody else.
Ellen winked at him. That didn’t make it better, and Paul felt a warm flush rise to his cheeks. “I’m sorry.”
“He took out the whole block,” Ellen quipped as she sipped her ginger ale. “He has some serious power. Maybe we should weaponize him!”
Oh, no. No way. “You can’t be serious!” Paul sputtered. “I know I can disrupt all kinds of stuff, but it’s all uncontrolled. It’s total chaos! If I try to disrupt any man-made electrical systems, I’ll likely put a hospital out of commission, with patients in the middle of surgery, and stuff.” He shuddered. It’s not as though he had not thought about this. The frackers, and Brian Clegg with his gang, would all get pretty messed up if he sent his morning surge down their wiring. Except he couldn’t, because he had no control over the extent of his damage.
None.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
Ash leaned closer, but not too close. “Calm down. Think calming thoughts, okay? Breathe.”
Paul tried to breathe.
“Think whatever you were thinking of in the river.” Within seconds, Ash’s hair stood up like a halo. A sure warning sign on Paul’s increasing electrical potential. This time, however, Ash didn’t pull away. He stayed right where he was, his gray eyes pinning him with an unusually friendly gaze. “Think of whatever you were thinking of after the fish showed up, Paul. You did it once, you can do it again.”
A rubber suit. A pretend rubber suit, which would contain him, booties and gloves and hood and a face-mask...
Uncle Owen squinted his eyes and leaned back, a small movement which Paul caught with his peripheral vision.
“This is better,” Uncle Owen said quietly. “Well done, Paul. We’ll work on this later.”
“And don’t you dare move,” Cooper chimed in, sounding a bit vexed. “I have my own reasons for joining one of those group offices. Like a bit of structure in my day, you know? And a nice conference room where I can meet clients. Copy machines, a receptionist... it’s a step up, and I’ll have the rest of you out of my hair for a solid block of time, five days a week!”
Ash smiled. “I know, I know. It’s hard enough to work from our spare bedroom with a construction site across the street, and people wanting to check every stupid detail with you instead of reading the plans and figuring stuff out for themselves!”
“Plus, having a more official office will bring me more work. I’m happy to help with all the environmental consulting here, but that’s non-paying work. If we want to build something solid and lasting, we need the cash flow.” Cooper ran out of air, but his posture was straight and almost combative as he was not-quite facing his father.
Nikko Anneveinen harrumphed. “And this is why we think you should rent out the other houses, boys. The family was happy to help you with sending people over, and we will still do that, but that’s not quite enough. If you overextend the enterprise financially, we cannot help you save the whole thing.”
Paul watched the discussion move back and forth, fascinated to witness the inner workings of something he had always taken for granted. The families always stuck together, he knew that. He had never been privy to a heated discussion that didn’t revolve around him.
“Cooper has a strong feeling that we’ll be good,” Ash said quietly. “And I trust him.”
At this, Cooper’s father flashed his son a surprised look. And no wonder. Paul knew, just like the rest of them, that foresight was their grandmother’s gift.
CHAPTER 15
Despite the carved pumpkin on the stoop of his house, Halloween had come and gone with so little fanfare, Cooper felt downright robbed. He had planned a proper ceremony, just him and Ash and the sword. If the veil between the worlds was really thinner on Samhain, (and surely there was a scientific explanation for that, with over ninety percent of all matter in the cosmos being unaccounted for), Cooper had hoped to reach out and feel some kind of a connection with Jared. Or rather, what he still thought might have been Jared’s soul, trapped within the old Japanese blade.
“You didn’t even light candles?” His father’s voice was flat, presumably not to sound judgmental, but Cooper knew his dad well enough to hear this as a guilty verdict.
The unlit candles, which still sat on the mantle of the red brick fireplace, attested to his faithless abandonment of tradition like accusatory exclamation marks. He was a bad son. A faithless son. An ungifted-
Cooper stopped his thoughts. Now. Stop. Right there. The old refrain ran through his head like corrosive acid, eating at the self-confidence he had worked so hard to build. He whirled at his father. “It’s not like that.”
“So what is it like?”
Cooper sighed, sank into the second-hand sofa and threw his head back into the worn stuffing. “It’s been busy. Things settled down after the node, and we were doing okay for a while. Then the low-level earthquakes began to hit, and I had to go and feel the bedrock, see where they were coming from.” He frowned. “Some of them are Brian Clegg’s fault, as in the power seeping from the south, but a whole bunch is oozing toward Pittsburgh from all directions. Like that guy I told you about, Graham Cornell? He had a quake, and it was recent, and it was also fracking-related. So I did a lot of running around, gathering data. Meeting people, too.”
His father’s expression gentled with concern. “But, Cooper. You need to take care, do your holidays. We didn’t raise you to do all that because, well... because your gift didn’t manifest, and we didn’t think it ever would. But this is important, Cooper. Four Keltic holidays, two solstices, two equinoxes. Eight times a year to get some structure into your meditations, to let your gift balance itself out. Is that too much to ask?”
“Dad.” Cooper just about groaned.
Nikko Anneveinen was a legendary water elementalist. He cast a shadow so long, nobody could ever equal him. His footprint was the size of a bathtub, and even if Cooper lived for five hundred years, he could never accomplish as much as his father had in mere five decades.
Because he saw things differently than Cooper did, his insight was as impenetrable as it was valuable. Over Cooper’s many years of abject failure at being a full-fledged, properly-gifted member of his family, he had given up trying to understand the reasons for his family’s weird cult doings. Their hippie
lifestyle. Their... eccentricities.
“You raised me as normal, Dad. That’s what I am.” Cooper didn’t bother to keep the bitterness out of his voice.
“Son. Look at me.” His voice was low now, and concerned. “Please.”
Cooper realized he’d reverted to his difficult teens for at least five minutes. Ashamed of acting like a brat, he straightened up and leaned toward his father, who was seated in Ash’s reading chair. He drew a cleansing breath. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I just... there is so much, Dad. So much at once, and I’m getting better at it, but I’m just so slow.” His eyes stung with frustration, and he blinked hard.
He would not cry.
“And I miss Jared, and Jared’s probably stuck in that fucking sword Ash gave me. Missing Samhain was like missing one of our old play dates in the woods, y’know? I was gonna try it, do a proper ritual like I read about in that book you gave me, and reach out to Jared, see if he’s in there somewhere. Jared used to believe in this stuff.” Cooper paused to collect himself. Talking about Jared had cost him.
“What did Ash think of that?”
“He thought it was a good idea. I mean, he didn’t grow up with these rituals either. He’s kind of self-taught, and I know you hate that, but we both knew Jared was into all this spiritual stuff. So maybe, I dunno. Even if it’s not my thing, I wanted to do it in his memory, Dad.”
“So why didn’t you?” No judgment now, only curiosity.
“’Cause Paul was having all that trouble! He took down a whole section of the power grid. And his teacher was here. Or friend... I think they might be dating, but he didn’t say it in so many words. This guy, Dad, you have to meet him.”
“Russ, right?”
“Yeah. Russ.” Cooper shook his head. He almost smelled the molten wax of the candles that had never been lit. He almost tasted the spicy gingerbread of his mother’s Samhain bannocks. He had wanted to do all that.
“And you still can.” As though he had heard him say all that aloud, his father responded in a voice calmed by his decades, by long years of experience which had settled him into a more stable space in life. More centered place in the universe. Cooper felt his father’s power signature like a steady, sheltered blue flame that would not waver in even the strongest gale, and he wondered what would it be like, to have control like that. “If you’d like, we can do it together,” his father said. “With Ash, too.”
“And with Uncle Owen?”
Nikko Anneveinen sighed. “No, not Owen. Owen will be busy with Paul and Russ. I don’t want to distract them.” His hazel gaze pinned Cooper in place with heavy concern. “Between Owen and Russ, they might be Paul’s only hope.”
THE NEXT DAY, Cooper’s stomach twisted with hunger as they fasted. That evening, after Bob and Matt had left their big, yellow machines slumbering at the construction site across the street, Cooper led his father and Ash past the three connected rectangles that were going to be their house.
“Don’t step into the concrete, it’s still wet.” Cooper’s voice carried on a soft, cold breeze, competing with the rustling of dead grasses and dry leaves underfoot. He carried a duffel bag over his shoulder and a sword in his hand, his father lugged a picnic basket, and Ash peered over a cardboard box of odds and ends which his dad had thought would be a good idea to bring along.
The footing, which had once been such a treacherous mess of weeds and tufts of grass and gopher holes, was familiar ground now. The guys had evened the ground some, and once they had cut most of the weedy grass, a traffic pattern had emerged which carved a path through the land that nature had tried to take back for her own.
Cooper stopped. This was the place, the precise spot where Jared had last stood behind him. “This is where it happened.” His voice came out like a croak. It was impossible not to feel the ghostly echo of his favorite cousin’s hand on his shoulder. He knew from before that if he only allowed his memory to wander, he would still sense a faint hint of the immense influx of power which Jared had poured into him that day.
He thought of mentioning it but shut his mouth instead. It was irrational. Sappy and sentimental, and he’d want to cry again – dammit, he never used to be this emotional before his earth-sense had kicked in – and he sure as hell was done wallowing in guilt-stricken misery.
To his shock, his father broke the sullen silence. “I can tell. I can still feel a trace of his power-signature.”
Carefully, as though the duffel bag was full of cut crystal and not just a blanket and meditation pillows, Cooper set it down next to the crater. Then he turned, making sure he didn’t fall in, and faced his father in the thin dusk. A tongue of fog rolled in from his left, as though the river himself wanted to join in. “What’s that, again?”
His father set down his old woven birch picnic basket and waved Ash over. “The thing is, boys, we’re forever on the cusp between the scientific understanding of the world, and the other. The primal, superstitious ways of our ancestors. You are right to cleave to reason, Cooper.” He faced him now, shorter than he, somewhat stouter, and as immovable as a piece of ancient bedrock. “The main difference between us and our ungifted neighbors is this. For them, deeds matter more than thoughts. They live in the material world, which is Newtonian and predictable, like it should be for their kind.” He paused, as though he expected Cooper or Ash to object. When only the chugging of a far-away river boat’s engine punctuated the silence, Nikko Anneveinen continued. “For our kind, for us humans with unusual gifts, things are more complicated. Our thoughts have the ability to become material, to affect this predictable Newtonian world. What you think is what you just might get, and your gift will often let your thoughts or desires manifest in ways which become tangible. And those ways can have profound consequences.”
Ash cleared his throat, and Nikko turned to him. “Yes, Ash?”
“How about memories? How about feeling old stuff over and over again? That’s thoughts, too.”
“Yes,” Cooper chimed in with a firm nod. “And feeling as though Jared’s still here and feeling his energy like I did before he disappeared – that's weird, Dad. I don’t know where the real ends and the imaginary begins.” He remembered his old days and the scary bottles of antipsychotics.
So did his father. “You’re not crazy,” he said. “But you have to be careful to tell which is just wishful thinking and which is a power manifestation. So...yes, it’s possible for a gifted person to become crazy, to believe in things that are not real in the material world, and to believe they are doing, or feeling, some kind of an effect of their gift. But you’re not that way, Cooper.”
“How can you tell?” He hoped it was easy and obvious, but he knew better than to even hope.
“Because you’re staying vigilant, Cooper. And doing your rituals will help. They’re just convenient traditions which center your mind. Having other people with a gift around helps too, and the same goes for making sure they are honest enough to tell you when you’re deluding yourself. Because think, Cooper. Everything you do will bear a touch of your power signature. Didn’t you say you could tell which earthquakes were connected to that Brian fellow, and which came in from the outside?”
Oh. Oh. Mutely, Cooper nodded.
His father turned to Ash next. Compared to how critical he had been of Ash in the past, his present manner was downright conciliatory. “To answer your question, Ash, there are ways to say goodbye to old memories. First, we will greet the new season, even though we’re doing it four days too late. Then we’ll examine Jared and see if he is alert inside that sword. And later, before I leave, I’ll teach you how to walk away from that which is no longer happening.” He shook his head in warning, and his voice turned dark. “We cannot afford to live in the past or delve into the future. For us, there is only the present. If we try to do what Grandma Olga does, we’ll change the course of events by accident and not even realize it.”
Cooper bit his lip. So that feeling of premonition he did occasionally feel with great int
ensity... that was real? Potentially real? He made a note to ask about it.
His father got down to business. “Let’s spread the blankets and set up our things, and then I’ll cast a circle, boys. It’s time.”
CHAPTER 16
“There is absolutely nothing wrong with you.” Uncle Owen’s words, which should have brought Paul peace and acceptance, filled him with panic.
“But, but...” He’d been hoping for answers, coping strategies, skills. And here they were sitting in the cool basement of Mark and Ellen’s house, using the metal drain in the floor as a dump for Paul’s excess energy. The old, fieldstone walls still gleamed with their almost-new coat of pale gray paint, and the brick walls that bordered the other basement shone with red warmth. Russ was sitting next to him on a thin yoga mat, while Uncle Owen enjoyed the luxurious comfort of a camping chair.
“But nothing, my boy. You got schooled in the same basic centering exercises as everybody else, and we’ll refresh all that. You never got to develop your shields, because your twin brother did a good job of protecting you from interfering adults.”
Paul glanced to Russ, then back to Uncle Owen again. “You knew?”
“I think everybody knew, but there were no easy answers. Your gift is rare. Aside from the Norwegian thunder giants, the only other historical reference I found is a Czech legend – did you know that the people had named the poor guy Krakonosh? It means the “Bringer of lightning,” I was told. He lived several hundred years ago, alone and in the mountains. The legend says he was a giant who punished the wicked and rewarded the pure of heart by rescuing them when they got lost in his realm.” He gave Paul an ironic smirk. “Seriously. You’re not that unique, and you don’t have to hide away from the peasants, who might burn you at the stake before you have the chance to fry them.”
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