by Dani Swanson
"What's so funny?" Her mom set down her measuring cup on the counter and raised her eyebrow.
"Nothing, everything is fine," Izzie smirked and flicked some flour at her mom.
"When did you get so sarcastic?" Her mother rolled her eyes as she went back to putting the flour into the cup.
"When people started calling me a weirdo," Izzie said with a shrug as she scrolled her finger down the recipe, looking to see if she was mixing the ingredients right.
"Sweetie, I don't want people judging you out in the real world. I know you have your little security blanket, invisible friend thing, but you're an adult now, and it's time to stop talking to yourself."
Izzie's face grew hot as she sat there, trying not to react to what her mom was saying.
"Just ignore her Iz, you'll be out of the house soon enough." Zyon's voice was sympathetic as he went over and gently touched her arm, careful not to walk through the baking goods on the table. She gave a slight smile to him and returned the sweet embrace, which looked like she was hugging herself to her mom.
"Well, mom, no one treats me like a weirdo now that the normal teenage, high school bull is over. I would think that my home is the one place where I can be myself. I went to all your specialists, and they all told you that there is nothing wrong with me. I think it's time that you just accept that I am a little eccentric and leave it alone." Izzie had never stood up for herself like that with her mom. She could feel a lump growing inside of her throat and a surge running through her veins.
"I didn't raise you to act that way. Is it that you don't feel like you're loved enough? That we don't listen to you?"
"You're not listening to me RIGHT NOW!" The sarcasm was thick, and Izzie stopped working on their project. She dusted off her hands on a towel and started to head out of the kitchen.
"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to go be a weirdo in my room, all by myself. Might have a nice conversation with myself too."
With the bickering going on between Izzie and her mom, Zyon didn't notice the orange cat's puffy tail creeping behind him on the counter. In a swift movement, Frankie had finally caught her prize. She had Zyon in her jaw and was swinging him back and forth. To Sami, the cat looked like the cat had her jaw open and was spazzing out; to Izzie, she could see the sheer terror on Zyon's face.
"Frankie! NO! Drop it!" Izzie started to rush toward the cat.
"What is wrong with her?" Sami was in the path of Izzie and the cat. A surge of energy came from Izzie's fingers, moving everything off the counter, including Frankie, sending Zyon sailing through the air. Izzie reached up and snatched him out of mid-air as if she were catching a football.
"What was that?!" Sami Screamed as she was trying to catch the cat to examine her mouth.
"Nothing, mom. The cat likes to play with my invisible friend too." With that, Izzie walked out of the kitchen, picking up her backpack. She headed to her room and shut the door. She wasn't disturbed for the rest of the night, and when she got hungry and ventured out to find something for dinner, the house was empty. There was no cheery note left from her mom on where she went. There was no dinner waiting for her in the fridge. The mess had been cleaned up and the kitchen was sparkling.
"Well, this is different," Izzie said to Zyon as she scooped him up and placed him on the counter. "She didn't even finish making the cookies. She's super upset."
"You did zap her.....and told her that your invisible friend was real." Zyon took the piece of lunch meat she was offering him and gobbled it up between words.
"You don't have to eat so fast. We're home alone." She rubbed his back as she spoke." Well, to be fair, I have been telling her since I met her that you were real. I don't agree that it's my fault that she doesn't believe me........and what was that thing I did?" She spun around to look at Zyon's face. He uncomfortably fidgeted.
"I'm serious, Zyon. Tell me the truth for once." She folded her arms across her chest and tilted her head to the side. She stood up for herself once today and survived it. This was going to be the next test.
"Okay, I think you're old enough to know now. Or should I say mature enough to control it? You know that crystal thing you wear around your neck? It contains magic. I don't know how it all works, but you come from a line of witches. There is some kind of magic within you, and it seems to be coming out in little waves throughout your life. I don't know if you remember the first night we got here, but you shut the curtains at the orphanage by waving your finger at it."
Izzie stood there with her mouth open for a minute and stared at him. She always felt that she was different from everyone else, more than just how she had a boggle as a bodyguard, but that there was something inside of her.
"Huh. Maybe my mom is right? Maybe I am just a weirdo."
"You're not a weirdo! It's completely normal in the Winding Woods." Izzie looked over to the fridge and saw the picture that she and Nathan had drawn out on the porch swing. Her eyes started to water.
"Why can't I go back to the Winding Woods? Where I am NORMAL?"
Zyon again paused, slowly chewing the bit of ham he had left in his hands. "ZYON! Tell me! I'm tired of having to hide who I am. Of Shadows coming for me at night. I want to be able to sleep without having a light on! TELL ME!"
Zyon let out an audible swallow before he slowly started to talk. He didn't know how to explain it all to her. Or what to even tell her at all. "Well, other than the boggles, the entire woods have been under a sleeping spell since we left. There is a witch that needs your magic to control all of the power throughout the Winding Woods. So no, you can't go back to that. I have no idea what she is going to do to you. The Shadows keep trying to take you back, and I can't let that happen either." His eyes were big and sad as he watched her for a reaction.
She didn’t know how to feel. She knew she should believe him because he hadn’t been wrong for any of the other things that he had told her.
“I think it’s time that we get ready to leave for school.” She took her drawing off the fridge from all those years ago and brought it with her to her room. She packed her boxes over the next few days; her mother barely acknowledged that she was even in the house. Nathan came the following Friday and picked her up, filling his car with her things.
Izzie wrote her parents a letter, thanking them for raising the little girl that was found in the park and that she loved them. She left it under the pink magnet on the fridge where her mom usually left them notes. With a deep sigh she looked back at the swing on the porch as she walked out to the car.
“You okay?” Nathan asked as she plopped down in the front seat. Her eyes were a little watery as she helped Zyon get comfortable in the backseat.
“I just have a gut feeling that I will never see this place again. I’ll never sit on that swing again.”
“This will always be your home, goofy. We’re just going on an adventure to college. You’ll be back for Thanksgiving at the latest.”
She gave him a weak smile and nodded though she knew that wasn’t true. She looked back at the house through the review mirror as it grew smaller along the horizon.
11: A Grumbling from the closet
She moved into a small studio apartment not far from where she would be going to school, taking a job working at a bookstore on campus. It gave her a discount on her tuition that her almost free ride scholarship didn’t cover and was just enough to pay her rent and feed her and Zyon. Nathan helped his sister get her place and even helped with getting a couch and tv to accompany her desk and bedroom set she had brought with her; it was very cozy. Nathan was right down the hallway in his own little place. The apartment was just enough for the two of them and gave Izzie a sense of belonging for the first time since she could remember a sense of belonging and being safe at home. She made it through the first three years of school without a problem and was becoming established around St. Mary’s.
The part that Izzie loved about her job was not only did it allow her to pay for her needs, but also
gave her resources to research, figure out her magic, and control it. She was able to order special books for the shelves and read them when they came in. Though Zyon continually protested her investigation, he too was curious about what her powers were. He had never been that close to a witch, well, a witch that knew she had powers. He had no idea how it worked or what her powers even were.
"Well, how do you do your magic?" She was looking over the top of a Moon Magic book she was reading. The author was sure that powers pulled from the moon and that witches should sleep naked under the beams of the full moon. Izzie felt that sounded like an arrest waiting to happen.
"What magic? I don't have magic." He was chewing on some beef jerky out of his special snack drawer in the fridge.
"You are invisible when you want to be, and I have literally seen you be the size of a toddler and as big as a bear. What do you call that if it isn't magic?"
Zyon stopped chewing and furrowed his brow as he looked back at her. "Is that magic? That's just what we do. A boggle just does that naturally. Like how you naturally walk and talk."
"But why would a witch have magic then? Isn't it something we just do?" Her focus was back to the ink drawings of pentagrams etched around a fire pit. She traced her finger around the figures.
"Okay, that difference I know about." He crossed the room, climbing up on the bed next to her as he looked over her shoulder. "You see, witches can have different magic. Some of you pull from the elements around you. Like you have to see water to make it do stuff. Or they pull fire from a candle. Then some witches have the Ether. I think that's what you have. You pull your magic from within you. So, I think there are different levels to it. Some can pull it and store it; some have to create it.....but I don't think you'll get it from dancing naked in a circle in the moonlight." He was shaking his head and pointing to a different sketch in the book.
Izzie giggled at him as she fidgeted with her sparrow around her neck. "Yeah they do look pretty ridiculous, don't they?" She shut the book and then went for one that was on the Salem Witch Trials. "How do you think we get the magic out of this charm? Do I have to break it?" She felt a little sick to her stomach asking that about her beloved necklace. It was all she had from her birth family, and she had grown attached to it over the years.
"I wouldn't until you figured out what is inside of it." He nervously watched her fidget with her necklace. He didn't know what was going to happen with her magic as she continued to grow stronger. Or, what a witch does with their magic. "These questions were easier when you were five." He went up and made a nest on her pillow and was getting ready to take his afternoon nap.
"Do you want me to make you a spot in the closet? Xander is going to be coming over." She smiled sheepishly as she could feel her cheeks start to turn pink.
"Again?" Zyon opened one eye as he looked over to her. "You spend way too much time together." He sat up and rested his arms onto his knees as he let out an annoyed sigh.
"Well, when you have a boyfriend, you tend to spend time with them."
"Do you think you should be dating with your new-found information on your, you know, your infliction?"
"Infliction? You make it sound as if I have a disease!" She went over to the closet with the throw from her bed and placed it on the floor next to the treasure chest box she kept in there for Zyon.
"Well, he doesn't have any powers. What happens if your abilities go crazy in front of him like it did with your family? He will freak out. It would be best if you didn't have to experience that." Zyon shrugged as he moved over to the little spot he had in the closet for the stuff he collected. He was terrified of this man coming into Izzie's life. He had enough problems trying to watch her and what she was doing; now he had a new person to worry about being a problem.
"One, I doubt I'll lose control again. That hasn't happened since I got away from mom. Two, how do you know he doesn't have any magic? Maybe he's a witch?" She raised her eyebrows as she looked over her shoulder at him. She was hurriedly picking up the dirty dishes on the counter and trying to tidy up the apartment. She looked at her phone periodically and was typing messages back to Xander about dinner.
"I think they call them wizards. Or is it a warlock?" Zyon took one of the decorative pillows from her bed and brought it with him to the closet. At least when Xander came over, he got a little longer nap time. He didn't have to worry about her wandering off while he slept. The last time she did that, he woke to find her running across the lawn, chased by twenty shadows. Screaming and hysterical when she made her way back into the house. Her parents were beside themselves as they didn't understand what she had been running from. That was when the medication talk had started in the home.
"Should I ask him? Xander, you have caught me talking to myself hundreds of times, and you still talk to me.....are you a warlock? Do you believe in my boggle? Would you like to meet him?" Her laughter brought a smile to his face even though he disagreed with her humor.
"Just because he finds your conversations with an unseen source charming doesn't mean you need to tell him about me. It's bad enough that your family knows. We don't need to add anyone else to the mix." He went over to his snack drawer again and got a cheese stick and brought it with him into the closet. "What are you little love birds going to do tonight anyway?"
"We're going to watch a movie and eat some pizza. Fascinating college dating rituals. It's called we're too poor to go out anywhere dating."
There was a light rapping on the door. Izzie shooed Zyon into the closet and slid the barn door halfway shut before checking her face in the mirror. She peeped through the peephole and saw Xander.
"Who is it?" She had a sing-song tone to her voice.
"Girl, I'm going to eat your share of the pizza if you don't open the door."
She undid the double lock and greeted him with a gentle kiss on the cheek as he passed through the door.
"You wouldn't eat my half of the pizza; you don't like onions." She said as she playfully took the pizza box out of his hands.
"I would like them to prove a point. It's not that I don't like onions, it's just that a solid meat and cheese pizza is superior."
He came in and tossed his jacket on the back of the chair at her desk. She loved how his t-shirts hugged the muscles of his arms.
"I saw your brother down the hallway. He wants us to go to The Smokey Owl with him after we watch our movie. He says it is an eighteen plus night, and we can get in and go dancing." He grabbed a slice of pizza and dropped down on the couch in his favorite spot.
Izzie nervously looked at the clock and then looked outside to see that the sun was already setting. It was supposed to be a full moon tonight, which allowed for more shadows. She wanted to go, though. She had never been out dancing before.
"So? Yes? No?" Xander raised his eyebrows as he questioned her. He continued to devour his share of the pizza.
"I'm not sure, I haven't ever been out dancing." She joined him on the couch and cuddled into the crook of Xander’s arm as she slowly ate her food.
"You know it's a full moon out, and you shouldn't be going out!" Zyon grumbled from the closet loud enough for Izzie to hear. She shifted uneasily as she turned on the movie.
"You know what? I don't know what I'm so nervous about. I will be with my boyfriend and my BROTHER. It should be a good time." She was speaking a little louder than she previously had been, wanting her voice to carry back to Zyon.
"What do you think would happen? You're going to be with two big guys."
"Yeah, and my brother has always promised to PROTECT me....you know, from guys like you." She tried to make it flirty as she was trying to make it sound like she wasn't weird about the conversation.
"He's not going to be strong enough against the boogeymen." Zyon was now poking his head out of the closet.
"I wonder if I have any fun jewelry to wear when we go out." She wiggled out of her spot and made her way over to the closet. She shoved Zyon back into the closet and opened his wooden b
ox on the floor.
"It's going to be harder for me to watch you at a crowded bar. I really don't think that it's a good idea, Iz. You should pass and stay in the house tonight. You guys watch two movies instead of just one." Zyon was tugging on her sleeve as she dug through his box.
"I want to go out and be a normal college kid. I'm tired of being the weird kid that stays locked up in her apartment all the time." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "I'm going out." She snatched the ring Nathan had bought for her that matched her necklace from Zyon, placing it on her pinky finger.
"I forbid it! You better not go!" Zyon had his arms crossed over his chest and was staring at her dead in her eye. "GO, WATCH YOUR MOVIE!" It was the first time that Izzie ever remembered Zyon raising his voice at her.
"Excuse me?!" Her voice was louder than she had expected it to be.
"What, babe? You okay in there?" She could hear Xander moving on the couch.
"Oh, I'm just talking to myself. Watch the movie; I'll get ready to go."
She could feel her face growing red. "You listen here," she harshly whispered. "I'm going,"
"No, you're not!"
"I'm going, but you're not!" She quickly grabbed him by the arm and put him in the wooden box. She slammed the lid down and flipped the gold latch, securing the top by shoving a pen through the latch, locking Zyon inside.
"LET ME OUT OF HERE!" His voice muffled through the box.
She took her finger and circled it around where the lock would be.
"You'll stay in there until you're let out. Zyon, I bind you to this box." She saw this in one of the many books she had been reading. The brass closer started to glow as Izzie stood up in the closet. She stared at the box in shock that she had done something with her magic and had control over it. A smile spread over her face as she quickly changed her shirt. "I'm sorry. I can't handle it if this relationship fails. I really like him." The grumbling from the box subsided for a moment, and then Zyon started rocking the box back and forth.
