Misfit Mage

by Michael Taggart

  “Sometimes, though, we are killed in battle.”

  “Really?” I looked around to see if she was joking.

  “The supernatural world is a lot more like the wild west or the mafia,” Sandy instructed. “For most of history, it has been about who has the most power. The old saying is still true, ‘might makes right.’ Civilization as we know it here is a relatively new concept. Laws and fairness often do not have a place in the supernatural world. The supernatural world isn’t all just humans, either.”

  “There are lots of creatures from other realms that end up here and we have to either orient them or send them back. Many times they don’t want to be sent back and they fight. Sometimes the fights get big and deadly. You can’t take on a pack of wargs without some injuries. Those things are tough and it always seems like they end up here in Louisville.”

  “How does the world not know this?” I asked. “How do I not know this? I’ve had magic all my life and I always thought I was alone. I figured there had to be others but I’ve never seen or heard anything that made me think other people had talents too.”

  “You’ve already had magic?” Sandy was clearly surprised. “Magic talent doesn’t show up until you have your Waker Moment. Near death is what forces us to transition from mundane to supernatural. Before that we are just regular people. No talents, no magic. I’ve never heard of anyone having powers before Waking.”

  Sandy seemed distressed about this for some reason.

  “That would explain why the House let him stay here before Waking,” John said. He turned to me. “Have you noticed anything physically about yourself that you thought made you different? I am part mountain troll. I’m what is known as a natural. That means I don’t have freeform magic like Sandy and Annabeth. Instead, I have specific attributes and abilities that belong to a mountain troll.”

  “I’ve had the abilities all my life and instead of learning about magical runes I’ve worked on learning how best to use my natural abilities. There are lots of naturals in this world and the realms and we are still learning about new types.”

  Johns question made me want to go into the bathroom and check myself to see if I suddenly had an extra appendage or wings growing out of my back. If John wanted to come and examine me all over that would be fine too. I felt a bit flushed just thinking about it.

  I pulled back from that line of thought. “I don’t have anything physically different about me that I know of. Mom never said anything about that when I was a kid. I’ve seen other naked guys and I seem pretty normal compared to them. I met one guy that had an extra toe and another guy was so double jointed he could bend his arms backward. You’ve seen me in the shower, John, do I look normal to you?”John laughed. “I must admit I was looking! Everything about you seems human and normal. Well, except for your package. Mother Nature was feeling kind and generous the day she handed that out.”

  I could feel myself flushing. I’m sure I was bright red.

  “Oh stop!” Annabeth looked a little embarrassed but she was laughing too.

  “Come on now. We’ve all talked about it. There’s an elephant man in the room!” John said.

  “A fireman with his very own hose,” Sandy pitched in.

  “The mighty python of the jungle,” John said.

  “Thor has a mighty hammer!” Sandy said.

  “If you’re bringing that sausage, I’ll need to bring more biscuits!” Back to John again. The two of them were having way too much fun.

  “Oh guys. Stop. You’re embarrassing him.” Annabeth was really trying hard for the scolding look, but her grin was breaking out.

  I was feeling really self conscious. I’m sure I was blushing all over. They were just having fun, though, and I didn’t want to bring the mood down.

  “That’s ok,” Sandy said. “It’s better to be blessed in that area than the alternative.”

  “True that.” John toasted me in the air with his sweet tea.

  “So, tell me more about your magic,” Annabeth urged. “I’m learning so much from Sandy and the concept of charms and how to make them just fascinates me.”

  “Oh no,” John groaned. “If these two get to talking about magic it can take all day.”

  “Oh hush.” Sandy scolded him. “If you get bored then go fix something. You are the handy man after all.”

  She turned to me. “Ok, tell us about it. How does magic work for you? Just tell us at this point, don’t show us. You haven’t worked magic since your Moment and it may have changed for you so let’s be careful.”

  “Well, I just decided what I want to do. Then I make a little cartoon creature that can do the job and give it interesting tools or machines to get it done. Next, I add some power and send it off to work. It seems like the clearer I make the image, the better it works, so I try to make it really colorful and interesting. My creations are really tiny, though, and they don’t have much power. I have to make several of them just to move a penny, so I’ve gotten creative on how to do as much as I can with just a little bit of force.”

  “So, you can just make up a spell on the fly?” Sandy and Annabeth shared a look. “You don’t have to say anything or use a charm or focus?”

  “Until I met you, I didn’t know anything about charms. I just make up what I need when I need it. Of course, I do have some little guys I like a lot. I give them different tools depending on what I need them to do. It’s easier than trying to create a whole new character from scratch. One of my favorites, Bob, looks a bit like Mario from the game, and he gets a Jetpack, or super glue, or light saber, or whatever I need for him to have. It’s actually pretty cool.”

  “Wow. That is pretty cool!” Sandy was clearly fascinated. “My magic requires a structure to work. It has to be crafted ahead of time and each charm only does one thing.”

  She didn’t have her big necklace of charms on today. Instead she had a bracelet strung with tiny pewter figures.

  “I take something that is solid and normal, like a piece of metal or a gem, and create a magical rune inside it. Different runes do different things and you can layer them for different effects. It can get really complex. If I do something wrong the results can be unexpected, or it just blows up.

  “Learning runes, triggers, constraints, and how to layer them is a skill that takes many lifetimes to master. Once I have a charm with a good matrix, I still need to fill it with power and that takes a circle. The circle takes the static magic in the world, gets it spinning, and funnels it into the charm for use. I can use then use the charm until it runs out of power.”

  “We are hoping you will be part of our circle,” Annabeth said. “It takes at least four people to anchor a circle, although more is better. Right now we’re down to three of us, and not being able to change anything has left us pretty tight in the magic department.”

  She looked over at Sandy, “We would have had access to lots of mages if someone was a bit more diplomatic and kept their mouth shut.”

  “Being diplomatic never was my strong suit.” Sandy grimaced. “Who would have thought it would be so hard? I only called her a bitch and set her hair on fire. That’s at least more diplomatic than saying she’s an old drooling ass wipe with delusions of power and a fetish for peeing in public. I should have made her boobs fall and her nose hair grow like barbed wire.”

  Her eyes flashed and she relived the moment. “How she ever got to be Coven Master I will never know. If I wasn’t already running this House, I’d challenge her for leadership, and believe me, I would win!”

  Sandy looked grim and powerful and I resolved never to piss her off if I could help it.

  Annabeth nodded. “That woman was a hussy. I don’t say that much as I was raised right. But, bless her heart, she was a brassy bitch. So, needless to say, old burnt and smoky banned us from the local charging circles and forbade any mages to work with us on pain of banishment. We haven’t had a circle since Jennifer passed on.”

  I was afraid to ask what had happened with the coven and g
et the full story. Sandy was getting so worked up, I starting to wonder if the breakfast silverware was going to start zooming around the room at lethal speed.

  I was also afraid to ask about Jennifer. That was obviously an emotional topic.

  It was wonderful to talk about magic, though. I hadn’t told anyone about it before and it was so good to hear that I wasn’t the only person with power. The idea of charms fascinated me and I wanted to learn more.

  06 First Magic

  “Can you show me how a charm works? Maybe do some magic?” I figured that was a safe topic to segue too.

  “Oh, of course!” Sandy pushed her dark thoughts aside.

  “Let me see…” She began sorting through her charm bracelet. “Most of these give me information or protect me but they don’t do anything visible I can show you. This one will raise your core temperature until you burst into flame but I don’t think that is the kind of demonstration you’re looking for.”

  I looked at Annabeth to see if she was joking. Annabeth just patted my hand and gave me a big smile. That didn’t really answer my question.

  “Ah, this will work,” Sandy said. “It’s a charm that is fairly simple. It has a rune to add kinetic energy layered with a directional constraint that makes me the center. Put them together with a bit of power and you have this.”

  She stretched out her hand and the salt shaker skated across the counter and into her palm.

  “With most charms it’s easy to add an inverse switch. If I trigger the same charm, but as its opposite, I get this.”

  The salt shaker gently slid along the kitchen counter for a few feet and stopped right in front of Annabeth.

  “Look at that control.” Annabeth smiled at Sandy. “One day I’ll be able to move it like that.” She gave me a wry look. “When I try it, either the shaker doesn’t move at all or it shoots across the room like a bullet and makes a hole in the wall. Want to see?”

  “Oh no.” Sandy quickly took the salt shaker away from Annabeth. “I don’t need any more salt in my walls. It has plenty already.”

  “Can you try that again?” I asked Sandy. “Sometimes I can see inside things and I’m curious to see what your charms look like when you’re doing magic.”

  “So, you have the sight?” Sandy said. “Some magic users are extra sensitive to magic in certain ways. Magic has different sounds for them; some smell it or feel it. I can see it as colors. It’s a bit hazy but I can tell if something is magical or not and generally what type of magic it has. Annabeth can hear magic.”

  “For me it usually has a certain tone or note,” Annabeth said. “If it’s a complex piece of magic it can have a whole tune. Sandy has this old artifact in her workshop that sounds like an entire orchestra. Mostly I just listen to hear if a new charm is good or not. If it sounds tortured, it’s probably just going to blow up.”

  “That is useful,” Sandy said. “I can’t see if a charm is good until I start to fill it with power. At that point it’s too late.”

  “I’m not sure if I can see magic,” I said. “That’s why I wanted to see you use the charm again. When I turn on my sight, I can see just about everything, although it can take a while to come in focus. I can see all around me, and if I really focus hard, behind doors and around corners.”

  “That sounds useful,” Annabeth said. “You are just full of surprises.” She held her hand behind my head. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  It was pure reflex, I looked.

  “Two fingers,” I said, and then gasped.

  The room was so clear. I could see everything in the kitchen down to the finest detail. I could see all the grooves in the cutting board in its rack in the far wall. I could not only see them, I could feel them.

  I could see every line and swirl in the hardwood floor, and the small crumbs on the plates in the sink. Extending my awareness even further, I looked inside a closed drawer. It held four hand towels, an oven mitt, 43 bread ties, and three clips to put on a bag of potato chips to keep them fresh.

  I’d used my sight all my life, but this was amazing! It was like I had viewed the world through an old black-and-white 13-inch TV, and then suddenly it changed to a huge high definition widescreen. I just couldn’t believe how detailed and crisp everything was.

  A memory surfaced, this is what it was like in the hotel room after I started drawing in my power.

  I shuddered and felt the cold inky blackness start to swirl. With a metal shake I let the memory go and pushed the darkness away.

  Annabeth was still giving me fingers behind my head so I quickly caught up.

  “Three fingers.”

  “Your thumb.”

  “A fist.”

  “Now you’re just waving your fingers around.”

  Sunshine let her hand drop. “That is so cool! What do you think Sandy? Have you heard anything like this?”

  “Not really. Maybe it is some type of natural ability?” She looked at John who just shrugged.

  “If you could really see inside a charm, that would be handy. So much of what we do when making a charm is laying down mental patterns. But I can’t actually see the final result and that makes it so difficult. It’s like trying to make your way through a room in total darkness. You might have a good idea of how the room is laid out but you are still going to run into the furniture.”

  Sandy was looking so excited I thought she would just start into teaching me right there. I must have looked a little overwhelmed because she reined it in and asked “So now you have opened your sight, how are you feeling?”

  All the detail was a bit much. I wasn’t used to everything being so sharp; it was giving me a headache. I was also worried about the darkness I’d sensed. That seemed real somehow. I wanted to keep going, though.

  “I’m fine. It’s a lot to take in right now, but I want to see what I can sense when you use your charm. Can you do that again, but slowly?”

  Sandy held the charm in her hand for a moment. To my sight it had a bright core of yellow light. From that nugget of energy, there were lots of small lines that led off and formed various shapes. One led to a wiggly shape in the center and then to a circle surrounding it. Next there was a series of shapes around that was encased in a larger circle. One of the shapes around the circle looked like a strange arrow. As Sandy activated the charm, I saw the nugget of magic pulse and the lines fill up with energy. The center wiggly shape changed color first to a bright orange. That spilled over the first circle, lit up some of the shapes around it including the arrow, and then exited the second circle as a tight beam. The beam hit the salt shaker, encased it, and slid it along the counter to stop in front of Annabeth.

  “Wow! I saw it all. That is just cool! You are going to have to show me how to do that.”

  “Certainly,” Sandy said. “Learning magic can be so much fun. Even though life changes a lot as a supernatural, being able to do magic makes up for some of that. I don’t think I could go back to being ‘normal’ again. Now, since everyone perceives magic differently, let me know exactly what you saw.”

  “I saw a hard core of magic, like a battery, then there were all the lines with circles and shapes and they intersected with each other. I’m assuming that was the rune you were talking about. The middle part changed to orange, got through the first circle, and then hit the arrow. That seemed to focus the magic and it then shot out to hit the salt shaker.”

  “Wow!” Annabeth said. “That’s it. That is how charms work. You have the power source, the rune, and the constraint. Being able to see a charm in action is going to really help you learn to make them. You are going to do so well at this!”

  She leaned over and gave me a big hug.

  It made me happy.

  I looked around at Sandy and John. They were smiling at me and I felt so included. I’d kept my magic a secret for so long. It was freeing to be open like this—to find others like myself that practiced magic and loved doing it. This must have been what the ugly duckling felt like when he di
scovered he was a swan.

  I had so much to learn and now I had a teacher, three teachers actually. Sandy and Annabeth could teach me about magic and John could teach me about the rest of the supernatural world.

  “If you feel up to it can you show us a bit of your magic?” Sandy asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Annabeth said. “He’s just started to get better. Should we rush things? It may not be safe.”

  I was a bit apprehensive myself. What if my magic didn’t work anymore? What if it did work but I couldn’t control it.

  “I think I want to try it,” I said. “I’m nervous. I haven’t done any magic since that night. Sandy, you said my magic may have changed, and my sight is certainly different than it was before. I feel like this is a safe place, though, and I want to try something small. I used to levitate a penny all the time. I started doing it because it was neat and a fun way to practice. Then it got to be a habit, like tapping my feet or chewing on my nails. If I got caught doing it, I’d just tell people I was working on a sleight of hand magic trick. Nobody ever thought it was real magic.”

  “That sounds like the perfect thing to start with,” Sandy said. “Plus, a penny is small. If it gets out of control it won’t make a big hole in the wall.” She gave Annabeth a look. “Until I can charge up my charms again, I don’t want to be spending a lot of power fixing up my living room.”

  “Hey, I haven’t trashed your place that badly,” Annabeth said. “I’ll admit the levitating incident was pretty bad but I’ve been much more careful since then.”

  “You mean your Hulk Smash moment?” John said. He started laughing.

  “You should have seen it,” John said. “Annabeth freaked out and waved her charm around like it bit her. Meanwhile all of Sandy’s furniture followed the charm, smashing into the walls, the ceiling, just about everything.”

  He flexed like he was the hulk. “Me Annabeth. Me smash things.”