Misfit Mage

by Michael Taggart

  A gave her a squeeze. I was listening.

  “For a while there, you got your beat and your bells back. I don’t know what happened but I think something gave you hope. Now, though, you sound like breaking glass. There isn’t any beat at all. It’s just glass shattering at random. It sounds like rows and rows of glass windows are falling out and smashing on the sidewalk.”

  I gave her a long squeeze. Then just held her hand tightly. That is exactly what I felt like. My sanity was shattering around me. I was focusing as much as I could but it just felt so hopeless. There was so much to do and my rate of recovery was so slow. The pain hammered at me in waves; crashing into me over and over again.

  Just to know that she was there, that somehow she had an inkling of what I was going through, was enough to break me down. I welled up with emotion. I wanted to sob into her shoulder and have her hold me tight. I desperately wanted to hear that everything was going to be ok.

  For a while she just held my hand and hummed. Her good energy washed over me. I’m not sure what I was sounding like, but eventually I did feel a bit better.

  “Jason, I’m not sure exactly what you are going through and you can’t tell me. I’m sure it’s horrible in there right now and you are feeling very lonely and scared. I can only imagine how I would feel. There is something I want to tell you and I hope it helps. Can you hear me? Are you able to listen right now?”

  Squeeze for yes.

  Tyler had given me a path for hope on his talk. It was a very slow solution for me, but at least it was something. Maybe Annabeth had something valuable to tell me also.

  “I don’t have anything magical to tell you that will help. Sandy and I have been talking and there isn’t anything else we can think of that will help magically. You already have three healing charms on you and you are only supposed to have one. If you get too many they start interfering with each other. In this case, there is enough damage right by the charms that we think they will work in a smaller area and not mess with each other.”

  I’d completely forgotten about the healing charms. I guess they were helping. Maybe they were helping me a lot and I would be even worse off without them. That was another scary thought.

  I checked them, they were still glowing like little stars. Which hopefully meant they were full of magic and doing their job. I could detect a fine coat of yellow magic coating my injuries around the charms. It looked a bit like someone had sprinkled mustard on them. I guess they were doing something for me.

  I gave Annabeth a squeeze. She hadn’t really asked a question, but it more of a confirmation I was listening.

  “I do have something that may help emotionally and that is where I think you are struggling right now. It’s something that a friend told me when I was going through a rough patch with my husband and it stuck with me over the years. She told me that the way to overcome any situation and make it better is through acceptance.

  “That seemed really weird to me at the time. My husband was not doing the things I thought he should be doing. He wasn’t treating me right and he wasn’t treating himself right. We were in this spiral of arguing and bickering all the time. If I accepted all the crap he was doing, wouldn’t that just make it worse? I felt like I would be making him do more crappy things to me. To us. To our relationship.

  “My friend and I had a long series of talks and I finally saw I was putting so much energy into resisting the situation, that there wasn’t any energy left over to find another way to deal with the problem. There’s another quote I found later; ‘whatever you resist persists.’ If you want something to stick around then resist it. The more you try to make something go away, the more it takes up your time and attention and sucks all the joy out of life.

  “Anyway, to make a long story short, I finally accepted my husband just the way he was. He didn’t get worse like I feared. He didn’t get better either, at least not at first. A few weeks later he asked me what had changed. I wasn’t being a complete bitch to him anymore. I was shocked. I thought he was being the ass hat but he was reacting to me. We both still loved each other and over time we worked it out.

  “I know this may not sound like it applies to you right now, but I’m guessing that you are spending a lot of energy trying to deal with all the injury and trauma. I’m guessing there is a lot of anger about what happened, frustration with what you are going through right now, and worry about how it is going to work out.”

  “I can only tell you this takes a lot of energy. I can feel you’ve been working on something. I’m not sure what, but you were doing good there for a while. Trying to make your situation better, and being upset about it at the same time is too much. You are going to wear yourself out. I know this sounds crazy to you right now, but try fully accepting what happened. Just accept you are in the situation you are, with no judgment about how you got here or how you are handling it. Just accept it. Let the resistance go. Maybe then you can find your strength again.”

  I gave her a squeeze. I understood what she was saying, but it seemed crazy to just accept it. There was so much that was wrong with my situation. My jaw was broken so I couldn’t eat. My nose was crushed so I couldn’t breathe normally. My ribs were broken so I was afraid to move. I had real huge problems. Accepting them wouldn’t just make them go away.

  I guess on the other hand, being upset about the situation wasn’t making it any better either. I thought about what Tyler said about finding my balance. This was a lot like that, only it was more proactive. I felt like I had lost my balance a long time ago. Whatever normal I’d found in this situation was gone now. I was just fragmented. Too lost and exhausted to find my way back again.

  It seemed like the strangest thing to me, but I decided to embrace her advice. Tyler’s advice had really helped and now I had one partially healed rib. Maybe Annabeth was onto something. It sounded bat shit crazy, but I was going crazy anyway, so what did I know?

  I centered myself in the middle of my magic, and just let myself go. I let go of the fear of moving. I let go of the fear of pain. I let go of the fear of the future and how all this was going to work out.

  Instead I accepted it all. This is what it meant to be a supernatural. I was a supernatural. I accepted that.

  I accepted that I was hurt as much as I was. I accepted that I would get better and it would be a rough road to recovery.

  I accepted that I hadn’t slept at all this whole time.

  I accepted that I was weak. I was weak magically, emotionally, physically.

  My life was what it was right now. Nothing more and nothing less.

  I felt like I was floating in my magic. Arms thrown out, head back. Just gently spinning around in peace. In surrender.

  I hadn’t realized how much I was resisting things. I was resisting moving. Resisting breathing. Resisting feeling.

  Resisting how long this was going to take to recover.

  Once I let it go, I felt a strange sense of peace. I felt power.

  Actually, I really did feel power. Like there was a center to my power and I was drifting toward it. I just let it happen. I spun gently in space. Completely yielding to the moment. Letting all the anger and hurt and frustration go.

  I moved toward something. And then I was there.

  I opened my eyes and touched down. I was in a room. It looked like a throne room that had seen better days.

  There were faded banners that were on the wall. A torn carpet of red lead to a throne that was chipped and faded. It used to be padded, but now it was just hard black stone. The tiles on the floor were cracked and broken and part of the ceiling was falling down.

  It looked like this had been the throne room for a small poor kingdom, but it had been abandoned for hundreds of years.

  I knew, somehow, this was my seat of power. This was the center of my will. The center of my magic.

  The room was in crappy shape, but then I was in crappy shape. That’s ok. I accepted the room the way it was. I wouldn’t be in this shape forever.
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br />   I walked up to the throne and sat down on it. It fit me perfectly, of course. It was hard and cold, but it was nice to just sit for a moment.

  I couldn’t believe how peaceful I felt. I hadn’t realized how much energy I’d spent trying to keep it all together.

  I looked around my little throne room and for the first time noticed a cot in the corner. It was one of those cots you use when you’re camping, with a simple cross frame and a canvas bed. It had a nice pillow at the head and a blanket folded up beside it.

  It wasn’t much, but it looked like heaven to me. I hadn’t slept in a very long time. Was it possible for me to sleep in here?

  It didn’t seem like much of a magic thing to do; find the root of your power, and then go to sleep.

  I went over to the cot and laid down. The pillow was so comfortable, just the right size and firmness. I pulled up the blanket and snuggled in.

  The cot was simple and basic, but to me it was the ultimate luxury. I knew this was all make believe somehow. It couldn’t be real.

  I wasn’t really in a throne room, feeling no pain, but somehow, it was real enough.

  I felt relaxed, serene.

  I’m sure this wasn’t what Annabeth had thought would happen when she told me about acceptance. I was accepting it all, though, and with that final thought, I feel asleep.

  18 Matrix

  When I woke up, I felt rested. The injuries were still there, they were still sending out the pain so I didn’t forget them, but now I felt clear headed.

  I wondered if my throne room was real of if I’d just hallucinated it. If it was real, would I be able to get there again? I felt worry and anxiety start to creep in again.

  I knew the solution now. I wasn’t going to let doubt and pain steal my strength again.

  I accepted and celebrated that I’d slept. I accepted that I was now awake and I wasn’t sure how I would sleep again. When I accepted what I knew was true, the worry just evaporated.

  Tyler was with me again. I could feel him plucking at my remnants. There were only two left. Hopefully it would only be one soon.

  Waking up with Tyler here made me think of Bermuda. I wish he was here with me. I loved waking up to him all sprawled out on my pillow.

  As if he was thinking about me too, I heard a little squeak. I expanded my awareness. Bermuda was here!

  He was in a box by my bed. Someone had filled it with towels to make him comfortable.

  He was in a body cast, though. It immobilized his front leg and both of his back legs. He only had one paw free.

  My heart went out to him. My poor little baby. It hurt like a bitch but I tried to crawl over to the edge of my bed so I could touch him. I was too weak so Tyler helped me.

  Finally, I could reach out my one good arm and touch his one good paw. He was so soft. Just touching his paw felt like heaven. I stayed that way for a long while. Even that little bit of movement on the bed had exhausted me and all my aches had cranked back up to 15 on the pain scale again.

  I just breathed, accepted it over and over again, and loved on Bermuda the little bit I could. He tried to wiggle closer to me. He gave a long pitiful wail. His little mouth was open and he was panting.

  We were both in bad shape. He licked my hand and then rested his head on my fingers. For a while we just existed together.

  I tried to scan his injuries but his aura was strong and made it difficult. It looks like they had put a pin in both his front leg and his back leg to help the bones heal correctly. He also had some cracked ribs but there wasn’t anything they could do for that other than try to keep him from moving a lot. I knew from present experience that cracked ribs were the worst.

  He didn’t deserve this. I wish I had been able to protect him. I wish I had been stronger. I wish I was able to help him somehow.

  That idea rolled around in my head for a while. It was taking forever for me to mend one bone in my body. I don’t know if I would be able to do anything like this in his body. His aura would stop me.

  I saw he had a healing charm on. Hopefully that was helping him too.

  He gave another sad little wail. Tyler got up to get Sandy. The vet had sent home some liquid pain medication. It should still work for Bermuda and obviously he needed some.

  It occurred to me that healing happened faster with magic. Maybe I could give him some magic and help him out? He was such a little thing that even a small bit of magic would go a long way.

  I gently pushed some magic out to him like I would to Penny. To my surprise, his aura didn’t resist at all. Instead the magic flowed smoothly and his aura got brighter.

  It was my experience that doing magic to other people was very difficult. They were a living creature and their aura always tried to shut me down. Were the rules different now that I was a full supernatural? Or was Bermuda different because he was a cat? Or maybe because I was his human?

  That was too much to think about right now so I filed that thought away in memory for experimentation later. Instead, I pushed more energy to Bermuda. He seemed to like it so I pushed even more.

  Soon, Bermuda was shining with emerald and sapphire light. I stopped pushing magic, but it kept flowing. I started to pull away, but Bermuda held onto my finger with his teeth. He gave a little growl and kept pulling.

  He was really sucking it down. I had to start pulling from Penny to make up for what he was taking from me.

  He was still pulling from me when his light suddenly dropped. It wasn’t shining as much. Instead it looked richer, more solid somehow. What the heck?

  I focused on his aura. It wasn’t projecting out like before. Instead it looked more like glowing water. It was thicker, richer, more vibrant. It was moving in a pattern too. I focused on that.

  Bermuda was folding the magic somehow. He was stretching it out, then folding it up, then stretching it out again. It was almost like he was kneading it like dough. He kept pulling from me and the new magic was getting folded in with the denser magic.

  He was up to something, so I just let him have the magic. I pulled from Penny and he pulled from me. He folded and stretched the magic and it got even denser. I had no idea how he was holding so much power. He only weighed about three pounds and he had pulled as much magic as I had in my whole body to start with.

  I felt like something should happen. Hopefully he wouldn’t blow up or anything. I wasn’t sure how that much magic could exist in such a little frame.

  Suddenly he shuddered, and the magic rippled. His magic stopped folding and the light faded completely.

  I waited for a moment but he had stopped pulling any magic and nothing more happened. He put his head back on my hand again and closed his eyes.

  Sandy and Tyler came back in. I longed to tell them what had just transpired, but I have a broken jaw so that wasn’t happening.

  Sandy had a little eye dropper of medicine that she gave to Bermuda. He lapped it up and went to sleep right away. She checked on me and I answered her as best as I could using the Yes/No squeeze method. I got a bit of water myself. Then she left and Tyler settled back in bed with me again.

  It got quiet and I went back to examining Bermuda. His new aura was strong. I poked at it and it just snapped back into place. It seemed stable and powerful. It also seemed much denser than the mist I was working with.

  Bermuda’s aura had always been emerald, but now it was my exact shade of emerald and there were swirls of sapphire in it. It was certainly my magic with my aura still mixed in it, but he had manipulated it and made it his own.

  I was fascinated and looked closer. His aura was much more open to me now. It still wasn’t like looking inside myself, but it was much clearer than before. I looked at the break on his leg and zoomed in.

  When I zoomed in on myself the magic got thinner and eventually faded. On Bermuda, the magic got thinner and finally turned into a mist. I had to really strain to zoom in that far but the mist was different. It was like the mist was made up of thousands of water droplets, but they were al
l organized. Each droplet was about the same size and the same distance from its neighbor. It was a giant organized matrix of magic.

  No wonder it was denser and more stable. My magic had bits and pieces everywhere. It was different sizes and just scattered around at random. Somehow, my little kitten had organized my magic and taken it to a whole new level.

  What made me most excited was at maximum zoom I could see lots of little flashes around the break. I couldn’t get down to the cellular level on him, but I was guessing that what I was seeing was the twinkle lightning. He was healing!

  And he was healing fast. Certainly much faster than I was.

  My room was peaceful, and it felt so nice to have Bermuda here. I just relaxed and appreciated him resting on my hand.

  I looked at the rib I’d been working on and got a shock. It had healed even more! I’d been about half done when I found my center of power and could finally sleep. Now it was about three quarters finished. I zoomed into the cell level and it looked like the awakened cells at the break were gradually converting their neighbors. When enough of them were converted the twinkle lightning started and new cells got created. It wasn’t quick, it was a slow and steady sort of thing.

  I was fine with that. It meant my rib had healed enough I could start working on another one if I wanted. I was very intrigued by what Bermuda had done, though. I didn’t just have broken bones, I had lots of tissue damage as well. When Isobel had sealed my feet to the ground I’d been running, and the sudden stop had torn up my legs and back. A denser magic would mean I was healing faster everywhere, not just at the site I was working on.

  I was concerned with how much magic it would take. Bermuda has used a lot and I was many times his size. I didn’t know if Penny had enough magic in her for what I needed. I guess I would find out. The worst that would happen is that it wouldn’t work and I’d go back to my slow healing at the cellular level again.

  I picked my next cracked rib, also on the right side, and decided to try folding my magic there. That way, if I failed, at least I’d have a lot of magic in the right area to start my slow healing.