“That’s really smart of the tree; its bark can
protect it from a forest fire. Are you going to show me how to prepare the dev…
the meat?” I asked.
“I have already done it, for I didn’t know when you
would be back and it couldn’t just sit in there for long. Are you hungry
already?”
“I should be, but I’m not.”
“Perhaps it’s the quality of food. I’m sure the
yorkie is better for you than your ‘fast food.’”
“Road kill is better than fast food. At least road
kill involves real meat.”
“You are joking, right? The food did look rather
unsanitary.”
“That depends on what day it is. They cook it up
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so if you get in early on one of those days, you
should be safe. If you get in late Sunday night, you might as well drive to the
ER afterwards.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Ronez had warned me about
Earth’s fast food.”
“The burger place I worked at is neither fast, nor
food. You’re going to take a bath?” I asked. Edward had grabbed a bundle of
clothing identical to the one he was wearing out of the chair. He must have
prepared it before I came back. “But it’ll be dark soon, won’t it?”
“Yes, it will, but I can find my way in the dark and
there’ll be plenty of moonlight. There’s a bag under my bed downstairs for
dirty laundry. I’ll show you tomorrow how to wash clothes. I assume you don’t
know because your world has machines that do it for you.”
“I didn’t; I had to go to a Laundromat.”
“What is a---”
“A big place full of washing machines and you pay
money to use them. Can I look at your books?”
“Of course.” After considering the sinking sun
through the window, he went over to the small lantern on the table, opened the
cover, and pinched the wick. When he removed his hand, the wick lit and filled
the room with light.
“Thanks,” I said.
He nodded and went to the door, then paused and turned
back to me. “There’s a gun under my bed with the safety on and another behind
the stove with the safety off. Both are loaded. There’re three axes and many
blunt objects in the shed. The rafters can support your weight if you need to
get off the ground. Just a precaution,” he promised as my eyes grew wide.
“Do you think I’ll need two guns, three axes, blunt
objects, and a hideaway?”
“No. I’m just telling you in case something does
attack. Every once in a while, a vampire, a hungry animal, or a drunk wizard
will come by and cause trouble. It’s very rare but you seem to attract that
kind of trouble. I’ll be back soon.”
“Don’t rush. But before you go… how do you kill a
vampire?” I asked. Of course, I was not serious; there was no such thing as an
undead person. I was sure Edward was joking about the vampire, but the other
two threats sounded very likely.
“A bullet between the eyes, stake through the heart,
burning him alive… on the other hand, just run. You should run and call for
help. I’ll be back soon.” He left.
I took the lamp and went downstairs.
After putting my clothes in the bag under Edward’s
bed, I went to the bookshelf. Most of the books Edward had weren’t written in a
language I could read. There were a few hand written in Edward’s language with
no titles, which I was pretty sure were grimoires. He did have several books in
English, however. One was about the religions of the world and in the very
front, Ronez wrote “Happy 2000
th
Birthday,” signed it, and dated the
year beneath his name. I wondered why Ronez wrote in English but signed his
name like Edward’s. Well, Edward had said they were both raised on Duran… But
if they signed their names in Sudo, it meant the language was over two thousand
years old.
Several of the books were stories and poems written
in Anglo-Saxon (Old English), which also seemed to be given by Ronez as gifts.
Authors I recognized were Cynewulf, Cædmon, and Bede. Most of the books written
in modern English were magic books. Some were bibles. I recognized names like
Aleister Crowley and H. P. Lovecraft. Two books were hand written in Old Norse,
one of which talked about seiðr so I assumed they were both magic books.
None of the books in modern English were actual
stories, so I left the bedroom without one.
I explored the cabin for a minute before my eyes
locked on Tibbit, whose eyes were always on me. I went outside to escape his
dark glare. The sun had set, but when I looked up, there was a huge white moon
that gave off plenty of light. I went to sit around the cold firewood and
flopped back in the grass. The moon was very bright in my eyes so I turned onto
my side… and still saw a moon. There were two moons! The one to the side was
significantly smaller than the one straight above, but it was there
nonetheless.
“I’m not on Earth,” I whispered pathetically. I’d
never been out of the country and suddenly I was looking up at the foreign sky
of another world. A Japanese-like world full of haunted springs, wizards,
yorkie cows, and creepy crows that stare. There was too much gravity and too
many moons.
It was never more than in that one moment that I felt
out of place in life. At least on Earth, I knew what to expect and what was
expected of me. I lived in the city, had a job and apartment, and I went to
school. That was all that life was for me, and I had a place to be. I had
friends and family. Only two people on Duran even knew I existed.
It must have been hard for Edward and Ronez to
live two worlds apart.
There was a disturbance in the shadows of the forest
when two trees began to shake. They were huge trees, yet something was bigger
or stronger than them. I could see a shadow move and it looked massive.
Don’t move. He can’t see you if you don’t move,
I told myself. Or was that the T-Rex? Edward was right when he said I attract danger:
I must smell like a small, defenseless, juicy animal.
Maybe it’s just
Edward. Or Edward’s pet troll. Quick! Play dead!
I slowly sat up instead. I
hadn’t brought a gun and with the gravity, I certainly couldn’t run to the shed
without tripping a bunch of times.
Kind of like a woman in a horror movie.
That thought kept me glued to the ground. Then the moving abruptly stopped and
the monstrous shape shrunk away.
I sat there for a few minutes before Edward came out
of the woods only a few feet from where the tree-shaker had been. I jumped up
and resisted the urge to run to him, pointing at the trees like an idiot. “Did
you see that thing?” I asked. He frowned, confused. “There was something in the
woods, over there. It was shaking the trees.”
He stopped in front of me. “You were out here at
night without a gun? All the biggest predators are nocturnal,” he said, as if I
were insane.
“You were in there without a gun,” I pointed out.
“I am not human, nor am I a monster magnet. It’s
going to be challenging to keep you alive,” he predicted.
Only the repeated experience of being kicked out on
the street for the night kept me from responding to the offense with sarcasm.
He never told me it was dangerous at night, so how could he be mad at me? I
came from Houston, where the only monsters that came out at night were people.
I wasn’t sure if my face revealed how offended I was,
but he sighed. “Sit down.” I did and he sat next to me with his dirty clothes
in his lap. “I have only taken apprentices from Earth a couple of times, and
they were orphaned children who were afraid of their own shadows.” He leaned
forward and moved a log, which lit up in flames. “I shouldn’t have assumed you
would stay inside, so I am sorry that I didn’t warn you.” He adjusted the grill
and sat back.
“Why do you have to touch it to make it burn?” I
asked.
“To command fire and earth, you have to use a lot of
energy. Touching what I want helps to focus energy on it.”
“So things around you won’t blow up?”
“Yes. Any person can learn to do magic, but it comes
easier for some. The magical energy we use is called nominal energy and is
actually produced by the worlds. Each book protects not only transportation to
its world, but the magic.”
“So if one of the books is destroyed…”
“The world would be destroyed. It is a delicate
balance between the gods, their worlds, and the magic. We are here to protect
that balance.”
“That’s a lot more pressure than I was prepared for.
Why are you teaching me to control water when I need to learn to turn myself in
visible or create huge diversions?”
“Diversions never protected my brother. Mastering the
four base elements is fundamental before learning any other magic. For wizards,
controlling nominal energy will come easier, but you may still have a difficult
time with one or two of the elements.”
“So which are you better at, fire and earth, or air
and water?”
“I’m best with earth. You probably will be, too.
Ronez was always best with air, which is odd because air is what most wizards
find the hardest. He seemed to make an art form out of his work. He wrote books
on magic that sounded more like philosophies. He liked to learn about
everything. That was his favorite thing to do; learn.”
“And you?”
“I like to know. I’m much more impatient than him. “I
kind of agree with your way of seeing it. I spent all my life being forced to
learn stuff I will never use, like the Pythagorean Theorem, war history, and
cursive. Physics, psychology, ancient languages… stuff like that I enjoy
learning about. Everything I learned that was important I learned on my own and
through experience. I learned that stepparents are evil, little dogs are evil,
and older brothers are evil. You’re not older than Ronez, are you? Because then
you’d be the older brother and you don’t look evil.”
“I don’t know, but I once tied Ronez to a tree so I
could use him as bait for hunting, so I probably am.” He grinned wickedly. I
made a mental note to hide all the rope I find.
I cleared my throat and went on. “I also discovered
that most laws are unjust- including the laws of nature, boys are crueler to
animals than girls, girls are crueler to boys than anything, bug bites itch,
it’s not a good idea to stick a wet plug into a socket---”
“How many times have you been electrocuted?” Edward
interrupted.
I thought aloud and counted off on my fingers. “Sixth
birthday… School fieldtrip… Teacher’s meeting… Seventh birthday… Sleepover with
Stacie Briggan… TV room… Stacie’s basement…” I smiled at the memory. “Vivian’s
house… and then the lightning strike.”
“Nine times?!”
“Most of them were just little shocks: Only three of
them got me into the ER,” I said.
“And one of them stopped your heart,” he pointed out.
I looked down. “Actually… Two did.” I could feel his
stare. “The field trip incident was at a science museum and I’ve never had good
luck at those. I remember once getting bitten by a dog there and I was pretty
sure it had rabies.”
“Did it?” he asked.
I looked up at him. “No, it had its rabies shots, so
I suppose it didn’t. The owner of the dog was pretty mad at me, though. I
thought she was gonna give me rabies. The one time I ever went to a zoo was on
a school trip. I fell into the alligator pit, and then the polar bear habitat.
Luckily, the bears were swimming and the alligators were busy chasing the guy
who was supposed to feed them. How ironic.”
“Remind me not to take you to a zoo.”
“Then there was a fieldtrip where we went to the
beach and I drowned. Twice. And I was bitten by a crab. The teacher didn’t want
me to go near the water or touch the sand, and she practically shoved water
down my throat to keep me hydrated. She didn’t want to deal with the lawyers
again.”
“How are you even alive?”
“Three trips to the ER, two CPRs, and one creepy
doctor who wouldn’t let a patient die on his time. He didn’t want to deal with
the lawyers again, either. So, I have had a few medical incidents.”
“Any broken bones?” he asked.
“Not including cracks, all my fingers, most of them
two or more times… both arms, the right one twice plus the cat-monster bites…
all my toes accept one… Both my feet, one of them shattered all to hell by the
Jacob, the aforementioned stepbrother… both my legs…. several of my ribs… And I
cracked my skull real bad. I couldn’t break anything else because Mother
refused to pay anymore hospital bills. Do you know how discouraging it is to
have life insurance at six years old?”
“What is life insurance?”
“If I die, she gets a lot of money. You know, I used
to think someone was out to get me. Mother would tell me God was testing or
punishing me and that if I behaved badly, he would send me off to Hell. That’s
probably why I never believed it; I was in Hell much of the time and I couldn’t
imagine anyone, not even God, could do anything worse.”
“Tiamat was never out to get you, or anyone. Ronez
told me that’s not her way. However, it does sound like someone was. I have not
seen any sign of bad luck, though. It sounds like your misfortune is less
subtle.”
“You haven’t known me that long, and most of the time
here, I was asleep. Things tend to happen when I’m around. A bolt would come
loose or a rope would snap. Several of my mother’s boyfriends thought I was
being haunted by poltergeists. I had a cat because even the most docile dogs
hated me.”
“Actually, that is odd. Most dogs like wizards. How’s
your immune system?”
“I once was sure I had the chicken pox, the Bubonic
plague, and an ear infection all on top of my asthma and double pneumonia. When
she heard about the Avian flu, Mother wouldn’t let me out of the house except
to go to school four days a week. My immune system is why Mother never let me
out of the country and made me keep my room cleaner than a hospital. I’ve run
over black cats that had better luck than me,” I complained.
Edward looked amused. “Perhaps you’ll have better
luck here.” He pulled a piece of Wigknot bark out of his bag and handed it to
me. “You should probably keep a little of this with you at all times. Eat it
like candy.”