Mage Catalyst (6 page)

I somehow doubted that figures such as Gandalf, Harry Potter or Merlin would be useful as role models anyway. I needed a non-fiction book – a how-to book. Fictional stories didn’t go deep enough into how these guys controlled their powers – and it was advice about control that I was desperately seeking. Unfortunately they don’t have
A Dummies Guide to Magic
in our library.  The internet too had proved to be a complete loss. There were a variety of groups that claimed to have magical powers, but I doubted that they had anything like this. I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to advertise that they were this different from everyone else. They would instinctively hide. They would have had to, otherwise everyone would know about it.
No. After several hours of useless web surfing I came to the inescapable conclusion. There was only one person who could help me. I just had to find her and convince her to teach me what I needed to know. If I was honest with myself I’d probably have admitted that I might have had other reasons for wanting to see Renee again.
“Devon?”
I glanced around to see Tina Higgins gazing at me. She had a pile of books in her hands and a nervous expression. Tina and I had History class together. She was one of the nerdy kids who sat up the front of the class. She was also one of Sarah’s friends, but I hadn’t really spent that much time with her. I didn’t know her that well at all actually. She had curly dark hair and wore tight wire-rim glasses on her freckled face. She wasn’t one of the popular kids, but I wasn’t exactly going to win any competitions for class president either. We had sat together and worked on several group projects, but we weren’t exactly friends.
”What are you searching for?” she asked as she logged into the computer terminal next to mine.
“Just something for English.” I shrugged as I quickly minimised a webpage on Gandalf. “You?”

“History,” she groaned. I didn’t even know we had something due for History.  I really should start paying more attention in class. We sat in uncomfortable silence for a few more seconds.
“I like your new contacts,” she began. “I didn’t know you needed glasses.”
That statement had come out of nowhere. Contacts? I wasn’t wearing contacts.  Where had that come from? I frowned at her in confusion, searching her face for any sign that she was making fun of me. If she was  – I didn’t get the joke.
My silence couldn’t have been helping with her nervousness as she began nervously twiddling with her hair.
“I was thinking about getting those coloured lenses too,” she stammered, “but I didn’t think the school would allow them. They’re making your eyes very blue.”
It finally struck home: she couldn’t see the blue particle lines, but she could see that something was strange with my eyes.
“Has anyone told you off?” she asked.
“Not at all. I need contacts for reading,” I said. “I got red eyes from the contacts at first,” I continued.
I was making it up as I went along and was amazed that it actually made some kind of sense. I’ve always been a bad liar but it looked like Tina was being taken in.
“I thought the blue contacts would help hide the red-eye,” I finished lamely.
“Well it seems to have worked.” Tina smiled, gazing into my eyes with a strange expression on her face. “Your eyes are completely free of red!”
“Yeah,” I said, getting nervous. “I’d better go now.” I shut down the computer.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Well, see you later Devon…” she murmured uncertainly as her sentence kind of trailed off.
The rest of the day finished without too much grief. No-one else mentioned my eyes. That was good. Mum had phoned me to say she was going to be late and that I’d have to sort my own dinner out. Mum was studying a business course at night school and so every now and then I had to fend for myself. I didn’t mind it actually – it was kind of nice to be self-reliant.
I fried up sausages for dinner. It was not the most appealing meal, but it was safely within my cooking repertoire. After I finished eating, I did the dishes and went outside. Our house was the rear unit in a lot of three, so I had plenty of privacy. I’d never get a better time to get some more practice.
I vaguely thought about getting out some more mugs to practice on but it had been pretty obvious from my earlier attempts that I needed to try something different.
In a burst of inspiration I hurried into the garage and rummaged through the storage boxes. It wasn’t long before I found what I was looking for. It was an old horseshoe game. It was something that I’d played as a kid. I think it was a gift from my grandmother for one of my birthdays. I hadn’t played it in years.
I sat down on the concrete floor in the garage, a ring held balanced on my palm while I slowly let the particles wrap around it. I didn’t have much trouble looping the thread through the hole and around the ring. I didn’t need anywhere near as much control. The family cat looked at me, annoyed that I had disturbed it when I had been looking for the  horseshoe game.
There was a noticeable creaking noise and an indent on the ring where the thread was gripping it. The ring didn’t break, but it did look like it was undergoing an enormous amount of pressure. I held the ring in one hand and had the particle whip around the other. All I needed to do now was remove my hand.
The ring fell to the ground. The particle whip had stretched from my hand to accommodate the distance. I tried several more times before I figured out the trick. I focused the particles from both hands into one thread, trapping the object between my two hands. The ring hovered in mid-air. I could cause it to rise and fall by altering the pressure from either hand.
Brilliant!
The cat and I exchanged brief amazed glances at the ring floating in mid-air. It didn’t take long before I figured out how to get the ring to rotate and turn in the air, but I soon grew bored of this. What I really wanted to try was throwing the ring at the post telekinetically. My eyes narrowed with concentration as I tried to gently throw the ring onto the wooden pole about three metres away. ‘Gently’ being the operative word. The results were spectacular. I applied what I thought was a little amount of power as I attempted to launch the ring at the post. I hadn’t even really aimed at the post. Anywhere close to the post would have been fine.
The ring left my hands with a speed I hadn’t anticipated and disappeared with a shower of leaves as it tore through the bushes on the far side of the yard. There was a dull thunking noise as it hit the brick wall that separated our houses. The cat glanced at me with curiosity before heading over to inspect the damage.
Investigating, I found it had gouged a chunk out of the brick wall. The impact had wrecked the rope ring. Now that it was broken I could see that the rope had been wrapped around a small metal ring.
The metal was also snapped neatly in two. I stared at the ring in disbelief. I had broken it in two by doing nothing more than throwing it. I investigated the chunk missing from the brick wall and realised that the only way I’d normally be able to do this kind of damage was with a sledge hammer. It was frightening, awe inspiring and so totally cool all at once. I needed to try again, but I’d take a little more care this time and avoid throwing things at the wall.
I grabbed another ring from the collection and tried again. It was a little easier to wrap the particles around it this time. I was so elated by my supposed improvement that I lost control of what I was doing and ended up jerking the particles to one side.
With a metallic shriek the ring tore itself into two. The first piece imbedded itself in the ground inches from my foot. The second piece shot straight up past my face. I felt the air whoosh past me and my hair flutter in its passing.  It took several seconds before it returned back to the ground. There was a horrible crash as the piece returned to the ground right through the garage roof, leaving a fist-sized hole.
Damn. That would be hard to cover up, I concluded as I inspected the damage. My God, what if that had hit me on the way down? This was too dangerous to continue. I could seriously hurt someone. Perhaps even kill them. I needed help with this before I continued. I could tell from the way that the cat was nowhere to be seen that he agreed with me.
Fortunately Mum didn’t comment on the damage to the garage or she never noticed. If she did notice she must have assumed something else as it wasn’t the type of damage that she would normally attribute to her eighteen-year-old son. The next week was subtle torture. I now knew that I lacked the necessary control to experiment on my own. I needed to find Renee more than ever. I resolved more firmly to track Renee down and insist that she teach me what she knows.
Friday seemed to take forever to come around. I had called Dad earlier that week and said I would be busy Friday night and that I’d crash at his place at around twelve. He didn’t comment other than a curt acknowledgment, so I figured he must have been busy with work.
That meant I’d have the whole night to hunt for Renee. I figured that I’d start at the Fitzroy pub where I’d first met her. She was there last Friday so it wasn’t totally out of the question that she’d be there again.

* * * *

I arrived very early to the club and it was pretty much empty. Tony had wanted to come but I hadn’t let him – I wanted Renee all to myself without Tony getting in the way.
The band that was playing was simply awful. It sounded like a mixture of screeching and droning. I’d heard Tony comment that the good bands didn’t come on until after nine. He was obviously right. I resolved to sit and wait for Renee to turn up.
I sat through three torturous bands before I finally lost my patience. All the while my eyes scanned the almost empty room for the tell-tale sign of a particle halo. Every new face that entered the room was examined and Renee’s face was definitely not among them. I was so frustrated. By the time I decided to leave the club was starting to get busy and the bands had notably improved but I didn’t care.

On a whim I decided to check the alley where she had thrown me down. Yes, the alley was pretty much as I’d remembered it, but Renee wasn’t there. I nodded sourly and returned to my seat inside. It had been a long shot anyway. Why would she be hanging out in an alley?
The fourth band was just setting up when I resumed my seat.
“Hey, Twitch!”
My stomach lurched in fright. Finally. She was wearing a tight black dress and I wanted to kiss her again straight away, but that probably wouldn’t have been a good idea.
“Where have you been?” I exclaimed.
“About,” she muttered noncommittally. “I wasn’t sure I was going to come.”
“You’re avoiding me?” I asked, hurt.
“No, I came looking for you,” she said. “Come on, I know a place where we can talk quietly – unless you came here for the music?”
She smiled at me, her expression smug. She knew what I had endured waiting for her and obviously found it funny. It was both endearing and infuriating all at once. We left the pub and she took me to the smaller and quieter sports bar on the corner. It had very few patrons and no-one appeared to pay us much attention as we settled into a booth in the far corner.
“I see you haven’t fried yourself yet,” she said grimly once we had sat down. “That makes things more difficult.”
“Fried? Difficult?” I stammered. What was she talking about?
“Yeah, I’d hoped you’d charcoal yourself and then you wouldn’t be my problem,” Renee said. I could tell that she was forcibly trying to keep her tone light.
It was charming the way that she’d put that with the emphasis on the word “my” as if this was something I was doing to her.
“Given the way you looked last time we met I was sure you’d be a cloud of ash right about now,” Renee continued lightly.
“I guess that means you owe me a Coke,” I said.
“You don’t understand, but you will,” she continued, unabashed. “You’ve obviously learned some level of control.”
“Control? No, not really, I just can’t seem to control anything.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“I tore a hole in my mother’s garage roof,” I announced guiltily, then snickered involuntarily.

“How?” Renee’s voice had taken on a dangerous quality, her eyes had narrowed and I could see her irises had taken on the ‘stranger’s look’ as she gazed at me. It was unsettling.
I glanced around the bar nervously. I was reassured by the fact there were witnesses about. Although, I reflected grimly, if she wanted to be rid of me, I doubted the presence of the other bar patrons would present much in the way of resistance.
“I threw a metal ring through it,” I said, deciding that it was best to opt for truth.
“Threw?” There was a small facial twitch. She was having trouble not grinning.

“Like you threw me into that wall, last week.”
The grin disappeared.
“You saw me do that and now you’re attempting it?” Her voice went deadly quiet.
“Is that not normal?” I asked carefully.
“No, none of this is normal. Firstly, our kind usually manifests long before eighteen and secondly they don’t see other spells and then figure them out on the first try.”
“Hey, it took me all afternoon to figure it out!” I protested.
“What? It only took you an afternoon?“ she hissed. “Please.” She leaned in close and stared daggers into my eyes. “You’re not supposed to be able to learn spells simply by watching them!” Her voice had a hint of hysteria.
“Whoa, wait… calm down,” I pleaded, taken aback by her ferocity.
Renee’s eyes flashed angrily. “Eventually you’re going to kill yourself or, worse, you’ll end up on the nightly news! Which will bring your trouble down on me!” she yelled. “And you think I should be calm about it?”
I didn’t say anything. I was scared I would drive her away.
“I can’t tell if you’re telling me the truth or not,” Renee whispered darkly.
“Everything I’ve said is true!” I protested weakly.
“I wasn’t going to give you this, but I can see it’s no longer my choice.” Renee pulled an older style floppy disk out of her pocket and passed it over to me. She passed me the disk as if she was passing on something very dangerous.
“It’s a treatise on mana,” she said carefully, “written by my grandfather. It will help you.”
“Mana?”
I’d read about mana when I was researching magic at school. It was the term used for the magical force that powered the spells that wizards used. I supposed, looking down at the blue particles lining my arms, it seemed as good a term as any.
“This old disk is a spell book?” I asked as I slowly rolled the disk over in my hands.
“What were you expecting? A gold-plated, engraved, tome of a book bound in human flesh? That can only be read by moonlight?” she said.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but a piece of technology small enough to fit in the palm of my hand definitely wasn’t it.
“What would have happened if I hadn’t learned some control?” I enquired. I wasn’t sure if I wanted an answer.
“If you were still as jazzed up as you were last week, I would have let you go,” she said. She looked a little guilty to be admitting it.
“And what would have happened to me?”
“The mana in your body would have burned you out and you would have died.” Renee refused to look me directly in the eyes.