The Magickers (16 page)

Jennifer sat at the table, her long light blonde hair neatly combed and pinned back, with a notebook by the side of her crafts tray, pen clipped to it, and looked ready to take notes. She wouldn't quite meet Jason's smile. Ting also had a notebook by her tray, but it looked as though she had been writing a letter in it. In the upper right hand corner, she had sketched a bird from the look of it, although Jason tried not to stare. Letters were private, after all.

Maybe there would be some more coming in tomorrow. He'd just sent his second letter off to Sam.

Danno Alfaro came over from his table to sit next to Henry Squibb. Henry looked pale, the leather cutting shears dwarfing his plump, dimpled hand. Danno thumped him on the back. “Hey, no canoeing again. Wonder how they're going to keep us busy today.”

Henry let out a groan. “I just want to go back to bed.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Bad? I hardly slept.” Henry lowered his voice slightly. “Waiting for the next prank.” He said not another word but began picking pieces of leather as if trying to decide what to make. He had his choice of a pouch, a belt, or badges, but the mess in front of him hardly resembled any of them. His shoulders hunched as if waiting for Danno to make fun of him.

“Hey, at least you know who's after you and it's real. In my dreams, it's like the Dia de la Muerta . . . Day of the Dead.” Danno shook his head slowly.

Jason shot him a glance. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing.” Danno shut his lips firmly. He glanced around as Gavan Rainwater, passing quietly between the tables, a coffee mug in his hand, slowed slightly and then went on by.

Then Danno only said quietly, “This place has secrets.”

Jason felt his jaw drop and then carefully closed his mouth. Did Danno have nightmares like he did?

“What kind of secrets?” Ting asked.

Danno shrugged. “All kinds, you know?” They all looked at each other.

Henry, however, brightened a bit. He said softly, “If only there was something I could think of to get even.”

“We'll get 'em. Don't you worry.”

Trent shifted on the table bench next to Jason. He brought out his jar and set it on the table. The fireflies moved around the jar, glowing and dimming like lights being turned on and off. He grinned at Jason. “I think I'll make a bug badge.” Outside, the skies got very dark.

“Lightning in a bottle,” Jonnard said from behind them. He gestured at the glass jar, and they made a buzzing sound, like hornets. His voice seemed to echo.

The room darkened. The lights went off and came back on, fitfully, sputtering. Lightning struck outside, its light blazing off the lake surface, and thunder boom-CRACKED right overhead, the whole mess hall shaking. The lights went off to a flurry of screams. The fireflies made short, darting flights in their glass prison, their white-green spots the only illumination for a moment.

Gavan and Eleanora got to the front of the hall at the same time. “Everyone sit and stay quiet,”he said calmly. “We'll have power in just a moment.” He glanced at Eleanora. “I think it's time.” She took a deep breath and then nodded.

He tapped his wolfhead cane once, as if to steady himself. Then Gavan bowed his head, and lifted one hand slowly. As he raised his hand, the lights came up.

Trent leaned back. “Woah,” he said softly, echoing the sounds of awe.

Gavan leaned back on his cane. “We have everyone here this morning?” His gaze swept the hall. “Because we believe the time has come to make an explanation. Because you're who you are, a number of you have noticed some odd occurrences around camp. And because you're who you are, there will be more. We had hoped to have more time for evaluations, but this has never been an exact science.” He laughed then, and smiled.

“Ladies and gentlemen. You were all chosen to attend camp because you showed us a certain talent, an aptitude. Like calls to like. We hope we recognized what we were shown.”

The lights flickered again, and he frowned. This time he spat out a word, and if anyone doubted he was doing something to restore the power, all doubt fled. At his word, the lights blazed.

“How did you do that?” a shy voice asked from the second row of tables on the other side.

“Because I have the Will and Talent to do so.”

Gavan rubbed the wolfhead on his cane in thought a moment, before looking up into the silence.

“What was once thought Lost forever is now known to merely have been Sleeping. This camp is intended to show you how to use your talent and develop it. To respect what you are and will become. Magick is alive in the world again, and you are its heirs. You can create it. Wield it. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the world of Magickers.”

Bailey's eyes went saucer big. Into a room of quiet, she dropped, “Wow. That is letting the cat out of the hat!”

11

E
LEANORA drew herself straight, her gaze raking the mess hall. FireAnn had come out from the kitchen, and crossed her arms, wooden spoon still in her hand. Even though breakfast was long gone, and they were buried in leather crafts, she was busy getting ready for lunch. Gavan indicated them.

“All of us here are Magickers, in one way or another.”

Eleanora added gently, but in a voice that carried to the far back corners of the room, “And because we once came from your world, we understand what you must be thinking now.”

Stefan let out a rude sound, echoed by Rich.

She nodded in their direction. “Of course. I'd do the same in your place.” She tugged at her flowing skirt, lifting the hem a bit. As the bottom of the skirt rose to expose her ankles, it also revealed another sight. Eleanora floated a good five inches above the floor, her shoes resting solidly on . . . nothing. As if to emphasize that, Gavan swung his cane under her.

Her face glowed faintly pink. “I don't like being short,” she added softly.

Gavan snorted. “Waste of energy.”

“It's my energy,” Eleanora returned loftily. She looked back at them. “Even if you don't believe me now . . . you will.” She stepped back with her usual grace, her shoes moving silently above the floor. She let her skirt fall back around her ankles. “Don't think we're going to hand you a magic wand and teach you to wave it. Magick doesn't come from a wand. Nothing is as simple as that.”

“The first thing we need to teach you,” Gavan said solemnly, “is how to stay alive. That may take a great deal of doing, seeing as how the enemy already knows we are here.”

“Enemy?” echoed Jonnard.

“Of course,” muttered Trent. “The balance. Where there is Light, there is Dark. Always.” He leaned on his elbows, his fascinated attention on Rainwater and the others.

Gavan nodded toward Trent. “There is most definitely Dark. Although we didn't know it at first, and that is where our story begins.” Gavan pulled up a kitchen stool and sat on it. Outside, the rain stopped, as though finally worn out. “Nearly three hundred years ago, Gregory the Gray met Antoine Brennard in combat over a disagreement on the basis of Magick. Because of that, all Magick was ripped out of the universe. It was not, then, a war of Good against Evil, although events afterward changed all of us. The shock of that incident killed many Magickers. Stunned others.

“Some of us were lucky to fall into a deep, deep sleep. Sheltered somewhere and miraculously left alone till we could awaken and find ourselves in a new world, a new century. Struggle to find ourselves at all.” Gavan cleared his throat.

“Most of us who would awaken began to sometime in the last century. Because we are what we are, we found each other. Realized what had happened. Realized what we had won, and what we had lost. Decided on a course of action that, eventually, brought us to this day.

“Each and every one of you have exhibited enough Talent for us to decide you could use training and our help. We ask nothing for it. Most of us have spent the last decade or two finding other Magickers and working toward a day like today. The Circle increases; that is our only reward. Some of you here today will fail to learn. It is not a failure to be someone of worth. Magick is fickle. In some of us, it can come and go unless we learn how to steady it and use it well.

“So. In the meantime, we ask that you spend your days here with an open mind, and a closed mouth. What we do must be secret. I've no desire to find myself in a lab somewhere being dissected to see what makes me tick or why Eleanora is on invisible stilts.

“Everyone take the hand of someone standing next to you. I want everyone in this room joined.” His gaze swept across them, and Jason moved to take Bailey's hand on one side and Trent's on the other. Their hands felt as his did, a little dry and rather nervous. After a moment of stirring and commotion, they all fell quiet again.

“Repeat after me,” Gavan commanded. His voice started quietly, and as they echoed his words, rose to a thunder on the last.

He smiled. “Now. There will be some of you tempted to test this binding. I recommend you don't. The disease tetanus was famous for its symptom of locked jaws, but in my time, not all those who had locked jaws had caught that dread disease. Some were merely oath-breakers.”

Trent's hand shot up. Eleanora nodded to him.

“What about our parents? They're not part of the Circle.”

“No, they're not.” She brushed a long dark curl from her forehead as she frowned. “We need your silence this summer, while we can train you to know yourself and learn how to protect and deal with your families. They did send you here, knowing that this is a camp for the talented. How extraordinary . . .” She paused, with a slight smile. “It might be a real shock for them.”

Gavan added, “Now, while we set up classes for tomorrow in the Gathering Hall, there is an afternoon movie, a mudbowl tug-of-war, and an early night so you can catch up on your sleep. Tomorrow our setup for phone conferences will be working and everyone has a call home coming. Also, we will be having a Talent Show that we are going to videotape and send to all the parents, since we are not having visits. Look for that on the schedule, so you can start practicing. As far as being a Magicker, you'll have lots of questions to ask, and we'll have some answers. But not all. Many answers are for you to find on your own.”

 

The mudbowl tug-of-war was as messy as promised. But no one minded, for at the end of the free-for-all, the sky opened up again and drenched them all so thoroughly there was little mud left for the indoor showers to take care of. Bailey preened at being on the winning side, declaring she was “happy as a pig in mud.”

Trent scratched his head. “I think she got that one right on the nose.” He watched as Rich and Stefan thudded past, grumbling at poor calls and weak wrists. “Nothing like sore losers,” he commented when they'd disappeared. He bent over to help coil up the immense rope with Jason.

“Going to the movie? I hear it's optional.”

“I didn't catch the title, did you?”

Trent's eyes shone in glee. “It's one of Jim Carrey's, should be a scream.”

Jason considered the idea of some gross-out slap-stick comedy, then nodded. It stopped raining as they made their way to the long line at the showers.

 

“I think it's a still,” Bailey said quietly, as she joined the two waiting for her at the back of the mess hall after dinner.

“What's a still?

“That bubbling pot FireAnn is always fussing over. And they're going to make magical elixirs from it. We couldn't possibly have known that before, but now we do.”

“We do?” echoed Trent.

“A still?” Jason stared at her.

“Did you get mud in your ears? Both of you?” She put her finger to her lips as they ducked through the flaps and went outside. The moist air of the summer night hit them, and a firefly floated lazily past, a brief white zigzag lighting their way.

“A still,” she said confidentially, “is a contraption people use to make their own liquor with.”

“I've seen those. That's a cauldron. It doesn't look anything like a still. They've got tubes and distillers and all sorts of things wired together.” Trent sounded openly doubtful.

Bailey shot them a look. “She's gotta start somewhere,” she retorted. “Now that we know she's using Magick.”

“Well . . . yeah . . . maybe. I still think she's making jam.”

“For days? And days and days?” Bailey made a huffy noise.

Jason shrugged. When Joanna wanted good jam, she went to the gourmet food market. What did he know about making your own? Still, he did know that the back of the kitchen around the great stewpot smelled of berries and sugar. Spelled fruit something or other to him. He said as much.

“Don't be silly. Cook is up to something. She kept shooing me away. You don't fuss like that over some jelly.”

“Did you try to get a spoon to taste or something?”

Bailey looked forward. “I did.” She looked around.

“What happened?”

She made a funny face. “The spoon melted.”

They spoke in unison. “It what?”

“Went all wobbly and then . . . nothing! Just flat disappeared in my hand. Started at the bottom and worked all the way up till I dropped it!” She waved her empty hand in the air and then frowned. “Maybe that's why Cook always uses wooden spoons.”