“Or, more probable, you do something to them that is unconscious. You reach out to them with your mind. Call them. Force them to do your bidding. They cannot refuse your will because of the essence you draw and squander.” The shimmer of the blue dress increased in intensity as she spoke until it appeared to be made of blue fire.
I looked directly at the woman again and could almost make out the forest behind her as if she was half-real or made of glass. Seeing that scared me more than any words could. I moved to my sister’s side, and then took a tentative step closer to the old woman. My hand reached out to touch her. The world exploded in an orange flash in my mind—and all went dark.
I awoke with Kendra kneeling at my side, several steps away from the campfire—and away from where the woman in blue had been standing. She was no longer there. My body stung, from head to toe, tingling and hurting like a thousand pins were being inserted. It felt as if I’d fallen through the ice in the middle of winter and was thawing. I could only manage to say through lips that barely moved, “What happened?”
“You tried to touch the Blue Woman,” Kendra said. “Your hand went right through her body like she was a shadow. Then she burst into a ball of orange fire and disappeared. You were thrown into the air and landed over here. When I looked back, she was gone.”
I tried to sit and failed. My stomach turned, and my body was too weak. Tater, the dog, and Elizabeth slept on, unaware of what happened.
“Rest. Recover.”
My sister was right. I needed time to heal if that was the proper word. But with each passing moment, I felt better. “Was she real? Or a dream?”
“Real enough to do this to you,” Kendra said. “I saw everything you did. Do you need water or anything? A blanket?”
Sitting up with her help, I allowed the tingling to continue instead of fighting it. As it diminished, I reviewed the incident. The entire thing took less time to consider than it had happened in real time. But it didn’t seem tangible. It was more like a dream, and the time she had spent with us was brief, despite my thoughts.
“She thinks I’m responsible for attracting the dragons. Like I have a third kind of magic that calls them to me.”
I turned to Kendra and closed my eyes to think. That was an interesting statement, especially coming from her. A third kind of magic. It paralleled my reasoning but differed in that the image of how the Blue Woman who might be controlled by the third kind. The blue body she revealed was dissimilar to the intense magic of mages and sorceresses, and certainly different from mine. Yet, the woman had as much as accused Kendra of possessing another kind of magic, so that must be a fourth kind. I got lost in the multitude of possibilities.
Four magics? That concept came as a total surprise. For my entire life, we had assumed there were only two kinds, mine and that of real magicians. No, that was not entirely true. We had believed that there was one kind of magic and that I was only able to perform a fraction of that as if it was inferior to those of mages who served the king.
Maybe there are five kinds. The woman had mentioned the forces of darkness, whatever they were. If they came from the essence of the earth, what were they and what kind of magic did they possess? My mind now tingled and hurt, but not from what had happened, but from confusion. I couldn’t seem to follow my thoughts in a straight line without angling off to a different subject. Five kinds of magic?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Kendra might have magic powers? My mind shifted again to follow that line of thought as we sat beside the campfire after the visit from the Blue Lady. I still sat in the dirt and allowed my thoughts to stray further from our conversation. The idea Kendra might control magic had never occurred to me. I was used to thinking of her as my younger, weaker sister that needed my protection while I performed magic. Our relationship had been that way . . . always.
My memories strayed back to our childhood before Elizabeth had rescued us. We talked about “before” and remembered little. However, there was a vague image of a woman who remained in my mind, and a man standing silently at her side.
The man was tall, strong, and handsome. He reminded me of me. At least, that’s my recollection. The woman was less clear in appearance, but somehow more forceful. No, not forceful as in fighting, but as in being a leader with her personality. She led the man. She was in charge.
Then, perhaps he was not my father but a servant or soldier, both thoughts I’d never had in the past. The idea intrigued me. Since both of them had disappeared from our lives, Kendra and I had speculated almost daily as to what had happened.
Then came the hard times, the fights for scraps of food, the wet and cold, the beatings, and most of all the sense of being alone except for each other. As the eldest, I became the head of our household, which for a while was a damp space under the bottom floor of a boarding house. We removed a pair of boards behind a holly bush and crawled in after dark each night. There we kept all we owned, which were three tattered blankets, a few trinkets, and extra clothing.
Rats ate any food we left out, so we immediately devoured what we obtained through begging, theft, and guile. I used my small magic to divert merchant’s attention while we stole an apple or two. A coin spilled from a purse was left unseen due to me. Without it, we would not have survived, although we didn’t know at the time it was a unique skill. What I did understand was that if anyone suspected or hinted at what magic was performed, I’d get a beating. That taught me to hide my crude abilities, such as they were.
However, not once in all that time had the idea that my sister might also have magic abilities crossed my mind. The revelation by the Blue Woman shook my beliefs to my core. Even if what she’s said was not true, she had given us plenty to think about.
I opened my eyes and found my sister. “Kendra?”
“Yes?” She was still kneeling beside me—waiting and concerned.
“Have you ever felt, or thought about, controlling magic?”
“Of course.”
My heart sank as I struggled to sit up. Again, I was caught unaware. “Tell me.”
“Well, it’s natural enough. You have magic abilities, and I wanted the same. If you’re asking if I ever believed it was possible, the simple answer is, no. When we were young, trying to imitate my big brother was expected. I tried to copy some of the magic things you did, but as we grew older, we realized and accepted that only you could do them.”
That seemed both reasonable and understandable. I went back to following the course of my previous thoughts. “Maybe magic abilities are inherited, not learned. I might have gotten them from our mother and father.”
“Meaning?” she asked, obviously not making the connections.
“If one or both of them controlled magic, or essence, as the Blue Woman called it, and since we know I can control it—it makes sense to me that you might, too.”
She didn’t immediately object or refute my statement. I still sat on the ground. Slowly standing, I worked my way to my feet and over to the pile of firewood, then idly placed a few more pieces on the fire, while waiting. Kendra would speak when she was ready.
“Damon, is that your real name? The one you were born with? Is Kendra mine?”
Like me, she was now questioning everything we believed we knew. Good. When she told me what she was thinking, I’d compare the information with mine, a task we’d performed a hundred times, always hoping to discover something new. “I’m not sure about my name, but I’ve only ever thought of you as Kendra. So, that is probably your real name.”