Breaking Barriers

by Bob Dattolo

  The candle stared at me, mocking. “You know that’s not entirely helpful, right?”

  He laughed as he stood up. “Welcome to the world of magic. If it was easy, everyone would do it and be a wizard. It’s not, though. Then again, you have so much power that I’m sure you’ll get it sooner than you think.” He gave me a quick hug before leaving, letting me sit with my unlit candle. My phone range a moment later.

  “Hello?”

  “Ceri?”

  Holy crap, “Rasphael?”

  “It is! How is my daughter in spirit today?”

  Hearing her say that made me feel warm and happy. “Good. I’m good. It’s been an interesting few days.”

  Her laughter sounded like tinkling bells. I freaking love that. “I bet it has. I notice that you’ve been exploring more of yourself?”

  Her question made me blush. “I, uhh, have?”

  More laughter. “Oh, Ceri, you have nothing to be embarrassed about. At all. Tell me, do you know how old I am?”

  “No? You look, I don’t know, maybe 30 at the oldest? Possibly 25?”

  “In human years I am something over 7,000 years old. I am not the oldest among the fey, but I am way up there. There is literally nothing you can do that I am not familiar with. That I’ve done. Countless thousands and thousands of times.”

  “Wow, that old?”

  “Indeed, I am. I’m sure your friends have told you a little about me?”

  I thought back through everything. “Not really? They’ve said a little bit about how you’re powerful and something about an attack that you stopped, but not really any specifics? I rather get the impression that they’re afraid of talking about you to me.”

  “That’s not an uncommon reaction when people realize who I am. Suffice it to say that I do not have an unearned reputation.”

  “Well, whatever it is, I don’t care. I meant what I said the other day, you reached out to me and were willing to risk yourself for me. I’d do anything for you.”

  “Oh, Ceri, that means a tremendous amount to me. One day you may even understand how much. But, your 17th birthday is coming up quickly. Once you reach your birthday and come into your waiting power, you’ll be beyond my king’s ruling. Once that happens, I can be your mother in truth if you desire? I simply cannot raise you prior to that point.”

  Her question made me start crying. “You’d do that? You mean it?”

  “I do.”

  “I would like that more than pretty much anything.”

  “Then that is what will happen. You just need to make it to your birthday, and I can put things in motion if you would like.”

  “I would. Like that, I mean.” She let me cry for a few minutes.

  “Now, that is not why I called. Not really. I did receive clarification from my king this morning that his ruling was only limiting us until you reach 17, so wanted to pass that on, but it’s really young Armand’s comments to you that I wanted to elaborate on.”

  It’s so strange to think that she sees and hears everything happening in my room. For the most part, I’ve tried not to think about that. While with Leticia earlier I did think about it at odd points, but fought to put it out of mind. Since I’m not human.

  “Okay?”

  She laughed again, making me picture her dancing in the moonlight amongst the trees. “Your friends are right, I am powerful. Very much so. You, on the other hand…what I said to Director Fitzsimmons about the two of us together not being able to take you? Or possibly not? I meant that. If you live to come into your power, you will have access to more than you can imagine. You already do, you just don’t quite know how to use it. Although, from what I’ve been learning, you have an intrinsic ability to access it at certain times. I will be forthcoming and say that, unless I attacked you without warning and killed you instantly, I’m not sure I would prevail against you right now. Not if your powers kept coming up as they have been.”

  “Wow…”

  “Yes, wow, it is a lot, but that is also not why I called you. Not really. Power does not account for much if you cannot utilize it. I agree with the human training approach of lighting a candle, since it allows the practitioner to get a concrete idea of what it takes to access their power. It is a wonderful learning tool. Wonderful.”

  She took a deep breath, “You, on the other hand…I will be honest and say that you are not a human mage.” I sucked in a breath as she continued. “Don’t take that the wrong way. I’m not telling you that to scare you. I’m telling you that to give you some assistance. The human approach for teaching will work for you. It will. It will also shackle you to their way of thinking.”

  “But…if I’m not a human mage, what am I?”

  She laughed yet again. “You are what you have always been. And have always been meant to be. Your growth has been nudged forward based on what was done to you in that factory, but it would have happened regardless. It’s also not something for you to worry about. As I told you, we are what we make ourselves. Many in the world would consider me evil, since I have the ability to do great harm. Yet I go out of my way to not do that. My enemies certainly think of me as evil. Those that I fight. Those that I protect? That’s something different. What you are is immaterial against what you do with your power and what you do with your life. Immaterial.”

  “Again, I’m telling you this, not to shock you, but to help you. I still won’t tell you what you are, but I will tell you what you are not. You are not human. You have felt your magic inside of you. You have felt it moving. I can see it on your face as it moves and grows as you learn about yourself and experience what your body has to offer. I have seen and felt you use it as well. Granted, you used it without thinking, but that, right there, is also a sign for you. I won’t tell you outright how to access your magic, but you will not be able to learn the human way without shortchanging yourself and restricting your ability to access everything that will be available to you. Think on that. Think about what you have done so far and how you’ve done it, then try to work from that. I have faith in you. Do not be surprised if you light the candle within the next week.”

  Her words filled me with fear, dread, and excitement. Fear and dread because my little mantra about not being human has an entirely new meaning now. I meant I wasn’t human, as in I’m a supernatural, but she’s saying it as if I’m not actually human. Like at all. “Is…is what I am or what I’m becoming bad?”

  “No, not at all. Any more than being a vampire is necessarily bad. Remember, you are what you make yourself to be. As I mentioned, you have the capacity to be bad, very bad. We all do. Those of us with an extraordinary amount of power have the ability to do incalculable damage to the world if we decide to. It is on us to hold ourselves back and to do the right thing. You were raised to believe you were human. While your parents were human mages, you, yourself, are not. It’s a quirk of what they were tied with a quirk of what you are. It is not a bad thing. It is just a thing. Like anything else. Scalpels can be used to heal or to kill. So, think about that, daughter-mine. Think about what I said. About how your magic has been used so far. Then I believe you will light the candle. Remember, do not restrict yourself to human mage thinking. It will be hard, but I think you can do that once you reach your magic. Take what they say as guidelines, not as rules, and I believe you will be all right.”

  She sighed. “And, have fun. It does my heart good to see you learning about yourself. I have spent a number of hours with the delightful spell you cast on my walls, and I only wish I had someone to experience the feeling with. You have access to people that will be there with you. Be with them. As you age and people become aware of your power, you’ll find yourself in my shoes, where people shy away in fear once they know who I am. Keep your friends close and your enemies dead.” Noise on her end seemed to draw her attention. “On that note, I need to sign off. I know I jumped around quite a bit, but the basic point of my call is this: Be you. Do not be a human mage. Be you. And…be my daughter. You have less than
a month until you reach your birthday. Reach that, and I can be part of your life.”

  “Thank you, Ras…Mom.” It felt beyond weird to say that. Beyond weird, but right. “Thank you for everything. I’ll try to do what you said.”

  “In that case, I hope you have a wonderful day. I will talk to you soon.”

  She hung up without waiting for my response, leaving me in my empty room listening to the hissing phone. I put it down and wiped at my tears. “Thank you, Mom. It’s sad that in our few times that we’ve talked I’ve felt that you’re more a mom than my actual mom…but it’s true. Thank you for everything.”

  My mind went crazy with possibilities, but since I don’t know much about the supernatural world, I can’t even guess at what I am. Or what I’m becoming. Or whatever. I don’t know how my parents can be human mages but I’m not. My knowledge about magical species is limited to the fact that they exist and some basic names. That’s it. Nothing jumps out at me as being a possibility.

  Putting that out of mind took an act of Congress, but I eventually got it to flutter away, probably to come back and keep me from sleeping. Instead, I tried to feel for my magic, digging into the space where I feel things moving and coiling. While I could reach in, I couldn’t quite grasp anything. It slid through my mental grasp like water through open fingers, barely making contact at all. Begging, pleading, and ordering did nothing at all.

  In the end, my growling stomach called me away from my attempts, making me realize that I’d spent almost three hours trying to reach my magic. Maybe food will help?

  Chapter 15

  As I settled into bed with Steph behind me, I realized that food did help. Oh, it didn’t help my magical attempts, but it did help other things. It helped me connect to my new friends. It helped my frame of mind. It helped center me and distract from the fact that I’m not really human.

  Of course, having that thought means that I’m back to that whole mystery. Even attempting to think through the basic forms that I’m learning didn’t do much to keep it at bay. My thoughts kept coming back around to it at every turn. What am I? I’m not an orc or a troll, that’s pretty apparent. I managed to slip that into the conversation over dinner, and they all let me know that they’re huge, to start, and, while common supernaturals, they aren’t all that common. Humans are, by far, the most numerous species on Earth that way. There are more fey than vampires, but since the fey are more secretive and tend to live between, and not really on the Earth, it’s hard to tell. Trolls and orcs live between as well, although some spill into the normal world. Not many, although more now that supernaturals are out. Beyond that, the numbers drop drastically. Very, very drastically.

  Before climbing into bed, I flipped through my magical species book and looked at each page, trying to see if anything jumped out at me. Nothing really did. Even reading the chapter about humans didn’t say that any other species can be born from one, other than vampires or shifters. And I doubt I’m one of them. If I was, then Ra…Mom’s advice that I’m not human wouldn’t apply. I’d still be human, just a mage shifter or mage vampire. It’s still human stock. Their magic still works the same, even if you can shift or want to drink blood.

  So I’m left with just as much nothing as I had to begin with. Granted, I’d rather know, since I seemed to be heading down a bad path of limiting my magical abilities, so I’m in a better place than I was. I don’t even know if I’ll know what I am when I turn 17.

  Yet I know I’ll have a mom again.

  How desperate am I to cling onto pretty much the first person to offer me compassion and a place with them? Pretty desperate. I know that. It’s obvious to me. That’s not going to stop me from reaching for it, though. All of us kids used to try to get our parents to pay attention to us. We wanted their love. Desperately yearned for it. It never came. Ever. Knowing what I know now, it’s obvious in retrospect that they barely had any parental thoughts for us at all. None, in point of fact. There was no nursing involved. From what my oldest brother said, he had to start taking care of the newborns when he was four. Four years old. Once that happened, the new baby would be birthed and dropped into the hands of one of the kids. They’d be required to tend to them. Feed them. Change them. Everything. There was no nursing and cradling the baby to my mother’s chest. Nothing at all like that.

  We were a means to an end, and that’s it.

  So make fun of me about my willingness to accept her. I don’t care. She could pretty much be an evil bitch hellbent on destroying things, and I’m not sure it would matter to me. She’s not, from everything I’ve heard, but I’m not entirely sure it would stop me from wanting to be with her. As long as she continues to reach out to me, I’ll take it.

  Starved for love and attention? Yes. Yes I am. I won’t apologize for my frame of mind. I’m just desperate enough to take what I can get.

  I spent the first half of my first week of school studying my butt off. I need to catch up on defense, magical species, and magic in a very real way. In defense, Ms. Darvel has me demonstrate the basic forms on Tuesday, earlier than she told me it would happen. Due to the heavy work I had been putting into it, I passed the demonstration. My friends helped me tremendously with the hard work, and I rewarded them appropriately, which was more fun for me. My reward for passing the forms was direction to work on the next three chapters. I’m just that far behind, so there’s no rest for the weary.

  I managed to hook up with Mitch for tutoring on magical species. He’s 16, like me, and a mage tiger. Powerful as hell, from what I can tell, but he doesn’t try to lord it over me, which I appreciated. He’s a good-looking guy and has slightly darker skin than Sarah does. They’re both tigers, but they don’t know each other outside of school. Not that that matters.

  I lucked out that he needed some help on math, so we agreed to trade off tutoring sessions. Yes, I had sex with him. Or he did with me. I guess it depends on how you look at it. I learned in our discussion that their floor has been going crazy since I showed up. Apparently, my magic is hitting them hard and they’ve been fucking like rabbits. Even thinking that word makes me cringe, but I’ve been trying to use more adult words. After all, I’m not human.

  I didn’t let him know that their sudden spike in random orgasms is due to me. Instead, we tutored an hour in each subject, and I learned more from him in the first hour than from all of the classes on the subject so far. Then we rocked each other’s worlds for a few hours. When my magic went haywire again, he figured out why everyone has been so impacted. He loved it. When his roommate came in at one point and got sucked in, pardon the expression, and was headed for a spontaneous orgasm to match ours, I managed to offer my services as I did for the guys when they touched my wall. That lad to more orgasms, which I’ve become fond of.

  Magic class, however, wasn’t working well. Or, it was working, but I still had an unlit candle. Mr. Reynolds was impressed that the wick was black until I told him that it was from Armand trying to give me advice, and not my efforts. He let that go with a nod and then left me alone to focus on my efforts while he walked through the class and assisted them with their breezes. By Thursday, everyone in the class managed a decent breeze, while my candle was still unlit.

  Dinner that night was excellent, as it has been since coming, and we ate and talked for most of two hours. On the way back to the dorm, we passed Corey as he stood in front of a fire burning in the huge outdoor fire pit. There were other students with him, all laughing and joking as we walked by. As I passed, he threw something into the fire that made me pause. A laptop. I had a brief flash of the back of the case before it was engulfed in flames, and my blood ran cold.

  Everyone in my dozenal caught the scene, but only Steph responded. “Oh fuck…”

  “What? What’s he burning?” Tom asked.

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

  The rest of the trip up to my room passed in a blur. A total blur. It was only finding our door splintered and open that I came back to myself.

&n
bsp; Standing in the wide-open door didn’t help much. At all. My side of the room was bare. Completely bare, as if I’d never moved in. The furniture was there, but nothing else was there. No sheets. No blanket. My desk was bare. No laptop. No laptop with the cute sticker on the cover that Steph gave me.

  My drawers were empty. My dresser was empty. My closet…empty.

  Everything is gone. Everything. It’s all gone. All of it except the clothes on my back and my phone.

  I’m not sure when the growling started, but I only noticed it when my muscles started trembling uncontrollably. About 30 seconds later, my phone rang.

  “Speak.” My voice didn’t even sound familiar to me.

  “Ceri, it’s Rasphael. I know what happened. I witnessed them enter your room and strip it. Corey was the leader, but Connor, Drake, Wanda, and Aaron are also responsible for this. Lacie was there but tried to fight back against their plan. She’s currently recovering from their beating.”

  My growling got louder.

  “What do you plan to do?”

  What do I plan? “I…I’m not sure. What I have in my head isn’t right. None of it is right.”

  “Then let me offer my suggestion? They took from you in fire. A little payback in the same vein may be appropriate?”

  “Fire? I think I can manage that.” My insides were a ball of superheated magic already. “I have some people to deal with.”

  My friends were wedged back against the walls around me, staring at me in shock as I hung up my phone and left it spinning in mid-air over my mattress, magic holding it aloft. I didn’t think they would, but they followed me back down to the lawn where Corey and his friends had a larger group of people watching, including faculty.