by Laura Emmons
“Corey, I have something I need to talk to you about. Get dressed, and then meet me in Rose’s bedroom.”
“Not before I get something to eat.” My brother ate constantly. “Can you smell that? It’s bacon!” He left me alone in front of the bathroom mirror.
Boy, I looked a mess. My violet eyes were puffy and bloodshot. My pink and raw nose was surrounded by random splotches of red on my face. I never looked dainty and adorable when crying, like girls on TV. I looked downright ugly and I didn’t care. My long, thick chocolate brown hair was all tangled. I tried to mash it down somewhat from the pieces that stuck up at odd angles around my face. Splashing water on my face and brushing my teeth. It was the best I could do.
Launching into my explanation as soon as I returned to Rose’s bedroom, I announced, “People are coming to visit. We need to tell Corey everything. He needs to know about the clan, about magic, about Arianrhod, the Destroyer, and especially how we are not boyfriend and girlfriend!”
Evan looked taken aback at my tirade. “Okay,” he said thoughtfully. It irked me sometimes how people spoke slower here than in LA. “But shouldn’t we break it to him a little at a time? He’s had to deal with so much lately.”
Corey walked in, carrying a piece of bacon.
“Oh good, you’re here.” I looked at Evan pleadingly and said, “There’s no time. We have to tell him now.” I racked my brain. How did Evan start when he broke the news to me?
Evan spoke first. “Corey, take a seat.”
I moved to sit on the bed while Corey headed toward the reading chair. Evan leaned against the dresser.
A small, high pitched voice squeaked behind me. “Mistress Maggie, I thought you might like a breakfast tray in your roo…Oh, hello.”
My dear friend, Ginger, the house Brownie, carried a tray of food. She hadn’t bothered to camouflage herself. Ginger stood about eighteen inches tall. Proportionally, she looked like an adult human. She had a huge mass of curly brown hair, dark leathery skin, and huge green eyes. She stopped short when she saw Corey, who never made it to the reading chair.
He ‘eeked’, threw his hands in the air (the bacon fell forgotten onto the floor and shattered) and shouted, “What the fire truck is that?”
Our father had been an enlisted military man who used a lot of colorful language. When I started imitating him as a toddler my mother instituted a couple of ground rules. She made my dad substitute certain words for other less age appropriate terms. Corey was substituting words again.
He fell backwards into the chair with his eyes bulged out and his mouth agape.
Ginger got scared and instantly became one with the wall. Her ability to camouflage herself was infinitely better than the coolest chameleon.
“Thank you, Ginger. Would you leave the tray on the dresser, please?” She did so, matching her colors to the surrounding furniture as she moved. It gave me vertigo watching her. I waited until she had scuttled away. That’s when I remembered how Evan had started the conversation last time. “Corey, the world is not what you thought it was.”
“But…but…” he stammered, “The furniture moves!”
I looked at Evan. “Didn’t I say they looked like moving furniture?” I’d had the same reaction to the first Brownie I’d met.
Evan brought the conversation back to urgent matters. “Corey, you just met Ginger. She is a Brownie. She lives here with Fiona.”
“Get out!”
“There are many magical creatures in this world.” He spoke with a great deal of patience. “You have to want to see them to know they exist…and of course, you have to be magical yourself.”
Well, that answered one question. I’d spent so much time forcing myself to believe Corey was non-magical, and the legend referred to a different boy, I’d refused to scan his aura. I’d absolutely refused. I had no choice now, but to face my fear. Instinctively, I opened my Healer vision and gazed at my brother. His aura was filled with gold. He had as much untapped magical power as Evan, but what gifts did he possess? Did he have Seer gifts, Healer gifts, or like me, something different entirely? This fact, Corey’s power, changed everything.
Evan didn’t react to the realization that Corey was magical. Of course he didn’t. Only I had heard Paul Sinclair tell the legend of the Destroyer. Evan still discussed the Brownies.
“…Brownies share houses with magical humans. They do housework in exchange for room and board. There are five Brownies living in this house.”
“That is so awesome!” Corey gushed. “Do they have any superpowers?”
He’s taking this well, I mused, but we had a real problem on our hands. I interrupted. “We can’t let Corey meet anyone today. Not until we’ve had a chance to think about this. We have to keep people from visiting.”
Evan picked up on the frantic tone of my voice. “Go tell Fiona.”
“You’re right. I have to tell Fiona. I’ll be back.”
I found her on the back deck offering the morning blessing to Llew, even though it was after noon.
“Fiona, we have to keep people from coming to visit. What can we do to stop them?”
“Why would we want to do that?”
“Because I have a secret I’ve been keeping from everyone,” I started, “about the legend of the Destroyer and, well, and Corey.”
She gasped.
I finished, “We can’t introduce him to the whole clan until our family has a chance to talk amongst ourselves.”
She looked stumped at my admission. Fiona never looked stumped. She reasoned out loud. “It’s tradition on Alban Arthan for the clan crone, the oldest living woman in the clan, to drink from the well of the Young, and to lead the children in a procession to give the leftovers from the Yule feast to the needy. Since our family sustained a death recently,” she paused for a moment, “we would be considered the neediest family right now.”
“Can we ask them to give it to someone else?”
“I’ll try to get Farmer Macgregor on the cell phone. His wife, Evelyn, is the Crone. I’ll tell them you are distraught and ask them to give you privacy. I’ll ask them to donate the food to the church in Shannon’s memory.” Her voice caught as she used Mom’s name. All of us grieved.
When I’d returned to Rose’s bedroom Corey had talked all of the Brownies: Grog, Daisy, Lard, Rock and Ginger, into using their power of levitation to bounce him up and down in the air. Evan and Rose cheered them on from the sidelines.
“Hey Maggie, look at me!” he cried as he bounced. “I’m floating like an astronaut. I’m weightless!”
I grumbled. We didn’t have time to play games. “You’re gonna be Nintendo-less if you don’t get back on your feet this instant. We have to talk. Let’s get together in…” I almost said ‘the living room’ but I really couldn’t bring myself to enter it. The Brownies had moved the bed. All of the furniture was back in its proper place, but the memories of last night were too fresh. Instead I said, “I mean, at…the dining table.”
Both Rose and Evan gave me curious looks, but neither commented on my short temper. They were cutting me slack today. I needed it. Evan, in particular, was going to be really upset with me when he found out I’d been keeping a really big secret.
Chapter Four
The Destroyer
When Fiona joined us it was pretty crowded at the table. Five humans and five Brownies clustered around the circle.
“Okay,” I began, “we need to bring Corey up to speed. Who wants to start?”
Fiona nodded. “I will. Corey, our family is part of the Cacapon clan of Appalachia. Our clan is comprised of several different families; we number about three hundred in total. We are different than most humans.”
He interjected, “Because of the magic, right?”
“That’s right. Because we’re gifted, we have an obligation to use our powers for good.”
He interrupted again. “With great power comes great responsibility.”
“Okay Spiderman,” I chided him, “pay atten
tion.”
Fiona took a deep breath. “We are sworn to protect the balance of nature.”
“Were we always magical?” he asked.
“As far as I’m aware, our ancestors have always been magical. Our people emigrated from Scotland in the 1700’s. We already had magic. We settled in the Appalachian Mountains so we could practice it without persecution. You see, few settlers in America were hardy enough to survive the dangers of Appalachia, but our gifts gave us an edge. The biggest threat we found was the native Cherokee living in the mountains. They also had magic, saw us as kindred spirits and let us live. We gave them our knowledge and they gave us theirs. Eventually the clans interbred and our people were stronger for it.”
“So how did the clan end up here, in West Virginia?”
“It’s a good question, Corey. When the Industrial Age started and big factories were built spewing toxic, black smoke into the air, Mother Earth and Father Sky were very upset. They worried about what the poisoned air would do to both the balance of the seasons and to the balance between night and day. Llew and Arianrhod came to us and asked our clan for help. Our leaders agreed. They sent a group north in search of an ancient secret temple hidden in the mountains near the Potomac River. This group found the temple in a natural meadow near where the Cacapon and Potomac Rivers meet. They became the first settlers of the Cacapon clan.”
“Wow. That’s a really cool story, Great-Aunt Fiona, but I want to know what kind of superpowers we have.”
“I’ll let Evan take over that part. I need a break from talking.”
“Okay,” said Evan. I was pleased to see Corey paying attention so well. I was also glad he hadn’t freaked out. Like me, he sensed there was something different about us. If nothing else, the impromptu data dump kept us from focusing on our grief; at least it would for a few minutes, anyway.
Evan started his explanation. “Well each family in the clan is associated with one of the seven professions. The highest profession is the Healers. The women in Healer families have always had the power to heal through energy-touch therapy. We call it Healing Hands. Your mom, Aunt Rose and Fiona are Healers, so you and Maggie are half-Healer. Because the clan considers the Healer profession to be the most important set of gifts, your family was given the property containing the sacred meadow as well as some other places.”
“Do you mean we own the sacred meadow?” Corey asked.
“Well, technically Fiona does. She inherited it from her father, but only humans think about land as a possession. To the magical community, Fi is just a guardian.”
“What other places are on Fi’s property?”
Rose answered. “There’s the Yule Cave we talked about last night and the Well of the Young used today during the Children’s Day procession.”
“There’s also the Crystal Cave on the top of Bald Mountain,” Evan added.
“Can we go to these places?”
Fiona answered that question. “I think we should visit the well later, but you need to hear this information first.”
“This is good stuff. So if the women in my family can heal people with their hands, what can the guys do?”
Evan took up the narrative again. “Men in Healer families can learn to use energy-touch therapy to diagnose illness, they just can’t heal, and most members of Healer families get a sixth sense around sick people.”
“Got it…” Corey said, “So what other jobs are there?”
“We call them professions,” Evan corrected, then continued. “The second highest profession is the Seers. The men in Seer families have always had the power to see future events before they occur.”
“And my dad was a Seer,” Corey stated this as a fact.
“Your dad was a very powerful Seer,” Evan confirmed.
“What else can Seers do?”
“The men have visions, but all Seers can see people’s auras. A few of us can feel the harmonic vibrations emanated by all living things. Sometimes women get dream visions while they are sleeping. A couple of people see visions of past events and very rarely, there are people who can astral project themselves.”
“Holy Cow!”
I agreed. Evan had all of those gifts.
“So…what else,” Corey asked.
“Well, Dowsers can sense energy under the ground and sources of water. Farmers can sense the health of plants and livestock. Hunters are born with extremely fast reflexes and highly tuned hearing, sight and smell. Warriors have exceptional strength. Lastly, Poets have phenomenal memories. Because magical people will always be persecuted by non-magical people, we keep our gifts a secret. Therefore, we don’t keep written records or histories of the clan. All of that information is memorized by the Poets and passed on orally.”
“And does everyone in the clan have these gifts?”
“Good question,” said Evan, “our gifts are passed to us genetically. When people from different professions have kids, their gifts are often ‘diluted’. A lot of people are born without magical gifts or with weaker powers. Every once in a while someone is born with really powerful magic. Still, no matter how strong a person’s gifts are, they have to be trained to be useful.”
“So do people ever have multiple gifts from different professions?” I thought Corey had a very interesting question.
“Yes, but kids usually exhibit strong abilities from one parent while gifts from the other parent are not as powerful. Either that, or they have no gifts.”
“What about when Healers and Seers get together?” I frowned. What did Corey know that he wasn’t sharing?
“It’s not allowed.” Evan stated this firmly.
“What do you mean? Mom and Dad did it.”
“That’s why your parents eloped and never returned to Cacapon. They broke the most sacred law of the coven. They defied the specific orders of Arianrhod.”
“But why is it forbidden?”
“Let me try to answer that one, Evan,” Fiona said.
“This goes back to the part of the story where our clan made a pact with the King of the Sun and the Queen of the Night at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, Corey. When we settled in Cacapon, Llew chose one Seer from all the Seers in the clan. He named him the Great Seer. He took this person to the sacred meadow and taught him to see the damage done to Earth. The Great Seer promised allegiance to the King of the Sun. He pledged his willingness to sacrifice himself to protect the King of the Sun.”
“Why?”
“Because the King of the Sun controls when the Sun rises over the Earth in the East and when it sets in the West. He controls the amount of daylight so the seasons change and things grow. He creates our atmosphere so only the right amount of the Sun’s radiation reaches us.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Then Arianrhod chose one Healer from the clan. She named this woman the Great Healer. She took her to the sacred temple and taught her how to heal the damage done to the Earth. The Great Healer must be willing to sacrifice herself to protect the Queen of the Night. Arianrhod gave us the rules of our clan. She commands that the Great Healer be devoted only to the craft, the clan and the Moon. The Great Seer must be devoted to the Sight, the clan and the Sun. They will not marry nor have children. Their siblings will propagate their lineage.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that future Healers and Seers will come from the brothers and sisters of the Great Healer and Great Seer. She also mandated that Healers can’t marry Seers.”
“But Mom and Dad got married.” Corey was obviously having as much trouble with this rule as I did. Mom and Dad loved each other so much. They loved us so much. How could all of that love be wrong?
“The Queen of the Night told us children born from Healers and Seers would not be magical,” Fiona continued.
I interrupted this time. “Actually, that’s not exactly what she said.”
Everyone looked at me with surprise. It was time for me to reveal my last secret to my family. I took a deep breath.
“Evan, do you remember the wedding reception we attended last summer?”
He nodded.
“Do you remember how you found me sitting next to Paul Sinclair, the Great Poet of the clan?”
Corey interjected, “What’s a Great Poet?”
“One person from each profession is chosen to sit on the clan’s High Council. It’s like their government,” I informed him.
“Okay, so does that mean that Fiona and Evan are part of the government too?”
“Yup.”
“Wow.”
“What about the time you were sitting next to Paul Sinclair?” Evan was impatiently waiting for an answer.
“Well, I know you and Fi told me to leave it alone, but, well, I asked him to tell me the legend of the Destroyer.”
“You did what?” Fiona was upset.
Rose gasped. I’d forgotten she’d been left out of the discussions about the Destroyer. She’d been in California taking care of Mom. Interestingly, Evan didn’t seem that surprised. Corey was frowning. I forged ahead.
“According to Paul, the story goes like this. The Queen of the Night warned us offspring of Healers and Seers would be devoid of magical gifts, except for one. A male child born to a Healer and a Seer would have powers from both Healers and Seers.”
“All right!” Corey pumped his fist in the air.
I gave him my stern look and he quieted quickly. “Those gifts would be so powerful they would drive the boy insane. In his madness, the child would use his powers to destroy Arianrhod. The oceans would stagnate and the cycle of night and day would end. Life on Earth would be destroyed.”
Rose murmured, “Oh my Goddess…”
Evan looked angry. Corey looked scared. For some reason Fiona looked thoughtful.
Finally, Corey spoke. “Oops. Okay, I take it back. I don’t want superpowers.”
“Don’t you get it?” I asked them. “She was LYING! I’m not devoid of the gifts. I have both Healer and Seer gifts. She was wrong. As for Corey, he’s fine.”