“It’s not what you think it is.”
“It’s exactly the same, Gunn. The nightmares, the confusion, the lost time…”
We’re sitting side by side, both staring straight ahead, so close to each other that it would be the easiest thing in the world for me to rest my head against his massive shoulder.
I don’t, obviously.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
He’s quiet for so long that I turn my head to look up at him. “Yeah?”
“I was wrong. About everything. The blackouts have got nothing to do with your mother’s death.”
“Huh?”
He glances briefly at my puzzled face before staring off into the garden again. “What I mean is that they’ve got nothing to do with grief, or depression, or sadness or anything like that. They never did.”
I frown. “What are you talking about?”
“Do you believe in conspiracies?”
The question is so unexpected that I can’t help smiling. “You mean like how the moon landing was faked and the government is hiding aliens in Roswell?”
“Something like that.”
“Sure,” I say dryly. “I mean, obviously climate change is a hoax. And the earth is flat. And, um, Beyoncé is a clone. Oh, and those white lines behind planes are really mind-controlling chemicals.”
He doesn’t even crack a smile. “I’m being serious. Have you ever thought that there might be hidden powers at work in the world, forces that manipulate our lives without us ever knowing about it?”
I give him a puzzled look but he avoids my eyes, staring at Ingrid’s front lawn as if it’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.
Hmm. Gunn is a very controlled person. He hardly ever shows emotion, apart from kindness and consideration, but whenever he’s upset, a small nerve starts jumping in his jaw because of the way he subconsciously grinds his teeth. That nerve is jumping like mad right now, which is why I take a while to think before answering him carefully.
“I guess it does happen, sometimes. Are you talking about things like how the tobacco industry buried the evidence that smoking causes cancer? Or how the big drug companies got so many people hooked on opioids?”
“Yes. That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about.” For the first time he turns his head to look down at me.
Oh boy.
With those deep-blue eyes boring into mine, I’m suddenly acutely aware that we’re sitting far too close to each other. I look down at my hands, praying he won’t notice my blush, but he must realize I’m feeling uncomfortable because he shifts to the right, subtly creating more space between us.
“What if I told you that there’s far more to the world than what you learn at school, or read in books, or see on the news? What if I told you that, for all its strengths, the modern worldview is only one way to look at reality, and that life is far stranger and richer than you ever knew?”
I raise my eyebrows but I don’t say anything. He’ll get to the point eventually.
“Do you realize, for example, that we have no idea what consciousness really is? No, wait—just think about it for a second. Have you ever wondered how—or why—we became aware of our own existence? And given that we’re essentially nothing more than a complex collection of carbon-based molecules, what exactly does this awareness consist of? Was it given to us at birth—like so many religions claim—from a dimension of reality that exists separate from the natural world, and that we return to again after death? Or did it develop organically over untold millennia in a purely mechanical way? Could it be, as mystics have believed throughout the ages, that a dimension of consciousness plays a causal role in a universe that is alive to its own existence? Or is the mind nothing but a collection of neurons that process information in the same way as a complex biological computer, and consciousness merely a meaningless byproduct of such processing?”
In the long silence that follows his bizarre speech, I give him a bewildered little smile. But he’s still avoiding my eyes, almost as if he’s feeling guilty or embarrassed.
“Wow,” I say. “Are you about to ask me if I want the blue pill?”
“Please, Jess. I’m being deadly serious. This is important.”
Ugh. Okay. So, this is really not good: I’ve seen Gunn like this once or twice before. Whenever he has to give me some seriously bad news, he tends to get so long-winded and philosophical and over-intellectual that I usually end up not having a clue what he’s talking about.
I take a deep breath. No sense in postponing the inevitable.
“Gunn? Enough with the conspiracy theories and the philosophical discussions, okay? Just tell me what’s going on. I promise I can take it.”
When he finally turns to me, his eyes on mine are like a scorching blue flame. “I’m not trying to be evasive here.”
“Alright.” I feel that familiar burst of heat spreading from my chest to my neck as my entire body begins to tingle with his nearness. “What are you trying to do?”
“I’m trying to give you some background so you won’t freak out when I tell you what I need to tell you.”
I clear my throat, wrench my eyes away from his too-intense gaze. “And that is…?”
“That magic exists. It has always existed, especially in your family. And I think it’s finally starting to manifest in you.”
A beat of silence.
Then I give a stunned little bark of laughter. “Magic? Like witches and broomsticks and Harry Potter?”
“No,” he says evenly. “Like putting out a fire with your mind. Or freezing the principal mid-speech.”
I stop laughing. Look up into his perfectly beautiful, completely unreadable face.
“You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
“But…” I make a helpless gesture, literally struck dumb.
“I think it’s the word itself that’s the problem,” he says, spreading his hands in a placating gesture. “These days people think ‘magic’ refers to everything that’s not logical, or rational, or scientific. But within a very small, very powerful, and very secretive group of people, the word has an entirely different meaning.”
“Really? And what would that be?”
He ignores my sarcastic tone. “In essence, when we talk about magic, we’re referring to certain very specific powers that allow people with a particular genetic background to effect changes in reality—including both objective matter and subjective perception—merely by the use of will.”
I scoot right over to the other side of the bench. It’s no use; I simply can’t think straight with him sitting so close to me, and this obviously isn’t a joke. Whatever’s going on here, I need to focus.
“Can you say that again please? This time in English?”
“Yes. Of course. Sorry.” He sighs. “Basically, it comes down to the fact that people from certain families have the ability to change the world around them simply by willing it to change.” He flicks a hand through the air, as if waving a wand. “A fire was burning, and because you wanted it to stop, it did.”
“That’s what magic is?”
“For most of us, yes. Although the most powerful can affect the thoughts and actions of other people too.”
“You mean like what I did with the principal?”
“Exactly.”
I think about it for a while. “So, basically, what you call ‘magic’ is the ability to get people and things to do what you want?”
“As far as I’ve been able to determine, yes.” Another sigh. “But you should probably know that there are many other views on this. Some believe magic also affords a fuller understanding of reality— one that makes it possible to see into the past, or the future, or to judge the present in new and astonishing ways. Others believe that magic is nothing less than a way to merge with higher powers that exist on different planes of existence.”
I feel my mouth falling open. “There are different planes of existence?”
“Almost
definitely. But whether any higher powers exist on such planes is still uncertain.”
“Holy crap.”
“It’s a lot to take in, I know.”
“A lot to take in? You’re a scientist, Gunn. How can you sit here so calmly and tell me that you suddenly believe in magic?”
“There’s nothing sudden about it.” He runs a hand through his hair, from front to back, slowly, in a way that makes it impossible for me not to notice the movement of the muscles carved into his powerful arms. “And I don’t ‘believe’ in magic. I know it exists, objectively speaking, because I’ve tested its workings in controlled, double-blind, repeatable experiments, and my results have been one hundred percent conclusive.”
It takes a few seconds for his words to sink in.
“That’s what you’ve been studying?”
“Officially? No. Of course not. Unofficially? Yes. Absolutely.”
I close my eyes, force myself to think this through.
Gunn’s been acting strange and over-protective right from the moment I told him about putting out the fire. And that day he arrived at Eve’s house out of the blue… Could he have known that something had happened? Was that why he came to town in the first place? If he really is studying magic, that means he must’ve known all along that I wasn’t going crazy again. So why didn’t he tell me?
“That conspiracy you were talking about,” I ask, frowning, “is that what you meant? That magic exists—like, really exists, in a measurable way—and that someone is keeping it a secret?”
“Not someone. An immensely powerful secret organization called the Order of Keepers, who’ve been hiding the truth about their members’ abilities for thousands of years.”
“Thousands of years.” I raise both my eyebrows, my voice flat.
“Yes.” He ignores my skepticism. “Nobody is exactly sure how old the Order is, but it is without a doubt the oldest human organization in the world. To give you an idea, its founding documents were written in Sumerian cuneiform almost a thousand years before the Egyptian pyramids were built, but it’s widely accepted that the information contained in those documents comes from a civilization that predates even mythical antiquity.”
His words cause an uncomfortable tightening in my chest. I take a deep breath, blow it out slowly.
“Um, Gunn? I’m having some trouble absorbing all this, okay? Could we maybe just stick to my magic for now, and leave Sumerian pyramids and ancient mythical civilizations aside for a while?”
He nods, his face grim. Gunn has beautifully carved lips, but when he’s stressed he tends to pull them into a thin line, so that his mouth looks hard, almost cruel.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “There’s just so much you don’t know; it’s difficult to know what to tell you and what to leave out.”
I drag my eyes away from his lips. (Honestly—sometimes I don’t know what is wrong with me.) Instead I look at the dappled blue-and-green shadows on Ingrid’s front lawn while I try to make sense of what he’s told me.
“Right,” I say after a while. “What you’re basically saying is that I’m not losing my mind. The thing with the fire really happened. And the thing with the principal too.”
“Yes.”
“And the blackouts? That’s also linked to the… um, magic?”
“Yes.” A short pause. “Not directly, but yes. It’s all connected.”
“So what happens now?”
“We need to start your training right away.”
I give him a wan little smile. “You’re about to send me off to a magical academy on a secret island, aren’t you?”
He doesn’t return my smile. “No. You misunderstand. You don’t need to learn how to do magic—quite clearly, you’re pretty adept at that already. What you need to learn is how to hide it.”
“And am I going to learn how to do that in an ancient castle filled with ghosts and ghouls and ancient curses?”
“This isn’t a joke, Jess. Magic leaves a trail, which means that the Order of Keepers will probably be paying you a visit soon. And if we can’t convince them that you’re basically harmless—weak, powerless, completely unthreatening—we’re going to be facing a huge problem.”
I raise my shoulders. “Why would some creepy bunch of secret-society weirdos even care what I do?”
“Because they’re not weirdos. Not in the sense you mean.” That muscle in his jaw starts jumping again. “Just because they belong to a secret society, it doesn’t mean they’re a group of old men with silly handshakes and nonsense rituals, okay? The Order of Keepers may consist of fewer than a thousand members, but those members are some of the richest and most powerful men and women in the world.”
He shakes his head at my dubious expression. “Think about it. Can you imagine the immense advantage the use of magic has always given them? People who can control the weather and crops, who can raise minerals from the belly of the earth, or travel safely across the seas, or change people’s thoughts and feelings merely by the force of their will… Throughout history, these were the people who grew ever richer and more powerful, even in times when those around them starved.”
A bitter expression flashes across his face.
“For thousands of years, the Order of Keepers have worked behind the scenes: toppling empires and creating civilizations, crowning kings and burning witches, inventing new religions and destroying old ones. And yet, apart from a few rumors and legends, there’s not as much as a mention of the Order’s existence in any history book you will ever read. Can you imagine the power these people wield? Can you imagine how tightly controlled their ranks are, and how ruthlessly they will act against anyone who threatens them?”
For the second time today, his words cause an uncomfortable tightness in my chest. Suddenly the world feels terribly big and terribly old, and my own life pathetically small.
“But why would my magic be any kind of threat to them?” I ask, genuinely confused.
He gives me that grim look again. “Your kind of magic has always been a threat to the stability of the Order, and in the past they’ve gone to… extreme lengths to control or neutralize the power of… girls like you. So far, Ingrid and I have managed to convince them that you’re completely powerless, but if you don’t learn to hide your power, and soon, we might be in real trouble.”
“Ingrid knows about this?”
“Yes.” He clears his throat. “But I’d prefer it if you didn’t mention this to her. She’s in a weird space right now.”
I’m about to ask what he means when I realize something I should have grasped right from the start. The thought is so disturbing that my mouth immediately goes dry, and I have to swallow hard before I can speak.
“You said it’s the magic of my family, right? So what about my mom? Did she know about it?”
He nods, his eyes guarded.
It’s as if a cool, heavy stone drops into my stomach.
“Why didn’t she ever tell me?”
“If there had been time, I’m sure she would have, eventually.”
But he doesn’t meet my eyes.
For the next hour or so Gunn keeps talking, telling me about techniques to hide my magic, and how we’ll have to train every day, and how there are all these different kinds of magic and bloodlines and secret clans and heaven knows what else.
I nod and agree with everything, but I’m not really listening anymore.
Instead I’m thinking about that time after we arrived here, when my mom was too sick to leave her bed and I sat next to her every afternoon after school, holding her hand and watching her getting weaker and weaker. She would talk to me, sometimes, reminiscing about our time in Australia and Chile and Namibia, reminding me of happier times and making weak jokes until I couldn’t help but crack a reluctant smile.
We spent a lot of time together in that sad, dark, endless year when we both knew she was dying. A lot of time.
More than enough for her to tell me something as important as this.
&nbs
p; I stare at the long shadows cast by the setting sun, not sure what to feel.
My mother was the person I trusted most in the world. She loved me fiercely and completely, and she knew me better than anyone else ever will. So why would she have kept such a big secret from me?
It just doesn’t make any sense.
Chapter 9
Some of you have asked why I never mention the name of my town in this blog. Let me put it this way: my neighbors can read (barely!) and they all have guns.
Question answered.
There’s nothing special about this sh*thole anyway. Basically, we’ve got:
- 19 (mostly Baptist) churches
- 3 stoplights (1 of which never works in winter)
- 2 incredibly sad little malls, and
- 1 factory (that pollutes so badly they had to fence in the f*cking lake!)
You want to know what state I live in? Just google ‘most boring state’ and I guarantee it’ll be one of the top 5. Basically, we’re known for cows and corn and a couple of Springsteen songs, but that’s all I’m giving away for now. (Those guns, remember.)
But enough about that. My topic for today is actually the seriously f*cked-up set-up we have at our school.
As you might expect, the popular group over here basically consists of the pretty and the athletic: an unholy alliance of jocks and cheerleaders, mean girls and rich boys. Because this is the heartland, however, nothing about this is subtle in any way. The boys at the top of this idiotic social ladder call themselves the ‘Alphas,’ the girls call themselves the ‘Elite,’ and the whole thing could even have been funny (in a this-is-so-lame-it’s-actually-great kind of way) if it wasn’t for the real suffering these *ssholes cause their victims (the overweight, the awkward, the freaks, the geeks, the gay kids, the intellectuals,(the feminists!)) on a daily basis.
Extract from Feminist in a Flyover State blog
It’s almost a week later: Friday, lunch time.
Ordinary Girl (The Dark Dragon Chronicles Book 1) Page 8