Discovery

by E A Foley

  “Oh, uh, let me see if I can explain it. So, there’s this power that runs through everything on Earth. I can connect with that power and then make requests of things. I call it magic because that’s what we’ve been trained to refer to it as, but it feels, well, natural. Like this is the way it’s supposed to be. Harmonious, you know?” The blank stares told her they didn’t know. “Would it be safe to assume neither of you have successfully completed anything magical yet?”

  “Yup. Safe assumption,” Cirrus agreed.

  “Then do you guys want a lesson? I think I understand it enough to teach it.”

  “Yes!” They said in unison.

  A knot formed in Iris’s stomach. She took a deep breath in order to calm her nerves and opened herself to the flows of power embedded in the Earth. It relaxed her enough to get started.

  “Can you guys feel out the stores of power beneath the Earth?”

  They both nodded.

  “Good. And can you draw it into your being every time you try? No? Let’s start there. Why don’t you both feel out the power . . . Perfect!”

  Iris wasn’t sure how, but she could tell they were both primed and ready to draw power into their beings. “You have to accept the power surrounding you into every inch of your body. There’s a limit to how much you can draw in, and you don’t really need more than the request you’re going to make requires.”

  “Why not?” Cirrus asked.

  “You could destroy yourself if you draw in too much, and it’s really tempting to, so it’s best to limit the amount of power you draw in to what you need.”

  “Good to know.”

  “Very,” Violet agreed.

  “Yes. Anyway, once you’ve drawn the power into your being, you think about what you want to happen. For example, I’m going to ask that picture frame to come to me.” As she spoke the words, Iris released her request and the picture frame obliged. “I still have a little power left, but not enough to send the frame back. I can either release it back to the Earth or ask this pen to do a few turns.”

  “What happens if you tell the object to move or whatever?” Violet asked.

  “It could decide to resist you and do something you don’t want, or even resist until it gets destroyed.”

  “Yup, sounds familiar,” Cirrus said.

  “You guys wanna try?”

  “Hell yeah!”

  Iris walked both of them through pulling power into themselves and releasing it several times. “You guys seem like you have that down, so why don’t you try making requests. I’ll guide you through it and let you know if something feels wrong. Try starting with moving something small, like a pen,” Iris suggested. She closed her eyes and focused on what her friends were doing. It started out great. They both drew power into their beings with little difficulty.

  Iris focused on Violet for a few seconds. She could almost hear her friend’s request being formed for a pencil to stand on end. A few seconds later, power was released and the pencil did as requested. Iris switched her focus to Cirrus. Something felt different in the way he funneled his power into his request. Iris analyzed it for a few moments. At first, she thought it was because Cirrus was a guy and something was different between the way men and women used the power. Then she realized it was because he wasn’t requesting the book in his hand to levitate, he was telling it to.

  “Cirrus . . . ”

  He didn’t budge.

  “Cirrus . . . ”

  Still nothing.

  “Cirrus, stop!” Iris demanded.

  “What is . . . ow! Shit!” He swore as the book slammed into his face.

  “Oof, sorry, Cirrus!” Iris cringed. “Remember, you have to request, not tell. Sorry,” she apologized again.

  Violet laughed outright.

  “Thanks, babe. That really, really hurt. Is my nose broken?”

  “No. It’s not even bleeding. But that was pretty funny. I mean one second you were sitting there and Iris was trying to get your attention and the next, wham! Right in kisser or whatever. That reminds me of that time when you—"

  “How about we keep that incident between the two of us, okay sweetheart?”

  Violet blinked. She looked at Iris as though she’d forgotten her best friend was there. “Right,” she murmured to the comforter she was sitting on.

  “Wanna try again?” Iris inquired.

  “Yeah. Maybe with something smaller. What did you say I was doing wrong again?”

  “You were telling rather than requesting. You can’t say ‘rise up’ or ‘hover.’ You have to request it. Try ‘will you please be lighter than the air surrounding you,’ or something along those lines.”

  “Wanna use my pencil?”

  “Yeah, thanks.” Cirrus took the pencil Violet handed him, closed his eyes, and focused on his request.

  “Better. Now, try releasing the power you’re holding into the request you’ve formed.”

  Iris and Violet watched as the pencil lifted a few inches off the comforter and hovered in the air. Violet squeezed Cirrus’s hand. He opened his eyes to see what he’d managed and the pencil promptly dropped to the bed.

  “Well, that’s the first time I’ve been able to do anything, so it’s a start, right?” Cirrus grinned at the two girls.

  “Definitely!” Iris grinned back. “What time is it, by the way?” Iris asked and turned around to look at the clock behind her. “Ten to two, all right, what do you what to try next?”

  Iris spent the next two hours teaching Cirrus and Violet how to draw in and release power consistently every time. She stuck to movement tasks the same way her Little Self had insisted with her. By the end of two hours, Violet had mastered most of what Iris taught her while Cirrus was still struggling with the basics. On a whim, he attempted to lift the bed he and Violet were sitting on and managed it with little effort.

  “How is it that I can move the whole damn bed, but I can’t get this picture frame back on my desk?” He asked in frustration as Iris grabbed her stuff to leave.

  “Well, maybe you learn differently. Maybe you have to do the bigger things first and work on the smaller things later. You know, become more detail oriented and stop focusing on strength?” Iris shrugged.

  “Yeah, maybe.” Cirrus was obviously not convinced. “So, when can we all do this again?”

  “I have no real afternoon commitments besides homework, so whenever is fine with me. Can we keep coming here, Cirrus?” Iris asked.

  “Sure. I think I’d like to take a day and try a few things out on my own, so do you want to come over Friday after school?”

  “That should work for me. There’s one thing you both need to promise me. That you will not try anything magical when you’re around anyone else. Not even if you’re at home with the door closed. I almost didn’t hear my mom knock on my door one day . . . it could have been catastrophic.”

  “Promise,” Violet assured her quickly.

  “What about you at school today?”

  “That was a mistake. I shouldn’t’ve done that, but I didn’t think you’d listen if I told you you could do magic without showing you. Then you guys seemed so desperate. You made me break that rule twice in one day. I won’t do it again and I can’t keep teaching you if you don’t promise. Please, Cirrus.”

  “Yeah, all right. I promise I won’t try anything around other people. It would probably end poorly anyway.”

  “Thanks, guys. I’ve been trying to keep this a secret for so long I thought I was going to explode. Now I have friends I can talk to. Yay! Anyway, see you guys tomorrow,” Iris waved. If she hurried, she would be able to get a little bit of practice in on larger objects before her parents got home. Watching Cirrus successfully lift his bed made her realize she had a lot more potential than she’d imagined.

  Chapter 13

  Iris thought about the ease with which Cirrus lifted his bed and compared it to her own attempts to lift heavy objects. While she was tentative and hopeful, he’d basically had an it’s-worth-a-shot
attitude. It wasn’t quite confidence, but it made Iris realize that her lack of any self-confidence probably had a large, negative impact on her ability to perform tasks. She decided there was no time like the present and was determined to lift the couch when she got home.

  She walked in the door and immediately opened herself to the flows of power surrounding her, formed a request and was sidetracked by the engine noise coming down the street. She pushed it out of her mind, drew in more power and requested the couch lift off the ground.

  A car door opened in the driveway.

  She only had a few seconds to get this one down, but her concentration was broken for the second time. Iris took a breath. She pulled more power into her being. Expelled the air in her lungs. Formed her request and released it in quick succession.

  The couch wobbled with Iris’s initial request. She increased her desire for the couch to rise up. Adjusted the flow of power she directed at it.

  A car door closed. The automatic beep of it locking followed. Faint footsteps drifted toward her.

  She knew she should just leave it for another time, but something compelled her to continue. Like if she didn’t manage the task now, she’d form her own block to it. “Please? I would be ever so grateful if you would lift a few feet off the ground. I know you can,” she begged the couch as she funneled more power toward it.

  To her surprise, the couch rose up.

  The jingle of keys outside the front door brought Iris back to her senses. She asked the couch to return to the ground. It complied faster than she’d wanted and landed with a soft thud. The key turning in the lock paused for a moment. Iris rushed to her room. She closed her door just as the front door opened.

  “Iris?” her mom called.

  “Yeah? I’m doing homework,” she lied as she pulled books and paper out of her backpack to strew across her desk.

  “Did you hear a thud a moment ago?” her mom asked as she opened Iris’s door.

  “Uh, no. Maybe it was from a neighbor’s?”

  “Probably. Got a lot of homework this week?”

  “As usual,” Iris grimaced.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to it, then.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  Iris slumped in on herself once the door was closed. All she wanted was a nap. The afternoon’s activities had drained her more than usual. Her homework, combined with a mother who was guaranteed to check on her from time to time, forced her hand. She pulled a random textbook toward her and got started. A thirty-minute break for dinner was all Iris took. She didn’t climb into bed until well past eleven and still had a third of her homework to go.

  Thursday dragged by at school. Cirrus and Violet were cheerful once more, which brought a huge smile to Iris’s face. When she got home, she managed to move the couch up and back into place smoothly three times. Finally, Iris conceded it was time to finish her homework. Her workload was frustrating, but this would allow her to leave Friday afternoon free to practice magic with Cirrus and Violet as long as they wanted. She decided it was a good compromise.

  Friday’s classes moved by at a glacial pace. She wondered about the time paradox that always seemed to occur when someone was looking forward to something. She felt it was the universe’s way of playing a practical joke on people. No matter what it was, Iris was thrilled to see Violet waiting for her at the track entrance so they could all head to Cirrus’s together.

  “So, Iris, what are we learning today? Anything new and exciting, or just more practice and repetition?” Cirrus asked the second they’d all closed their doors to his car.

  “More of the latter. You’re not quite ready for anything new to start with, but I hope to show you something new before we finish. Remind me if I haven’t by quarter after four or so.”

  “Will do. And I guess it’s probably a good idea to stick to practicing what we’ve been working on. I mean, I still don’t have the hang of moving small objects. I managed to rearrange my entire room before my parents got home last night, but I couldn’t move that damn picture frame more than a few inches before dropping it.” He vented his frustration by laying on his horn in an attempt to get the idiot in front of him to go.

  “Perhaps if you show me what you’re doing I’ll be able to figure out some way to help you out. I can’t make any promises, but I’ll try.”

  “I’m sure you’ll figure it out, Iris,” Violet assured her.

  Iris shrugged.

  “All right, let me see it from the top again, Cirrus,” Iris instructed once they were secluded in his room. She closed her eyes in order to better feel out the nuances of his abilities. It only took her a few seconds to determine where he needed help. “So, it’s a great beginning . . .”

  “I sense a ‘but’ in that statement. Iris, you’re teaching me. You’re not going to hurt my feelings if you critique what I’m doing. I swear.”

  Iris’s eyes twinged and heat filled her cheeks. “Okay,” she more whispered than said.

  “So, what am I doing wrong?”

  “You’re releasing all of your power into your request in one burst rather than throughout the entire request.”

  “Basically, you’re saying that I’m funneling all of my power into the first few seconds and there’s nothing left to get the frame more than a few feet away from me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well that should be an easy fix. Any pointers on how to practice that one?”

  “Try getting a pen to spin in circles for progressively more time each time you make a request.”

  “What about me?” Violet asked, pulling Iris’s attention away from Cirrus and his now tap dancing pen.

  “What about you?”

  “I can’t lift anything heavier than that desk chair. Or perhaps it’s larger. I’m not really sure if it’s a weight or size thing yet. Maybe I should figure that one out first.”

  “Show me what you can do.”

  Violet nodded. She pulled in power and released her request three times. She stalled out at the same point during each of her attempts.

  “Ah, I see it now. You’re drawing in the same amount of power each time rather than adjusting to compensate for different requests. In essence, you don’t have enough power within your being to complete the request. Kind of the opposite of Cirrus, actually. Try filling with power. Good. Now, take in more. Almost like gulping in more air during a breathing exercise. Yeah, perfect! Do it again. And again.”

  “I think I’m gonna explode.”

  “Then form a request and release—No! Slowly!” Iris yelled too late.

  Violet had already released everything she was holding in a torrent directed at the bed—which Cirrus happened to be sitting on. Cirrus dove to the floor just in time. The bed shot straight up in the air, expended all magical support and slammed back down.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Violet said to Cirrus as she rushed to his side.

  “It’s all right, babe. No harm done. I’m fine, the bed’s fine, and Iris isn’t curled up in a ball. All in all, I’d say great first try. Perhaps pick something else next time. Preferably something no one is sitting on.”

  “Yeah, that would probably have been a better idea in the first place. Sorry,” she said again. She glanced at the floor and looked back up at Cirrus through her eyelashes, chin still tilted downward with an embarrassed smile parting her lips.

  Cirrus couldn’t resist her smile. He crossed the room and gave Violet a bear hug followed by a kiss on the top of her still hanging head.

  “Neither of these compare to my initial mistakes.”

  “Really, what happened?”

  “I tried to send all the power I was holding back into the Earth in one go. Without a request. According to my Little Self, I could have died.” Iris’s statement was met with silence. Her eyes burned. She swallowed and attempted to school her emotions before her eyes could shift too far toward amber. She decided to change the subject. “Since no one was hurt, the only other thing to be concerned about would be if
someone were to come home and hear a large object like the bed thud back to the ground. We’d have a hard time explaining it away. But we have nothing to worry about, right Cirrus?”

  “Actually, my brother comes home on occasion for our dance competitions. In fact, I think he was supposed to be here tonight. We have a competition this weekend.” He checked his phone’s calendar. “Yup. Thank god for LA traffic, right?”

  “Dance competition?”

  “Yeah. Ballroom. Latin, mostly. My mom got us into it when we were young. We rarely compete now because of school and such, but this is kind of a big one for our dance studio, so we always go.”

  “We’d better get back to practicing if we want to get a good amount in before he comes home,” Violet said. “He wouldn’t freak out on us, right?”

  “Naw. He wouldn’t freak out. But I’d rather not tell anyone about this yet. I mean, I don’t want to end up in someone’s lab or sedated and chained to a wall for my supposed own protection or anything like that. If I’ve learned anything from sci-fi movies, it’s that no one truly likes change or what they can’t understand.”

  Iris agreed but didn’t want to think about the thousands of possibilities that could happen if one of them was discovered. Instead, she encouraged the continuation of practicing the skills they’d already worked on. After another quarter hour, Iris introduced Violet and Cirrus to turning on and off light switches, opening cabinet doors, and more. Once she felt they had a good handle on all the movement items, she decided it was time to explain the Gallery of Doors to them.

  “I have one more thing I want to cover today. So, you know how I talked about my Little Self? Well, she lives in this room in the back of my mind. You guys have one too. And all the rooms are connected through this larger room I refer to as the Gallery of Doors.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, there are a lot of doors and they’re intricately carved and look like they should be in an art gallery, so, yeah. . . . What was I saying?” Iris asked. Somehow she was even more full of nerves now than she’d been on day one of teaching.

  “Doors in the back of our minds?” Cirrus supplied.