by John Conroe
My contributions to our economic condition mainly came in the form of website administration, cheap dishwashing, odd jobs like painting and gardening, and being solely in charge of gathering wood and feeding the furnaces. Fire was one of my elements, and thus the home fires were my charge. I once argued that I could probably draw enough heat from the earth under us to keep us warm, but my aunt just raised one brow and wondered how bright a beacon that would be to our enemies. Part of me wanted to call them in, wanted to go to war. But I had also heard many stories about the caliber of the witches in our home circle. Mom and Ashling were tops but not enough to beat twelve to eighteen witches who were fifty percent of their strength. How I measured up, I didn’t know, as my aunt would never say when I asked.
“I’ll get to it,” I said, holding up my arm for a circling Draco to land on. On the game course, my Double D stopped all motion, freezing in place. Draco flew over top of him, stretching his claws in a pretense of grabbing him from six feet up. He swooped past the dirt avatar and landed on my arm, stretching his head to sniff my face.
“He’s uncommon real looking,” my aunt commented, watching the little avatar dragon.
“He gets better with every game we play,” I said. “Your spells worked great.”
“Not my spells doing it, lad, as awesome as they are. Something you’ve added on your own is responsible.” She studied him a bit longer, then turned to me. “Now… firewood.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She nodded and then left the barn.
I put Draco back on the ground. He made his awkward-looking yet deceptively fast crawl over to the frozen dirt dude and poked him with a winged forefoot, looking for all the world like a long-necked giant bat. When the avatar failed to move, Draco launched himself from the ground and flapped up to hide among the rafters.
Five minutes later, I was in our woods, looking for likely deadfall, my ax on my shoulder. I found an upright, broken-off maple tree that had died in a storm a few years ago. It was maybe twenty feet tall to the snapped-off part.
I was too young to run a chainsaw on my own but allowed to use an ax. Great. The Estwing was very sharp, the result of a spell I put on it myself. Chopping down the dead tree took a total of twenty-two chops, and it landed on the big pile of rocks that I liked to sit on sometimes. I took a seat to catch my breath, studying the log. I’d have to cut it into thirds in order to drag it back to the barn where the old cross-cut saw that came with the property waited.
Too bad we didn’t have a lawn tractor or ATV to drag the thing back up to my sawhorses. Aunt Ash saw no reason for a tractor when I could mow the lawn part of our property with a push mower, and our neighbor’s goats would clean up the fields several times a year by some arrangement we had. She said hauling wood was good for my character.
“Draco could haul you if he was larger,” I said to the tree trunk. It was only nine or ten inches in diameter, but almost twenty feet long. A wave of something from the forest flowed over me, relaxing and slowing my beating heart. A dragon wasn’t the right shape for hauling wood. A giant dirt dude would be better, I thought as the warm feeling of acceptance I got from this part of our land refreshed me. There were lots of broken dead branches lying around and so, on a whim, I set out the stick figure internal frame of a seven-foot-tall dirt dude, thinking how cool it would be. Then with a sigh, I got to work, chopping the log into thirds, my eyes returning to the wooden skeleton periodically. Hmm. Not today, but perhaps there was a way.
I dragged my logs out, one by one, and got them to the barn. After sawing, I had eighteen rounds of wood that needed splitting. A small pile of dead hardwood was the end result after I sweated my way through the logs. Stacking them inside the barn would come later, as dinner would be soon.
The next day, after school, I went back out to get more, foregoing my Wytchwar practice, as I had another project in mind. I took my ax and a little messenger bag of Craft gear, along with several water bottles.
The framework for my big dirt dude was still there, untouched, and I set about cleaning the bark off the dead sticks with a knife that Levi had given me. My black Sharpie marked well on the clean pale wood, the runes of my spells easier to write on the big sticks than they were to etch into the wood and wire frames of my small game dudes. Rather than cover the frame with dirt by hand, I simply loosened a patch of ground with one of our little hand weeding rakes and then poured some water to make it muddy, mixing in some ferns, leaves, and wild grapevine. Then I cast an Earth spell to move the mud. It didn’t work as well as it should have, probably because of the addition of the water, which is not one of my affinities. But wet ground was still just ground, so a small modification and the mud flowed over the skeleton. Pulling heat energy from the rock pile that had soaked up sun all day, I hardened the mud enough that it wouldn’t fall off. Then I pulled more power from the ground around me and sent it into the giant form. It shook and twitched. I was worried about the next part, sending my awareness into the form. Mom had taught me how with the little dirt dudes of Wytchwar, but pushing myself into a seven-inch-tall form seemed like it should be a lot easier than a giant seven-foot-tall one would be.
I was wrong. It was actually easier, just as writing the runes on the larger wooden bones of the avatar had been. I could feel myself inside the mud and wood body, aware of the ground underneath it. Then I went to move and discovered that moving three hundred pounds of dirt and wood is a lot harder than animating a pound. It took way, way more effort to even make one of the arms move. I had to pause and pull more energy from both the rock pile and the ground under it, as well as the forest around me. I pulled and pulled, slow and careful, hoping my aunt wouldn’t sense what I was doing, hoping that the Rowan tree behind the restaurant would keep my work shielded from any sensitive people nearby.
It was like being inside a big room. A hollow space that needed a lot to fill it up. Luckily power seemed to flow easily, especially from the rock pile that I liked so much. After about ten minutes, I tried sitting up again.
The big dirt dude moved easily this time, lifting its torso smoothly off the ground. Next, I tried standing and found that my grapevine-lashed joints were too stiff and awkward. It was a moment’s work to re-imagine them in a different configuration, one that allowed each joint to move with a full range of motion. In my mind’s eye, instead of being used like rope, I saw them like actual tendons and ligaments, connecting each wooden bone to the other, the vines actually fusing into and becoming part of the wood.
Much better, but still the big avatar was a whole lot clumsier and so much more clunky than my little wire and mud game pieces. On the flip side, it was more powerful—way, way, way more powerful. I easily knocked over a dead tree that had to weigh several hundred pounds, then picked up one end and hauled it to the edge of the woods like it was nothing. I had left my sawhorses set up here, and mega dude was more than capable of lifting the whole ten-inch diameter, fourteen-foot log and gently laying it into place.
It worked! Now I had a way to carry and haul logs that was even better than a tractor, at least in the thick woods. The only problem was getting the wood from the forest across the open yard and into my barn—unseen. Because somehow, I was pretty certain my aunt wouldn’t approve.
Laying the avatar back down, I covered him with some pine tree boughs and then thought about my new tool while I started cutting the log up into stove-length chunks. Even this would be easier with the muddy wood man, but my eagle-eyed aunt was sure to spot him.
I had a wooden log skidder that I had found with the saw, tucked away in the back of the old barn. It was meant to be pulled by a horse or mule across snow or low grass, but boys have been beasts of burden for eons, so with the addition of a rough-built wooden box, it became my vehicle to skid cut wood to the dry storage. I cut the log into thirteen pieces, split them, and stacked half of them on the wooden box, that being my best guess as to what I could pull. Turns out I was a bit generous in my estimation of my own strength. It bar
ely budged. If only the big dirt dude was spelled like Draco, I thought, imagining wood being hauled to the barn and stacked for me while I slept in my bedroom. But wait… Why not? He was totally Earth formed, meaning the spells would be even easier for me than my Air dragon. Like a robot from an old sci-fi movie which I sometimes watched with Levi.
With a plan in place, I loaded the rest of the wood into the box and left the whole thing right where it was. After our habitually early dinner, while my aunt was busy with the regular evening dining crowd, I reactivated the big dude and had him pull the skidder to the barn. It was almost full dark and his brown earth colors went a long way toward hiding him. His strength and reach made stacking the cut wood a matter of mere minutes and then I walked him back to the rock pile and recovered him.
The next day, after school, I skipped Wytchwar again, heading straight to the wood lot. I had thought about little else but my project since the night before and had even drawn up some combinations of runes on scrap paper. With a thought, I peeled the mud from his form, then took my Sharpie to his frame. My aunt called to me once and I had to go to the forest edge and wave to her, showing I was diligently working on my firewood task. She studied me from the corner of the barn for a moment, then waved me back to work.
I manually ran the dude again, pulling a couple of logs to the cutting station, the action giving me even more insight into my spell program. Wood cut and split, I added more runes to his skeleton. Again, I stacked the wood in the skid box and left it.
This time, when dinner was over, I went to my room to do some homework. Aunt Ash nodded approvingly and left for the restaurant dining room. From the window in my little bedroom, I looked at the dark and shadowy forest. Putting my hand on the wood of the window frame, I sent my thoughts down into the ground, down into the forest, and into my creation.
Moments later, I saw the giant stride out of the tree line, picking up the rope and easily pulling the load of wood up and into the barn. From my desk, I could feel its movements, track its actions, follow its progress inside the dark old barn as it stacked the wood. Then I drove my magical worker back down to the woods, putting him to bed on his rock pile.
I added more runes to him the next day, carving some of these into stones that became part of his muddy body, using a small chisel from our odd collection of old tools. The layers of spells now allowed me to set him to certain tasks and let him run them himself, like the simple robots we were building in tech class in middle school.
The rest of the week continued that way, my robot gaining utility daily, now hauling logs, cutting with the big saw, and splitting the rounds with an old maul that I made integral to his right arm.
On Saturday, I got up a little late, ate a bowl of Cheerios, drank some orange juice, and ran outside.
But when I got to the barn to grab my gear, I found my aunt there, staring up at the stacks of firewood. I hadn’t thought about it, getting caught up in the magic of the project, but there was a lot of wood in there.
“How did ye get it stacked so high, lad?” Aunt Ash asked.
I almost lied, caught off guard as I was. Robbie, my wood, stone, and dirt robot, could stack wood nine feet high with ease. Me, not so easy. But lying to my aunt was a fool’s game. Air witches are incredibly tough to fool.
“Magic,” I said. “Instead of Wytchwar. I figured it counts as practice,” I said. “I was so far behind for the winter.”
“Show me, lad,” she said, causing my heart to lurch into my throat. Then she added, “Let me see you levitate the wood.”
I used telekinesis, lifting logs off one pile and onto another. Inside the barn, protected by its wards, my use of power would be muffled, hidden.
“Good control. But let’s not stack it so high. If I noticed, someone else might too. Darci and Levi know we have abilities, but showing them this is too soon, lad.”
“You want then shorter, like the normal four feet?” I asked.
“Make them five, as that would be easy enough for a lad your size,” she said. “Good job, boy. Ye’ve done a man’s work here.”
“I’ll restack them now, Aunt Ash,” I said, pleased with her praise. Inside, part of me squirmed, but I squashed that traitorous self and started moving wood about with TK. Frankly, if I could use TK all the time, I never would have needed Robbie, but that much unwarded power was like a sonic boom mixed with a strobing flash of light. Every sensitive within miles would feel it.
“Maybe we need just a bit more, lad, and I’d say we’re more than ready for even a Vermont winter,” Ash said as I adjusted the piles with my mind, pulling energy from the earth under my feet.
“I’ll get it done today, Aunt Ash,” I promised.
“Easy, lad. I did not intend ye to become an automaton, ye know,” she said. “Ye should get your bike and visit your friend Rory. All work and all that.”
My heart thumped a second time when she said automaton. But she was smiling. I wasn’t sure there was anything wrong about Robbie but even I realized that a seven-foot-tall monster-shaped robot of wood and mud would alarm anyone who saw him. Hmm. Maybe I should disguise him.
“Okay, thanks, Aunt Ash. I’ll ride over and see if he’s around,” I said, already aware that Rory was out with his parents visiting Church Street in Burlington. But I had a sudden errand that needed running.
Forty minutes later, I was pawing through the men’s clothes at the Castlebury Goodwill store. There wasn’t a great deal to choose from, but much of what was hanging on the racks was XXL and XXXL stuff. I was able to get a pair of great baggy canvas pants and an old beat-up Carhartt jacket in faded tan that looked like it would fit my giant. The colors and cut of the clothes were bland enough, common on farms and job sites around our place… but just not usually when the weather was as warm as it currently was.
When I got back to Rowan West, winded from my long bike ride, I found both Darci and Levi’s cars in the lot, along with an unknown Honda Accord. I stored the clothes just inside the empty metal storage container that had been on the property since before I was born. My bike and skateboard were usually stored in it as well. We had been careful to keep people out of the barn where I played Wytchwar ever since a food delivery guy had wandered into it, looking for someone to sign his paperwork, and then asked questions about the model landscape he’d seen. Inside our living quarters, I found my aunt sitting with Darci on the couch across from a man and woman I didn’t know while Levi made coffee in the kitchen.
I entered quietly, but my aunt noticed me instantly even when the ex-soldier and the deputy sheriff didn’t. “Declan, please come meet these nice folks,” she said, something odd in her tone.
I stepped into the family room as the couple turned my way. At first, I had thought them husband and wife but now something, some subtle body language that I couldn’t pinpoint, told me that they were just co-workers or something.
“Here is Monica Flaherty and her associate, Gatik Dhingra, and this one, folks, is me nephew, Declan.”
“Ah, hi,” I ventured. They were both fairly young, at least as adults, maybe in their mid-twenties. She had red hair, freckles, and green eyes, and he had dark brown hair, brown eyes, and light brown skin. They were sitting so it was hard to tell, but I guessed them average in height, both slim of build.
“Hi Declan,” the girl, Monica, greeted me, flashing white teeth as she smiled. Gatik nodded my way but his attention scarcely strayed from my aunt, eyes flicking to me and then back.
“They be researchers, lad, from New Hampshire,” my aunt said.
“We’re from the White Mountain Paranormal Research Society,” Monica said, studying me.
Her partner had looked back at me when Aunt Ash said that they were researchers, so he missed the look of warning that she gave me. Instantly I checked my center, then tamped down my energy levels.
“Are you here for books?” I asked, frowning deliberately and flicking a glance toward Levi.
“No, but your shop has a wonderful selection,”
Monica said. “It was the energy of this place that drew us in. We’ve got a case not far from here, in Saint Albans, but your aunt’s lovely restaurant pulled us in like bees to honey.”
Which meant that one or both of them were sensitives.
“A haunting?” I asked.
“So we’re told.,” the guy, Gatik, said with a frown. “The preliminary reports are intriguing, so we’re joining a local Burlington team to check it out.”
“But imagine how exciting it is to stop for dinner and find you all in such a place,” Monica said, clearly picking up on Rowan West’s energy.
“You’re mediums?” I asked.
“Monica is,” Gatik said. “Quite gifted, at that.”
“Aw thanks, Gat. But I’m definitely feeling outclassed by your lovely aunt here,” she said.
“Now, don’t be that way, lass. I’m no medium. Just a bit sensitive is all,” Aunt Ash said.
“Hah. I’m not buying that,” the young woman said. “My guides are just about genuflecting, when they’re coherent at all.”
“Oh, that’s probably the tree,” I said.
“Tree? I kept seeing a tree the whole drive here, didn’t I?” she turned to her partner, who was looking at me and nodding.
“The restaurant be named for a big rowan tree out back,” Aunt Ash said. “It’s a special one.”
“Oh, can we see it?” Monica asked.
“Sure, I’ll show ye myself,” Ashling said.
“Oh, I don’t want to be a bother. Perhaps Declan could just show us so as not to bother your busy schedule any more than we have?”
“Well, it’s no bother at all and the lad has firewood to clean up down in the forest before the rain comes tonight,” my aunt said, her eyes flashing at me.
“Right, Aunt Ash. I’ve gotta clear up my tools and get the last of the wood up to the barn,” I said. “Excuse me.”
I backed out of the residence and carefully shut the door, then bolted for the woods. Robbie was right where I left him, but he swiveled his head as I approached his pile of covering pine boughs.