Magic, Madness, and Mischief

by Kelly McCullough

  “Hey, kid, I think you dropped a variable.”

  Startled, I turned to look at the hare. “What?”

  Sparx rolled his eyes. “I’m beginning to think you have plugged-up ears or something. I said I think you dropped a variable on that problem you’re working.”

  “Wait, you can do algebra?”

  “Sure, a little. I’m actually better with calculus.”

  “You’re a rabbit.”

  “Fire hare, if you please.”

  “Whatever. Either way, you’re a bunny. Since when do you know math?”

  “I learned a lot of algebra from this Arabic fellow who summoned me back in … well, let’s leave that aside for now—it says too much about my age. The key thing was, he was super hot on the subject, said one of his many-times-great-grandfathers invented the stuff. The calculus came later, of course, but it made more sense to me.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation.”

  Sparx snorted. “Well, you wouldn’t be if you were doing the problem right.”

  That’s when my mom pushed my door open and stuck her head into the room. “Honey, who are you talking to?”

  “Uh … deh … dur … that is, I…” I couldn’t for the life of me think of what to say, and Sparx simply froze.

  Mom looked from me to my desk to the shelf where Sparx was perched and back again. “Well, dear, I’m waiting.”

  “Uh, Mom, this is … Sparx. He’s a rabbit—”

  “Fire hare, and it’s nice to meet you, ma’am.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine, hare, then. He’s … um … he’s helping me with my algebra.”

  “Oh, excellent! Thank you, Sparx, it’s lovely to meet you as well.” She turned her gaze back to me. “I know you’ve been having a lot of trouble with it, and all that happens when Oscar tries to help is that you both go around slamming doors for days afterward. Speaking of which, we’d better not tell him about this; he’s dead against pets of any sort.”

  “Pets!” barked Sparx.

  My mom shrugged. “Pets, companion animals, familiars, whatever. He doesn’t like any of it.”

  “You’re not concerned that I’m hallucinating?” I asked rather distractedly.

  “Of course not. I’d never have gotten through my twelfth-grade composition class if I hadn’t met that very helpful hedgehog.” She smiled vaguely then and ducked back out of my room, closing the door behind her.

  Sparx leaned back and rubbed his chin with his paw. “A hedgehog? Really? They’re usually awful with grammar, to say nothing of the fact they’re rarely aligned with fire.”

  “I … Wait, grammar … what?”

  “Grammar. Very important for composition. What are they teaching you at that hippie school?”

  “I know what grammar is. It’s just, hedgehogs? And what did you mean about them not aligning with fire? What does that have to do with my mother?”

  The hare sniffed loudly. “You don’t actually listen to anything anyone says, do you? Do you remember all the times I’ve called you a child of fire?” I nodded and Sparx pointed after my mother. “Child, the fire that bore you just walked out that door, and she burns very bright indeed.”

  “But she’s crazy!” The words just burst out of me, though I’d never dared to say them to anyone before, and I quickly slapped my hands over my mouth as though that would unsay the awful truth.

  But Sparx merely nodded as if that were the most ordinary thing in the world. “Some the fire within illuminates. Some it consumes.”

  5

  Rabbit, Aim, Fire!

  I FELT LIKE someone had kicked me in the chest. “Wait, are you saying that this fire you claim I have within me might drive me crazy?”

  Sparx shrugged. “I don’t see any signs of that, and it’s not likely at this point, but it’s certainly possible.”

  “That’s not very reassuring.”

  “No worries, then. I’m not here to reassure you. I don’t even like you all that much.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” The fear burned higher than it had in a long time.

  “You’re starting to own your power and to find outlets for it. That’s certainly a step in the right direction on the magic side. On the brain side, you’re mostly on your own. That’s more a matter of biology and chemistry and luck than it is anything you can control—pretty much like all the other ailments your kind are subject to.”

  Before I could ask any more questions, my mother called from the kitchen, “Kalvan, dinner!”

  Our house was a duplex that Oscar had converted into a single-family home before he even met my mom, so the dining room was right outside my door, but we almost always ate in the family kitchen beyond. There was a second kitchen upstairs, where my mom and Oscar had converted about half the floor into a master suite, but that kitchen only got used during the holiday baking season, when my mom would stay up half the night making cookies in both ovens. Even though Mom knew about Sparx now, I told him to wait in my room. We still didn’t know who could or couldn’t see him, and I really didn’t want Oscar to know about him.

  Mom was just dishing out some casserole as I came through the door. “Kalvan, could you take this down to your stepfather? There was some screwup at work he needs to sort out before tomorrow, so he can’t eat with us tonight.”

  Oh drat, I sooo hate that, I didn’t say. Instead I went with “Sure, Mom,” even though I loathed going down there.

  The basement door was closed, as usual, though it was unlocked this time. Beyond the thick oak door, a huge iron spiral staircase spun itself down into the depths. The basement was much older than the house—the last remnant of a brewery that had stood on the site sometime in the late eighteen hundreds. At the bottom of the double-length staircase I stepped out into a huge barrel-vaulted room walled and roofed with rough limestone block. According to Oscar, this was where they’d stored the beer casks while waiting to ship them off to local bars.

  It was only then that I thought to wonder if I was getting far enough away from Sparx that it would be a problem. Too late to do anything about it now. The basement had a ten-foot ceiling at the center and no walls to speak of, but it always felt claustrophobic and dead to me. Maybe because it was so much deeper than a normal basement, with the ceiling a full six feet below the earth outside—they’d dug it that way to help maintain a constant temperature in winter and summer—and that made it super quiet and still. Or maybe it was the lack of windows.

  Whatever the reason, it gave me the creeps, and none of Oscar’s modern touches helped. Two thick tracks bristling with high-intensity LED spotlights ran the length of the ceiling about ten feet apart, and the floor was red concrete molded to look like tile, with built-in heat—Oscar liked things much warmer than the beer had. He’d also sealed the limestone with some sort of clear plastic finish that made it look and feel slick and slippery.

  I spotted Oscar halfway down the length of the basement, working on the third largest of the enormous tables he used for three-dimensional models of highway projects. The biggest, which took up a quarter of the whole basement in the exact middle of the space, held a topographic map of downtown Saint Paul and Spaghetti Junction, and had for as long as I could remember. Directly above it, the hatch where they used to haul the kegs out had been replaced with rough oak planks.

  Either Oscar didn’t see me or he ignored me as I approached with his dinner, but when I got within a few feet, he said, “Put it on the desk.” I did, then started to turn away.

  That’s when he finally looked up. His usually grim expression was about two notches harsher than normal, but he made an effort to smile and said, “Thank you, Kalvan.”

  “You’re welcome, Oscar.” I never called him Dad—I couldn’t even imagine doing that. Silence fell between us, and I almost turned away, but then, in one of my periodic and mostly desperate efforts to find some common ground, I jerked my chin at the table where he’d been working. “Problems?” I didn’t like Os
car, but he was good for my mom, and that meant a lot. If getting along with him gave my mom more of whatever she needed, I owed it to her to try.

  Oscar raised one eyebrow slightly and his face soured, but then he took a deep breath and his brow smoothed. “Yeah, big one. We’re softening a curve on an old county road out in the southern burbs, which means tearing out a big chunk of hillside. It’s mostly sandstone and easy to crack, but my backhoe broke through into a cave this morning and there was a skeleton in there, along with some artifacts that look Native American.”

  “Cool!” I knew as soon as I spoke that it was the wrong thing to say, but it was already too late.

  Oscar’s face closed up as hard and fast as any trap. “No, Kalvan, it’s not cool. It’s six kinds of government regulations and three weeks of site assessments and other crap that’s going to put this project seriously behind schedule. It’s also a giant headache for me.”

  He turned and went back to poking at the model on the table without another word, and I knew we were done. I had about a minute to clear the area before things would go from silent to ugly, so I started for the stairs.

  On the way, I passed the large model of downtown. As usual, I took a moment to pick out the state capitol and my nearby school. That was always kind of neat. Only this time it wasn’t. When my eyes touched the capitol, I found myself looking down at the base of the miniature and remembering the tunnels beneath, as I felt an echo of that terrible sense of presence I’d encountered there. Creepy enough by itself, but infinitely compounded by the feeling that while I was looking into the model, it was, in turn, looking outward … looking for me.

  In the face of that searching presence I froze completely, unable to move or look away or even release the scream I could feel building in my chest. I don’t know how long I stood there before I felt a hand come down on my shoulder and spin me around. Suddenly, I was looking up into Oscar’s eyes, dark and cold and, in that moment, utterly inhuman. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out, as the scream I’d expected fell dead beside my suddenly hammering heart. He reminded me once again of the stone monster I’d seen in him the other morning, looking more like a statue pretending to be a man than anything human.

  “Kalvan, I need you to go back upstairs now and let me complete my work in peace.” It wasn’t Oscar’s usual angry tone, which always felt raw and red to me. This was quieter, darker, and infinitely more menacing.

  It was that same commanding tone he had used on me earlier, and I found that my legs were marching me toward the stairs almost independently of my will. That scared me even more, and I suddenly felt a wild itching heat in the skin of my shins and calves, like someone had rubbed me with nettles. But as soon as I reached the back hall it faded and I bolted for my room.

  If I hadn’t had to pass through the kitchen on the way, I’d have forgotten dinner entirely. As it was, I mumbled my way through some generic phrases about school when Mom asked me how my day had gone and then subsided into a quiet series of ums and uh-huhs while she told me about her latest project, getting some nonprofit’s books ready for an annual audit. I was only too happy when it was over and I could numbly retreat to my room.

  * * *

  “Dave, meet Sparx. Sparx, Dave. Dave is my best friend, and Sparx is a fire hare.” For perhaps the dozenth time I tried to make that sound normal as I rehearsed and re-rehearsed the introduction, but every time it just came out sounding crazier and crazier.

  “Relax.” Sparx was lying under one of the low bushes that surrounded the dell on the hillside above school. “I got a good look at him in your advisory group thingy this morning. No magic to speak of. He probably won’t even be able to see me.”

  “Oh, that helps.” I banged my forehead against a small tree. It was first period and just imagining having to deal with Sparx through another school day had already driven me off the grounds. Between the problems I usually had focusing in class and knowing there was a magical hare in my bag, I could practically feel my brain trying to eat itself with worries. “Dave’s the guy who’s supposed to act as a sanity check and tell me if you’re a hallucination. If he can’t see you…” I wanted to punch something.

  Twenty-four-hours had passed since I … what? I hadn’t actually summoned the hare, no matter what he said about it. Summoning would have implied that I wanted a sarcastic critic who was magically attached to me like some kind of ball and chain. Maybe I ought to start calling him The Curse of the Bunny. No, that just made me think of those Egyptian mummy cats, and Sparx covered in flaming bandages was way too much.

  I glared at the hare. “You are a SERIOUS problem for me.”

  “Who summoned whom here?”

  “No one summoned anybody!” I leaped to my feet. “I’m not a boy wizard, okay?! I’m just an ordinary kid with an overactive imagination.”

  “You’re not going back to pretending I’m a hallucination, are you? Because that got old really fast.”

  “No.” I kicked the dirt. “But I can’t even begin to figure out how to deal with you, and the idea that I’m some kind of child of fire is…” I waved my arms in the air. “It’s ridiculous.”

  Sparx shrugged. “A little bit, yes. But it’s also what you are. A budding power of fire, that is.”

  “I am not!”

  “Are too.”

  “Not!”

  “Really, you are.”

  “Then why can’t I wave my hands and shoot fireballs? Or breathe flames like a dragon?” I demanded.

  “Have you ever tried to breathe flames? Because that fire-powered tongue of yours suggests to me that you probably could.”

  “What?” I found my heart burning in my chest with a terrible anger at all the stuff that was happening to me, all the things that I couldn’t control because of my mother, or Oscar, or simply being thirteen and under everybody else’s thumb. “Just open my mouth and blow fire all over? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

  Sparx rolled his eyes. “No, I think that would be an incredibly stupid thing to do. That’s a power of rage and nearly impossible to control.”

  “It’s not even a thing!” I was getting angrier and angrier. “You’re just making crap up to sound all smart and stuff!”

  “No, I’m not. I’m trying to keep you from doing something dumb.”

  “It’s not even possible. SEE!” I took a deep breath and blew all my rage out in one long exhalation.

  And, in complete defiance of my expectations, jets of flame roared out of my mouth, all red and gold and blue and green. The bush Sparx was resting under exploded into fire, like the world’s biggest struck match.

  Oh. Crap.

  Before I could even begin to think about what to do and in defiance of the nonexistent wind, the flames leaped to other bushes and trees, moving more like some raging beast than any fire I’d ever seen. In seconds, the whole top of the hill was burning, though the heat and smoke hardly seemed to bother me.

  Sparx leaped clear of the flames. “Idiot boy!”

  “How do we fix it?” I whispered.

  “We can’t.”

  “What?!? But there are all kinds of buildings around, and…” I felt a sort of sick horror at what I had done and the beginnings of fear as the flames began to surround me.

  “You released the fires within unfettered by anything but rage and petulance. They cannot be called back or unmade by any power of our element.”

  “What can we do?”

  “We? Nothing. You? Contain them, perhaps. Constrain them until they burn themselves out or your firemen bring the power of water to bear on the problem. Is that what you wish?”

  I nodded even as I heard the sound of sirens in the distance. This was my mistake. I had to fix it. “Tell me what to do.”

  “To control your magic, first you must learn to control your heart.”

  I felt another pulse of anger at that. What I needed was practical advice I could apply right now, not Yoda-esque claptrap. But in that same instant, the flames grew suddenly bigge
r and brighter. “Did I do that?”

  “Of course you did.” Sparx looked like he wanted to slap me, but he kept his voice calm, soothing even, as he pointed at the blaze. “All of that comes from your heartfire. If you can’t learn to control yourself, you’ll never learn to control fire.”

  I gritted my teeth and tried to force myself to calm down. Not easy given the circumstances. Maybe not even possible. “Look, we’re kind of under some time pressure here.…”

  “Let that go for a moment and just breathe.”

  “What about all the smoke?” The sirens were reminding me rather vividly of the lecture the local fire department gave when they did their annual school visit. Smoke can kill you faster than fire.

  He ignored my question. “In. Out. Breathe. In. Out.”

  To be fair, the smoke wasn’t even making my eyes water, so I tried doing what he told me.

  After perhaps twenty cycles of breathing, Sparx nodded. “Good. Now, reach out to the fire.”

  “How?”

  “With your heart. You love your mother. I’ve seen it. Keep breathing. That feeling you have when you look at her, that sense of connection, that you are part of one thing … you and the fire are one, too. It came from your heart and your heart can govern it.”

  “But I don’t know how…” I felt like crying as I watched the flames devouring one of my favorite places. I had done this.

  “Look, we all get mad at people we love, right? Well, this is a bit like that. Keep breathing. In. Out. Surely, you’ve tried to wish your mom into doing things differently when you’re mad at her. This is a bit like that, only the fire must listen to the will of your heart. Can you try it now?”

  “I … maybe.” I wasn’t sure that I understood him, but thinking about my mom had … kind of grounded me. I could feel the fire, if only dimly. I reached out. “I’m touching something…”

  “Good! You’re doing it. I can see the magic. Wish the fire to remain within its current bounds. Tell it that you need it to stay close, to only burn the ground you’ve already given it.”