To be honest, I’d completely forgotten about Halloween with all the other weirdness going on in my life, but considering what that weirdness was, I couldn’t tell her that. “I’ll probably just wear all black and say I’m a vampire or something.”
“That hardly seems like a costume, but I suppose you are a teenager, even if I hate to admit it. All right, it’s your decision, but if you change your mind and want a better costume, there’s not a lot of time left. Think about it and get back to me after dinner … which I need to go make. And you need to shower.” She leaned forward and pressed her forehead against mine. “I love you, kiddo.”
“Mom.”
She got up but stopped briefly in the doorway. “Oh, and don’t think I’ve forgotten about the light you keep leaving on. We will definitely be talking about that again if it keeps up.” She closed the door on her way out, and I snagged my bathrobe and started skinning out of my clothes.
As I slipped the robe on, Sparx hopped into the center of my bed and gave me a hard look. “You are most certainly not wearing black for All Hallows’ or playing the vampire.”
I stopped halfway to the door. “What? Why does it even matter?”
Sparx put his face in his paws. “I swear to all the powers, whatever I did to deserve you, I repent of it wholly and completely. Tell me that you’re not that dim a light, child, please. It’s bad for my heart.”
“I don’t understand a word you’ve just said, my funny bunny man.”
He sighed. “Then I shall have to use short words and simple sentences. All Hallows’ or, Samhain, as it’s more commonly known in the magic world, is a day of great power. Black is the color of Nightmares and the Winter Crown. For a child of fire to wear it on Samhain would be an ill omen indeed. Doubly so, when you are in the midst of putting yourself in direct opposition to Winter’s King. Triply so to play the vampire—an avatar and symbol of both death and winter.”
“Oh. I guess that does make sense.”
Sparx rolled his eyes. “And lo the light did shine down from above and strike the young knave full in the face, bringing wisdom and wit with it. If only in very small measures.”
“So, what should I wear? A costume?”
“Yes. There is great power in symbol. You should dress as something that opposes winter, of course, and wear flame’s colors—gold, orange, red! If you could light yourself on fire for a bit, that would help enormously.”
“What if I went as a Vulcan?”
Sparx blinked. “Like Star Trek? Because that doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“No, like the Saint Paul Winter Carnival. The Vulcans are the guys who dress in red and run around on a fire truck, the ones who chase away Boreas, King of the Winds, at the end of the carnival.” Which sounded pretty darned weird as I said it—when you grow up in Saint Paul you tend to forget just how strange the whole thing is, with its ice palace and all the rest. “You’ve been around a long time. You must know about Vulcanus Rex, right?”
Sparx reached up with one of his paws and slapped himself sharply. “All right, that’s it. I’ve gone senile. You should probably throw me in a pot and call me rabbit stew at this point.”
“Wouldn’t that be stewed hare?” I grinned. “Also, what are you talking about?”
“Very funny, boy. Your Winter Carnival, of course. I’ve never really thought about it before, because I usually head south once it starts snowing, but it’s basically a huge ritual designed to weaken the Winter King and set him up to hand over the Crown to Summer. The real Winter King. Not this Boreas, but whoever holds the Corona Borealis for winter. It has to be intentional. I bet they had a bad Winter King back then, too.”
“When?” I was having trouble following Sparx’s conversational leaps.
“The year they created the Boreas myth. It’s brilliant. Almost too brilliant for humans. I wonder if they had a fire hare advising them.… Makes no difference now, of course, but you have to think so. That’s what I get for ignoring so many people things the last hundred years or so. We need to learn everything we can about your Winter Carnival.”
“All right. We can Google it after dinner. Does this mean I should go as a Vulcan?”
The eye roll again. “Of course it does. What are you, boy, hard of thinking?”
My mother called out from the kitchen just then. “Kalvan, shower!”
“On my way, Mom!” I opened the door of my bedroom and continued more quietly, “Oh, and, maybe I’m not completely over All Hallows’ costumes. Will you take me out to get a few things after dinner?”
“I’d love to.”
* * *
Dave raised both eyebrows. “Weird Halloween costume, dude.”
I shrugged. “I’ll explain later. In the meantime, blame the bunny.”
Halloween at the Free School was kind of surreal. All classes were canceled for the day, and each advisory group had its own holiday event set up. Evelyn’s class had turned the black box into a sort of mini haunted house with the usual cold-noodle brains and pickled-onion eyeballs. The science room was filled with things that bubbled and burbled and glowed. Home economics and life skills had a costume contest—where I won a prize for Most Out of Place. Second was a kid who came as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. We’re kind of a weird lot at Free.
If dressing as a Vulcan had any impact beyond the little ribbon and candy bar I got as a prize, I didn’t see it right away. In any case, as soon as school was done and I had some time to curl up with my laptop, I started researching the Saint Paul Winter Carnival.
Dude! That’s some really crazy stuff there, with King Boreas of the Winds and Vulcanus Rex, god of fire, having a giant “war” through the streets of Saint Paul at the end of January, and the winter medallion hunt, and a ton of work going into a huge castle made of ice blocks that mostly melts away in a few weeks. Don’t believe me? Go look it up for yourself; it’s all online.
Back in 1986 they built a palace with a tower 127 feet tall for the carnival’s centennial, using ten thousand blocks of ice. That was more than thirty years ago, and the designers of this year’s ice palace were hoping to outdo it thanks to advances in computer-aided design and a major grant from an anonymous donor. They were talking 175 feet and thirteen thousand blocks.
What made reading about the carnival doubly surreal was how much Sparx loved every single bit of the lore and his amazement that mere humans could have come up with such a great ritual. Reading about it took me on to the parallels with Mardi Gras in New Orleans and all the stuff the Saint Paul festival borrowed from that, and Easter celebrations and the rebirth of spring. Talk about going down the rabbit hole …
I had just clicked a link to last year’s medallion clues when I heard a knock on my door and my mother’s voice. “Hey, Kalvan, do you want to go trick-or-treating? I know it’s cold, but I could drive you over to the Summit neighborhood…”
That made me stop and think. Summit Hill is Saint Paul’s historic mansion district, and the pickings there are really good. Sure, I’m getting kind of old to be trick-or-treating, but Summit meant full-size candy bars and plenty of them, and we hadn’t gone in years. It was always a hassle to find parking and Oscar didn’t like it, so the practice was slowly phased out after he married my mom. I was still mostly in costume with my red pants and red sweatshirt. All I really needed to do was throw on my black boots and the red cape and helmety thing Mom had bought me the night before.
“Sure, give me five minutes.” I could tuck that baby pack Dave had found under my cape for Sparx to hide in and … “Wait here,” I said to Sparx as I put on the helmet. “I’ll be right back. I need to hit the restroom and get a fresh pillowcase for a candy bag.”
I was about halfway down the back hall when Oscar came through the basement door and we practically ran into each other. “Sorry, Oscar, I—”
“WHAT ARE YOU WEARING!?!” Oscar bellowed, his face a twisted mask.
I actually leaped back away from him. “It’s a Halloween costume. Mom wa
s going to take me trick—”
“IT’S NOTHING OF THE KIND! I KNOW A DAMNED VULCAN WHEN I SEE ONE!” His face had gone this terrible gray-brown color, like old brickwork, and he seemed to have grown suddenly larger, like an inflating frog.
Oscar and I have had any number of run-ins over the years since he and my mother got married. He’s got a temper and he’s not afraid of yelling, but I had never seen him nearly that angry or heard him get so scary loud before. Looking at his tightly clenched fists and the set of his shoulders, I more than half expected him to hit me. He might have, too, if Mom hadn’t practically teleported in from the kitchen then, putting herself physically between me and him.
“Oscar!” She spoke sharply. “Stop that! You’re scaring Kalvan.”
For a moment things teetered there on the edge of violence, and Oscar’s eyes glittered like there were obsidian spear points in their bleak depths. But then his rage visibly cooled into something icy and somehow much scarier. The red faded from his skin, leaving him once more gray and cold, like the granite monster I had seen him as the other morning.
“Did you have anything to do with this?” His voice came out sharp and deadly.
My mother nodded. “Of course. I told you last night I was taking him to the costume shop.”
“But that’s no Halloween costume! It’s … pagan ritual nonsense!” He was still very cold and very angry but seemed more in control now, spitting his words like one of those weird cobras that use their fangs like water pistols.
“The cape was easy.” Mom’s voice started to go dreamy and faraway in a manner that made my guts churn—I’d seen it too often over the years. “It’s part of a devil costume. The helmet was harder. We ended up buying a plastic Roman gladiator helmet and some red spray paint.”
“You know how much I hate the Winter Carnival,” said Oscar.
“My grandfather was a Vulcan, back in the fifties. It’s how he met my grandmother.” She glanced over her shoulder at me. “Did you know that, Kalvan?”
“I … no.” We were way off the edge of the map here as far as conversations go—with Mom lost in space and Oscar still looking mad enough to kill someone.
“He was. And, later, he became Rex. Grandma kept the uniform in an old wooden box. Before she passed away, she gave it to my mother to keep as a remembrance. When she died, I thought it came to me, but I now can’t find it anywhere. Maybe I should search the attic again.…”
With that, my mother turned and went up the stairs without another look at either Oscar or me. I started back toward the kitchen then, but Oscar caught my eyes and shook his head. When the attic door closed a moment later, he pointed at me.
“You are grounded. Two weeks. I want you to go back to your room right now. There, you will take that ridiculous garment off. And then you will put it in a bag and bring it back to me here. After that, I’m sure you have homework to deal with. Do you understand?”
I nodded. I didn’t like it and I really didn’t want to obey him, but there was a power in his voice and his glittering eyes that left me with no will to argue. I simply went and did as I was told, ignoring Sparx and his questions until I had returned from disposing of the costume and finished all my homework.
Hours later, when I was in control of my actions and my voice once again, I explained, ending with, “I don’t know what came over me.”
Sparx eyed me gravely. “Do you not? It was the power of the Winter King.”
As if to punctuate his words, the window rattled suddenly in the wind, and pellets of freezing drizzle began to patter against the glass.
13
Fire Fur and Foul Weather
I WOKE UP to the radio going in the dining room—a voice was reading off a list of school closings. I blinked blearily and realized there was a LOT of light coming in through the window. Pulling aside the curtain, I found a world covered in ice and snow, with the dawn light reflecting from every surface, cold and bright and cruel.
I crawled out of bed as the radio announcer said, “… freak blizzard, completely unexpected. Worse than the great Halloween storm of ninety-one.” A few minutes after that, the Free School closing came through, and I was off the hook. I pulled the blankets up and sagged back into my pillows.
I thought back over the previous day then—my encounter with Oscar and how he had compelled me against my will—and I shivered. In the frozen light of morning it seemed somehow even more horrible. Especially when I realized it wasn’t the first time he had ordered me to do something and I had simply obeyed, though I’d never felt it so powerfully before or for so long.
I was just trying to sort that out when my mom came in with breakfast and a big smile on her face. “Good morning, Kalvan. I made waffles, and I thought I’d bring them in here so you could eat in bed.” She set the tray down in my lap and settled herself on the foot of my bed, sitting cross-legged. “Your father used to bring me breakfast in bed on cold winter mornings, and it always made me smile.”
If she remembered any of what had happened yesterday, she wasn’t showing it. Whether that was because of something he’d done or simply because of her troubles, I couldn’t say. So, for her sake, I decided I’d better do the same.
“Where’s Oscar?” I asked cautiously.
“I think he’s in the basement, though he might have headed in to the main office. There are tracks leading back and forth to the garage, but without going outside I can’t see whether he’s gone or not. Now, these are still hot and crisp.”
She took a plate and served herself waffles with strawberries and whipped cream, and I did the same. There was also a small plate for Sparx, and he climbed up beside me. For a few minutes not much happened beyond chewing and swallowing.
Then Mom said, “I suppose you think that’s a bit odd.”
“What?” I’d learned to be cautious about questions like that, given how very many possibilities there were with my mother.
“That I don’t know where Oscar is.”
“Not really.” I’d never cared where he was beyond preferring he not be where I had to see him.
Well, that’s not quite true. There had been moments in my life when he’d been a pretty decent dad substitute. Or at least he’d tried. Like the times he took me to hockey games, or showed me how to use some of his power tools. Unfortunately, we really didn’t have much in common. I’d never cared for watching other people play sports, and I didn’t like puttering in the shop even if the skills I learned there were useful. I think with a more ordinary sort of boy, he might have done all right as a dad. But … well, I was weird. Not my-mother weird, but certainly fit-right-in-at-Free-School weird.
Mom looked down into her lap, and what she said next came out very quietly. “That’s sweet of you, Kalvan, but you don’t need to pretend for me. We both know you have problems with Oscar, even if you’re too kind to say it to me. We also both know I’m not always very … attached to the here and now.”
I felt like someone had taken my heart and made a fist around it. “Mom…”
But she held up a hand. “I’m not finished. That’s one of the reasons I married Oscar, you know. That I can’t always be sure I’m going to be in the best shape to take care of you. I do love him, even if he’s gruff and difficult sometimes. But also he … he grounds me. There’s something incredibly solid to him, like bedrock. I was drifting for a long time after … after your father … left.”
Which was one of those subjects I’d never been able to get her to talk about. I had a few memories of him from when I was very little—brief moments, mostly. A bearded face leaning down toward me. A dark sapphire earring the size of an almond with a star sparkling in its depths. A deep voice reading to me about a badger named Frances. Being lifted onto a shoulder. But then the memories stop. I didn’t remember anything about him leaving. No fights. No difficulties at all. At some point he simply wasn’t in my life anymore, and to this day I don’t know why.
My mother had picked up a corner of her skirt and begun
to gently wring it. “When I met Oscar, it felt like having a place to put my feet again. A safe place to stand in the whirl of the world. He’s a hard man to like sometimes, a hard man in general, but he helps me to hold on even when he isn’t here.” She sighed and let go of the skirt. “But that’s probably more than you wanted to know.”
“I love you, Mom.” I didn’t know what else to say. “Is there anything I can do?”
“You can be you.”
I blinked at that. “I don’t understand.”
“You’re stronger than you know, Kalvan. Stronger than I am, certainly. More like your grandmother. You won’t remember it, but when you were four I used to take you to this little playground where there was a big spiral slide. You were big for your age, bigger than most of the other kids, and you could have taken over. Instead, you always made sure the littlest kids got a turn.”
I was lost. “Where are you going with this?”
“There was one day when three older kids, maybe six or seven, came by and started pushing the little ones around. You told them to stop, and one of them knocked you down. I got up to help you, but before I could take three steps you bounced back to your feet and punched him in the nose. You didn’t hesitate for a second, and you didn’t count the cost. You were ready to fight them all even though they would have mopped the floor with you.”
“I don’t remember this at all,” I said. “What happened next?”
“I got there before it went any further, along with a couple of other parents, and we stopped it, but I had to actually carry you home at that point, because that was the only way I could keep you from going after the big kids. You were furious with me, and you kept saying it wasn’t right. Do you know what lesson I took away from that day?”
I shook my head. “No idea.”
Magic, Madness, and Mischief Page 14