by Ann Macela
“I think—” Clay said.
“Wait to be called on,” Alaric admonished. When nobody else held up a hand, he said, “Okay, you have the floor.”
“Thank you,” Clay said. “I propose a committee of high-level mathematicians and teaching masters to calibrate the requirements for low-level spells in basic general disciplines. We can already measure internal energy production. It’s simply a matter of teaching a bunch of guinea pigs—uh, test subjects—to cast at precise outputs. It should be no more difficult than teaching people to read.”
“I can speak to that.” Evelyn raised her hand, and Alaric nodded. “Teaching reading is not easy. Children learn by different methods. For some, phonics works, for others, the ‘whole word’ approach is best. Because something comes easy to one person doesn’t mean it will to another. I would not like to see anybody pushed into one method or another—reading or spell-casting.”
“I thought the formula was even harder to use because you have to remember what all the letters and sub-designations mean and how much energy application is too much,” Antonia said.
Gloriana couldn’t help smiling this time. She remembered the problems her mother had—but her mother was such an intuitive caster, especially after years of casting. Trying to use the equation had seriously disrupted the flow of her process.
“Wait to be recognized,” Alaric cautioned.
Antonia gave him one of what Gloriana considered her “mother looks” until he said, “Go ahead.”
“Remember, I tried the formula, and I had trouble,” she continued. “Some young people can’t grasp algebra or haven’t even gotten to it yet in school. How can they think about the equation while struggling to manipulate the diverse parts of a spell, especially to control their power use?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” George spoke up, then stopped. “Whoops, I forgot. Am I recognized?” Alaric waved at him and he went on with a grin, “Put the process in a rap song.”
“What?” several people asked.
“Sure.” George rose, began to speak with a rhythmic beat, and accompanied his words with hand gestures.
“You take your talent, you take a spell.
You add your level, you stir it well.
Pour in some power, but not too much!
Mix it precisely, keep a light touch!
Watch your hands, don’t let them roam,
Focus on a crystal, if you need one.
Concentrate, concentrate, and when you’re done,
Abracadabra! Alacadun!
A ball of light shines like the sun!”
Rainbow colors spinning around inside it, an orb of light appeared in his hand.
Gloriana smiled. George evidently had hidden abilities. She shot a glance over at a frowning Forscher. Couldn’t the man take a joke about his “baby”?
“Hey, I like that,” Clay said. “How does it go again? ‘You take your talent…’“
“You take a spell,” George continued.
“You add your level, you stir it well,” Clay added the next line and mimicked George’s hand gestures while Bent began to beat time on the arm of his chair.
“Pour in some power,” Francie almost sang.
“But not too much!” several people stated emphatically.
“Mix it precisely,” Evelyn added.
“Keep a light touch,” Antonia admonished, wagging her finger.
“Concentrate, concentrate,” everyone in the audience shouted.
“And when you’re done … Abracadabra! Alacadun!” George finished, “A ball of light shines like the sun!”
Sparkling lightballs in rainbow colors materialized in the hands of everybody except non-practitioner Bent.
“Order, order!” Alaric rapped on the table with his knuckles while the audience laughed and batted the balls around like toys. Clay rolled one along the floor, and Samson chased it into the hall.
Gloriana sighed. Her prediction of chaos was coming true right in front of her, and it wasn’t only Clay acting up. She glanced over at Forscher, who was shuffling his papers with a resigned expression. She could empathize—he wanted a real discussion of his formula, not another circus. “Daddy,” she said and put a hand on her father’s arm, “let’s get on with it.”
He nodded and spoke louder. “Let’s come to order, people. The question is how to study the equation to determine the best way to use it.”
“Thank you,” she heard Forscher say softly.
“Let them have their committee,” Daria said with a gracious smile.
Gloriana came to attention. She knew that tone; her sister had laid a trap.
“Why are you giving in so easily?” Clay glared at Daria, then his eyebrows shot up. “Oh, I see. You think the whole idea will get buried, don’t you? Send it through Council channels, let everybody talk and talk, and nothing will get done. What’s that old saying? In a bureaucracy, all channels lead to the Dead Sea?”
“No, of course not,” Daria replied, “I believe the notion should be studied—thoroughly. In the meantime, let the rest of us muddle along in our blissful ignorance, happily casting our spells as we always have.”
“I’m more interested in the result,” Evelyn interjected. “What happens when some of us can’t use the equation—not won’t, but aren’t capable, can’t think or cast in those terms?”
“I won’t be stifled by a strict formula,” Antonia stated with a sharp shake of her head.
“Mother, you aren’t stifled by recipes, either. You make them up while you go along,” Clay protested. “Think how efficient you’d be if you used it?”
“Sometimes, son, it’s not efficiency that results in a good meal—or a good spell,” she replied.
Touché, Gloriana thought and sighed. They were getting off the subject. She poked her father in the arm.
“Daddy, we need to stay on track.”
“In a minute,” he said, “I want to see where this is heading.”
“Think how a low-level practitioner would benefit from using the equation,” George suggested.
“What if they simply couldn’t use it? They tried, but they couldn’t think that way or make it work?” Francie asked. “I’d be devastated and think I was a total failure.”
“You’re not a failure, honey,” Clay said.
“That’s not the point,” Evelyn put in.
Gloriana watched in dismay as everyone started talking at once and to each other. Then Bent, of all people, started chanting George’s rap ditty, and Francie joined him. Clay said something about “stodgy, old-fashioned” casting. Antonia said she’d show him stodgy and wiggled her fingers. Her mother’s favorite illusion of rose petals filled the air, and they swirled in invisible currents when Francie accompanied the beat with hand and arm movements.
George joined the chanters and cast multiple lightballs that danced through the petals. Evelyn shrugged and cast the illusion of a dunce cap which she settled firmly on her husband’s head. Daria asked Clay how she, who couldn’t spell anything except herself, would have learned to cast when trying to fit into a rigid mold. Clay’s answer was lost amid the uproar.
Her father—finally—called for order, but gave up after about fifteen seconds and joined in the rap.
“Oh, hell,” Gloriana muttered. The event was breaking down exactly as she’d feared—in chaos and fiasco. She turned to her father and tugged at his sleeve until he stopped rapping. “I give up, Daddy. Nobody is taking us seriously. This rehearsal is useless. It’s worse than a waste of time—it’s no help at all. I warned you, and I’m not going to stay around and play. I’m out of here.”
Shaking her head in frustration, she rose and marched out of the room. The hounds followed.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
Marcus stared at the confusion of rose petals, multicolored lightballs, and gesticulating, talking, singing people. He had never envisioned the rehearsal falling apart as it had. The Morgan family was clearly crazy, but George and Evelyn had joined in the d
ebacle, too. What a mess. They’d never get anywhere after this uproar. It was the first debate all over again.
When Morgan walked out, he felt a moment of panic. She was leaving him alone in anarchy.
No, she wasn’t going to do that to him. He wouldn’t let her. He wasn’t going to be stuck with these lunatics.
He stood and stalked into the hall. A burst of laughter and clapping followed him. The front door stood open, and the dogs were on the porch, so he went out to join them.
Morgan had opened her car door. She was truly leaving.
“Wait!” he called and heard the word come out in a croak.
She stopped and stared at him over the closed top of the dark green convertible.
“Take me with you.” God, he sounded pathetic. He didn’t care. He had to get out of there, and they needed to talk about what happened. “Please.”
Her eyes met his for a long moment before she nodded. “Get in.”
Samson and Delilah beat him to the car. When he opened the passenger door, she was spreading a blanket over the back seats.
“Come on, you two, in the back,” she said.
After the dogs climbed in, he settled into the front seat and fastened his seat belt. He didn’t know where they were going, and he didn’t care.
When she started the engine, a country-western song blasted out of the radio speakers. Some guy was singing about a woman who was T-R-O-U-B-L-E. Marcus couldn’t stand country-western, but at least the words certainly fit his situation.
She backed out onto the road. “Hold on,” she said, changed gears, and stepped on the gas.
The car leapt forward like she’d hit the afterburner on a jet, and he grabbed the armrest as the acceleration pressed him back into the seat. She slowed—barely—for a right-hand turn and hit a high speed on the straightaway. He glanced backward. The dogs had their heads out the open windows and seemed to be enjoying themselves.
“Where are we going?” he managed to gasp out over the music.
“Over there.” She actually took a hand off the wheel to wave in a direction off to the right.
On the horizon, he saw a tall building literally shining in the sun. Other, lower buildings stretched out from its right flank and reflected the clouds. The farm’s greenhouses, he surmised before her fast cornering jerked his gaze back to the road. He took a firmer grip on both the armrest and the seat belt.
A couple of white-knuckled minutes later, they pulled up before the larger structure. Blessed silence fell when she cut off the car engine. With shaking hands, he released the seat belt and pulled himself out of the car. He was surprised his legs still held him upright after that ride.
“Do you always drive that fast?” he asked. He wasn’t sure if he was angry or astounded as he stared at her across the roof of the convertible.
“Fast? That wasn’t fast. I barely hit fifty. Besides, the sooner we were away from that riot in the living room, the better.” She gave him a mischievous grin before waving at the building in front of them. “Well, what do you think?”
He faced it and looked up … and up. From the ground to a peaked roof it stood at least three stories high. The bottom third of the glass structure was tinted a light smoky brown, and he couldn’t really see inside. Leafy branches pressed against the upper panes like they were trying to escape. “What is it? A greenhouse on steroids?”
About to unlock the door, she glanced back at him. Her green eyes sparkled, and she chuckled. “I never thought of it like that. Come in and see for yourself.”
She turned the key, but before opening the door, she shook her finger at the dogs who had followed them from the car. “Okay, you two, remember, no chewing on the plants.”
“Are the plants poisonous in there?” he asked, suddenly apprehensive.
“I don’t use herbicides or pesticides, and some of the plants are mildly toxic or have a few thorns. Delilah comes in all the time, and she leaves them alone. If Samson was a puppy, I wouldn’t let him in. Otherwise, I don’t want my specimens to have teeth marks. It really will be all right.” She walked into a small vestibule between the outer door and an inner one. When he had closed the first door, she led the way through the second.
He followed her into a world with heavy, humid air smelling of earth and faint floral fragrances, with multiple shades of green punctuated by spots of red or pink or white or purple, with large and small ferns, bushes, trees, and vines. A narrow pathway, overhung with leafy branches, led deeper into the jungle and quickly disappeared. At ground level, the lighting was soft and shady, filtered by the trees; above the boundary of the tinted glass, the sun shone brightly on the treetops. He could hear water running somewhere.
“Welcome to my tropical paradise.”
Her words brought his gaze back down to her. Dressed as she was, the green sweater matching the emerald of her eyes and blending with the background, her dark hair flowing around her shoulders, she could almost be a creature of the forest. Or the jungle, rather. He, however, felt distinctly out of place, practically on another planet.
“This is my playground. It’s for pure enjoyment and is not connected to either the farm operations or my research. When I come here, I can block out the rest of the world.” She grimaced. “When the so-called debate degenerated into chaos, I decided I’d better get out of there before I screamed like a banshee and made a fool of myself. It seemed to be the appropriate place to come for some peace.”
“I’m glad you did,” Marcus said. “Left, I mean. It gave me the excuse to do the same. What happened to everybody? They all seemed to go crazy.”
“I’m not surprised. I feared Clay would start something, if for no other reason than to uphold his reputation for family teasing. I warned Daddy, and he assured me he’d keep order. Hmph! Some order.”
Marcus shook his head. “Clay wasn’t the primary instigator. George holds the honor with his rap song. Putting him and your brother together was like throwing two firecrackers into the fire. For reasons I’ve never been able to fathom, George delights in ‘shaking me up’ from time to time. He claims it’s good for me.”
“Our rehearsal never had a chance, did it?”
He could only shake his head again. She sounded and looked so disappointed, his hands itched with the desire to take her in his arms to comfort. Or maybe simply to hold her. Hell, even when confused and unsettled by a ludicrous “debate” and a terrifying ride, his damned attraction to her pulled at him like she was a magnet and he a pile of iron filings. He refused to think it could be more than his libido reminding him of its existence. Certainly not what George had been talking about. He needed to change the subject.
To distract himself, he started looking around. Her house had been practically devoid of plants, he remembered. The building and its contents more than made up for that lack. “What are all these?”
“Do you have plants or a garden?”
“No. Except for tending to Samson, I’m too busy. I told my landscaper to put in native trees and the like to cut down on the upkeep. Never had an interest in gardening, either.”
“Oh. Then let me give you the nickel tour. The path runs through a series of S curves, to maximize the growing area and put us close to the plants. To my left is an allspice tree from Jamaica. Over to the right a cinnamon tree from Asia …” She walked him along the winding gravel walkway pointing out ferns, flowering bushes, trees, a stand of bamboo. The dogs disappeared into the foliage ahead.
Marcus was grateful, but a little surprised that she used common names in her explanation, not the long Latin ones he would expect of a botanical scientist. He had never heard of some of them, others he vaguely remembered seeing somewhere. All appeared to be growing with abandon. He could only marvel at the size of some of the elephant ears—at least, he thought that’s what they were, even if they were blue in color.
He was beginning to feel the vines reaching for him, when they emerged into a small clearing where the path widened. Light streamed down from above and
highlighted brilliant reds, pinks, and blues in flowers and leaves. After the darkness of the green tunnel, the profusion of color and light was almost blinding. A cooling breeze made the humidity bearable and rustled the leaves. On the side wall rose a huge tree with large branches arching over the open space. The lower branches, almost within his reaching distance, had no tree leaves and teemed instead with foliage with stiff, shiny, spiky leaves.
“Is all the vegetation natural?” he asked. “That can’t be a real tree. Its trunk doesn’t extend through the wall.”
“No, I fudged some and copied what some zoos have done in artificial rainforests. The biggest trees are fake and serve as hiding places for wiring and plumbing or platforms for the vines and bromeliads. The epiphytes can grow practically anywhere since they don’t put down roots like other plants. If you look closely, you can see the braces holding up the long limbs.”
He studied the false branches overhead. They certainly appeared natural with the vines coiling around and draping off the horizontal. One of the vines had a funny color—sort of a mottled brown. He followed it with his eyes until he came to an end. What was that triangular shape? Were those eyes?
“Uh, I thought you said there was nothing harmful in here. What about that snake?” He pointed to it.
“Snake? Oh.”
He heard her chuckle, but didn’t take his eyes off whatever that was lurking above.
“That’s Sassy, the cybersnake,”—she emphasized the hiss of the S sounds—”my brother’s contribution to my garden. He’s named for an African tree bark that’s poisonous. ‘Can’t have an Eden without him,’ Clay said. He’s rubber.”
He took his gaze off the snake to look at her. She had that mischievous glint in her eyes and quirk to her lips again.
“He’s computerized, of course. Clay rigged him to move and even fall down on people. There’s a remote control to activate him.” She glanced at her watch. “Come this way.”
She crossed the clearing, and he followed her down the serpentine path through another twisty, leafy, even narrower, more thickly planted tunnel into a much bigger open area with more shrubbery, flowers, and trees on its edges and a lawn in its middle. They had reached what looked to be the rear of the building. In the right corner against the clear back wall rose a black stone formation about ten feet high. A gurgling waterfall splashed down its rugged sides to land in a pond with lilies and a background of tall skinny stalks topped with pompoms of green skinny leaves. At the other end of the pond close to a stand of bamboo, a stream vanished into the bushes.