by Lee Hayton
A Tale of Magic and Sorrow
(World War Magic)
LEE HAYTON
Copyright © 2017 Lee Hayton
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
Dedication
With eternal thanks to Kat Lind, the SIL Creative team, the Ds, and my fellow boot-campers at Phoenix Prime.
Rise up from the ashes, people.
Phoenix Prime is a Ph.D. level workshop that spans approximately four months. It uses applied industrial psychology to address components of writing, marketing, branding, business, contract issues, and productivity that combine Creative Writing and Business perspectives.
The participants will create a portfolio to showcase their work alongside students in doctoral programs in several major universities. The objective, in addition to expanding the professional growth of all the participants, is to study the impact of the independent author-publisher on the commercial fiction industry.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
About the Author - Lee Hayton
Chapter One
Ciaran Helmond sat pensively in the front seat, chewing his lower lip. He kept his wide blue eyes fixed with rapt attention on his swinging feet, not wanting to gauge their progress from home to school. When the car pulled to a stop, brakes grinding, he looked out the window with a frown.
An expanse of rolling meadow stretched out on either side. Lush green grass feeding on the dew-soaked soil. The last smoky tails of mist were dissipating as the morning sun grew hot enough to burn them away.
Far from school, far from trouble. A blade of hope sprouted up through his pessimism, eliciting the first tentative curl of a grin.
“I thought you could do with a break,” his granddad said, then pointed to their right. “There’s a slab of concrete in the middle of that field. We can set up base there, then go exploring.”
Gramps twisted out of the driver’s seat and kicked an empty beer can away in disgust. His face turned pale, a curious shade of eggshell white. Ciaran remembered the smell of his Dad tucking him in some nights, after a game. The warm yeasty breath, tangy and bitter, was something he missed. A scent his granddad never wore.
Opening the back door, Gramps reached for a picnic basket.
Ciaran wriggled down from the car and ran around to take the handle on one side of the basket. He gamely lifted it the whole way, though the movement caused the angry row of Indian burns along his forearm to flare into pain. If his granddad could manage with his terrible limp, Ciaran could too.
“When I was a boy we used to live out this way,” his granddad said as they reached the concrete slab. “This here,” he stamped his twisted left leg twice, “was part of the foundations for the inn.”
He pointed out spots farther back toward the roadside. Ciaran looked at long grass, the seeding tips rustling in the quickening breeze. His granddad painted over the view with ghostly constructions: a butcher, a haberdashery, a grocer.
“Where did they go?” Ciaran held his breath while his imagination lit up with excitement. Had they been destroyed in a magic blast? Been fired into another dimension?
“We burned them down, after the war. Moved a few miles away to empty land and started again.”
“Oh,” Ciaran said, chewing his lower lip again. “Why’d you burn them?”
When no answer came, he looked up at his granddad, silhouetted against the sun. The shadows on his face gathered around the deep scar that bisected his cheekbone, turning his expression into a snarl. To another onlooker, he’d look aggressive, but Ciaran loving eyes only registered his troubled frown.
“We did something bad here.” His granddad’s gruff voice was a whisper, torn away by the breeze.
A cloud moved across the sun and the day’s warmth plummeted into coldness. Their shadows on the concrete suffused and spread, mixing into the dank green of slowly creeping moss. He shivered, gooseflesh popping up on his arms, and pulled his sleeves down to shield them.
After a while, Ciaran sat on the concrete slab, his back toward his grandfather. He was used to long silences, a trait passed down to his father and now to him. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, letting the wind ruffle through his hair.
Anything was better than a day spent worrying at school.
His granddad grunted as he maneuvered his bad leg so he could sit down beside Ciaran. After a few minutes, he slung his arm around the boy. The open gesture of love was as unexpected as it was welcome.
“What do you see when you look out there?” his granddad asked.
Ciaran swept critical eyes across the fields around them. Anxiety tightened the muscles in his chest. An opportunity existed here: to cause delight or dismay.
His breathing grew shallower as he turned his head from side to side. Then he saw the first anomaly and relaxed. In front of them stretched a beautiful meadow with blooming flowers. It all appeared to be innocuous until the partially concealed skeletons were seen.
“There,” Ciaran said, stretching his finger out to point, proud and triumphant. “And there.” He pointed to another.
As his eyes wandered, his mind found the pattern, and he could point out more. Even when the sun-bleached bones were buried deep within the shadows. Each site sported a crown of flowers, crowded in a showy display of color. The grass thrust taller into the sky, a darker green than the surrounding area.
Granddad ruffled his hair with one gnarled hand and nodded. “Aren’t you scared of them?”
Ciaran looked up at him in surprise, his eyes widening. Scared? He shook his head, “No,” he scoffed. “They can’t hurt me, they’re just bones.”
His granddad laughed, and Ciaran smiled even though he didn’t understand the joke.
“What are you now, boy? Seven?”
Ciaran nodded and puffed his chest out. “Almost eight.”
The old man smiled, eyes focused far out into the distance. “I heard your mom talk about a birthday party.”
Ciaran’s cheeks flushed red with a rush of excitement, then he shrank back and curled his shoulders forward, twisting his hands together in his lap. “I don’t have anyone to invite to a party.”
“They pick on you at school.”
It was a statement, so Ciaran didn’t answer. Useless tears welled up in his eyes, washing the meadow before him from a sharp photograph into a vague watercolor.
Crybaby, a voice teased in his head, nasal and sharp. He stretched his eyes wide and stopped blinking so the tears wouldn’t fall.
“I used to be bullied when I was your age.”
Ciaran bit his cheek and pulled at his left ear, searching his granddad’s face for telltale signals that he was fibbing. Instead, his wrinkled cheeks flushed red like he was embarrassed, the scar standing out white against the throbbing crimson.
“A big lad, Jason, he was the ringleader. I used to think if I could just avoid drawing his attention I’d be alright. The other kids would leave me alone.”
Ciaran nodded, although his bullies were double that. Cedric and Frederick. Sometimes they’d push Ciaran back and forth between them like he was a shuttlecock. A toy that would bruise and bleed when the brutish arms they used as racquets shot him back onto the opposing court.
For wee
ks, Ciaran had tried to fade from view at school. Hiding behind the cycle sheds during playtime or climbing a tree to stay out of range. Wishing for a cloak of invisibility every time they caught him and started to play their games.
The other kids avoided him as though there was a plague circle drawn around his feet. None of them ventured within a set distance in case they caught whatever infection he had.
Ciaran waited anxiously for his granddad to continue. When it seemed he’d never speak, a plaintive cry burst out of him, “What did you do?”
“A woman helped me. She had the magic.”
Ciaran’s mouth dropped open in amazement. The magic?
It had been eradicated so long before his birth, Ciaran placed magic in the same category as Unicorns or Pixies. Imaginary, empty fairy tales. Even though the scars his granddad earned in battle were real, it all seemed so far away.
“Did she put a spell on you?”
His granddad shook his head, then hugged Ciaran tighter as he shrugged instead. “Something like that, but not in a bad way. It’s a gift she gave me that you can use yourself.”
I can use magic?
A shiver ran up Ciaran’s spine. He forgot about the cold concrete, the hostile bullies, or the powerless skulls tangled in the meadow weeds. He forgot everything but the picture his granddad painted. The courageous warrior hero Nolan Helmond, living as a frightened young boy.
Chapter Two
Nolan forced himself back into the empty gap between the cycle sheds and the school fence. He was small for an eleven-year old, but it was still a tight squeeze. A spider ran across the back of his hand, but he bit his cheek so he wouldn’t cry out in disgust. The bullies were larger than a spider and a hell of lot more frightening.
“That boy’s scared of his own shadow,” Nolan had overheard his father say just the week before. His parents were washing up in the kitchen, the room directly below his. He was tucked up safely in bed, meant to have been asleep for the past hour.
The frustration and shame of his father’s disapproving words triggered a flood of adrenaline. The shock hyped him up so much it took another hour to fall asleep. The angry retort that sprang to his lips went unsaid, as usual. “It’s not MY shadow I’m scared of. It’s the boys who beat me up every day.”
If he spoke that aloud, his father would just snort and turn away. Once, his dad had been captain of the football team. Decorated and venerated. Not to mention the awards he’d won for academic prowess. An honor student and a jock. When Nolan compared himself he always came out inferior. Was it any wonder his dad did the same?
So, he wouldn’t cry out with fear at a stupid spider. No matter that it had four legs more than any creature needed to, and bulbous black eyes looking every which way. Nolan shook his hand until it went flying and wiped the revolting hairy sensation off against the back of his knee.
If he could stay hidden a while longer, Jason might assume he’d left and head elsewhere to cause trouble. Then Nolan could sprint home using the shortcut through the paddock. With luck, his mom wouldn’t even notice he was late.
“She’ll be needing a bra next,” a boy said, so close by that Nolan jumped. Two more boys barked raucous laughter in appreciation, and Nolan’s heart rate sped up.
Two years of terror and he’d recognize Jason’s laugh anywhere. The sound was embedded in his ear drums just as Jason’s face was etched on his eyelids each time Nolan tried to fall asleep.
The cycle shed wall shuddered as the boys pulled out their bicycles. Nolan shoved his wrist into his mouth to muffle his breathing. A minute, maybe two, and he could crawl back out. Dirty and disheveled, but unhurt.
“Well, well, well. Who’s a naughty boy, then?”
Nolan’s eyes widened, and he whipped his head toward the exit. No one there, but the voice mocked him all the same.
A rapping on the wooden shed wall above his head startled Nolan into looking up. Jason’s eye stared down at him, pressed against a knothole.
Nolan sprang to his feet, catching his lower back on the crossbar of the fence. The blow sent a cascade of pain down his legs, but he ignored it, scrambling toward the exit.
Too slow.
“Look, boys,” Jason said, blocking Nolan in. “We’ve got a pervert back here spying on the bike sheds. What did you think you’d see, Helmond? Harriet’s knickers?”
More raucous laughter drowned out by the pounding heartbeat in Nolan’s ears.
“What do you think we should do with a pervert, fellas? Set him free to try it again?”
A chorus of noes, then Jason reached forward and bunched up the front of Nolan’s sweater. He dragged him out and pushed him forward, center stage entertainment.
Nolan’s legs forgot how to work. His feet tangled, and he fell over. A piece of gravel lodged in his palm as his hands stretched out to break his fall. Closing his eyes, he focused on that one small pain, trying to ignore the remaining parcels dished out as the boys provided his ritual serving of abuse.
With one last kick to his ribs, the boys scattered. Two cycling, Jason running.
After they had left, Nolan lay on his side, struggling to catch his breath. He gingerly prodded the sticky swelling on his cheekbone. A kick had either sliced him or caused such swelling his skin had split wide open. Blood dribbled from the wound but even worse, he couldn’t hide it. The injury would earn him a hard stare and a sniff from his father.
Hot tears of shame pricked at his eyes. His nose watered and his throat swelled. He turned over onto his hands and knees, his breath hitching at a protest from his bruised ribcage.
From the school gate, a woman’s voice shouted threats in the departing boys’ wake. Nolan’s head swam with dizziness, and he lowered his forehead to rest it on the rough asphalt of the driveway.
“You okay, lad? Need a hand?”
Nolan looked up into a young woman’s face. Her skin swirled beneath a blue haze of light. His lips parted in wonder as he watched the magic flow, shimmer, and dance.
A hundred stern fatherly warnings bustled forward from his memory. Nolan staggered to his feet, shaking his head. “I’m okay, I just fell over.”
“Bad luck,” the woman said, a smile causing a cascade of gold light to dive into the blue.
“Looks like you fell over just as that lad raised his boot like this.” She lifted her foot up in a rugby kick.
Nolan smiled, though his tender cheek protested. He clamped his elbow tight to his side to lessen the pain of breathing. An old trick he knew far too well.
“I can help you with that,” the woman said. She stretched her right hand out, the magical glow reaching much farther.
The magic are lazy. They’re cockroaches. Living off our earnings because they’re too inferior to lift a to help themselves.
Her eyes widened, and she jerked her hand back, hugging her arms to her chest.
“It’s not—” Nolan faltered, biting his lip. He tilted his head forward as a spurt of blood from his nose ran down his throat.
“It’s not me.” The words came easier when he didn’t have to look at her. “That’s my dad.”
“I know.”
When he kept his head down, she stretched out a gentle finger out to tilt up his chin. She smiled and blew a puff of light at him: the blood stopped flowing, the pain was gone.
“I didn’t think that was you, Nolan. But I don’t want you to get in trouble with your dad.” She leaned forward, her eyebrows drawing together. “Trouble seems to like you well enough as it is.”
Nolan turned away from her intense stare and squeezed the tip of his nose. Honk. He glanced back in curiosity, under lowered lashes. “How’d you do that?”
How’d you know my name?
She laughed, and the harmonic notes sent intimate shivers up his backbone. “I don’t do it. The magic pleases itself. I just hand it over when it asks me.”
He frowned and wrinkled his nose. The swelling gash along his cheekbone had also gone. His ribs no longer protested when he drew in
a deep breath.
Although his dad would be annoyed, Nolan pushed the thought of him aside, fascinated. “I don’t understand, how does it ask you?”
She squeezed her right earlobe between her fingers before speaking. “Do you ever get urges? To try something weird for the first time, even though it doesn’t fit with your routine?”
Nolan smiled and ducked his head to hide his amusement. Your routine. His life occurred as an afterthought to other people’s priorities. But Nolan nodded just the same. Sending a wish at her to keep on talking.
“Sometimes, the magic is like that. I go places, and it’s only later I see why.” She chewed her lower lip and Nolan mimicked her.
“An urge brought me here, today.”
As she fell silent, Nolan stared at the magic’s light. Each heartbeat sent crimson ripples out in waves, like a stone thrown into a pond. The blue wasn’t just blue, but indigo, violet, teal, and green. The gold formed a shimmering accent, pinpoints moving in set patterns like a sped-up night sky.
“Hold out your hand,” she ordered. The challenge offset with a peaceful smile.
Nolan stretched out his right hand, cupping it, and she flicked a glowing light of brilliant cyan blue to wriggle in his palm.
At first cool, friction from the magic’s constant motion soon produced warmth. Inside the light, shapes writhed into being. They formed small scenes then split apart, a kaleidoscope of possibilities.
A horse rode into a pock-marked battlefield—a warrior in chain mail seated on its back. The man raised a sword, his mouth opened wide in a battle cry. Even though the scene was mute, Nolan’s mind provided the shouted words. “Awaken Iron!”
The tiny man looked like a cross between Nolan’s dad and his Uncle Brian. With equal parts horror and wonder, Nolan realized he was peering at a grown-up version of himself.
Eyes wide, heart pounding, he stared into his future.
The scene changed. Jason’s despairing tear-streaked face peered out at him. Nolan jerked his head back in fright as though the vision would catch him staring.