Family of the Fox, #1

by F. M. Isaacs

  I was delighted, but also deeply unsettled. “Daniel! We’re really at Disneyland? Someone will see us!” I cried out, grabbing his shoulder.

  “Well, it's three in the morning here, so it's unlikely. I did a bit of time traveling.” He seemed very pleased with himself.

  “Don't they have cameras and security?”

  “I guess...”

  “So I’m right! Someone will see us! Think, Daniel!”

  Another lurch, and we were in a meadow surrounded by thick woods.

  “Not here they won't.”

  “Why not?” I stomped up and down on the soft grass to see if it was real. Then I bent down and plucked a flower from the patch of clover near my feet. I sniffed at the blossom, reveling in the fragrance. Yup, very real. “So where's here?”

  “1328.”

  I actually laughed. “No way. Even if that's true, why?”

  “Julian showed me this place. It's around where Delaware will be. He used to take Mom here.”

  I think I almost lost my lunch. My father took my mother here? “My dad...?”

  “He showed me some great stuff. Sometimes Mom does too.”

  “Mom.”

  “Both of them.”

  “Time travelers?”

  “Yup.”

  My parents were time travelers. I'd known them my whole life, but I had no idea that anyone could travel in time, let alone them. What other surprises awaited me? Was my entire life a lie? Was the world a lie? How much more ludicrous could this get?

  “So it's genetic?” It was all I could think to reply.

  He regarded me for a moment. “I guess? Can you do it?”

  “What do I do?”

  “Think about taking us home, then push us there.”

  I tried. Nothing happened.

  “Hmm. Well, first of all, you don't look like you're concentrating enough.”

  My stomach was jumping all over my body. Being that nervous makes it hard to concentrate on much of anything.

  “Mom says something needs to push you into your abilities. I went through a lot of tough stuff in the past few years, and she thinks that helped me.”

  “So did Matthew.”

  He smiled knowingly.

  Now I really felt like an outsider. “Matthew? Really? He's one too?”

  “No. He's a healer. He healed my dad, in fact.”

  So Jack's incredible and instantaneous recovery wasn’t the result of a miracle drug. Matthew had done it! Then my mind snapped back to that night with the...whatevers...ripping at my shoulders. I knew I'd been hurt far worse than it appeared.

  “He healed me too! He healed me and he didn't tell me either! I hate him too! Take me home now, Daniel!”

  Immediately we returned to my room, and I almost gagged, but I continued my tirade nonetheless. “Why didn't he tell me...”

  “He didn't know then. He just found out after that all happened. Calm down, Corinne!”

  “Why can't I do anything?”

  “You probably will,” he said quietly. “Mom and Julian have been watching you for ages. Maybe you haven't been 'set off' yet. Mom didn't develop her abilities until she was about thirty-eight.”

  I thought about my stupid dream. “I dreamed that things would attack me from the sky, and they did.”

  My brother smirked. “Well, I'm not sure about that one...”

  I so needed to talk to my parents now. “You keep saying ‘abilities’.”

  “Abilities, talents, whatever. Mom and Julian are really powerful. They can do lots of stuff, and they expect you to be amazing,” Daniel whispered. “I'm a bit jealous, in fact. My dad can't do a damn thing. That's why he and Mom divorced.”

  I drew in my breath.

  “He couldn't deal with her as she discovered her abilities and as they kept growing.”

  “Oh, poor Jack.”

  “Yeah, he was nothing compared to Julian,” he said with a twinge of regret. “But honestly, Julian is awesome. He's been so helpful, like a second father to us, as you know.”

  “I'm glad,” I responded smugly. Even now, when my brothers were adults, Dad was still being a good stepfather.

  “Listen, I gotta get back and finish up some work for the semester. But whenever you need me, I can pop in, and when you're ready, pick a time in history and I'll take you there. Matthew too. I took him to Ancient Rome on the night of your party. He almost got us thrown into the arena with the gladiators.”

  He found this extremely hysterical. I, on the other hand, was horrified. My goofy brothers alone in Ancient Rome? They were lucky they made it home alive.

  “So that's it. You tell me you're a time traveler and then you're leaving me?”

  “The next step is having a discussion with Mom and Julian to fill you in on the rest.”

  Right. The big conversation. My teeth were chattering just thinking about it.

  “Before I go, I have to ask. Has Allen changed you yet?” he mur-mured.

  Oh, yeah. Then there was the fact that transformation was totally possible. How could I forget that newest of revelations? “No. He offered me to, but it's too freaky to think about.” I moved closer to him. “He was a dragon, Daniel! A real, live dragon!”

  My brother's eyes widened. “No! I want to see him like that!”

  “But...”

  “Wouldn't you want to try that? You've got to let him change you!”

  “I'm scared it'll be...scary.” I could be so articulate at times...

  “Oh, let him. It's awesome. What do you think we were doing at your party?”

  The clawing... “Was that you coming after Matthew and me?”

  “What?”

  “The scratching...birds that...weren't there?”

  He looked puzzled. “We were deer, not birds. Unless...” He stopped, thinking. “Well, Allen can't become invisible, but there was something after us...”

  “So he was changing you at the party. He said there's some stupid school project you needed help with.”

  Daniel blushed, “Well, being transformed into all kinds of things is my own personal project. I guess we could have waited until after the party. Sorry.”

  So Allen hadn't quite lied about what they'd been up to, but it was pretty close.

  “Just be careful, Corinne. Everyone wants me to bring Allen back. They keep telling me I'm responsible for cleaning up my own mess, and they're saying they'll do it if I don't. But he's so much better off here, and I have such a great time with him...”

  I examined my brother, looking for any sign that he’d been an animal. But there was no indication he’d become anything other than human. Not even a bit of fur stuck out from his skin.

  “Does it hurt?”

  “God, no. Try it. I dare you.”

  And he was gone.

  Outraged by my brother’s abrupt departure, I stamped my foot, opening and closing my fists furiously. I wanted to shout at him more, but we were done for the moment. So it was now time to let my anger out on Matthew.

  “HEY, KID! WHAT'S UP?” my unsuspecting other brother answered his phone.

  Unfortunately, I started crying again instead of yelling. At this point weeping seemed to be what I did best. Daniel could time travel, Matthew could heal people, and I could cry.

  “I hate...you guys...so much...” I pushed out between sobs.

  “Corinne? What's wrong?”

  “You healed us! You saved Jack! Why wouldn't you tell me?”

  Silence. “I...couldn't?”

  “You couldn't? What kind of stupid answer is that?”

  “You know I couldn't tell you that! Mom and Julian said–”

  I cut him off. I didn't care how unreasonable I was being. “Who cares what they said!”

  “Corinne, do you want me to come there? Daniel can teleport me–”

  “I don't want him to teleport you! I just saw him until he freaking disappeared on me!” The fact that the word “teleport” had just been used in everyday conversation made me feel even wo
rse. “I feel like I'm the only powerless person in the world, and you're all better than me. I can't wait until Mom and Dad get home so I can yell at them too!”

  I PACED BACK AND FORTH in the empty house like a predator, waiting to hear the sound of the garage door opening. Since it was Wednesday, Dad and Mom worked the same hours, so Dad usually brought Mom to and from her office. I knew I should give them time to decompress when they got home from a long day, but I had to talk to them. Desperately. I was past the yelling stage, now more in a mind-frame of self-loathing and despair, but I needed them.

  When my parents came in, I immediately felt guilty. My mother looked like she’d survived a war, and Dad wasn't much better off.

  “I had to do a stainless steel crown on a screaming kid today,” Mom muttered. “I need chocolate.” She started to search through the cabinets.

  I was about to tell her we don't have any when she walked to the refrigerator and pulled out a plate of chocolate peanut-butter chip brownies. I swear I had not seen them before.

  “Want?” She offered them to me, placing them on the table by where I now sat.

  “I want,” Dad said, settling down beside me. He took a bite. “Oh, Patricia... Always perfect. I know why these are Jonas' favorite desserts on the planet.”

  She finally sat down, grumbling, “I hate working on screaming kids.”

  “Then send them to the pedodontist.”

  “Well, the parent's a friend of a friend, and the kid's nine years old...”

  “Patricia, did she really need that treatment?” My father was regarding her fixedly, and I wondered for a moment if my mother was committing fraud or something.

  Mom only nodded. “Her previous dentist said she needed it. She did,” she said simply. “But I hate doing them. Especially when the parent is in the room.”

  “Yes,” Dad agreed, “a parent there can definitely make it harder to...work.” Why were they looking at each other so intently like that? What was the hesitation I heard in Dad’s voice?

  Then it hit me. If Matthew could heal, and there were “stories” about my mother “healing” a patient's teeth... And then there was Jack, who wanted her to visit him in the hospital...

  “Why didn't you just heal the tooth, Mom?” I asked.

  My voice hung in the air like a dark cloud, and both parents froze.

  “What you mean, Corinne?” Mom responded cautiously.

  “She's heard too many of the crazy patient stories,” Dad tried to shrug the comment off with a laugh. “Brownie?” He pushed the plate closer to me.

  I nudged it away, feeling that unexplainable rage returning. “I didn't see Mom cook them.” Was this another impossible feat, or did I simply miss her making them?

  Brusquely, Dad stood up. “Well, she made them,” he retorted, going over to the refrigerator and taking out the juice. When I saw his hand was shaking, I knew I’d hit pay dirt.

  “Dad, you're a time traveler.”

  My father dropped the juice. It spattered all over the kitchen, and he cursed. Repeatedly. Mom jumped up to help clean it, murmuring, “Julian, Julian,” but Dad stepped past it as if it wasn't there.

  Feeling victorious, I sat up straight in my chair. Finally I had the upper hand! “I know all about it. Don't try to cover it up. Daniel is too. He proved it to me.”

  My father approached me, the oddest expression on his face. It wasn't anger. I wasn't really sure what it was.

  “You can't deny it, Dad!” I cried, feeling the tears coming again. “Daniel told me!”

  By now, he was standing over me, and he ran his hands through my hair. “Corinne, our Corinne...” This made me burst into sobs, and he mumbled, “Don't cry. Don't...”

  Through my tears, I could see Mom come up beside him. “Why won't you admit it?” I exclaimed. “Why didn't you tell me? You all left me out in the cold! Don't cover it up anymore! Don't lie to me!”

  “We're not covering it up,” Mom replied quite plainly.

  I looked up at her. The beautiful brownish eyes, the dark hair... This was my mother, but there was something more there. Something beyond ordinary humanity.

  “Mom can travel too,” Dad remarked. Then, juice-soaked clothes and all, he collapsed into the chair across from me.

  “I know,” I muttered. The helplessness and the feeling of being weaker than everyone else had been reinforced. “Oh, God...” I sniffled.

  Mom joined us at the table, and we blinked back and forth at each other. She waited patiently for me to speak.

  “What else do you do, Dad?” I questioned in a quavering voice. “Do you teleport like Daniel?”

  He nodded. “That's part of time traveling.”

  Summoning a smile to her lips, Mom pointed to the broken light bulb high above us. “Well, Julian, I guess you don't need the ladder to fix that burnt-out bulb anymore.”

  Glancing up, Dad seemed almost bashful. “Guess not.” And suddenly, he was levitating.

  I gasped as he bobbed up to the ceiling, and, as if suspended by invisible wires, he unscrewed the light bulb then floated down beside us. “We'll need that bulb now, Patricia.”

  A curse escaped my lips. I couldn't help it.

  Mom narrowed her eyes at my expletive, then she actually giggled, “Yes, your father is a flying time traveler. Well, a time traveler who can fly.”

  A flying time traveler? How did one even react to such a statement?

  I twisted toward my mother. “Okay. My time traveler-father can fly. Excellent. Now what about you, Mom?”

  She bowed her head, so I turned to Dad for further comment.

  “Your mother can do pretty much anything. Bulb, please, Patricia?”

  A look of deep concentration came over Mom's face. She took my father's hands, flipping them palm-up, and then held her fingers over them. And something was appearing.

  A ghostly outline of a light bulb formed right there on top of Dad's palms.

  “That's the right size, Julian?” Mom asked.

  He gave a proud nod, and she continued on. The bulb image coalesced into something more solid. First it became translucent, then the base turned completely opaque, and a bulb covered the LEDs in the middle. Mom tapped at the glass with a fingernail, and it clinked. “All yours,” she said, sitting back and yawning.

  My mother had just made something from nothing.

  “Thus the brownies,” explained my father. Then he flew back up and replaced the light bulb. Of course it worked when he turned it back on, as any normal bulb would.

  Just like when Allen had revealed himself to me, my head was swimming, and I grew remarkably faint. I tottered on the chair, and Mom was somehow right beside me, catching me before I tumbled to the floor.

  “Let's get her to sleep,” Dad suggested, alighting beside my mother. He lifted me in his arms, and next I knew all three of us were in my bedroom and Mom was tucking me into my bed.

  “Mom, it's only six o'clock,” I protested.

  “Sleep. You've had a lot to absorb. What you've learned in one day is overwhelming. Sleep on it a bit.”

  “But Mom–”

  “Sleep.”

  She touched me, and I was out.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Somehow I got through school the next day. I had slept straight through the night, and the slumber that Mom had placed me in was the deepest, most relaxing one I had experienced in a long time. And she was right – it did help me accept yesterday's otherworldly events a little better.

  But still, as I sat through each class, my mind wandered to the fantastical. Dragons danced in front of me, and I marveled at how Allen could become a mythical creature. I guess if he could change his body in any way, it didn't matter whether the form existed in nature or not. But what did that feel like? He claimed to dissolve into energy, then to return in a completely alien form. Daniel said it didn't hurt, but how could it not? How was it even possible?

  My mind's eye focused on the image of Daniel, looking so smug as he brought me to a different t
ime and place.

  I shivered, pondering just when and where my older brother had explored so far with his new talent – other than Ancient Rome, of course. It wasn't fair that he could do that and I couldn't.

  And Matthew could heal people?

  Mom and Dad were super-powerful?

  I held out hope that I was a seer. I decided to work on that. I'd get online and read everything about it, and learn how to bring it out if I had that ability.

  Allen wasn't in school, which irked me to no end. Didn't he have any schedule to adhere to? I wanted to tell him about all my discoveries, to hear about his adventures with Daniel, and to learn more about his past.

  What if I wanted to call him? Did he have a phone?

  I stayed after school to clean out my locker for the end of the year. There wasn't much to get rid of, but it felt good to purge whatever I could of high school. I worked slowly, not wanting to return to my empty house, where the prospect of being powerless would be most overwhelming.

  But I needed to find out more about my parents, and to learn about myself. They were expecting me to be able to “do” something. But what? And how would I “do” anything? From what I understood, something needed to set me off. I hadn't endured the sadness that Daniel and Matthew had experienced. Could my “bird attack” have touched off a possible forecast-the-future talent?

  Yet my mother had been so dismissive of it, and it had only happened once.

  I slammed my locker shut and trudged through the empty hall. The only people I encountered were a couple from my English class lurking under the stairs. They paid me no heed, and frankly, I couldn't have cared less about them either. I walked out the side entrance by the woods, noting that the teachers' parking lot was completely devoid of cars. Of course. Who would stay after school in this summer weather if they didn't need to?

  A flock of starlings landed in a nearby tree and began to make quite a racket. As I watched them dart back and forth between branches, an odd whinny caught my attention. I followed the sound, and there, on the edge of the woods, waited a magnificent black stallion.