Injustice III
Chapter 13

Copyright© 2017 by Uncle Jim

As we approached the shell around Uncle Thad’s house and buildings, I sounded the horn to alert them that we were back. There was no problem passing us and the SUV through the shell and its wards. Maureen was impressed with the size and color of the shell. Jill had told her how I had cast it when we had first arrived here.

Arriving in the field in front of the farmhouse, we could see a number of people out on the porch in addition to Uncle Thad and Aunt Grania, as they were surrounded by girls and young women who were their Granddaughters or Nieces. I was surprised by their numbers, but apparently Jill wasn’t.

“It looks like Uncle Thad invited all of the young women and girls from the whole Clan here to meet Maureen, as I see my remaining Brother’s two girls on the porch,” she told me.

As I pulled up near the house, all of the youngsters moved off the porch to greet us, as we exited the SUV. They were all laughing and giggling until they reached us, and then went silent, as Uncle Thad, Aunt Grania, and another man who I didn’t know joined them.

“Welcome back,” Thad said, but Jill wasn’t listening, as she raced around the SUV to embrace the other man with him. They hugged and kissed for several minutes, and the two girls with him moved up against Jill, as everyone else watched them but said little. Finally they parted, and Jill took his hand while the two girls trailed behind them. Jill led all of them over to where Maureen and I were standing beside the SUV.

“Max, this is my remaining Brother, Trevor Kelley and his Daughters,” she told me, before continuing, “who I haven’t seen in four years.” She then turned to her Brother and Nieces.

“Trev, this is Maximilian Hardtrick who will soon be my husband,” she told them.

“Glad to meet you,” Trev said, as we shook, and he then backed up a step.

“The same,” I answered while watching the look on his face.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Your Talent ... it’s ... it’s like none I have ever encountered before,” he told me.

While he was speaking, I again looked closely at him, as I had when Jill was so eagerly greeting him. He was about 5’-9’’ tall, maybe 165 pounds, perhaps 30 or 31 years old, and had the same bright red hair and green eyes that Jill has. His Daughters, while younger and shorter than Jill, had very similar hair color and eyes.

“Yes Trev, he has a huge Talent and can do more Magic than anyone else,” Jill told her Brother.

While all of this was going on, a number of the young women and girls had approached Maureen. Several of the young women had reached out to give her a hug after exchanging names with her, but they also had all backed up in surprise.

“You ... you too have a huge Talent, much stronger than any of ours. Are you Mr. Hardtrick’s Daughter?” the oldest of them, who couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen, asked Maureen.

“Oh no,” Maureen assured them, “my Father died in Afghanistan.”

“How do you have such a strong Talent then?” the young woman wanted to know. Maureen shrugged before answering.

“I don’t know, I just do,” she said.

Aunt Grania interrupted us then.

“Let’s get them moved into the house and their rooms. You can all get better acquainted then,” she told all of us. Turning to the SUV, I selected the ward surrounding Jill’s and my things and transferred them to the room that we had used previously, leaving Maureen’s things in the vehicle. All of the girls and young women were shocked on seeing this. That, of course, was before Maureen called her things to her from the vehicle also. There were gasps of shock from everyone including me, but not from Jill. I now knew what they had been doing in the back seat while I was driving.

“Let’s all go back to the house. These three still need to get settled, and it will be supper time before long,” Uncle Thad reminded everyone. We had started for the house just before the cats arrived and got under everyone’s feet. A number of them slipped up and sniffed Maureen, but one young female cat in particular stropped herself against Maureen’s leg several times.

“You have cats!” the young girl squealed in surprise.

“We have too many cats,” Aunt Grania said in an unhappy voice.

“Can I have one? We couldn’t have one in Boston, Mother couldn’t afford to feed it,” Maureen said reaching down for the small rust and white striped cat that jumped into her arms.

“You can have that one if you want, but not in the house. It will have to stay in the barn. No cats in the house,” Thad told her in a very positive voice.

“It will be all right, Maureen. You can play with the cat on the porch or in the barn when you have time,” Jill told her and picked up Maureen’s things, which she had dropped to pick up the cat. She held it all the way to the front door, where she sat it down on the porch. The cat seemed to understand and hurried off to join the others on the way back to the barn. It being late afternoon, I noticed that the thermometer on the porch read 60 degrees.

“How has the weather been?” I asked Thad.

“It’s been up and down. Nice for a few days before a cold spell blows in, then it’s cold for a few days. The nights are all pretty much the same. It gets pretty cold some nights,” he told me.

“Boston and Salem were very cold. We left shortly before it snowed heavily again with strong winds,” I told him. We were the last ones to enter the house.

On entering the house, Aunt Grania took Maureen up to the room that was to be hers. Jill followed along as she still had Maureen’s things. On seeing the room, Maureen was very disappointed, and Jill immediately objected to it.

“This will never do,” she told her Aunt.

“This is the same as the other girls have,” her Aunt answered.

“Maureen won’t be able to fit her doll house in here,” Jill told her.

“Doll house, what doll house?”

“The one that Max transferred here from her room in Boston,” Jill told her. “It’s in our room, and we will need to move it, so we have enough room to move around,” she continued.

“How big is this thing?” Grania demanded.

“Come to our room,” Jill told her and moved to our room and opened the door. Her Aunt was shocked to say the least.

“Good lord, how did that get in there?” she demanded.

“Max moved it here on Saturday morning before we left Boston,” Jill told her.

“It would never fit in her room, unless you removed the bed,” Grania admitted and stopped to think.

“The room next to yours would be large enough if we moved out one of the beds,” she said after a short time.

“I’ll get Max to help move the bed,” Jill told her Aunt before leaving to find me.

“We need you to help move something,” she said on approaching me down stairs.

“What are we moving?” I asked.

“A bed, we need make room for the doll house in the room, and one of the beds will need to go,” she told me. I followed her up to the room, and one look at the bed convinced me that we didn’t want to take it apart to move it. I cast a ward around it before turning to Aunt Grania.

“Where do you want it moved to?” I asked.

“Up to the attic,” she answered.

“Lead the way,” I told her.

“Aren’t you going to disassemble it?” she asked.

“No, I’ll move it like that,” I told her to a very confused look.

“All right,” she agreed after a minute or so and led the way to a room on the third floor, that was presently empty. I reached out with my Magic senses for the ward on the bed and transferred it up to the room and then canceled the ward.

“Lord have mercy, Thad never did anything like that,” Aunt Grania said on seeing the bed appear in the room. “I know who to call when I need things moved now,” she continued.

On returning to the now partly empty room, I transferred the doll house from our room to this one. Maureen was very happy now, but Jill and I still needed to get our things put away.

It didn’t take us long to do that, as we had done this often lately, and we still had things here, since we hadn’t taken all of our things with us to Boston. Especially, we still had the box with most of the gold and money that we had acquired in it. I was considering sending it to the farm to join the money from the Russians there, but would talk to Jill about that later. When we finished with our things, we went next door to see how Maureen was doing with her things. On reaching her door, we received quite a surprise.

Maureen was sitting on the bed with the cat that she had selected in her lap. The two of them were just sitting there, and both of them had a faraway look on their faces and in their eyes. It was several minutes before they became aware of us watching them. They both sat up then with startled looks on their faces. The cat appeared ready to leap out of Maureen’s lap and run off, but she lay a hand on the cat, and she relaxed. Jill was the one who handled the situation.

“Maureen, dear, what were you just doing?” she asked.

“I was talking to Lilly,” the young girl answered.

“Lilly?”

“My cat, I’ve named her Lilly,” Maureen said, as if it was something obvious to everyone.

“You were TALKING to her?” Jill inquired in a questioning voice.

“Yes, I was explaining about Boston and the snow there. She knows about snow, but they don’t have that much snow here. I showed her pictures from the last big snow storm,” she told Jill, much to our surprise.

“How were you talking to her, dear?” Jill asked carefully.

“The way that you talk to all animals, with your mind,” she answered, again as if it were a common occurrence.

“You have done this before then?” Jill asked.

“Yes, but not with a lot with cats. They are very calm and listen. Dogs are too active and don’t want to listen or behave,” Maureen told her.

“I see, how long have you been able to do this?” Jill asked in a nonchalant voice. Maureen shrugged, it seemed to be a standard reply for her.

“I don’t know, a long time,” she answered.

“Do your Mother and Grandfather know about this?” Jill asked, trying to get the young girl to talk about it more.

“No, they never asked about it. Grandfather would take me with him when he went to the Pub, but there wasn’t anything to do there. There were dogs and mice and rats around there, but I didn’t like talking to the rats and mice. They weren’t any fun. The dogs were always ready to talk, but they didn’t always pay attention to what I said to them,” she told us.

“How did you get Lilly in the house?” Jill asked next.

“I just called her to me, like you showed me how to do with my things,” Maureen told her.

“You just called her to you ... you didn’t transfer her here?” Jill asked, surprised.

“No, I’m not sure how to do that. I just thought about her being her with me, and she was here,” Maureen told her with another shrug.

“You know that Uncle Thad doesn’t like cats in the house,” Jill reminded her.

“Yes, I know, but I needed to talk to her more. We didn’t have enough time to talk before,” Maureen said in excuse.

“All right, dear, but she will have to go back to the barn shortly, and you still need to put your things away before it’s time to eat,” Jill reminded her.

“All right, Aunt Jill,” Maureen agreed before that blank look appeared on her face for a few seconds and the cat disappeared from her lap. Jill remained to help her put her clothing away, while I went to have a talk with Thad.

I found him in the parlor watching soccer with some of the young women. He looked up as I approached.

“We need to talk,” I told him.

“Something wrong?”

“A new discovery,” was all that I said.

“Let’s talk in the other room,” he told me, rising from his chair.

“What’s happened now?” he asked when we were alone.

“It appears that Maureen can converse with animals. We found her sitting on her bed with her cat in her lap. She says that she was talking to the cat,” I told him.

“How did the cat get in her room?” Thad asked in an unhappy voice.

“She said that she called it to her, just as she did with her belongings from the SUV.” I told a very unhappy looking Thad. He didn’t say anything for a short time.

“There are tales of people who could talk to animals, but no one has been able to do that for a very long time. Nick or Angus may know more about it though,” he finally told me.

“Is the cat still in her room?” he asked after that.

“No, she sent it back to the barn,” I told him.

“How powerful is that girl?” he asked next.

“I’m not sure, and I’ve never met anyone who could talk to another species. She keeps coming up with surprises,” I told him.

“I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to help her. She may need to stay with Nick before long. We’ll need to talk to him in a day or so,” Thad told me in a very serious voice.

“We will need to speak to both Nick and Angus about her, but she is still a young girl and needs to continue her regular schooling as well as her Magic education. She also needs to associate with those close to her age. She has already spent a lot of time with just her Grandfather, as her Mother works most days. Her Grandfather, Paddy, often took her to the Pub with him when he drank,” I told him.

“Yes, the Irish are all great drinkers,” Thad agreed remembering the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve parties last year.

 
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