Chapter 17

Mom called me for lunch shortly after my friends left. She had made a pot of homemade beef barley soup and had warmed a couple loaves of crusty bread in the oven. Part of me didn't have much of an appetite, but part of me knew I should eat. I stared at my food for about a minute.

Mom apparently intuited what was going on. She broke off a hunk of bread, stuck it in my soup, and held it near my mouth. "Just try a little." I opened up, and she popped it in. Once my taste buds started functioning, the despairing nausea in my innards backed off enough to let me eat.

On the couch in the basement, I settled in after lunch with the same notebook I had used to design the protection sigil. I wondered if I could come up with something to change the mind of Kirsten's father.

Manipulating people against their will is an unethical use of magic, thought Ursus. At least it is in matters that aren't clear cases of self-defense or the defense of others.

Keeping Kirsten and me apart is against our wills.

As the parent of a child, his responsibility is to protect her. You might think he's overreacting, but he has no choice but to use his best judgment. Who else's can he use? In any case, it's still wrong to use magic that way.

Why?

If it's wrong to do it physically, it's wrong to do it magically. It's like walking up to someone and beating him with a stick. Except using magic that way is even worse, because you can often do it covertly. Using magical force against someone is still using force.

I sat thinking it over. I didn't really want to see his point, but I saw it nonetheless. Being good can be hard sometimes.

Indeed, but you can sleep well and look at yourself in the mirror. Besides, life is more enjoyable when people trust you.

I thought that over for a little while, too. What should we do, then? I'd like to get more practice with magic.

Well, we've come up with a way to make a little money, and we've devised a way to increase our safety. How about a health spell? It won't be perfect, but it ought to make us at least somewhat healthier.

We were of one mind that it was a good idea, so I started designing a sigil. Health is an abstract concept rather hard to visualize. I began with the letters in the word and then turned to my health textbook for help. I made rough sketches of healthy hearts, blood vessels, lungs, bone, skin, kidneys, and so on. I drew a generic germ with a slash through it. Getting into the spirit of things, I drew a sketch of a kid in bed with a thermometer in his mouth and put a slash through the picture. I drew a sketch of a healthy me--slender, straight, muscular. None of it was good art, but it didn't have to be at this point.

I started the iterative process of combining and simplifying. Part way through, Mary came over and sat on the end of the couch. "Watcha doin'?"

I showed her the notebook and explained the idea behind sigil making. "Magic is controlled by visualization--purposefully imagining things vividly in your mind--and metaphor. You've learned about metaphors in reading, right?"

"That's using a comparison to show your meaning. 'Quick as a wink' or 'He was a giant of a man.'"

"Yeah, like that. But they can be other kinds of symbols rather than just words. A sigil is a type of concentrated metaphor."

"You can make one of these sigil things and it does magic?"

"Not by itself. You need to use them in a ritual. You saw me doing one of those last week."

"So you can do magic with a sigil and a ritual?"

"Yeah, but not everyone can do magic, and for the ritual to work, you first have to gather magical energy, called manna."

She was starting to look a little frustrated. "And how do you do that?"

"So far, the only way I've figured out how to do it is by putting myself into a trance and calling the manna to me."

"OK, how do you do that, then?"

"That takes a lot of practice, but I can tell you how to begin learning." I taught her how to do diaphragmatic breathing and then the progressive relaxation technique. "A way to start is to relax like I showed you every night before going to sleep. If you're still awake at the end of it, try to pay attention to your deep breathing and nothing else. Once you get good at doing it before you fall asleep, start trying it sitting up so that you don't fall asleep. When you can get to the point where your head starts emptying out of stray thoughts, you're ready for more."

"This magic stuff sounds hard."

"It's good that it is. Can you imagine what someone like Carol Flagler would do if he was able to do magic?"

She thought for a moment and then gave a little shudder. "That would be awful."

I got back to making my sigil. Mary sat on the end of the couch and practiced relaxing and breathing. For a first effort, she kept at it longer than I would have if I hadn't had internal help. Her ability to suppress boredom was better than mine, but she did wander off after a while.

When I was satisfied with the rough sigil, I sat at the table and reproduced it neatly in pencil. I wouldn't finish it in blood and charge it until closer to bedtime, because it was sure to make me tired, although not nearly as much as the actual spell on Sunday. In the meantime, I practiced guitar and read The Iliad, which I had been halfway through when I'd started the guitar books.

I got my pocketknife athame back from Dad, who had absentmindedly left it on his dresser when he had cleaned out his pockets Friday night. "Do you carry that thing in school?"

"Yes."

"Isn't that against the rules?"

"Yes, but as long as I never take it out, I won't get caught."

"If you can't use it, why carry it?"

"I might need it on the way there or on the way back here."

He gave me a skeptical look and said, "You're full of old rope," but he dropped the subject.

Sunday was much like Saturday. I decided to work somewhat ahead in my social studies text; I could pretty much guess where we were going next in the book even if it wasn't yet assigned. Danny, Mike, and Terry came over for a couple of hours in the afternoon to play music.

Sean arrived while the others were still around. The grapevine had reached him, and he wanted to hear what happened from the source. I thoroughly filled him in, knowing he could be counted upon to spread the word. "Beating up four guys, that's totally flipped out."

After everyone left, I read and practiced guitar. I even made three of the damn stupid book reports for the two guitar books and the Iliad, which were the only books I'd finished since the recent beginning of the second quarter.

The spell before bed went fine, and Mary quietly observed me working it. She helped with the cleanup, which I much appreciated as I staggered around in exhaustion.

The big event of the weekend as far as I was concerned, though, wasn't the spell. It was a resolution I made with myself: I wasn't going to let Kirsten go without a fight. I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but I liked her too much to just give up.

Considering that I was on parole or its moral equivalent, Mom insisted that I ride to school with her. When I arrived in front of the grade-six door on Monday, 29 November, Kirsten walked straight up to me and gave me a hug. She whispered, "Dad can keep me away from you after school, but he can't do a thing about school hours. Besides, Mom's on my side."

I immediately felt better than I had since Friday evening. No, that is an understatement. I felt terrific knowing that Kirsten wasn't going to give up, either. I held on to her long enough that some of the other students began making "woo hoo" noises and wolf whistles.

When I released her, she immediately grabbed my hand. I looked around some, now that my eyes were able to look upon more than Kirsten. Carol and Pat were in the crowd and had several people surrounding them. They weren't looking at me, but a lot of the people with them were. Sean had gone over to talk to Al. Donald wasn't around, but he seldom arrived before the doors were unlocked.