Chapter 20

Mom and Dad were staying home; forcing Dad to go shopping three nights in a row was unnecessarily cruel. At dinner, Mary had talked excitedly about Danny's pedal car, and I believe everyone in my family was disappointed when he didn't drive it over. "Sorry," he said, "my mom won't let me take it out in the dark until I put some lights on it."

He did bring three harmonicas in different keys, and we went downstairs to play. I said, "Mike and Terry will be here in a few minutes." I taught Danny the melody and harmony of "The Shepherd's Lament," and we went through it a couple times with each of us taking lead once. Dan also kept the beat on his bass drum.

Mary and all three cats came down when Mike and Terry arrived. We picked up where we had let off the evening before, except sometimes Danny played along with the harmony, sometimes the melody, and sometime he just blew the occasional accent here and there. He also suggested that Mary double on the keyboard part of the organ the bass note of each chord in addition to pressing the chord buttons.

I thought we were sounding passably good, and we must have been, because after we had worked out the kinks for hour or so, the rest of my family members came down and went over to the sitting area where they could listen.

Once we had an audience, Ursus reached out for the manna. It was close. Come to me, he told it. Come to me. It was difficult to play the rhythm correctly and also coax the manna, but I managed. Still, we couldn't quite draw it in. Maybe when everyone got a little better, or maybe when we had a bigger audience, or maybe the problem was something else entirely.

I noticed that my friends seemed to be getting somewhat bored, so I said, "There are other things the rhythm guitarist can do besides just playing four strums on the beat. One is to provide an alternating bass line. On every other beat, instead of the chord, play the bottom note of the chord on one of the two lowest strings." I demonstrated, and we worked on that a while.

Everyone cleared out around 8:30. "Mary," I said, "it looks like once I achieve trance, it's hard to bother me, so why don't you wait about a half-hour and then come back and practice with your lesson book on the chord organ. You can also run interference for me if anyone else comes down."

"OK. I'll keep the volume low."

I did the setup rituals and began tracing over my money-finding glyph with blood and feeding it manna. It was a bit before ten when I finished, and I was still in trance and holding some manna. I deepened the trance and filled myself with as much manna as I could hold.

Mary, at the chord organ, had her back to me. I didn't say anything, but I rapped on the table to get her attention while I struggled to maintain intense concentration. Mary looked up, and I made a "come here" motion.

When she crossed the circle without ritual preparation, I lost about half the manna I was holding. Still, once she was close enough to touch, I passed her more than I ever had before.

Her eyes opened in surprise even as she smiled with pleasure. "What did you just do?" Of course, she didn't know how to actually maintain a hold on magical energy yet, but she had felt it pass through her.

"That's what manna, feels like. To put it crudely, it's the fuel that makes magic work. If you want to be a magician, you need to learn how to get manna and hold on to it."

"It felt really good."

"It does. It has been helping me feel better lately."

"I've noticed you've been happier and, well, nicer."

"I'm sorry that I was so hard to get along with for so long."

"It's OK. I'm just glad you've been treating everyone better."

"So am I."

I was tired and went to bed. Before we went to sleep, Ursus thought, I think we should try making an amulet soon.

How do we do that?

Lots of ways are possible. One is to carve or mold a sigil into something durable. One pours as much manna into it as possible during creation, and then keeps it on one's person.

I thought about that. Why don't we make all of our sigils into amulets, so we don't have to destroy them?

There are tradeoffs. For a given level of magical ability, the initial power of a sigil-sacrifice spell is larger. When one makes an amulet, one is trading peak power for durability. Too, amulets do need to be recharged occasionally, the frequency in part depending upon the material with which they're made. The more amulets you carry, the more of your time you need to spend recharging them.

I guess that makes sense.

The next morning, I woke up about eight. Mom and Dad were going shopping, so there was no way for me to cast the money spell. In any case, Ursus had warned that it was going to be more powerful than before, and thus take more out of me, so I was going to have to work it before bed. Sunday, therefore, was going to be money-search day.

I went downstairs and worked on the final copy of my term paper. I had it finished, in my neatest handwriting, just before Mom and Dad left at about ten. I would look it over again and have Mom, Dad, and Mary each read it later.

Shortly after my parents left, Danny, Mike, and Terry all came over to work on music. I noticed that they seemed both more mellow and happier than normal. "Are you guys high?"

Rich, Charlie, and Susan had dug a big box of blocks out of the storage room and were paying us no mind. Danny looked at Mary. "Are you going to narc on us?"

I had been letting her hang around with my friends more than before, and she seemed to like it. Her face looked troubled, but then it firmed. "No, no I won't. What you guys do to your brains and lungs is your own business."

"Yeah," said Danny, "I scored a little sin semilla, and the three of us smoked it before coming over."

As long as they weren't lighting up in the basement, I didn't much care. I said, "I hope it doesn't interfere with practice."

"We didn't have that much," said Mike.

I believed we actually sounded somewhat better than the previous evening. On the rhythm parts we concentrated on alternating bass lines. I tried calling manna several times--still, no joy.

During one pause, Danny said, "I believe we could use a high-hat to go along with the kick drum."

"Ek-skellent idea," Mike agreed.

"Do you know where you can get one?" Terry asked.

"Other than at a store, you mean?"

"Of course. You're the sultan of swap."

"I might be able to get one the same place I got the drum, but I'd need to find something he wanted."

"More weed?" suggested Mike.

"Then I have to find something the person with the pot wants. Don't worry about it; I'll work on the problem."

Everyone got ready to disperse at lunchtime. Just before they left, I said, "Guys, I'm not going to be available at our normal time tomorrow. Do you think we could delay practice until three o'clock or so?"

"What's up?" Mike asked.

"It's Christmas related, so I don't want to talk about it." The explanation was true enough that it didn't activate my conscience.

"We'll see what we can do, I guess," said Terry. My friends planned on spending the afternoon working on the pedal car.

Mary and I made some sandwiches and warmed up some soup. As the five of us Powyr kids sat around the table eating, Rich said, "You guys are starting to sound good."

"Great!" chimed in Charlie.

"Thanks."

"So, are you going to form a band?" Rich asked.

"No one has said much about it, but you never know." I knew we weren't good enough for that, yet.

"You should."

After we cleaned up the lunch mess, Rich and Charlie were getting antsy over being stuck inside, so we all went out in the backyard and threw a Fliskus around for a while. When Susan began looking cold, Mary herded us inside, and we played board games for the rest of the afternoon.

It was getting late when Mary said, "What should we do about supper?"

"My guess is the folks are going to bring some carryout home."

"What if they don't?"

"I can't believe that Mom would expect us to make supper. Our kitchen skills aren't up to it." Actually, Ursus's were, but Arthur's weren't. Fortunately, my prophecy was correct, and Mom and Dad soon arrived with pizza.

"Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!" yelled Rich and Charlie until Dad told them to "be still." They even had managed to get Susan to chime in a few times.

After supper, I gave my term paper to the parents to read. "If you see something wrong, please mark it very lightly with this pencil." I then went to the basement to finish up my homework for the weekend.

That finished, I went up and borrowed the example money from Mom again. "You say you use this to train yourself to find money?"

"It worked the first two times, didn't it?"

"Yes, but it's such a weird-ass idea."

"I'm not going to change my method at this point. If it works because it actually works, or if it works because it just gives me more confidence, I don't really care for now."

Mom turned over the loot with a shake of her head, and I took Mary downstairs. I told her to bring something to read with her. "I'm going to cast the money-finding spell now. I need you to make sure no one interrupts, or we're going to have to wait until next weekend to cast it, and there might be snow on the ground by then."

"I'll do my best, but I can't run off Mom or Dad if they want to come down."

"Don't try with them. Just tell them my method of training myself is a magic money-finding spell, and it will be ruined if I break concentration. With luck, they'll just assume it's kid nonsense."

The spell went much like the previous two times I had cast it, except this time I finished by meditating upon the sigil and feeding it manna until I simply knew it was complete. When I broke the circle and thanked and dismissed the elemental powers, I felt as if I had been dragged through a marathon. "Mary, help." I leaned against a support post.

She came over and assisted me by opening the window and giving me a shoulder to lean on as I burned the sigil. I burned my original voodoo portrait as well. After that, I flopped on the couch, and that was it.