Sorry people – real life has been a bit hectic

By the time he finished reading the journal, he had much greater theoretical knowledge of what spells his grandmother had available and what they were used for without much practical information on how the spells were crafted, which was a bit frustrating. Over the next few months, he kept re-reading parts of the journal while trying to nut out how she did things. The key seemed to be collecting power which wasn’t really explained in detail, but from a couple of indirect references, he decided it involved absorbing sunshine.

One afternoon when his dad had gone fishing with a mate, his mother asked him how he was going with his grandmother’s stuff.

“Okay, I guess. She mentions quite a few of the things she could do but never explains how she did them.”

“Like what? His mother asked.

“Hang on. I’ve made a list.”

He ducked into his room and retrieved the list he’d made. He brought it back out to the living room where his mother was waiting.

“Right. Let’s see. Sleep, Stun, Shield, Push, Laugh, Hiccup, and Fireball. She also mentions something called bubbles and a spell to make her unnoticeable.”

“I never could work out what she meant by bubbles. I could sort of do the unnoticeable spell, but if I moved, it didn’t work very well. The other spells I learned were Sleep and Stun. Push I lacked the strength for, and she never taught me how to do a Fireball. There were two types of Shield spells. There is a mental Shield that blocks your mental projection and stops things like Sleep and a physical Shield that stops objects. I was okay at the mental Shield but lousy at the Physical one. You can sense people magically?”

“Yes. You are really bright.”

“Oh. Thanks. So close your eyes and watch me mentally.”

He did so, and her glow damped right down until it was about as bright as a dog.

“Wow! How did you do that?”

“I put up my mental shield. Think of a mirror, double-sided, surrounding your head. It keeps your thoughts in and stops others from getting through to you. Come outside.”

She led him onto the porch at the back of the house and had him sit on the deck crosslegged.

“Close your eyes and feel the sun on your skin. Feel the heat flowing into your blood and spreading around your body. Now imagine the double-sided mirror around your head.”

She closed her own eyes and could sense his shaky shield.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“Yes. Now let it go. Practice that every day. As you get stronger and more comfortable doing it, eventually, you will do it automatically. Now feel that power flowing through you again. That is how you power all the spells. Now let the power dissipate from your body into the air around you. Good. Holding too much power can be dangerous, apparently. I could never pull in enough power for that to be a problem.”

The box contained a heap of loose paper with notes scribbled on them and a small journal. His grandmother’s handwriting was hard to decipher, but he started on the journal. He kept an eye on the time, and ten minutes before his dad would normally get home from work, he packed everything away and headed inside, where he hid the box again before his father got home.

A week later, he hadn’t learned anything much in the way of magic as the pages he’d read had mostly been information on people and places she had been traveling through when she started the journal. There was a reference to her stunning two men who were obnoxious but no information on how that spell worked. He made a note of it on his computer, packed up well before his father was due home, and started on his homework.

He made steady progress studying the stuff in the box every day over the rest of the school week, apart from Thursday when he just had too much homework to do. He did learn a few things, mainly mentions of things his grandmother had done or considered doing. She mentioned using a sleep spell lightly on a male pest at a party at one spot, while at another, she said she had been shielding herself mentally at one point, and at another point, after the same function, she had used a shield spell to protect herself from heavy rain and hail.

The biggest takeaway he got that week was her mention of how she could close her eyes and sense the people around her. Apparently, she could tell where people were around her and the difference between a normal person and someone with some magic genes. He had no idea of how to go about that, but he decided to close his eyes and see what he could achieve.

He let his consciousness settle, and he could “see” glows. Hmm. He moved his head and studied what he was sensing. There were two bright glows to his left, and beyond them, at what he felt was probably some distance, there was a whole group of dull glows. To his right, there were four dull glows fairly close. Beyond these nearby glows, which he could sense clearly, there were more glows, but he got the feeling they were all further away.

He considered where he was. The two bright glows had to be his mum and sister. The four to his right were the Kings, the people who lived next door. Interesting. In his mind’s eye, his mum and sister, who both had a fair number of the engineered genes, showed up brighter than everyone else nearby. He studied the Kings some more and noticed that two of the glows were a little brighter than the other two. Not by a lot, but noticeable.

Over the next couple of days, he practiced sensing others, and he also began noticing other things when he closed his eyes. There was a blueness that he found strange. And things that he could sort of see, maybe, that appeared to be just floating around. Hmm. He didn’t know what to make of them. He wasn’t even sure they were real and not something his mind was making up.

“It’s not like it used to be, dad. People are proud of their engineered genes these days.”

“Being tall or purple isn’t the same as being able to do shit. Having powers scares people. Trust me, I know.”

His father used his hands to compress the sunlight into a small ball of light between them. Andrew looked at his father and realized that he was further advanced than his father. He didn’t have to do his father’s extravagant hand movements to achieve the same effect. He decided his father must’ve repressed his abilities to hide for notice. Damn. He’d been hoping his father would teach him more advanced techniques rather than the fumbling self-teaching he had been managing.

” I guess I was hoping you would teach me all those fancy magical tricks I’ve heard all the stories about, dad.”

“Your grandmother tried to teach me a couple of times, but I wasn’t interested. It was just too dangerous. You only had to do one thing once in the hue and cry would be up and, if you’re lucky, escape and be able to hide somewhere else. I don’t know how many times your grandmother had to move in her life, and it wasn’t just because she didn’t get older. A lot of the time, it was because she did something accidentally that made it obvious she had power.”

His father stood up and looked down at him, a frown on his face.

“I can’t stop you fooling around with that stuff, but you won’t do it under my roof, do you understand?”

“Yes, dad. I understand.”

“I want your word. No magic in this house.”

Andrew shrugged. “Ok, dad. I give you my word. No magic in the house.”

“Good.”

His father gave him a sharp look and then left the room. However, all was not lost. On Friday afternoon, when his father normally went to the pub for drinks with the boys from work, his mother took him into their room and pulled out a box she kept in the back of the bottom drawer of her dresser.

“This was left to you by your grandmother. Your father thought I had thrown it out when we went through her things. I showed them to my father, but he and his fellow soldiers had never really received much training in power techniques. I could do some simple things, but I think I lack the right genes to do much. Your father can’t do much either, but I think with him, it’s more a matter of not wanting rather than not being able to. Take the box and hide it in your room somewhere.”

He took the box and smiled at his mother.

“Thanks, mum!”

He hid the box under his bed and refrained from the incredibly strong temptation to go through it right then! He had told his dad he wouldn’t do stuff at home, and he wouldn’t. There was no opportunity over the weekend, but Monday afternoon after school, he grabbed the box and went out behind the garage. It was still on their property, but it wasn’t technically under his dad’s roof.

He had been arguing with himself about whether he should tell his father about his abilities over the last few months. From things his father had said, Andrew had gotten the impression that his father didn’t think much of tellies or people with any sort of power. He could remember his grandmother always saying not to be obvious and attract attention. But he was starting to think that these days that may not be such a problem as it used to be. His dad had been down the coast at Ballina on business for the last week and was supposed to be back today. Andrew’s father had taken the train that ran through Mawillimbar.

Cars were few and far between still. There was a steelworks near Gilong now, and there was talk of a car manufacturing plant being built there to use the steel. So far, though, nothing had actually happened. Most cars in use were salvaged ancient vehicles converted to mostly run on steam power, at least up here in the north. So many gardens had contained decorative rubber tree varieties that rubber, at least, was something that was plentiful.

There were a few coal mines in operation out west, and that was the main fuel for transport and industry alike. And the power station that was at the back of Coolangatta. With the site of Brisbane still radioactive, coal was exported from Southport, the rail line feeding docks near where there had been a large swimming complex, or so he had been told in the history class. The fighting, pestilence, and starvation that had followed the nuclear war had reduced the population to almost subsistence levels, and it had taken centuries to recover.

He had seen pictures of the incredibly tall buildings that had stretched along the coast in the old days. They had been gutted in the aftermath of the nuclear war before some had been destroyed in the fighting, and the rest had collapsed over the centuries, more or less. A nuclear winter and mini ice age that had followed the war had reduced sea levels for several hundred years, but things had since returned to normal, with the huge rubble mounds forming a good base for people to build houses on with great views of the ocean.

Farmers still turned over the odd artifact from before the nuclear war in the farmlands that ran up the length of coast inland from the mounds of rubble. According to the history books, nearly the whole area from the ocean to the mountains had been covered in houses and industrial areas. Nowadays, it was mostly crops and cows with a few towns dotted in between all the way to the edge of the radioactive lands north of Yatlar.

Chapter 2

New skills

He finally summoned up his courage and told His father, who wasn’t impressed when Andrew told him that he could do things.

“Well, don’t do anything! It will only bring unfavorable attention to us all. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to move again.”