"You should have waited for me to get your stuff." Jeff said, leaning against the kitchen door frame.
"I needed to get my school books!" Beatrice stood a few feet away from Jeff near the couch in the living room.
He sighed. "We'll need to go back again."
"I know, but where would I keep my stuff?" She shuffled her feet. "I'm sorry to cause you trouble Jeff, I really am. I can find somewhere else to stay if you want."
"No," He closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose. "No, you're no trouble. I'm just a little stressed. Work's been hard this week and I haven't been getting enough sleep at night." He opened his eyes and walked over to the fridge taking a Corona out for himself and a coke for Beatrice, "You get along with my kids and my wife likes you, you can stay Bee." He laughed a little, but not because something was funny. It was a sort of scolding laugh. "You think too loudly Bee. Don't worry about money or anything of the like. You're a more valuable Wizard than you know, the Powers will compensate for normal child support."
She wasn't quite sure what he was talking about but she kept quiet, sipping her coke. The front door opened and shut loudly as Natalie came in from outside, an old cocker-spaniel golden-retriever mix dog followed behind her. The dog immediately ran to Jeff and looked up at him expectantly.
"What do you want dog?" He scratched the top of his head. The dog wagged his tail.
"Hi Beatrice," Natalie said, "Hi Daddy. What's for dinner?"
He smiled wickedly. "That depends on what you're going to make me!" Beatrice had seen this exchange of conversation go on many times at her partner's house. Jeff loved to tease his children and his children loved to tease him.
Natalie didn't seem up for this little rouse today though. She sighed and said; "I'll go feed Jack." She patted the dog's head and told him to come.
Jeff trapped his daughter in a hug as she passed. "Are you okay?"
She smiled at her father, "Yeah, fine. Just tired."
Jeff released her and turned back to Beatrice who appeared to be thinking something over very intensely. "I think I have an idea," she said and ran off to get a pencil and her notebook that she kept her spells in. She scribbled a few things down, a summary of what the spell she had been thinking about would do. She handed it to Jeff. "Will that work?"
He nodded. "That's a good idea."
"I was looking over some of the details about Wizardly Exchanges that some kids do a few days ago. That spell would be similar to their temporary pup-tents."
"It's different though. This isn't just your normal temperospatial-claudication... It almost looks like you would be creating actual matter here." He shook his head, his eyes wide in astonishment. "Do you know how much energy that kind of thing would need?"
"Yes." She replied matter-of-factly. "We could do it."
He cocked his head to the side a little and looked at the girl. He knew what she was, he knew they could do the spell successfully in theory if all their written work was correct. This would be a very intricate spell. He blinked and nodded. "We can do it." As an after thought he added, "Later. I'm going to make dinner. Want to help?"
Beatrice nodded and when Jeff went to get some frozen chicken out of the fridge she went directly for the spice cabinet. It was a lot easier to work as a team when you could hear someone think...
"When's your wife going to be home?" Beatrice was writing speech symbols down in her notebook very feverishly. She'd stop every now and then, read her work, erase something and replace it with something else, and then then the pattern would start over again.
"She should be home around midnight... Her shift at the hospital was shorter tonight." Jeff looked up from his own spell work to read the clock. "Damn, it is somewhere around midnight. Get to bed Bee, you've got school tomorrow."
The younger Wizard sighed. She knew better than to argue. As long as she was in this house she would be under Jeff's rules. "Night." She said and trudged up the stairs to Natalie's room where Jeff had set up a cot for her. She paused at the top of the stairs as Jeff's wife walked in. They had been married for many years but anyone who saw them could see that they were still just as much in love today as they had been when they first got married. Go to be Bee. Jeff mind-spoke to her. She smiled and said back, I'll give you two kids some privacy. Jeff gave Beatrice the mental equivalent of a friendly punch in the shoulder. She went off to bed.
It was Saturday morning, five days after the initial start of writing the spell. Six days after Beatrice had been kicked out of her home. Six days after Jeff had made a new permanent addition to his household.
Jeff carefully looked over the spell, line by line. The parts he had written and the parts Beatrice had written were in two different colors of ink as to save confusion of who was in charge of what element of the spell. "You already ran it through the automatic spell checker?"
"Yes, I used your manual to do it this morning."
"Why didn't you use yours?" Jeff asked curiously.
"I... um... well... It wasn't available." Beatrice's face turned very red. Nathanael still hadn't returned her manual.
He shook his head at his young partner but didn't question her further. "Let's get started then." The two walked up the stairs to the second floor of Jeff's house. They stood in front of a small piece of blank wall. "You may start it."
Beatrice nodded and closed her eyes. She took in a deep breath, let it out, took in a deep breath, let it out slowly. She moved her hand softly across the air in front of her as if she were touching water. A thin silver thread wound around her finger. She gently pulled it and spoke several words in the Speech. The English equivalent of these words does no justice to the actual words that were spoken but many words in the Speech don't translate directly into English because they are fragments of thought and feeling, none the less, a non-Wizard would have heard, "I create and open a door."
A wooden door slowly materialized on the empty wall space.
Jeff began to speak. The air quavered like water at every movement of the wizards. As her partner spoke, Beatrice took the time to observe the longing in the walls and everything around them to hear what the two were saying. Natalie and Adam stood half way up the stairs, observing the spectacle. Jeff touched the door and the wood rippled and became still again. Carefully, he touched the doorknob and opened the door. Behind the door was a black emptiness. A part of space and time with nothing in it. It wasn't dark, just empty. Jeff stepped onto the emptiness shortly followed by Beatrice. Most of the spoken work was done, the door was created and the claudication open, now came the hard part.
Jeff and Beatrice combined their power and slowly started the second part of the spell. Jeff opened his palm and watched as a string of Speech symbols arranged themselves in front of him, the light from the symbols made the corners of the emptiness glow a soft blue-gray. Beatrice touched one of the symbols and tied it with a Wizard's knot to her own string of symbols. With her mind, she gently pressed the symbols. Some of them multiplied as new ones appeared. Jeff added pressure with his mind as well. The symbols elegantly arranged themselves into a beautifully intricate stairway. Beatrice added a final symbol to the stairway and it went from being a delicate looking piece of art made of Speech symbols to being made of hard wood.
Later, Beatrice sat cross-legged in the middle of her room at the top of the stairs. All of it was made from wizardry. The room was empty of furniture but that would be remedied when she and Jeff made a raid on her old house. The room wasn't very large, but it was comfy, although that had been programmed into it by the spell. The walls were a warm cream color and the carpet was dark blue-gray. School books were stacked in a neat pile by the door which led to the landing at the top of the staircase and a few pillows and blankets were folded in a corner under a large window. It was late afternoon now. Jeff was taking a nap in he and his wife's bedroom downstairs. Beatrice didn't understand why he had been so tired (or so edgy) after they had finished the construction of the addition to Jeff's house where she would be living. She was very proud of their project. It was clever. The tower was invisible from the street and this made Beatrice feel powerful. Jeff didn't seem to share her enthusiasm. After their work was finished he had barely said a word to Beatrice and just went downstairs to sleep. When she had asked what was wrong he had snapped back, "Well Bee not every wizard can create that large an amount of partially existent matter and just bounce back immediately afterwards!" With that he quickly went downstairs. She was tired too, but it wasn't something a cup of coffee or a fifteen minute cat nap wouldn't fix. She knew she was powerful but Beatrice had always regarded her partner as being just as powerful despite their difference in power levels. Was he just getting old?
Beatrice tried to dismiss that last thought as quickly as she could. She didn't want Jeff to get old even though she knew it was inevitable. Sometimes she just assumed they would pal around like they did now forever and a day, but of course her logical mind told her even with wizardry that was impossible. But, according to most Wizards some of the things she did would be impossible for them. Beatrice's mind began to race, searching for all the things she had ever learned about why a Wizard might have power levels as high as hers. There was the occasional wonder-child that had an incredibly large spike of power before and during their Ordeals but that went away over time. She had been a wizard for three years and her power remained and as she learned more she was able to control her power more which made it even more formidable.
She had read a chapter in her manual a few weeks ago about Abdals. Abdals were Wizards with incredibly large amounts of power they were always given this power for a reason. They had a very important task to do usually. In days of old, Abdals were often called prophets by some religions. Abdals were also never supposed to know what they were, at least in this day and age they weren't. The knowledge in the world in its current state would somehow corrupt them in most cases. If an Abdal found out what they truly were, their power was usually lost and their task was either passed on to another wizard unknowingly or in most cases, lost forever. The Lone Power was a great fan of the latter consequence. I couldn't be an Abdal could I? Beatrice thought, edging over to the corner where her blankets and pillows were. She suddenly felt like sleeping. What other explanation is there? A charming voice said in her mind. You must be an Abdal. She tried to shut the voice out, not believe it... But she did believe it. She was used to being different and she had thought she finally fit in somewhere when she had become a Wizard. Even in the Wizardly community she stood out though, even here she was different. Beatrice Childs was an Abdal.
Her eyelids were heavy but she wasn't particularly tired. Helplessly, she fell into darkness and a very deep sleep...
