ETHAN'S WEDDING PRESENT
Natalie met Ethan and Sarah at the same time. The two came bearing a large package as a wedding present, a present selected by Sarah. It was the oldest of old school Canadian luxury items, a Hudson's bay blanket, a wool blanket featuring green, red, yellow and indigo stripes on a white background. These blankets were sold by the 350 year old Hudson Bay Company, a fur trading company and and of the type traded for centuries to the Indians in exchange for beaver pelts.
Krypto loved the smell of a brand-new wool blanket. But more than that, he loved seeing Sarah again and jumped on her and licked her on the face.
Natalie was also thrilled to see Sarah and the blanket, albeit in a far more restrained manner than Krypto. As for Rory, he was slightly perplexed at getting a pricey wool blanket given he and Natalie would be heading to the Australian outback after a long break travelling through the tropical Polynesian islands. Rory thought for sure Ethan would give them a selection of video games that he could play with his wife to me.
"I was" Ethan shrugged, jocularly, as the girls examined the piece of Canadiana. "But Sarah thought it should be something lasting, old-school, and romantic. Face it Rory, you aren't seriously planning to spend your spare time beating new video games . . . not for a long time. And I know how long it takes you to beat a new game."
"No way" Rory agreed. "But are we still going to tell today . . . .everything? I thought Sarah wouldn't like to . . . ."
"I asked Sarah's permission" said Ethan. "She agrees it's for the best
"To tell my secret?" said Rory.
"It's her secret too" Ethan pointed out. "In part she crammed her last few days of work in fast, to be here."
"For the big Team Sabre debrief?" said Rory incredulously.
"Also we were apart for two weeks now" said Ethan, thoughtfully. "That's the longest since we've been married. You wouldn't believe it felt like two months, even though we've been married nearly two years now."
"Yeah, I believe it buddy" said Rory, and looking at Natalie he did believe it. "But you ought to say it to Sarah."
"I did" said Ethan. "It may have taken me two years to ask her out, but I'm not dumb."
"Yeah, but how are we going to tell her . . . everything?"
"With Benny's help" said Ethan. "I have the ultimate plan. Almost ultimate."
"Benny's coming over?" asked Rory. "But the coin said Ethan."
Ethan looked at Rory for a moment.
"You coin flipped on your best man?" said Ethan.
"Go and try to keep a secret from a seer" said Rory disgruntledly.
"It's not seeing" said Ethan. "It's ordinary common-sense deduction."
Benny didn't know how he felt about the "formal country wedding" the Cretes were going with.
"Rory's getting married, and Natalie's parents are paying for this fubrecarb."
Benny felt stupid at Whitechapel Custom Tailors and Dressmakers, trying on the morning coat, waistcoat, and trousers. He wore an ordinary tux at Ethan and Sarah's wedding.
Mr. Prudhomme and his wife were acquaintances of Benny's grandmother, and in the past week Rory and Ethan had made time for fittings while on visits home to their respective parents. Benny was picking up the final results, after asking his own grandmother advice on how to help break news of the supernatural to Natalie.
"If Natalie loves Rory, she'll forgive him no matter how stupid he was" Evelyn had said contemplatively. "You know I never had time for the bloodsuckers, but I always knew Sarah and Rory were special cases . . . for different reasons. You know dear, I can tell, I told you."
"I know Grandma" said Benny. "But I think it's our duty, as Rory's best buds."
While Benny typically avoided tailor-made clothes, Prudhomme did meet with Benny's approval. The shop hadn't been changed in years; and like years before, there were mirrors everywhere in the store, all to strongly discourage a particular type of individual from coming into the store from back in the time Whitechapel had been overrun with them. Prudhomme and his wife were particularly good acquaintances of Evelyn Weir.
"You're forgetting the top hat, Benny" said Prudhomme. "1st class collapsible."
"What I do for my buddies!" Benny complained to Prudhomme, as he frowned at his reflection. "And Rory didn't even make me his best man! That mother-in-law of his is a terror. I look like a clean-shaven Abe Lincoln."
"Don't be ridiculous, Benny" said Prudhomme. "This is Canada. You look more like a stretched out Sir John A. Macdonald."
"You know what I could do to you" said Benny, in a half-joking matter.
"And I know what my good friend Evelyn will do to you if you do what you can do" said Prudhomme. "Besides, I know you well enough to know you wouldn't."
"Not even in revenge when you give me the bill?" joked Benny.
"Half the price you'd see in Toronto" Prudhomme told Benny. "Rory and Ethan were satisfied."
Still, Benny hadn't felt this ridiculous since he briefly served as a "zombie bellboy" many years before. Still, it was ironic how much he hated the outfit, considering even as a grown man he still had a number of clothes that could only be properly called "costumes."
Benny might have felt better (or worse) if he knew that in another nine years, his own future wife, his soul mate, would actually conspire with her mother to have Benny dress at his own wedding in white tie and tails. And Benny would even think he rocked the outfit.
But for now, Benny was even embarrassed speeding back to Mississauga with the three outfits in tow, hung up carefully on the car-hooks in the back seat of his black Dodge Charger SXT.
"Clothes man" said Benny, as he walked into the condo, carrying Ethan and Rory's morning clothes carefully above Krypto's reach. "I"ve got your Bowser bowtie, Krypto, too.
"And we have an extra-large Mediterranean pizza, heavy on the garlic, on order" Rory explained. "Like old times."
"That's good" said Benny. "All that garlic'll make sure there's no misunderstandings later. And, yeah, I've seen you've put up a mirror in the room too."
"Ethan's idea" said Rory.
"Buddies . . ." warned Ethan.
"Huh?" said Natalie, who had been folding up the blanket just out-of-view. "Why would Ethan want to make sure there was a mirror here?"
Natalie didn't know why Benny started glaring angrily at Rory.
"Um" said Ethan, awkwardly, "it's just because Sarah and me are vain."
"Incredibly vain" tried Rory.
"I'm surprised you haven't said hello to me" said Sarah forcefully, after she finished putting the blanket a way.
Sarah gave Benny a hug in greeting, although that wasn't something they typically did.
"What I do for Rory!" whispered Sarah, half-jokingly.
"I thought you liked me" whispered Benny as the hug ended.
"On a first-name basis, not hugging" said Sarah.
The pizza made it feel like old times. But when the pizza and soft drinks were finished, the conversation fell silent. Almost at once.
Natalie suddenly felt awkward. Why? Everyone else around her looked awkward. Rory was, uncharacteristically, standing quietly on the tiny balcony, staring into empty space. Ethan was silently reading something off his smart-phone. Sarah had, as Rory claimed, suddenly turned incredibly vain; she suddenly wanted to study her reflection in the mirror; in a very ostentatious way, almost as if Sarah wanted to make sure Natalie knew that she had a reflection.
As for Benny, from somewhere he had produced a very old, worn book, and was showily looking through it. He seemed to want Natalie to ask him what was in the book.
"Now that's an old book" said Natalie, at last going for the bait.
"Close enough" said Benny.
Sarah left the mirror and crossed her arms, in an unhappy way as if she was going to have to endure something painful.
Rory gave Sarah a grateful look, and sat down beside Natalie looking sheepish.
"Rory asked me to help break something to you, Natalie" said Ethan, as if he had rehearsed this remark. "Something important. We're going through this in a three-step process."
Ethan gave Rory a significant look.
"A twelve step plan" Rory muttered, remembering something stupid he had said at the Westdale Theatre some twelve years ago."
Natalie jumped to a conclusion.
"You used to be an alcoholic? Or a drug addict?"
"No" said Rory, shaking his head. "Nothing like that. Well, if you really think about it . . . ."
"Nothing at all like that" said Ethan.
"Yeah, not at all" echoed Rory. "But
"Step One is all yours Benny."
"You've heard about Team Sabre" said Benny. "You think we make like the tv ghost hunters, wandering around haunted houses. Well, it's far more than that. This book was a gift from my grandmother when I was fourteen. It's an actual authentic magic book."
Natalie stared at Benny as if he was crazy. She looked to Rory.
"No really" said Rory, at a machine-gun pace. "We're not a bunch of crazy, evil, magic cultists. We're really, really normal people. We're men . . . and woman of science. It's just that some people are born with powers, and that helps them fight supernatural evils that still exist in this world. And when we were teens Whitechapel was filled with supernatural evil, but we cleaned up the town and now it's only occasionally has supernatural evil."
"Awk-ward" observed Benny.
"Is this a prank, Rory?" asked Natalie, quietly. "Can you swear this isn't a prank?"
"I swear" said Rory, putting his right hand up as if he were in court.
Natalie believe him. So, being something of an old-school woman, did something women did in older days when confronted by bad news. She started to cry.
She believed she was in a group of lunatics. Or "crazy, evil, magic cultists". It even occurred to her, in the back of her mind, that far from innocent townspeople burning down the Reverend Horace Black's church, a "bunch of crazy, evil, magic cultists" attacked an innocent group of churchgoers. Rory was involved in this longstanding group of Whitechapel evil.
"Natalie, we're not crazy" said Sarah, not needing to be a seer to know what Natalie was thinking. Sarah handed Natalie a box of tissues. "As children, we all thought our town was a perfectly normal place. It was only as teen we discovered the dark secret."
"And my grandmother told me I was born with magical powers" said Benny. "And Ethan's a seer, a sort of a super-powered psychic."
Sarah glared at Benny.
"Prove it" said Natalie fiercely. "If you're going to say this garbage in front of me, you're going to have to show me."
"Let me try first" said Ethan awkwardly. "Let me remind you of two things, Natalie. First thing. I'm a 99% normal man. Qualified engineer. I was just born with the power to see into the past and the future . . . and, uh, into people's minds too. Sometimes actually . . . well, it's hard to explain."
Ethan looked very embarrassed.
"Second, my eyes go a wonky colour when I do this. So, if you want me to prove it, just let me hold your hand."
Rory looked jealous a second, before he realized what Ethan was going to do.
"Rory?" asked Natalie.
"He's serious" said Rory.
Natalie gasped as the eerie white light lit up behind the brown of Ethan's eyes.
"I think it's weird too" Ethan said, in good humour. "I like my eyes their natural colour. But I can tell you what happened on April 23rd, when you were three years old. Something you haven't yet told Rory. You were riding your tricycle but decided to go down the slope of the garden. Now . . . let's make this more intense, if you're okay?"
"Okay" said Natalie, cautiously. "Is it safe?"
"It's safe" said Rory. "Not that I ever held Ethan's hand or anything."
Ethan's powers, fully developed, allowed Natalie to see what exactly what Ethan was viewing. The glow didn't travel to Natalie's eyes, yet she was able to see the scene notwithstanding. And not from her own memory. It was a bright spring day. A little girl, riding a tricycle by a house overlooking a small brook. The girl, with a smile on her face, decided to leave the beaten path and go down the gentle grassy slope. She sped up as the slope grew steeper, and soon the small tricycle was going out of control. It fell over near the water, and the little girl started crying.
"Your mother, Etta Crete, ran down to comfort you" said Ethan. "You had a broken leg, but nothing too serious, like little kids get from time to time. Your Mom rode in the ambulance with you, and stayed by your side while you had the cast. And didn't even rub it in."
Ethan joked at the end.
"I believe you" said Natalie, quietly, but in a voice of surprise . . . . "But I've heard of clairvoyance. Not like you . . . but . . . ."
"Let me tell you about spellmasters" said Benny. "I'm also a 90% normal guy, but magic powers usually run in families. I have mine from my grandmother. You see, certain people just have a natural ability to process the magic in the environment. That's all! And, you know, if you are born with magic powers, like seers, you're supposed to use your powers for the forces of good versus evil. That's what they're there for!"
Benny snapped his finger, and set off sparks. He gave a theatrical bow.
Natalie looked unimpressed.
"I wouldn't be impressed either" said Sarah sarcastically.
"That's hard to believe, Benny" said Natalie, shaking her head although she was no longer sobbing.
Benny gave Natalie a bouquet of roses, and juggled apples.
Natalie looked at Rory.
"Really" said Rory. "If he wanted too, he can do lots of stuff. He can evil kill someone by turning them inside out. He did it once to a mouse as an experiment."
"I just thought it would look cool" said Benny hurriedly. "I didn't know it would kill the mouse. It's a lethal death spell. Never touched it since."
"And David Copperfield once made the Statue of Liberty disappear" Natalie retorted.
She looked angrily at Rory.
"Benny, make me fly" said Rory.
Benny shrugged.
"I was going to slowly build up" said Benny. "But, okay. Rory floatum nummow."
Rory did an aerial summersault from the sofa to the ceiling, where he became stuck spread-eagled.
Natalie gave a look as if she was going to scream. But she bit her tongue, thinking she'd look silly.
"You see Natalie" said Rory, who was a bit disgruntled at the position he found himself in. "I like flying a plane a lot better than Benny's magic. Too much force, buddy. I haven't done this for a long time."
"Can you try it with me?" asked Natalie.
Benny obliged, this time only muttering the spell.
Natalie floated up more gently.
"I believe you" said Natalie at last.
Benny snapped his fingers, and the two went down.
"That's Stage One Natalie" said Benny.
"How do you feel?" asked Rory.
"Well, seeing is believing" said Natalie, sitting down.
"Yeah, I know" said Rory. "Believe me, Natalie, I know."
"We all know" said Ethan muttered to Sarah. "Ready for Stage Two?"
"No" said Sarah cooly. "But we promised we'd go through with it."
