Fire and Ice: Story 1 - Homecoming

Just so you have an idea what you're reading -- this is a story I'm working on, on and off, through the school year. It's freewrite, mostly -- follows the story of a group of five high school kids in a world just a bit different from ours. The first chapter is the only one in first person -- it doubled as a sort of assignment I had for school, that had to be a narrative -- and the rest switches from viewpoint to viewpoint, whatever suits the scene best. Feel free to crit me hard, I'm thick-skinned, but please take it with a grain of salt -- this is freewrite and handwritten, pretty much unedited, and though I'm rather attached to the story it's definitely not my best writing of all time.

    I scared you off yet? No? Good. Read on.

 

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“You might say magic is a — a journey. From the moment a mage is born — or Awoken, as it were — they begin to migrate from their own lives to something entirely new. And you, young lady, have just begun on yours.”
    He sounds like a third-grade teacher.
    I knew I was frowning as I brushed stringy brown bangs out of my face, studying the mayor of Ridge. That’s right, plain old Jenny was talking to a town mayor. I wasn’t liking it much.
    My mother scowled and nudged me. I plastered on a smile.
    “Thank you, uh —”
    “Leyman. Mr. Leyman. No, no, thank you, Miss Aiza —”
    “Jen,” I interjected, and he blinked.
    “Ah, of course. Jen. Hmm, ah — Ash, honey, could you take the young lady and tell her a little more about life around here? I’d like to speak with her family a bit more, but she doesn’t really need to be present…”
    The slim girl I had taken to b his secretary looked up and nodded. Her hair, I noticed, was white-blond and very long. She looked to be about my age, maybe a year older. “Come on, Jen — there’s a back room we can use.”
    I followed her with the same numbness I had felt since this Mr. Leyman had come up to our minivan and announced that I was the reason we had come to this particular city for my mom’s work. My two brothers — four-year-old Jake and eighteen-year-old Jason — stared after me, but just as the door was closing I heard my mother speak.
    “Mayor Leyman — I hate to put you in this situation but I’m afraid I have to ask. Shortly after Jen started showing signs of this — magic, my ex and I filed for divorce. Could there be any kind of, well, connection between the two?”
    The mayor shifted uneasily. “Well,” he said awkwardly, “it’s really not possible to, uh, track the spell that puts these things in place…I suppose —”
    The door swung shut behind me, and my stomach dropped out with it.
    The mayor’s secretary slung herself into the most comfortable of the three chairs in the cluttered little office we now stood in. Sharp green eyes regarded me lazily from behind the long bangs, and I sat down uneasily as well.
    “Leyman didn’t introduce us,” the girl said bluntly, tucking her hair back behind one ear. “My name’s Aislin Devinne — that’s ASH-lin, spelled A-I-S-L-I-N — and you are?”
    “Jennifer Aiza,” I heard myself say. “Call me Jen.”
    Aislin paused as Leyman had when she heard my name, but it was a thoughtful pause. “Jen. All right. How old are you?”
    “Fourteen. Almost fifteen.”
    And the girl grinned at me in sudden open cheerfulness. “That’s great — you’d fit right in with the gang, wouldn’t you. Me and some of my friends — Mily and Bane are a year older than us, and Alex is younger. Mily’s just Woken, too — you know what? We can meet this Saturday and I’ll introduce you all.”
    “Uh.” I was floundering, trying to keep up with this sudden rush of explanations to my life. My life. It made me mad, it really did, the way this — magic — took over and decided how I was going to live.
    And my family — Dad —
    Abruptly, I said, to divert my thoughts, “Does everyone have such weird names around here? Bane, Aislin, Millie…”
    Aislin had been tapping her chin, apparently deep in thought. Now she tossed her waterfall of hair, shrugging at me with a wry grin.
    “It’s a mage thing, goes back to ancient times. You’re a mage, you want them all to know you’re a mage, so you choose a fancy name. Bane’s real name is David, you didn’t hear it from me. Mily’s real name is Millicent, she goes by Millicent when she’s spell casting. Alex, well, he’s still a kid.”
    “And you?” I dared.
    She flashed me another grin. “My parents are fond of strange names. My middle name’s Nemesis. Comes of having a novelist for a mother, I guess.”
    I grinned in spite of myself, a startled grin that slid away at an abrupt knock on the door. My mother poked her head in.
    “Come on, Jenny,” she said, voice clipped. “Mayor Leyman has someone to show us our new house.”
    Aislin flashed me a slightly sympathetic look as I followed Mom out. I found myself thinking, You don’t think this is strange at all, do you, mage-girl…you see this kind of thing every day.
    I wasn’t sure whether my scorn came from anger or true contempt as I imagined some old girls at school in the same situation, what I’d say to their sneers.
    That’s right, plain old Jenny’s moving up in the world. See? She throws fireballs now. She made her parents split up and her mom lose her job. You really think you want to mess with me?

— ☼ — ☼ — ☼ —

It was getting ready to rain.
    I lay on my familiar bed silently, staring out the unfamiliar window. Strange, how everything looks the same outside in the dark. I might have been lying on my bed at home in New York, staring out at our backyard and smelling the rain that hadn’t yet fallen.
    I’ve always loved storms. Hasn’t got anything to do with my being a mage, I don’t think; fire’s my thing, and it’s just the rain I love. The electric power of a stormcloud, the fresh clean smell to the air that a shower always brings — the simple pure strength of it, washing away all that came before. I remember once, when I was about six, I ran out into the rain to play in the storm. Ten-year-old Jason stared at me like I was mad, and my parents’ disapproving glares were more than enough to keep me from trying it again. Kind of stupid, doing that, I guess — but maybe they’d understand it, here.
    Here —
    I rolled over onto my stomach, away from the window, and viciously buried my fist in the pillows. There wasn’t any hiding it here, not to me, myself and I. This whole mess, it was my fault.
    They mayor said I had — awoken. Something had happened to me, in my body, that had made the magic wake in me. I had gotten sick — would have died it I hadn’t Woken. My mother had thought — recalled the time I’d been four years old and stayed out in the cold too long — hypothermia that had almost killed me — the fire that no one had lit —
    I should have died ten years ago.
    If I had died, Mom and Dad would still be together. Mom would still have her job down by the Falls. Jason, and poor little Jake — they could have kept their friends, their school. It not for me, everyone could have kept their normal life. Should have. It wasn’t fair, wasn’t worth it, what my living had done —

— ☼ — ☼ — ☼ —

A few streets away, Aislin Devinne’s bed was noticeably empty. Her parents weren’t yet aware of her disappearance, but even if they had noticed it wasn’t likely they’d worry — not because the streets weren’t dangerous at night, for darkness in Ridge brought on a whole slew of new troubles, but because in one respect their daughter was not difficult at all to understand. Ash knew how to take care of herself.
    The mage slipped noiselessly around the corner to a house’s back door, long blond hair gleaming in the dim streetlight’s glow. She looked like a wraith in the darkness, pale, tall and slender, and at this time of day she did her best to move as silently as one.
    Aislin had had a feeling, earlier. She made herself an enigma and everyone know it — but the one thing everyone agreed on about her was that she wasn’t stupid. And she listened. It was plain as the coming storm that Jen had been troubled by the circumstances of her arrival — who wouldn’t be! — and for Aislin, one suicide at Snowdrop High School had been one too many.
    And this time, Aislin had the means to prevent it.

— ☼ — ☼ — ☼ —

    I don’t think I was really aware of slipping out of the house, that night. I remember the breathless sensation of needing to be quiet — pressing myself against the wall and praying no one would hear me — shoving my feet into my ratty old sneakers and hoping the door wouldn’t creak — but until I heard the voice, it was like my brain had gone numb. For the briefest instant, back in my room, it had flared wild with ideas of escape and maybe even death, but then shut itself down before I could really think about it and discredit the plans. But her voice was like the crack of a whip, clear and slightly mocking, cutting through the haze of my thoughtless panic.
    “Thought Leyman told you not to go out at night.”
    My heart leapt into my throat and I spun around, a hand raising as if in self-defense. But no — there she was — tall and pale in the dim light, smiling slightly, leaning against my wall with the lithe, casual grace of a wildcat. Aislin.
    “You —” I blurted, and her smile widened. Long hair tossed slightly by the wind, she pushed away from the wall and crossed the patio over to me.
    “Mistakes, mistakes, Jenny.” My eyes narrowed at the name — she must have caught my irritation at anyone using it, earlier. “This is nighttime. You should’ve tossed a fireball before I even saw I was there.”
    I bridled and bristled, angered by her words, but — not sure what to think. This Aislin was supposed to be my — well, my connection to the new world. What was she doing here?
    “If the night’s so dangerous, you should be in bed.” My tongue fumbled its way around the retort. “Go home. This is none of your business anyway.”
    Aislin’s eyes hardened slightly behind the laughingly superior mask, dark and expressionless like chips of bright emerald. She shifted, dropped her eyes, played with a strand of long hair. When she spoke, her voice was softer, but the taunting edge was gone — there was nothing to mask its troubled intensity.
    “Towards the end of last school year,” she said quietly, not looking up at me, “there was a girl about our age who Woke and came to the city. She came with her dad — I guess her parents split up because of her, like yours. Her father was —” she coughed, turning away momentarily, “— he was, I guess, they told us later her was abusive. She blamed herself, and he only encouraged it.”
    “So?” My voice was cold. I made it cold. I knew where this was going — didn’t want to hear it —
    But now Aislin did look at me, and there was something brutal in her gaze. “She ran off one night. They found her dead only a few streets away, some kind of drug on her. But she didn’t kill herself — didn’t need to. The Nightstalkers got to her first. Vampires, or maybe weres.”
    I couldn’t help it, I flinched. Aislin stepped closer, passionate now, almost angry. “I know a kid, he’s a Nightstalker. Vampire and werewolf both — he’s the legacy of a group of people no one but themselves wants to know at night. Listen up — come darkness he has no control, no matter how hard he tries. He’d kill you on the spot, he’d kill me if the rage was on him.”
    “I haven’t got a death wish,” I retorted heatedly. Aislin’s eyes glittered.
    “Go inside, then.”
    “I can’t.” It was bluster, avoiding the point she made. “My mom, my brother, they should be home now. I’m leaving. They can go home if I do.” Suddenly the dam broke, words tumbled out of me like the storm that was waiting to begin. “I should be dead, by all rights I should. This magic, this business is all my — if it didn‘t happen, there would be no divorce. Mom and Dad and Jake and Jason would all be happy —”
    “And you would be dead,” Aislin broke in softly. Oh, there was still passion in that voice, but there was pity too. And much as I hated it, much as I denied it, I needed that pity.
    “I should be.”
    “Jenny — Jen —” She grasped my arm earnestly as I turned away, I don’t know where, just somewhere to get away from these words. I glanced at her sharply, startled by the touch, but she didn’t pull away.
    “Jenny, Jenny — don’t say that. Don’t believe it. Nothing, nothing is worth a human life. Any life. Even yours. Every time some dies, there’s — a hole —” Her voice dropped, she fumbled for words. “Every person who dies, they’ve got hopes and dreams and people who care about them. It’s worth it, things like divorce, it’s worth it if it means someone can keep on living. You too, Jenny. Not just the rest of the world.”
    I was looking at her, expressionless. Awkward suddenly, she dropped my arm.
    “Why do you care?”
    Now she smiled, tightly, and held up a hand as I had on first seeing her. “Toss me a fireball, Jen.” She shook her head impatiently as I continued to stare, and urged, “Just do it.”
    I did. I — don’t know how to explain it yet, magic — doing magic. It just sort of happens. It’s — different. But I made a fireball, my talent, aimed it slightly to Aislin’s left —
    And it winked out of existence, as suddenly and completely as if it had never been there at all.
    Aislin smiled again at my confusion, more easily this time. In one fluid movement she bent down to the ground, trailing a hand over the top of a puddle left by the single brief shower that had fallen earlier that day. Wherever her shadow passed, the gleam of water dulled to something more solid.
    “You are fire, I am ice,” she told me, looking up from her handiwork with one side of her mouth quirked. “I had a — feeling, when I met you. Besides the fact that I don’t like seeing people die, not when I have a say in it.”
    She stood up, suddenly brisk. “Well, you — you’ve heard me out and then some. Just, get to know life around here before you go and kill yourself. I’ll see you later, Kee.”
    She was halfway down the street before the strange name registered. I started after her, stopped, and shouted, “What did you call me?”
    She stopped, turned and waved back at me. “Kee. Short for Keahi. You need a mage name, now. Means fire.”
    I smiled slightly, for the first time away, as the darkness took her out of my sight. “Keahi,” I echoed softly, to myself and no one else, to taste my new name on my tongue and decide I liked it.
    A drop of wet touched my shoulder and I smiled again, ducking inside before the storm could break.