Lives of Magic (Seven Wanderers Trilogy) (4 page)

“Tell me. Everything, this time,” I said, and couldn’t believe myself as I said it.

K
ian looked just slightly surprised as his eyebrows lifted, but he regained his normal cool composure. He was wearing the same denim jeans with the white t-shirt as the previous day.

My mother’s assumption had not been far off. He seemed like a ghost, pale and immune to all the elements around him. It was like time didn’t matter for him. I felt certain that his pitch-black hair would never go grey, and his porcelain skin would never wrinkle. The thought scared me, but he seemed helpless at the moment.

He scooted a little closer to my end of the bed and looked at me with such earnestness that I thought I would melt.

“Everything I told you was true, Gwen. You are the first I’m collecting. You must help me find the others like you. The magicians are here and they need your power. Your soul. If they get it, you will not only be enslaved but they will have what they need to continue destroying the world. Millions of lives depend on you.”

I stared. My mind was buzzing and I knew I had to get some answers before I could sort things out. It was too early.

“The magicians,” Kian went on, “are trying to do the same as they did in their previous lives. They will destroy the world to own it. They will cow the Earth into submission. They have already begun.”

“But … but … global warming….” was all I could say.

Kian shook his head. “There is something happening to the Earth, and it is unnatural. But they will crumble away the pieces until there is so little left that they can grab hold. In the process, millions could die.”

“When did these … magicians … or whatever … get here?” I asked, still feeling foolish. A part of me expected a camera crew to jump out and tell me I was in some MTV show.

“They were born approximately half a century ago. They have prominent positions in this country,” Kian answered obediently. “They have recovered their memories, and hence their powers, decades ago. I’m afraid you have a lot of catching up to do.”

Okay,
I thought,
I have no idea what that means. Next.

“Why are you here then?”

To my surprise Kian actually seemed at a loss at what to say and bowed back a little bit. I instantly felt sorry for my question; he looked so hurt by it. I was debating whether to take it back when he looked at me with a set chin and sorrowful eyes.

“I am here to collect you all. I am the perfect collector,” he said, but it was not a boast. “I knew you all in your previous lives. You have retained some of your appearances, but you will be drawn to your own kind.”

“Are you my own kind?” I asked, feeling like an alien.

Kian shook his head. “Only you have had previous lives. I am here through other magic, and only to do this.”

There it was again. Those words set me on edge.

“Previous lives?” It came out it a whisper. I cleared my throat.

Kian sighed. I knew what he was going to say. I dreaded hearing the words. “You are not your body,” he said sternly. “To send you forward in time is to send your soul.”

Relax,
I told myself.
It’s a past life
—
of course it means I died.
Still, being told of your death was never pleasant. Figures. Last year I told my parents I was an atheist. My mom had asked me if I still wanted Christmas presents. So much for all of that.

Kian’s cold demeanour had been falling apart since yesterday. He lit up with a crooked smile when I nodded. It felt like the right thing to do. I suddenly became very aware he was sitting in my bed.

His story was insane, but it explained so much. I had walked on water! (One half of my mind said) I had never fit in at home. But, on the other hand (the other half reminded me), I didn’t know if I felt this way because I was a warrior on a mission travelling through time, or because I was a teenager.

My previous day was coming back to me in waves. I remembered the terrifying and paralyzing sensation of losing control, the pain of falling down the hillside and hitting the water. The images Kian had shown me playing from my eyes now seemed familiar, like memories. Like when you can’t remember if you’ve dreamed something or if it happened to you.

I looked Kian straight in the face and said, “Okay. I’ll do it.”

In that moment, I was sure. I was sure the visions wouldn’t stop, and I was sure that whatever I had felt in that vision — or whatever it was — were the strongest and most real feelings I had ever felt in my life. I had to see where this would lead.

Kian was overjoyed. He looked like a little kid at Christmas. He jumped up and grabbed me out of my bed, spinning me around. I was reminded of how strong he was and how my short-shorts pyjamas weren’t really appropriate for this kind of thing. It was odd being held fast to his chest.

Gwen Carlisle,
I said to myself,
your quiet days are over. And stop thinking about how nice and strong he is.

After some negotiating and wiggling, I got him to put me down.

“What do I need to do?” I asked, smiling despite myself. It was a journey of self-discovery, and I was determined to find out who the stranger in the water was. Kian’s awed and ecstatic look made this feel like a joyous occasion, and not my agreeing to run away with a stranger.

“Pack your things,” he told me. “The others are in this country. We will need to find them.”

I obediently began dragging an old green suitcase out of my closet when I suddenly realized something. “How did you find me?” I asked. “How are you going to find anybody?”

While I struggled to get the tattered green suitcase out from underneath some shoeboxes, Kian dug around in his pocket.

“The world is big. But I have this machine.”

I turned around to look and immediately sighed.

“That’s a cell phone.”.

He nodded. “I receive messages written in text with the location of the next one to be found. Like I said, you were scattered.”

“So how did you find me?” I asked again.

“The location was given to me as this town,” Kian answered simply, “and you were the only new young person here. I followed you, and here we are. You all performed the ritual at the same time. You are all the same age. Probably born on the same day.”

I nodded. It seemed so obvious when he said it like that.

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Older than you,” he replied, smiling like it was a joke.

I gave up and began throwing things into my suitcase, keeping my panic down by pretending I was just going on a family vacation. It was the new rebellious side of my personality that had agreed to this.

I packed everything from boots to sandals, dresses and pants, jackets and sunhats. Twenty minutes later I was almost done and marvelled at how quickly I had packed up my whole life.

“Wait,” I said, climbing on top of the dingy thing so that I could close it. “Who sends you the text messages?”

Kian came over to help me struggle with the zipper. Together, we managed to close it and it sat on my floor, more like a sphere than a rectangle.

“I don’t know,” he answered, shrugging. “Magicians exist today, though they hide. Our cause has supporters. They finance our journey and provide me with locations.”

“Doesn’t that seem odd to you?” I asked him. “Are these other magicians the ones who brought you here?” When he only smiled, I shrugged and relented.

“You’re right. That’s the least odd part about this. So who told you it was your job to find all of us? How did you get here?”

I circled my room a few more times like a hawk, looking for necessities I had forgotten, but found I had none. After a few moments, I noticed Kian hadn’t said anything.

“Well?” I asked, turning to look at him.

He was sitting on the edge of my bed, an awkward sight. I could only imagine what my parents would say if they saw him just sitting there as I rushed around in front of him in my little pyjamas. My eyes drifted to my closed bedroom door and I realized how suspicious my parents would be if they knew he was here at all.

“Hmm?” asked Kian.

I somehow doubted that he hadn’t heard, but repeated myself nonetheless.

“I said how did you get here? What’s your story?”

“It is what I need to do,” he answered simply, looking out the window at the sun. “It has been, I think, seven years since I came here.”

His voice had changed somewhat — he sounded bored when he answered me, like he wanted to change the subject.

“Okay….” I replied, patting down my suitcase. “I guess I have less here than I thought. Turn around.”

Kian obediently turned while I got dressed. When I announced I was finished, he got up, and taking the suitcase in one hand as if it weighed nothing, crossed my room before I could realize what he was doing. Soon, he had opened the door and was about to go downstairs.

“Hey!”

I chased after him, my heart jumping up into my throat. I didn’t know how I was going to tell my parents that I was leaving for a while, all because some magicians might want to steal my magical powers.

“What are you doing?” I whispered fiercely.

“We have a flight that leaves this afternoon,” he answered, calm as calm could be. He started descending the stairs, having to manoeuvre my oversized suitcase carefully since he and it did not fit onto the narrow stairway together.

“Hey!”

I immediately followed. Even in my panic, I marvelled at how his different moods washed over me like waves. I could feel sympathy for him one moment and be furious the next.

“You knew I would come around?” I half-yelled. The house felt too small to full-on yell.

When I caught up to him on the stairs, his mouth was set and his dark eyes feigned innocence. Struggling with my suitcase made him look a little more human —especially when he missed a step and nearly crashed on top of the green thing that held my belongings.

“I had an inclination that you would not deny your true self,” Kian replied calmly, but I could see frustration play across his face as he reached the first landing of the stairs and had one more to go. I nearly growled at him.

“That was a little presumptuous, don’t you think?” I was still chasing him down the stairs at about zero miles per hour. “To think I would just jump on a plane and leave the country? This is a lot to take in, you know!”

“But your memories are convincing, are they not?” he asked. By the way he looked at me, I wondered how much he knew.

“Besides,” Kian added, pretending I wasn’t shouting in his ear, “we are going to New York City, not leaving the country.”

“New York?” I cried.

My resolve weakening, I had to remind myself of the waterfalls. The hand on the riverbank. My selfish — and foolish — reason for following Kian into the unknown.

He finally reached the last few steps and shoved the big suitcase unceremoniously down into the kitchen. He followed it down then picked it up and headed for the back door. I was on his heels.

“Listen, I don’t even know if I have a passport….” I lied, knowing I had packed it in my backpack. It was all just going too fast.

“Gwen,” Kian finally turned at the back door to face me full-on, “what happened to your sense of adventure and wonder? And, moreover, what happened to your willingness to come with me?”

I didn’t know if he was talking about me in a past life or in the present. I bit my lip. All I wanted was to learn about the visions — the other place — and maybe see it again. I had naïvely assumed that Kian and his search would stay rooted in Oregon.

“Well?” Kian asked.

“I just didn’t think of leaving and going … far,” I replied.

“You will get used to it,” he told me. “Think of how I felt when I first learned of all the new lands and how you could travel across them!”

I sighed again. He was trying to make me feel better, but we could not relate to each other. I looked back at him but noticed his eyes focused on something over my shoulder. Kian pursed his lips, and if he were anyone else, I was sure he would be blushing. I knew what it was before I even turned around.

“Hi, Mom, Dad.” I nodded to my parents, trying in vain to place myself in front of my suitcase. The thing was twice my size.

At the small kitchen table, my parents sat with toast on their plates. They had gone on a diet the week before. My dad still held a knife in mid-air, the low-fat, no-sugar jam having already fallen to the table. No one had come in — they’d been there the whole time. Their mouths hung open.

“W
ho’s your friend, Gwen?” my mother asked politely. “And what was he doing upstairs this morning?”

“This is Ted,” I improvised, “from school.”

My mother raised an eyebrow. “You’re in high school?” she asked Kian skeptically.

“No,” he answered.

I choked.

“And where are you and Ted heading with your suitcase?” my father asked, standing up.

Oh, no.

I could see the questions play across their faces. Slowly, my mother put down her fork and wiped her mouth with a napkin. Kian looked as if he was being cornered by wolves. His eyes darted, looking for an escape route, and fell on some horseback riding trophies on a mantle in the living room. I hadn’t ridden in years, but back when I was eight, I was tough to beat. They were sandwiched between some pictures of me in my ballerina outfit from childhood and my archery trophies.

“Gwen has been selected to attend a school for the arts — a very prestigious one,” Kian told my parents. “But unfortunately, the deadline to apply was in July, and Gwen filled out her application in August, so the school’s acceptance is rather short notice. I am a … representative ... of that school. I booked her a flight for today, but unfortunately couldn’t reach you.”

In unison, my parents turned to me. I was surprised at his improvisation skills but felt my mind go horribly blank.

“Surprise….” I said weakly. It was all I could manage.

“Gwen …” my mother began, “what’s going on?”

I couldn’t think of anything the way a rebel brain does on a vital exam question. I stalled the inevitable.

“Like he said, Mom, I applied to this school and now I’ve been accepted, but the semester started today and I really shouldn’t miss more than one day….” It was such a weak lie.

“And where is this school?” asked Dad.

“New York,” I answered immediately.

“And what is it called?” he asked.

I looked to Kian for inspiration.

“The … Academy for Gifted Young People?” It came out as a question.

In my mind, I was kicking myself furiously, holding my breath as I waited for my parents to realize I had stolen the name from
X-Men
.

“That sounds familiar,” my mother said, putting a finger to her chin, contemplatively trying to remember where she had heard the name before.

The
X-Men
DVD on the TV cabinet burned in my vision. I wished it out of existence, but it did not budge. I looked at Kian, desperate. He took a deep breath.

“You will not worry about Gwen,” he told my parents. “Nor will you check the school, or speak about it to others. You will know she is away and will expect her letters. But Gwen
is
away.”

I held my breath — I had no idea what he was doing, what he was trying to pull. There was a long pause while my parents seemed frozen in time, then my mother broke into a loud sob and grabbed me in her arms.

“I’m going to miss you!” she exclaimed. I would have gasped had I not been crushed in her large arms.

“You take good care of her, Ted,” my dad said to Kian then shook his hand. Kian smiled in return. Dad gave me a hug, for which Mom had to move out of the way, and then tried to include her in what he called our family bear hugs.

After even more hugs and promises to write, Kian and I stepped out of the house. We did not speak as we walked down the driveway, and he put my suitcase in the trunk of a rental car that I was not surprised to see parked on the road.

It was a heavy moment for me. I had just lied to my parents and left home with a stranger. My rebellious mind pictured the
America’s Most Wanted
episode which would feature my photo next to Kian’s.

I got into the passenger seat of the Ford Focus and leaned my head against the headrest. A big part of me wanted to run back into the house, screaming that I had been abducted by a lunatic. But another part was curious, and for the first time in my life, really courageous. I blamed it on an adrenaline rush and low blood sugar. I hadn’t eaten anything in a long time.

Kian got in next to me and slowly, with my heart aching, we began to pull away from the house.

“So are you a Jedi or something?” I finally asked. I could tell he had been respecting the gravity of the situation for me, not pressing me to talk.

“A who?” he asked.

I rolled my eyes in the morning sunlight. I sat hugging my knapsack, looking at the sky above. “What did you do to my parents?”

“Magic,” he answered simply. “Though I am not like you. I can do simple things like play on the power of conviction and belief. I do not like to do it,” he added when I turned around to look at him. “I do not like to take advantage of the human mind, or its weaknesses. But it was necessary.”

“You did that to me yesterday, didn’t you? To keep me from calling the cops or something?”

“It was necessary,” Kian repeated.

“Yeah,” was all I could say in response. Then, “So I can do more than that?”

“Yeah,” Kian said, smiling and emulating my tone.

“You know, you’re really annoying,” I retorted, looking away. I saw him shrug in the window’s reflection.

“Yes, I was told that a long time ago.”

He seemed happy enough and I turned on the radio, scanning the channels until I was able to find something that wasn’t talk radio or country music. It was surprisingly difficult. And there we sat for upwards of an hour — an apparent magician from two thousand years ago and a seventeen-year-old descendant of his gods, who was, in all respectable terms, plain as cheddar cheese.

When we finally pulled up to the rental car garage at the airport, my heart lurched a little. I was inundated with anxiety about (of all things) missing school. How much was I going to miss? Would they call home? What would my parents say? Would I have to stay back a year? My resolve was weakening.

I opened my mouth to ask this last ridiculous question, but Kian turned at that moment to deal with the garage attendant. I scuffed the ground with my foot, dejected. When he came back he frowned at my expression.

“Don’t worry,” he said, leading me into the airport. “You are brave for trusting your true self above all others. You will be fine.”

“Where are you getting this?”

“My father,” Kian replied, finally getting a printout from his jeans pocket. He also produced a passport. “He was a wise man, and I remember his words, even now.”

I felt unfit to comment, so I just stood, stupidly staring at the escalators and desks with airline logos as far as the eye could see. Kian went to an electronic board with desk numbers then walked until he found the desk he was looking for. I followed all the while, feeling like a lost child.

“Delta,” Kian read aloud, “New York.”

He smiled at me with an accomplished look. I couldn’t tell if I was getting used to the statuesque eeriness of him or if he was letting down his guard. His mind-bending magic kept me nervous — I wasn’t sure if my emotions were my own. I kept second-guessing my decision to go with him and run away from the apparent threat of some magicians. Had it really been my choice? Yes. I wanted to see that place again. To feel like I had under the waterfalls.

“Hello.” Kian had walked up to the attendant at the desk and passed her the printed paper.

She was a young woman, at least ten years older than me, and she smiled at him coyly and made small talk for nearly five minutes, even though there were people queuing behind us. I was getting annoyed.

“What’s the matter?” Kian asked me when she had finally turned back to her computer to do her job.

“Nothing,” I replied automatically. He frowned at me.

“Your jaw is set,” he said.

I made a point of turning away from him. All I could hear was the little computer tap-tapping of the flirty attendant at the Delta desk.

“And will your … little sister be travelling with you?” the woman asked.

Before Kian could open his mouth, I had slammed my passport down on the desk. Neither of us said a word. The flirty woman tapped in my information, and the machine spat out two boarding passes.

My head was throbbing and my injuries were causing my entire body to ache and tense. The combination made me irate.

“Here you go.” She gave the passes to Kian.

We walked away towards the gate we needed.

“What’s the matter?” he asked again.

I did not underestimate his naïveté, so I was about to tell him when I turned and saw a wide smile on his face.

“Oh, you’re such a jerk!” I rushed forward, pulling his dainty suitcase behind me. Unfortunately, there was no getting rid of him.

While we sat in the uncomfortable airport chairs, he badgered me.

“Why did you not like the desk woman?” he asked, smiling in a way that made me want to punch him.

“Her smile,” I finally answered.

“What about her smile?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “It had too much
eye
.”

Kian frowned, genuine confusion playing on his face. “Gwen,” he answered, quite seriously, “she had two eyes.”

“Oh, forget it!”