Authors: Tim Pratt
“Raise a kid, apparently,” I said, drinking fast so I could get drunk faster. “Try to keep painting. Be a single mom-slash-elder sister and a starving artist.”
“Without the literal starving.”
“True. The magic is good for that. It’s almost like being born wealthy.”
“No conquering the world, then? Being a superhero? Lifting up the downtrodden? Making the desert bloom?”
“That last part sounds good in theory, though it would probably screw up the ecosystem if I tried. I bet I’d accidentally trigger global boiling or something. Everything’s interconnected, you know? My father blundered around stomping on people, because he used to be a giant, right? I may be wearing his boots now, but I want to be careful not to crush anyone underfoot. I feel like I should learn what I’m doing before I start trying to change the world. Even small magic gives you headaches, or steals years off your life, or messes up your vision, or makes you lose time. If I go trying to cast big magic, the blowback is likely to be bigger, too. Maybe, once Clara’s older, if I don’t screw
her
up…I can think about doing other things.”
“Fair enough. So let’s leave the big picture behind for a moment, and move on to something closer to my heart: you, making out with me. Does that have a place in your future?”
“We’ll see how you do tonight, and maybe I’ll consider your application for any future openings.”
“Happy to be a contender.” He sipped his beer. “Really, the thing is, you have to think about what’s most important to you, right? Because you’re in a position to really
do
it, whatever it turns out to be. That’s a pretty rare opportunity.”
“No pressure there, Trey. What’s the most important thing to
you
?”
“I’m not all that ambitious. What matters to me is doing work I like, and seeing people I like, and never having to kill anybody ever again, and drinking good beer, and kissing pretty girls. Or at least one particular pretty girl.”
“Who is she? I love pretty girls.”
“You and me both, darlin’,” he said.
I had Sunday dinner at Trey’s parents’ house, the week before Thanksgiving. After the meal, Clara sat in the living room, watching cartoons on a TV screen bigger than some movie theater screens I’d seen, surrounded by Trey’s assorted cousins and nieces and nephews of roughly her age. She was pretty good at keeping her magical skills secret, and at this point they were mostly limited to making her stuffed animals dance anyway, so I didn’t worry about her turning any of the other kids into newts (although that would have been an improvement for a few of them). After dinner the womenfolk cleared the table and went into the kitchen—because the South, I guess—but Trey’s grandfather touched my elbow and led me, his son, and Trey into the den, which was exactly as wood-paneled and brandy-sniftered as you’d expect.
I eased into a leather armchair, and the others settled down around me, so we sat in a loose circle. Looking across at Trey’s father and grandfather, I realized I was looking at the man Trey would become, pretty much, in middle age and old age—though I hoped he’d be less careworn, since his period of magical thrall was rather shorter.
The elder Howards had been resentfully loyal to my father because they’d had no choice. Now, though, they were gratefully loyal to me because I’d set them free. Grace’s way of ensuring loyalty was more reliable, but I felt a lot better about mine. They’d agreed to help me with any legal (and selected illegal) problems I had, which was good, because it was proving tricky for me to take formal guardianship of a little blonde white girl who didn’t officially exist.
They’d also given me a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle’s bourbon as a thank-you gift (which was terrible in a way, because after that all other bourbon failed to satisfy in comparison), and Trey’s dad had offered to teach me how to golf (which I gather is the only way he knows how to express feelings of fondness).
“The DNA tests will prove the girl is related to you,” Trey’s grandfather said. “That you share a father. We’ll say she was Grace’s illegitimate daughter, that he kept her hidden, and that her mother has either died or abandoned her recently. We think the court will look favorably on your petition for guardianship. And if they don’t…”
“That’s what magic’s for.”
They nodded. Trey’s father beamed at me—he was affable, if not as sharp as his own father or as witty as his son—and said, “Are you sure you won’t join us for Thanksgiving dinner, Bekah? You’d be welcome. You feel like family already.” His glance slid toward Trey, and he didn’t quite wink, but it was a near thing.
Trey blushed, which was suitably adorable. As much as I liked his family, though, I was a long way from becoming part of it. Hell, I was still adjusting to being part of the
Grace
family. But we were definitely dating, as much as time and circumstances allowed, so it was nice to know I was welcome in his ancestral home. I wasn’t sure his extended southern family would be thrilled with him bringing a black woman to a holiday dinner, but if anyone looked at me funny, Trey’s grandfather would bring the hammer down in full, brutal, iron patriarch fashion.
Sometimes it’s good to have a reptile on your side.
But still: “No, I should really go home to Chicago. I’ve got to introduce Clara to my parents. They’re still kind of adjusting to the idea of taking on a half-grandparent, half-stepparent role. Honestly, none of us know how to describe what they are—what’s your relationship to your adopted daughter’s half sister?”
“Family,” Trey’s grandfather said, and that seemed fair enough.
Clara and I teleported to the airport in Chicago and met my parents at the curb. The security at airports is a pain in the ass, but it makes pretending to arrive by plane a lot easier, since my parents couldn’t wait for us at the gate. We hugged, and they were very nice to Clara, who greeted them solemnly.
But once we got home—and Clara was installed in my old bedroom with some brand-new coloring books and crayons and safety scissors—my mom and dad sat me down and poured me a big glass of wine that was nevertheless dwarfed by the glasses they poured for themselves.
“Honey,” my dad said. “Are you sure about this? You’re so young. Taking on a child, especially one that probably has, ah, all sorts of problems, is a huge responsibility. You haven’t even started your career yet, whether it’s teaching or painting or whatever it turns out to be.”
“Your biological father’s mistakes are
not
yours to fix, sweetie,” Mom said. “The way he raised that girl in secret, she’s going to have all sorts of issues, I know. But fixing her isn’t your responsibility.”
“I know it’s not my responsibility,” I said. “It’s my opportunity. And she’s not a mistake. She’s a little girl. I was a little girl, once. I didn’t have anyone. I got abandoned, too. And you know who took me in? Two wonderful, kind, smart people. Honestly, Mom, Dad—you’re the ones who raised me. You’re really surprised
I want to adopt Clara?”
They looked at me, and then at each other, and then my mom said, “All right, then. Are you really going to keep on living in the middle of nowhere, though? If I’ve got a granddaughter all of the sudden, I’m going to want to see her, you know.”
“We’ll visit more often than you think,” I said.
We’d decided to enroll Clara at school in the new year, and in the meantime, I was sort of homeschooling her, keenly aware that if I didn’t do a good job, I could have a monster on my hands someday. I already knew the worst possible outcome of catastrophically bad parenting in Clara’s case, and while I was almost certainly going to do a better job with her than Grace had, that wasn’t saying much by any objective scale. I had to give her some stability and support…and I finally felt like I was in a place where those weren’t impossible, alien concepts.
Trey and I were in bed one night, as Christmas approached, listening to the wind whip and howl around the house. We were snug and warm in the master bedroom, and Clara was tucked away in the room next door. I was expounding on the general theme of my doubts and fears and worries, and he was kissing me on the neck and murmuring that everything was going to be okay.
“But is it
really
? What if she grows up to be a crazy murderer?”
“I’m not an expert in child development, Bekah, but I know nurture has a lot to do with how things turn out. Yes, by nature she’s shape-shifting sorcerer spawn, but you’re going to teach her to be a person, too. A good one. The only kind you know how to be.”
“You’re sure you want to date a single mom, Trey?”
“It gets me in a lot less trouble than dating married moms would.”
I elbowed him in the ribs. “Seriously. That little girl in there tried to murder you. You’re okay with this?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think of Clara as the same person who tried to kill me. They’re relatives, maybe…but you had some shitty relatives for a while there, too, and I don’t hold that against you.” He nuzzled his head against my hair. His voice was sleepy and faraway. “Besides, I wouldn’t care if you adopted a family of rabid wolverines. The first day I saw you, I knew you were my destiny.”
I tensed up a bit. “I don’t believe in destiny, Trey. Or fate, either.”
“Oh, neither do I. Not really. I think you have to make your own destiny. I want to make you mine. You’re my moon and sun and stars, Bekah. And clouds. Satellites. Contrails. Also helicopters. Skydivers. Basically everything in the sky. And also everything under it. I’m here as long as you want me.”
For once in my life, I didn’t say anything snarky, sarcastic, or funny in response to an expression of genuine emotion. I just held on to him, and enjoyed him holding on to me in return.
Clara liked Christmas stuff, weirdly enough—having a pine tree inside especially delighted her for some reason—so we decorated the house, and I teleported Charlie in to spend the weekend before Christmas with us. (Luckily there was lots of Christmas candy to gorge myself on, to pay the caloric price for all that jaunting around.) Within two hours he’d become “Uncle Charlie” and Clara was very firmly in love with him. He always was a charmer.
Charlie and I sat drinking eggnog by the fireplace while Clara committed crimes against arts and crafts with pine boughs and holly leaves and red and green ribbon at the kitchen table. Trey was off helping his parents with their holiday preparations. “How’s
your
art going?” Charlie said to me. “Unless you haven’t been painting. I mean, parenting and being a wizard and stuff cuts into your time, I know—”
“Come see.” I rose and led Charlie to my studio and the canvases there. Clara was a remarkably self-sufficient child—I gathered our father had left her alone in their cabin in the woods for days at a time on a regular basis, and she got along fine without tons of supervision—so I still had time to work.
“Not just melting houses anymore,” Charlie said, pacing in front of the paintings, giving them his best gimlet eye. He paused in front of one done in shades of black and gray. “This is, what, a moonscape?”
“Yeah. I went to the moon and painted it, when my vision was only showing me black and white. Crazy contrasts.”
He snorted. “Show-off. If you could tell anybody the truth about that painting, you’d get a lot of money for it, though.”
There were assorted exotic landscapes, because as part of Clara’s geography homeschooling I’d used
The Book of Grace
to take her to various beautiful places, and as part of her art curriculum, we’d sketch for a while and then come back and paint.
“These are okay,” Charlie said at last. “This one here, though—this one’s really something.”
It was another landscape, this one drawn from memory and not life, depicting white trees and black shadows, with a half-glimpsed figure—a giant, its form blurred but recognizable—half-hidden by the branches.
“Ah,” I said. “That’s not mine. It’s Clara’s.”
Charlie turned and stared at me. “She painted this. At
seven
?”
I sighed. “She’s going to be better than me, isn’t she?”
“Becks.” Charlie put his hand on my shoulder. “I think maybe she already
is
. Not technically, obviously—I was going to say this is unusually primitive for you, when you’re usually so controlled—but…Nurture her in this.” He cocked his head. “If you can turn her into an artist, maybe you can keep her from turning into a homicidal maniac.”
“You mean the two are mutually exclusive? Now you tell me.”
On Christmas Eve, Clara rolled over in the bed we shared in my old room at my parent’s house, and shook me awake. “Bekah,” she said. “Can we go north tonight?”
I was half-asleep. “What, the North Pole? You don’t believe in Santa. You told me our dad hunted the immortal elf who pretended to be Santa Claus and killed him in the 1890s.”
“I know,” she said. “But Dad used to take me to see the northern lights every year, for as long as I can remember.”
I couldn’t tell if my heart swelled or broke when I heard that, but I bundled her up in a magical jacket that would keep the cold off her, and let
The Book of Grace
take us far north.
After my first failed attempt, Clara rather prissily explained that the North Pole was a terrible place to see the lights, and that we should find a spot about twenty degrees offset from the magnetic north pole. We ended up in the wilds of Canada, on our backs in the snow, gazing up at the bands of undulating color above. It was breathtaking. “I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s so beautiful.”
I looked over at Clara and was surprised to see she was sobbing, quietly. “What’s wrong?”
“Bekah,” she said. “Why did our daddy have to die?”
I took her hand and squeezed it. “He was old, and sick. He didn’t feel good anymore. He thought it was his time to move on.”
“But he could have lived forever.”
“If you live forever, I think maybe you start to forget what living is for.”
Clara considered that for a long moment, then said, “That’s stupid. Dying is stupid.”
“Well,” I said. The whole thing was kind of complicated to explain to a seven-year-old, but I thought of it as the start of a long-term conversation. “Can’t argue with that.” At least she wasn’t crying anymore.