A world pops up in the slice of light, and I see my mother’s name, the date of her birth and the date of her death, only days ago.
Only days ago? Try a lifetime ago. A lifetime passes when your mother dies, and another lifetime for you begins. Another lifetime without the source that gave you your life.
Her face fills that world, sallow and careworn, her eyes haunted by pain and sorrow. The pinch of wrinkles between her brows always made her look angry, even when she wasn’t.
Her face vanishes, and a world of light fills my eyes. Light, just light. Pure flat white light without depth, without shadow.
“By Jove!” Bonwitch exclaims and slaps his knees with the palms of his hands. “Your mother was never known for her power the way your father was. But look at this! Look at this!”
I peer at that world of pure, flat light. “What is it?”
“Her warding! Her warding of you. What a paradox! What an irony! Abby Teller, famous to all of the World of Magic, yet vanished from the world.”
“But that’s just crazy, Isaac.” I’m shaking my head. I don’t want to hear what he’s saying. I don’t want to accept what he’s saying. “I mean, how could I vanish from the world? Maybe in the Yonder, but not in the quotidian world.”
“Oh, I suspect so. I suspect in all the worlds.”
“No. No, that’s impossible. I’m here. Everyone in Buckeye Heights saw me and knew me. I attended Rowland Elementary and Buckeye Heights High. I earned my marketing degree at Carnegie College. I mowed my mother’s lawn, raked the autumn leaves, shoveled snow from her driveway. I ate barbecue with our neighbors, shopped at Whole Foods. I got engaged to Daniel Stern in plain view of the quotidian world, Aunt MasterCard, and the Department of Motor Vehicles.” I take a deep breath. “And I kept my power a secret, the way my mother urged me to.”
“Just so.” Bonwitch springs to his feet and paces, his hands clasped behind his back, a shadow moving in and out of the beam of light streaming from the projector. “No one of the quotidian world would have posed a threat to your life.” He raises an eyebrow. “Not like the Horde could.”
“Couldn’t the Horde have spied on me in my everyday life?”
“A spy may have watched you, certainly, then forgot what he saw. So powerful was your mother’s warding, even your inciting incident at fourteen with the fireflies has vanished from the Yonder. By Jove!”
Bonwitch rubs his hands with glee. A glee I can’t share. The more he enthuses, the more uneasy I feel. Not just uneasy, but resentful. And not just resentful, vexed. Very, very vexed.
“So powerful was your mother’s warding,” Bonwitch rattles on, “it has protected you for days after her death.” He claps his hands, applauding that world of pure, flat light. “Well done, Alice. By Jove, well done!”
“Professor Bonwitch–”
“Isaac, please.”
“Isaac, my mother struggled for most of her life with a wasting illness. The doctors couldn’t diagnose it, couldn’t treat it, couldn’t cure it. Couldn’t take her pain away, either, and she suffered for years.” I curl my fingers so tightly into fists that my fingernails dig half-moons in the skin of my palms. “Damn it, Isaac, is that what her warding of me did to her?”
Bonwitch stops pacing. Stops chortling. The sudden sorrow in his eyes confirms the truth. “Warding a person other than yourself may drain you of your vital essence, it’s true.”
“My God.”
“Listen to me, Abby. Your mother loved you that much. You must not add guilt to your grief for her. Grief has damaged your aura, here and here.”
He points at my heart, at my solar plexus, and sharp intrusions of his power jolt me. He’s not playing power games, I know, but still. I don’t like it.
“You must release this grief and guilt and heal yourself with compassionate magic. You’re too vulnerable to dark powers.”
“And just how do I do that, Isaac? How do I release grief? How can I not feel guilt, now that I understand the truth?”
He strides to the projector, presses the rewind button, and the film speeds from sprocket to sprocket with a clickety-clack. He unsnaps the reel from the supply sprocket. “It’s just a prop to boost the energy,” he explains and turns the projector off. “It will take work, Abby. Consider that part of your homework assignment. Write about this. It will help.”
“My homework assignment? Write about how all I did to care for her seems like nothing now? My daughterly obligation a sham and a joke compared to her motherly sacrifice for me?”
“Yes, write! In the beginning was the Word. Write, child! Write! The Word has power!”
Bonwitch crosses his office in two swift strides, pulls his chair around the table, sits and faces me. He frowns, his vast power roiling all around him like thunderheads crackling with lightning. He takes my hands.
“I’ve been rude and unspeakably callous. Crowing about your mother’s warding. Consider that an aspect of my dark side. Sometimes my love of magic is greater than my love of people. Will you forgive me?”
“I forgive you, Isaac.”
There it is again, forgiveness. Do I understand, exactly, what Bonwitch is asking me to forgive? Yeah, I think I do.
But I don’t know how I’ll ever forgive myself.
********
Enjoy the book here for free!
Or buy it at the links below. Or donate if and when you wish, whatever you wish, at https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lisamasonthewriter/
The choice is yours!
The Garden of Abracadabra is on BarnesandNoble, US Kindle, Canada Kindle, UK Kindle, Apple, Kobo, and Smashwords.
The Garden of Abracadabra is also on Amazon.com in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, Brazil, Japan, and India.
Copyright © 2012–2016 by Lisa Mason.
Visit me at Lisa Mason’s Official Website (newly updated for 2016) for books, ebooks, stories, and screenplays, reviews, interviews, and blogs, adorable pet pictures, forthcoming projects, fine art and bespoke jewelry, and more!
And on my Facebook Author Page, on my Facebook Profile Page, on Amazon, on Goodreads, on LinkedIn, on Twitter at @lisaSmason, at Smashwords, at Apple, at Kobo, and at Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
If you enjoy a title, please “Like” it, add five stars, write a review on the site where you bought it, Tweet it, blog it, post it,, and share the word with your family and friends.
Your participation really matters.
Thank you for your readership!
