When they were six years old, Maru'El and Daru'El realized it was time to travel. They made it as far as the first neighbor down the grassy
road that passed infront of their house. This was the home of Elzbeth Mauh'Lee.
Elzbeth was a widow of about thirty years of age, getting on in her years for a human. She still had all her teeth, and most of them were straight.
She had long, black locks of hair that ended in twirled curls, shiny and bouncy. And she knew magick.
Her eyes could shoot through you like daggers, if she were sober and sparring words with you. But generally, people tended to wonder if the
ice-blue irises held any pupils at all. Elzbeth Mauh'Lee was the local drunk, oddly leaving her bright eyes to have contracted pupils, instead of dilated ones.
When Maru and Daru first wandered away from their parents' farmhouse, no one even noticed the unusual quiet that settled around the yard.
Hand in hand, the two slender children followed their noses(Maru'El swore she could smell cinnamon extract) and ears(a lovely voice whispered
on the wind but faded so fast) to the next source of "civilization", which happened to be Elzbeth's property. As they strode up her fenced walkway, they
could hear her singing loudly. And when they pushed open the gate to her back yard, they could see her dancing over the packed dirt.
Elzbeth moved like a butterfly alighting on a flower full of nectar. She fluttered, all her body a study of soft waves. She would come near to crouching, her
white chickens pecking and prancing around her feet. Then she would bounce up, high into the air, and wriggle and writhe and do it again.
Her voice was like a rare sparrow, high and ululating, and her words were in a language the children found familiar but strange none-the-less.
Silently they watched her as she danced, as she hopped up and crouched down. Tiny dust devils started of a sudden around her toes, whipping up the
corn feed and sending the chickens scurrying. As Maru and Daru watched, the mini-twisters became larger, and began to move up the dancing woman's
body. Before their eyes, the dust took on the shapes of hands, cupping the woman's large breasts through her blouse, lifting them, lifting Elzbeth off the ground.
Her arms were high in the air, and her voice never ceased its calling. But she no longer had to bounce or jump to gain height.
The dust was lifting her.
Maru blinked. Daru gasped.
And Elzbeth came tumbling down as she stopped singing, landing on her behind and rolling around in peals of laughter.
"Children! Ha ha ha!! Children?!?!"
Elzbeth struggled to stand up, laughing as she was, and the twins ran into the yard to help her.
"My spell was to call daemons and I find children on my step? Hah!"
Maru looked at Daru. And she was the first to speak.
"Mother calls us demons all the time…"
Elzbeth stood up, shaking off the children's helping hands as she dusted her long and heavily folded skirts.
"Indeed, as would I if my children were so precious and wandered so far from home!"
Maru looked at Daru, then back at Elzbeth.
"You are far from home, aren't you, wee ones?"
Daru shook his head 'no'.
"You can't be the children from down the road, at that wretched Breadar's farm…? Can ye?"
The woman leaned down slightly and looked at the children. Her bright eyes suddenly seemed very clear and sentient as she looked into their faces.
"Hmm…."was all she said, and there was silence.
Then, out of nowhere, a dust devil rose up around her again, and her eyes fogged over, looking almost gray. Before the children's startled gaze, she
leaned back against a daemon made solid of dust and dirt that pawed at her breasts wantonly and tried to disrobe her right then and there.
"Mmm, now where were you moments ago when I was alone?"
The woman reached a many-ringed hand behind her into the center of the dust cloud she leaned on and then as she turned to greet the daemon,
she clutched a handful of the dirt and threw it over her shoulder, in the direction of the children.
There was an echo of a wail or scream, and the daemon was no more.
She turned to look at the children, her eyes bright, her hands on her hips.
"If you are going to make magick, never leave off it suddenly. It can and will come back, at its own leisure, to do things you never intended it to. Or
worse yet, to do things you meant it to do ten minutes before, but have since changed your mind about!"
And that is how Elzbeth Mauh'Lee came to teach Maru'El and Daru'El the lore of human magick.
To me, Elzbeth was how a woman should be. How she acted, how she looked, how she tasted and smelled. She was the epitome of womanhood in
my eyes. And in my brother's.
I could see in how he looked at her how a man could be affected by a woman. I was far too young to understand the importance of that. It was something I
would learn in a year or so. But just then, it didn't matter who Daru'El looked at, to me.
I looked, too.
Elzbeth swayed when she walked. She sashayed. She always had bare feet unless she was dancing at a tavern. Then we would see her on those evenings
wearing sandals that strapped up her muscular calves.
"To prevent slivers," she would say to us, giving us no more explanation than that.
We never got into trouble for wandering to Elzbeth's house the first time. I think our family was happy to have us occupied elsewhere. And Elzbeth
expected that much. She seemed to know of us, or who we were, by our father's name. Elzbeth didn't like him, I thought. Her eyes gleamed and she grinned
so viciously at the mention of his name. It had to be a great dislike indeed.
Daru and I felt Elzbeth was someone like us, at least someone more like us than our own family was. She was mysterious, she was beautiful. And she had
dark hair, like mine was sure to be some day, if I could just keep the knots out of it.
I wanted to be like her in every way.
Elzbeth taught me everything she knew, eventually. But it wasn't something she ever intended to do.
In the beginning, when we were only six, we would leave our farm and go to her's almost as soon as the sun rose up and the beasts of the night crept back
deeper into the woods and the shadows. The Mystic Kinde didn't come this far, but their offspring and inbred relatives were everywhere. Horrors with many
arms and legs and voices that went "chit-chit-chit" or "screeee-aaak" wandered outside all of our homes as soon as the sun set. It would take a farmer a full
pack of dogs to keep his livestock safe through the dark time.
We never stayed at Elzbeth's past sunset. We always made sure we were home before then. Not only because of the beasts, but because our father liked to
pretend we helped around the house, that we mattered as a significant part of his little family. And it wouldn't do if we were not there when he came home to beat
when the chores were undone.
"You need to learn magick, my dears," Elzbeth said to us after we had known her for only a week.
"You need to learn it, and learn it fast. Else you will never make it to adulthood, what with the way your father takes after ye."
She nodded at us, having finished inspecting Daru's one very swollen eye. The laundry had been left out the night before, and someone had to take the
blame for Tikki's mistakes, besides Tikki. The family that bled together stuck together, or so our father seemed to think.
"I can't say I blame him. You obviously aren't his get, you know. No, I've seen his children, and his grandchild. And you two are nay his kind!
"I'd wager his wife got raped."
I held Daru's hand then, petting it to comfort him.
"But if we are from rape, why would they have kept us?"
I blinked at Elzbeth, and she looked at me for the first time then in a way she would look at me so often later on. Like I was too wise for my age.
She never did answer. I would find an answer on my own, another time, I knew. And so I wisely let the issue drop.
"Magick for humans is hard. It isn't easy for us, not like they say it used to be. We have to tear it from our flesh, from our souls, from our very beings.
"But magick is inside everyone, you can mark me on that, children," she said as she dabbed a stinking herb-infused cloth over my brother's eye.
"It's inside you, and it's inside your mother and father. And even that sister of yours, Tikki, she has some, dumb as she is."
"Tikki is our niece, Elzbeth," I corrected.
"So says you," was her chuckling reply.
"Magick is inside every one of us. But it's the ability to make it come out that makes us unique from others."
"Us?" Daru asked.
"Yes, 'us'"
"You mean we can do it, too?"
Elzbeth laughed, sitting back on her stool and smiling at us.
"Well yes! Do you think you're coming here was an accident?"
"We just followed your music."
"And I could smell you," I piped up.
"Yes, I bet you could, child, I bet you could, at that. But it was the Call that brought you."
"What is the Call?"
She smiled and took us by the hands, and led us out to her back yard, then into the field of wild flowers that she "tended" to. She
began to twirl, and her voice began to rise and fall, ululating again in that alluring language. This was what she called the Call.
I tried to imitate her. So did Daru'El. We twirled and twirled, and sang and sang. And we got so dizzy, we fell down, laughing and laughing
. She hugged us to her bosom, and kissed our dark heads, and we hugged her back. It was a good feeling. No woman had held us like that for years.
Then suddenly, the ground shook beneath us, as if the thunder from some storm had been buried in the earth.
We screamed, Daru and I. And in an instant, Elzbeth had scooped us both up, heavy as we were, and was racing back to the house. Into
her yard we spilled, and just in time!
When we turned around and looked up, there was a herd of bah'ki barreling down the meadow towards Elzbeth's small clapboard house.
I ducked my head and felt her arm draw over me protectively. But Daru was still watching. I could feel his fear, but he wouldn't look away. I had to look, then, too. Bah'ki are large grayish-brown animals with barrel chests like some overfed cow. But they have big, bulbous eyes, and they drip green slime
from their very sharp teeth. And they have the oddest horns on their noses, filing down from forehead to snout in a single line, smallest to largest. They
have large, flat feet that pound the earth when they run. Bah'ki are part of the Mystic Kinde. And they should not be out in the sunlight like they were just now.
As we watched, they drew closer and closer, a small group of about five or six that must have come from the nearby wood. Down the slight slope they
galloped, right towards us!
And as I watched, they ran into an invisible shield around the fenced backyard, and bounced back into the grass. Blue sparks flew everywhere as they
got back to their feet and tried to ram their way through that unseen barrier. But try as they might, they could not break through.
I turned to look at Elzbeth. She was whispering, and her eyes were bright, a sign that she was in deep concentration. Slowly, the bah'ki backed away.
Then they thudded back into the woods, snorting in what sounded like disgust at being disturbed for nothing.
Daru stood up and walked to the edge of the yard. He put out his hand, and it met nothing. Elzbeth was panting, and I stayed near her, under her arm.
"What happened?" Daru'El whispered.
Elzbeth stood up, and I could tell something was troubling her, something very serious. Her face had become very dark and mean-looking. I backed away
from her and bumped into Daru, who put his arms around me protectively. I knew he saw what I saw.
Elzbeth was mad.
"Well, then," she huffed, dusting herself off and glaring at us.
We stood there, trembling, staring at the woman who moments ago had felt closer to us than our own mother ever had. We knew what could happen
when an adult changed faces like that. And though we were sad, we were ready for it, bodies rigid for violence, ears ready for condemnation - for what,
we had no idea.
But then Elzbeth's look softened, and she put out her arms. And gladly we leapt into them, hugging her tightly and weeping. Finally, she crouched and
put a hand on each of us.
"Now listen," she said, her chest still heaving with the stress of her run and her magick whisperings.
"There are lessons here to be learned. I should never have let you use the Call without explaining what it was. And I should not have underestimated such
fine and special children as you two."
"What is the Call, Elzbeth?" Daru asked.
"It is a Call to magick. Everything around us has a magick life force in it, just like there is magick in every human. The trees, the earth, even man-made things
like this house, or that fence, or that tool there," she said, pointing to a common garden hoe.
My eyes went wide. Magick in everything? My flesh began to crawl with goose bumps when I started to thinking about that. In everything??
"When you use the Call, you are calling magick out from something. But, I should have told you, you only call magick out of something specific."
She looked over our heads then, at the trampled path in her beloved meadow where the bah'ki had disappeared.
"I can't imagine what called them, though. Only lesser daemon and sprites should come, things that live in flowers, in the small piles of earth or dung we have
laying around…
"But a herd of bah'ki," she said almost to herself, biting her lip.
Elzbeth shooed us away then, and Daru took me by the hand to start our journey home, leaving the woman to her thoughts.
"Remind me to teach you about shielding against bad magick," we heard her call out as an afterthought. But we knew we were truly already gone from her mind.
Something had her upset, and we couldn't tell what.
As we walked, Daru'El and I talked. Do you think we did that?
Yes, I do. Elzbeth knows very much about magick, but I don't think she is that strong in it.
Well shouldn't we be scared to walk home alone? It's getting dark, and those bah'ki might be near.
If anything came, Daru'El said to me, his chest puffed out, I would use the Call on those rocks and I would smash whatever came! Nothing would touch you!
I smiled, because I knew Daru would protect me. And I would protect him.
