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sakon76Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 17th January 2022
Beltane. 918. Beltane. 918. Barbara repeated the facts to herself to make them stick. She wasn't sure when Beltane was, exactly, except for a vague idea it was in the spring, but now that she knew when her new son's birthday was, she wasn't going to forget it. She'd have to sound out Archie about whether or not Douxie would like a birthday party. Maybe he would feel he was too old for such a thing? On the other hand, maybe he'd never really had one before, and would like to celebrate it? She'd have to find out. Jim's birthday parties had always been small things, just the two of them and Toby and Nancy.
Maybe now that both her boys were making more friends, that would change....
Javier and Ophelia were both looking shaken by Douxie's display of telekinetic power. Or, perhaps more importantly, by his control.
Javier wet his mouth. "If you can do that," he said, "why do you need my daughter?"
Claire rolled her eyes. "Because I've got magic he doesn't," she replied. "And I don't know if you've noticed, Dad, but Douxie's one guy. Even if he's pretty powerful, he can't do everything himself."
Barbara half expected a sarcastic response, but what came out of Douxie's mouth instead was a heartfelt "Exactly." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees as he addressed the Nuñezes. "You want your son back. Claire and Jim and Toby and I are working on that. But what you need to do to facilitate that, is not to get in the way of Claire practicing magic. What you need to do is foster her gifts."
"Gifts?" Javier latched onto the word like it was a new concept.
"Magic isn't evil," Douxie said quietly. "I've spent centuries watching my people be murdered because of that misconception. What sorcery is, is a natural aptitude to use magic, one of the primal forces of the universe. I can use it to manipulate gravity, among other things... and with a bit more training and practice, Claire will be able to do that too. And other things, things I can't even name or dream of. She's going to do great and wondrous things. But she needs the support of her family. Of her parents," he pleaded. "I can teach her. But I'm only her friend; you're her family. And family is... everything."
Ophelia's mouth opened, but she didn't speak. Barbara's heart felt like it was overflowing.
"I'm told children are the best of their parents," Douxie said. "If you believe that at all, if you believe that Claire is the best parts of yourselves combined and given new form... how can you not want her to pursue all her gifts to their fullest?"
"He's right, Mamá, Papá," said Claire. "This is something I'm good at. And I can't just give it up, not even after we get Enrique back. It's in my blood, like acting." She cast a sidelong glance to her mentor. "I'm a wizard, like Douxie."
Ophelia felt like the world had been turned on its head. Her daughter had magic? Her son had been stolen and replaced by some sort of demon? A punk teenager was, if he was telling the truth, a centuries-old wizard?
She liked order. She liked things to make sense. She liked her town, and her home, and her family, to be safe.
And if what she was seeing, and hearing, was true... she could not guarantee any kind of safety for any of them. For her children, for her husband....
It felt like the world was sand crumbling away beneath her feet.
Making a decision, she stood. "Show me," she told her daughter.
"Show you what?" Claire asked.
"What you need to, to make this real to me."
"O-okay." Her daughter stood, then looked at the punk wizard. "I'll show her the Shadow Realm."
Concern flashed briefly across his face, then washed away. He nodded. "All right. Be careful - remember I can't pull you out of there."
"And Morgana's there." Claire nodded back. "I've got it, Douxie." She looked back at Ophelia, and held her hand out.
Ophelia took her daughter's hand and watched as, with her other, Claire summoned a swirling purple-black rift in the air. Her daughter looked up at her with big brown eyes, and smiled. "Trust me, Mom," she said, and led the way.
Claire's shoulders dropped with relief as soon as she crossed into the Shadow Realm. For all that her first foray into this, the heart of her magic, had been kind of traumatic... well, Douxie had been right. She had made the power her own, completely separate from Morgana. And now coming here felt like... like coming home, coming in from a storm. The world outside was chaotic and messy, with all kinds of bad things happening. But here it was peaceful, and she could think.
Her mother's crushing grip on her hand belied that sensation. "Mom, it's okay," Claire said, turning to face her. Her mother's eyes were wide with terror, the hand that wasn't holding Claire's clutched to her chest.
"What is this place?" Ophelia asked, looking around.
"It's the Shadow Realm," Claire said. "It's where a shadowmancer's power comes from." But her words, she could see, weren't working their way past her mother's fear. She let herself drift up, closer to her mother, face to face. Eyes on the same level.
"Mamá," Claire said, touching her hand to her mother's face. Ophelia focused on her. "Don't worry. You don't need to be scared. I won't let anything happen to you."
"Mi hija," said Ophelia, "you can't promise that."
Claire smiled. "Here? I really, really can," she said, and turned. "Come on!" She flew, taking her mother with her.
"Claire-- Claire, where are we going?!"
"Wherever we want!" Claire called back, springboarding from one asteroid to another. She gave a whoop. "This is a playground!"
Her enthusiasm must have been infectious; after a moment, her mother laughed, and the grip on her hand became less punishing. And Claire had never brought anyone here but Archie, and that by mistake. But he'd had wings to maneuver with. Would her mother, with no aptitude for sorcery that Claire knew of, be able to get about under her own power?
"Trust me, Mom," Claire said, and let go.
Her mother tensed, then, as nothing happened, slowly relaxed. "How-- how do I move around?" she asked, hovering in space.
Claire shrugged. "You just think about it, and then you go," she demonstrated with a zoom of her hand. "It's like flying with pixie dust in here, all the time."
Her mother looked skeptical. "Happy thoughts?"
"Faith and trust and pixie dust." Claire shrugged. "If it works, I don't mind the crazy."
And that cracked a smile on her mother's face. "All right, Claire. Show me around your Shadow Realm."
It wasn't long at all before Claire and Ophelia came tumbling back out of a shadow portal, the latter breathless and almost giggling. "Oh, Javier!" she said, making her way over to her husband, eyes sparkling. "It was amazing! We flew!"
"No sign of Morgana," Claire reported to Hisirdoux.
"Well, that at least is good news." He frowned. "Hopefully."
She slugged him in the shoulder, sitting back down next to him. "Don't borrow trouble. Enough of it finds us all on its own."
"True," he admitted, and looked back up at Claire's parents. "So. Will Claire be permitted to continue her studies?"
Ophelia sobered a bit, and looked at Javier. He put his hand over hers. "Mi corazón?" he asked.
She sighed. "To get our Enrique back, we have to allow this," she told him, then looked at her daughter. "You will be careful, Claire. I will not get one child back just to lose another, do you understand?"
"Sí, Mamá," Claire said. "Does this mean I can have my textbook back now?"
"Yes, I'll get it for you in a little bit."
"That's one thing taken care of, then," said Archie, stretched out along the back of the sofa behind Douxie.
"There are others?" asked Javier.
"There are a few other important points at the moment," Douxie replied. "The first is, can Claire skip church this Sunday?"
Claire turned to look at him, blinking. "Skip church?"
"My friend who's making you armor needs you there for a fitting," Douxie explained to her. "If we can make it an all-day thing, that will give us multiple opportunities to fine-tune the design, and get it done faster."
"Armor?" Javier asked.
"Magic armor," Douxie emphasized, looking back at him. "We're engraving it with several strength and durability spells, among other things. I'm not sending Claire up against Gumm-Gumms without protection."
"What about you, Douxie?" Barbara asked softly.
He sighed, his shoulders slumping. "Yes, I am getting armor too," he said, unhappy reluctance in his tone and posture.
Ophelia's eyes narrowed. "Where will you be taking Claire?"
"The Triple-H Ranch, about fifteen miles east of town," Douxie answered easily. "I can give you the address and the house phone number. Actually," he said, turning to his mother, "I mentioned you to Henry, and he thinks his wife might be your Krav Maga teacher?"
Barbara blinked. "Astrid?"
"Yep, that's her."
"Huh."
Ophelia and Javier, meanwhile, exchanged a glance. "This Sunday only," Javier said, returning his attention to the teenagers. "This does not become a habit."
Claire and Douxie both nodded.
"What else?" asked Javier.
"NotEnrique stays here," Douxie said, looking at the changeling who crouched on the sofa back beside him. When the Nuñezes opened their mouths to object, he held up his hand. "Unless you have a way to explain your infant son disappearing for several weeks until we can retrieve him, that's not even a negotiation point. He has to maintain the masquerade, and you have to treat him decently."
"According to someone I know," Barbara broke in, with her own look at NotEnrique, "changelings are physically and mentally abused for literal centuries before they're sent to our world. So you might want to keep that in mind."
"Oi, ain't nothin' wrong with me!" NotEnrique protested.
"Well, you're a scrungy loudmouthed brat," Claire told him.
"Aww, now you're just talkin' up me good points," he replied with a grin.
Ophelia looked narrow-eyed at him and slowly breathed out. "He can stay here to keep up the charade." Her expression wasn't amenable to further concessions.
Douxie glanced at Claire and NotEnrique. First one, then the other, of the siblings shrugged.
"Anything else?" Ophelia demanded.
"Stop telling Claire to diet," Hisirdoux said bluntly. "Magic burns calories like mad. She needs to be eating more, not less."
"Douxie!" Claire protested.
"We talked about this," he told her. "And I know it's me harping on a point, but this is important. I need you to be happier," he said, brushing a strand of hair out of her face, "and healthier, and have better habits overall than myself. If I'm your teacher, that's my responsibility, Claire."
"Douxie." She sighed. "You deserve to be happy, and healthy, and have good habits too."
"I'm learning that," he replied, with a quick glance at Barbara. "But, Claire, I'm starting from a negative point that nine hundred years has ground into me. For you, I don't want you to get anywhere near the lows I have. For you, I want there to be no way you go but up." He smiled, his thumb brushing her cheek. "You're amazing, and you deserve nothing but the best."
"So where's Nuñez?" Steve asked as he set his lunch tray down at the table with the mixed crowd of losers and not-losers who apparently had their fingers on the hot pulse of Arcadia's literal underworld.
"Good question," said Mary.
Jim twitched.
She pointed her spork at him. "Spill, Jimmy-Jam!"
"She kind of had a falling out with her parents yesterday and spent the night at my place," Jim admitted, cringing.
Steve gave an appreciative wolf-whistle.
Jim glared. "Not like that, jerk!"
"Wait, what kind of falling out?" asked Domzalski.
Jim grimaced. "They found out about her magic."
The table fell silent.
"So?" Steve asked, not getting it. "So what?"
"Wow, someone really slept through history class," Darci muttered.
"Steve." Mary waited until he was looking at her. "Does 'burn the witch' ring any bells?" Her dark eyes were narrowed in a glare.
"Yeah, sure, that's from Monty Python, right?"
Mary's glare intensified. She leaned across the table and whacked him with her spork.
"Ow! Hey, what was that for?!" Steve demanded, clutching at his forehead, which hurt surprisingly a lot. "Pepperjack, am I bleeding?" he asked, uncovering the wound and showing it to the geek. "Tell me I'm not bleeding! Nurse Crystal is scary!"
"You're not bleeding," Eli reported. "I think she hit you, not stabbed you."
"Oh, thank god." Relieved his good looks weren't ruined, Steve relaxed.
Mary, though, was not glaring any less. "Forget Nurse Crystal," she grated. "I'm scary. Don't make me ruin your reputation with a few well-placed tweets, Steve!"
He held his hands up. "Okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"
Mary settled back onto the bench, her glare fading a little.
"What am I sorry for?" Steve asked in a smaller voice.
Jim sighed deeply. "Steve, witches and wizards got murdered all the time through history. If you want some horror stories, and to make him really depressed, ask Douxie about it sometime. He's got nine hundred years of firsthand experience."
"Nine hundred years...?" Steve didn't get it.
Toby rolled his eyes. "Shyeah, dude's nine hundred and seventeen years old, dude. Get with the program, Steve." He took a bit of his sandwich, chewed, and swallowed. "He's a wizard. They can live for a long time."
"Whoa," Steve breathed, impressed.
"Anyhow," Mary bit out, bringing them back on track, "that means it's not unlikely that her parents might, say, kick Claire out for being a witch. Because people don't like magic."
"Wow." Jim blinked, looking impressed. "You're picking this stuff up pretty fast, Mary."
"Yeah, well. I don't want to die. You bet your shiny Vespa that I'm learning it as fast as I can," she retorted, unruffled, and stabbed what the school kitchen claimed was Chicken Alfredo Noodles with the sharp tines of her spork.
"So," Toby spoke up, "anyone else for tacos and training after school?"
"Douxie," Barbara said, sitting down on the park bench and starting to unwrap her burrito as he did the same, "Can I ask you something?"
"Couldn't stop you if I tried," he replied, making her laugh. Which she guessed was true enough, except then he continued, "Well, I could, I suppose... but."
"But?" she asked.
"Merlin used to magically muzzle him," Archie said, jumping up onto the space left between them and investigating the paper food tray of shredded chicken, doused with the taco truck's hottest salsa, that Douxie had ordered for him.
Barbara froze. "Muzzle?" she demanded, aghast.
"I was... not the best of apprentices," Douxie admitted, looking at the grass before them, not meeting her eyes. "I doubt he ever did it to Morgana."
"Douxie." Her fingers found his chin, guiding him to look at her. "Tell me you know that what he did was wrong."
He gave her one of those soft smiles that she was realizing frequently hid pain. "Intellectually," he said, which was not at all the same as a yes. "I'm afraid you've adopted a deeply damaged son."
Well, at least he knew that much. "The next time I see Merlin," Barbara said, "I intend to have words with him about child abuse."
"Good luck," Archie muttered, tucking in.
"He's a master wizard, Barbara," said Douxie, shaking his head. "Nothing you or I could do would make a whit of difference to him."
"He does not get to hurt one of my boys," Barbara informed him, and bit angrily into the corner of her burrito. "Oh, I always forget how good these are." She didn't get to eat from the taco truck nearly often enough.
"I know, right?" Douxie took a bite of his own lunch and hummed happily.
As she chewed, Barbara looked at him, thinking. Finally she swallowed, and spoke. "Douxie. You know that everything you said to Claire earlier, about being happy and healthy and having a family to support you... you know that applies to you as well, right? You're not less, and you don't deserve less, just because you've had a lot of bad things happen to you."
He sighed, and lowered his burrito, looking at his hands. "I know that," he said. "Some of the time, at least. And I am trying," he promised her, looking up. "I swear I am. But it's not always that easy."
"I know." She leaned across Archie, put her arm around Douxie's shoulders, drew them closer until the side of her head touched against his. "I won't pretend they're as bad as yours, but I'll tell you a secret: I've got issues too."
Looking at her, he smiled and shook his head just a little.
"I do," Barbara insisted, letting go, giving him his space again. "If I didn't have all that baggage from my stepdad in my head, I probably would have known better than to marry James. But at the time, all I saw was security and a man I thought would never hit me. And I guess he didn't."
"He still hurt you," Douxie said levelly. "When he left you."
Barbara nodded. "Eventually. And that's given Jim his own issues, which is kind of funny." She smiled sadly. "Because when I found out I was pregnant, my first thought was 'I'm going to be the best mom ever, so he never has to worry about the things I do.' And I failed, so profoundly. Which is why I've never gone looking again. I couldn't bear to do to Jim what my mother ended up having to do to me."
Douxie's hand touched her arm. "You know it's not your fault, don't you?" he asked. "You're not responsible for the pain that other people inflict on you."
"Oh, I know," Barbara said. She looked at him. "Do you?"
Douxie froze. Then he gave a low laugh. "Touché." They sat in silence for a few minutes, eating and enjoying the sunshine, before he spoke up again. "Strickler is a good man. Neither Jim nor I would recommend him to you, if either of us thought he wasn't."
Barbara sighed. "I don't doubt it. I just... experience has taught me to be wary, and go slow. And the man having secrets doesn't help."
Douxie shrugged. "I can't pretend to know everything he's got hidden in his past. But I doubt many of them are things that would destroy your relationship, given what you already know about him."
"The history of trauma, murders, and backstabbing, and the whole interspecies thing. Right." Barbara sighed. "Is it bad of me to say that almost makes me trust him more?"
Douxie laughed, light and bright. "If he's not human, he won't hurt you the way your last husband did?"
"Oh, don't say 'last husband'," Archie implored. "It makes it sound like she's one of those black widow serial wedders or something."
Now Barbara laughed. "Can't say I haven't ever pictured myself in widow's weeds, standing at James' headstone after I murdered him and got away with it."
"Well, I can't say I condone murder," Douxie said, smiling, "but there are certainly rather a lot of people who make you long to commit it."
Barbara sighed. "And it's amazing how many of them end up in the ER."
"Or dining at a cafe."
Archie snorted. "Like mother, like son."
She and Douxie exchanged a glance. Barbara gave a shrug.
"Well," said Douxie after a moment. "It's not like Arch's wrong...."
"I would say I am never wrong," said the dragon, "but that would sound entirely too much like Merlin."
"Ugh." Douxie sighed and his expression went glum again.
Barbara searched for a topic to turn the conversation around. "So why music?" she asked.
Douxie blinked. And smiled. "It's everything I love about magic, but I'm actually good at it."
She scoffed. "You're telling me you're not good at magic?"
A shoulder lifted in a half-shrug. "Well, I mean. Not compared to who I compare myself to?"
"Comparison is the thief of joy," Barbara murmured.
Archie's head popped up. "Teddy Roosevelt," he announced, then went back to his spicy chicken.
Douxie laughed and rubbed between his familiar's ears. "Never play trivia games with Arch," he said. "Unless he's on your team, I suppose." He went silent, then after a minute, said, like he was trying to sound it out for himself, "Magic... is emotion and logic, balanced. And so is music."
"That... very much does not explain Merlin trying to emotionally cripple you," Barbara pointed out. "Whether inadvertently or deliberately. Kind of the opposite, in fact."
Douxie shook his head, staring into mid-distance. "No one ever said they had to be good emotions. Morgana... didn't fuel her sorcery on happiness. And she was brilliant."
Archie, though, had paused and raised his head. "Actually, Douxie, I think Barbara may have a point."
Douxie made an inquisitive noise.
"Merlin never, in all the time you studied with him, expressed an emotion happier than mild amusement. And seldom that."
"He was in a stressful situation," Douxie protested. "Caught between Arthur and the trolls and magic users...."
"Douxie," said Archie quietly, "Merlin channels his magic through logic and necessity, and that alone. Perhaps it's time for you to accept that Merlin simply isn't a happy person, and thus has never held much value for positive emotions, and their power, in others. Whereas you," he said, butting his head affectionately up against his familiar's arm, "have always held on, no matter how dire the circumstances, to hope. To love. It's far more integral to you than the negative emotions."
Douxie's eyes closed; his head bowed. "Archie, you know--"
"I know," the dragon said softly. "But for all that loss and pain, you've always found something to survive for, yes? Something worth going on for. What do you think it is, if not that?"
The boy's arm went around the dragon; Barbara's arm went around the boy. Douxie shivered, but did not pull away.
"It's hard to cling to positive things sometimes," she murmured. "Nihilism is so much easier than the audacity of hope."
Douxie breathed a laugh. "Hope is punk as eff," he said shakily. He drew a breath. "Want a secret?"
"...Sure," Barbara said, unsure where this was going.
"Jim is hope," Douxie said quietly, his eyes meeting hers. "If I can get him through the next year and a half... if we can find a way to defeat the Arcane Order... he's going to change the world." Gold eyes flashed. "For the better."
Author's Notes: "Faith and trust and pixie dust" is from Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie, though the line never really stood out for me until I encountered it in the Disney Fairies movies, which I love. The Audacity of Hope is the title of a book by Barack Obama (which I have yet to actually read).
