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Mint Chocolate Chip
Gabriel walked away from the cart with his ice cream.
Melting tendrils of mint chocolate chip dripped over his fingers, already
melting in the summer sun. He paused and dabbed at the sticky mess with the
thin napkin the confectioner had handed him. He succeeded only in smearing the
ice cream around. The feel of sugar drying on his skin, clotting his arm hairs
together, made him grimace.
I should have gotten
the cinnamon pecans, the young wizard thought. That would have been a
better choice on a day like this. Why hadn’t he thought ahead? Master Zeke kept
telling him to keep the consequences of his actions in mind before he did
anything.
Something tugged on his jeans.
Gabriel looked around and saw the head of a child, all
auburn ringlets with crimson flashes brought out by the sunlight. He pressed
his lips together and pulled away. Children were gross creatures. “What?” he
said, impatience bittering the sweetness on his tongue.
The child looked up at him. The red flecks in her hair
continued down over her face, smears and splatters. Blood.
He gasped and yanked out of her grasp. His fingers went numb
and he dropped his ice cream. “What the hell?” He dropped to his knees in front
of the girl and grabbed her shoulders, his former revulsion forgotten. “What happened?
Are you okay?”
She blinked blue-gray eyes at him. “I didn’t mean to,” she
whispered.
His heart pounding, he reached to her with his magic,
scanning her for injuries. Shimmers of light, like little heat waves, skimmed
over her thin frame, undisturbed by the darkness of trauma.
It’s not her blood.
Oh, God.
And there was something else. The glimmer in the depths of
her round eyes. A light reflected in his own. A shine of magic.
Everything made a terrible sort of sense now. Gabriel shook
the girl, her head rocking back and forth. “What did you do? What happened?”
“Hey, what’s going on over here?”
Gabriel snapped his head up. An older man approached,
looking stern. The scene he was walking into looked awful, and Gabriel was very
aware of it. A bloody child, a grown adult male. No one else seemed to have
noticed what was going on, everyone minding their business on the crowded
boardwalk, but if they did…
The girl trembled under Gabriel’s hands. The temperature in
the already-hot air started to rise, leaping to scorching levels. Gabriel
watched, horror climbing up his spine, as his skin mottled pink and then red
from the touch of the heat. Pain snarled through his hands, a sensation like
he’d grabbed a pan straight out of the oven.
He forced himself to act. Releasing the girl with one hand,
he thrust his fingers into his pocket and grabbed at the white powder he kept
on his person at all times.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized, and then he threw the Blinkdust
into the other man’s eyes.
The man flinched back, too slow. The dust reached his eyes,
dulled his perception of what he had seen through a process Gabriel was still
working to understand. He went slack, standing motionless except for rapid
blinking.
The effect wouldn’t last long.
Gabriel grabbed the girl’s blazing arm and started to move,
walking fast through the crowd. Running would attract too much attention.
Pulling her behind him, feeling her trip and stumble, he ducked between a clam
bar and a pizza parlor, through the cluttered and dirty alley to the back areas
ringed with dumpsters and recycling bins.
He spun to face the girl and dropped in front of her again.
“What’s your name?”
She stared at him and blinked a few times. “P-Penelope. What
did you do to that guy?”
“I made him forget we were there.” It was close enough to
the truth. “Penelope, what did you
do? Did you use your magic on someone?”
She hesitated. The blood was drying on her skin, going
ruddy.
“I’m a wizard. I can use magic, too. But you knew that,
right?” Gabriel lowered his voice. “That’s why you came to me.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she whimpered.
He bit his tongue. Showing his urgency would make her
retreat further. “Then, show me. Take me to where it happened.”
Penelope looked at him for a moment longer before nodding.
She grasped his hand, sliding her small fingers between his.
She led him to the scene of what she’d done, behind an
arcade. Gabriel needed only a glance at the remnants of another human spread up
the back wall and across the ground to know the whole story. She’d been grabbed
and had protected herself, probably more violently than she meant to. Her young
magic knew no limits. Not yet.
“Penelope,” he said, trying to sound calm, “where are your
parents? Your mom?”
“I don’t have parents.”
Of course, not. Unfortunately, that was a story most wizards
knew all too well.
“Me, neither,” Gabriel said. “But I have a teacher. He shows
me how to use my magic. I think you should meet him.”
Penelope looked at what she’d done and said, in a voice much
older than her years, “Me, too.”
The one day Master
Zeke lets me take a break from studies and I find an orphaned mage.
He straightened up. “Let’s get you away from here. I’ll find
you a bathroom so you can clean up, and I’ll call my teacher. While we’re
waiting, we can have ice cream. Would you like that?”
She might have been a mage -a very powerful one, if he was
reading the signs correctly- but she was still a child. Penelope took his hand
again and said, “Okay.”
At least this was one
situation in which he knew the consequences of what he was doing. He was going
to get this kid the help she needed.
© 2019 Emily Blue
© 2019 Emily Blue
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