A Nomadic Witch

Chapter 13

Jamie watched The Monk steal into another dark alleyway, and turned so the small girl riding on his back could see. “What do you think he’s up to, munchkin?”

“Ya-ma-da-da-ya.” Kenna chattered away happily, far more interested in the buckle on the backpack. So far, early attempts to teach her game strategy weren’t going very well, but at least it let Nat take a nap. Nights were not exactly restful lately.

The Monk turned, silhouetted for a moment by the mage-light in his hand.

Huh. Jamie moved closer, curious now. Odd bumps under cloaks were generally grounds for concern in Realm. He strained to catch a better angle-and then laughed as a small, naked foot popped out.

Marcus’s game persona turned and glared. “If you’re going to follow me, you could at least do it quietly.”

Not a totally unreasonable request. Jamie released a silence spellcube around the four of them-no way was he trying to keep Kenna quiet enough for good skulking. “What are we up to? Is that librarian kid on the move again?”

“I have no idea.” Marcus tucked the stray foot back under his cloak. “My house has been invaded by people expecting me to crack at any moment-I needed somewhere to go.”

Realm had always been a haven for introverts. Jamie’d never been one, but his brother Matt had sometimes suffered from the witch hordes. “You’ve got a nice private castle keep-how come you’re in the alleyways?”

Marcus looked around like he’d never seen an alley before. “I don’t know. We were just taking a walk. I need to think.”

Jamie winced and spelled away a basket of half-rotten grapes, Marcus’s foot inches from being slimed. And sighed-he knew the classic signs of parental sleep deprivation. The man needed a keeper. “Want another head to help you think?” He didn’t have to ask about the topic.

“I’ve spent forty-three years thinking.” Marcus stopped and leaned back against a wall covered in dirt of questionable ancestry. “Gotten exactly nowhere.”

Jamie pulled out a couple of apples and offered one up, crunching on the other. Two sleep-deprived guys were not the best brain trust to throw at hard problems, but there was something that had been niggling him. “Have you wondered why Evan sent Morgan to you in particular?”

Marcus blinked.

“Think about it.” Jamie tugged on the thread he’d been worrying. “If we assume he wasn’t just trying to torture you, then he must believe you can help keep her safe.”

“With what?” Marcus looked ready to spew rocks. “Light sabers and pretty blue flowers?”

“Dunno, dude.” Although Jamie was pretty fond of the light sabers idea. “That’s what you have to figure out.”

“My brother always did overestimate my thinking skills.” Marcus’s voice was as dry as dust, and no more hopeful-but Jamie could hear his brain coming online. “It was usually his utter disregard for the laws of physics that got us into trouble, and then he’d expect me to come up with some brilliant idea to get us out.”

It was an experience Jamie had lived through all too often-and the first time he’d ever heard Marcus volunteer anything about his long-gone brother. “Devin was the holy terror in our trio. Matt was the brains.”

Humor tickled the edges of Marcus’s mind. “What job did that leave you?”

“Lookout.” Jamie squeezed the feet of the chatty baby on his back. “Don’t let anyone tell you that’s the easy job, girl of mine. The lookout always gets in trouble first. Gramma Retha’s got eyes in the back of her head.” Although if Nell’s experience bore out, their mother was more often found aiding and abetting the troublemakers these days.

Apparently grandmothers played by different rules.

“The Fairy Godfathers missed that particular piece of advice.” Marcus flicked invisible lint off his robe. “The car-seat-on-top-of-the-dryer trick was quite useful, however.”

Jamie said nothing. He’d mostly been the lookout for that particular project, too.

“You might thank Daniel and his sidekicks, should you see them.” Marcus pushed off the wall and meandered in the direction of daylight. “And tell him to fix whatever infernal hole he used to hack my computer.”

It had been a very small hole-Daniel had cursed a blue streak getting that particular job done. Jamie grinned. Maybe Marcus would read his damn email next time.

Kenna cooed as they reached the street, arms stretched up to the sun. His child of heat and light, even the virtual kind.

They watched as Slink walked by, followed by a couple of motley tagalongs. Fifteen years trying, and he was still the worst player in Realm.

And then Jamie had another piece of the puzzle. Sometimes they were easiest to see just as you stopped looking. “What does Slink do wrong?”

Marcus snorted. “What doesn’t he do wrong?”

Point, but not the one he was trying to make. “He has no plan. All he ever does is react to what happens in Realm. He never experiments, never builds alliances, never launches an attack.” He didn’t even pick his sidekicks-they just kind of stuck to him like old chewing gum.

Marcus stared. “You think I need to go attack the mists?”

Kind of. “I think you need to stop reacting. Go on the offensive. You’re one of Realm’s best strategists-you play to win.”

The Monk steered around a lamppost, amused. “Hasn’t worked out so well. I’m currently getting schooled by a ten-year-old.”

“Exactly.” Jamie’s instincts were humming. “And still you fight. That spellcube raid you led a couple of weeks back? Warrior Girl’s still steaming over that one.” And plotting revenge, but he was sworn to secrecy on that part. “Fifteen years, and you keep coming up with new ways to play. To win.”

“The game’s not life.” Marcus’s voice was quiet, but fierce. “Nobody dies here.”

Jamie pushed away the sympathy-it wasn’t what his friend needed now. “Not all that different. Does Morgan need Slink protecting her? Or does she need the mind that causes half of Realm to tremble?”

Marcus snorted. For form. But his brain had snapped into high gear. Jamie had reason to know that it was a pretty fearsome weapon-and maybe Evan had thought so too.

It had to beat skulking in alleyways.

Jamie watched as The Monk marched off down the street. The sleeping general had awakened. Not a bad morning’s work.

Moira touched her fingers to a last zinnia and climbed slowly to her feet. She’d been tending flowers all morning, and a nice distraction was finally walking down the street.

She’d been waiting for hours.

Under the cover of the large, floppy hat that graced her head, she studied the meandering duo. Morgan looked right as rain, if a mite perplexed. Marcus looked like his usual scowly self, which was balm to her heart.

Sleep and green goo fixed many things.

Judging from the way Marcus was holding his wee girl, however, something quite different was needed at this moment. She stepped out of her flowers and walked to the gate. “Good day, nephew. ’Tis a diaper you’ll be wanting, I’m thinking.” She grinned at the brogue in her voice-little ones always brought out her Irish.

Marcus grunted in greeting. “If she’d just stop kicking her legs like that, we might make it to Elorie’s without catastrophe.”

That seemed fairly unlikely. Moira opened her gate. “Come on in-I’m sure I can scare up a spare nappy somewhere.”

The look on her nephew’s face was high comedy. “You have diapers?”

“Indeed I do.” She snipped a sunny yellow buttercup on the way by-her table bouquet could use some brightening.

“And why is this the first I’ve heard of them?” Marcus’s growl would have been more effective if he hadn’t been fighting amusement at the antics of the child in his arms, waving frantically in the direction of the buttercup.

Moira reached over and snipped another. “One for you too, darling girl. You can take it home with you.”

The drooly grin was lovely to see-but it was the light touch of humor in her nephew’s eyes that had an old witch sniffling. She could count on one hand the times she’d seen him relax into simple pleasure.

She walked in her door and headed straight for the hall cupboard-baby poop didn’t come with a lot of patience. It pleased her immensely when Marcus reached automatically for the diaper and looked around for a place to put his bright-eyed girl. “Come-I’ve a blanket on the spare bed for just this purpose.”

Morgan grinned happily as Marcus set her down on the bed. Moira sat down beside her and held out the buttercup. “Maybe you’ve some earth witch in you, sweet girl. Or maybe you just like buttercups. They were your uncle Evan’s favorite.”

Marcus’s hands froze, diaper halfway undone.

Moira kept talking to the baby, trusting the urgency of poop to do its job. “When he got a little bigger than you are, he used to rub them on his face and pretend to be the sun, all yellow and happy.” She touched the blossom to a pink cheek. “And then he’d have his brother make a storm cloud, and they’d walk around town pretending to be the local weather forecast.”

Sweet giggles shook Morgan down to her toes-and had the added benefit of getting the man in charge of her diaper moving again. Moira smiled, delighted with them both.

And then she crossed her fingers and took an enormous chance. “Do you remember that, nephew? The two of you, bringing water and sunshine to the gardens of the village? You nearly drowned Clare Higgin’s prize roses.”

Marcus snatched a baby wipe. “Someone taught me a rain spell and forgot to mention how to turn it off.”

Ah, yes. She’d forgotten about that little training lapse. “You figured it out quickly enough. And then we taught your brother a quick-dry spell.” Mischief was always fertile ground for new magic lessons.

“Scorched my shorts.”

The voice was gruff-but he was talking. About Evan. Moira blinked back tears and reached out a hand to the baby. “Tell her the stories, Marcus. She needs to know her history.”

Eyes snapped to hers in painful shock. “Evan’s not her history.”

“She’s a witch.” That ran deeper than blood. “And we need to remember the whole of Evan. Not just how it ended.”

All she got in response was the harsh sucking of breath.

No point just dipping your toe in the hot water. “Remembering frees us-even when it hurts in our very bones.” Pain sliced at her, old agonies thrust into the light of day. “And Morgan needs us free.”

“Why?” One word, ripped from his throat.

“Because you’ve lived a life of paralysis, my sweet, beautiful man-and we’ve let you.” She leaned over to kiss a round cheek. “This one, she needs us now. We can’t let ourselves sit still in fear and pain any longer.”

A long moment of silence-even Morgan lay still, watching them with big, wide eyes. And then Marcus’s hands moved again, sliding baby limbs into bright, stripey leggings. “You sound like Jamie. He gave me the more manly version of that same speech this morning.”

Had he, then? Moira hid a smile-young Jamie was becoming quite the skilled meddler, and an early riser, too. “Witches are never shy with advice. You know that.”

He snorted and scooped Morgan off the bed. “All too well.” He raised the baby up to eye level. “It’s a bunch of nosy busybodies you’ve chosen, silly wiggle.”

Morgan made a noise that sounded suspiciously like agreement.

Marcus tucked down into a cluster of boulders at the far end of the main beach of Fisher’s Cove. If he remembered correctly from his wayward youth, this was the best spot to avoid being seen. It was a matter of survival-village rumor said Lizzie was experimenting with her green goo again.

And he still needed to think.

Carefully, he tucked another blanket around Morgan. Boulder clusters weren’t the warmest of places to take a small baby.

She promptly kicked the blanket off, naked toes waving in the rather brisk breeze coming off the ocean.

He snorted and covered her up again. “Listen, girl-child. The faster you get cold, the sooner we have to head back for hearth and home.”

Morgan grinned-and stuck her toes out the bottom of the blanket.

It was like trying to wrap an octopus. He raised his eyebrows and stuffed the wandering limbs back in. “I’ll tell Lizzie you’re the one that requires a dose of green goo.”

The feet quieted, lavender eyes considering his words with great seriousness.

Heh. “Smart girl.” Marcus nodded in satisfaction. The Fairy Godfathers had been certain you couldn’t negotiate with babies. Perhaps, despite the manual’s general usefulness, they didn’t know absolutely everything.

And then Morgan let loose with the telltale sounds of poop detonation. Accompanied by giggles.

“Again? Ingrate child.” He refused to laugh, even as her Houdini feet escaped the blanket one more time. With a sigh, he raised an air bubble around the two of them. Magic on the beach probably wouldn’t escape notice, but he could hardly strip her down in a brisk Nova Scotia breeze.

She’d been cold enough lately.

Good mood suddenly gone, he squeezed her feet, reassuring himself of their warmth and general feistiness. He needed to figure out how to keep them that way.

Just for a year. Witchlings with the telltale signs of astral magic grew out of it, or developed mature powers. You just had to keep them alive long enough for it to happen.

One year. Twelve months. A million breaths.

A long, gray eternity.

Morgan’s fussing interrupted his thoughts. Bloody hell. Marcus reached for changing supplies. Maybe he could just mark the time against poopy diapers. His brain refused to do the math. Anything involving poop and several zeros was far too frightening to contemplate.

And Jamie was right. One breath at a time might work in yoga class, but it was the fastest way to annihilation in Realm. Smart players had strategies and fallbacks and several layers of attack moving at the same time.

He snagged one of Morgan’s feet right before it created poop catastrophe. Who was he kidding-he couldn’t even plan a diaper change without incident. “Hold still, creature, or we’ll have to give you two baths in one day.”

With fast hands, he got the new diaper on and the old one sealed away in three Ziploc bags and a containment spell. And then reached down for the little girl babbling happily in their dungeon between the rocks. He held her up to his nose, caught, as always, by the humor in her eyes. “What am I going to do with you?”

She hiccupped, and a giggle spilled out.

He held her steady and waited-maybe she’d do it again. Lavender eyes stared at him solemnly, feet waving quietly in the wind.

“That one was an accident, was it?” He had the sudden, bizarre urge to see if there were more hiding inside her somewhere. Carefully, he nuzzled his nose into her belly and blew.

What came out sounded far more like whale farts than the raspberries Lizzie had blown. Morgan looked at him in wide-eyed surprise. Unwilling to be outdone by a six-year-old, Marcus tried again-and got a grin.

Getting closer.

One more time, Marcus blew against her belly-and this time, the stars aligned. Giggles ignited in Morgan’s toes, a great shaking mess of them.

Marcus held her out at arm’s length and felt something similar rising from his own toes. Life, it seemed, was contagious. He pulled her in close and blew one last time.

They were right. It was time to act.

Even if he had no idea what to do.

Sophie watched as Lizzie dropped the last handful of chamomile in her brew. Her trainee looked up. “That should work. Do you think it needs anything else?”

Sophie leaned over and sniffed the contents of the huge pot on the stove, trying not to wince. It smelled atrocious. “What do you think?” Part of the job of a healer was to know when to quit-and Lizzie’s concoctions still suffered badly from overkill.

“Maybe some mint to make it smell better.”

Even mint wasn’t going to chase off the odor of year-old gym socks, but it was a laudable thought. “If you made this again, how could you prevent the stinkiness?”

Lizzie’s head cocked to the side. Sophie turned off the stove-no point burning smelly gym socks while her student was lost in thought. Mike had high tolerance for most healer shenanigans, but he had a sensitive nose.

One more stir and Lizzie grinned. “I could let them sniff some of Gran’s skunk remedy first, and then nobody would notice how this one smelled.”

Sophie tried not to laugh-Aunt Moira’s skunk remedy was urban legend, but a very effective one. Nothing got patients to drink something foul more quickly than threatening them with the one that was worse. “That’s one approach, cutie, but we modern witches sometimes try to do things more subtly.”

Her student headed for the cookie jar. “Why?”

“Well, in the old days, healer brews were usually the only choice if you wanted to feel better. These days, people have more options.” Doctors and pharmacies and little pills that sometimes worked miracles and sometimes masked the real problems. “The old ways need to adapt.”

Lizzie looked at her sideways. “Gran doesn’t think that.”

Oops. Sticky territory. “She believes in balance, and in respecting the old ways. That’s important, and it’s a good place for every witchling to start.”

“I know, I know. Feet firmly planted in the traditions.” Lizzie rolled her eyes and looked down at her bare toes. “I think they like running better, though.”

Sophie grinned at the broad hint. “Okay, lesson’s over. Go play on the beach, or whatever it is that has you all antsy.”

“I get to go play with Morgan.” Lizzie started stuffing herb jars back onto the shelf in a six-year-old version of clean-up.

Ah. Her student had fallen in particular love with the village’s newest resident. “Is Marcus still trying to make you change all the diapers?”

“Nope.” A lid slammed down on the pot. “He’s getting pretty good at all that stuff.”

That was fascinating-and odd. Rumors of Marcus’s sudden competence had been circulating for two days, but no one had any idea how it had happened.

Lizzie tilted her head again. “Is he Morgan’s daddy now?”

Sophie wondered briefly why the hardest questions always came at the end of lessons. “He’s taking care of her, so he does a lot of the same things daddies do.”

Lizzie frowned. “That just makes him a babysitter.”

“Well, he’s also her guardian. You remember the woman who came to visit us? She put Marcus in charge of making sure Morgan is safe and happy.”

“He doesn’t hate that so much anymore.” Small fingers touched a droopy flower, perking it up. “He likes Morgan a lot now, even if he still growls sometimes.”

Being a parent was a journey, and none of them were entirely clear just yet where Marcus stood. “That’s good. It’s a lot easier to take care of a baby if you love them.” She tugged on a stray pigtail. “If you weren’t all so cute, we’d feed you to the fishes.” It was a threat oft repeated in Fisher’s Cove.

“Morgan’s way too cute to feed to the fishes.” Lizzie giggled. “They can have Sean, though.”

The first person who tried to dump Sean into the briny deep would instantly face the wrath of their smallest water witch, but Sophie kept that knowledge to herself.

“I think Marcus will love Morgan soon.” Lizzie picked up her backpack. “She still makes him sad a lot, though.”

Sophie reached over to hug the bright and far-too-aware girl who had adopted Morgan as her baby sister. And hoped fiercely that there weren’t oceans of sadness yet to come.

Marcus looked up and growled. Quiet invaders were no less welcome than their noisy counterparts, and Lizzie had left only minutes ago. Receding footsteps suggested his point had been made. Morgan was finally sleeping, and he was supposed to be coming up with some grand master plan to keep her safe.

So far, he had exactly nothing.

The scuffling sounds returned outside his doorway. Interloper, or intrepid mouse-either way, he wanted them gone.

Instead, he found Kevin, adding another pile of dusty books to a very precarious pile. Marcus grabbed the newest ones before the entire enterprise came crashing to the ground and woke up his purple-eyed master. “What are all these-you running away from home?”

Kevin’s smile was tentative-an unusual sight these days. Growls had ceased to scare him some time ago. “I heard you were trying to figure out how to help Morgan.”

Yes. A project he intended to keep children well away from. Realm’s gossip chain rivaled the one in Fisher’s Cove. “I don’t need your help, youngling. Or your dusty books.”

“Gran says all the knowledge of the world can be found in books.”

Gran hadn’t learned about the Google. “Some questions don’t have answers.”

Brown eyes gleamed, undeterred. “No-but there are still clues.” He took a deep breath. “Astral travel is an old power, so I started reading the old books.”

Gods. The history of travelers was full of death and misery. “This isn’t work for children.” It broke grown men.

“I’m a witch.” Said quietly, in a tone reminiscent of Moira at her least biddable. “And I know how to find things in books.”

“We don’t know how to save them, Kevin.” Marcus willed a modicum of kindness into his voice-the boy was just trying to help. “We’ve never known.” One of the oldest of magics, and one of the least understood.

“I know.” Sadness shadowed the boy’s mind. “I didn’t realize there were so many.”

Marcus did. He’d learned every last one of their names as a child, looking for some clue, some way to find Evan and bring him back. “Put away the books-there’s nothing to find.” He ran a hand through the boy’s hair. “I was a reader once.”

Kevin pulled out a sheaf of paper from his backpack. “I made a list. All the travelers I could find, and where they lived, and what happened to them.” He took a deep breath. “I think I found something.”

There were pages of notes. All written in careful childish hand, mute evidence of many hours spent deciphering cryptic old texts. Days of work, started long before anyone else had even begun to think straight.

It wasn’t in Marcus to send him away unheard. He would listen-and then perhaps the boy could be convinced to master the fine art of diaper changing instead of spending useless hours in the bowels of witch history. “What did you find?”

“It’s easier to see this way.” Kevin reached into his backpack one more time, and then started unfolding the rattiest map Marcus had ever seen. “South America fell off while I was working, but you don’t really need that to see the pattern.”

South America wasn’t the only continent in serious jeopardy. And several countries in Africa hadn’t been called by those names for fifty years. “Where’d you find this?”

“Joey’s grandma’s attic.” Kevin’s eyes gleamed with treasure found. “No one else wanted it, so she said it was okay if I took it home.”

Joey’s grandma’s attic had been feeding small-boy fantasies since before Marcus was born-he was fairly certain she planted a new crop of treasures up there every spring.

“Do you see the pattern?” Kevin stood calm, but his mind was practically zinging.

Marcus stopped trying to decipher African countries and attempted to pay enough attention to reward Kevin’s efforts. There were little brown X’s scrawled all over the map. “What are all the markings?”

Kevin nodded in approval-apparently the question was on the right track. “Those are where travelers lived. Every time I found a town, I marked it on the map.” He frowned. “The records aren’t very good-I couldn’t find a location for everyone.”

No doubt. Not to mention that cities had changed a fair amount over the last several hundred years. Marcus tried to focus. There was a fair collection of X’s in the east. “Lots on the coast here.”

Kevin hovered, trying not to explode. “Where else?”

Marcus looked. “Ireland.” Not exactly a surprise-half of recorded witch history happened on that small green island.

“Where else?”

Marcus reached a finger out slowly and touched a quiet brown X on the coast of Nova Scotia. Evan.

“Sorry.” Kevin looked down at his shoes. “I wanted to include all the data. It’s what good researchers do.”

There was a reason he’d been born to crusty bachelorhood. He hurt feelings just by breathing. “What did you find, witchling?” Marcus cursed the gruffness in his voice-and had no bloody idea what to replace it with.

“All the travelers…” Kevin’s voice was barely audible now. “They all lived near water.”

Water. Mists. Marcus’s eyes sped over the bedraggled map. All the X’s. All within a stone’s throw of the ocean. Most witches lived near water, but not all. He felt the pattern of the X’s coalesce into certainty in his brain.

Astral power only worked near the water.

One more time, Marcus touched the lonely X on coast of Nova Scotia.

“Will it help?”

Kevin’s glasses sat askew on his nose. Gently, Marcus reached out to straighten them. And blessed the boy who had found him something to work with.

He had a clue. A thread. A place to start.

And now, by the gods, they would have a plan.