The Way of the Wizard

Jamaica Orson Scott Card

AP Chemistry was a complete scam and Jam Fisher knew it. Riddle High School was the cesspool of the county school system. Somebody in the superintendent’s office came up with a completely logical solution: Since statistics proved that high schools with the highest enrollment in Advanced Placement courses showed the highest rates of graduation and college placement, they would make all the students at Riddle High take AP courses.

How dumb do you have to be to believe something like that? Dumb enough, apparently, to go to college, get an Ed.D., and then work in the Riddle County School System.

Jam was one of the few kids at Riddle who would have taken AP Chemistry anyway. But now, instead of studying with other kids who were serious about learning something, he was stuck in a class with a bunch of goof-offs, dumbasses, and idiots.

Which he knew wasn’t fair. They weren’t actually dumb, they were simply out of their depth. They didn’t have a college-grad Mom like Jam did, or have a small shelf of books in the living room which were written by relatives (but read by almost nobody).

Fair or not, the result was predictable. In order to have a hope of teaching anybody anything, they were dumbing down the curriculum, and so Jam would have to work twice as hard to educate himself in order to do decently on the AP tests. Mom would go ballistic if he didn’t ace them all and come out of high school with a whole year of college credits. “If you don’t have a full ride scholarship you’ll be at Riddle Tech and that means you’ll be qualified — barely — for janitorial work.”

And here he was on the first day of class in his junior year, listening to some overly-chummy teacher making chemistry into a joke.

“What I have here,” said Mr. Laudon, “is a philosopher’s stone. Supposedly it could change any common metal into gold, back in the days of alchemy.” He handed it to Amahl Piercey in the first row. “So before we go any further, I want every one of you to hold it — squeeze it, taste it, stick it up your nose, I don’t care—”

“If I’m spose to taste it, I don’t want it up Amahl’s nose,” said Ceena Robles. Which provoked laughter. Meanwhile, Amahl, not much of a clown, had merely squeezed it, shrugged, and passed it back.

The stone was passed hand to hand up and down the rows. Jam saw that it looked like amber — yellowy and translucent. But nobody seemed to notice anything special about it, till it got to Rhonda Jones. She yelped when she got it handed to her and dropped it on the floor. It rolled crookedly under another desk.

“It burned me!” she said.

Shocked you, you mean, thought Jam. Amber builds up an electric charge. That’s the trick Mr. Laudon must mean to play on us.

But Jam kept his thoughts to himself. The last thing he needed was to have Laudon as an enemy. He’d done a year where he antagonized a teacher and it wasn’t fun — or good for the grades.

“Pick it up,” said Laudon. “No, not you, her. The one who dropped it.”

“My name is Rhonda,” she said, “and I’m not picking it up.”

“Rhonda.” Laudon scanned the roll sheet. “Jones. Yes you will pick it up, and now, and squeeze it tightly.”

Rhonda got that stubborn look and folded her arms across her chest.

And with a resigned feeling, Jam spoke up to take the heat off her. “Is this an experiment or something?” asked Jam.

Laudon glared at him. Good start, Jam. “I’m talking to Miz Jones here.”

“I’m just wondering what’s so important,” said Jam. “It’s not as if there’s such a thing as a philosopher’s stone. It’s just amber that builds up an electric charge and it shocked her when she got it.”

“Oh, excuse me,” said Laudon, looking at the roll. “Yep, I checked, and right here it says that I’m the teacher here. Who are you?”

“Jam Fisher.”

“Jam? Oh, I see. That’s a nickname for Jamaica Fisher. I’ve never heard of a boy named Jamaica.”

Some titters from the class, but not many, because in the lower grades Jam had been through bloody fights with anybody who said Jamaica was a girl’s name.

“And yet you have the evidence right there in your hands,” said Jam. “Doesn’t the roll have a little M or F by our names?”

“It’s gallant of you, Mr. Fisher, to try to rescue Miz Jones, but she will pick up that stone.”

Jam knew he was committing academic suicide, but there was something in him that would not tolerate a bully. He got up, strode forward. Laudon backed away a step, probably afraid Jam intended to hit him. But all Jam did was reach down under the desk where the stone had rolled and reach out to pick it up.

The next thing he was aware of was somebody slapping his face. It stung, and Jam lashed out to slap back. Only has hand barely moved. He was so weak he couldn’t lift his arm more than an inch before it fell back to the floor, spent.

The floor? What was he doing, lying on his back on the floor?

“Open your eyes, Mr. Fisher,” commanded Laudon. “I need to see if your pupils are dilated.”

What is this, a drug test?

Jam meant to say it. But his mouth didn’t move.

Another slap.

“Stop it!” he shouted.

Or, rather, whispered.

“Open your eyes.”

With some fluttering, Jam finally complied.

“No concussion. No doubt your brain is in its original condition, despite having hit the floor. You — the two of you — help him stand up.”

“No thanks,” murmured Jam.

But the two students delegated to help him were more afraid of Laudon’s glare than Jam’s protest.

“I’ll throw up,” Jam said. Or started to say. But the last part came out in a gush of lunch. By good fortune, it landed between desks, but it still got all over Jam’s shoes, and the shoes and pantlegs of everyone near him.

“I think he needs to go to the nurse,” said Rhonda.

“Need to lie down,” Jam said. Whereupon he fainted again, which accomplished his stated objective.

He woke up the next time in the nurse’s office. He heard her talking on the phone. “I can call an ambulance for him,” the nurse was saying, “but school policy does not allow us to transport a sick or injured student in private vehicles. Yes, I know you wouldn’t sue me, but I’m not worried about getting sued, I’m worried about losing my job. You don’t have a job for a fired nurse, do you? Then let’s not argue about the policy. Either I call an ambulance, or you come get him, Miz Fisher, or I keep him here to infect every other student who comes in here.”

“I’m not sick,” murmured Jam.

“Now he’s saying he’s not sick,” said the nurse, “even though he still has puke on his shoes. Yes, ma’am, ‘puke’ is official nurse lingo for vomitus. We speak English nowadays, even in the best nursing schools.”

“Tell her not to come I’m okay,” whispered Jam.

“He says for you not to come, he’s okay. Weak as a baby, probably delirious, but by no means should you leave work to come get him.”

Within twenty minutes, Mother was there.

So was Mr. Laudon. “Before you take him, I want it back,” he said to Jam.

“Want what?” asked Mother. “Are you accusing my son of stealing?” Jam didn’t even have to open his eyes to see his mother right up in Laudon’s face.

“He picked up something of mine from the floor and he still has it.”

Jam noticed that Laudon didn’t seem to want to tell Mother or the nurse that what he was looking for was a stone. “Search me,” Jam whispered.

Mother immediately was stroking his head, cooing at him. “Oh, Jamaica, baby, don’t you try to talk, I know you don’t have it.”

“He offered to let me search,” said Mr. Laudon.

“So this boy of mine, this straight A student who comes home from school every day and takes care of his handicapped brother and prepares dinner for his mother, this is the boy you want to treat like a criminal?”

“I’m not saying he stole it,” said Mr. Laudon, backing down — but not giving up, either. “He might not even know he has it.”

“Search me,” Jam insisted. “I don’t want your philosopher’s stone.”

“What did he say?” said Mother.

“He’s delirious,” said Laudon. Jam could feel his hands now, patting his pockets.

Jam opened his hands to show they were empty.

“I’m so sorry,” said Mr. Laudon. “I could have sworn he had it. It wasn’t in the room when they carried him out.”

“Then I suggest you take a good hard look at some other child,” said Mother. “Jamaica, baby, can you sit up? Can you walk? Or shall I have Mr. I–Lost-My-Rock-So-Somebody-Must-Have-Stolen-It help you out to the car?”

Rather than have Laudon touch him again, Jam rolled to one side and found he could do it. He could even push himself into an upright position. He wasn’t so weak anymore. But he wasn’t strong, either. He leaned heavily on his mother as she helped him out to the car.

“What a great first day of school,” he said.

“Tell me the truth now,” said Mother. “Did somebody hit you?”

“Nobody hits me anymore, Mama,” said Jam.

“Damn well better not. That teacher — what was that about?”

“He’s an idiot,” said Jam.

“Why is he an idiot who’s already on your case on the first day of school? Answer me, or I’ll tell the principal he touched you indecently when he was patting you down and that’ll get his ass fired.”

“Don’t say ‘ass,’ Mama,” said Jam.

“Ass ass ass,” said Mother. “Who’s the parent here, you or me?”

It was an old ritual, and Jam finished it. “Must be me, cause it sure ain’t you.”

“Now get in that car, baby.”

By the time they got home, Jam was recovered enough that he didn’t have to lean on anybody. “Maybe you should take me back to school, Mama, I feel a lot better.”

“So does that mean you were faking it before?” asked Mother. “What’s so bad that you want to get out of it and jeopardize your whole future by skipping school, not to mention jeopardizing my job by making me leave all in a rush to take you home?”

“If I could’ve talked I would have told the nurse not to call you.”

“Answer my question, Jamaica.”

“Mama, he was passing around a stupid stone, talking about alchemy as the forerunner of chemistry, and claiming it was a philosopher’s stone. Only it picked up a static charge and zapped Rhonda Jones’s hand and she dropped it, and Mr. Laudon was having a hissy fit, trying to make her pick it up even though she had already touched it and what’s the point anyway, he was just going to tell us that alchemy doesn’t work but chemistry does, so why should we all touch the stupid rock?”

“Let me guess. You saw injustice being done so you had to put your face right in it.”

“I just bent over to pick up the stone and I must have passed out because I woke up on the floor.”

“You didn’t pick it up?”

“No, Mama. You accusing me of stealing now?”

“No, I’m accusing you of having something seriously wrong with your health and having visions of getting called out of work next time because you turned out to have a faulty valve in your heart or something and you keeled over dead on a basketball court.”

“The only way I’ll ever get on a basketball court is if I’m already dead and they’re using me for a freethrow line.”

“I got too many hopes pinned on you, you poor boy. If only — I should have killed him instead of marrying him.”

“Don’t go off on Daddy now, Mama.”

“Don’t you call him Daddy. He’s nothing to you or to me.”

“Then don’t bring him up whenever anything goes wrong.”

“He’s the reason everything goes wrong. He’s the reason I have to work like a slave every day. He’s the reason you have to earn a scholarship to get to college. He’s the reason your poor brother is in that house on his bed for the rest of his life, your brother who once had such… so much… ”

And then, of course, she cried, and refused to let him comfort her until he made her let him hug her, and then it was him helping her into the house, making her lie down, bringing her a damp washcloth to put on her forehead so she could calm down and get control of herself so she could get back to work.

He closed the blinds and closed the door as he left her room. Only then did he go into the living room where Gan’s bed was, in front of the television, which he didn’t really watch, even though it was on all day. The neighbor lady who supposedly looked in on him several times a day would set the channel and leave it.

“How you doin’, Gan?” said Jam, sitting down on the bed beside his brother. “Anything good on? Watch Dr. Phil? I already got myself in trouble with a teacher — chemistry teacher, and a complete idiot of course — and then I passed out and smacked my head on the floor and threw up. You should have been there.”

Then, even though Gan didn’t say anything or even make a sound, Jam knew that he needed his diaper changed. It was one of the weird things that Jam had been able to do since he was nine, and Gan got brain-damaged — Jam knew what Gan wanted. He learned not to bother telling Mother or anyone else — they just thought it was cute that “Jamaica thinks he knows what Ghana wants, isn’t that sweet? Always looking out for his brother.” Jam simply did whatever it was Gan needed done. It was simpler. And it gave Jam a reputation among the neighborhood women as the best son and brother on God’s green earth, when he was no such thing. It’s just that he knew what Gan wanted and nobody else did, and nobody would believe him, so what else was there to do?

Jam got a clean diaper from the box and brought the wipes and pulled down his brother’s sheet. He pulled loose the tabs and then rolled his brother over. And this was the other weird thing that had started when Jam began taking care of his brother: His skin never actually touched the diaper or anything in it. It was like his fingers hovered in the air just a micron away, so close that you couldn’t fit a hair between, and he could pick things up and move them as surely as if he had an iron grip on them. But there was never any friction. Never any contact.

All that Mother noticed was that Jam was tidy and never soiled his hands. She still made him wash. Once, defiant, Jam had gone through the whole handwashing ritual without ever letting the soap or water actually touch his skin. But it took real effort to repel the water, not like fending off solid objects. So he didn’t bother pretending, when washing was so easy. Didn’t bother defying anybody, either. Except when somebody was being a bully. If he’d stood up to Daddy, got between him and Gan, maybe things would have been different. Daddy never hit Jam, it was only Gan he lit into, even at his angriest.

The diaper was a real stinker but it made no difference to Jam. It didn’t soil his hands, and he had stopped minding the smell years ago. Dealing with anybody else’s poop would make him sick, but it was Gan’s, so it was just a thing that needed doing. Jam cleaned off his butt — it took three wipes — and then folded the diaper into a wad and dumped it into the garbage can with the anti-odor bag in it.

Then he opened the clean diaper, slipped it into position, and rolled Gan back onto it. Now that everything was clean again, he didn’t bother fending — his hand touched the bare skin of his brother’s hip. He was about to fasten the diaper closed when suddenly Gan’s hand flashed out and gripped Jam’s wrist.

For a moment all Jam felt was the shock of being grabbed. But then he was flooded with emotion. Gan grabbed him. Gan moved. Was it a reflex? Or did it mean Gan was getting better?

Jam tried to pry Gan’s hand from his wrist, but he couldn’t — his grip was like iron. “Come on, Gan, I can’t fasten the diaper if you—”

“Show me,” said Gan.

Jam looked at his face, looked close. Had Gan really said it? Or was it in his mind, the way Jam always knew what Gan wanted? Gan’s eyes were still closed. He looked completely unchanged. Except for the grip on Jam’s wrist, which grew tighter.

“Show you what?”

“The stone,” said Gan.

A shudder ran through Jam’s body. He hadn’t told Gan anything about the stone. “I don’t have it.”

“Yes you do,” said Gan.

“Gan, let me go get Mama, she has to know you’re talking.”

“No, don’t tell her,” said Gan. “Open your hand.”

Jam opened the hand that Gan was gripping.

“Other hand.”

Jam’s right hand was still holding the tab on the diaper, preparing to fasten it. So he finished the action, closing one side of the diaper, and then opened his hand.

Right in the middle of his palm, half buried in the skin, was the stone. And it was shining.

“Power in the stone,” said Gan.

“Is it the stone that healed you?”

“I’m not healed,” said Gan.

Then, as Jam watched, the stone receded into his palm and the skin closed over it as if it had never been opened.

“It wasn’t there before, Gan. How will I know when it’s there?”

“It’s always there. If you know how to see.”

“How’d I get it? I never touched it. How’d it get inside me like that?”

“Your chem teacher. He serves the enemy who trapped me like this. He gathers power for him and stores it in the stone. Steals it from the children. When he has to tell his master that he lost it….” Gan smiled, a mirthless, mechanical smile, as if he were controlling his body from the outside, making himself smile by pulling on his own cheeks. “He’ll want it back.”

“Well, yeah,” said Jam.

“Don’t touch him,” said Gan. “Don’t let him touch you.”

“Who’s his master?”

“If he ever finds out you’re involved in this, Jam, you’ll end up like me. Or dead.”

“So it wasn’t Daddy?”

“Daddy hit me, yes, like he hit me a hundred times before. Do you think I’d ever let him hurt me? No, my enemy struck me at the same moment. And Daddy got blamed for it.” Then, as if he could read Jam’s thoughts, he added, “Don’t go feeling sorry for Daddy. He meant to hurt me every time.”

“Is it the stone that’s letting you talk?”

“The power stored up in the stone. When you stop touching me, I’ll be trapped again.”

“Then I’ll never let go. Can you get up and walk?”

“I’d use up everything in that stone within an hour.”

“What’s going on, Gan? Who’s your enemy? Are you in a gang?”

Gan’s body trembled with grim laughter. “A gang? You could say that. Yes, a gang. The gangs that secretly rule the world. The turf wars that are invisible to people who have no nose for magic. Sorcerers with deep power. This is the price I pay for being uppity.”

“Isn’t there anybody who can help you?”

“There’s nobody we can trust. You never know who is a servant of the Emperor.”

“There’s no emperor in America.”

“In the real world, there’s no America. Only the wizards and their toys and playthings in the natural world. What’s a president or an army or money compared to someone who controls the laws of physics at their root? Now let go of me, before we use up the stone. We’ll need its power.”

“Are you under a spell? Like in a book?” But there was no answer, for Gan had let go, and now skin was not touching skin. Gan lay there as he had for all these years, slack-faced, inert, unable to move or speak or even show that he recognized you. But he was inside that body, just as Jam had always believed, just as Mother pretended to believe but didn’t anymore. Gan was alive and he had spoken and…

Jam sank to the floor beside Gan’s bed and cried.

Mama came into the room. Jam stopped himself from crying, but it was too late, she had seen.

“Oh, baby,” she said, “are you really sick? Or is there something wrong at school?”

“Gan,” said Jam. And then she thought she understood, and sat beside him on the floor, and cried with him for her great strong son Ghana, who had once been her friend and protector, and now lay on a bed in her living room like a corpse in a coffin, so her life was one long endless funeral. Jam understood now, and longed to tell her what was really going on. But Gan had told him not to, and so he didn’t. He just wept with his mother until they were worn out with weeping.

Then she went to work, and Jam went outside and watered the tomatoes and sprayed them for the fungus that wiped them out last year. They’d already had so many tomatoes this year, what with Jam spraying them every two weeks, that they’d been sharing with half the neighborhood. And Jam and Mother were so sick of tomatoes that they were giving them all away now. But Jam couldn’t stop watering and spraying them. It was as if having too many tomatoes this year made up for having almost none the last.

Jam thought about what Gan had told him. An emperor. Wizards. Gan involved in a war — a revolution? — and nobody knew it. How futile it was that Jam had worked so hard last year to learn the name and capital and location of every nation in the world — only to find that they don’t even matter. He wondered what the map would look like, if the cartographers knew who really ran things.

And yet the government still took taxes and controlled the cops and the army — that was power, it wasn’t nothing. Did the wizards meddle in the wars of ordinary people? Fiddle with the laws that Congress or the city council passed? Mess with zoning laws? Or bigger stuff, like the weather. Could they stop global warming if they felt like it? Or had the caused it? Or merely caused people to believe it was happening? What was real, now that a small part of the secret world had been revealed?

I have a stone in my hand.

Mr. Laudon showed up so soon after school let out that Jam suspected he dismissed class early. Or maybe his last period was free. Anyway, if he knocked on the door, Jam didn’t hear it. The first he knew Laudon was there was when he saw him standing near the gate to the front yard, watching as Jam pick the ready beans off the tall vines. Jam was carrying the picked beans in his shirt, holding the bottom of it out like a basket.

Jam couldn’t think of a thing to say. So he said, “Want some tomatoes?”

Laudon looked at the beans in his shirt. “That what you call a tomato?”

“No, we just got plenty of tomatoes. We ain’t sick of beans yet.”

He could see Laudon wince at “ain’t.” Laudon was the kind of teacher who would never catch on that whenever he wanted to, Jam spoke in the same educated accents and careful grammar as his mother. The kind of teacher who thought there was something morally wrong with speaking in the vernacular.

“I came for the stone,” said Laudon.

Jam rolled up the front of his shirt to hold the beans, then pulled it off over his head and set it on the back lawn. He pried off his shoes. Pulled off his socks. Pulled off his pants and tossed them to Laudon. Wearing only his jockeys, he said, “You want to sniff these, too, Mr. Laudon? That what you came over for?”

Laudon glared — but he went through the pockets of the pants. “This proves nothing. You’ve been home long enough to hide it anywhere.”

As if I’d let it out of my sight, now that I know what it can do. “What’s so important about this stone, Mr. Laudon?”

“It’s an antique.”

“A genuine philosopher’s stone.”

“A stone that people in the middle ages genuinely believed to be one.”

“That’s such a lie,” said Jam.

“Watch what you say to me.”

“You’re in my back yard, watching me strip my clothes off. I’ll say what I want, or you’ll be explaining to the cops what you’re doing here.”

Laudon threw the pants back at him. “I didn’t ask you to take your clothes off.”

“There were a lot of kids in that room, Mr. Laudon. I’m the one who was unconscious, remember? Why not search among the ones who were awake? What about Rhonda Jones? She’s the one who dropped it. Whatever’s in that stone, it bothered her, didn’t it? Maybe she took it.”

“You know she didn’t,” said Laudon. “You think I don’t know how to track the stone? Where it is, and who has it?”

“And yet you checked the pockets of my pants.”

Laudon glared. “Maybe I should go ask your brother.”

“Go ahead,” said Jam. But inside, he was wondering: Was Laudon the enemy who did this to Gan? Would he harm Gan, lying there helpless in bed?”

Laudon smirked. “You haven’t given it to him, I know that much. You don’t know how.”

Jam wondered what would happen if he touched Laudon. Not hit him, just touched him. Would Laudon get a jolt of power the way Gan did? Or would Jam have power over Laudon? How did this stuff work?

“You’ve got the fire in your eyes,” said Laudon. “Ambition. You’re wondering if you can use the power in the stone. The answer is, you can’t. It’s a collector. A battery of magic. Only someone with power can draw on it. And that’s not you.”

He said “you” with such contempt that it made Jam angry. He bent over and plunged both hands into the muddy soil around the tomatoes. But he did it while fending, so that when he pulled his hands out, they were clean — not a speck of dirt or mud clung to them. He showed his hands to Laudon and then walked toward him. “Does this look like ‘no power’ to you?”

“You can fend?” asked Laudon, glancing around. “Then why did you let me…. ” He clamped his mouth shut.

Why did I let him in here? Interesting. So the fending he did was supposed to work farther than just a micron’s depth of air surrounding his body. Jam had never tried to push things farther away than that. He tried to do it, to use the fending to push outward.

It was like when he decided to try to wiggle his ears. He had already noticed that when he grinned, his ears went up. So he stood in front of the mirror, grinning and then letting his face go slack, trying to feel the muscles that moved his ears. Then he worked at moving only those muscles, worked for days on it, and pretty soon he could do it — move either ear up and down, without stirring a muscle on the front of his face.

This was the same thing, in a way — not a muscle, but he did know how to fend a little. Now he isolated the feeling, the thing he did to make the fending happen, and pushed it outward from himself. At first he had to move his arms a little, but quickly he realized that this had nothing to do with it.

His shirt, twisted up on the ground with the beans inside, began to roll away from him. The garden hose snaked across the grass. Laudon took a step back. “You don’t know what you’re doing here, Jam. Don’t attract the attention of powers you don’t understand.”

“You’re the one who doesn’t understand,” said Jam. “You said the stone was nothing but a collector, but that’s not true. That’s what you are, gathering whatever magical power your students have. Rhonda had a lot of it, didn’t she? But you don’t know what I have.”

“I know you fainted when you touched it.”

“I never touched it,” said Jam.

“And I know it’s here. Somewhere close.”

Jam gathered his fending power and made a thrust toward Laudon.

Laudon staggered back. He looked frightened. Now Jam was sure that Laudon himself was no wizard. He tried to bully Jam only as long as he thought Jam was powerless, just a kid who stole something. Now that he knew Jam had some power — apparently more than Jam himself had guessed — it was a different story. Laudon was frightened.

“The emperor will hear of this.”

“As if you ever met the emperor,” said Jam contemptuously. “All you’re good for is gathering power for somebody else. And not the emperor.”

“A servant of the emperor,” said Laudon. “The same thing.”

“Unless it isn’t. Didn’t you take history? Don’t you know how this works? How do you know the one you serve, the one you’ve been gathering power for, how do you know he’s really loyal to the emperor? How do you know he isn’t gathering power to try to challenge him?” Jam gave Laudon another shove, which knocked him off his feet this time.

This is cool, thought Jam.

He flung the hose at Laudon now, and it went after him like a flying snake, hitting him, splashing him with the dregs of water left in the hose.

“I’ll report this!”

“What can you do to me that’s worse than was already done? My brother’s lying in there like a vegetable, and you think I’m worried about the treasonous wizard you serve?”

“He’s not treasonous!” But Laudon looked worried now — about a lot more than a garden hose or a few grass stains on his butt. “You don’t know who you’re messing with!”

Which was true enough. Jam had no idea who the emperor was, or who Laudon’s master was, or anything but this: He had a stone inside his skin, and now when he touched Gan, his brother came to life under his hand.

He also knew that when he made wild accusations about Laudon’s master, he got more anxious and fearful. So maybe there was some truth to it.

I shouldn’t mess with this, thought Jam. I’m out of my depth. Whatever Laudon’s afraid of, I should be afraid of it too.

Or maybe not. Maybe I shouldn’t let fear decide what I’m going to do. Gan never showed fear of anything.

Then again, Gan ended up as a vegetable for all these years, trapped inside a body that couldn’t do anything. What might happen to me?

What will happen to me — and Gan, and Mother — if I don’t do anything?

“Who is your master?” demanded Jam.

Laudon rolled his eyes. “As if I’d tell you.”

“I’ll ask Gan.”

“Yes, yes, go ahead,” said Laudon, taunting him now. “If he knew, do you think he would have let down his guard? You don’t know anything, little boy.”

“I know that you don’t know anything, either. In fact, you know less than nothing, because the things you think you know are wrong.”

“It’s the madness of power on you, boy. You think you’re the first? You realize you’ve got something that nobody else has, you realize you’ve got your hands on something powerful, and suddenly you think you’re omnipotent. But go look at your brother. See what you think about his omnipotence!”

“No, I don’t think I’m powerful,” said Jam. “Just more powerful than you.”

“But not more powerful than the one I serve. Never more powerful than that. And every word you say, every push you make with that fending power of yours will only draw attention to you. Attention you truly do not want.”

“But I do want it,” said Jam. “I want the emperor to come here! I want the emperor to judge between us!”

Where had that idea come from?

Gan? Was it Gan, telling him what to say?

“You tell the emperor who your master is, and how he trapped Gan, and how he’s using you to gather power.”

“It’s for the emperor, I told you, all the power I’ve gathered.”

“Then let the emperor come, and I’ll give the stone to him!”

“So you do have it.”

Jam rolled his eyes. “Duh.”

“That’s all I needed to hear,” said Laudon. He stood up. Started walking toward Jam.

Jam fended him. Laudon didn’t even pause. “I can feel your little pushes, boy,” he said. “That made it easy to pretend you had power over me. But you don’t. You’re like a baby with a squirt gun.” Laudon reached out and took Jam by the throat. “Where is it? Not in your head — though that wouldn’t stop me, I’d have your head, it belongs to my master just like everything else does.”

“Nothing belongs to your master!” cried Jam. “It all belongs to the emperor!” Or at least it would if this magic society worked like feudalism.

“Do you think the emperor cares what happens to you?” Laudon ran a finger down Jam’s neck and chest until it rested directly over his heart. “Which arm?” he asked. Then his finger traced out and down to Jam’s right hand. “I’ll have that back now, thanks.”

“No you won’t,” said Jam. He rammed his knee into Laudon’s groin.

“Owie owie,” said Laudon, sarcastically.

“I should have known,” said Jam. “You gave your balls to your master along with everything else.”

“Open your hand.”

“Open it yourself.”

“Right down to the bone if I have to,” said Laudon. Then he pulled a sharp piece of obsidian from his pocket and prepared to slice Jam’s palm open.

So all his bravado had come to nothing. And yet there was a power that could save him — or destroy him — but what else could he call upon? He had only just learned that there was an emperor, and yet somehow he knew all about him. No, he knew nothing about him but his true title — and the only other thing that mattered. That Jam could trust him.

He pulled away from Laudon and fended him with all his might. “I call upon the Emperor of the Air, to come and judge between you and me!”

His fending was more powerful than Jam had dared to hope — Laudon flew away from him clear to the fence and fell into the cucumbers.

“Oh, master!” cried Laudon, reaching out his arms beseechingly.

Oh. It wasn’t Jam’s power that had thrown Laudon so far. Jam had called on an outside power, but it wasn’t the emperor who had come.

Jam turned to see Mother standing in the back door. “Why did you come back here!” she demanded of Laudon.

“He has it,” Laudon said. “I told you he had it.”

“I would have known,” she said. “Do you think he could have it, and I not know?”

“He admitted it! And he can fend. He has power.”

“He has no power,” said Mother. “Do you think I can’t tend my own house?”

Jam’s mind reeled. Was it possible that his own mother was his enemy?

“No, baby,” said Mother. “This man is a fool. He has no business here.”

“You know about all this,” said Jam. “About the stone, and collecting power, and Gan being enchanted.”

“I only know that my boy is standing in the back yard in his underwear while a high school teacher is lying in the cucumbers,” said Mother. “That’s enough for me to call the cops.”

Laudon chimed in. “He already called somebody.”

“Do you think he’d waste his time?”

“Are you still loyal to him?” demanded Laudon. “I haven’t been helping you commit treason, have I?”

“Shut up, Laudon,” said Mother. “Nobody wants to hear what you have to say.”

Jam turned to see how Laudon would react, but saw instead that Laudon had no mouth. Just a smooth expanse of skin from nose to jaw.

Mother reached out her arms to Jam. “Come on inside, baby.”

“He was going to cut me with this,” said Jam, holding up the obsidian blade.

She held out her hand for it. “That’s too dangerous for you to play with it.”

“Dangerous for me, Mama? Or you?”

“Come inside.”

“Are you the one who locked Gan inside his body? Are you the one that made him a vegetable?”

“A talky vegetable, judging from your attitude right now. Jamaica, don’t make me cross with you. We’re too close for such a spat between us.”

“You haven’t denied it yet.”

“Oh, how television of you. No, darling, I didn’t hurt Gan. But if I had hurt him, would I tell you? So why bother asking a question that has only one possible answer, whether it’s true or not?”

“Has it all been an act? All your tears for Gan?”

“An act? Gan is my son! Gan owns my heart. Do you think I could do this to him?”

“I don’t know,” said Jam. “I don’t know anything. Nobody’s who I thought they were. Nothing’s what it seemed like up to now.”

“My love for you is real.”

“Are you Laudon’s master?”

“Jam, I’m not anybody’s master.”

“You’ve got Gan on a bed where he can’t do anything, not even speak.”

“And that is the greatest tragedy of my life,” said Mother, starting to cry. “Are you going to find a way to blame me for that?”

Arms closed around Jam from behind. “I’ve got him now, Master,” said Laudon.

Jam fended him viciously, and abruptly he was free. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Laudon sprawled on the grass.

“Oh, very nice,” said Mother. “Is that how I taught you to treat company?”

“What I want to know is, does Father have any of this power? Are we all magicians?”

“You’re not, and your father isn’t, and Gan was but now he’s not,” said Mother.

“But if you have so much power, Mother, why don’t you heal Gan?”

“Heal him? He chooses to be the way he is.”

“Chooses!”

“He was not a dutiful son,” said Mother.

“And what about me?” said Jam.

“There has never been a better boy than you.”

“Unless I refuse to give you the stone.”

Her face grew sad. “Ah, Jamaica, baby, are you going to be difficult too?”

“Was that what happened to Daddy? He got ‘difficult’?”

“Your father is an animal who doesn’t deserve to be around children. Or anybody, for that matter. Now come here and open your hand to me.”

“It doesn’t show,” said Jam.

“Then open your hand so I can see for myself that I can’t see it.”

Jam walked to her, his hand open.

“Don’t try to deceive me, Jamaica,” said Mother. “Where is it?”

“This is the hand it’s in,” said Jam.

“No, it’s not,” said Mother. Then she pressed her ear against Jam’s chest. “Oh, Jamaica, baby,” she said. “Why did you have to do that?”

“Do what?”

“Swallow it.”

“But I didn’t.”

“I’m going to get it from you,” said Mother. “One way or another.” She reached out a hand toward Laudon. In a moment, the obsidian knife was in her grasp and she was singing something so softly that Jam couldn’t catch a single word of it.

She reached out with the obsidian blade toward Jam’s bare chest. “It always hides in the heart,” she said. “I’ll have it now.”

“Are you going to kill me, now, Mother?” asked Jam.

“It’s not my fault,” she said. “You could give it to me freely, though — then I wouldn’t have to cut.”

“I don’t control the thing,” said Jam.

“No,” said Mother sadly. “I didn’t think so.”

The obsidian flashed forward and she drew it down sharply.

But there wasn’t a mark on Jam’s skin.

“Don’t try to outmagic me,” she said. “Your father tried it, and look where he is.”

“He’s better off than Gan.”

“Because he’s not so dangerous to me. I trusted Gan before he turned against me. Now stop fending.”

“It’s a reflex,” said Jam. “I can’t help it.”

“That’s all right,” said Mother. “I can get inside your fending.”

“Not if don’t let you.”

“You’re part of me, Jam. You belong to me, like Gan.”

“As you told me growing up, if I can’t take care of my toys, I’m not entitled to have them.”

“You’re not my toy. You’re my son. If you serve me loyally, then I’ll be good to you. Haven’t I always been till now?”

“Till now I didn’t know what you did to Gan.”

“I must have that stone!” she said. “It’s mine!”

“That’s all I needed to hear.”

Mother and Jam both turned to see who had spoken — the voice certainly wasn’t Laudon’s.

In the middle of the back yard, standing on the lawn, was a slim, young-looking man with flashing eyes.

“Who are you?” asked Jam.

“I’m the one you called,” said the Emperor of the Air. “Now your mother has admitted that the stone is for her.”

“For me to give to you,” she said, sinking to her knees.

“What would I do with it?” he asked.

“Why, how else do you get your vast powers?

“Virtue,” said The Emperor of the Air. “You hid your deeds for years, but you should have known you couldn’t hide forever.”

“I could have, if this boy hadn’t—”

“She’s not really your mother,” the Emperor of the Air said to Jam. “No more than Gan is your brother. She took you, as she took Gan, because you had the power. She tried to use Gan’s power as a wizard, but he rebelled and she punished him. You’re the substitute. She stole you when Gan was confined to bed.”

“She’s not my mother?”

The Emperor of the Air waved his hand and suddenly the dam inside Jam’s mind broke and he was flooded with memory. Of another family. Another home. “Oh, God,” he cried, thinking now of his real father and mother, of his sisters. “Do they think I’m dead?”

“That was not right,” said Mother — no, not Mother — she was Mrs. Fisher now. “We were so close.”

“Not so close you weren’t willing to tear his heart out to get at the stone. But you wouldn’t have found it,” said the Emperor of the Air. “Because you never knew what he was — and is.”

“What is he?” demanded mother.

“His whole body is a philosopher’s stone. He gathers power from everyone he touches. The stone flew to him the way magnets do. It went inside him because it was of the same substance. You can’t get it out of him. And that knife of yours can never cut him.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” she cried out from her heart.

“What am I doing to you?” asked the Emperor of the Air.

“Punishing me!”

“No, my love,” said the Emperor. “You only feel punished because you know you deserve it.” He held out a hand to Jam.

Wordlessly, Jam took his hand, and together they passed Mrs. Fisher by, entering the house without even glancing at her.

The Emperor led Jam to Gan’s bed. “Touch the lad, would you, Jamaica?”

Jam leaned down and touched Gan.

Gan’s eyes opened at once. “My lord,” he said to the Emperor of the Air.

“My good servant,” said the Emperor. “I’ve missed you.”

“I called out to you.”

“But you were weak, and I didn’t hear your voice, among so many. Only when your brother called did I hear — his voice is very loud.”

Jam wasn’t sure if he was being teased or not.

“Take me home,” said Gan.

“Ask your brother to heal you.”

Jam shook his head. “I can’t heal anybody.”

“Well, technically, that’s true. But if you let your brother draw on the power stored up inside you, he can heal himself.”

“Whatever I have,” said Jam, “belongs to him, if he needs it.”

“That’s a good brother,” said the Emperor.

Jam felt the tingle, the flow, like something liquid and cold flowing through his arm and out into Gan’s body. And in a few moments he was out of breath, as if he had been running for half an hour.

“Enough,” said the Emperor. “I told you to heal yourself, not make yourself immortal.”

Gan sat up, swung his legs off the bed, rose to his feet, and put his arm around Jam’s shoulders. “I had no idea you had so much strength in you.”

“He’s been collecting it his whole life,” said the Emperor of the Air. “Everyone he meets, every tree and blade of grass, every animal, any living thing he has ever encountered gave a portion of their power to him. Not all — not like that trivial stone — but a portion. And then it grew inside him, nurtured by his patience and wisdom and kindness.”

Patience? Wisdom? Kindness? Had anyone every accused Jam of such things before?

Gan hugged Jam. “We can go home now,” he said. “I to the Emperor’s house, and you to your true family. But you’re always my brother, Jamaica.”

Jam hugged him back. And with that, Gan was gone. Vanished. “I sent him home,” the Emperor explained. “He has a wife and children who have needed him for long years now.”

“What about Mother? I mean Mrs. Fisher? What she did to Gan. To me. Taking away even my memories of my family!”

The Emperor nodded gravely, then gestured toward Gan’s bed.

Mrs. Fisher lay there, helpless, her eyes open.

“I’m kinder to her than she was to Gan,” said the Emperor. “Gan did no wrong, yet she took from him everything but life. I’ve left her eyes and ears to her, and her mouth. She can talk.”

Then Mr. Laudon stood beside the bed. “And that will be Laudon’s punishment, won’t it, dear lad? To take care of her as Jam once cared for Gan — only you get to hear what she has to say.” The Emperor turned to Jam. “Tell me, Jamaica. Am I just? Is this equitable?”

“It’s poetic,” said Jam.

“Then I have achieved even beyond my aspirations. Go home now, Jam, and be a great wizard. Live with kindness, as you have done up to now, and the power that flows to you will be well-used. You have my trust. Do I have your loyalty?”

Jam sank to his knees. “You had it before you asked.”

“Then I give you these lands, to be lord where once this poor thing ruled.”

“But I don’t want to rule over anybody.”

“The less you rule, the happier your people will be. Assume your duties only when they demand it. Feel free to continue high school, though not at Riddle High, alas. Now go home.”

And at that moment the house disappeared, and Jam found himself on the sidewalk in front of the home where in fact he had lived for the first twelve years of his life. He remembered now, how he met Mrs. Fisher. She came to the house as a pollster, asking his parents questions about the presidential election. But when Jam came into the room, she rose to her feet and reached for his hand and at that moment he was changed, he remembered growing up with her as his mother, and being Gan’s brother, and the tragic incident where “father” knocked him down and damaged his brain. None of it true. Nothing. She stole his life.

But the Emperor of the Air had given it back, and more besides.

The door to the house opened. His real mother stood there, her face full of astonishment. “Michael!” she cried out. “Oh, praise God! Praise him! You’re here! You came home!”

She ran to him, and he to her, and they embraced on the front lawn. As she wept and kissed him and called out to everyone in the neighborhood that her son was home, he came back, Jam — no, Michael — murmured his thanks to the Emperor of the Air.