I looked curiously at Turtle. “What do you mean?”
“Tell me what happened to you.”
“I summoned a demon once, and it killed my brother.” I waited for something to happen, for him to say something.
He didn’t. “And let me guess – the Rosy Knights found out and went to kill you.”
“One wanted to kill me. They invited me into the Academy.”
He snorted, wheeled over to the fridge. “If you can’t beat them, make them join you.” He pulled out a jar of barbeque sauce, opened it and sniffed it. “So this Ritter – he’s one of many, you know.”
“I know there are other Knights.”
He stopped and looked up at me. “What do you know about the Rosy Knights?”
“They’re originally the Knights Templar –“
“No, not just that. Who they are, or who they think they are.”
I thought about what he said. I wasn’t going to take the Origins of the Templars until next semester, but I did get a basic history class just this past year. “They’re the keepers of magic.”
Turtle pressed his nose and then pointed at me. “Egggggsactly. That’s who they think they are. And that’s why a lot of people hate their guts.”
“I don’t think they should be keepers of magic, either,” I said, finally admitting to someone what I really thought. It felt so freeing.
“Who should?”
“Nobody. Everyone. I think everyone should be able to learn what they want.”
He laughed. “Goddamn, you’re an idealist. Will you give a toddler a gun?”
“What?” I didn’t know what he was getting at.
“A kid says, ‘I want that.’ You’ll give it to him? Even if it’s a gun?”
“Well, I’d tell him how to use it.”
“He’s a kid. A toddler. He doesn’t understand more than point-and-shoot.”
I thought about that, as Turtle took the platter of ribs and put them on his lap, laying the bottle of barbecue sauce on top. “Grab me a beer and something for you to drink, and meet me outside.”
I watched as he wheeled across the living room to a set of sliding glass doors. He opened them and somehow wheeled outside onto a rear porch. I found the beer and a bottled water in the fridge and followed him.
Outside, it was brisk, but not biting cold as I expected in mid-March. I bundled up my jacket. “Want me to get you something warm?”
“Don’t need it.”
He started up the grill and set the ribs on them, sans sauce, and closed the grill’s lid. He turned to face me. “So the Rosy Knights talked you into the Academy, and you believed them when they told you that daemons hold the key to knowledge.”
“Well, don’t they?”
Turtle gave me a smirk, and then softened it to a gentle gaze. “No, boy. Not at all.”
“But the Key of Solomon—“
“Is a hackjob by a guy who was looking for the fast track to godhood, not unlike you.”
“I don’t want to be god.”
“Well, what do you want to be?”
“I want…I want to know things.”
“Because? What is your ultimate goal? Taking over the world? Having everyone serve you?”
The answer came to me, but I didn’t like it. It was a stupid answer, a silly answer, the answer of a child. It’s still a stupid answer. It’s still the reason why I do what I do. I buried that answer, and gave him a noncommittal shrug.
Turtle studied me for a long time, knowing I was lying to him, but waiting for me to blurt it out. I wouldn’t budge from it.
“Uh huh,” he said, and folded his arms. “So you want to learn for the sake of learning, let’s just go with that.”
“Okay,” I replied, reaching for that lifeline.
“You think magic should be free?”
I pulled on the lifeline with that statement. “Yes.” I smiled at him; it was a perfect explanation. That would be my story for years.
“Uh huh,” he said again. He peeked under the grill lid and let it down again. “Do you know why magicians have apprentices?”
“To keep magic from people who want to learn.”
“No, to stop you from making the same mistakes that they did, to help and guide you along. Nobody takes a magic book, tosses it at a person and say, ‘Go forth, and have fun with that.’ “
“Tell that to the Stewarts and their store.”
“Ah, them,” he said, with a sudden, predatory smile. “The perfect combination of circus huckster and commercialized new age paganism. They tell you what you want to hear so you keep giving them money.”
“They have books.”
“Oh, they do. And classes. And pre-planned rituals. And pre-made spells. But they’re so eclectic as to be their own tradition, and they sell their tradition to the easily manipulated.”
“So which is better?”
He smirked. “Depends on what you like. I suspect that you, boy, don’t like being led by the nose and told where to stand, how to sing, what to do, what to say. You’re not a follower. You’re not a leader, either.”
“I’m not?” I felt insulted.
“Nope. You’re a lone wolf, dependent on yourself, doing your own thing, and to hell with the world and the spirits.” He smiled, “You are the magician. You instinctively know the Four Words of the Magi.”
“Quintin mentioned that, but I didn’t know what he meant.”
“Of course not, that’s higher degree thinking. The Rosy Knights don’t want anyone out of their degrees.”
“No…they don’t.” I smiled my best smile, as best I could with the ugly, scarred face I had. “So what are the four words?”
“Simple: to Know, to Will, to Dare, and to be Silent.”
I mulled those words over and over. The Will I had in spades. The Knowledge was what I craved. I was always Daring if I had both of those. “To be Silent?”
“You shut up.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Q has an ability, a power. He doesn’t advertise it. Have you figured it out yet?”
“He has the power to be irritating,” I grumbled.
“Watch the world around him sometime,” said Turtle. He lifted the grill lid and turned the ribs over. I forgot that I had his beer, so I handed it to him. “Thankee,” he said, and drank deeply from the bottle. “What do you think I am?”
“A shaman,” I said immediately.
“Good. What do shamans do?”
All my knowledge of shamans came from old western movies. “They heal people?”
“Okay, and why are people sick?”
“I don’t know, infections?”
“No,” he said with a smile. “People are sick because their balance is off. The balance between spirit and the rest of us.”
I looked around and saw an Adirondack type of chair, so I brushed the snow off of it and went to sit down on it. I knew a lecture when it was coming. I asked, while I was doing that, “So shamans work with spirits.”
“Yes, indeed we do. Souls, spirits…daemons.”
“Daemons are spirits?”
“Of a sort. They’re infernal creatures. They want to help you because it helps themselves.”
“How?”
“What daemons have you worked with?”
I almost told him Grimalkin’s name. “My own,” I said.
“And she did this to you? Made you look like this?”
“She set me on fire.”
“Oh, that was brilliant. That’s how she marked you to own you. You think nobody’s going to want you anymore, the way you look, so you wear that glamour to cover you.”
I was silent. He was right.
“There is someone for you.”
I stared right at him. “There is?”
“There is someone for everyone. With or without a daemon.”
“I’m not getting rid of her.”
“Did I say that?” He lifted the lid again on the ribs, checking them. “No, you’re stuck with how you look, whether or not you have her. You might as well use her for everything you can. But you know what? Instead of using your knowledge for your own selfish needs, do it for good.”
“What do you mean?”
He started brushing the barbecue sauce on the ribs. “What have you done with your magic? Who have you helped?”
Helped? I cast back in my memory. Really, who have I helped? I’ve hurt people with my magic, somehow avoiding the whole threefold law. I killed my mother’s killer. I killed my brother. I destroyed lives. I hadn’t done one thing to help anyone.
Turtle turned to look at me. “Let me guess.”
“I’m still thinking.” Lucy? No, I never used magic for her. Evie? Gods, I was grasping at straws here. “Wait! I made money for someone.”
“What was the reason?”
“To pay for my mom’s funeral flowers.”
He said quietly, “I’m sorry. But what was the real reason?”
To show Evie my power, my ability, even with machines. “I wanted to show off,” I said quietly.
“That’s not unusual,” he said, and I could smell the barbecue from here. “Beans okay with this? It’s all I got.”
“It’s fine.”
He wheeled back into the house, much more toasty warm than that cold chair outside. I noticed there was a small ramp at the bottom of the sliding glass door to get him over the hump. I followed him and got the can from the shelf for him, while he finished making it, draining some molasses and putting some barbecue sauce in the beans. “Go turn the ribs over and baste ‘em.” He handed me the jar of sauce, of which there wasn’t much left now.
I went outside to do as he told, and looked out at the woods that were behind the house. The trees were still covered in snow. A long, sloping ramp led down from the porch, and I could see a path shoveled – not very well – into the woods. There were some wheelchair ruts there, and mix of other shoes along with it. Did he have someone to help him out here? He must have.
I went back into the house, and he had his back turned to the stove, watching me. “Maybe after this, I’ll introduce you to the woods.”
“Introduce me?” I chuckled. “I think I know what woods are.”
“No, not these. I bought this house for that reason. You know what a ley line is, doncha?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Can you find the ley line?”
I closed my eyes and stretched my hands out toward the floor. It was there, a small branch of it, but I couldn’t follow it. If I tried to, I lost it. It was like trying to catch a moving snake. I know I opened my eyes with a confused look, because Turtle laughed again at me. “You found it, but you can’t hold it. That’s because the spirits don’t trust you.”
“What do I need to do?”
“If you stayed here long enough, they may learn to trust you. You don’t want to browbeat them or force them to do anything. What happens when someone ends up forcing you into doing something you don’t want to do?”
“I plan revenge.”
“So do spirits. But they have plenty more time to plan it.” He started to roll back outside. “Set the table, boy.”
1886 words.