Chapter 4: Chapter 3: In The Not Quite The Beginning

The time was past for me to move.

I realized the truth I knew but my brain had done its best to logic around: I could not move. At least not yet.

I moaned and shifted in the dirt, but nothing. The sun beat down and I felt my skin reddening, my open wounds broiling.

As bad as that was, I knew worse would come if I couldn't get up. The squire's compatriots would come to fetch us ere long, and I did not look forward to them discovering his body when they did.

###

A small country house shook with the buzz and airborne dust of moving day. A brick wedged the screen door open, letting in a gust of floral spring air

Gruff men in jumpsuits carried in bed slats, new furniture draped over with dirty moving sheets, and mattresses. What couldn't be found in the continuous carousal in and out of the house was personal effects.

One small boy tried to help but mostly watched. The men seemed more likely to trip over him than need his help lifting a two hundred pound cabinet.

Joshua's curly hair had yet to become a staple and he wore it short. Whatever athleticism he would gain in the coming years couldn't be spotted by a magnifying glass as his pudgy legs carried him up the stairs. Even the knowing cocksure smile that the average passerby would swear that he was born with hadn't grown in, a sullen expression with wide eyes in its stead.

The small box of personal effects he carried– the only such box that he owned– landed with a dull thud at the top of the stairs as child-Joshua bent over and caught his breath. Sweat trickled down his neck and he could feel the back of his polo sticking to his back. This was the furthest south he'd ever been, and he appreciated neither heat nor humidity. In fact, it was the first time traveling at all and he loathed the general discomfort of displacement– a feeling he'd never truly shrug off in the coming years.

With his spasm of self-pity behind, he hefted the box again and made for a door. He thought he heard the sniff of a nose on the other side, but continued anyway when it didn't happen again.

The door creaked open slowly, pushed by the box on Joshua's chest. Inside, another small boy about the same age sat on a mattress with the plastic wrap still on. His eyes were red and his nose had a dribble of snot coming out the left side. The boy breathed sharply and wiped his face off.

"There you are," Joshua said.

Kael looked to his feet, his cheeks turning red. "I'll be down to help. Just give me a second."

As if the words invoked it, a sudden crash that hummed like broken glass sounded below.

"Who do you think that was?" Joshua asked.

After a pause, the boys said in unison, "Avonly." Kael's smile lasted only that fleeting instant and then he sniffed again.

"Don't worry about it dude," Joshua said. "We got movers and everything. The only reason any of us are doing work is because the old lady likes to keep us miserable."

"She's not so bad," Kael said, and what followed was an awkward pause. Joshua shuffled in place aimlessly and Kael stared out the window. "She said we can get mom a headstone at the local cemetery. It would be nice. I think."

"But there's no bod–" Joshua halted, just barely not finishing the word.

There was a body. It just wasn't anywhere around here. Actually, Joshua couldn't even be sure of that. The fire was bad. Really bad. Whatever was left of Kael's mother was. . . indistinguishable. Had to be.

Joshua's mother too, despite them being half brothers on their father's side. He was never formally adopted, but Joshua basically lived with them, called her mom himself. At a time like this however. . . it didn't feel right to think of her like that. What Kael was feeling, it was clearly different than what Joshua felt.

Joshua said, "Let me know if you want to talk." It sounded stupid, but he had heard people say it before on TV. And to a small child, that was 99% accurate to real life.

"You've always been a good listener. I should be the one asking if you need to talk. You're always so quiet. I'd probably have to force you to say if something was wrong."
"I guess." Joshua played footie with box, pushing it across the floor with his feet, making for the other side of the room. He stopped at the second mattress and start pulling his effects out of the box, one book and then the other.

"But I do have something I've been thinking about,” Kael said to Joshua's back.

"Oh?" Joshua replied. Kael was right: Joshua liked to use as few words as possible.

"About dad. Well not dad, but a story he used to tell." Kael kept his eyes focused on Joshua, looking for some recognition in his brother's eyes. "You don't remember?"

"No? Dad wasn't really– I mean. He didn't tell us stories."
"Not like bedtime stories, or reading-out-of-a-book stories. But when he'd talk about Syches, he'd talk about a book. Some artifact that would give you powers. He always wanted to be like us, to–

“To be like you,” Joshua corrected.

“Sure, sure.” Kael sniffed. “But what I'm saying is, Dad believed in it. Dad believed there was some other power out there that even a normal person could use.”

“Are you saying you want me to have powers to? I don't think I want that.”

“No,” Kael continued on, the phloem now fully out of his throat. “Dad wanted the book to be like everyone else in the family, but he said it could do things. A real honest to Goddess treasure. Something that could bring back the dead!”

"Okay."

"So that's what we have to do, right!" Kael jumped up on the mattress. "We have to go on a treasure hunt and save our mother!"

"Don't you need a map or something? I've read some pirate books. You definitely need a map."

"We'll figure it out. I have superpowers. You like going on adventures with me. It's a perfect team! I can't believe I'm only thinking of this now, but Mom isn't gone for good!” Kael fell backwards on the spot, his mattress embarrassing him like a cloud.

“If you want,” Joshua mumbled inaudibly, backing out of the room. “Dad was never around and now you want to be like him.” As Joshua closed the door he thought, You spent the first three nights afterwards screaming until you couldn't any more that he was gone. That things would have been different if he was home. I don't get it.

Kael was already asleep by the time Joshua closed the door. He opened it slightly to look at his brother laying there, a dog-tired grin on his face. "Even if it's stupid, at least you are happy."

Happiness proved to be a relative term. Unloading some boxes in the newly minted study later that day, he rifled through an old dictionary and found the word mania by chance. In the coming weeks, he'd remember that word and not be so keen on the source of Kael's happiness: The Book of Light.

###

The rattling was a pleasant sensation.

Two months after moving into their new home in southern Kidenia, Joshua found himself on a bus out west and was enjoying the rattle his forehead gave when placed on the window.

The trip wasn't for a treasure hunt, mind you. They were still ten and the old lady refused– categorically– to let them leave so much as the city until they were thirteen. Even that was pushing it if child protective services ever found out.

That same woman sat next to Joshua enjoying a pleasant snooze.

Joshua couldn't quite place the feeling, but a knot welled up in his stomach when he heard that Kael wanted to leave. It went away at the swift and decisive denial by their. . . well– She wasn't really a grandmother. Maybe more like a guardian? Even though that description seemed inaccurate as well. She had been closer to a tutor or maybe a nanny when they still lived at home, and when it all came tumbling down. She was there when she was needed, whisking them all away to live in the countryside.

It was why Joshua showed so much respect by calling her old lady. He would have just called her Agassa if he didn't like her.

He was tempted when Agassa said they could leave at all. Some days he wanted to stay in bed. Other days he was perfectly content to lounge about the new house and keep his nose to his chores. No days did he want to travel the world. He was prepared to live his adult life out in their house and never face the outside world again.

But he knew he would, someday. Kael wanted to and he couldn't tell his brother no, not with everything that had happened.

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And as foolish as it seemed to dread something that was going to happen years from now, Joshua dreaded it all the same. He was restless if he had something that needed doing within the hour, let alone within the year. Every morning he woke up with the same imaginary guillotine over his head contemplating on the inevitable.

The bus rolled through a small municipality now, the mint of the surrounding green-wood creeping towards pre-century brickwork. The bus bobbled over the uneven cobblestone roads of the center of town and Joshua sat upright as the bus slowly crawled to a halt.

"This will do," Agassa said. Her eyes opened with what Joshua could have sworn was the creaking of a rusty door.

"Where are we?"

The old woman frowned and looked out the window. "No idea. Doesn't matter. We're here."

"Why are–"
"Why are we here? Yes, yes." The woman barked, grabbing Joshua by the wrist and dragging him down the aisle. "Let me explain this little exercise in the light of day."

Said light of day did little to brighten her mood. She paced up and back the sidewalk, really working out the kinks from sleeping in an uncomfortable position. She was small and ancient, and yet she was as spry as Joshua. He suspected that was her Sychic abilities, her ability to control Blood. He never asked. She was terrifying enough without powers, radiating that tremendous aura of staunch rigidity that every elderly woman possessed.

Women got rigid and men got more carefree. In a few years' time, Joshua would come to understand that it happened like that because the women had spent their entire lives putting up with the men.

"Do you know what the first thing I'm going to do when I get back to the house?" Agassa asked.
Joshua lip and pondered for a second. "Take a nap?"
Her foot subtly moved forward and tapped him just in the right spot on the shin to really make it hurt. "I'll do that on the way back, no smart aleck comments." She paused for a second with her eyes closed. "The first thing I'm going to do is teach your brother how to use his powers."

"He already–"

"How to fight you muppet. How to use them. And what do you suppose that has to do with bringing you out here?"

"You think he's going to screw up that badly? Blow up a gas line or something. You think I'll feel much safer here; I agree."
Agassa went for his shins again but Joshua had already leaped back. She snorted her approval and continued, "Training. I might make the rules now, but in a couple of years I won't be able to stop you boys from doing what you want. Kael will drag you away on the definition of foolishness, and you will need to be ready before then."

Joshua hesitantly looked around the city for anything unusual. Any reason why she brought him here. There was absolutely nothing. There may have been more nothing here than anywhere else in the world.

"You'll need to look out for each other. Protect each other. Your brother will need to rely on you just as much as you him." She bulldozed on through, ignoring Joshua's open mouth contemplating words. "You. . . don't have powers," she hushed her voice as a couple holding hands approached out of her eyesight.. "But that just means I have to teach you differently. Teach you how to squeeze every little advantage you can out of your unblessed life."

"K."

"So for our first little exercise–" She stopped to grin. "You're going to find your way back to the house. You get your clothes on your back, and the rest is up to you."

Joshua sucked in air like a fish. "I don't even know where we are. I don't know where we live. I don't–"

Agassa held up a finger and Joshua obeyed. "You need to learn self-dependence. You need to learn how to make do with nothing. And more than anything you need to learn how to fail. If you can learn how to fail, you've already mastered half of what life has to offer." Agassa's eyes narrowed in on Joshua's pensive expression. "No police and no government goons on my doorstep. You get back home on your own two feet, without asking for help, and with no problems for me. Especially with no problems for me."

Joshua chewed on his thumb and Agassa patiently waited. "No police?" he asked and she nodded. "But that doesn't mean no crime."

"Now you're getting it." She patted him on the head and strode past, plopping herself down on the bus waiting bench hard enough for anyone else her age to fracture a hip. "See you when I see you kid."

###

A week later, Kael lay belly down on the carpet in the room that had come to be known as the study. The process by which the room came to be used for this and that was a deep and mysterious one. It started with some boxes being left in a back room, behind the staircase. Then someone, perhaps one of the sisters, unpacked a single box and laid its contents on the floor. Someone else took what was left behind and moved them to where they should be, assuming they belonged in that room. And so forth. Of the six people living in the house, each one had directly contributed to making this room what it was, without ever deciding that is what it should be.

So it became the room where Agassa would sit on her chair and read. It would be where Kael could sit at the desk and read through mythology books rented from the library ten miles down the road. The scratchy rug somehow became the place where the youngest sibling, Noel (on Joshua's side of the family), would come to lay down.

And it had a fireplace. The fire wasn't roaring today, but the heavy thumps of rain against the window sure made it seem like a good idea.

Obsessed with the occult and the weird as of late, Kael was involuntarily reading a chemistry textbook. It wasn't enough for Agassa to drag him out into the woods and to force him into drills exploding substances in every which way. No, that old hag was forcing him to read up on science. Elements. Periodic table. Specific weight. Kael could see how a Syche whose entire arsenal was whatever was around him could use this information, but he also didn't care.

Combusting inert gases was hard, he got that. But he'd probably never be in a room of full neon so why? And he didn't need to learn about carbon to understand that wood burned real good. Oh yeah it did.

Actually, as he looked at the diagram in front of him, carbon wasn't very good on its own at all, so that just made his understanding of wood more confusing.

He slapped the book closed in defiance as Agassa came in and sat down with her steamy cup of paline sprinkled with orange zest. Joshua loved the stuff, as did most of the world, but Kael could never get over the nutty, earthy smell.

"Any news on Joshua?" he asked.

"Ah, no." Agassa sipped at her drink dismissively. "Why don't you go up the hill and practice a bit. You haven't been outside today."

"In the rain?"

"Guns work fine in the rain. If you need to use your abilities to protect yourself, I don't think your enemies will let it factor in."

"And if it's a Syche. . . ."

"Oh yes. If it's a Syche, they'll be chomping at the bit to catch you soaked and all the ammunition around you moist. Especially us Blood Syches. We can still control blood that's up to fifty percent diluted."

"That's a weird word: Moist." Kael set it again and held the inflection on the "T".

Agassa gave a cold stare over the brim of her reading glasses. Why don't you take your sister up with you? She's feeling left out and wants to spar."

"Really?" Kael furrowed his brow as if he was receiving a completely vulgar joke. "Alma said that?"

"No, Avonly."

"Well, half-sister then."

"You're all, related. You're all living under the same roof. I don't want to hear about any of this half-sibling nonsense. This is what we chose, so it's our family. Honestly boy, you've gone around calling Joshua your brother since you could speak. It shouldn't be an unfamiliar concept to you."
Kael grunted.

And then the front door echoed with a strong series of knocks in return.

"Speaking of Joshua. . . ." Kael said, springing to his feet and jolting down the hallway. He yanked open the front door and then fell back defensively.

A large, overweight man with an uneven shave and a yellow policeman's uniform stood on the front porch. Next to him, a woman who had the soft face of someone wanting to help people with their lives but the vacant glare of someone who had worked in government too long stood. Between them, with one of their hands on each shoulder was Joshua.

"What in the–" Agassa said catching up, huffing more in annoyance than from the effort.

Joshua smiled regarding Kael and Agassa before throwing out his arms wide in pure showmanship as if it would make this farce somehow better. "I have learned how to fail."

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