Fiction River: Fantasy Adrift Read Free Page B

said. Then she ran her fingers along the brooch. “It’s all right.” She took her cane and she hobbled the few steps to the door. I fingered the brooch and stood right there behind her.
    “Was just wondering if I could use your phone,” he said and then he looked down at me. I shrunk further away. I didn’t like him. The images of those dead boys came back to me and then the rationalizations began. They were boys. They were found in other parts of the city, further west. They were away from people and they were alone. I was not alone.
    But none of that made any sense to me right now and I felt little protection except for the brooch from my Aunt Lou who wasn’t the strongest in the family and a woman whose powers were draining.
    If we were back home—
    The truth, though, is that we weren’t. We were here in this world of concrete and steel and even though I was a mouse, a person without power in her family, I felt the difference. I knew magic even if I didn’t wield it. It had a certain feeling to it, a shimmer, a warmth that had been the underlying tone of my life now ripped away.
    So that on a Friday night I was facing a stranger who could kill both of us in the twenty minutes it would take for my parents to come back home.
    “You’re welcome to ride out the storm on the porch,” Gramma said. “Or I can call someone for you, but you cannot come in.”
    She took a step back and pushed me in front of her gripping her fingers into my shoulders to hold me steady. I shrunk back against her skirts, the open door let all the power of the storm rush through the door.
    He reached out to us, his hand stopping at the doorsill. Where his hand stopped, energy waves formed circles around it like when you throw a rock in a pond. He tried again and again it was stopped.
    Gramma nodded. “You had best be on your way,” she said. “If you need me to call someone I still would be happy to do it.”
    He already backed off the porch stumbling and then down the stairs.
    She patted my shoulders. When she spoke her breath held the regular stink of someone twelve hours from their last brushing. “I think we can still catch the end of Tic Tac Dough.”
    I blinked watching him go. She had already hobbled around me and sat on the couch.
    She left me standing there. I watched until the man made it to the sidewalk where he started running.
    “We aren’t supposed to use magic here.”
    “I’m not leaving my grandbaby here unprotected. So the house is warded. It only keeps those out who you don’t allow in and only at the door. Anyone can come up to the porch. We want to be able to get the mail. You don’t think I really came here to see a doctor, did you?”
    “You didn’t?”
    She sighed, settling into the couch. “I don’t see where they can do anything else for me that the folks back home can’t,” is all she said. “And don’t tell your parents, but I also bumped up the protection spell on that brooch you carry around so much. Your Aunt Louisa didn’t know you’d like it that much but I figured you’d look for something to remind you of home.”
    But I’m just a Mouse—a mute—a normal. “But I would know the magic was around. Mom and Dad would know.”
    “They don’t know everything,” she said. “It’s subtle. You appreciate the subtleties as you get older, Mouse, and you’ll learn how to pick up on them. That’s what I would have taught you if you grew up at home when I knew for sure what you were going to be.”
    She took my hands in hers. “You have magic. Everyone does. You just have a subtle source of magic that it took me a while to get used to seeing. You knew enough to protect yourself didn’t you? You’ll learn. You’ll grow it in this strange world. This Big Town.” She sighed. “But I guess you do have a better chance here.”
    She turned to the television.
    I took my place next to her on the couch. The contestant Bob was taking his turn at the Xs and Os. I scooted so that my pajama