Not So Secret, Secret Study

David and Mathew entered Stevens' study. "How the Hells do you know how to get in here you two?" I was shocked that the youngest brothers found us. David was the first to reply. "We've known about this place for decades of course." Smug in his reply. "Oh, you did not." I accused the pair, somewhat playfully. The two youngest brothers were always the jokers and playful ones of us. "Ok no we didn't, you got us, big brother. We were headed to the kitchen and we just ended up here." Matthew replied. Always the Hungary one even his true form was robust. They, like the rest of my brothers and sister, had managed to keep their tanner darker skin. I alone appeared like a half-breed. We convinced the human world that my father was Irish and that I, apart from the rest, was born to a different father but the same mother. In truth, I had just changed as time passed. We weren't sure why; I just did, my skin lightened and my hair once black became auburn and my eyes lightened from deep earthy brown to tan eyes with black flecks. I was an Etukeok and a Cunningham, respectfully from my mother and father. In the days of the first English settlements I kept the Etukeok but as time demanded it I adopted Cunningham. It wasn't until years later that we started to see benefits to both my new name and my new appearance. "Do you remember the spell that created our life this way? The way it was worded and performed?" Steven asked me as he reached across his small seventeenth-century French table. Its small wooden surface polished squealed as he reached across it. "Do you remember how it started, on the first day of the full moon, into its second, and ended on its third? Do you remember the blood spilled for our mother's pledge.?" Steven asked me, I noticed instead of answering my question he skillfully replied with one. He's stalling and it's working.

Before our generation was born, almost a generation before a prophecy was made about my birth. When I would be born the people and circumstances around my birth, even my full name. I was to be a bridge from the old into the new. Old lives, old stories. These are pretty much the same thing. Old powers and new powers, I was born to be a genesis, an amalgamation of two worlds. "He shall stay on the line, the fence, the threshold of the living worlds and the dead as well as the Fey worlds that have slipped past the valve separating the human worlds from the magical." Was what our great ancestors had said.

Then grandfather spoke about my life, that all my choices, all my joy, and pains would lead up to me sharing myself with the world and healing our people and our land. It became apparent that I would be born soon and in a moment of panic our mother cast the spell that bound our lives to these ageless and unprogressive lives, an endless story of accumulating power and strength was not reason enough to progress. We didn't live really, we just became more of the same. The only difference between our lives and that of vampires was that instead of blood we thrived on the stories and tales of others. So I guess we still lived off the lives of others, just not their blood, it is something far more intimate.

I didn't cast the spell but I was the cause, I was the reason. I was. "Special," as our grandfather put it. It was my magic used to craft the spell. I hadn't been born yet, I was still in our mother's belly. Everything about my birth lined up with what grandfather told the village about my birth, about what and who I would be. Grandmother read the tea leaves, listened to the birds, and watched the water, and the sky. I was the next in line for Shaman and meant at some point to help build a bridge between the Fey and Human worlds. When, how, and why, none of us had any idea. We only knew that what my grandfather saw and spoke about was always true, was always the future. As Shaman it was one of his many gifts in life. He and I are bound as one spirit in two different times and two different bodies. Such was the nature of our being. For the better of over ten thousand years. When we came here across the frozen oceans and out of our homelands we knew as the Mongolians. Genetically even now we aren't much different. It seems that ten thousand years isn't enough to create enough of a divide in evolution. Our magic came with us, and during our time traveling here, older magic was done, magic even we don't remember now. It had no words, it had actions. It was primal, the kind of magic that needed to create and fill itself. The furthest back our generational stories go, my greatest of great grandfathers was dying as one of us was being born. He helped me into this world as he was slipping away from it. The door of ancestors was open as soon as my head saw the first lights of the moon. Something of us slipped in between and we were created. From then until now one of us is born just before or soon after another dies. Our magic passed between us, our knowledge passed between us, and large swatches of lives passed between us until it became impossible to tell where one life stopped and another ended. Now here I stand in front of my abstinent yet beloved brother. Who came close to being my equal in the family. He came close to being my equal in everything, to be honest. "Why did you hide this place from all of us Steven?" I asked again, measuring myself between anger and true need to know. "Because, until I knew who was affected by the new spell and who wasn't, I didn't know who could and couldn't know," Steven said quickly. "Tell me what you remember about the spell that made us, that created our never ending saga of what we call lives." He asked again. This time, with less hint about stalling and more I think just to buy himself more time.

It did make me think though, it was three thousand years ago. I have heard about it and read about it. I've even seen bits and pieces of it in diagrams. I haven't performed the sealing spell, however, not in the way it was done to us. I never would. It may have created long lives for us, but it stole so much away from us, our childhood in fact. After I was born I went from newborn to about twenty years old in a week. Robbie, David, Mathew, and Karen are the same. Steven aged as well only being eight years older than me Larry just stopped aging. He was seventeen when he was bound like the rest of us. Thinking about Larry and Robbie, where were those two? I couldn't help but wonder. I only then realized I had broadcast my thoughts to the entire grounds of our home. I no sooner thought of it than a shimmer, like a heatwave flashed in front of us and there were Robbie and Larry. First like after images then, as the wave of air passed over them. There they were in flesh, in blood. Each is on either side of Stevens's table. "You rang, I assume dear brother," Larry said with his deep black eyes, Larry's pupils were still adjusting to the light of Steven's study. His straight black hair lay in his face in long thick shafts of jet-black steel. His dark chestnut Eskimo skin gleaned from sweat. I could only guess that he was wearing his dark ruby shorts and weapon straps over his shoulders with one baton holstered that he was in the simulation chamber House created to help us train in weapons and magic work somewhere in the realms past a door in the attic. He spent so much of his time in their House and had moved his room just down the flight of steps that typically lead the way up there. Robbie must have been in the gardens or the greenhouse picking plants and herbs, roots, and fungi for the potions and spells that required the ingredients to work correctly or at all. Robbie kept his steely black hair in ribbons down his back and off the shoulder. Being a healer and mixer, he preferred the earthy tones of the healers' guilds when at home and in combat. I could count on one hand the number of times I've seen him in battle clothes or even with a weapon. His skin was closer to mine but still darker. If I had to pick a color it was like a cup of tea with milk in it. Still darker than me, closer to the rest of our siblings than I am now. I don't know if it was him being born away from the tribe or from the land we grew up on but he was born with only the slightest hint of blue on his body. Even his true form lacked the blue in any real measure.

"Steven was just to explain this room to all of us, brothers." "Go ahead, Steven." I jerked my chin at him. One eyebrow raised in question. "What do you, Tocktoo, remember about the spell?" Steven referred to me not just by name but by my title among our people. It was then that I noticed he was asking for reasons I couldn't completely explain. It is not like it was hidden knowledge, it's only that our mother was willing to waive the price of the spell out of desperation to ensure my survival. We assume that the spell thought that the others were needed to accomplish that goal. I couldn't imagine thinking that things in life have gotten so bad, that so much had been lost that a price any price was beyond the pale. I don't think I could have made a call like that, though I don't think in her wildest questions she would have assumed that it would have been one of her own children. Larry's twin was there one day, and in front of Larry, she just became unmade. She was named Rhonda. She and Larry were sick as babies. Nothing that by today's standards couldn't be cured or treated, three thousand years ago on the other hand, hell an ingrown toenail could take you down if not caught in time. Still, twins were rare and magical twins even more, so the extra expense was spent to keep them alive. Expenses are both magical and mundane. Food, water, wood for warmth, herbs, and berries, and fungi for medicine. Accompanied by Ocean and Moon magics, bound by Earth and Fire magics. The first year was hard, and the second year was easier but it wasn't until they were five years old that they were sure both would survive. It was another full 2 years before our mother decided to carry another child. She had refused all affection from our father, not that he didn't try. Thankfully our culture didn't have the same taboo as the Europeans about affection from another person in the tribe. Father took residence up with a fifth cousin of ours. His name is long gone, but they had been in love during our mother's marriage and long after as well. After mom died he took us under his wing and let us share in his portion of responsibilities and his rewards. By the time the last of us was born and he had been in love for an entire generation, our mother loved our second father in her own way. She died only 6 years after Karen was born. So in the end I'm here while my oldest sister is dead, gone, in a world somewhere we've never heard of? Who really knew? It was the cost of the spell, and the spell had chosen its price. So we may never know for sure where she ended up. The rest of the spell was easy in comparison. Binding the product of her womb to the life of the Moon and Stars. Vowing her blood and grandmother's blood to the Earth and the realms. Mom spilled her moon blood and her normal blood. Some dancing, a couple of hand-held fans made of bone, and feathers, carved and held in either hand. A plea to the great spirit that has no name, face, or body. Badda boom, Badda bing, immortal children. I mean that is the gist of it. There were deeper names to call on, deeper wounds that needed filling in the arts of magical places and beings. It was performed without a stop in dedication for three full days, from the birth of the full moon, to the fullest moon, and on into the last of the three days of the moon. The three moons are now named Maiden, Mother, and Crown moon. I ended my retelling of the spell to Steven with the last line filling in great detail. "That's how we get back to who we are, why we had no childhood and never have children," I said after a low point in my story. The sun had set, the fire burning died down and House had produced light, a vein of silver white light crawled from the floor, up the wall, into the ceiling, and across the study. Bright enough to bathe everything in a soft warm glow.

"Good, thank you, I'm happy no one is watching or listening through any of your ears or eyes," Steven said. In an almost deadpan like. He just dropped that note right in the middle of our conversation. What in the hell does he mean? "What in the Hells do you mean?" I asked out loud, too much of my essence crept into my voice making even House seem to wince in response.

Steven pointed at the walls around him, a ring of crystals and stones in a variety of configurations lined the walls of his study. Configurations I had seen bits and pieces of in diagrams but this equation of magic was surprisingly complex and intricate. To do it all in one sitting would have been next to impossible even with House's help. Steven had to have put them together in parts over years only to install them all at once. It prevented anyone from any kind of detection. No, seeing inside, hearing inside, noticing the room, or perceiving the room. It was a lot like what we used to create the barrier that protected our 20 acres of peace and hiding that we've enjoyed over the centuries, hells over the millennia at this point. Still, every part is more complex than even the land's spell. Different lines on different stones and crystals Lined up perfectly, creating more patterns that intersected with lines and patterns on the other walls. Small cracks webbed across the ceiling and walls, filled in with purple and indigo light as the four walls met. There was one circle that lay outside the whole work, with small rose quarters that didn't seem to add up to the rest. It was a link! It was linked to House so that House could see where the room is and connect to it. Still, the link could be cut off at a moment's notice giving emergency refuge to anyone inside the study at the last second if it was needed. "You could practically be standing in the room without noticing it," I said in awe of the artificial lay lines that he was able to create. Complete with stars and planets, models of the major landmarks of the earth and its core. Even some modern religious faiths were represented, in addition to the pillars of the old faiths of the fey worlds. "Sealing it all off, with Salt of the Earth. I mean literally with the salt, dug up from the Earth and placed at the feet of the room four buttresses supporting the roof above." I spoke without even thinking about what I was saying. How did Steven find all of this, put all of this together without anyone knowing about it? Even in the main parts of the building, there were creatures, beings that could see inside. If not completely, enough to know with varying degrees of accuracy what was being done or what was being worked on. With thanks, most of them had morels or allies and disagreements with others that helped us prevent any leaks of any kind. As people at the pinnacle of the magical community, we were lucky enough to enjoy either alliances or install enough fear into anyone or any being that might betray us. "Entire lines of fairy creatures, family bloodlines amount the fey born and mundane alike, have been taken, some altered, some just gone," Steven said to the room at large. Adding, "No one noticed at first because it was one, then four, then twelve, and finally the entire family group. At first, I didn't believe it because we would have noticed, I would have noticed or you Jones would have noticed. But it was among families that were at war with one group or another, or that moved in and out of Fey as they resettled on Earth." Steven continued. "They weren't high on the radar, we don't keep deep records or take census, we just follow families around and in and out of the earthly realms. So who would have noticed but the families themselves and even assumed that it was fortune or adventure that members of the family were seeking? By the time the rest were taken the others in the families had been altered or replaced altogether." Steven informed us. House had brought out a dining table, laden with foods from all around the world with additions from our homelands. Native foods we loved, anything from northern Alaska just pleased us but like without tea, we chose to gather or hunt them in mundane ways to keep the flavor intact with the memories of them.