Small Magics Page 9

  Chad trotted up. "Don't worry," he said. "We won't be late."

  She just nodded. The sooner they got done, the better.

  They didn't speak on the way to the theater.

  Just before they reached the old theater building, they were stopped again, this time by skinny, dark-eyed Marky. He and Chad spoke in hushed tones, until Chad cut him off. "Screw this shit, I'll do it myself." Marky paled and took off. Chad turned to her as if nothing happened and led her inside. He offered to buy her popcorn and soda, but she declined.

  The movie was awful. Long, tedious, odd, and it didn't make a bit of sense. With the name like Gonzo the Spearcarrier, she had expected some fights, maybe acrobatics, and Kitai fire magic, but no, the movie followed the story of some medieval Kitai official who was seduced by his boss's wife. Or maybe he seduced her. The movie seemed to consist of one long conversation after another and after a while she got confused.

  Chad stared at the screen with a grim expression. He didn't seem to like the movie any more than she did.

  After about thirty minutes Alena considered walking out. But then Chad had paid for it. What if he would get offended? She could hear her mother's voice droning on in her head now: "All you had to do was sit through a two-hour movie, a movie, tickets to which had been purchased for you as a gift. Was it really that difficult?"

  No, Mother. Of course Mother.

  It was no use. She was trapped.

  Finally the credits rolled on the screen. Alena got up and quietly followed Chad out of the theater.

  Outside, Chad's face took on the look of serious concentration again. The movie had been an utter failure and now he had to do some damage control. She wondered what his next move would be.

  He steered her toward Lion Park, where marble statues of lions guarded a huge three-tier fountain. Of course. The ice-cream stand. Chad followed the Old Town manual of dating to a T: having done the movie, no matter how awful, he would now buy her ice cream.

  They walked in silence.

  "That movie sucked," he said.

  "Yes."

  More silence. This was so not working out.

  Chad came to a sudden halt. She glanced in the direction of his stare and saw the ice cream shop. A big CLOSED sign hung up front.

  Chad looked almost pained. For a moment she actually felt sorry for him. Chad realized that verbal seduction was quite beyond him and her family name prevented him from simply grabbing her and giving her breasts a squeeze, as he obviously wanted to do. What was more, thirteen years of childhood made for a lot of memories and these memories sat between them like an impenetrable barrier.

  "Do you remember a couple of years ago, you pushed me off the pontoon?" she said suddenly.

  Chad glanced at her.

  "My mother forbade me to go swimming because of the factory dumping waste upstream from the pontoon, but I came anyway. I was wearing a black dress with red and yellow dots on it. You pushed me off the pontoon, and I felt something odd with my foot, but I climbed out. And then you pushed my friend Sveta in. The blonde? She wore a white t-shirt. You pushed her in, and when she surfaced, a dead body came up behind her."

  She vividly remembered a pale body rising through the murky water the color of tea. Sveta had screamed and screamed. Even when the cops wrapped her in a blanket, she still made these tiny squealing noises, like something was broken in her chest.

  Light gleamed in Chad's eyes. "I remember that. He was a wizard from the local academy. He'd gotten drunk, tried to swim the river at night, and got cut by a propeller."

  Alena nodded. "You probably made me step on the dead body."

  Chad smiled.

  She stared at his grin in disbelief. He thought it was funny. She had nightmares about it for a month after and he thought it was funny.

  That was about enough of that. Alena raised her chin. "Look, the movie was bad, the ice cream didn't happen, and we won't even count the broken sleigh or the dead guy. Thank you for taking me out, but I'd like to go home."

  A dark shadow passed over Chad's face. He squared his shoulders. "Okay," he said finally.

  They headed down the sloping street toward the river. She did try. She gave it her best shot. No doubt everybody would be very disappointed that she failed to hit it off with Chad. But to sit in the park next to him, while he figured out what would be the fastest way to feel her up really was beyond her. Especially after that self-satisfied smile.

  They turned the corner and stepped onto River Street. Three blocks, then up the slope and she would be home.

  A hoarse howl of outrage rolled down River Street. Alena stopped.

  With a loud squeal something small dashed from behind the stone warehouse. A second later Marky and Pol, two of Chad's finest, whipped around the corner and chased after it.

  The thing veered left and bolted toward them. Alena squinted. A pig! A small brown furry pig. What in the world…

  "I'm going to kill that fucker," Chad snarled.

  She glared at him, sure she misheard.

  He charged at the pig. The little beast dodged right, and Chad collided with Marky. The smaller guy bounced off Chad like dry peas from the wall. Chad whirled around, his face contorted with rage.

  Oh God, he really is going to kill the pig.

  Oh no. No, you don't. A date was fine, but if he thought she'd stand by and let him murder small animals, he was in for a big surprise. She had to catch that beast before he did.

  The pig headed straight for her, all but flying above the asphalt.

  Twelve feet.

  Ten.

  Six.

  She lunged for it. The pig swerved left. Her fingertips brushed its bristles and then it was off, running for its life down the street.

  There was no way she could catch it in her heels.

  New shoes or the life of a little pig? It took her less than a second to decide and then she was running after the beast in her stockings. Behind her heavy thudding of boots announced the three guys giving chase.

  Three blocks flew by. The pig made a rough left turn and charged into the old soccer field being remodeled into a tennis court. Ha! Nowhere to go: a twelve-foot-high chain fence enclosed the field to keep the soccer balls from flying in to the neighboring apartment house. Alena squeezed out a burst of speed and shot out into the soccer field.

  Where did it go?

  A hint of movement caught her eye. There it was. The beast had scrambled up a pile of red clay the construction crew was using to smooth out the field and perched there, covered in orange dust.

  She jogged to the pile on her toes, trying to appear friendly and non-threatening. The pig watched her advance with a wary look. Carefully Alena began to climb the pile.

  "Here little beast." The run had shredded her stockings into nothing, and the powdery red clay smooshed between her toes. "I won't hurt you."

  The pig glared at her but stayed put. Almost there. A-a-almost.

  She reached for it, moving as slowly as she could manage.

  Behind her Chad's deep voice warned, "Easy…"

  Easy my foot, he wouldn't be getting his hands on the pig. Alena leaned until she was almost on all fours, her face level with the pig's nose. Sad brown eyes looked at her from the fuzzy muzzle.

  "Don't worry," she whispered. "I won't let Chad get you."

  She inched forward, hair by hair, her outstretched hands reaching for the small brown body.

  The beast squeaked and darted down the pile.

  "Shoot!" Alena straightened in a sharp jerk. The momentum pitched her off balance. She teetered on the apex of a pile, waving her arms like an overgrown stork about to take flight.

  Clay crumbled under her feet. She clawed the air, trying to hold on to something, but the sky rolled back, replaced by the view of the apartment house, and Alena plunged, sliding down the slope until the green soccer field grass slapped her face.

  The world swam. She shook her head and pulled herself upright. A wide smudge of orange clay marked her side: fro
m the remnants of her stockings across her jean skirt and once white blouse all the way up to her hairline.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Chad and his thugs skirt the pile and halt, staring at her open-mouthed. She staggered to her feet. Her left side stung. Her right ankle was sore.

  In the distance the pig shrieked as it tried to squeeze through a hole in the fence.

  Surprise twisted into predatory mask of glee on Chad's face. "He's stuck!"

  They charged after it like a pack of ravenous dogs. Alena chased after them. They wanted the pig badly, but she was scared for it, and her fear drove her so hard that she caught up with them at the end of the field.

  With a heroic tug, the pig squeezed through the hole, leaving clumps of brown fur on the wire. Chad swore. Pol ran to the fence door and struggled with the piece of wire hooked through the lock to keep it shut.

  The pig cleared the path from the soccer field and ran onto the old wooden staircase. The stairs led down, and back to River Street. On the left rose a huge yellow apartment building, and on the right sat a row of old storage sheds, covered in grey waves of fibrocement roof. The top of the stairway was just about level with the storage sheds.

  The pig looked left, looked right, backed up a couple of steps, and leaped onto the roofs, its hoofs clacking on fibrocement.

  Pol finally worked the door open and they filed out onto the path. The pig backed away from them. It had reached the edge of the roof, and it had nowhere to go.

  Chad measured the distance between the stairs and the sheds with his gaze.

  "You're too heavy," Marky said. 'The roof will break. Let me…"

  Chad was too heavy, but she wasn't. Alena took a running start and jumped. The fibro cracked under her but held. Step by step she began to advance. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Chad, Marky, and Pol run down the staircase, trailing her.

  Step. Another step.

  The pig gathered itself into a tight clump. Long red scratches scoured its sides, where the fence had torn off the skin when it tried to escape the soccer field.

  "It's okay," she told it. "It's alright. It will be okay." Her feet really hurt from all the barefoot running. A stray thought zinged through her brain: this can't really be happening, can it? She pushed it aside, bent down, and grabbed the pig.

  It didn't struggle. It just looked at her with huge dark eyes and she was struck by an oddly sad expression in their depths…

  With a thunderous crack, the roof collapsed under her feet.

  Alena plunged into darkness, pig pressed securely to her chest. Her damaged feet hit something hard. Suddenly there wasn't enough air. She choked, coughed, and realized she'd landed in a pile of coal stored for the winter.

  Outside something crashed and then the door was torn from its hinges. Bright light stabbed into the shed. Chad appeared in the light. He held a switchblade in his hand. "You did good," he said. "Real good."

  She rose to her feet shakily, clutching the beast.

  "Give me the pig," he said.

  Her voice came out dull. "No."

  "Give me the damn pig," he snarled.

  Something inside her broke, like a glass rod being snapped in two. Magic flooded her, roaring through her veins. Behind Chad, Marky backed away and she knew her eyes had ignited with pale green glow.

  "No," she growled. The magic swelled inside her and broke loose.

  The shed exploded. Chunks of coal pelted the walls, going right through the soft wood. She took a step forward. Chad lunged at her and fell back, knocked aside like a twig.

  That was her talent. She didn't have anything elegant, like her father's ability to precisely pinpoint a location miles away and establish that first tenuous connection which would allow the building of a water communication line. Nor was her magic complex like her mother's ability to reconstruct images with her mind with perfect recall.

  No, her power was simple and brutal, like her grandfather's. Alena took another trembling step. Pol pulled out a knife and stabbed at her, trying to penetrate the invisible cocoon of magic. She let the magic tear the knife from his hand. The blade streaked past her and bit into the nearest shed, sinking to the hilt. The magic brushed against Pol, and he went flying across the asphalt.

  Such a simple magic, really. If she didn't want an object within six feet of herself, it moved out of her way.

  Streaks of silver shot in a continuous tornado of magic around her, bright footprints of her power.

  Chad had doubled around her and barred her way up the staircase. "Alena..."

  "Move," she said.

  He held on for another second, his hands white-knuckled on the rails, and then he moved aside. Limping and shuddering, she climbed up the stairway, up the steep path to the gate of her home's wooden fence. As if in a dream, she opened the door, crossed the path between the rows of rose bushes, and came up three stairs to the porch.

  Her own reflection stared at her from the glass of the kitchen window. Orange clay covered her left side. Everything else was black with coal dust. Her hair flared from her head in a tangled filthy mess. Her eyes blazed with green. Even the pig she still held seemed to know better than to offer any resistance. It just sat in her arms, filthy with a mix of clay, coal, and its own blood.

  She looked down at her legs. Her stockings were in tatters. Long scrapes marked her bare feet.

  By this evening everyone in the neighborhood would know what happened.

  Alena sniffled, reached into her pocket, pulled out a key, and let herself in.

  The family had just sat down for dinner. They saw her and froze. She looked at them, from the slack-jawed Aunt Ksenia, to the stunned face of her father, to her mother, petrified in mid-move, a pot of mashed potatoes in one hand and a big wooden spoon in the other, and hobbled past them, to her room.

  They watched her go. Nobody said a thing.

  Inside, she locked the door, crossed the room to her bathroom, got inside, and slid to the floor. Her magic died. Tears swelled in her eyes.

  She released the pig and it backed away from her.

  "This was my favorite blouse," she told it and wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. "This mess will never wash out. And I don't even know why they were chasing you."

  Alena crawled up onto her knees, picked up the pig, and maneuvered it into the tub. "And you got all scratched up. Look, you're bleeding everywhere. We need to wash that or it might get infected."

  She turned on the water and began to gently rinse the clay and coal dust from the pig's sides.

  "None of this would've happened, if that damn idiot hadn't stood me up. That stupid sonovabitch. Do you know how awful that felt? I felt this small." She held up two fingers with barely any space between them before picking up the soap and building it into lather on the pig's back. "And it's not like Dennis even was a decent boyfriend. He didn't even noticed I was a girl. It's not like I wanted him to be all over me all the time or shower me with flowers. Just some small acknowledgment that I was pretty or at least female would've been nice. So what do I get? I get Chad Thurman who stares at my chest and tries to slaughter small animals. How is that fair?"

  She rinsed the pig off and examined the scrapes running down the pig's sides. Not too bad. The little beast gotten off with mostly scratches.

  "You're one lucky pig. All of your battle scars are shallow." She sniffled, blinking back the tears that kept wanting to break through her defenses into a full blown deluge. "After I'm done, we'll put some nice poultice on your hide to keep you healthy. And you know, I perfectly understand that you can't understand a word I'm saying. I never thought I'd end up in my bathroom looking like this pouring my problems onto a pig."

  She paused and stared at it helplessly. "It's just that I have nobody to talk to. And if I don't talk, I think I'll fall apart to pieces. And I don't want to do that, because then my family will pity me."

  Alena reached for the towel. "Let me tell you about Chad. You should at least know who you ran away from. It all star
ted with a sleigh…"

  Fifteen minutes later, the pig's wounds were treated with cinnamon-smelling poultice and Alena had ran out of words, she set the pig on the bathroom floor and began to strip her own clothes off. "I think we'll have keep you in protective custody," she said, climbing into the tub. "Until Chad gives up on his pig-killing dreams. I can probably guilt Father into building some kind of sty."

  She picked up the shower head and turned on the water. "So I--"

  The pig jerked. Its brown hide boiled, expanded, twisted, like a rapidly inflated balloon, paled, and snapped into a nude man. For a brief moment they stared at each other in total shock. Alena caught a flash of wide shoulders, young face, and dark intense eyes beneath brown eyebrows. The man raised his hand, uttered an incantation, and vanished.

  That was too much. Alena dropped the shower head. Her knees buckled. She sat into the bathtub and collapsed into tears.

  * * *

  Someone knocked on the door. Alena put her head deeper into her pillow.

  Mother swung open the door and brought it a tray. "It's been three days," she said. "I understand you don't want to come down for the family meals, but you have to eat something besides a sandwich a day."

  A sandwich a day had been great, Alena thought. That way she didn't have to field questions from Boris and her sister.

  Mother put the tray down and said next to her on the bed. "Would you like to talk about it?"

  Alena shook her head.

  Mother pursed her lips. "This isn't what your father and I had in mind. Had we known it would turn out this way, I would've never let you out of the house. If it helps, the story hasn't made the rounds. Everybody is talking about how Thurmans are in a heap of trouble. They've managed to offend one of the patrician families, very powerful. Not sure how in the world they would even have come into contact with them -- must've been through their bank. Rumor has it, Thurmans have to pay out an enormous sum to avoid a feud. They're liquidating their investments to raise cash."

  Alena looked up. "So the date was completely for nothing?"

  "It appears so."

  It figured. Maybe she was cursed.