The Big Book of Enchantments, Chapter 4, Jessica's Story

   Today me, Zachary, Michael, Johnathan, Julia, and Rachel arrived at the capital. It’s smaller than I thought it would be. I know Portland is bigger but, even taking that into account, this place feels small and shabby. To be honest, it reminds me of the Citadel, in that everything here is old, about to fall apart, or both. 

   When we arrived, Michael was deeply moved. He said he’d never seen a place as nice as this. Zac said he spent a lot of time here until the head of guards kicked him out. He doesn’t think it’s all that great. My impression is that this was once a great a noble city, but as the country started to outgrow the need for a king, it’s fallen off of everyone’s priority list. There’s something great about this city, beneath all the grime and decrepitude, but it would take a strong person with a passion for change to really bring it back to its glory days. 

    Johnathan says he used to live here. I wonder, how would he like the Citadel. It’s the oldest place in the entire kingdom, or so I was told, but as we’ve walked to the capital, I couldn’t help but notice how out of place it is. When you look at pictures of the Citadel from a hundred years or so ago, it looks almost identical to what it’s like now. But even when I got to Portland, I was struck by how different it was from the pictures in my history books. I remember hearing that the Citadel was once the place every mage tried to enter, it was where all great magic was performed. When artifacts began to get traction, power was drawn elsewhere, but the mages of the Citadel were able to hold their own against the changing tide. But now artifacts have gone out of fashion. 

    I remember a visitor to the citadel telling the enchantress “This place is dead. It would be better for everyone if it was gone for good.” The enchantress was furious. I thought he was just dumb, as most outsiders are, but even the Capital has changed more than the Citadel has. My biology teacher once said that everything, dead or alive, is subject to change. When will the Citadel change?

***

    Tomorrow, Johnathan, Rachel and Julia are going to meet the king and queen to ask if they can stop the assassin that’s harassing Rachel. Zac says he’s going around town looking for wallets to steal. I’m not proud of relying on a pickpocket, but it’s hard to make ends meet just by making charms. No one wants to pay that much for them. I promised Zac I’d look after Michael. 

    My plan is to look around the capital for any news about the Enchantress. I know she’s after me for something, and she apparently went after Michael for some reason. I know she’s related to the queen’s sister, and Johnathan think’s the queen is connected to the Assassin that’s after Rachel. I’m guessing she’s plotting to usurp the throne in some way. 

    The enchantress always complained that nobody outside the Citadel took her seriously. At the Citadel, if we were ever rude to her for any reason, she would curse us. If you were lucky, you got turned into a toad. If you weren’t, you would feel total unending pain for three days. Outside the Citadel, nobody cared about her. The elders wouldn’t let her curse guests, and she knew that if she cursed anyone from the outside without very good reason, the queen would execute her. She hated that. She was the one in charge of the Big Book of Knowledge, the one artifact that the Citadel held claim too, an artifact that was built before most of the other artifacts were. It’s powerful, but so unstable that no one who isn’t from the enchantress’ bloodline can use it. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. When I was about five, she lost her ability to use it, and now she can’t even touch it without getting burned. As time has gone on, she’s kept her position as leader of the Citadel, but has lost influence. In fact, last month, just after my thirteenth birthday, one of the teachers forgot to bow to her. You’d have thought Armageddon was coming based on the spell she let loose. 

    So, I’m guessing she’s going after people to show that even without the Big Book of Knowledge, she’s a major threat and everyone should take her seriously. I don’t honestly think that’s going to work. She’s a mage, but from what Julia told me mages fell out of fashion almost two hundred years ago. Any magic you could want is done by computers these days. 

    I need to learn more about life outside the Citadel. I was told when I was little that since I can’t cast spells, I could never be a proper mage. Julia and Rachel both say that not only have they never cast a spell on their own, they don’t know anyone who has. And they’re related to the owner of a Magitronics corporation. 

   Zac says he doesn’t know much about what normal people do. He hasn’t even gone to school in years. Michael says his teacher told him that raw magic was dangerous and if we saw anyone performing it, they should tell an adult. 

     My first memory involving magic was me accidently blowing up a wall in one of the dormitories. I can’t cast a spell, but I channel magic like crazy, and when I was very little, I was prone to accidents. Not minor accidents either. I melted books. I set tables on fire. I cause rooms to be filled with horrible voices. But when I blew up the dormitory wall, it was the last straw. The elder’s banished me to a tower high above everything, and said I could only come down for meals, schoolwork, and to study in the library. I still live there today, even though I’ve figured out how to control my magic.  I learned that if I channeled magic into something, and then used it for a spell, I could set of my magic in a way that was harmless. But that wasn’t enough for the Elders. 

    I wonder what my life would have been like if I had been born outside the Citadel. My accidents would have been a lot more dangerous for normal folk, and there wouldn’t be anyone who knew how to manage my problems. Maybe Julia’s aunt could have gotten me something to do the same job as my notebook. Every time I feel magic surging, I pull it into my notebook, and at least once a day I look through it for a spell to cast and then cast it, somewhere where nobody will get hurt. Ironically, all my practice writing, and casting spells has made me one of the best spell casters in the citadel. 

   I need to make more charms for tomorrow. I know Zac says no one wants them, but I’d like to have at least a little bit of honest money in my pocket. If I have to become a thief to survive, I will, but I don’t want to go that route unless I’m desperate. Mind you, I was perfectly honest, but the enchantress’ awful husband still stole all my money. I guess that means I shouldn’t steal. I don’t want to stoop to his level. Ever. 

Bellevue Square Mall

    Bellevue has changed a lot in the past twenty years, but one thing that’s remained constant is the presence of Bellevue Square mall. A mall that is not aimed at the ordinary masses, but at the wealthy elites who populate the city.

    Everything about Belle-Square is built to capture wealth. The floor tile, the store layouts, the food available to eat, all of it is built to make sure you spend as much money as possible. All appeal is built on the idea that you, the consumer, want to keep up with your rich friends. So they show you the most expensive version of everything they can think of.

     Belle-Square’s other definitive trait is change. The mall has been in Bellevue since 1946, but nothing within is static. Stores come and go. Strategies change. But the mall is always as full as it can be because everyone who gets into business wants to be at the top.

    The mall is big, crowded, and overwhelming to people like me, but it’s undeniably successful. It’s the heart of downtown Bellevue for a reason. But it’s not without its flaws. It has no food court, only various restaurants spread throughout the mall, and not many places to sit. Its not a mall for everyone, and I feel as though that’s on purpose. You’re supposed to love going to a mall, not the mall itself. The mall is just where the good stores are.

The Big Book of enchantments, Chapter 3, Zac's story

     My friend’s call me Zac. My enemies don’t call me anything. Not because I don’t have enemies, but because all my enemies are the kinds of people who don’t care about a kid who decided to leave his family at the age of six. 

     Most people who know my story think I’m nuts. I guess I am. I was the kid who couldn’t learn anything, no matter how simple it was. I guess it makes sense I would think it was a good idea to leave home at six, and to still be on the road years later because someone like me will never learn their lesson, no matter how often it’s spelled out for them.

    I can’t even remember why it was I left to begin with. I think it had something to do with looking for my real parents. See, even though my mom and dad were alive, still are as far as I know, they didn’t like me at all. I think I had some brothers and sisters, and I remember them getting the lions share of my parents’ attention, but I don’t remember it clearly. The only thing I remember about my birth family clearly was the day I brought a report card home from school with a note saying I needed to be held back. I left the day after that.

    I can’t remember what they said that made me leave, all I remember is sitting in the closet in my room bawling my eyes out. I remember seeing a book belonging to one of my brothers or sisters, about a kid who got left on someone’s doorstep and was on a journey to find their birth family. I remember thinking “maybe I’m like that kid. Maybe my real mommy and daddy are out there missing me.” 

     I don’t know if that’s why I left. I do know that if I thought that, I didn’t look very hard. I just wandered from place to place, leaving when local residents drove me out. A few people tried to put me in an orphanage, but I just broke my way out. Nobody tried to find my birth parents. 

     But one day I found something special. I was walking one a road going somewhere, I’m not sure where, and I found a ring lying on the ground. It wasn’t anything special, just a silver band, but written on it were the words, “I will love you forever, Maggie.” When I saw it, my heart just started beating like crazy. I thought “This is it. This is how I find my family.”

    That was about two years ago. I haven’t found who, if anyone, it belongs to. 

***

    The nice thing about traveling with royalty is that nobody suspects you’re a thief. I’ve been stealing to get by ever since I left home. Jessica keeps telling me that I shouldn’t steal things because she can make charms that’ll let us get by. I say dream on. Charms are going the way of magic artifacts these days. 

   I don’t steal anything from people who’ll be ruined. I look at people and guess how rich they are and how much of jerk they are, and if I think they’re mean I swipe their wallet when they aren’t paying attention. I told Jessica this and she asked me “How do you know for sure they weren’t just having a bad day when you met them?” I said, “I don’t know, but I don’t have to look to see where they keep their wallets, so I’m willing to bet I can judge character pretty well.”

    I don’t think Jessica’s comfortable with me stealing. Why she hasn’t left I don’t know. It’s not like she has to put up with me. From what she’s told me, she left her family the same way that I did. 

    Maybe she doesn’t think she can make it on her own. She did say she comes from a high-class family from someplace called “The Citadel”. She might just need me to take care of her. Or she’s just looking to take advantage of me. 

Crossroads Mall

     The signs on the outside say Crossroads Mall, but it doesn’t fit the traditional image of a mall. In a mall, your supposed to come in with a wallet full of cash and leave overloaded with shopping bags. In crossroads, your meant to linger. You come in by yourself, or with a few friends, and then you sit and chat and take in the world around you.

      The heart of Crossroads mall is its food court. Most of it is ethnic food from many parts of the world, all in one place. Close to the food court is a stage where people, mostly locals, can come and perform. The music is always loud, but rarely good. It’s not supposed to be good. It’s supposed to represent the people local to the area. Most people who come to crossroads come to eat food and watch performances.

    Surrounding the food court is the shops. Most of them are small stores run by people who cater to the weirder parts of Bellevue. The exceptions are places like Old Navy and Bed, Bath and Beyond. You won’t find Nordstrom’s or Macy’s here. Those stores go to Belle-Square mall, a place not to far away from Crossroads, but a world apart in terms of experience. 

   The essence of Crossroads is belonging. This is not a place you go to because you want to feel wealthy. You come here because the people are friendly, and the atmosphere is like that of your grandparents’ house. It’s a safe place. Covid may have taken most of the second-tier stores, but it left the mall mostly intact. 

    

The playground

 In the beginning, there was only a playground.
A field,
A playset,
A neighbors backyard,
A place our parents would leave us to while away the time,
Until dinner,
Until we became exhausted,
Until we needed their attention.

We loved the playground,
Hated it when mom told us to leave,
Told friends we would see them tomorrow. 
We left,
But we came back.

We came in spite of wounds, 
In spite of fights,
In spite of bullies.
We came in spite of the pain, anger, and fear we saw.
We came because it was fun,
Because we could be free,
Because, for as long as we were there,
We could do whatever we liked.

For that time we were the hero,
Saving the innocent,
The cashier, selling goods for the public.
A firefighter,
A racecar driver,
A president. 

And then we left,
And we never came back.

All of us knew it would come,
When a bully hit or yelled, we told him we would hit back, when we were bigger.
When Father made a joke, and mother laughed, and we didn't know why, they told us we would know, when we were older.
When we were on the playground, all we could think of was the time, long into the future, when we would have all the answers.
When we could yell when we wanted to.
When we could play when we wanted to.
When we could do whatever we wanted to.
In our minds, it would be heaven,
So we left the playground.

Adults would warn us to cherish what we had,
But we did not listen.
Until we left.
Then we saw that, though we could do whatever we wanted, 
Other people wanted something else.
We wanted to find love,
But we couldn't understand the other side.
We wanted respect,
But no one wanted to listen.
We wanted fun,
But we had to pay a price.

All at once, we hit a wall.
We didn't know what to do.

The day after Christmas

     This post is going up the day after Christmas, but it’s being written about ten days in advance. It’s nice to live in a world where you can build up a buffer. 

     I confess, I can’t think of anything I want to write about in particular, but since this is going up in that no-man’s land where Christmas is over, but the new year hasn’t arrived yet, I figure this is as good a time as any to just ramble. 

     I have to say, I’m growing to like the fact that people can read what I’m writing. I kept it private for so long because I was afraid criticism would break me, but I’m coming to accept that, in all likelihood, nobody is going to care about what I have to say. I find that a little bit liberating actually. Though one of my goals is to mentally go from “I hope nobody reads this” to “I hope everybody reads this” about my normal posts. I do hope people read my poetry. I don’t know if it’s any good, I just know that it matters to me, and I think a lot of people would, if not find meaning, at least like what I have to say. 

    I do wish I could come up with more to say in my posts. I know I could stop posting but I’m a little worried that if I cut down on posting I’ll stop posting altogether. I figure that bad writing is acceptable at this point, since nobody is reading anything, I post anyway, but later on it’ll just get annoying. 

    I think my biggest hope for the future is to be somebody’s imaginary friend. If I follow you online, there is a one-hundred percent chance I’ve tried to have a “conversation” with you in my head. I realize this may sound creepy, and in all fairness, it possibly is, but when you find socializing as difficult as I do, it’s nice to know you can have friendships where you aren’t constantly paranoid about screwing up or making someone angry, if that isn’t what you wanted. So many people have given me that over the years. Maybe it wasn’t their intention, but I feel better knowing that there’s someone I feel safe caring about, who shares my views on life. I keep hoping that I could do that for some other lonely soul who feels trapped by family who doesn’t understand them, friends who don’t like them for what they are, or a world that just doesn’t care. 

   A lot of people view the internet as poisonous den of evil, which isn’t wrong. I can’t blame people for thinking that social media and search engines have proven to do more harm than good. But it’s been my home for at least the past fifteen years. It’s where I went to read news, play games, read the life stories of strangers, and learn about the world many wouldn’t talk about, but I still wanted to see in some way. 

    I think I should make my goal building a space for people like me, people who don’t want to be evil but find it hard to be good. People who don’t fit in and don’t really want too either. People who wish they could be themselves and still live in society. I think we underestimate just how hard it is to live when society won’t accept you. We have to. Being a member of society requires that you not see those who can’t live alongside you.

    Well, that got dark. I think I’m going to end it here. Hope you had a Merry Christmas. 

Christmas Day

    This is my first Christmas post. More accurately, it’s the first post that’s going up on my blog on Christmas. I’m writing this about a week in advance. 

    I confess, I have very mixed feelings about Christmas. It’s not that it’s horribly corporate, although it is, or that there’s so much to do it’s honestly overwhelming, it’s that I don’t like my extended family that much. 

    I have to wonder if we put too much pressure on people to have fun during Christmas. I used to love Christmas. There were presents to give and be given of course, but it was also nice to be in the presence of family members. Then I grew up and realized just how much we didn’t like each other. Now Christmas is an annual reminder to cherish people I don’t feel close to. 

    Yet part of me almost likes Christmas. Not the part where your stuck in holiday traffic or trying to find gifts that your relatives will like. The part where you’re watching a holiday movie about the importance of love and family, or seeing Christmas lights everywhere, or seeing little kids go to visit Santa. The parts that I used to love the most about Christmas. 

    I think the issue is that Christmas doesn’t feel like a real thing to me. I’m not religious, so the part where we’re celebrating the birth of Christ doesn’t matter to me, I’m too old to believe in Santa Claus, and most of my family lives out of state. Christmas is a holiday built on the promise of a better future and nostalgia for an idealized past. If you can believe in either of those things, or both at once, it’s one of the more meaningful holidays. But I feel like I should acknowledge that at this point in time, doing either is very hard. We may idealize the past, but I can’t think of a point in my life I wish could have gone on longer than it had, and like most people my age I don’t have a lot of hope for the future. 

    On the other hand, I’m a firm believer that even if you don’t think the future is going to be much better than the present, you should still hold onto hope. Change happens a lot more slowly than you think it would, so slowly you often don’t notice it until there’s no going back. So, if you want to change things for the better, you have to do it consistently. So maybe a new version of Christmas is in order, one that’s not about reminiscing about the past, or talking about the future, but one that promises to be strong in the face of adversity. One that’s about acknowledging the pain we all feel from time to time, that the world we wanted won’t come and we don’t know what we could do instead. Maybe if, like me, you think that the only real hope we have is that we still could make the world a better place, you could find people who agree with you and talk about what you want the future to look like. Not everyone wants the same thing of course, but I wonder if we even know what we want the future to be at all. It’s scary, but we can only change the future if we learn what we want from it, what other want, and try to come up with a way to make a world that would keep us both happy. 

    So, with all that said, Merry Christmas. Happy Hannukah. Happy holidays to everyone. May your family love you and your community appreciate you for all you do. 

The Big book of enchantments, chapter 3, Julia's story

Warning: the following story contains adult language       

My aunt isn’t very religious, but she says that if people think you believe in nothing, they won’t want to buy things from you. So, every week, we head off to the temple to hear about how there are gods watching us and making sure we learn important lessons so when the time comes, we can save the world. I don’t believe a word of it.

     I haven’t seen my mother in eight years. When I was really young, I lived with her and a cramped and dirty apartment. Actually, there were a lot of apartments, but they all kind of looked the same. They were always only one room, or at least only one bedroom, always falling apart, and always filled with mold. When I was small, I had terrible asthma. I don’t know why we moved around so much, but I think it had something to do with either debt collectors or gangs. I remember a lot of shady people in our apartments, and I remember my mom taking a lot of strange men back to her bedroom or chasing me out of the place we were living in. I don’t think I need to tell you why. 

    I didn’t go to school back then. I knew school existed, but mom never bothered to enroll me. As long as I wasn’t bothering her, she didn’t care what I did all day. Bothering her often meant being in the same room as her, from what I remember, so I avoided her.

     Outside was heaven. Not that anywhere we were was great, but it was much better than being with my mom and seeing what shady shit was going on. I didn’t have a lot of friends, mostly because I spent a lot of time rummaging through trash. I think I was looking for food, but I soon learned there was all kinds of stuff there if you kept looking. 

     The best trash was the stuff by rich people’s homes. If you got lucky, you could find broken Magitronics. I would collect them and try to put them back together. Sometimes I couldn’t, because I couldn’t find manuals, but sometimes I could, and I kept getting better and better. Or maybe just lucky.

    When I was seven, Mom finally had enough of me. I don’t remember what broke her. I think it was just seeing my aunt on tv and realizing she couldn’t have that life because she wasn’t that great with magic. So she sent me away to Brooks Hallow, where my aunt lived, so she wouldn’t have to see me again.

      In hindsight, I was supposed to go straight to my Aunt’s house and beg her to take me in, but young me didn’t get that Mom didn’t want anything to do with me anymore, so I figured I’d wait it out on the streets until the clock ran out, then I could go home. I had a return ticket with the departure date. So I went to the streets and lived off of what I could find and steal.

       I lasted three weeks. The police found me and realized immediately that my departure ticket was fake. They also realized that what my mother told me was mostly a lie. I didn’t want to be sent to my aunt, but when I realized the alternative was the orphanage, I let them take me there.

     I don’t know why my aunt never contacted my mother. I didn’t know my mother’s phone number, or even her name, but my aunt has more money than almost anyone else, more than enough to get rid of unwanted family members. 

     Maybe she kept me for the same reason she goes to the temple every week. One more way of assuring the public that she’s the good person she isn’t. 

    I had nowhere else to go. It was clear that most of my aunt’s servants felt the same way about me that she did, but I consoled myself with the fact that I could escape to the streets, the way I always had. That lasted until that fall, when my aunt enrolled me in school.

      I hate school, but that first year cemented that I would never excel in anything. Thanks to collecting instruction manuals, I could read better than anyone else, but I couldn’t write or do math. I was put into a class for people with learning disabilities. I hated it. I felt bored most of the time. Worst of all, my aunt didn’t want her reputation ruined when it came out that I wasn’t smart, so she had her servants overload me with as much homework as possible so I could keep up with my classmates. 

     Things got better after Rachel was born. Funnily enough, my aunt didn’t even realize she was pregnant until I pointed it out to her. I know she wasn’t showing, but it’s not like it’s that hard to tell if a woman’s pregnant. She was frightened until Rachel was born. She hates children, but I like to think she hate’s Rachel a little less. 

     Rachel’s a good kid. She’s smart, cute, great at sports, the kind of kid everyone wishes they could have. I like her mostly because when she was born, my aunt hired Mathilda to be her nanny. Mathilda doesn’t like me anymore than my aunt does, but she’s always been nice to me, and helps me when I feel like I can’t take living with my aunt anymore. 

    I can’t wait until I can leave. I’m better at school than I was, but I’ve made no friends. The only good thing about living with the aunt is that, since she owns a Magitronics corporation, I get to see them being made. I’ve learned a lot since I first got here, and I own a lot of them and can fix them up myself. The nice thing about magitronics is they don’t care about how good you are or how smart you are. If you know how to fix them, they can’t ignore you. If I wasn’t as stupid as I am, I would love to be a magitronic’s engineer. 

    I just wish that we weren’t on the run. People don’t care if we’re on the streets, unlike when I was younger. I always thought that Rachel wouldn’t have to learn what it’s like when people don’t like you. I wish she didn’t have to learn now. 

The future

     It feels weird to be blogging right now. In theory, writing these posts is easy, all you have to do is write down whatever you think into a word document and then copy and paste it onto whatever blogging platform you use. In practice, I’ve been dealing with this weird anxiety. Humans tend to put other humans, and themselves into boxes. I’ve never had a box I felt comfortable being in, but I was always an outsider, of a sort. I’ve never been good at making friends or being totally at ease among people. So posting my thoughts on line feels a bit dangerous, I won’t lie. I think a lot of me is waiting for the moment someone posts a comment saying that I talk a lot but don’t have anything to say.

     Still, the more I think about this, the more I want to keep doing this. It’s incredibly stressful, but not the kind of stress where most of your mental energy is going towards trying to keep yourself from thinking about how bad of an idea this is. 

    I do want to be a writer at some point. I’m not sure if I want to be the kind of writer who writes deep stories for people to get lost in, or shallow stories that anyone can enjoy, but I do know that I have this world I’ve lived in ever since I was young, and I want to share it. It’s not a happy world, but it is a world where if you believe in yourself, you will eventually succeed. 

   

The Big book of Enchantments, chapter 3, Rachel's story

     Mathilda used to warn me to never, ever go on an adventure. Adventures don’t get work done or make the world a better place. No matter what people say about adventures, there only purpose is to see the world. They don’t promote growth, they don’t bring understanding, they don’t even help people make money. The world, she often said, would be better off if we just stayed home and did what our parents told us to do. 

    Then a man entered the nursery unexpectedly. I wouldn’t have been frightened, but Julia was there, and I didn’t want her to be hurt. Julia doesn’t have a lot of magic. So I grabbed the wand Mommy gave me for my birthday, and flung a spell at the man. I think I hurt him. I hurt a lot of people when I throw spells at them. 

    Mommy found out there was a man after me. I decided to leave. I didn’t want that man to hurt Julia or Matilda. I’m strong enough to fend for myself. But Julia wouldn’t let me leave by myself. She told me, “I know you’re a lot stronger than I am, but you’re still eight years old.” So I brought her along.

     It turned out alright. Julia’s not a strong mage, but she used to live on the streets. She knows how to live on next to nothing. That didn’t help when we had to sleep out in the open so much that my clothes got filthy and filled with holes. Then we ran out of money.

     Fortunately, Julia’s a whiz with technology, so she took on jobs for money. That meant that the assassin could follow us again, but fortunately, he isn’t that bright, so we were able to hold him off. 

    I wish we could go home. I miss Mathilda, Mommy and all our servants. Julia says we’ll be home soon, but I don’t think she means it. Julia can be mean sometimes, but she’s always been nice to me. She told me once that, “I can’t understand how you came into this family. I belong in this family but the world doesn’t like me much. I guess it’s a good thing you don’t belong in the family, because the world might just like you more.”

    People do like me a lot more than they like Julia, but people would like Julia more if she wasn’t mean so much of the time. Mathilda thinks so to. Julia says she doesn’t care that people don’t like her, but I think she’s lying. Mommy has people over for dinner, and I often see Julia in the corner looking sad when people don’t talk to her. 

   Johnathon says he can get the assassin to stop attacking me. I hope he finds a way to make Julia happy. She keeps saying that when she turns eighteen, she’s leaving us and never looking back. I don’t want to lose her. 

    Why can’t she stay with us? Why doesn’t Mommy care if Julia leaves or stays? Why did a strange woman send an Assassin after me when I’ve never even spoken to her in my life? 

    I don’t know. I just wish that Julia and I could be happy.