One Life

“Perhaps it would be unreasonable to ask you to come home at this point, no?” the other woman begins, as she always does in this dream. Way taller than any woman has any right to be, dressed up like some ancient soldier in silver and blue, ready for battle, but armed with a guitar. Her face is fuzzy, and the details about her are scarce, but she’s just the first actress in this play.

“Ya think!?” shouts our second female lead.

She turns, throwing her arm out in anger at the armored woman. My vantage point is at the second’s breast, but after a moment, she fixes her long fiery hair away from her face and looks down at me. Anger cools to sorrow and sadness as she carefully caresses my face. Soft and tender, just like…

‘Blue’ takes a step closer in this massive space courtyard covered in stone architecture and greenery, but the one holding me, ‘Red,’ bristles at her step. “I told you what my plans are, you cannot dissuade me!”

Keeping her tone measured and level as possible, Blue pleads, “Even if your plan succeeds, what will become of this world we built together? Sister, you know what building the chord will do to this planet: we’ve seen it happen before! What about her future? Are we going to lose another home just because you cannot stand the life you once had!? Please, return to me! It doesn’t—”

“It does!” ‘Red’ fires back with a voice that shakes the leaves around us. “Her future is everything to me! If I have to burn this planet to the ground to give her the life she deserves, I’ll do it without so much as batting an eye!”

Grinding her teeth, shaking with rage, Red takes a breath. “If only you had left us be, if only you had never intervened in the first place, none of this would’ve happened!” Her muscles tense, her body warms like a flame about to go out of control, but then, she stops.

Red looks at me again and relaxes. She takes a breath.

She turns back to Blue, this time with a new tone: “Keep your piece in tune, and when I get back, I’ll either take it from you willingly, or I’ll take it from your corpse, sister.”

Blue shudders. As if those words on their own were a blow itself, she takes a step away from Red and me. “Please, sister, you don’t have to do this! After all these centuries, you finally have her! Why give up her childhood to chase after some fantasy you may never recover?”

Again, Red starts to radiate heat. “I will! I can! I have done it before! I just need… more power this time.”

Her brow furrows and she brings me to her face. She kisses my forehead and holds me close. So warm, so sweet, so familiar, so comforting. “Chances are high that she’s just like us. A decade or two will be nothing worth crying over. Nothing we won’t have time to get back.”

“You do not believe that!” Blue counters. “You know very well what our own childhood was like. Are you really willing to let her go through the same thing we did?”

“And what does it matter if I am!? You, the hypocrite! What will you do when your number is finally drawn? This lofty position you’ve clung to with all your might for over two millennia will be compromised in a single night, and you won’t be the wiser for it!”

Then, Blue grew quiet. Her armor clinked softly, and her ‘weapon’ lowered, as if she were the one to defuse.

Red’s face was twisted in such agony that I wanted to touch her—some fleeting feeling that I might make it better, as if I had the power to console her. I reached for her face, and all at once, she smiled—her massive finger so big that my whole hand couldn’t even grasp it all.

“Sister, I… am sorry for how I treated you, back then.”

The sweetness on Red’s face fades. “It doesn’t matter what you are,” she spat.

But then, her face softened. “Stay out of her life.”

As fuzzy as her features were, those five words cut Blue the deepest. She seemed small after hearing them.

“However,” Red continued, “if I don’t return in twenty years, take her under your wing. Tell her the truth, who she really is.”

She reaches for my chest and picks up a trinket almost the size of my head. This, I know all too well: the sun, eight little spears of orange topaz extending beneath a yellow crystal’s center, all framed in gold.

“For now, I’d prefer she have a family to grow up with.” She sets it down and brushes my cheek with her finger. If only I could grab hold of it so she can’t slip away. “One day, I’ll come back for you, my darling—”

Buzzing vibrates my vision away letting darkness take over, only to be replaced with faint morning rays shining through my window.

I sit up in bed, rub the dust out of my eyes, and the dream goes with it. Vague fragments of a conversation between two giants dance in my groggy head. And still, the buzzing.

Tired of the noise, I grab my phone and slide the button along the screen to make it stop. Seven-thirty in the morning. Half an hour to shower and get dressed, half an hour to eat, and half an hour to make the trek to school.

Groaning, I lay back in bed and stare at the underside of the top bunk. It’s empty up there. No equally tired masculine groan, no groggy ‘Morning, Dawn,’ no slow descent down the ladder to pull me out of bed. Nothing. I’m all alone in here.

My phone starts buzzing again and a sigh escapes me. I slide away the second alarm, and, finally, get out of bed.

Hair dry, underwear on—including this stupid itchy thing on my chest—I started on my uniform. Today was Monday, September 30th, 2013, the last day in the ninth month of the Arian calendar. Nothing really special about it, other than having that dream again. It’s not the first time; probably not the last time. At the very least, it isn’t a nightmare like usual.

Blouse on, skirt on, tie tied, blazer buttoned. I found one of my stockings, but where the other might be was a mystery. I really shouldn’t just throw my clothes wherever when I get home.

Sighing, I called to mind a spell to search it out then snapped my fingers.

Magic flowed through my veins and out my fingertips with the call of the sound, then flooded my room in a glowing violet smoke. It scanned every nook and cranny from the ceiling fan to the TV console, from covering my desk and Aaron’s old laptop to flowing under and out of each sheet on each bed.

After a moment, all the smoke left where it lay to converge under my bed. It was a stocking after all; maybe I slept in it.

I got down to the floor and reached under my bed, letting the smoke guide me to my target. My fingers brushed the fabric and I had it. Snapping my fingers again with my prize in hand, the smoke dissipated and I put it on.

My uniform in place, I started to leave my room when I remembered something, something I knew well. I went to the desk, kneeled by the lower drawer, and opened it. There in the back was a trinket. The sun, made of yellow and orange gems, framed in gold, and chained into a necklace.

I picked it up and inspected it. I could never remember where it came from, or even how long I’d had it. It fit comfortably in my palm, no bigger than a half-dollar coin, and there was a faint heat to it that felt like an unremembered memory. If it was magic, it wasn’t magic I knew. Maybe I should ask somebody about this. But then again, I doubt I’d get an answer.

How bizarre.

“Dawn, breakfast is ready!” Dad called from the kitchen below.

Not thinking twice about it, I put the ornament back in its place and closed the drawer. I didn’t really like attracting attention to myself anyways; why wear something that would make me stand out?

Leaving my room, I headed downstairs.

After breakfast and the walk to school, I split with Poppie at the ringing of the first bell and headed to my classroom. The girl’s school in Downbeat catered to about a hundred and a half students, grades K through 8. Each class was about ten to twenty students, and despite the impossibility of it, Downbeat was the largest town for miles, so we had students who lived minutes away or miles away with few in between.

It was an old building, initially a military barracks built hundreds of years ago and then reformatted into a school when the town grew. Cinder block walls painted with dull shades of white or cream, as Amethyst would have it; windows that clearly once had bars over them, bearing sad, slatted, white blinds that were always open to make sure the sunlight kept us awake when the subjects threatened to take our consciousnesses away. Drab is the word she’d use to describe this place.

Despite the drab nature of the classroom, the advanced seventh grade class was always alive and full of chatter in the mornings: the mayor’s daughter and her little followers, Amethyst and the farmer’s daughter, that really tall kid who sits quietly in the corner… and finally, me, the top student who spends most of her time here playing video games instead of paying attention.

The second bell rang, meaning all students needed to move into their classrooms, and shortly after, our teacher, Mrs. Rich, walked in. Expensive heels to compensate for her height, expensive clothes to compensate for her figure, and her hair all curled up into something like a cone on the back of her head to make her seem bigger than the ‘children’ in her class. ‘Bigger’ would be a word for her, just not in the way she’d like.

After she click-clacked her way to the podium in front of the white board, she took a folder out of her purse which she’d make sure you know was from that one brand they only sell in the Queen’s own backyard—the capital, Virtuoso—and began.

“Good morning, girls,” she said in her fake high society accent, “This week starts a new unit, and that means we’re diving into the foundations of magic.”

For once, my ears noted my interest. I spend a lot of my time reading, and because of that and my status as an ‘active’ mage type, I knew a lot. Foundations, however, meant that we were putting things we knew into practice, and practice was where I struggled. I understood the concepts, I could memorize the chants if they had them, and I could just snap into reality the ones I’d really learned well. But, for the most part, I wasn’t my brother. I couldn’t just read a spell and put it to power; I’m not that talented. With a teacher, however…

“As such, I’ll need you to take this form home and get your par—ahem, guardian’s signature and return it. This year, you’ll be learning some of your first attack spells, provided you haven’t been doing your own research.”

She took out a stack of forms from her folder and started to click-clack down the rows of desks, handing them out. “You know, my daughter—”

And there she goes. I mentally turned my ears off and dove into my memory to see what spells I’d try to get checked off this unit. ‘Find,’ I’d mastered, if only because Dad got tired of me losing things and having to find them himself. If this morning was any example, I used it a lot. I knew ‘barrier,’ I’d figured out a few pieces to ‘teleport’ and ‘warp,’ and I could even use ‘beam’ on the rare occasion I could gather enough magic in my fingers to fire it.

Of course, Dad caught me doing that once and told me not to, but Aaron taught me, so I try to practice it safely when I can. I mean, a thirteen-year-old performing a third-level spell? Not just anybody can do that—but I can. And if I can make the most out of this unit, then maybe—

“Ms. Hibana?”

I blinked, and there was a form in my face. “Oh. Yes?”

Mrs. Rich nodded in approval. “Excellent. Please recite The Arian Creed for the class.”

What? Where did that come from? I scratched at my head but stood up from my chair anyways. I always imagined the creed was some form of conditioning for the subjects of Aria to make us into loyal little potential soldiers for ‘her majesty’ in the event of another war. With as powerful as Queen Luna is, I never really understood why Aria was ever involved in wars in the first place, but once every hundred years or so, there seems to be a new one.

All the same, I knew the creed by heart: “The people of Aria, blessed by the Goddess with two of her very own, believe in the seven virtues true. Loyal, honest, kind, joyous, wise, generous, and loving are the men and women of the Arian Kingdom, and in these seven virtues strikes harmony with the Goddess: such is the magic of truth.”

Mrs. Rich nodded in approval and click-clacked her way back to the podium. “Excellent, Ms. Hibana, excellent. Class, for those of you who don’t have that memorized, it will be on the test, and it will be part of the oral portion. Now then, please take out your textbooks and turn to page ninety-seven where we’ll begin our journey into second-level spells.”

And just like that, my interest was lost. Literally, who cares? I can spit second-level spells out of my ass. There’s like—what, two avian type mages in the advanced class? Even they should have every second-level spell memorized! This is why classes should be segregated into mage types, but no, that’s ‘divisive.’ Actually, the tall kid is one of those avians, and I know she’s got the fifth spot in the class rank. She’s better at magic than Amethyst, and Amethyst is an active type like me!

Frustrated and already bored with Mrs. Rich’s droning voice, I stood up my book, took my game out of my bag, and put on my headphones. It was going to be a long, long, very long day.

Downbeat was a small town in the northern state of Bass Blues in flyover Aria. To put it simply, there was nothing here. There was barely anything in the state, for that matter. Farms and fields of trees as far as the eye can see, so long as you’re outside of Downbeat, that is.

There’s a river that runs north to south all the way through Bass Blues, into Treble Blues further north, and out of the empire from there. This river, the Ambience river, is known far and wide, at least in the Blues states, for the steady stream of fog it produces, bisecting the two states with a wall of mist that’s thin in the summer and thick in the winter. In some twisted act of the Goddess, the Ambient splits, circles around, and reconnects on the other side of Downbeat.

The little town is constantly surrounded by fog, sometimes so thick, all you can see in any direction is the hazy wall. I’ve never understood why Dad chose to live in this place. Maybe it was the only place he could find work in or afford or something. All I do know is that I’ve never been far from it.

After I’d parted ways with Poppie at the southern suspension bridge that leads out of town, I was left alone with my thoughts on my way back home. I live on River Road, which is the longest single road in Downbeat, if only because it circles the whole town. There are two stoplights that cut River Road in half at the edges of town going east and west so the highway can pass through uninterrupted, then there are two more turns going north and south that lead out to even more rural areas beyond Downbeat. As the name implies, it’s outlined by a little grassy bank that gives way to the Ambient.

When the fog is thick, it's like the bounding box in a video game: there’s nothing beyond this point, it’s the end of your vision, you can’t go that way. As somebody who rarely leaves town for any reason at all, it makes it feel like everything inside River Road is all there is to the world.

A heavy gust stirred the mist and played with my skirt, reminding my thighs that they weren’t covered by anything, making me shiver. October was the beginning of the temperature decline. Soon, we’d switch over to the winter uniforms, and we’d spend our mornings practicing second-level spells which I’d probably blow off and instead practice whatever I decided was interesting on my own.

While people come in all kinds of shapes and skin tones, we only come in three types of mage, and there are hard and fast rules about all of them. Active mages, like myself, are mages who excel in the use of spells. We’re not necessarily good at keeping spells going for long periods of time like an ambient mage would, and on the rare chance we can even cast the fifth-level spell ‘flight,’ we’re nothing in that department compared to avians. But in everything else? We’re the best.

Active mages, at least at my age or around seventh grade, can start casting third-level spells, if talented. Somebody like Amethyst who isn’t very interested in spellcraft probably won’t ever be casting third-level spells, and it won’t affect her life in the slightest. Same age, same mage type, completely different levels as far as theory and application of magic goes.

A sort of sad aspect of the world is that, as much as we practice it, magic isn’t really all too important for everyday life. We have technology for things that only a select few could do in the past. ‘Telepathy?’ Replaced by phones. Warp and teleport? Cars and planes and motorcycles. Is it still faster to use teleport to move things that aren’t you, and warp to move yourself? Yes. Is there anybody in the Midwest capable of using either of these fourth-level spells to a degree that would make them superior over normal modes of transport? Probably not.

And thus comes the second problem with my chosen career path: I might not be able to do it. People who come from long bloodlines of active mages are the few you could guarantee would make it to fourth-level magic at some point in their lives. Somebody with a really muddy family history is a gamble in either direction, especially if they’re not an active mage.

Avians can comfortably hit second-level, but struggle at third. They have ‘flight’ from birth and could practically live in the sky if we could ever sustain a city like that, but that’s about it. Ambients are sort of the middle of the road, and you’ll see them with spells on that may never be turned off, but you probably won’t see an ambient mage cast a fourth-level spell.

Once in a generation, you’ll hear about a really rare active mage who manages to transcend normal limits and cast a sixth-level spell without dying. Since spell level gaps work like exponents, casting a sixth level spell in the first place would probably drain your body of magic and then some, leaving you dead in a glorious flash of a city-destroying blaze.

Scholars will devote their lives trying to reach that level and never make it or die trying, but in all history, it basically never happens. If you really want to see a sixth-level spell, the Queen will put on a performance once a decade just to remind the world that it can’t hold a candle to her. When I got to see that show three years ago, they had a counter on the corner of the screen to see how many average mages it would kill to use all these spells. By the end of the night, she had thrown around a hundred people’s lives worth of magic. Ya know, for fun.

If it took humans generations under the Queen to develop a bomb capable of wiping a city off the map, she’s been able to snap spells like that to life for all of recorded history—as far as we know, anyways. There was a point in Aria’s history where there were supposedly two queens like the creed says, but that was so long ago that it’s faded from memory, deliberately or naturally.

And then, above the top range of human capability is the mythical seventh-level spell. It’s not enough for us to wipe a small country off the map with sixth-level spells: the human desire for destruction has always had designs on some form or other of suicide, and with magic, the theory is there. In the event somebody could ever power a seventh-level spell, it might as well be game over.

Ideas that range from destruction on an unprecedented scale, to completely bending the natural order and reviving the dead. The dominant religion in Aria, Incarnationism, says that the Goddess herself incarnated in human form once, and only she has ever shown the world what a seventh-level spell looks like, but those records are from before even the Queens appeared in history, so who’s to say anything like that actually ever happened?

As I wandered around ideals of lofty magic and ancient theories, the afternoon mist slowly brought me back to this morning’s dream. What is it about that medallion that sticks out so sorely in my head? As an active mage, I should be able to analyze any spell I see, at least to some degree. I study spellcraft in my own time and I know the more obscure magic in the lowest levels, but for the life of me, I can’t even begin to see what’s stuck to that little trinket.

Maybe I should ask about it.

A car passed to my right, tossing me around in wind and fog, throwing my train of thought right off the rails and into the ditch. My little house was finally in view anyways, so I let it be.

Spell levels, mage types, commonality—I’m sure we’ll spend most of the unit in class going over this stuff anyways. Maybe Mrs. Rich will say something interesting for once and not talk about her daughter for however many hours she can. A gamble with bad odds, but it’s better than missing out completely. Just one headphone this unit.

“I’m home!” I called in the little entryway.

Two floors, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, an upstairs office, no garage, a living room, a kitchen, and a laundry room: my home for thirteen years. Whitewashed walls with a picture or two here and there of Aaron winning some award somewhere or of Dad back when he was younger, and that little family picture of the three of us by the TV. I set my bag down by the door after taking my game out and headed to the kitchen.

“Hey, honey. How was school today?” he asked from the stove.

Somewhere in his late thirties, Dad was an active mage born around Virtuoso who had just about as much going for him as I did for myself. Lanky, pasty, poorly shaven; long, unkempt dark hair; divorced and entirely unremarkable. I know it sounds like I’m being harsh toward my own father, but this is how he describes himself on the blog he runs. Self-deprecating, yes, but true? Absolutely.

I sat down at the dinner table and booted up my monster collector game. “It was alright, I guess. She did that thing she always does, so I tuned out pretty early.”

Dad put the lid on the big red pot he’d been working with, then took it off the burner and moved it inside the oven. Savory smells of beef, potatoes, and carrots wafted through the air, stirring up my appetite. “Sounds like a pretty normal day to me. Nothing interesting at all? I figured you’d be moving on to a new unit by now.” The oven beeped three times, he shut the door, then came to the table to sit across from me.

I shrugged. “I mean, we are. It’s just that she’s going over foundations, and she made it clear that we’re only doing second-level stuff, so…”

Sighing, he rested his elbow on the table and cradled his cheek in his palm. “So, you’re just gonna be bored for the next month, eh?”

“Yeah, pretty much.” I set the game down and leaned back in my chair after the monster I’d been looking for escaped. “Oh right, there’s a form I need you to sign for that, by the way.”

Calling ‘levitation’ to mind, I snapped my fingers and took hold of the form inside my bag by the door. The spell worked a little like a claw game: whatever object I had was almost like it was on a fishing line, and I had to carefully think about reeling it to my position while avoiding any kind of collision.

Even with as many times as I’d cast this, it always took a lot of energy to make happen, and it was almost more taxing than just walking over there and picking it up. Levitation is one of those spells that can potentially be higher level depending on the mass of whatever you’re trying to move. It’s not the initial casting that gets to me, but the sustaining part. If you don’t keep your flow of magic consistent, you risk crushing or letting go of whatever you have, on top of having to drag it to your location. It was more work than it should be most of the time.

The form landed on the table after a moment, and I snapped the spell away.

Dad snapped himself, and from somewhere upstairs, his reading glasses floated to his face in a cloud of glowing yellow haze. Magic, when used, can typically be traced by the signature it leaves and the color associated with the user. Purer bloodlines typically keep the same color hue through the generations, but the more mixed you get, the more you see different hues pop up in a single family. Aaron had something closer to amber than Dad’s yellow.

“Oh, so they’re having you say the creed as part of the unit final, huh?” he mentioned.

“So says Mrs. Rich. She made me say it this morning.” Which was a little weird, all things considered. The creed is something like a ceremonial thing. We say it at the beginning of the semester, at the end of the semester, and then it just kinda… stops happening later on in life. Students can rattle it off if they pay attention, but adults are less likely to remember all the words.

He turned his brown eyes at me. “Did you know it?”

I rolled mine. “Of course. I mean, Poppie might not know it, but everybody else in school? I bet we could all say it.”

Dad nodded approvingly, which, though I’d never admit it, made me feel pretty good. “Well, maybe you should teach it to her.” He flipped a page, snapped his fingers again, and a pen appeared in his hand. That was teleport, and how he could perform such a complex spell so casually always baffled me. As far as I knew, he wasn’t special. But, then again, Dad doesn’t like to talk about the past. Or himself. It was irritating.

“You know, there’s actually a funny little anecdote I was taught about the creed.”

I raised a brow. “Oh yeah?”

He put the form down and started scribbling his name out on the line. “‘There are seven virtues true, but above and below each, there are but two that shine through. At the point which makes a man, this virtue tells one worthy from one not. But at the heart of them all, this virtue shows the truth of who thou art.’”

He clicked his pen, snapped it back to whence it came, and handed me the signed form.

I was still waiting for the end of the anecdote. “Well? What are they?”

He smiled then got out of his chair. “Well, that’s not part of the anecdote, you see.”

“What!? Come on, you can’t just lead me on like that!”

He tapped that mustache of his then shrugged. “I can, really. Since she never told me what they were and I had to figure them out myself, I think I’ll let you do the same. I will, however, pass on the hints she gave me.”

Dad crossed his arms, wrinkled his forehead, and dove deep back into a place far beyond the dining room table. “‘A man who fails at the break will succumb to all things nasty and unpleasant. One whose heart is incapable is a sad, shallow creature, unwilling to understand or actively in rejection.’ It took me a long time to figure these out, but over the years, I eventually got it. Course, the person who shared this with me in the first place has probably long since forgotten both of those words.”

As long as I’ve known him, his emotions usually ranged from ‘easy going’ to ‘mildly upset.’ This, however, was some kind of… lonely melancholy that didn’t really fit my image of Dad. “You’re a smart girl, Dawn. When you do figure out what they are, I’m sure you’ll understand what they mean.”

I didn’t like any of this. Dad has never acted like this before; it’s almost like he’s deliberately leading me on instead of blowing me off like usual. He was never direct about it, and he never appeared like he was doing it, but in his subtle little ways, he’d always skirt questions and give half answers like this.

I scowled at him, picked up my game, and headed upstairs.

Why be cryptic about it? What’s the point of making me figure it out? Irritating, irritating, irritating. He’s always like this. He won’t talk about his past, he won’t talk about Aaron, and he’s never specific about anything concerning me. ‘It’s not for me to say.’ Then who is!? He’s your son! You obviously know something, so why won’t you tell me?

I don’t know why I even thought about asking him about the pendant. Not like he would answer anyways.

I slammed the door behind me, put my game in its dock by the TV, and collapsed in the chair at my desk.

My world outside this house is surrounded by fog. My world inside this house is surrounded by fog. The only clarity I ever get is when I look at the sun, and before too long, that just hurts my eyes.

My vision drifted over to the open closet door, and the vanity mirror hanging on it. Dad’s hair is black. Arron’s hair was black. My hair is somewhere between chestnut brown and strawberry blonde. My magic is violet, my eyes are green; I’m not exactly ‘small,’ but I’m definitely bigger than most girls my age, and Dad and Aaron are both kinda short for men.

Why do I feel like I don’t know anything? I’m the top of the class; I read the most, I study the most, and I know the most, but that’s all just facts and figures. When it comes to the real, tangible world around me, I know the least. One day, I’ll cut through the fog and get to the truth of all this, even if I have to leave to do it.

Thirteen years later and the blue skies of Downbeat are always the same.