Chapter 12: Practitioner (3)

Staten Island, NY

I…

I just sat there.

I read the letter one more time.  Then once more and then another read.

At some point, I grabbed my backpack and rummaged around for my father’s letter.  Taking the two, I placed them side by side.  So that they were next to each other; the edges touching.  My father’s handwriting was more shapely.  More curves, a little bit akin to script but not quite.  My mother’s was all angles and precise lettering.

Then with a tenderness I didn’t know I had, I traced a finger over the seam where the two met.

It was cold.

My vision turned blurry.

Something wet fell from my eyes.

As I pushed my parent’s letters away, lest I get them wet, I saw that my hands were trembling.  A fierce thing gathered in my chest, hot and angry.  It dripped with what I could not name.  It burned with an ache; an ache that I’d had for so long that it had become a permanent part of me.  A fire that left ashen scorch marks over the barren walls of my heart.  The all too familiar longing, of… of something I remembered having.  As a kid.  Barely old enough to be self-aware of the world around me.

My parents loved me.

There had been so many sleepless nights where I stayed awake, wondering where they had gone.  Perhaps they had run off, no longer wanting to take care of a bratty five-year old.  Maybe they got tired of me not wanting to eat my carrots.

Maybe they didn’t love me anymore.

In those childish fantasies, I’d been so angry.  So angry at them.  At the world.  At my social worker who wouldn’t let me go outside and look for them.

So angry.

I’d been wrong.

My parents loved me.

And they never stopped.

Slowly, I reached for my eyes with the bottom of my palms, to stem the tide of tears.

Then I cried.

Great sobs wracked through my body.  Snot dripped out my nose and I just kept trying to inhale, to let out the next weep.

I wish they were here.

I wish I could say sorry.

I wished I had a photo.  A video.  Anything.

The two people who loved me more than anything else in the world and I’d never remember what their voice sounded like.  Their faces forever drawn in a blurry haze of early memories.  My mom’s eyes.  My father’s voice.  Nothing.

Death hits hard when you start missing the people you lost.

I’d wanted parents before.

I’d never missed mine before.  Not like this.

Never like this.

I don’t know how long I stayed like that for.

As all things do, the moment passed.  The emotions that raged within my body ran their course and the sobs disappeared.  The fire had died down to flickering embers.  Barely visible, and barely noticeable.  But I knew that the feelings remained.  And the knowledge that these letters gave me would never go away.

I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and got to work.

The first thing I needed to do was to choose: eating or getting right into the thick of it.  And by it, I meant Magic.  The capital M magic that I kept referring to.  Seeing as I had two arms, I found no reason to do both at the same time.  I grabbed two pieces of bread, heaped an unholy amount of salami, bologna and pepperoni on it.  

The first bite nearly gave me a heart attack, but the salt was too good to stop.  My only real meal is at school, and eating in the bathroom doesn’t make things taste that good.  Being famished, I devoured the sandwich in a few bites and made myself another one.  I gulped that one down in even less bites, grabbing a bottle of water and chugging it down.  Finally, I made another sandwich, which I promised myself was the last, held it in my left hand and got to work.

I made my way over to the bookshelf, browsing while looking for the ‘Arcanum’ book that my parents had spoken about.

Collections of Fairfolk

Musok: Bestiary

Musok

Witch of Endor

Shamanism: Spirits

Shamanism: Greater Spirits

Shamanism: Dark Spirits

Prerequisites: Standard

Shamanism: Mythical Beasts

Shamanism: gods

I paused, setting the sandwich down on the shelf.

Shamanism, gods?

What the fuck?

I gently lifted out the ‘Witch of Endor’, running my hand over the leather binding.  It was smooth and rough.  I frowned as bits of the cover kept catching on the rough part of my hands, prickling them.  I grabbed one of the protrusions and pulled.  I walked closer to the candles to get a good look at what it was.

A silky black strand of–

I dropped the fucking book and almost screamed, as goosebumps erupted over my arms.

Hair.

Human hair.

The goosebumps traveled to my neck then my cheeks.

“Jesus.”  I cursed.

The RV felt very empty.

And I felt very alone.

I looked around for a light switch.  Finding one near the living room, I flicked it on but nothing happened.

“Fuck.”  I cursed again.

My heart began to race and I quickly walked over to the kitchen.  The air felt so cold and I kept resisting the urge to turn around. Or look outside the window.  Or any mirrors.  Too many fucking horror movies began like that and after everything that happened, my decision-making skills were a wreck.  There was no such thing as ‘logic’ after experiencing everything.

I found some more candles in the cabinets.  Dozens of them.  The panic-ridden part of my mind screamed at me to light all of them, to make this place as bright as Long Beach on the 4th of July.  I wasn’t so stupid as to actually listen, but I did light a good number of them until the room felt safe again.

Light.

Grabbing a napkin, I picked up the ‘Witch of Endor’ and put it back into its place.

Then I went back to browsing.

Death: Ghosts, Haunts, Wites

Death: Necromancy

Death: Wake

Necromancy Tales

Skinwalkers and the Like

Other Powers

Totemism

“What the fuck…”  I whispered.

Arcanum: Condicio sine qua non

Arcanum: Instrumentum

Courts of the Fae

Genesis: Adam, Lilith, Eve

Genesis: Cain, Abel, Seth

Nephilim

Demons & Devils

Infernal Names

Infernal Contracts

Genus: The Classification of All Things & In-Between

Prerequisites: Staffs and Trinkets

And a dozen more.

An alcove with three bookshelves.  And three bookshelves filled to the brim with these things.  Half of them weren’t even in English.  I recognized Japanese, Korean and what looked like Chinese.  I even saw Spanish.  

The language on the lower shelves were unrecognizable; eventually becoming just an illegible combination of lines and curves.  Somehow, my instincts told me that these were ancient languages.  Like how people call latin a dead tongue.  Tongues so old that no one knew how to speak it anymore.

Emyrith had said this was only a portion of what my parents left me.

There was more to this.

I stroked the books, carefully avoiding anything that was beige or leather –even if my parents had left it to me, I wasn’t comfortable with a book wearing human skin.  Not yet, anyways.

This was the culmination of my parent’s lives.  A side of them I never knew or even suspected of.  Somehow, the books gave me a better idea of who my parents were than their letters did.  Like, sharing a secret with them.  They had this whole hidden part of their lives that no one else knew about.  A painful past that only they shared.

Now, I was a part of that.

And people were trying to take it away from me.

“No more sob stories.”  I said out loud, still feeling the effects of that scare from earlier.  It had been in my head and hearing someone talk, even if it was just myself, helped alleviate more of the baseless fear.  “Let’s get to work.”

“Prerequisites… Arcanum…”  I began to pull the books that I thought I’d need.  I put them on a heap on the coffee table.

I didn’t even bother opening Arcanum: Condicio sine qua non.  It was in latin. I opted for the Prerequisites: Standard.  It was slimmer than I expected.  Opening up, I found the table of contents.

Fundamentals …… 1

World …… 2

Realms …… 3

Tools …… 4

Additionals …… 5

Prerequisites: Standard was thin.  I expected some kind of encyclopedia or a thick binder.  Nope.  Just a standard flexible notebook.

My fingers flipped the pages, turning to Fundamentals.  My eyes scanned the pages, searching for what I needed.  Sometimes, I wish we had a CTRL-F function in real life.  I wondered if there was a spell for that.

“There.”