The Source of Magic, page 3
Melanie took John by the hand and lead him back through all the gates to the city which lay in between the outer and second wall. She passed the time pointing out various curiosities and landmarks as they went.
John noticed that she was far more talkative when not in the presence of the sisters. He was willing to let her chatter away brightly as they walked; it gave him time to process what had happened to him. She seemed to have bounced back after the night’s events, whereas he was definitely crashing after his adrenal gland felt its work was done and punched out for the evening.
With the threat of death by armed guard past and the planning of his escape no longer preoccupying his thoughts, John could take the time to absorb the city’s night life, what there was of it. There were not a lot of people moving about due to the late hour. John was surprised to see anyone out at all given this was supposed to be a city under siege. As they approached the checkpoints again the guards that waved them through had the all the mannerisms of a soldier on the front line waiting for battle and possibly death as did your typical underpaid warehouse night security watchman. John was disconcerted by the city’s faith in their magical barrier. Throughout history whenever someone invents armour that can defend against a weapon, some smart cookie comes up with an innovative new way of, as General Patton had put it, 'making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country'.
When they reached the outer city Melanie led John through a network of side streets and alleyways. Whereas the previous parts of the city contained houses in which people lived, the outer city had the feel that the people lived as much in the street as they did in their actual homes. Contrasting with the previous rings of the city there were people moving about busying themselves with the various trappings of life which normally take place indoors, and during the daylight hours.
As they progressed John started to notice more and more Nekovolk. They all had the ears and tail of a cat, fur and all, upscaled to human size, as well as larger-than-normal eyes that reflected in the dark. He was yet to see anyone sporting further feline appendages. No one had paws, claws or whiskers. Their fur was within the scope of John’s experience with cats. Some were shorthairs like Melanie and others longhair, and their colours and patterns ran the usual gamut: ginger, calico, black, white, and grey, striped, solid and patches. Their fur was always limited to the ears and tail and went no further.
A short way down one of the wider streets, which was also lined with two-storey buildings with shopfronts at street level, Melanie let go of John's hand and gestured for him to keep quiet.
Rising on her toes and pulling John’s head down, she whispered to him with her lips brushing his earlobe, “I live with my grandmother. She’ll be asleep.”
She produced a key and led him to one of the shopfronts which was currently shuttered. Opening the door she led him through a pitch black room and up some stairs.
Though Melanie could see in such low light as was afforded by cracks in the shutters and gaps around the door, John had to make do with sticking as close to her as possible and he felt her tail brushing up against him, tickling slightly. He was also aware that in spite of his efforts to remain silent he was still making a small amount of noise as his moved. Melanie on the other hand might as well have been a ghost for all the sound she made while moving. John wondered whether this was also a result of cat DNA, or if Melanie was used to slipping in and out at night and was not so innocent as she seemed.
After taking a turn at the top of the stairs, Melanie closed a door behind them. She guided his hand to a low bed and he sat down.
“You can sleep here,” she whispered.
John slipped his boots off and was asleep the second his head hit the pillow.
Pausing in the dream world halfway between sleep and wakefulness, his eyes closed, John smiled to himself as the warm sun splashed across his face easing him into the day. He was happy. He had the whole weekend ahead of him. Last night’s dream had been fun. Sexy ladies, magic and adventure. As he rose the further out of sleep, he noticed a weight on his chest and the vibration of a cat’s purr.
That’s strange, I don’t own a cat, John thought to himself.
Three…
Two…
One…
Bursting awake, his muscles jerking as if he had jumped down a cliff and landed heavily, John’s eyes opened to the dream made real.
Melanie, having been disturbed by John’s abrupt movement, gave a small high-pitched grunt of disapproval, then curled her body into his a little more tightly. Her body was on full display. She had stripped completely naked before climbing into bed beside John, who was still fully clothed.
Dust motes danced in the bright golden sun that spilled through gaps in the blanket-come-curtain in front of the one small window. The rest of the room was a hazy shade of summer. There was a set of shelves that ended abruptly in splintered ends halfway up the wall, its topmost surface holding a cracked earthenware bowl and pitcher. A wicker basket held Melanie’s neatly folded clothes and other assortments of rags. Every other surface in the room – the wide window sill, an uneven desk with one leg replacement shorter than the other three, the top of a DIY bedhead, and even the floor under the window – housed an array of carved stone totems.
The totems were all small enough to be held in the palm of the hand. John noticed a pattern and similarity in the shapes and wide grooves calved into them. There were two identical totems on the window sill with two grooves cut in one side, three on the other and a v-shape in the top. The carvings matched a totem over by the clothes basket; however, this one was squat and round while the others were tall and rectangular.
Having been previously disturbed, Melanie was slowly coming awake herself and she rolled onto her back to rest her head on John’s bicep. John looked down her body, taking in the view.
Melanie’s cat ears poked up through her short tussled black hair and lightly brushed his forearm which he had cocked to support his head as his eyes followed the mountains and valleys of her body. Her breasts were large, much larger than they appeared the night before, proudly rising skyward capped with large round, pink aureolas. John surmised that the shirt she wore must have been made by wrapping the long rags around herself so as to bind them down quite few cup sizes. Her belly was a soft inviting slope, her waist narrowing down to her playful mons pubis awash with ginger hair. Out of wide hips her two legs were splayed apart, one dangling over the edge of the bed with her tail, and the other continuing straight down the bed displaying a surprisingly lean and sizeable thigh and calf muscles and sporting a dainty foot.
John was still ogling Melanie’s naked form when she blinked long thick eyelashes and stared up with her large eyes, which were now pale blue in light of day rather than the reflective silver they had been last night. John expected a sour expression upon being caught in flagrante delicto. However, Melanie had a warm smile on her face and reached her arms up to stretch, moaning softly, arching her back and thrusting her nipples to even greater altitudes.
“Good morning,” she said softly, laying her head back down.
“Morning,” John replied
“You’re so warm when you sleep, it was so nice cozying up to you," Melanie observed.
John decided to play it cool. He was used to women being naked around him, but when they were playing at being sexy to varying degrees of success. Whether Melanie was just that confident in her body or it was nonchalance it didn’t matter. What she was was sexy as hell, and it got John’s engine running.
John had put aside his initial shock at remembering the events of last night and was in the middle of drinking in every detail before him when he was suddenly interrupted. Melanie squealed excitedly and jumped up to stand on the bed.
The focus of her attention was a totem the size of a thumb, vaguely pyramidal with two grooves carved in parallel around its circumference. What set it apart from the rest was that it was glowing. Pulsating blue light seemed to be coming from inside the stone much like a Christmas light in an ice block.
Melanie snatched up the totem and jumped off the bed landing so lightly she didn’t make a sound. John didn’t notice how stealthy Melanie was because she was currently bending over and rummaging through the clothes basket. Her plump ass on full display and her snatch, like a velvet macaroon, could be seen peeking out between the tops of her thighs.
John rolled over and sat up focusing on lacing his brown boots up. The last time he focused so hard on tying his shoes his great aunt, who was his only guardian, was watching him with a stern eye. She had just demonstrated the requisite one time that she believed it was necessary instruct a five-year-old to do anything.
Bringing a disgruntled septuagenerian to mind was perfect for John’s purpose, and he added the image to his lace-tying project the object of which was to prevent him from – as Great Aunt Susan would have put it – ‘taking advantage’.
Melanie had found a long white dress, slit two thirds up the back to accommodate her quickly swishing tail and a corn blue blouse which was obviously not intended for her. It was at least a size too small causing her milky cleavage to thrust up into a gorgeous balcony of soft flesh. John had begun to realise he could tell a lot about Melanie’s mood by the swishing of her tail, though she also seemed to be the kind of person who wore her emotions on her face. First nervous and reserved last night, now almost bouncing with glee.
Melanie seized John by the hand and, holding the totem tightly in her free hand, led him quickly down the stairs. The shop downstairs was well lit by the sun, the front door flung open and the wooden concertina window shutters folded back. Sitting at a small work bench in the middle of the room was an older woman whose figure reminded John of a semi-deflated beach ball. She looked up from her work bench and raised an eyebrow inquisitively and gave two flicks of a drooping grey tail at the sudden arrival of the pair.
The old woman had the same cat features as Melanie, except her fur was grey, a little fuzzier, and shot through with white. Her clothes were a little nicer, a flowing long dress tie-dyed light blue and white, which was cinched at the waist with a wide belt of colourful scarves. Overall her appearance was that of a wizened old fortune teller. Though there were hints that her decrepitude was an affectation, there were some smudges of makeup around the eyes that seemed to exacerbate the crows feet rather than hide them.
Situated on the work bench was an array of small stones similar in size to the totems upstairs. In a neat row were two sizes of metal file, a hammer, a chisel, a small block of wood and various grades of sand paper in a stack.
The rest of the shop had the same secondhand, lucky-find-on-the-street-corner vibe as Melanie’s room, though with a lower level of damage. Shelves around the walls were loaded with knick knacks and boondoggles. In general they were well made and showed that the creator was blessed with creativity as well as proficiency; however, they all looked as if they were made from reclaimed and recycled flotsam and jetsam of the city. There was a shelf of totems as well, similar to those in Melanie’s bedroom, inert and lacking the glow of the pyramid she now held on display in her outstretched hand.
“A lucky day, child,” she crocked with a quick glance out the window checking to see that there were no pedestrians peering in who would spot the glowing totem. “And who is this young man?”
The way she pronounced young man, ‘youn-ga maaan’, had a leer to it that suggested she had led a man or two to her bedroom late at night in her youth. Or even a week ago.
“I’m Johnathan Kirk. I’m new to the city.” It was not a lie, but wasn’t the full truth and his alien clothes made it obvious.
“I imagine you are. I am Melanie’s adoptive grandmother, Olga.”
“Do you mind if I ask why that stone is glowing?” John asked to move the conversation on from who he was and where he was from.
While he doubted he could come to any harm from discussing it, there was prudence in trying to fit in. He didn’t know anything about the local costumes or laws. He was surprised that there hadn’t been more of a fuss the night before from the guards. Who ever Lord Detier was, he had enough pull to execute the minor cover up of the incident that brought him there. And if the summoning was supposed to be off the record then his presents was a liability, so John figured it was wise to keep his head down and make as little noise as possible.
“When the Nekovolk came to these lands magic was wiled and untamed," Olga said as she put down a rock she was handling, and John kicked him self mentally as he could tell from her tone that an epic of this sort usually came with jumbo popcorn and 3D glasses.
“Those who lived here, the humans, had little understanding of the strands of magical energy that twist through the cosmos coalescing into planets and stars, creating but also destroying. Which energies work in harmony, and which strands clash and fight with one another.
“Only those humans who were most attuned to magic were entrusted with its power. However, not knowing what they were dealing with, they tapped into the magic directly, channelling it through themselves, wielding great power but also slowly, and the more foolish among them not so slowly, destroying their minds and bodies in the process. They were like children reaching into a hearth oven to grab fire, burning themselves and never thinking that there could be better ways of harnessing the power differently.
“We brought the knowledge of the totems to this land. These tokens of the earth safely collect and trap the magic energy that created all that we see and feel and hear to be safely released at the appropriate time.”
“What’s with the engraving? Do they sell for more if they are carved into funky shapes?” asked John.
“The ‘funky shapes’ as you put it, channel the magic energy upon its release to shape it into a useful and specific spell. The carving that Melanie holds is for a protective shield, much like one that covers the city now. Without these carvings, there would simply be an explosion of raw magical energy,” she answered a little more sternly, put off by his flippant tone.
John thought back to what had happen the night before when he was hit by the axe. He hadn’t intended to channel magic, he didn’t know how. It occurred to him that perhaps he was one of these attuned people who would have been a magician if not for being born on Earth. The comments of Lord Detier made a bit more sense now.
“So that magician, Detier, can carve these as well? He said there was a whole school of magicians," John recounted, to which caused the old woman to snort derisively.
“The humans have no idea what they are doing. Now is no different to back then. They make inferior copies in gemstone and jewels thinking that because they value those materials more that they will make better totems. They don’t realise that this,” she waved her upturned hand across her implements and collections of smooth stones, “is as much art as science.”
“You cannot use their mathematics or geometry to measure one totem and craft another. Yes, there are the cuts and grooves and shaping that have to be made for one spell or another. But the material you are working with tells you as much about these things as does the type of magic energy you are carving to collect.
“Yet they insist they know all there is to know and we artisans are cast out while their school of magic sits upon their convergence of ley lines, forcing magical energy into their sparkling atrocities like an idiotic father shoving a dead infant into his grieving wife’s breast.”
“Hang on,” John paused in his train of thought, steering the conversation away from dead babies, “Last night, that totem wasn’t glowing. It was totally dark. Even with all the insanity I went through I still would have noticed a flashing nightlight made out of stone. Where did it get its magic from? Is this building on a convergence?”
“Not a convergence, but one of the ley lines does run deep under the earth here,” she felt that was an explanation and in her mood, brought down by the animosity she held against the humans, she was not inclined to answer further.
“You see this line here?” said Melanie in a sweet tone she hoped would defuse the tension.
She stepped forward and holding out the pyramid, indicating to a small notch on the glowing totem much smaller than the others.
“It allows the totem to syphon energy from that ley line, as well as collect any wisps of magic that float in the air. It must have fully filled up overnight. That’s so fast, though.” Melanie sounded a little puzzled.
John smiled and nodded his agreement as if he knew exactly what she meant. That was one of the things John learnt in the Navy: sound confident. Nothing strikes fear into a battle-hardened crew like an officer who isn’t confident in his orders. The problem with this of course is that you often had to make decisions and give those orders without all the information you would like. So you give the best orders you can with the information you have at the time and you damn well sounded like you meant it.
The truth was that he had no idea as to the accuracy of anything he had been told. However, it was their world, and he wasn’t about to question his hosts. For the moment he would keep his eyes and ears open and wait for the right time to take charge of his new, hopefully transient, life on this world. Until then he would have to do something against his nature. Go with the flow.
The old woman reached for a small cloth bag made of material thick enough to hide the glow. She held it out towards Melanie, who dropped the totem in and then sealed it shut, tying a solid knot in the drawstring at the top.
“Take this to Greegson, who owns the knife shop in Storm Lane. You might be able to get up to three gold for it. And you, young man. Go with her. Normally I wouldn’t send you to him, but having a human around should keep Greegson in line,” she instructed as she handed the bag to Melanie.
Being thus dismissed John and Melanie exited the shop. John was a little surprised he’d slept so late. The sun was high in the sky and his stomach was feeling hollow. Waking early had become a habit since working at the docks.
“Is there somewhere we can get a meal?” John asked.
