My eyes flew open–information slotting into place. My mother was insistent I return before my seventeenth birthday. It seemed strange then. Birthdays lost their importance when it was hard to find food and shelter. Since things settled they’d celebrated more but its importance held something greater than a simple milestone marking adulthood.

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. I went through my morning routine, my mind turning in circles. Illusionary connections formed but escaped before I could figure out their meaning.

Putting on a turtle neck, I tugged it over the bite marks littering my arms, adjusting it at my wrists. Unable to wait, I went in search of my mom.

A note on the fridge was the only trace of her. She’d run away, something else that was new. Blythe didn’t run: not when faced with a horde of zombies, she charged in; not when we thought Vaughn was dead, she took her two kids and traveled half the country to find him; not when Iggy got sick and we thought he wouldn’t mutate. Never. But, she’d run this morning.

To: Ignacius Kaz’myr Blake Huxley

I can’t find the words. Seventeen years was so long, but it passed in a blink. Part of me thought this day would never come, part of me hoped it never came, and a part–the girl who grew up into a woman, who realized how she’d been wronged–waited for this day.

Keep your father company. I have to retrieve something and then I’ll explain as best I can.

Love

Blythe Alara Blake-Huxley nee Caster

Caster?

What was my last name before it became Huxley?

I stared at the note, trying to fill the obvious space in my memory. I remember stubbing my toe when I was four. How did I forget my last name? And there was something–I remember choosing the name Kaz’myr. My name hadn’t always been Ignacius. My head hurt, and I stumbled in search of Vaughn.

He was on the patio, a cigarette dangling between his fingers. My steps faltered. He’d stopped smoking when I was a child.

I glanced from the cigarette to the stormy look on his face. The questions lodged in my throat, and I swallowed them. It didn’t matter what my name was before. I knew an ending when I saw it.

Sitting beside him, I set up the chessboard between us. “Is anyone sick?”

“No.”

I gave him white, taking black. “Is the base in danger?”

“No.” He took a deep breath, flicking the ash off the glowing ember tip. He picked up his queen and put it in front of my line of pawns, a unique chess strategy.

I took it up, twirling it in my fingers. The queen represented my mom and her mysterious past. I didn’t have a father until I was four, and she didn’t get a birth certificate until she married.

I put it on the board, moving my queen beside it.

“No hints?” I asked, speaking Eyoglaven, one of the languages my mother made up and taught us. It was a game we played when I was a child. I remember how thrilled I was that Vaughn had taken all of our eccentrics in stride.

“Later,” he said. “It’s your mother’s story to tell.” His jaw worked. The lines on his face had deepened overnight.

I didn’t like not knowing. I thrived on information and finding details, but he looked devastated. I bit my tongue, blood tasting in my mouth. We played several games without using our queens.

“I have to head to work soon,” he said.

“Later, Dad,” I said, getting up and heading inside, questions swirling in my head.

“Kaz,” he called.

I paused, looking back at him.

The cigarette stub was clutched between his fingers even though he’d never brought it to his lips. “I love you, Kaz. You’re my son. My son.” His voice was hoarse, his hand pounding on his chest.

I looked at him. “I love you too, Dad.” I was leaving, I didn’t know where I was going or why I had to, but he’d prepared himself never to see me again. I dived in, hugging him, probably for the first time in years. We didn’t speak again. He disappeared off the porch, the sun high in the sky. He was usually at work by this time.

Returning to my room, I looked at the ceiling. The glow-in-the-dark stickers were still there. The feeling of Vaughn lifting me high so I could slap them in place made me smile. I’d been eight, far too old for it. The smile slipped from my lips before disappearing.

What was mom going to tell me?

Why did it make them so scared and sad?

I bolted up. My body tensed, ready to fight or flee, but I had no enemies to fight, real or imagined. I didn’t have a beast to kill or a problem to solve. Pacing my room, I went through everything I had or hadn’t been told about my biological father or mother's family.

A list appeared in my notebook:

Her parents were dead

She got along with them, but there were issues with her extended family

She was sixteen when she had me

They were rich, and she lacked common sense about simple things

She never mentioned my biological father

She never mentioned where she was born or where I was born

There was something there. Something didn’t fit. I thought she was a runaway pregnant teenager, maybe her parents were part of a religious group aka a cult. I’d had theories, but then the apocalypse started and I was in a different city and it was a fight to stay alive and get back to her. Everything else had seemed inconsequential.

I was getting nowhere, a hamster on his wheel. I was caught flat-footed– a lack of information stopping me from reacting. It was a feeling I was familiar with and hated.

I couldn’t even meditate.

Shaking my head, I changed my shoes. Running might clear my mind.

***

Things were getting ridiculous.

My mother, who stayed at home or in her lab unless necessary, suddenly had a social life that required her to be out the door by seven every morning. Poor Iggy didn’t know why mom dragged him out of bed at the crack of dawn.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Yesterday turned into tomorrow before morphing into the day after tomorrow.

She was also increasingly angry, cursing someone I could only assume was my biological father.

***

Then on the thirtieth of December, one day before my birthday. My mother was waiting for me. She sat in the blue wingback chair facing the door. Her shoulders were squared, her legs crossed at the ankle, and her chin up with a determined tilt– a queen overseeing her court.

I needed to calm down. I’d hounded her for days but now that it was time for the talk, I was the one running scared. “I’ll shower and come back.”

She nodded. Steepling her fingers, she leaned back in the chair. “Be quick about it.” Her accent was thicker, the only thing betraying her nerves. An outsider wouldn’t have been able to tell. She might not have even noticed. It was something only Vaughn or I might catch.

Sprinting up the stairs, I took the quickest shower of my life. I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. I knew it would change my life, and from her reaction, not in a good way. However, living in ignorance warred with my very nature.

I stood before her, water still dripping from my hair.

A wave of her hand sent a warm breeze in my direction. It targeted my hair, blowing it dry. My eyes widened. I took an unsteady step forward. “How? Why? That-. That’s impossible!” My mother mutated fire and water elements. I’d seen her fight enough to know.

She snapped her fingers, causing lightning to dance and arch through the air. Each subsequent snap sparked a different power.

Water, fire, air, earth, and ice. Snap. Snap. Snap. On it went.

I lowered myself to the floor, unable to look away from her fingers. “How are you doing that?”

She lifted her foot before stomping. The brown wooden floors shudder before changing to pink tile. I smoothed my hand over them, feeling the texture of the wood against the pads of my fingers. What I saw and felt didn’t align. It was an illusion.

I felt like the kid in a candy store who could buy anything, but also like the kid walking by the candy store, staring through the window. Excitement and dread coiled into a nasty beast that settled into my stomach.

Why now?

It couldn’t be anything good if this wondrous display made her face contort into such a bitter and ugly expression. I buried the part of me that wanted to know more, the part that puzzled at how such feats were possible and if I could do them.

I felt like a child. I was a child. The child who’d rubbed his mother's back as she cried and held him close. Wondering why her tears flowed faster when she said I looked like her father. Her sorrow seared through me as her tears burned my little shoulders. I remember that too small house, and those auties with their comments, and the temporary jobs.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“Ah, but I do.” She gave a sweet smile, reaching forward to stroke my cheek. Mom took a deep breath, and her face rearranged into a blank mask. The emotions disappeared as if they’d never been. “That was magic.”

“Okay.”

Mom laughed. It chimed through the room, breaking the tension. “Don’t sit there acting as if you aren’t bursting with a thousand questions.”

I blinked, sitting on my hands. I leaned towards her, an avid child at a campfire or an eager devotee listening to a sermon.

She giggled behind her hand. The cheer was forced but no less genuine. “I’m from a different world.”

That was the simplest answer, but it seemed so improbable, bordering on impossible. I didn’t believe her. “Does Dad know?” I asked, humouring her, waiting for the joke before we moved into the real discussion.

She leaned forward, knocking me on the forehead with the knuckle of her index finger. “Is that the first thing you want to ask?”

It wasn’t. I had a million questions, but none of them would come out. They crashed into each other within my mind, vying for dominance. I settled for a nod. I still didn’t believe her, but–at the same time, I knew it was the truth.

“Yes, your father knows.” She relaxed. “We met because he caught me doing a bit of magic.” The mask cracked, a tiny smile tilting her lips before it slipped away.

I looked away. When Mom spoke about Vaughn, I felt as though I was intruding. Even this situation that caused her so much stress didn’t stop her face from softening as she thought of him. “Why are you here?” won out against the other questions.

“I was young and stupid,” she said, another laugh slipping out more self-deprecating than humorous.

“I couldn’t fathom that magic wasn’t universal. That it didn’t exist everywhere.” She sighed. “I was naive. I thought I was regaining my freedom, and making my own choices. But, I was led around by the nose–and while I don’t think it was a mistake now, it was then. I ended up here, on Earth. In a world that wouldn't appreciate my talents, and where all my knowledge was useless. I was proud. I was arrogant. I was young. All of that crumbled under the collective achievements of the people living here."

That was hard to believe. He'd seen his mother fight. Her mutation, or was it always magic, was superior to those around her. Then again, things pre and post-apocalypse were different. So were things pre and post-Vaughn.

"I can tell what you're thinking." She gave me a fond and exasperated look. "Magic is individualistic. It can impact society and produce useful technologies, but in my world, the focus is on personal power. Mages are intrinsically selfish. Not to say they don’t need each other."

That I could understand, I'd seen how power affected people's behavior. He'd been a moralistic bastard before the world fell apart, but now he understood the protection and freedom personal power could bring. I wondered what the world she was from looked like compared to the war-torn one they inhabited now.

The teacup lifted off the coffee table and floated towards her.

I watched its trajectory, the feeling that I’d seen this happen before. “You got caught doing magic a lot, didn’t you?” I don’t know how often people said I had a vivid imagination as I spoke to teachers or my mom about wild things I’d seen. “Did Mr. Piggles speak?” I remembered the Tabby cat that was my constant company when I was younger. I thought he was an imaginary friend.

“Mr. Piggles was my familiar, and he used to watch you for me.”

My imaginary friend from childhood did talk to me. He also read me bedtime stories and tucked me in. “That’s wild.”

“That’s pretty tame.” She held up her hand. “I know you have a lot of questions, but things are complicated. Let me start by giving you some context. Yes?”

Complicated wasn’t good. I nodded, rolling off my hand to make a zipping motion before tucking it back under my body. I wish I’d brought my notebook, but Mom hated it when I scribbled while she talked.

“My father died when I was fifteen. At his passing, he entrusted me to the care of my uncle. Who viewed me as an obstacle to what he wanted. The fastest way to get rid of me was through marriage.”

She took a sip of tea, setting the cup to the side before releasing it. Instead of plummeting to the ground, it hung there. “The country I’m from still has a functioning system of nobility, and as my father’s firstborn, I was to inherit after his passing.”

I didn’t need to hear more to understand what happened. It was almost cliche. To inherit the title, my uncle ‘got rid’ of his niece. “Bastard.”

“If he were a bastard, it would have been better. Alas, I was married off to a man who’d already met the love of his life. His father forced him to end his relationship with her because of our union. He had no patience for his young bride, and I loathed his twitterpated nonsense. Since you’re here, I’m sure you can figure out that something did happen-”

“Yeah, I get it. We can skip that part.” I didn’t want to know. As far as I was concerned, storks delivered Iggy. It was the only story that made sense.

“Hehe, if you wish. You were only a month old when I found out Hendrix was unfaithful. I had no faith in my uncle, but I hoped he would value our family name enough to intercede on my behalf. He did not. I could see the decline of our family happening, and I was in a vulnerable position. I can’t say I was thinking clearly, but I made a decision. I would divorce your father under strict conditions.”

I raised my hand.

“You aren’t in school,” she admonished.

“I never got to finish school.”

“Well, that will change. One of the conditions was that you attend a premier magic school after you return. Mola Academy will whip you into shape in no time” She primly pinched the cup’s handle. “I graduated from there, and I would hazard to say, I’m one of the greatest mages in my age group. Not that I didn’t have help. The Caster family has many legacies as you will learn.”

That wiped the questions I had out of my mind. “Return?!”

She sighed, “Yes, and I can’t adequately prepare you because your father–I signed a contract that limited what I could say until you were seventeen. You will be meeting him when you return to–hah. This is why I put off our conversation. I didn't realize I’d be so limited in what I could say. I’ve written down everything I could remember in a journal, but I– I’m sorry Ignacius, I should’ve prepared better. There are three countries. Enki, Nioroma, and Threece. I’m from Nioroma. Why I can tell you that and not the planet's name is beyond me. There is also a Theocracy. Which I can’t mention because talking about the gods is also banned.”

I could tell when she ran into topics she couldn’t talk about. Her jaw would lock, and her neck spasm. It caused her pain. “Is there no way to break the contract?”

“Unfortunately not. I swore on my mana, which mean the only way to circumvent the contract is to lose my magic. Ironically I told everything to your father, Vaughn, but he can’t tell you and he has no magic to lose.” She huffed, smoothing her hand down her pants. “Ignacius, magic is wonderous, but I’ve realized how illogical it can be, and don’t get me started on the way it’s taught in some places.”

“I leave tomorrow, don’t I?”

“Yes. I wish you’d told me. I’d have spent more time with–everyone.”