Macey sat in the planetarium seats, and was so awed that she forgot all about her nausea. The planetarium was massive. It was like an auditorium and a warehouse had a baby with gigantism. A giant glass sphere hung from the ceiling, encapsulating the gradually smaller and smaller spheres, each containing a celestial body until it finally got to Munth. The glass had become so dusty over the years that you couldn’t see the plate sized Munth at the center. Macey had tried to find it when she was small, but had since given it up. The little kids next to her finally were trying their best. She shook her head with a smile. Poor naive children, so innocent of the facts of the world. She knew her childhood was fleeting, Macey was almost eight after all. She was practically ready for a mortgage.

She imagined a scenario of the glass sphere falling while she waited for the show to start. It fell, rolled around the stands, pancaking innocent families while others dove out of their chairs. Of course she would stop it. She picture herself standing in its way defiantly. Her parents would scream at her to get out of the way, but it would be too late! She got squashed. Or so it seemed. Her parents would cry, but the planet would slowly rise, to reveal Macey lifting it with one hand. She would play it cool. Oh this planet? Well it’s no gas giant, she’d say, they fling the thing into space. The audience would go wild, and her uncle would immediately invite her to Aethowix.

She smiled at the daydream. Perhaps a little violent, but no one got seriously hurt. She changed the channel in her brain, and imagined a giant swinging from planet to planet. Macey had never seen a real giant before, but she’d seen pictures. They were basically orangutans but twice the height of a full grown adult. The giant in her imagination had pink hair instead of reddish-orange. It smiled as it dropped its, well, droppings onto unsuspecting parents.

She was shaken from her daydream when the lamps dimmed. A hush swept over the audience, and excitement was ready to explode.

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. For your edutainment pleasure, we present the Illustratious…Yufizard…Hickory. The polite clapping of the parents was drowned out by the unhinged slapping of their kids.

Uncle Yufe strode out onto the stage, purple cape fluttering and sequenced clothes dazzling.

“Salute!” he cried. “Ladies and gentlemen you know my name and what I can do, you know very well that there is absolutely no trickery involved. That everything you see, hear, touch, taste, smell, and feel here today is all real. However, half of you kids might not know me and half know me less than you think. I’ll have to convince you that I’m not pulling, tugging, slapping, sniffing, or shaving your legs!”

That got a giggle from the kids. Macey rolled her eyes. Oh to be young again.

Uncle Yufe took out a match. “Now kids, you’ve probably seen your parents use this, if so you probably know how it works. Parents, if you’ve seen your kids with this you should be worried because they don’t know how it works!”

A chuckle rolled through the audience. They weren’t exactly zingers but Macey knew he had to save his smart jokes for her.

“What if I told you that the very things that make up this red stuff on the match head could be found in your very body? Potassium, sulfur, and phosphorus. It’s true, everything from you to the sun to steel is made up of matter and powered by energy. And all we have to do is use that energy to change matter into whatever we can dream of!”

Without striking it, the match lit. There was a chorus of soft oohs and ahs.

“Not impressed huh? Well let’s see if we can start combining matter, and heat it up a bit!”

He waved his hands over the flame, with each pass it glowed a different color. From green to blue to red to purple and back to its normal color. The audience applauded.

“Hm, still not enough? You’re trickier than my last audience. How about this?!”

A fire ball the size of an elephant exploded above his head in a rain show of colors. Every eye shot open and every mouth gasped. It was over before their brains even had time to register.

“I assure you I am a trained professional or at least my teachers have told me so! But what’s a demonstration without lab mice? Can I have a few volunteers from the audience?”

A forest of miniature hands shot up. Even a few adults raised their hands. Macey knew her uncle would pick her.

“How about you?” He picked the first kid, a boy in the second row.

“And you,” he said to someone who was not Macey. Well obviously he would pick her, it was only fair for the other kids to get picked first.

“You,” he picked the kid next to her family. Well this was just his way of keeping her humble.

“And you.” Again someone who was not Macey. Maybe he couldn’t see her?

“Oh you’re really excited! Come on down!” he said to not his favorite niece. There was ‘fair’, and there was ignoring your own family.

“And finally…uh, you!” The last kid stood up. That scoundrel! That absolute cad! If he turned his back on Macey then she would turn her back on the world! She never liked him anyway.

“Oh…why don’t we have another. How about? The little redheaded girl?” Macey skipped down the steps, she knew she’d get picked.

The little wizards lined up, as nervous as any undergraduate awaiting his final exam. Macey felt butterflies in her stomach. Probably just the nerves. She shoved the feeling down. A museum staffer brought out a tray of candles. Hickory took one.

“Now ladies and gentlemen our brave volunteers will perform magic before your very eyes. We all have the power to wield it but it takes years of training and dedication to do something like this!”

The candle burst alight, and kept bursting small flames shot out of it and gently floated down, each like a little burning leaf in autumn. As they fell, they shifted colors and the audience was stunned. Hickory turned to the first child, a little blond boy who looked equal parts scared and ecstatic. Maybe not equal parts, some kids have a permanent look of constipation.

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“All you have to do is light that candle. You can point, whisper, shout, wave, or tap. Any way you feel is best is best for you,” he encouraged. The little boy stuck out his hand, muscles tensing his arm. He closed his eyes. Macey thought he could have an accident as much as light the flame. Looking at him made her stomach hurt. The audience gasped and clapped. The boy opened one eye and discovered he’d done it! Hickory clapped in the way Macey had seen a hundred times before. That booming way that could turn any mosquito to dust.

“Marvelous! Simply marvelous!”

The next kid to their place. There were five in front of her, and Macey was antsy to show off. The second child, a dark skinned girl a little older than Macey. She did the same thing as the previous boy, but couldn’t light the candle. Hickory leaned down.

“Try focusing on a single point on top of the wick,” he whispered to her. “Picture that, and imagine it’s dancing! That the little guy is excited! It’s ready to jump up and down and scream and-“ Flame shot nearly a foot out of the wick.

“Woah!” he smiled. “You’ve got some oomf!” The audience cheered.

Only four ahead now. Macey felt her excitement rise, or was that her throat?

Three ahead.

What would her candle do? Shoot up ten feet? Flash in a hundred different colors? Or maybe even lightning?

Two left.

She settled on lighting.

One

This was her moment, she would amaze the audience, her parents, and her uncle with her powers!

The final kid lit their flame. The audience clapped. Macey took center stage.

Silence hung in the air of that huge planetarium.

“You’ll do great,” whispered uncle Yufe for some last minute encouragement. She knew she’d do great. Her hand whipped out, as she’d seen her uncle do a million times before. Her muscles relaxed and her breathing steadied. She cleared her head, and let her magic flow.

Nothing happened.

Okay, maybe she had to be more relaxed. She took a deep breath, and channeled raw magical energy. She became a lens by which the cosmic energy could be focused.

Nothing happened.

Maybe it came from emotion? She dug deep into her feelings. Dredged up every ounce of fear, love, rage, and sorrow and forced them into the wick.

Still nothing happened.

It had to be physical. Her hands had to do some or maybe her stomach? She tensed every muscle in her body.

Her uncle leaned down. “Mace, I think-“

“I can do it!” She said through gritted teeth. She could feel her one chance slip away, and grabbed it with every fiber of her being. What was that thing her dad always told her to do? Shock and awe? Yes, focus on shock and awe, give them shock and awe!

She felt it. She felt it! Power rose her body, every nerve fired at once. She felt-

She doubled over.

A chemical reaction did happen on stage, but it had much more shock than awe.

Macey nibbled on unbuttered toast in her special place in the window nook. She had apparently fainted after throwing up all over the stage, which she supposed was a good thing. It spared her the embarrassment, until it sunk in when they were in the coach.

She cried all the way back to her family’s townhouse. Her mother was soothing but her father did his best to ignore it. And as soon as they got home, he immediately fled up the stairs to his study where he built little ships in bottles. Half the time, he let the hobby relax his anger. The other half, he let his anger destroy them. Her father destroyed many things he had made.

Her mom checked in on her every few minutes to ask if she needed anything, but Macey was too dazed to give anything more than simple yes or no.

“Hey kid,” came the familiar voice of her uncle.

She rolled over in surprise. He usually lived at Aethowix during the school years. He was unusually clean for someone who was just…protein spilled on. He wore a familiar off green tunic instead of his sparkly purple robes. Macey supposed she ruined them beyond repair.

“Sorry for ruining your show,” she said sourly and rolled away from him.

“May I sit?” he asked. Mace nodded. He sat on the window nook just beyond her legs.

“Did you know?,” he started. “I actually started teaching for children much younger than?”

“Mmph,” voiced Macey.

“It’s true! It was a short lived program we had at the academy. They wanted to know how young we could start teaching prospective wizards…er, um future wizards.”

Macey knew what prospective meant. They were those slanted lines that artists like to use to make their drawings look deep. But she appreciated that he tried to make himself more understandable.

“In my one year of teaching those tots, I saw way more and way worse come out of their tiny bodies.”

That got a giggle from her. She was a mature woman for a kid, but there was nothing like toilet humor to cheer her up.

“Do you know how many kids thought that that was the end of the world for them? That they’d die from embarrassment?”

“Um, no?”

“All of them! And do you know how many picked themselves and became great wizards?”

“Mmm, thirty eight percent?”

“Wow, more specific than I thought, but no. Ninety five percent! There were those two who went into acting and one who became an actuary, but other than that, they got back on that mushak.”

“But what percent threw up in front of a whole crowd, in front of their parents, on their uncle?!”

He shrugged. “You’ve got me there.” He smirked and said, “But I’ve got one to top yours.”

“Yeah?”

“I failed nearly every class in my first year at Aethowix.”

“No!” she gasped.

“I did!”

“But you’re a teacher there now?”

“Yeah, I actually hated Aethowix by the end of my first year. Ended up having to repeat it.”

“Why did you fail?”

“In truth, I was lazy. I had breezed through lower education without having to work at it. And when I got to the academy I thought I was good enough to breeze through that as well. I didn’t even realize how bad the situation got until a month before the year ended.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I quit school.”

“You quit?!”

He nodded. “Took a few years off to travel. Learned about myself, what I wanted in life, typical soul searching stuff. By the time I went back and buckled down, your mother was already enrolled and far ahead of me just in her first semester.”

Macey found that hard to believe. Her uncle was the famous one. The one who pursued a career in wizarding while her mother settled for a minor alchemy job.

“The point is, you threw up on accident, I failed on arrogance. Look at your dad, he embarrassed himself in front of a food vendor and feels less shame than you do for an accident.”

Macey never thought of it like that. The kids she knew were way more embarrassed about their mistakes than all the adults she knew. They could do bad things and feel good about it.

“Thanks Uncle Yufe,” she said.

“Anytime Mace,” he answered, wrapping her in a hug. “Fair warning, you’re going to have both worse days and better days.”

“I hope you’ll be there for the bad one.”

“I know I’ll be,” he smiled.