Chapter 23 Arturo

I awoke to find the world a more colorful and wonderful place. I jumped out of bed and started stretching out and getting all the little cricks and cracks out of my body.

“Good morning Pickati,” I greeted my fine furry friend as he groggily awoke. He was still lying on the makeshift bed I had made for him the night before.

Well, maybe bed was a bit much. It was a spare pillow I had laying around I’d put on my desk and put a clean t-shirt over. Apparently it had been close enough to what he usually slept on.

He let out a yawn as he arose from his slumber. He raised an eyebrow at me before laying back down.

“Cheery this morning, aren’t you?” He huffed as he shuffled back under my shirt. “If I knew you were a morning person, I would have spent the night in your sister’s room. She knows how to enjoy the early morning.”

“Oh no, I’m not a morning person. I’m usually as much of a slow waker as Melodia,” I explained as Pickati shuffled around on my desk again and gave me another look.

I shrugged my shoulders and started whistling while grabbing my stuff. A few minutes later, I walked down the stairs with a pep in my step and a song in my soul. A song that was pulsing out from my heart and right into the rest of my body. I was just about ready to dance my way to school when I spotted Melodia at the table, half-heartedly nibbling on a bit of toast.

Oh right. The memories of the day before rushed into my head. I ran down the stairs without a word.

The two of us talked for a bit, mostly about how I was rescinding my promise. She didn’t look all too happy about it, but it was for the best. As much as I wanted to see her stand on her own, she needed a helping hand. And she was going to get that hand, if she wanted it or not.

“Well that went well,” my mom finally said as I silently ate my eggs. She had kept quiet the whole time I’d talked to Melodia. “Don’t worry Arturo, she’ll come around and thank you one day.”

“I would rather one day to be today,” I stabbed my fork through my eggs.

“I’m sure you would. You’re a good brother, never forget that,” she marched over to me and pulled me into a hug. I didn’t even bother trying to get away from it.

Ever since the incident, my parents and Melodia had been… distant. There was this awkward air between them, one I wasn’t even sure she noticed. They tried their best and they still loved her, but they couldn’t figure out how to talk to her. All the while, she was content to sit out of reach. I did my best to try and drag her back into the family the best I could, and hopefully I was doing a good job of it.

“By the way, what has you so happy this morning? Is there anything or… anyone you want to tell me about?” My mom giggled while I was in her hug. I rolled my eyes while safely out of sight.

“Ha, I wish,” I only half-joked, “no, I figured something out last night that’d been bothering me for a while.”

Mom prodded me for more details but that was all she was getting out of me. I would have loved to tell her about all this, but it was too much of a security risk. Mom and Dad were a team. What one knew, the other one found out before the end of the day. And there was no way either of them were learning about the whole magic thing without also learning about the doll situation.

I left home as the song started coming back. I felt like I was five years younger. The age I’d been when my magic had been at its strongest, even if I hadn’t known it at the time.

I put a single foot down on the corner of the sidewalk and froze. Was this my magic? Was this what happened when someone who was ‘too old’ still managed to awake their magic via sheer dumb luck or twist of fate?

I took a few deep breaths before continuing to school. Just enough to steady myself before walking on. I still had a song in my step, but it was less ‘pop song with full instrumentals’ and more ‘lofi beat to relax to’. Still catchy enough to move to, but not as obvious to any outside observer.

I still ended up spending the first half of my day in bliss. Everything felt a little bit easier, and it was so much less effort to try things. I felt so good, I could even ignore the slight headache I started feeling throughout the day. By the time lunch hit, it was like the day had barely begun.

“Man Arturo, who put the firecrackers in your cornflakes?” My friend Jason laughed as I raised an eyebrow.

“The heck was that expression man?” I laughed as I rolled a fry around my plate with my fork.

“I came up with it yesterday and wanted to use it,” Jason shrugged, “still not sure what it means though.”

“Wouldn’t someone putting a firecracker in your cornflakes make you mad though?” Mice pointed out as she looked at the pizza she got like it was not of this earth.

“Yeah, and Arti here looks like he won the lotto or something,” my smile slightly faded as Charlie gave me a cat’s grin while using my most hated nickname.

“I thought I told you to not call me that,” I groaned as Charlie beamed.

“You know you can’t stop me,” I let out a sigh. “Nothing stops your old buddy Charlie when she wants something.”

“And don’t I know it,” I muttered as Mice set the pizza back down. The tiny girl pushed the plate towards the center of the table.

“You guys can have this thing if you want,” we all looked at the now ownerless slice of pizza between us. I could see the ludicrous amount of shiny grease on it. If I put my face in it, would I drown?

“That is a lot of oil…” Charlie poked it with her finger and scowled. She took a paper and started trying to wipe it off.

“What do you think would happen if I used a lighter on it?”

“You’d probably get suspended Jason,” Mice grumbled before looking back at the rest of us. “This is what I get for not paying attention to what I’m grabbing.”

She took the plate and started walking over to a nearby trash can.

“So would it be safe to say you’re over whatever’s been bothering you these past few weeks?” Charlie asked as Mice came back to the table.

“What are you talking about?” I tried to think if I’d talked to Charlie about something bothering me, but nothing rang any bells.

“You’ve looked kind of out of it for the last few weeks,” oh, so that’s what this was about. Charlie must have noticed how worried I’d been for Melodia these past few weeks. Of course now that I knew the truth of what she was doing, I wasn’t sure if I should have been more worried, or less.

“Yeah, If you were worrying about me, don’t. I have things handled,” I lied, but what else could I have done.

“So you want to talk about it?” Charlie leaned forward, with a focused and intense look in her eyes. I placed my finger at her forehead and slightly pushed her back.

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“No, I don’t,” Charlie pouted and I rolled my eyes, “mostly because it’s a secret, and it’s not even mine.”

“Is this a family thing?” Darn it Jason, why did you have to hit the nail on the head with this one?

“Yeah it’s a family thing, and that’s as far as you guys are going to get to it,” I crossed my arms and looked around our little table. “All you guys need to know is the person that was going through a rough time was not me.”

“Well if that’s the case…” Charlie trailed off as she met eyes with the other two. They all sort of looked at each other and nodded. The heck was going on? Was there some sort of unspoken agreement or something? I would have asked them what that was all about, but at that moment, someone else walked up to our table.

“Hello, may I speak with you?”

We all turned around to see who it was. The voice belonged to a young looking guy I didn’t recognize, a freshman if I had to guess. He was short, almost as short as mice, with near porcelain pale skin and black hair.

And most noticeable of all, he carried a giant backpack that looked way too big for him. Despite its size, he didn’t look like he was having any trouble carrying it on his back.

“Um sure,” Jason said as he shuffled a bit closer to the guy, “what do you want to talk about?”

The freshman shook his head.

“Not all of you,” he raised a single finger and pointed right at me, “just him. I need to speak to him alone.”

Well that was odd.

“Sure I guess,” I got out of my chair, “do you already have a place in mind or…?”

“Yes,” he simply stated before turning around, “follow me.”

I turned back to the rest of my friends.

“I’m going to go see what this is about,” I informed them.

“You want us to come looking for you if you’re not back by the end of lunch?” Mice asked as I shook my head.

“No, I‘ll be fine… I think.”

And with that, I followed the strange boy as we left the lunch room behind and into the hallways of the school.

My first thought was he was going to take me to some empty hallway in some dark corner of the school, but he instead led me to an old unused classroom. He reached into his pocket to take out the key. Why this random kid had the key to an unused classroom, I didn’t know, and I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know.

“We’re here,” he said as he walked into the room. He reached the center before turning back, waiting for me to walk in after him.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” I muttered to myself as I went in through the door.

There was something weird about an unused classroom. Most of the usual things you’d expect to see in a classroom were gone. There were no books, nothing on the walls, and nothing on top of the teacher’s desk at the front. The only thing at the front of the room were said desk and a blank whiteboard behind it. In front of both were rows and rows of old empty desks and chairs.

There was barely enough here to let you know this was a classroom, but not enough to make it feel real. Like someone had tried to make a classroom from nothing but a short description. Still, I was here for a reason. I needed to talk to this guy and get out of here.

“So… what’s your name?” I asked the kid as he walked up to the teacher’s desk. He put his giant bag on top of it before sitting next to it.

“Marvin,” he pointed towards himself before pointing back at me, “and you’re Arturo Ricardo Gomez Suarez, age fifteen. Born October fourteenth here in the U.S. to Peruvian immigrants. You’ve attended South Palm High since starting high school and have near perfect attendance.”

I flinched back as he listed off the facts of my life like he was reading them off a page.

“How do you know all that?” I slowly backed away from him as I heard the door lock behind me. Looked like I was going to be talking my way out of here.

“You were completely ordinary and mundane in every way,” he kept going like I hadn’t even asked the question, “and yet today, I felt a new magical signature trip the alarms I have set around the school. Imagine my surprise when I traced it back to you.”

Well, looks like I wasn’t the only magi attending South Palm High.

“Considering your advanced age, the odds of you awakening your magic were slim to none. And researching your family led to no obvious signs of a magical tradition,” Marvin leaned back as his bag flew open.

Three shapes darted out, my eyes going everywhere as I tried to track them across the room. They bounced off the walls, jumped off the desks and disappeared from my sight.

I tried to move and something cold on my neck.

I looked down and saw a knife hovering right over my throat. I followed the blade to its source. The wielder was a small doll, the actual toy kind not, the monsters my sister fought. It was made of wood, with two black bead eyes, white hair and no other facial features. It wore an old fashioned black and white dress that looked way to cutesy to match the deadly weapon it was carrying.

I froze in place as another identical doll floated in front of me with its own blade aimed straight for my heart. A second later, I felt something slowly and carefully crawl on my back.

“This leads me to one conclusion,” and this guy was still talking like none of this was happening, “you are not Arturo Gomez. You are an imposter in this school for reasons unknown. You will answer my questions or my dolls will end your life right here and now. If you manage to avoid the blade, the doll on your back will detonate, taking you out without fail.”

He raised his hand and tightened it. The light from the windows shifted to reveal the whole room was covered in strings, all of them coming from his hand.

Well time to start talking. Sorry Melodia and Pickati, but I didn’t see any other way out of this. And after keeping your secret from my own friends too.

“My teacher told me I got lucky,” I explained as I eyed the emotionless marionettes in front of me. “I was this close to losing my magic but still had barely enough to make the cut.”

“I see, and this teacher of yours, is he family?” Marvin demanded.

“No, and I don’t think he has any family of his own either,” I tried to imagine Pickati with a big mustache standing next to a litter of smaller version of himself. There was something weirdly off about the whole thing.

“And this teacher of yours, what base concept is he teaching you?”

“Gravity.”

“Really,” his eyes widened, but the doll’s blade didn’t get any closer to me. That had to be a good sign… right? “According to my records, the last gravity magi were wiped out when the Dakon Family died out.”

Well wasn’t that an interesting detail to bring up to Pickati later on.

“So is this teacher of yours a surviving member of the Dakon family?”

“He’s never brought it up, but I doubt it.”

“I see,” he hummed to himself as he got off the teacher’s desk. He walked back to the board and placed his hand on it.

“One last question,” he finally said, “how long have you been a magi Arturo?”

“I managed to awake my magic late last night,” please believe me. The last thing I need right now is to be found dead in an unused classroom. I had other things to do.

“Hmm,” he looked back at me one last time before looking back at the board. He raised his string covered hand into the air. My eyes widened when he suddenly pulled it down.

I braced myself for pain when I felt the pressure on my neck disappearing. The three dolls from before backed off and floated back over to the bag.

“You seem to be telling the truth,” he explained as I reached for my neck, checking for any injuries. Looked like I was clean, no awkwardly placed blood to explain away. “You don’t seem to have any malicious intentions towards this city, even if your teacher might.”

“What kind of malicious intentions were you even worried about?” There wasn’t much I could think of that would require sticking a bunch of knives on someone.

“The last time a new magical signature appeared in this school, its owner tried to kidnap eight people in order to use their bodies for magical experiments,” the calm and near emotionless way he said it threw me off. It took a whole second for what he said to click in my head as I forced back a violent cough.

“Someone tried to do what?” I demanded answers, but he didn’t look like he was about to give me any. Instead, he reached into his pocket for a piece of paper. He muttered something under his breath as the paper floated in midair for a second before flying at me. I reached up and snatched it out of the air.

“That paper contains directions. Please come to that address after school on Thursday. Make sure your teacher comes with you. We need to make sure they’re not a threat to the people of this city,” I looked at the paper in question and realized I knew this place. It was a small café on a street filled with little shops of every kind. The street had a real name, but everyone I knew called it Shopping Street.

Not the kind of place I would have expected for a secretive meet up between magic users. Although the words underneath the address more than made up for it. Once I was there, I was supposed to ask for private room number three and give them the secret password.

And what a password it was.

“What kind of password is ‘book fair’?” I pointed out as he gave me a flat look.

“One that’s supposed to be hard to guess,” he said before turning to leave the room. He moved his hands and the door opened by itself.

He reached the door frame and stopped. He gripped the frame and looked back at me. “I’ll stop the trackers on you. And if you were telling the truth and aren’t a danger, then you have my apologies. I wish these measures weren’t necessary, but past events have proved otherwise.”

And with that, he was gone. I dropped to my knees and took a couple deep breaths as I tried to forget the feeling of knives on my throat. So much had happened at once. A kidnapping attempt? When had that happened? What kind of world of danger had I stepped into by learning magic?

I spent the rest of the day in a kind of daze until making it back home. As soon as I made it through the door, I went to the dining room to sit down. Melodia was waiting for me at the table with a huge smile on her face that died as soon as she saw me. I found the closest chair and sat down letting all the tension from the day melt away.

“Are you okay?” She asked. Instead of telling her right away, I reached into my pocket for my phone. Looked like we still had some time. Might as well take advantage of it.

“Okay, we have a few minutes before Mom and Dad come home,” I told her as I got back to my feet. We were going to need to go upstairs for this. “There’s something that I need to tell you and Pickati.”