Keeping my head down.

I’m Aran, and I’m in danger.

Great Grandmother looked at me on Ami’s birthday.

I think she knows I can see like she sees. See the lights.

My family has the lights, but it's all messy until they use it. Then it's shapes that move around and through them. Others have lines, many, many lines.

Grandpa, the new Grandpa who keeps giving me cheese even if it does make me poot, he has lines, big thick lines, like the woman with black and white hair who comes to visit. The Sheriff. I think she’s his girlfriend.

I didn't know old people had girlfriends, but I am glad they do. I told the Sheriff that and she thanked me but said when you get old it's called being lovers and my mom gave her a dirty look.

Milinda has big lines too, like Dare who lives with her and her mom, but Dare’s lines are thinner, and Milinda’s Mom lines are very thin.

I think the lines are what makes them able to turn to wolves, but they can only move the lines around to do what the lines are made for, wolf stuff. I think it's easy for them to do magic like that, the light that Mom and Dad and Sara and Uncle Dave use is stuff they had to learn to do.

Saku, our puppy, is all lines. Some of her lines are always doing something I think some are there just to make her look like a dog. I can see there is a line in Saku that connects to some lines that goes from Sara to the puppy, and another line that I think will go to Great Grandmother if anything ever happens to the line that goes to Sara.

Grandma Bree and Aunt Rose are teaching Ami and Sara how to turn their light into lines, Ami is better at it. I watch them and I think I can make lines too, but when Grandma and Aunt Rose talk about how to make the lines it’s all stuff It’s all words I can’t do yet.

My new cousin who has a boy who is somehow also my cousin is learning from Grandma too, her light isn't as bright as Ami's but she can make lines out of her light outside her body like Ami. Sara can only make lines inside her body where her light is and then reach out with her lines to make stuff go on fire.

I tried it, and I could make the line, but it faded away before it could do anything. My light is very soft and even through, but I can keep it inside like Sara even when it wants to go out like Ami’s.

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Her light used to go everywhere and it would do stuff when it made lines all on its own when folded over itself.

I can see Great Grandmother’s eyes follow the lines, so I know she can see them too, but I have seen her watching my eyes so I try to keep them looking down and try not to talk so I don’t forget and look at the lines around her.

I don’t know what she will do if she knows I can see the lines, but the smiling man who lives in the teapot has told me that it would be bad since she is a bad witch.

I thought the smiling man was made of light without a body, almost like Saku is with lines, but I understand now that he’s made of lines so big I’m only seeing the part he is reaching out with to talk to me.

We used to play when I was little, he could walk right past the lines Grandma Bree put on our house because he said he had an in. I asked him if he was a fairy godmother, but he said he was more like a guardian spirit, it was one of the things some people believed he was, so he could be one when he wanted to be.

He told me Great Grandmother had a wounded heart that was only now starting to heal when it was almost too late for her to be a real person again. But if she knew I could see the light in people and things it would tear open her wound again and make her want to hurt me to make her pain stop.

So he told me to go see Grandpa to teach me about the lazy eight.

Grandpa looked down at me when I asked. "Sure sport, I don't think you're the type to need it. You're a pretty good kid aside from stealing my throw blanket. Let's go sit in the sunroom and try it out."

I liked the lazy eight, it can go around and around so that as long as you keep it moving you can stop letting other stuff bother you, but you still know everything is still there.

Then Grandpa told me to make the eight a ribbon, and when I told him I could, he told me to put a twist in it.

That was hard to do, the twist kept wanting to away, but for a moment I thought I saw more beyond and around it, a boy shaking his head and waving me back, an older white woman with Sara’s eyes smiling at me, but then it started to make my head hurt.

Grandpa picked me up and put me in one of the tall chairs in the kitchen and got out the chocolate ice cream with all the stuff in it, and then the jars and bottles with all the other stuff to put on it. And the can that shot out whipped cream and the jar of cherries.

“You used up some calories there boy, you got to restock your blood sugar.”

I tried to tell him what I had almost saw, but he just nodded at me. "I could barely keep the ribbon moving without the twist, but I know I could see further if I could." He looked out the window for a little while as I ate my ice cream. "I think I saw farther once when I was your age Aran. That was before I even figured out the lazy eight. I could see more then."

"For a moment I could see what kind of man being able to see like that would make me. And I didn't like him, especially when he started to look back at me like he was coming to get me. So I locked it down, and never looked in that direction ever again."

He looked down at me and sprayed some more whipped cream on my ice cream. “It might be best if you didn’t look too far Aran. Not until you’re older.”

So that is what I will do. My Mom is already teaching me how to stand and fall like she did with Sara and Ami. When I’m ready, and maybe after Great Grandma is gone, I will learn how to make lines and use them. Until then I will look at the lazy eight to help keep my light inside me when it starts to want to get big enough to go past my skin, and I will keep playing with Milinda even though she is mean when she punches me when I get lost in my head.

Her lines are so clear because so many of them aren't being used yet, If I keep looking at them I think I can make them in myself when I want to one day. I can be a werewolf like some of my family and do magic like the rest.

Then my sisters will have to play with me whenever I want and play nice or I’ll bite them.