Prodigy

An idea

Kate hadn’t gone to a normal school a single day of her life. From a young age, her parents had recognized that she wasn’t normal, and had hired specialized tutors to educate her. At the moment, she was focused on physics, which meant her math, writing, and history were centered around that single subject. She was always allowed to choose her focal point and she stayed with it until she mastered the subject at hand.

She walked into her study and her tutor stood. Koreth had been a career researcher until he retired, but money had brought him out of retirement. He was bald, and slightly stooped shouldered, but bright blue eyes stared at her through his glasses. He wore the old style lenses, not the new digital lenses that had been the fad for the past twenty years.

“Ms. Dawson, punctual as usual.” he said in a raspy voice. He picked up his cup of hot tea and took a sip. As he glanced at the physical paper lying on the table, even though paper had been out of style for two hundred years, Koreth still preferred it. He tapped his cup with his free hand as he did when he was thinking. “Please sit,” he said, following his own suggestion.

Kate sat.

“The postulate is sound…too sound for someone your age, but then all of your ideas are advanced. I’ve read your political papers, your papers on programming protocols, and your economic papers. You do not think like a child.”

“Thank you,” Kate said.

Koreth nodded. “I think you are correct, you need to flesh it out a bit more, but this paper could get you into Hanou. I forwarded excerpts of your paper to a colleague, Professor Vuln. He was very interested in your math and your powers of deduction. I left you some notes, but I don’t think you really need them.”

Koreth adjusted his position in his chair. “Kate…people with your range of abilities are extremely rare and some have a tendency to burn out or just disappear.”

Interesting, he knows something, but he isn’t a magua. A voice whispered in her head. Silent I’m trying to listen.

“…it doesn’t happen often. In fact, it is so rare that many consider it a fluke, but there are those of us, in academic circles, who do not believe in accidents. We think we could protect you.”

He didn’t know what he was talking about. Her father was likely the most powerful person in politics and he couldn’t protect her, not from the enemies she thought she had. The enemies she remembered having.

“Sometimes the best defense is to simply talk, to come out in the open and tell the world what you are,” Koreth was saying.

“And what do you think I am?” Kate asked.

The professor shifted again. “There are urban legends of people who can summon things with their minds…I don’t believe all theories, but ancient texts found from other times mentions these powers and a name…magua. The most explicit of these books usually disappears, but I know a group of collectors…”

Kate watched the professor as he left. He had given her a lot to think about. She knew magua existed. The postulate she had given Koreth was formulated to prove the voices in her head weren’t just her imagination.

Why don’t you believe in us? We exist because you called us. An aggravating voice asked in her head. She sighed. Having voices in your head wasn’t normal and she didn’t have just one or two voices, she had a whole village, but this particular voice was aggravating. It was like the older brother she didn’t have or didn’t want. Hey…just because I care enough to say the truth, doesn’t mean you can call me names. The voice said. Kate sighed, there was no getting away from the voices. She decided to go to her garden.