The Harmony Saga

Owen only lit himself on fire when his father wasn’t home. "Fire cannot kill a dragon," he muttered as he struck a match and held it beneath his hand. To clear up a few things, Owen was really into Game of Thrones. And he was excited when he saw on TV an awesome dragon girl who, like himself, was impervious to fire. Owen could control the flames, making them bend away from his hands. He could stick his hand straight into a fireplace and not feel a thing. He didn"t even feel the heat of the flames unless he decided he wanted to. Owen snatched his hand away from the fire as he heard the front door open and then shut. He quickly sat on the box of matches; he didn"t want his dad to catch him. He was first greeted by the small, jingling figure of his dog Poppy followed by the larger, sweaty figure of his father, Sam, trailing with the dog’s leash. "How was your run?" Owen asked as innocently as possible. "Good," Sam replied, stowing the leash in its drawer. "Very sweaty." "Good to know," Owen said, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "Don’t worry, I’ll keep it to myself." Sam sat down next to Owen on the couch. Owen moved slightly further away from his sweaty father, who ignored him and leaned back, settling into the cushions. "Aren"t you glad it"s summer?" Sam said, sighing happily. "I guess. I mean, I"m glad sophomore year is over, and it"s nice to have free time…" Owen trailed off. "I"m kind of bored, though." His father got a strange look in his eye. "Funny you should say that. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something." Owen got a sinking feeling in his stomach. “Look, I don’t have a girlfriend. I don’t even want a girlfriend. Or boyfriend. I’d settle for regular friends. Do we have to do this?” Sam started to squirm too. “Uh, that’s actually not the talk I planned on giving you today.” “Oh,” Owen said, feeling relieved and a little confused. “What is it then?” Sam settled into the couch a little more, staring at Owen intently. “I wasn’t going to tell you about this, but at this point, I think it’s better to be honest. Have you ever had anything weird happen to you around water?” “I don’t know what you mean.” Owen started to get a little defensive, worried that his father had discovered his secret. Sam softened. “To be honest, I was hoping you wouldn’t be like me. You’re sure you’ve never been able to maybe make water move?” “I haven’t had anything weird happen to me with water.” Owen hesitated. He wanted to keep his secret from his father, but now there seemed to be no point. “Fire, though. I can kind of control it. Like Daenerys, so it’s not that weird,” Owen rushed through his confession. The expression of worry on Sam’s face turned into relief. “You can control fire? That’s interesting. Rare, I think, to see the dominant element flip in a child. Very interesting.” “Hey, what did you mean you hoped I wouldn’t be like you?” Owen asked suddenly. “Are you saying you know something about this?” Sam sighed heavily. “When I met your mother, I turned my back on the world of balancing. After she died, I went back, but I always hoped I could keep it from you. These powers usually manifest during puberty, and since you’re sixteen, it should have happened by now. And I guess it did.” “Did Mom know?” Owen’s head was spinning with this revelation. So it was genetic. He wasn’t a freak. Or maybe I was just born into a family of freaks, he thought. At least I’m not alone. “No, I never told her. It would have been too dangerous for her.” Sam shook his head. “I think I have some explaining to do.” Owen snorted. “No kidding. I only have about a million questions.” “Let me shower real quick, and we can talk over dinner. Stir fry sound good?” Sam stood to head upstairs. “Sure,” Owen replied, trying to stay calm. His heart was pounding, but he also felt lighter. He was glad he didn’t have to hide from his dad anymore. They were close, and he hated keeping secrets. But now his entire perspective on the situation had changed. Before, he had loosely been considering what he could do with his powers. He’d decided that joining the circus or going to Vegas would be too risky, people would ask questions and he could end up shipped off to Area 51 or something. Then they"d ask him where his powers came from, and they"d cut him up when he answered that they just kind of appeared one day. It was the day after he turned sixteen, April 18th. Owen woke up because his room had become a sauna. A literal sauna, though he didn"t realize that yet. He thought it was just hot. He went to go take a shower to cool off, and the water wouldn"t turn on. Then, after brushing his damp bangs off his face, he smelled the acrid stench of burning hair and looked down in terror at his hands, which were on fire. He’d accidentally singed the hair on his head. When he realized that his flesh wasn"t burning off, the horror turned quickly to fascination. Owen had been experimenting with these new abilities in the time since his birthday, and he had been almost ready to show his dad. He was enjoying keeping it to himself for a little bit. When dinner was ready, Owen joined his father at the table, but he was too nervous to eat. It felt incongruous to be sitting down for dinner like any other night when they had such a loaded topic to discuss. “So where do we start?” Owen said curiously. Sam seemed excited to talk about it, like he’d been holding back for some time. “Well, for me it started when I was young. My grandpa would do magic tricks for me, making glasses of water fill themselves or freeze. My mom and dad could both do it too, but they kept it to themselves. They told me that it was important not to show off my abilities. “I went to Camp Harmony for the first time when I was sixteen. I was so excited to get to go to the camp where my parents had met, to make friends and learn how to control my powers. Your Aunt Lisa joined me the next year, and we had some of the best summers of our lives. I even stayed on as a counselor when I aged out.” Sam’s eyes grew distant, wistful. “This would have been back in the eighties?” Owen took the opportunity to insert himself and ask a question. He remembered hearing his father and his aunt talk about the fun times they’d had at summer camp, but he never realized there had been magic involved. “Yes, I was there from ‘86 to ‘93.” Sam’s expression turned sour. “Then my parents died.” “I thought they died in a car accident,” Owen said, surprised to see his grandparents’ deaths brought into this. Sam shook his head. “It was an accident, and technically there was a car. But balancing was involved. See, there are balancers who follow the path of Light and those who follow the path of Darkness. The two sides are constantly at war, and my parents got caught in the crossfire.” Sam’s tone made it clear that he didn’t want to discuss it further, so Owen didn’t press the issue. Sam continued. “Camp Harmony is led by Brian Percival, the Leader of Light and the greatest balancer I’ve ever met. After what happened, he offered me a job, working with him against the forces of Darkness. But then I met your mother.” “Okay, hold on.” Owen put up his hands. “You can’t just drop all that information on me and move on like that! I need to know more about everything. The more you talk, the more it sounds like a fantasy movie. Next thing I know you’re gonna tell me you’re personal friends with Harry Potter.” Chuckling, Sam said, “I’m sorry. I know this is a lot to take in. But you’ll learn all about this stuff when you go to camp.” He hesitated. “Assuming you do want to go, but I can’t imagine you wouldn’t.” “After all the stories I’ve heard you and Aunt Lisa tell, I’ve always wanted to go to a camp like you did when you were young. Now that I know it’s a magic camp, I’m totally in.” Owen grinned. This conversation was going way better than he’d expected. He was going to get to spend time with people who had the same powers he did, and get to learn about magic all summer? He couldn’t see a downside. “I’m glad to hear it,” Sam replied with a smile of his own. “I wasn’t sure whether or not you’d inherit my abilities, what with your mother being normal. I left everything behind for her, just like Lisa did with her husband. We still don’t know about your cousins, and she’s terrified that they’ll end up like her. Like me and you.” Sam’s grin faded. He started to play with his food, not wanting to talk about what came next. “For ten years after I met your mom, I pretended I wasn’t a balancer. I got a job as a paralegal, we had you…” “And the rest is history,” Owen interrupted. He could see his dad’s face falling, and he didn’t want to revisit the death of his mother. She’d gotten sick when he was only six, and after a long battle with cancer she passed away when he was eight. Sam had barely made it through, and Owen was glad he didn’t remember it very well. “You said you went back, though.” “Yes.” Sam exhaled sharply, trying to clear away the difficult memories. “I finally took Brian Percival up on his offer of employment. Luckily, he’d always taken a shine to me, and he welcomed me back with open arms. Now it’s like I never left.” “I can’t believe there’s so much I don’t know about you,” Owen said, sitting back in his chair. “So what do you even do?” “It depends. When camp is in session I head up every once in a while to teach, and the rest of the year I work with Brian Percival on his projects. Sometimes I have to fight the Darkness’s people, but it’s usually pretty boring. We’re currently trying to remove pollution from Boulder Creek, but permits have been a nightmare.” Sam rolled his eyes while Owen stared at him, openmouthed. He finally noticed Owen staring at him. “What?” “Did I actually just hear you call being a superhero ‘boring’?” Owen couldn’t believe his ears. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re literally the coolest dad ever.” Sam feigned disappointment. “I wasn’t already?” “I can’t believe this.” Owen sat there agape while his father laughed. “My dad’s a superhero.” Shaking his head, Sam went back to his food. Owen’s mind was already spinning with excitement over the new potential of his summer. The next morning, Owen was walking the dog and thinking about this mysterious Camp Harmony. He hoped it would be as cool as he had been led to believe. He was imagining log cabins and fire pits and sing-alongs and s’mores when Poppy stopped right in front of him, jerking him out of his reverie.