The Tethering: The Complete Collection

4. Made to be Broken

4

Made to be Broken

The sun was high in the sky when Jacob woke later that morning. He had put his dirty clothes back on after his shower since he couldn’t find his bag. His brain ached, and he was starving. No one had told him where the kitchen was, so he wandered downstairs to look around.

The house was huge. Every surface had been polished to perfection. A crystal chandelier shone over the dining room table and large couches made room for a dozen people to sit in the living room.

Jacob wandered outside onto a stone veranda overlooking a sprawling garden filled with flowers and trees. Finally, he smelled something wonderful and found the kitchen.

He knocked.

“Come in, silly boy, and get your lunch. You look like a half-starved rat,” Molly fussed as she examined him, clearly judging his lack of nutrition. A rather plump woman, Molly had the same bright red hair as her nephew and more freckles than anyone could ever count. “Eat, eat.” She steered Jacob to sit down at her worktable where a plate waited for him.

Jacob started with the thick stew and a roll before he even bothered to look at his salad.

“That’s a boy after my own heart.” Molly laughed as she began to peel vegetables for the evening’s dinner.

Jacob watched her for a few moments. “Molly, couldn’t you just do that with magic?”

“Oh sure,” she said. “Pelloris.” The carrot that had been in her hand ripped its skin off and placed itself on the cutting board. “But if you use magic all the time, it ruins the fun.”

“Could I do that?” Jacob asked.

“Sure,” Molly said with a smile, “but you’ll need a few lessons first. We don’t want you peeling yourself by accident. That would be a nasty one to fix.”

“Could Emilia do that?” Jacob pointed to the perfectly peeled carrot and tried not to shudder at the thought of peeling himself. Would Aunt Iz be able to reattach his skin?

“She helps most days. But I’m afraid she’s in a spot of trouble and will be in her room the rest of the day doing some rather difficult spell translations. Iz was not pleased with her running off in the middle of the night. Samuel would have been perfectly fine on his own.” Molly moved on to the potatoes. “That girl is a strong-willed one. More stubborn than a pigheaded mule.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Jacob’s bread turned brown as it soaked up the juices from his stew.

“I should have known there was something different about her.” Jacob shook his head. “She always seemed so much more, I don’t know, real than the rest of us. So much more alive or connected.” He pushed his plate away and grabbed a peeler to help Molly. “I should have noticed, or she should have told me.”

“Don’t you be judging her.” Molly shook her knife at Jacob’s nose. “It’s not as though she didn’t want to tell you. We have laws, you see. Magickind has been hiding for hundreds of years, and it hasn’t been easy, mind. We’ve had to come up with rules and laws to govern us all. And one of the very first rules is keep the secret. Tell no one. If Emilia had told you, she would have been in for a world of trouble. Especially with the possibility of you joining us one day. That would have made it worse.”

“What do you mean?”

“The minute someone displays any potential, if they are not a magical child already being raised by a magical family, all ties with anyone in the community must be immediately severed.”

“But I never displayed any potential,” Jacob said. “I never did any magic until yesterday.”

“Do you remember the day we left?” Molly asked.

Jacob nodded. Nothing could make him forget that day.

“When Emilia fell, she broke her wrist. And you, Jacob”―Molly tossed him a potato to peel―“healed her. As soon as that happened, our laws forced us to leave Fairfield, and you, at once.”

“But why?” Jacob asked angrily. “Wouldn’t it have made more sense to teach me before I destroyed an entire school?”

Molly left her work to sit next to him. “My guess is the day you healed Emilia, you were terrified. Your blood was pumping, and you probably had a fair bit of adrenaline going, too. You did something beyond normal human capacity in an extremely stressful situation. That wouldn’t necessarily make you a wizard. If Emilia had told you then and there all about witches and wizards and the rest, and you never showed another lick of magic after that, she would have broken the rules. That is why all contact had to be severed.”

Jacob laughed and shook his head. “That’s easy for you to say. But being left behind was―”

“Terrible,” Molly finished for him, patting his arm. “I know. But don’t go blaming anyone but the Council.” Molly got up and returned to her pile of vegetables. “Iz said for you to go to her study as soon as you’re ready. She’d like to get a start with you as quickly as possible.”

Jacob got up to leave but stopped in the doorway. “What would they have done to her? If she had told me?”

“Stripped her of her powers,” Molly said to the rhythm of her chopping. “And banished her from all contact with Magickind…forever. Makes you as good as dead if you ask me.”

Jacob nodded slowly. “Thanks, Molly.”

He drifted out of the kitchen, lost in thought. He took a wrong turn on his way to Iz’s study and found himself in a large library. The walls were lined floor to ceiling with shelves of books. Desks were scattered around the room, each in a different state of disarray.

Connor and Dexter sat at their desks, engrossed in their work. Claire hummed loudly, rolling herself along on the ladder that allowed access to the higher shelves. There were empty desks in the library, too, and Jacob could tell which one was Emilia’s, even though she wasn’t there. Hers was the one with a vase of fresh flowers on it. He wondered if Dexter had brought them to her. Jacob shook his head and slipped away.

When he found Iz’s study, her door waited open.

“Welcome to your first lesson.” Aunt Iz clapped her hands delightedly as she rose from her armchair. “And let me say, Jacob, I am thrilled to be your teacher.” She patted his cheek the same way she had when he was young. “Now, help an old lady to the garden. We’re going to be practicing outside today. The weather is lovely, and I really don’t want all the furniture bashed up again.” She laughed merrily as they moved out into the hall and toward the veranda. Iz was not feeble in any way. In fact, she was more agile than most people half her age, but Jacob offered his arm anyway. “You would be amazed how often I have to redecorate.”

“Couldn’t you just fix the furniture with magic?” Jacob asked.

“If I did, I would still be stuck with the same furniture I had forty years ago.” She smiled up at Jacob, her eyes twinkling. “And what fun would that be?”

They strolled past the stone veranda and down the path onto the lush lawn. Iz was right. It was a lovely day. Cherry blossoms dripped down from the trees, and the flowers balanced on the edge of full summer bloom. The garden was filled with so many trees, it looked more like a forest than any lawn Jacob had ever seen. There were beech trees and willows, giant evergreens and tiny saplings. But the most remarkable thing to Jacob was how alive everything felt.

The moisture in the air shot vitality through Jacob’s veins. He could almost hear things growing within the earth. The green of the grass and trees was more vibrant than any he had ever seen. The flowers didn’t look yellow or red or blue. They embodied what those colors were meant to be. And the smell…a thousand scents rolled into one that filled his lungs and made him feel thoroughly alive.

Aunt Iz stopped by a stone bench far enough down the path to hide the house from view. The bench sat in the center of a small clearing surrounded by trees and carpeted with wildflowers. She sat silently.

Jacob glanced up and down the path, searching for someone else who might be coming. “Why?” He brushed his fingers along the deep violet of a blooming iris. “Why is everything in this garden so much more alive than anything I’ve ever seen?”

“Because we sing to it,” Aunt Iz answered simply.

Jacob didn’t like singing. Music had never been an area in which he excelled. His music teacher in elementary school had written in his report card that he was lacking in musical ability and had difficulty matching pitch, but had a good work ethic. Trying and failing was not a quality he wanted to display on his first day with Iz.

“Even if the magic done on these grounds isn’t specifically aimed at the flowers,” Iz said, “they still come up to listen. This garden is wild and wonderful because as the earth feeds us the energy to do our magic, we also feed the earth.”

“So, basically you make the flowers bloom?”

Aunt Iz looked up into the canopy of trees. “We don’t make them. We supply the energy, and they do the growing. We nurture them and give them the strength they need to grow on their own. I suppose that’s why I love my garden. It reminds me of my students.”

Jacob followed Iz’s gaze up to the treetops. The sunlight peered back at him through the leaves. As beautiful as the glittering emerald light was, he didn’t see any magic.

“Now,” Iz pondered aloud, “where to begin?” She leaned down and picked up a fallen leaf. She closed it in her hand and held it for a moment before blowing the leaf away.

The leaf didn’t fall to the ground. It had folded itself like a paper airplane, and Iz’s breath carried the plane up through the trees. The leaf slowly floated out of sight. “Magic is not some cosmic explosion. It is merely a manipulation of the world around you. There are some rules. Most are for safety’s sake. And all have been broken at some point.”

Jacob nodded his head. That sounded like physics. And physics he could do.

Aunt Iz continued, “The first thing we need to teach you is how to focus your mind. There is no point in teaching you spells if you are not focused enough to perform them without injuring yourself or others. Do you see this tree?” She stood and crossed to a tree Jacob hadn’t noticed before.

Amidst the abundance of life in the garden, this one small sapling struggled to survive. It didn’t have very many leaves and grew too crooked to be strong. Something so weak and deformed didn’t belong in this place.

“Make it healthy.” Aunt Iz patted Jacob’s shoulder and headed back down the path to the house.

“What?” Jacob started after her.

She turned him around and pushed him back to the clearing.

“But how?” he said. “I’m really sorry, Aunt Iz, but I think that tree is doomed.”

“Tell me when it’s green,” Aunt Iz called over her shoulder.

Jacob looked at the sad little tree. “You have got to be kidding me.”