Chapter 2
“I’m Nathaniel,” I answered hesitantly, “Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown. I just came here to deliver this medicine ordered by Olivia Oldham. I hope I came to the right place.”
To judge by the expressions on the faces of Preston and Lucy, the name meant something to them.
“Thank you for gifting us with your name,” said Preston, looking a lot kinder than Lucy. It is quite possible that Masteress Olivia is on her way here at this present time.”
“I don’t want to cause trouble,” I said in a small voice. “I’ve delivered the medicine I was asked to bring. I can leave now.”
“No you can’t!” Lucy insisted.
“Why not?” I asked.
My heart was hammering pretty hard by this time. I looked again for the door I came in from, but it still wasn’t there. It looked like I was trapped.
“We have to find out how a boy who shouldn’t be in this house got here,” Lucy insisted.
“How do you know he shouldn’t be here?” asked Preston.
“Because he doesn’t wear a guild cape and I’ve never seen him at the Academy, that’s why,” Lucy answered, giving me a look that made me feel that my whole life had been a mistake from the get-go.
“Lucy,” said Preston, “let us sit down and talk to Nathaniel calmly. Can’t you see how scared and upset he is? I think asking questions in an accusatory mode will not help. I also think that the reason this capeless, unguilded boy should remain here for the present is to find out why Masteress Oldham has summoned him.”
“Since you do not approve of my manner of speaking,” said Lucy, “I suggest you speak to this child in your own manner.”
When Preston and Lucy each took a chair, I sat down in one as well, closer to Preston than to Lucy. The chair was kind of big for me, but it was more comfortable than I thought it would be.
“Nathaniel,” said Preston, “please tell us in more detail how it is that your have come to this house.”
“My father works at the local Rite-Aid,” I began, “and so does Mary Ann, the woman my father wants to marry.”
“Do you mean a place for aiding rightly?” Preston asked.
“No,” I said, wondering if Preston and Lucy lived in the same world as I did. “A Rite-Aid is a pharmacy. It’s where you buy medicine. I stop there on the way home for school every day in case they need me to deliver medicine to somebody. When I stopped in this afternoon, Mary Ann said she had just gotten a phone call from Olivia Oldham, ordering a new prescription and asking me to deliver it. So I took the bag and brought it to the address printed on the bag. I thought this house looked kind of strange, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t on this street last time I came round here. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to see it, but I did. This house looked so weird, I wanted to run away, but I know it’s important to deliver people’s medicine, so I came to the door anyway. The instructions I was given told me to walk in if I didn’t get an answer at the door. Nobody answered my knock and so I came in. I hope you can get this prescription to Ms. Oldham.”
“I see you as the kind of person who might be called to the Guild of Gifted Healers,” said Preston.
“Preston!” Lucy cried. “You know you should not tell a non-Gifted person about the Guild!”
“How do you know that Nathaniel is not Gifted?” Preston asked her. “Have you tested him?”
“Uh—can you tell me what you are talking about?” I pleaded.
“See?” said Lucy, “he doesn’t know anything about this except for the words you let slip out!”
“Lucy and I are members of the Gifted Healer’s Guild,” Preston explained. “The Gifted Healer’s Guild exists for the purpose of ministering healing to any person who has been injured or rendered ill through the use of etheric power.”
Those words made me shake with excitement and terror.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Hmm. Magic is the word that comes to my mind,” Preston answered, “but I think that is not altogether the right word.”
“Magic?” I asked.
“Etheric energy is energy that can be directed and redirected by those who are gifted for it,” Preston explained.
“Sounds like magic to me,” I said. “But if you and Lucy only try to heal people, then I guess you don’t turn people into toads or blast them away with fire spells. Instead, you help people who get turned into toads or blasted with fire spells. Is that right?”
“That is correct,” said Preston. “Many etheric injuries and many etheric illnesses are being inflicted on many people as a result of a battle between two Gifted clans, and much healing work is being asked of us. Now, it appears, a healing work may be asked of you.”
“B-but why would you ask me, if I’m not even in your guild?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Preston replied.
Preston picked up the white bag, opened it, and took out the small bottle of pills.
“What is the healing substance?” Preston asked me.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I’m just the delivery boy.”
“Hmm.”
Preston handed the bottle over to Lucy.
“Can you identify this healing substance?”
Lucy struggled with the child-proof cap and lost. That was another sign she didn’t live in the same world I did.
“I can open it for you if you want,” I offered.
I wasn’t sure I should let Lucy check out the pills, but I decided my best bet for getting out of this situation alive was to be as cooperative as possible. Lucy gave me a withering look, then tugged on the cap again with no success.
“Okay,” she said angrily. “You open it.”
I took the bottle, pressed down on the cap, screwed it off, and handed it back to Lucy. Slowly and carefully she tilted the bottle until one dark red capsule dropped into the palm of her hand. She looked at the capsule dubiously, the way someone might look at a strange serving of food.
“The medicine is inside the capsule,” I explained when I got the impression Lucy didn’t know what a capsule was either. “The capsule dissolves in the stomach after you swallow it.”
Lucy carefully pulled the capsule apart and dropped some of the powder into her hand. Then she whispered a few words that made no sense and moved her other hand over the medicine. A soft glow with lots of different colors appeared over the medicine. It looked something like the spectroscope my science teacher had just talked about a week ago. Lucy examined the colors, and then they faded away.
“This healing substance is derived from dalebark solution,” Lucy announced.
“I wonder what we are going to need it for,” said Preston.
Before he had time to wonder about it any longer, another door opened into the stone and a heavy-set man with a red beard came in. Like Preston and Lucy, he was wearing a purple cape but, to my surprise, he was wearing a t-shirt and blue jeans under it. And it wasn’t the cleanest t-shirt I’d seen in my life either.
“What’s up?” the man asked as he sat down next to Lucy.
“We don’t know yet,” said Preston. “It might be something big. It seems that Masteress Oldham has summoned an unguilded boy to bring a healing substance derived from dalebark.”
The man whistled.
“We don’t use dalebark for everyday fevers inflicted during routine etheric duels.”
“That is for certain,” said Preston.
“So why would Masteress Oldham send for an unguilded boy who is hardly old enough to be a student at the Academy at a time like this?” Lucy exploded.
I tried to sink all the way into my chair as the man looked over at me. but he looked reasonably friendly, if puzzled about me.
“Are you the unguilded boy who was summoned here?” he asked.
“I guess so,” I answered.
The man stood up and extended his hand across the table.
“Master Hugh McDermott’s my name,” he told me.
I stood up and shook his hand. That made me feel a little less horrible about everything.
“I’m Nathaniel,” I said back.
“And your clan?” Master McDermott asked me.
“Uh—my last name is Brown,” I said, uncertain if that was what he wanted to know.
“Hmm. Only one other Brown in our Guild that I know of. Well, glad to meet you. I’m sorry you got called here before anybody had a chance to tell you what was what. Come to think of it, I don’t think any of us here know what is what at this passing moment.”
For a while, nobody knew what to say next, and I was afraid we were going to be left hanging there for some time. But it wasn’t that long before a tall woman with long steel-gray hair and dark piercing eyes appeared a few feet away from us. She wore a black evening gown and a purple cape like the other guild members over her shoulders. She didn’t look like the woman you’d want to mess with. Even less would anyone want to mess with the dark brown owl perched on her shoulder. Nobody else seemed to find her sudden appearance unusual, so I assumed it was just the way these people did things. The woman took a chair straight across from me and looked me in the eye. I just about melted.
“Are you Nathaniel Hawthorne Brown?” she asked me.
“Yes.”
“I gift you with my name of Masteress Olivia Oldham.”
“Uh—glad to meet you.”
I wasn’t sure that I really was glad to meet her, but at least she was treating me like I belonged where I was.
“Did you bring the prescription I ordered?” asked Masteress Oldham.
“Yes,” I answered, pointing to the capsules on the table.
She looked at the capsules and frowned.
“Is the healing substance derived from dalebark?” she asked.
“It is,” said Lucy.
“Nathaniel,” said the woman, “you are to be commended for your effort.”
“You’re—uh—you’re welcome,” I stammered.
The owl hooted loudly and glared at me as if I’d done something wrong. Masteress Oldham glanced to her side and nodded.
“Natasha is feeling neglected,” said Masteress Oldham. “She won’t let us proceed until everyone here has stroked her breast feathers.”
I hardly needed that sort of a challenge, much as I believed in humane treatment of animals and birds. Lucy did her duty first, looking for the first time like an indulgent woman. Hugh, Preston, and Masteress Oldham stroked the owl’s feathers and then everyone looked at me expectantly. Natasha looked like she was daring me to touch her. On the other hand, everybody else had stroked her feathers without getting their hands shredded. So, I swallowed my fear and did it. It felt wonderful. Natasha also looked like it felt wonderful to her, too.
“Now we can proceed with our business,” said Masteress Oldham. “Nathaniel, can you sing?”
I sort of crumpled at that question.
“Not really,” I answered.
Masteress Oldham gave me a sharp look that made me wish I just had Lucy to contend with.
“Are you sure?” the woman asked me.
“No, I’m not sure that I can’t sing,” I replied. “It’s just that I don’t sing much. Nobody else has asked me to in ages.”
My first thought was the choir at my middle school. It was almost all girls and the few boys who sang in it were thought to be girls in disguise. The choir director was a social studies teacher who also did the choir so that our school’s music program would be a little more than zilch. She gave the impression she didn’t think boys should sing in her choir any more than most of us boys did. But when I said nobody had asked me to sing for ages, I got blindsided by my memories of singing with my mom before she got sick. She played songs on the piano by the hour, and I sat and listened to her, and then I sang with her. I never thought anything of it; I just thought that singing was the most natural thing to do. Then after Mom got sick and died, nobody asked me to sing, and I didn’t. That put the biggest lump in my throat I’d ever had, and I started crying in front of these strangers before I knew it was happening.
“Cheer up,” said Lucy, not sounding very cheerful, “you’re being asked to sing now.”
“I think the question has touched a deep sorrow in Nathaniel,” said Master McDermott.
He said that with just the right touch of sympathy that kept me from feeling more self-conscious than I did already.
“My mother sang, and I sang with her,” I explained, as soon as I’d gotten control of myself. “But she’s dead.”
“Yes,” said Masteress Oldham, “your mother had a very fine singing voice, and your father told me how well you sang with her. That is why he and I thought we should test your voice to see if your are Gifted to our present need.”
Those words sent shock waves throughout my system. And what did she mean by Gifted? I could hear the capital “G” in her voice. And how could a kid like me help somebody like her?
“You know my parents?” I asked.
“Yes, I knew your mother and I still know your father,” Masteress Oldham replied.
“Masteress Oldham and I have been working hard with your father on our current project,” said Master McDermott. “He’s a fine man.”
“I thought he was away on a business trip,” I said.
“He is,” said Master McDermott. “I suppose he didn’t tell you what his business was, because he didn’t expect to stumble on a discovery of a possible healing substance that requires a Gifted Singer.”
As Master McDermott spoke, there was a colorful shimmer next to him. As if I didn’t need to have any more loopy things happen, the shimmering resolved into an image of my father, and he was wearing a purple cape just like the ones everybody in this room was wearing except me. Looking at him was kind of like looking at a television without the box around it, except the image was three-dimensional. In the background, I saw two or three people lying in bed, looking pretty sick.
“Hello, Nathaniel,” said my father.
“Uh—hi, Dad. What are you doing? What’s going on?”
“I’m awfully sorry to have to spring this on you like this,” said Dad. “I assure I was going to tell you about this part of my life soon, and break the news to you more gently. There is a serious medical crisis in what we call the Gifted World, and I have been working overtime to deal with it. Has Masteress Oldham tested your voice?”
“She just asked me if I can sing, and I said I don’t know.”
“Well, I know you can sing,” said my dad. “I just wish I’d thought to encourage you to keep it up these past two years.”
“Nathaniel,” said Masteress Oldham, “I must ask you to sing something for us, as we must find out if your voice can do what needs to be done.”
I’d never sung alone in front of people in my life and I didn’t want to do it with Lucy glaring at me. At least Preston and Master McDermott both looked more sympathetic, and I knew my father was rooting for me.
“Want me to sing anything in particular?” I asked.
“Sing what you want to sing,” said Masteress Oldham. “Now.”
The first song that popped into my head was “I am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger.” It’s pretty simple song, so I thought I could probably sing it without messing up. Besides, it kind of fit the mood I was in. And so I sang:
I am a poor wayfaring stranger,
A trav’ling through this world of woe;
Yet there’s no sickness, toil or danger
In that bright world to which I go.
I’m going home to see my mother,
I’m going there no more to roam,
I’‘m just a-going over Jordan,
I’m just a going over home.
The music flowed out of my mouth with almost no effort, and my voice sounded better to me than I thought it would. The song almost made me cry because of the way it made me think of Mom and of all the times I’d have sung with her if she hadn’t died. My listeners were silent for some time after I stopped singing.
“Nathaniel, how could you possibly not have known you were gifted in singing?” Lucy asked me, sounding like she was mad at me all over again.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled.
“That’s Lucy’s way of saying that you’re one of the best singers she’s heard in a long time,” said Preston.
“And has nobody in your world put you in a choir and made you their top soloist?”Lucy asked me.
“No,” I said.
“Some world you live in,” Lucy muttered.
“Every boy like you ought to have a boy’s choir in town he can join,” said Master McDermott. “Then your voice would already be well-trained for what we need you to do.”
“That was really good, Nathaniel,” said my dad.
“Your singing was exquisite, Nathaniel,” said Masteress Oldham, “but we need to test the level of your Giftedness.”
Uh-oh, I said to myself. There’s nothing like getting shot down as soon as you’ve done something that somebody thinks you did well.
“This shouldn’t hurt—too much,” said Master McDermott cheerfully.
“Nathaniel,” said Masteress Oldham, “do you have something in your pocket that you have touched, and is something you do not mind losing in its present form?”
There were lots of things in my pockets I didn’t care about losing, but the idea of doing something freaky gave me the creeps. Since I didn’t see any way out of taking this test, it seemed that my best bet was to flunk it and get out of this whole shebang. I dipped my hand in my pocket and came up with a penny.
“These days, a penny isn’t worth much,” I said as I put the penny on the table.
“Very well,” said Masteress Oldham. “The task I will ask you to perform is to sing to the coin you call a penny, asking it to melt into the table.”
Freaky enough, I thought, but at least I wasn’t being asked to turn the penny into a toad.
“How do I do that?” I asked.
“Try singing the tune you just sang with words of your choice that ask the coin to melt into the table,” Masteress Oldham replied. “As you sing, imagine the coin doing what you are asking it to do.”
That sounded like an easy test to flunk. I could even treat it as a joke. I almost felt inspired when I started to sing:
I am a poor wayfaring penny,
Asked to melt into this table of woe.
For there’s no worth or buying power
if this poor penny should melt away.
Things didn’t go according to plan. I found myself imagining the penny melting into the table without meaning to, and then the more I tried to stop imagining that, the more I imagined it.
I’m melting you, to meet the table,
I’m melting you, no more to spend.
I’m melting you into the table,
I’m melting you in your new home.
As I sang, I felt quite a lot of heat all in my finger tips and then a harsh smell hit my nostrils. I was afraid to look, but I had to look anyway. What I saw made me shiver like I’d never shivered before in my life! Where the penny had been, there was a pool of melted copper.