Nano Day 12 - Trippin the Vortex - working title

[joegoda]

For Capi, and the other readers:


Angelina's mother was something I would deal with in my own time. It did prove, however, that Angelina had at least one parent who wasn't your mainstream Betty Crocker. The sigil itself proved that some heavy minds were involved. It wasn't something your average circle caster would know. How heavy a mind that was behind it would be something to deal with when it came time. If I was lucky it would be a friendly mind, and I wouldn't have to deal with it at all.

Angelina picked up our order and started to move towards the door, but I steered her toward a table.

"Let's just sit and talk for a bit," I said. "Take some time and eat our donuts leisurely before we head out."

She looked at me oddly, and said "All right." She sat the bag down, I pulled out my little round cakes and nibbled, looking out the window at the traffic. Angelina got her crullers out of the bag, popped the top on her cappuccino and sat watching me.

"What did you want to talk about?" she asked.

"Hm?", I hummed. "Oh!" I had forgotten what reason I gave her to sit down. I thought quickly for a second and then, "Tell me about your mother."

"My mother?" She took a drink from her cup, then blew on it to cool it down. She crossed her legs and looked pretty uncomfortable to me. "Well, Chester, my mother was very good to her children. She would play piano and tried to get us interested in it. Ummm."

"So, did any of you pick up the piano?" I looked at my watch. It was just a bit after eleven. Checkout time. I watched the traffic as it zipped by.

Angelina glanced out the window, trying to see what I was looking at, since I obviously wasn't paying any attention to her.

"What are you looking at?"

"I'm just watching the traffic," I said. "Did any of you get involved in music?"

"Uh, yes, we did a bit, but my brothers did not show that much interest in it." She continued to follow my traffic watching, still answering my questions. "I picked up stringed instruments well. I learned to play the guitar a bit, and the cello."

She leaned over to me as she watched the traffic with me, and asked me what we were looking for. I glanced at her and stifled a laugh. Her cappuccino had made it's typical mustache, and on her it looked very cute. I quickly turned my eyes back towards the moving traffic.

"We're looking for anything that shouldn't necessarily be there," I muttered. "Remember I told you someone had been in the van?"

She nodded.

"I'm looking," I told her, "for something that is following a sigil that I found in the van. Do you know what a sigil is?"

"Oh yes!" she said, suddenly excited. "That was something that mother taught us all when we were very young."

"Hm." Just another thing to add to the oddity that was her. "Well, I found a sigil in the van. A very special sigil, used for tracking. I'm looking for the people that should be tracking the sigil."

"Mother taught us how to make a sigil out of anything. We practiced on making sigils that were practically invisible to see. She assigned a sigil to each of us, so she could find us when ever she needed to."

"So," I asked her, "Why didn't she find you when you ran away to New York?" I already knew the answer. I just wanted to see what her answer was.

She grinned, slyly. "Surely you know the answer to that, Mister Wizard. If there is a sigil for tracking, there is a sigil for hiding. It was an easy thing to remove the sigil she had put on me."

Hm. Even more clues. She was convincing me that her family were of the heavy mind type. "Tell me about the fun times... did you go on picnics or have parties?

Angelina nodded again and smiled in remembrance. "We had some wonderful times. Mother taught us to ride horses and we would go down to the lake and have quiet times watching the weather or collecting leaves in the mountains. As for parties..." She didn't smile as much as wistfully drift away in memory. "Yes, we had parties. Thousands of my uncles and aunts would come and there would be dancing and drinking and presents. Yes, Chester, we had parties. There's not much I didn't learn."

Interesting childhood. I noticed she didn't give me an age or a time-line for these parties. They could have been held when she was a child, they could have been when she was a young adult.

"Your parents let you drink at an early age?" I asked, trying to gain a bit more detail.

"Father was absent a lot," she said. "So he didn't have much influence over me." She grinned, mischievously. "Mother, when she was occupied with my other relatives, didn't pay much attention to me."

"What about your brothers?" Then, something she had said pulled my attention from the road outside. "Wait," I said. "Did you say you have thousands of uncles and aunts?"

"Well," she said, blushing. "That might have been a bit of an exaggeration, but yes, I have a very large family."

"How large?"

"Well, most of them do not live in this country," she said, hesitantly. I caught the sense that she was back-peddling, trying to cover something she had said that she shouldn't have.

"Quite a number of them visit only on special occasions. And they aren't all my uncles and aunts. Some of them are my grandparents, and great grandparents and grand uncles and aunts and cousins and cousins once or twice or three times removed from me."

"Ah." I said, nodding and not quite believing her, but not quite knowing what to believe. "I can see that." I returned to watching the traffic, but filed her answer away for later. It's not that I didn't trust her, I just didn't know how much to trust her and in what direction.

"Where were your brothers during the parties?" I asked.

"Oh, they are much older than I am," she said. I had the feeling that she was still covering for herself. "By the time I was born, they were often away with my father." She stopped and anticipated my next question. "My father is something like a... foreign envoy. He traveled quite a bit and would take my brothers with him. They were something like his body guards."

"Your brothers are very large, then?"

"Oh my yes. Raphael is very large and very strong. To me, he's almost a giant. Michael is not as large, but quicker. In a fight between them, Michael would win, I think. Daniel is next, the same size as Michael, and very, very intelligent. Damien is the smallest one, almost as little as me. But he's quick and he's devious. Nobody wants to challenge Damien." She grinned a wicked grin. "He fights dirty, you see."

"Ah." I checked my watch again. Almost eleven thirty. The lunch crowd would be out any time now. I looked up from my orange glazed and checked the window again. And there, what to my wondering eyes should appear?

"Did you see it?" I asked.

"What?" Angelina glanced quickly at the window. Traffic moved as it was before, zipping along. She scanned left and right. Then she smiled. "Ah yes," she nodded. "The hunter sigil." She nodded towards a small red car that was zooming out of sight. "Is that the same red car you saw yesterday?"

"Yep." I stood up, dropped the last half of the last orange applesauce in to the bag. "It's time to go."

Angelina stood up, nodding. "You are one very smart cookie, mister Chester."

"Not so smart, Angelina," I answered her. "I'd like to know why they are following us, when it would have been just as easy to break in and take you away, while I slept. I'd like to know why they didn't do anything more to the van than just put a tracking device in it. Too many questions, Angelina, not enough answers."

She didn't have any answers either. She followed me to the door and out to the van. "I can tell you why they didn't break in, I think," she said as she was getting in.

"Oh?" I started the van and turned back onto the highway. "And what would that be?"

"Do you think I would walk across the country without protection?" She reached into her neckline and pulled out a thin chain. On the end of the chain was something I had seen in pictures, but never up close. Since I was driving, I didn't get a chance to see it that close anyway, but I knew what it was.

There was a small vial hanging like a pendant. In it there was probably some quicksilver, maybe a drop of blood, maybe some shards of bone, but most assuredly there was going to be a bit of charcoal, some purified water, a shaving of wood, and of course, air.

Depending on where the contents came from, depending upon their age, what she had was what the circle casters called a major class ward. From those friends I had among the circles, this would keep anyone, pretty much anything, that intended to cause you harm to simply... not.

Oh, it wouldn't stop a bullet. It wouldn't keep you from being hit by a bus, and you couldn't jump off a cliff and walk away unharmed. Unless it was a very small cliff, that is.

What it would do, depending on its strength, is change the mind of those nearby that were thinking of doing you physical harm. Depending on its strength, it could do anything from cause your enemy to suddenly remember they had an important errand to run to rendering you as a blind spot to them.

It would and could not do harm by itself. It was only a charm. It's one purpose was to keep your enemies at bay. It runs basically on the same concept as a sound so high you can't hear it, and a color so clear that you can't see it. Sympathetic magic, which works only on those that believe in it. I think.

And no, it's not a simple thing, and no, I won't go into detail because I can't. I don't make them, I don't wear them, and I don't even know if they'd work on me. What I'm saying here is that every thing I know about these sort of charms is what I've heard, what I've read, and that is only what they are supposed to be. A protector ward. You want to know more about wards and other crap like that, go find a major class circle caster and ask them. Parlor tricks is all they are, but apparently very good parlor tricks.

Just like a sigil. Except I know about sigils. Simple things like those I don't mind using, because I know they work. Not simply believe, mind you, but I know they work. Of course, they also work by Sympathetic magic, the same as Voodoo or crossing yourself or any other stuff like that.

Sympathetic magic is a concept that has been around since Ogg first looked up at the stars and decided that there was something bigger than he was. It works on the vibrations that come off of everything. It works because everything is affected by the vibrations that are radiated by everything else, no matter how small or insignificant the vibrations might be.

Belief plays a large part in Sympathetic magic. We all, as humans, have deep seated beliefs in the closet monster, the monster under the bed, Santa Clause and even God and Jesus. These beliefs can be used for or against us, simply by the symbolism certain objects contain. Now, when you add the concepts of alchemy and harmonious vibration theory to the natural vibrations created by a deep seated belief, you can create something like a charm, like a sigil, and it works. All that is required is the knowledge of what a thing is, down to it's pure energetic vibratory state, and how it affects certain other things at their pure energetic vibratory state.

It's all about harmony and discord. To drive something away, create a discordant vibration. To draw something near, create a harmonic vibration. It's the music of the spheres, baby. It's real, and it does wonderful things from creating love to creating enemies. From keeping a young woman safe as she walks across America to keeping seeking eyes from being able to see you.

Still, it's all parlor tricks to me. I'd rather sit and have a good Reuben sandwich. It takes less energy.

"Where did you get that?" I asked her.

"I made it," was her simple answer.

"You made it?" I let that sink in. "Did your mother teach you how?"

"No," she said. "It was my father, when I was a very small child. I had a fear of ..." she looked at me, embarrassed. "I was afraid of monsters."

"Ah." Well, so did I. I even had the scars to back my fear up. "So he taught you how to build a ward?"

"Is that what it is called?" She looked at it. "I just called it protection." She shrugged and put it back under her sweater.

"Tell me about your father," I asked.

She settled back in her seat and crossed her arms. "I thought we were done with this stupid game."

"No," I said. "I'm interested, really." I reached out and touched her shoulder. "Tell me about your father."

She looked at the spot where my hand had touched her and smiled at me. Yeah, okay, so it was a trick. I felt like a schmuck, but I wanted to hear more about her parents. If I was going to be walking into ... whatever I was walking into, forewarned is forearmed.

I suspect I know why the bad guys, or whoever it was that was following us, was only following us and not doing anything else. One, that was what they were told to do, and two, it was because they wanted to find out exactly where we were going. Why was that? Because the person that sent them had no idea where Angelina's home was. It wasn't a magic charm worn around the neck, and it may not have been a sigil drawn on a door. There was a logical answer to these sort of things. There always is.

"My father is a big man, like my brothers. I look like my mother, which may be why he pretty much..." She stopped. "Anyway, he was away a lot, like I said. He went on trips and would be gone for weeks or months."

I was getting the feeling she didn't like her father much. She may have loved him, she may have held him as the standards that every man she ever met would have to measure up to, but she didn't like him much.

"When he would come home, everything was business all of the time. He and mother would sometimes go into the study and talk for hours. Sometimes there was yelling. Sometimes my mother would cry and go off into her room. Father would walk through the house as if nothing was wrong."

She looked out the window at anything but what she was remembering. "I don't really want to talk about my father, all right?"

"All right, Angel." I nodded and went silent. I noticed that when I would show any sort of small affection towards her, like the touch on her arm or calling her by her diminutive, Angel, she would smile this very tiny smile and her eyes would spark just a bit.

I've seen this affect on women before. It's what my friend Sherry calls the Charm effect. It's not something I do consciously. It's just something I do. I tend to think it's a combination of the fact my voice is pitched just right and I look absolutely harmless. It puts people at ease and gives them the idea that they can tell me anything, in confidence, and I'll keep their secret until I die.

It's true, too. That is exactly the way I am. Men think I'm their best buddy and will come up to me regardless of where I am and start talking to me as if they have known me forever, and soon I find out all about their wives and lives and lovers and favorite sports. Women will look at me as their favorite brother or a father figure and look to me for support or guidance or someone they can just, you know, talk to.

Now, not everybody sees me that way. I mean, nobody has charm is universal. I know people that don't like me even a little bit. You can't please everyone all the time, and like I said, I have the scars to prove it.

But still, every time I was aware that I might have pushed Angelina just a bit too much, regardless of what she was telling me, or what I had asked her, a touch, or a word, or a look and it made her day easier. Hearing how she viewed her father, I could tell that I was suddenly becoming the dad or the brother she had never had. And that was something I really didn't need, but it was something I that would use, if I had to. Yeah... I'm not a nice guy, okay?

So, her mom was this really nice witch that could do sigils and seeking eye and probably some other heavy circle casting stuff. Dad was a traveling man that took his sons with him on business trips to possibly use as muscle. Dad also knew about charms and was a bit of a belligerent bastard. Of course, this was just surface stuff. There was bound to be deeper stuff, stuff that kids either don't know about or don't talk about. Every family has secrets. Every family does.

It was a five hour plus trip to Provo. I figured that we would get there near to dinner time, around six or so. We'd stop for dinner and then drive on to Elko. We'd get there about midnight or maybe just a bit earlier. If I drive like I normally do, definitely we'd get there earlier. So much for enjoying the scenery. Maybe I could pick it up on the way back.

Now that I was fairly sure that the red car was off on a wild goose chase, I felt a bit easier. Not that there wouldn't be any other attempts to find us, once the ruse had been discovered, but for right now I didn't have any sense of tingle or seeking eyes or anything that would get in my way.

The road, right now, seemed to be clear and open. That's really all I ask for. Open road and clear skies.

And then the rain came.

The sky started out my friend. The sun was high in the sky and there were just a few clouds fitting. Nothing serious, just a few fluffy cumulus hanging around. It was right around Grand Junction when the fluffy became ominous, and the ominous turned into a downpour.

The west side of the Rockies gets a lot of the weather that never reaches the right side because it dumps before it crosses the peaks. I should have remembered that from my time in Mancos. It's the dramatic weather that I love about the mountains. It's also the very thing I don't love about the mountains.

It was beautiful, and it was a bit scary. Fortunately, the roads are incredibly well taken care of and I'm just as crazy a driver as most of the other drivers in Colorado. I'm defense driven. I had a great friend, who now lives in Italy, who gave me the best piece of advice about driving I ever heard. "There's someone out there that wants to die," he told me, "and they want you to do it for them."

Using that bit of philosophy has kept me from being in thousands of accidents, just because I keep my eye on the road and the other guy, anticipating what they'll do before they do it. It's like road poker. You can always tell what another driver is going to do, no matter how sane or bone-headed it might be, by how they are driving, by what their car, their automotive extension is doing. Everyone slows down when they make a decision. Everyone slows down when they are indecisive. Most people start to change lanes before they change lanes, then swerve back when they realize there isn't any room. By watching the drivers around me, I can predict, to within a fairly accurate degree, what any other driver will do.

Being aware will save your life. It has mine, time and time again.

The rain in the mountains is a sight that always will take my breath away. It's a sight that I could sit and watch and be entranced by for hours, every single time. That is, if I had the time to sit and watch and be entranced. As it was, I wanted to get to Elko before I fell asleep, and I figured I could make it in nine hours, if I didn't dawdle. Angelina did all of my sightseeing for me, though she did grump a bit when she saw something spectacular and I didn't exactly share her enthusiasm.

Wet and soggy, we turned the van onto I-70, finally pointed West and trudged our way out of Colorado.

Comments

[tapestry01.livejournal.com]

That's great!

[capi.livejournal.com]

"I mean, nobody has charm is universal."

Hey, somehow i skipped this one. Are there any more i missed??

SHAME on me!!

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

You skipped it? Sheesh, *I* wrote it! I'm sure that there are tons of these that I haven't caught. I'll make sure to check the soft copy on my computer and get it corrected. As you know, it should read something like 'Nobody has charm that is universal' or something like that.

[capi.livejournal.com]

No no! I don't mean i skipped that error, darlin'! I've been skippin' 99% of the errors, aye?

I skipped that whole installment, somehow! Luckily, i went back to make SURE i'd not done so, and found them eating in the donut shop! *whew* Almost missed it!