MAGIC REQUIRED

They decided water would be the way I died. But I swam anyways. It was my way of biting my thumb at them. At the Old Gods who made me like this.

To be honest, I hated the water. It scared me. I doubtless hated the fear more than the water itself, because I needed it too. It kept me centered.

I didn’t use to swim. I didn’t use to need to risk my life to clear my head. There was a time where singing did that for me. It still did . . . sometimes.

But not like it used to.

Not like before my eldest brother died.

My eyes flicked up to the clock on the wall. 5:37AM.

Twenty minutes.

The community center pool wasn’t huge, but it was long enough to pick up some speed. With any luck, I’d have a lane to myself until just after six. Standing at the edge, I looked down at the rippling water and the only other person I ever saw swimming this early.

Tim.

Though he was likely in his early seventies, I could tell he’d been one hell of an athlete in his prime. I suspected a boxer. Or mayhap he reminded me of Muhammad Ali with darker skin.

He was here every day, without fail, right at 5:30, and he had the slowest front crawl I had ever seen.

Looking away from Tim, I positioned my goggles, filled my lungs and dove. Cool liquid engulfed my body and I felt the familiar jump of my heart.

That happened every time I was in the water. Blind panic rose up within me. But this particular brand of panic was familiar. With a practiced progression of thought and movement, I controlled it easily.

Tim and I were soon joined by the six-AMers. Sharing the lane slowed my pace. I had no patience to swim slowly.

Not today.

I got out of the pool.

To say I was a little old for nightmares was a cosmic understatement, I thought as I stepped under the lukewarm water of the community center showers. Then again, the longer you live, the more you saw, so perhaps not.

I turned to let the water run over my face. When I closed my eyes, the young girl’s lost and tear-stained expression was all I saw. I squeezed my eyes shut tighter, attempting to remember every detail of my nightmare.

I didn’t want to remember, but it felt important.

Her crying seemed to flood my ears. She couldn’t have been older than five. Why was she alone? The images of her wandering down an abandoned street flashed on the backs of my closed eyelids.

She passed a sign. Fort Totten Park.

Her flushed cream-colored face was covered in blotchy red patches from crying. Dark brown hair stuck to her cheek where it had fallen out of her short ponytail. It was matted with blood from a cut on her forehead. The yellow tie in her hair matched the dress she was wearing. Both were discolored with dirt and grime.

I sighed.

There was nothing I could do for the imaginary girl, lost only to me.

I looked up into the small mirror in the shower. Bright green eyes stared back at me; green eyes that were the exact shape and color as those of my two brothers.

Someone had left a razor on the little shelf beneath the mirror. It reminded me I needed to shave before work. I ran my hand over the roughness on my cheeks and jaw, then through my short black hair that wasn’t as short as I’d like.

And a haircut too, I thought as I stepped out of the shower.

“Hey Lochlan!” said the blonde teenager behind the counter on my way out. “How was your swim?”

I adjusted a thin chain under my shirt. The small stone at the end of it settled on my chest before I answered.

“Hi Ella,” I said, ignoring her question. At 6:20AM her cheeriness was unsettling.

“I noticed your membership is coming up for renewal,” she told me with a bright smile. “Would you like to do that now?”

“No thanks,” I answered, pausing briefly at the doors.

“Okay,” she said, still beaming. “Have an awesome day!”

“Too late,” I said under my breath as I left.

March air hit my face when I stepped outside the community center. The swim hadn’t rid my mind of the lost girl as I’d hoped it would, so I tightened the strap of my gym bag and ran home.

I took a slight detour on my way to pass one of my thinking spots. An old oak tree stood tall and proud not far from where I lived, and it reminded me of my homeland and of my brothers. The sight of it brought me peace, short-lived though it was.

Even with the detour, what was a thirty-minute walk took a third of the time at a run. When I rounded the corner of my block, I saw my elderly neighbor having an argument with the community mailbox. I ran past my house, only slowing once I reached her.

“Mrs. Abernathy,” I said pushing my square-rimmed glasses up my nose. The glasses were thick and black. They helped me be less noticeable, more overlooked. I wanted to be invisible.

Society tends to ignore the impoverished, and in 2047 laser-eye surgery was more affordable than ever, which meant glasses were a sign of poverty. I used this to my advantage and wore them every day, despite my perfect vision.

“How are you this morning?” I asked, waving to the small woman with dark chocolate skin and grey streaked curls.

“Oh Lochlan, better for seeing you,” she said, turning to look at me. My face broke into a smile. Mrs. Abernathy’s southern drawl and kind face had a way of doing that to me. “You’re up early,” she said, adjusting her vivid green handbag on her shoulder and tucking a wisp of grey-black hair behind her ear.

“I went for a swim.” She returned my smile before grimacing at the mailbox.

I moved into the neighborhood almost three years ago. On my very first afternoon, while I was unloading the moving van I’d rented, I met Mrs. Abernathy. She called me over, insisted I take a break and offered me some of her homemade sweet tea. Many a hot summer afternoon had been spent thus.

We both carried the accents of our homeland. It made the stories we shared all the better. She would tell me about growing up in the Deep South and I would tell her Celtic Folktales. In reality, I was telling her about my childhood too. She just didn’t know it.

“I don’t know what it is with this darn thing,” she said, placing her thumb to the scanner pad beside her mailbox over and over again, receiving nothing but an angry beep in return. “But it’s not working.”

“Why don’t you let me have a look,” I said, pulling my phone out of my pocket.

I worked for a technology and security company. That fact alone was usually sufficient explanation as to how I fixed things using my phone.

I didn’t need the phone; it was a prop.

I’m a Caster, or at least that’s what I call myself. Saying I’m a Demi-god, while accurate, would show hubris.

The bottom line was I worked with Magic.

Mrs. Abernathy stepped back, allowing me access to the box. I pretended to fiddle with the scanner pad while I muttered a few words under my breath and brushed the back of my hand over the black square.

“What was that dear?” she asked from behind me.

“I think it was a glitch, why don’t you try it again?”

She beamed at me and took a slow step forward.

Contrary to popular opinion, Magic and technology work brilliantly together if you know what you’re doing.

And yes, Magic with a capital M because Magic is a name. Magic is alive.

“Oh!” she cried as the scanner turned green under her thumb. A door popped open to reveal several envelopes. “You fixed it!”

“Hardly,” I shrugged. Seeing the multitude of letters she pulled from the small square, I said, “I can’t believe you get so much mail. I’m jealous.”

“Maybe I’ll start writing you, shall I?” she said with a devilish gleam in her eye.

“With the price of postage these days, I wouldn’t let you.”

“And then you might not ever speak to me again, and you know how much I enjoy that.”

“I do,” I said.

If only she had heard me speak when I was in school five years ago. There, my thick accent was unremarkable. Here, it would get me noticed. I used to be able to speak without it completely, but for some reason it came back to me at school. I haven’t been able to shake it since.

“Can I walk you home?” I asked her, offering my arm. “I’m going that way.”

“Why thank you, dear,” she said, placing her hand in the crook of my elbow after tucking her mail into her aggressively bright handbag. She walked at a brisk pace I was only prepared for because this exact scene had played itself out several times over the past few years.

Mrs. Abernathy filled me in on her favorite soap operas as we walked the half block to our side-by-side front doors. She lived in 34B and I in 34A.

After going up a few steps, she reached over the little wall that separated our respective porches and waved me towards her. Reaching out, she patted me on the cheek. If the wall were any higher, she wouldn’t have managed it.

“You’re a good boy,” she said with a sad smile. “How come I never see you bringing any girls over?”

“Oh, ummm . . .” I didn’t know what to say.

Sorry Mrs. Abernathy but any relationship I had would be built on the lie I was Human. Been there, and I don’t want to do it again.

No. I couldn’t say that.

“Or boys,” Mrs. Abernathy said, misinterpreting my hesitation. “I don’t judge dear. In fact, I know of this wonderful bar—”

“No,” I laughed. “I don’t get out much is all.”

“Oh, well try, won’t you?” she said, stepping to her front door, punching in the unlock code and laying her palm above the doorknob. “Otherwise, as soon as they come up with some anti-aging technology I’ll just keep you for myself.”

“If only,” I said, putting in my own door code.

j

“Locherrrrrrr,” said a familiar voice that carried across the Tjart Tech and Security lobby.

“Jen,” I replied to the twenty-something man walking towards me. “How are you?”

“One day I’m going to get here earlier than you,” he said as he pulled the drawstring of his zip-up hoodie back and forth.

I gave him a wry grin. It was a bit of a running joke. I always seemed to enter the building steps ahead of him. Even on days when Jenner came in early, somehow I would come in early too. It was something neither of us could explain.

“I’m good,” he said as we walked to the elevators. “Better after I saw this gorgeous blonde in the coffee shop around the corner.”

“Did you ask for his number?”

“Madre de Dios, with eyes like that? He wouldn’t give me the time of day.”

Jenner wasn’t unattractive. Confidence was his biggest problem. He was tall, only a little shorter than my 6’2. His warm copper skin hinted at his mixed heritage, and his puppy-dog brown eyes made him look nineteen when he was closer to twenty-five.

Jenner was my only friend in the city.

Well, that’s not true, I thought. I guess I was friends with his sister, Cam. I made a mental note to call her.

“Anyways,” he went on. “I saw him flirting with some skinny little muchacha who was flipping her hair like she had a tick or something.” He moved his head back and forth in a jerky robotic imitation of someone brushing long hair over their shoulder.

“That seems like some misplaced anger my friend,” I said, stifling a laugh at the looks Jenner was getting from the people behind us.

The ding of the elevator sounded, and we got on. In turn, everyone in the elevator pressed his or her palm to the scanning pad. After a few moments an automated voice told us we were going down.

The elevators are Tjart Tech only allowed five to ride at a time and there were no floor numbers to press. Instead, the system took you where you needed to go after it scanned your palm and looked up your file. No one ever got off on the wrong floor here.

“It’s not misplaced anger,” Jenner said, his light accent increasing with his irritation. “She was proudly wearing a Right Waters pin on her oh-so-lovely blazer.”

I sighed while Jenner swore in Spanish.

Currently making headlines was the Right Waters Party. They were getting coverage because of their strong support of a new immigration bill. Though Jenner and his parents were born in this country, his ancestors had been immigrants.

Long before his mother’s grandparents had walked across the border to find new life in ‘the land of the free’, his father’s side had been brought over in the belly of a crowded ship. As a result, Jenner kept himself well informed of the goings on in our nation’s capital.

“Then she deserves your anger,” I said with a serious nod.

“Okay,” he said, throwing me a sideways look in exchange for my sarcasm. “Maybe not her specifically but I just, I just . . .” He abruptly switched to Spanish and I tuned him out. After three years of knowing Jenner, I knew once he got going, it was best to let him go.

The rest of my day passed without incident. My job of tech support was busied yet monotonous. It was more often a matter of resetting a system than fixing it. These days everyone and everything had a system. Unless you crossed the river into Lowtown, you’d be hard pressed to find a building that still used keys or a store that still accepted cash. Everything had gone digital.

Tjart Tech and Security took care of all things related to technological systems and private security. From phones to computers, banks to mail boxes, Tjart Tech did it all.

And yet somehow, in this age of technology, ‘Have you tried turning it off and then on again?’ was the phrase I used more than any other.

Eight hours to the second after I had walked into the building, I was walking out. As I headed out of the front doors, I saw my bus nearing the stop at the end of the block.

Like so many times before, I had to make the split-second decision: wait the nine minutes until the next bus came, or sprint down the street in a vain attempt to catch this one. It wasn’t cold out, being the warmest March on record. Waiting wouldn’t be so bad.

But who liked to wait?

I clutched my messenger bag and took off down the street. The driver saw me running and, with a vengeful grin, he closed the door and drove off as the light turned green. I got there in time to bang on the tail end of the bus as it passed.

I cursed under my breath and sighed. If there is one lesson a long life will teach you, it’s how to let go of the little things.

Sitting down on the bench inside the bus shelter, I looked up at the images flashing across the glass wall to my right. Curious as to the time of the next bus, I stood and approached it.

The bottom half of the glass wall was a 24-hour news station with a ticker tape running across the top. Above that were tiny, flashing squares with rounded edges of blue, red or green. Each square had a number in it signifying a bus route.

I tapped twice on a blue square with a large 16 in the center. It revealed a drop-down list displaying the time of the next buses.

’Delays,’ an automated voice intoned. ’Next trip: 21 minutes.’

“Brilliant,” I said.

The drop-down list disappeared, and, as I started to turn away from the screen, something caught my eye. I stared at the image of a smiling young girl with dark brown hair and a rosy complexion that had taken the place of the news anchor.

“I’m sorry,” I said after bumping into a man when I took a step backwards to get a better look at the screen. He looked exhausted and made a beeline for the bench in the corner of the bus shelter. He sat so he could lean against two walls at the same time and seemed to immediately fall asleep.

I took another two steps backwards and sat beside him. At this distance I could better read the bold words written beneath the face of the girl who was the focus of my nightmare.

“What? No . . .” I muttered to myself as I read, “Fort Totten Park?”

“Oh, so sad,” said the man beside me. I turned to look at him. “They found that poor girl’s body.”

“What?” I said again, shifting to face him. His skin had grey undertones and dark circles drooped under his eyes.

“Did you not hear?” he said, looking at me through one half-open, very blue eye. “The girl they thought had run away or been kidnapped or got lost or something. Melissa, Melinda?” he said, letting his eye close all the way as he struggled to remember her name.

“Melanie,” I supplied, not knowing when I had learned that.

“Oh, so you did hear? Melanie, that’s right. Melanie Connor.”

“Yes I . . .” I stopped. I could hardly tell this man I had heard the girl’s name in a dream. Luckily, he kept speaking and I didn’t have to come up with a response.

“Poor girl,” he said, his blue eye searching my face. “I feel for her family.”

“Remind me of what happened?” I asked.

“She went missing a few days ago and they found her body in Fort Totten Park, oh,” he said, peeking down at his watch, “maybe four hours ago. They say if they had found her even an hour earlier, she might have made it. No idea what happened.”

“Gods,” I said, not knowing what to say. “That’s . . .”

“Yeah,” the man said.

We sat in silence for a few minutes before he truly fell asleep. It was the snoring that clued me in.

Twenty minutes later when the bus arrived, I shook him awake.

“Thanks,” he said, before stumbling onto the bus, finding a seat and falling asleep again.

The ride home was 35 minutes with a ten-minute walk on the other end. It took longer than that for my mind to attempt to make sense of my prophetic dream, if that’s even what it was.

As soon as I got home, I started towards my office to look into the girl’s disappearance. My single-mindedness was interrupted by an angry growl from my stomach. I remembered there was some leftover Chicken Thai soup in the fridge. I heated it in the microwave before taking it to my office.

I set the bowl of hot soup down on my desk, carefully avoiding anything that might make it tip over. Then I started my search.

One of the advantages of working for a tech and security company was there were few systems beyond my reach. And if there was one I couldn’t get into, I would ask Jenner to hack it for me. I may be a Caster, but when it came to computers, he’s the wiz.

It took me under five minutes to get into the city’s police department system. Once inside, a quick search revealed the missing persons file I was looking for.

Melanie Connor, age five, disappeared from a friend’s backyard on Saturday afternoon during a birthday party. It took anywhere from five minutes to two hours for the hosts of the party to notice her absence.

It’s rare for a child to go missing. In the mid 2030’s it became commonplace for parents to have their children wear locators in the form of a bracelet or a necklace in case they got lost or, for some, broke their curfew.

Melanie’s parents had told police she knew how to use the locator and how to set off the panic alarm. The locator bracelet was found on Sunday. It wasn’t working.

Her body was found in a small patch of trees that bordered the southwest side of Fort Totten Park. There was no indication of abuse or sexual assault. The autopsy scan to determine the girl’s cause of death was inconclusive and a true autopsy would have to be done.

“Gods below,” I said, leaning back in my chair. I looked at the bowl of soup, forgotten. Picking it up, I brought a spoonful to my lips. It was cold. I didn’t care. I ate it quickly.

Would I have been able to save this girl’s life? Was I supposed to have figured it out somehow? How could I have known it wasn’t just a dream?

Was this my fault? I asked myself. Could my soul bare the weight of yet another death if it was?

By the time I was done thinking myself in circles, I was mentally and physically exhausted. I went into the kitchen to wash the bowl and spoon from my soup.

I got ready for bed, thinking of Melanie and what I could have, or perhaps should have, done. It might have been minutes, or mayhap it was hours, before I fell asleep. Either way, I awoke the next morning tired, blaming myself for the death of a young girl.