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Hey Ya’ll!
I have so many secrets to tell and I can’t! Which sucks. So below are two outtakes from a new shiny. I don’t usually have outtakes, and these characters still stay in the new book, but not as point-of-view characters. This is a magical world based on the short story from the 2020 Dirty Deeds, edited by RJ Blain, but altered and expanded to make it worthy of a book length story. And yes—there will be murder, mayhem, magic, and … uh … miniature flying goats. Enjoy, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Miccah
Miccah woke with a start, shock like electricity shooting through him. He rolled off the thin mattress in a single motion. Instinct and training beaten into him by Uncle Sam. He didn’t have magic yet, but it was coming. It ran in his family. He could feel it itching below the surface of his skin, and he already had a modicum of dream-based precog. Without a doubt, there had just been a … disturbance in the force.
He laughed silently. Star Wars comparisons. Even now.
Miccah stepped silently, barefoot, out of the house onto the porch. Sunset was long gone, the stars like a promise of joy overhead, but their light was overwhelmed by the night. Somehow, darkness always won.
His precog pulled his attention in multiple directions which had never happened before—toward the Whiteaker’s on his right, to Mable’s directly ahead, and oddly, slightly to the left of Mable’s, at the abandoned cabin once inhabited by Hector Abercrombie. His magic was wonky tonight. Hector had been dead ten years.
Rubbing the back of his neck, Miccha considered the knowings. They made no sense.
The dangerous ones never did.
Jillianne
She waved the paper in the air trying to put out the flames, then dropped the school assignment to the ancient floor where she stomped the fire out. Carefully, she looked around, making sure Gramma hadn’t seen her magic. Accidental magic. Magic she was hiding in order to stay on the farm and take care of her grandmother. Jill didn’t have anyone else, and neither did Gramma. If she was discovered using magic she wasn’t supposed to have, the government would cart her off to magic school and keep her there until she was an old woman, like twenty, or something. And Gramma would die alone. Not happenin’.
Jill stomped one last time on the charred mess. She grabbed a whisk broom and pan and a wet rag used to clean the wood burning stove and tidied up her mess. She’d gotten good at it lately, but thankfully only at home. She hated burning up her homework. Starting over ticked her off, especially when it was caused by losing control of her magic for no good reason. This time it had just happened, out of nowhere. She hadn’t even been mad. This was new. New meant scary. She had to control it better in order to hide it. Gramma would be so disappointed in her. Her lessons in using and hiding her gift would be useless if Jill couldn’t control it.
Jill looked up, catching a hint of movement through the window at the edge of the woods. With the trees bare, she could see, sorta, Miccah’s place, though the front of his house was in afternoon shadows. She held her binocs to her eyes, focusing on his doorway. Miccah’s cabin was a one room log cabin, about twenty-by-twenty feet and looked more rundown than theirs. He’d painted their place last year and left his own looking worn. She had a feeling he did that on purpose, though it made no sense to her.
Miccah stepped out onto his porch, dressed in a pair of old desert combat fatigue pants, barefoot and shirtless. His breath blew white clouds as he breathed, but he didn’t look cold. He’d let his beard grow in again. Or forgotten to shave. Some said he wasn’t right in the head. She knew better. He lived with demons from the war. Feeding him had become her pet project because he didn’t always eat good or take good care of himself. Like standing in the icy cold, shirtless.
He’d told her once that Uncle Sam’s military had taught him not to think about stuff like the weather. He carried a gun in his right hand. A pistol, by the tip of the muzzle barely visible in the dark.
Miccah had a gift starting up too. Precog, mostly likely, because he knew stuff. She could tell when he’d gotten a warning by the way he moved. Like a cat on the prowl.
Dayam.
She’d burned her homework and Miccah had a vision. At the same time. That was a bad sign. That meant the Earth’s local magic field had been stirred and trouble was coming. Or that was the way she felt like it worked. She was smart enough to not do research on the internet, and to not check out library books on the subject. Those could be tracked. And she was not gonna get caught. All she had was her Gramma’s old tales of how to use it. How to control it. Breathe. Meditate.
Jill set the binocs down and looked in on Gramma. She was already down, sleeping for the night, her tiny body curled beneath the blanket, her dark skin shining in the light that leaked through the curtains. Jill rubbed her skin down every day with Vaseline lotion. Gramma had once had gorgeous skin and she had always hated it when she got ashy. Now she slept about eighteen hours a day and moved too slow. Jill didn’t want to think about what all that meant.
She added wood to the stove and put the percolator on the eye to make coffee. She had to start again on her homework. Magic sucked.
Hugs! Faith
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