Magic Sucks, chapter two
there was an attempt ... to write a fantasy novel
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise, as a painter and engraver once said. Therefore here is the second chapter of my fantasy-novel-in-progress. (Read chapter one.)
Until recently I hadn’t written fiction since college, when I wrote very bad short stories for a class (later stolen and pawned off as his own by a former friend attending a different college, but that’s another story). So thank you for reading! The fae will make their first appearance in chapter three, coming soon. I’ll introduce the next installment with some possibly mundane thoughts on dialogue-driven novels.
chapter two
A little crowd had already begun to gather in front of the Schwarz house, holding their phones toward the fallen rock as if they were taking readings with sensitive instruments. They were chattering and pointing. The phones swiveled to the front door as their owners spotted the kids standing there. People shouted questions that none of the teens bothered to answer. Maggie stepped out, teetered, and sat down unsteadily on the front step like a drunk person.
Brad said, “So what do you do after a meteorite crashes into your driveway?”
“Into my car,” Maggie moaned.
“I called 911,” said Elsbeth, sitting down beside her daughter.
The next several hours were a kaleidoscope of people, cars and trucks, uniforms, lights and cameras, motion, talking, yelling, and generalized exhaustion. Eventually the kids found themselves sitting on the front lawn, watching the confusion from a relatively safe distance.
“I don’t know if the police need to be here,” Maggie said. “I just read an article—hey, what is that?” She pointed at the mass that had killed her sole means of transportation to thrift stores.
“Um, that’s a meteorite, Mags,” Brad said. “Remember? Did you hit your head?”
“Not that, idiot,” said Maggie. “That. That … pink thing. On the meteorite.”
“I don’t see any—oh, wait, yeah I do. Huh, what is that?”
Pike began to say, “It’s probably just a—” as Maggie rose and started toward the rock. “Hey, Mags, don’t—Maggie,” he hissed. She was approaching the side of the meteorite closest to the house, where a pinkish something seemed embedded in the larger gray blob.
“Uh, Maggie,” Brad said, “you’re not supposed to touch—ah, she touched it.”
“What does she think she’s doing,” mumbled Pike.
Maggie ran her fingers over the object, then looked around to see if anyone was watching her. Everyone in the hive of activity seemed focused on other matters. She grasped the thing—a rather beautiful pink stone, she could now see—and pulled. It came off the large rock surprisingly easily. She looked around once more, furtively, then put it in her pocket.
She scurried back to the boys and sat down, gazing indifferently about her in a pantomime of innocence. “What the hell, Mags,” Pike hissed again. She removed the stone from her pocket and, shielding it with her hand from the bustling congregation around the meteorite, showed it to Pike and Brad. The stone was rough and small, maybe two inches in diameter, like a piece of quartz, but jewel-like, glittering in rose-pink tones from a thousand facets.
Pike said, “Wow.”
“Is this normal?” Maggie asked.
“Well, you’re the resident meteorite expert, you tell us.”
Maggie ignored Brad. “I can feel it, like, in my mind,” she said. “It’s … calming.”
Brad looked at Pike. “She definitely hit her head.”
“Kids,” Elsbeth yelled, dodging shouts from the local media teams that had assembled outside a cordon of yellow tape, “come on. We’re going out to eat while they clean this up.”
They got to their feet and followed her to her car, which had been moved from the garage to the street at some point that Pike had missed. “Who are ‘they’?” he asked his mother.
“Scientists, local authorities. The usual. I talked to a very nice professor of something who works at some kind of institute of metallurgy, I think he said. I forget the name.”
“Well that clears that up,” said Pike.
“It was all quite chaotic! I couldn’t keep track of everything everyone was saying. Basically they’re going to take it away for further study.”
“To the institute of metallurgy,” said Brad. Elsbeth narrowed her eyes at him as if trying to decide whether he was making fun of her.
They stood around the car watching the chaos for a bit longer. Elsbeth opened the car door but didn’t get in. A man in a white lab coat with black gloves was placing some kind of device on the meteorite while other men, also wearing black gloves, were wrapping what looked like a fire hose around it, attaching it to chains with giant metal hooks. “They’re going to try to lift it off the car onto the bed of that truck.”
“What truck?” said Maggie.
Elsbeth looked up and down the street. “There was a big flatbed truck, I don’t know where it went. Maybe they decided they need a bigger one.”
“That guy’s actually wearing a white lab coat,” said Brad. “I thought that was just a movie thing.”
“Come on,” Elsbeth said again, and they climbed into the car, which she slowly piloted down the street, navigating news trucks and fire engines and dozens of people standing around or talking in small clusters, watching the saga unfold. She recognized some as her neighbors, others she had never seen before. Mary McDonough from two doors down, who hosted the book club on Thursdays, caught her eye through the car window, lifting her hands and raising her eyebrows in a gesture that somehow conveyed both “Can you believe this shit?” and “Are you guys OK?” Elsbeth nodded back and mouthed, “We’ll talk later.”
From the backseat Brad said, “Can we get pizza?”
•
The next morning, Elsbeth stood on the porch, holding a white garbage bag, and surveyed her demesne with a fatalistic sigh. The scene was calm but still a mess. The meteorite had been removed; the wreck of the car remained. Someone had taken down the yellow tape but detritus littered the street and driveway—empty coffee cups and plastic bottles, fast food bags, random bits of trash. The lawn, however, was weirdly immaculate.
Pike came up beside her. “I thought they were gonna clean this up.”
“Luckily,” Elsbeth said, handing her son the bag, “I know just the crew for the job.” He groaned and dragged his feet down the porch stairs.
A half-hour later Pike plopped a plastic container whose purpose was a mystery into the garbage bag, straightened, and looked around. He figured he’d done enough. He pretended not to see a protein-bar wrapper that had eluded his previous notice. He was tossing the garbage bag in the blue recycling container in the garage when Brad’s skateboard clattered into the driveway.
“Dude,” Brad said by way of greeting.
Pike regarded him. He wore fluorescent green board shorts. “What the hell are you wearing?”
Brad rolled his eyes. “My parents are gone for the weekend and I forgot to do the laundry. I have no clean clothes.”
“So you decided to cosplay Point Break?”
“Hey, Point Break is a classic.”
“Nevertheless,” said Pike.
They entered the house, whereupon Maggie flew at them from the hall, saying, “There you are, Jesus, come to my room.”
“Aw, Mags,” said Brad, “I thought you’d never ask.” She ran without a word back into her room. Brad raised his eyebrows at Pike. “No derogatory comeback? Something must be wrong.” They followed; Maggie sat down cross-legged on her bed, holding something in her cupped hands.
“Shut the door.”
Brad complied. “What’s the emergency?”
Maggie held out her hands and whispered, “Look.”
The pink stone rested in her palms, pulsating with a soft rose light. It was very faint, but unmistakable. Light played about its surface, seemingly generated from within.
Both boys bent down to stare at the object. “I got nothing,” Brad finally said.
“What the hell is that thing?” Pike asked, straightening up. No one responded. “Actually, you know what’s weird?” he went on. “I haven’t even thought about it all day.”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Brad said. “It’s like I forgot about it till just now.”
“Same,” Maggie said. “It was in my pocket and every now and again I’d be like ‘Oh right, the pink rock,’ but then it would slip my mind again.”
“It wasn’t doing that light show yesterday, was it?” Pike said. “When did it start?”
“I don’t know, but I first noticed it just now, in the woods. Behind the house? I was back there … I was going for a walk.”
Brad smirked. “You mean you were getting high.”
“Whatever. I suddenly remembered it and took it out of my pocket and it was doing this.”
Pike squinted at it. “That meteor was just a meteor, right?”
“Meteorite,” Brad said. “Meteors burn up in the atmosphere.”
“I think it likes the woods,” Maggie said. She held the glowing rock in an outstretched palm, as if weighing it. “I think it wants us to go to the woods.”
Brad emitted a kind of squeal. “You know, you have been saying some really weird shit since you found that thing. It’s a rock. A weird rock, but just a rock. Right? Rocks don’t want people to go places.” He looked at Pike. “Back me up here.”
Pike shrugged. “I mean, rocks don’t flash like disco balls, either. And you can generally remember that they exist.”
Brad shook his head. “I give up. Sure, let’s go to the woods. Because the glowing rock from outer space wants us to.”