A Different Witch

Chapter 18



Lauren grinned and snuck a green block into the middle of Jacob’s intricate pattern. He giggled and pushed it back out.

Making airplane noises, she zoomed it around his head and dropped it back in the pattern. No giggle this time, just a quick shove out of the way.

Slowly, she picked it up again, watching for any signs that she’d leaned on his growing flexibility hard enough. He tracked her hand, but otherwise made no protest. Still moving slowly, she leaned over and tucked the block up his pant leg.

New game. And for Jacob, new was often still scary.

He looked down at the half-covered block for a while, thinking. Processing.

And then he picked up a red block and put it on her knee.

“You’re so silly.” She chuckled, making sure her face stayed in play mode. No need for Jacob to know her brain was trumpeting Ode to Joy.

Some of us can hear you singing all the way in the parking lot.

Lauren’s head shot up as Nell walked in the door of the Center. Hey. What are you doing here?

Nell picked her way slowly through the jumble of train tracks, pillows, and building blocks—therapy sessions with Jacob were never neat. It was time.

The morning suddenly felt like one of those that required another cup of coffee. Then again, she’d already had two. Jacob was a serious early bird. Lauren leaned over and kissed his head—victory was always a good place to stop. And he liked to play alone with the toys for a few minutes before he left.

“Something went right?” Nell propped her elbows on a small bookcase.

This didn’t feel like small talk. “Yes. He finds new things difficult, so one of the goals of his therapy is to work on that. Some of the fear comes from not knowing what to do, so we want to build memories where he’s successful when something new happens. Today I tossed in something different while we were playing—just a small variation in a game with his blocks. Three months ago he would have thrown a block at me.”

Nell grinned. “Sounds like Kenna.”

Pretty much everyone at Witch Central had been ducking ever since a certain silly uncle had taught his youngest niece how to throw. Daniel was still unreasonably proud of her aim. “Fortunately, Jacob’s a little less temperamental.”

“He didn’t throw stuff this time, huh? You seemed awfully happy.”

She’d learned to take victory in small steps, but today’s had been pretty major. Lauren told Nell the story of the blocks. “The goal right now is to have him tolerate change. It’s a pretty big deal when he actively wants to play the new game.”

“It’s like when my kids were little.” Nell watched the small blond boy intently now. “I used to sing to them all day long. And then Daniel would walk in and make up a silly new verse to the song, and he’d get all the giggles.”

Lauren was pretty sure she’d never heard Nell’s husband sing. “Most kids are wired to seek out novelty—it’s how they learn.”

They watched as Jacob pulled over another bin of blocks. More fodder for his patterns. Nell’s mind shrouded in sadness. “But not him.”

“Not always. He has a lot of challenges that make it hard to embrace something new.” And they weren’t only talking about Jacob anymore.

“Tell me about that.” Nell’s voice trailed off for a moment. “I think it’s part of what I came here to learn.”

Lauren tried to figure out how to explain sensory overload to someone who lived in the Walker household. “You know how it feels the morning after you’ve been on Kenna duty? The world seems to be moving weirdly fast and coffee doesn’t fix it?”

Nell smiled. “You think I have days that don’t feel like that?”

Point taken. Lauren dug for a better example.

“I remember the first weeks after Nathan was born.” Memories hazed Nell’s brain. “No sleep, and when we did manage to sleep, I’d wake up in a panic in case he’d stopped breathing or something.”

If they had a child, Devin was going to be on are-they-breathing duty.

“We were working on an update to the video version of Realm.” Nell chuckled quietly. “It’s a good thing I had two parents and three little brothers checking every line of code I wrote. I was more tired after Aervyn was born, but in many ways, Nathan was the hardest.”

Maybe Devin needed to take a little walk down memory lane with his sister—he was finding little babies on every street corner lately. Lauren focused back on her current conversation and made an educated guess. “Did anything change about how you handled emotions or sounds or light? Anything like that?”

“Yeah.” Nell fondled a bumpy ball pensively. “I burst into tears at random intervals, the lights had to be on bright, and I couldn’t stand the sound of Jamie crunching potato chips.” She bounced the ball quietly on the floor. “I’d forgotten about that.”

“Sleep deprivation makes most of us more sensitive to sensory input.”

Nell looked at Jacob, who was still intent on his blocks. “And so does autism.”

“Sometimes. People with autism aren’t any more similar to each other than people with magic.” Lauren grinned as Jacob stuck a green block in the middle of his pattern. Totally out of place—and exactly where she’d tried to put it. “But I think it’s one way that Jacob and Beth are similar. She’s just got a lot more coping skills than he has right now.”

Nell nodded. “Not fragile.”

“No.” Shay’s words still reverberated in both their heads. “I think she has one of the strongest wills of anyone I know. She’s just busy using most of it to cope with everyday life.”

“That must be very difficult.”

They were the right words—but Nell Walker, woman who had been born able to do sixteen things at once and do them easily, still didn’t understand in the place deep in her gut that guided who she was. Lauren ached to help.

“He makes wonderful patterns. Really complicated ones.” Nell was back to watching Jacob’s solitary play. “In another life, he’d be a great spellcaster.”

Lauren had a quiet debate with herself and decided Tabitha would approve. “Would you like to see?”

“See what?”

“We have permission to use nontraditional therapies here. Jacob’s parents know we pick up information from his mind. We don’t push too far unless safety is at stake, but I can give you a taste of what it feels like to live inside his head.”

Nell watched the small boy and his beautiful, intricate patterns for a while longer. And finally nodded.

Gently, Lauren formed the three-way link that would let Nell feel the reality of Jacob’s head. The noise. The clutter. The dimensional patterns that would keep a mathematician busy for a week.

And the steady determination to live anyhow.

-o0o-

Jamie shuffled down the street, hands in his pockets. Damn cold morning, at least by Berkeley standards. And he hadn’t dressed for a stroll, only for the one-block dash to Nell’s house.

Which would have worked out just fine, except she wasn’t home. And she hadn’t returned during the entire time it had taken him to consume three plates of Daniel’s hazelnut pancakes.

So now he wandered the streets alone, unable to tackle the problem Nat had sent him out the door to fix.

He snorted—that was a walloping dose of pathetic from a guy with an amazing wife and a belly full of the world’s best pancakes. Nell was hurting, stuck in the echo chamber of two people who had tried hard—and simply failed to comprehend each other. But his sister wasn’t the only way to solve this particular problem. Just the easier one. Maybe.

He turned the last corner on the route to Caro’s townhouse, thinking of Nat’s wise words of the morning. Witch Central didn’t only love—it understood. Saw people clearly and embraced them for who they were.

And in the implacable opinion of his wife, they still weren’t seeing Beth clearly.

He was well aware that he was only a small cog in the army Nat had mobilized. Shay had captain status, and he was deeply afraid that he was outranked by his own daughter and a boy last seen wearing a red cape while eating pancakes.

Even Lizard had been spotted in the vicinity.

It was a weird day in Witch Central when the non-witches, kiddos, and former delinquents were in charge and the rest of them could barely manage to tie their shoes.

He kind of liked it.

Or he’d like it just as soon as he managed to graduate to non-idiot foot-soldier status.

The first thing he noticed when he entered Caro’s yard were the flowers. Big purple ones—the kind that had no business growing in December. The next thing he noticed were the two witches crouched down behind them.

Damn. Nat’s army was fast.

Ginia stood up and waved. “Hi, Uncle Jamie. Did you leave any pancakes for me?”

Apparently the better army recruits put duty before food. This whole foot-soldier thing was more work than it looked. “Has your dad ever run out before?”

His niece giggled and collected her backpack. “Nope.” She grinned at Beth. “Don’t let Uncle Jamie touch your flowers. Gramma Retha says all the Sullivan kids were born with black thumbs.”

His father would agree—his children had tormented his gardens pretty much from the moment they were born. Devin had mastered rolling over for the express purpose of eating some yellow petunias, and it had gone downhill from there.

“I’ll take good care of them.” Beth touched the petals lightly. “Thank you—they’re Liri’s favorite color.”

That sounded ominous. “You headed home again?” Jamie was pretty sure his attempt at casual had totally failed, especially when his departing niece graced him with her best preteen eye roll.

“At some point.” Beth looked up, eyes welcoming and strangely peaceful. “I miss her.”

Choices. “I was away from home once.” The simple words caught in his chest. “Whenever you need a transport spell, just let me know.”

“Thank you.” She picked up a watering can and sprinkled the flowers. “I’ve never been very good with growing things, but there are wonderful gardens here, and Ginia says these should grow in Chicago, even in winter, if we give them a little extra light. Liri will love them, and so will Mellie—she’s our earth witch.”

She was talking. And she was collecting things—small treasures for the people she loved. He had a wife who did that.

Maybe he could offer something for her stash. “If you want, ask Aervyn to show you how to heat a fire globe a little. That would help things grow nicely.”

Her eyes widened. “That works?”

“Yup.” Their father had often snagged him or Nell to help baby his tomato starts in the early spring. He grinned. “Just don’t touch the flowers with magic still in your fingers.” It had taken a lot of crispy tomato plants before he’d remembered that lesson.

His dad had the patience of a choir full of saints and angels.

“Yeah.” Beth winced, eyeing the purple flowers nervously. “I wilted Liri’s orchids once.”

That kind of stuff could be very hard on relationships. And maybe he could offer up another small gift for Beth to tuck in her treasure chest. “If you want a visitor someday, Ginia loves to travel. I bet she’d be happy to help with the orchids.”

“Oh!”

He could practically see the sunrise dawning in her mind. And was totally clueless as to why. “If we can get you here, we can get people to Chicago. No problem.”

She cuddled her arms to her chest and simply glowed.

He’d somehow given her something huge—that much was obvious. And even if he had no idea what it was, accidental joy was still a gorgeous thing. He grinned back at the entirely happy witch in front of him. And did what foot soldiers do. “Want to come have some breakfast?”

Bringing joy home would make the major general very happy. And he was always up for more breakfast.

-o0o-

Nell snuck out the back door, bagel in one hand, strawberry smoothie in the other. Time for a morning snack and some noodling in her hammock hideaway.

Distracted by the gears cranking in her own head, she didn’t notice the hammock’s existing occupant until she nearly sat on him.

“There’s room for two.” Daniel caught her neatly and shifted, managing to deposit them both more or less safely within the canvas confines.

Nell handed him her smoothie and wiggled until her perch felt a little less precarious. “Hiding, are you?”

“No.” A smile crinkled his face in the patterns she loved. “Waiting for you.”

“What are you, psychic?” She took back the smoothie, wondering what the tell had been. It never took much.

“You come here to think.” He slid her fingers into his, swiping half her bagel in the process. “And ever since you got back from hanging out with Lauren this morning, you’ve been one big ball of think needing to happen.”

For Daniel, everything in life made more sense in ball form. “I went to visit Jacob, the autistic boy she’s been working with.”

“Ah.”

Her husband had thus far been very silent on the subject of one Beth Landler. “I haven’t done very well with Beth so far. I was hoping that learning a bit more about what it’s like to live with an autistic brain might help.”

“Hmm. Interesting.” Daniel munched on her bagel for a minute. “Did it?”

“Yeah.” And it was still rocking her mama heart. “Lauren piped me into Jacob’s head for a bit.”

Sympathy spiked in her husband’s eyes. “What was that like?”

She took a deep breath. The whirling, chaotic jungle of the small boy’s brain would haunt her for a very long time. “It’s kind of like trying to code while watching gaming live on five different screens.”

“We do that all the time.”

“Not when it really matters.” She’d get her pants beat trying to seriously game that way. “His mom walked in while he was playing with his blocks. And there was all this stuff flying in his head—colors, sounds I couldn’t even hear, gravity tugging on each of his fingers, the seams in his socks. I don’t know how he even noticed her.”

“But he did.”

He had. This time. “Lauren says sometimes he doesn’t.”

“Ooph.” Daniel’s fingers clutched hers reflexively. “That must be awful.”

“His mom loves him so much.” She’d felt it—huge, deep oceans’ worth. “And some days, even that isn’t enough to get through.”

Her husband laid his head back, pain tracking in his eyes. “Tab and Lauren do really important work.”

They did. And she was pretty sure a perhaps-not-very-useful fire witch was going to be visiting the Center again soon, even if all she could do to help was clean up blocks. “Sometimes, I look at Aervyn and think we have the hardest job in the world.” She looked at her husband, tears threatening to spill over. “We don’t.”

Daniel didn’t speak. He just tugged her into his lap.

Exactly like Jacob’s mama had done. “I don’t know how he opens his eyes in the morning.” And yet he did. And he was learning. Talking. Playing sweet, giggly games with people he clearly loved.

Her husband’s voice rumbled beside her ear. “He sounds brave.”

Yes. The distinction between fragile and different was blindingly clear to her now. “To him, it’s normal.”

“Mmm. A little bit like a small boy who likes fire trucks and teleporting and mostly ignores his hearing aids.”

Yes. And no. Nell tried to follow the thread that had been tangling her up for hours. “Kind of, but Aervyn’s different. It’s sort of like game points. Most people have a certain amount. With hard work, you can get more, but they’re still limited.”

Daniel chuckled. “Some of us aren’t fond of limitations.”

How well she knew—but very few people had her husband’s gaming skills. “If you use too many of your game points on your wardrobe or fancy buildings, you don’t have enough left for weapons.” Or nasty surprises left by elderly librarians.

“Sure. But most players only make dumb mistakes like that once. Not enough weapons, you die.”

“What if the rules aren’t the same for everyone?” asked Nell quietly. “What if some people have to spend half their game points just to have one decent outfit?”

Her husband’s breath blew out slowly. “Then they have to make some pretty careful choices on the weapons front.”

“Yeah.” The kind of choices that might make you seem weak to others. Or fragile. “I think autism’s like that. Jacob has to blow half his game points just to open his eyes in the morning.” Maybe Beth, too.

His arms wrapped tighter around her aching chest. “And you just want to give him half your stash, I bet.”

“Yeah.” She sat up, running her finger down the cold drops on the outside of her smoothie glass. “I always think of Aervyn’s hearing aids as no big deal.”

Deep brown eyes met hers. “They aren’t. But he’s got an awful lot of game points.”

Exactly. She closed her eyes, grateful that he so easily understood. “I’ve been judging Beth by what she does with her leftover points, and not giving her nearly enough credit for what she’s already done with the main chunk of them.”

Her husband was quiet for a long time, chewing the last bite of the bagel she’d never touched. “I’ve gamed with you for a long time,” he said finally.

She waited, fairly sure he had a point. Daniel Walker didn’t always pitch in straight lines.

“You know what I’ve never seen?” He took a deep swig of her smoothie and swung his legs over the hammock. “I’ve never seen any teammate of yours go under because they ran out of points.”

He stood up. “Not ever. I’ll go get you another bagel.”

Nell watched him go—and wrapped her arms around the words he’d left behind. They were one of the nicest compliments she’d ever gotten.

And wickedly smart advice.