“You’re talking around something,” she accused.
“You know you’re stranger than me, right? How are you twelve? You’re like the reincarnation of a sneaky old lady.”
“Uncle Jason…”
“Yes, I’m talking around something. You really want to know?”
“Of course I do.”
“Alright,” he said. “What if I told you that magic was real?”
“That’s nonsense,” she said.
“Agreed,” Jason said. “What if I told you that it was true anyway?”
“You’d need some compelling proof,” Emi said. “The weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to its strangeness.”
“You’re quoting Laplace? You couldn’t go with Sagan and at least pretend you’re not that much smarter than me?”
“Stop dodging, Uncle Jason,” she said. “I’m going need an explanation better than magic.”
“Or some evidence proportional to its strangeness, right?”
“If you could prove magic is real, then you’d make millions of dollars and be all over the news.”
“I did make millions of dollars and get all over the news,” Jason said.
“The news has been nothing but that thing in Sydney for days.”
“Yep,” Jason agreed.
She narrowed her eyes at him, looking eerily like her mother.
“You’re saying that you’re the Starlight Angel?” Emi asked.
“I prefer Starlight Rider,” Jason said. “Angel comes with connotations I’m not entirely comfortable with.”
Shade pulled to a stop and the doors opened. They had driven to Castle Bluff, Shade stopping at the impressive coastal lookout. Jason got out and Emi followed. Although the Mid North Coast enjoyed mild winters, there was no one else around as the day turned into evening. Emi took his hand and they sat on one of the public benches set up on the lookout. The sun was dropping low behind them, leaving the sky over the Pacific a rich purple.
“Do you believe in magic, Emi?”
“Of course I don’t. You got weird, Uncle Jason.”
Jason took a deep breath to steel himself.
“I have secrets,” he said. “Secrets that I haven’t told your parents about, yet. I will, but I think you can handle them a little better than they can. Take a look at my car.”
They turned around on the bench to look at the car.
“Pack it up, Shade.”
The car exploded into a swirling mass of darkness that swept over and vanished into Jason’s shadow. Emi leapt to her feet, staring wildly between Jason and the spot the car had vanished from. She walked over, feeling the air with her hands as she stepped cautiously through the space it had just occupied.
When she turned back to Jason, he was draped in his combat robes, his starlight cloak shining and a huge, dark motorcycle next to him. He pushed the hood back off his head to reveal his face.
“You’re him,” Emi said.
“I’m him,” Jason said.
“How?”
“Magic.”
“Magic isn’t real.”
“That’s a reasonable position to hold in the absence of evidence to the contrary,” Jason said.
Emi warily moved closer to him, looking him over. His cloak shone with starlight and there was a sword at his hip. She trailed her fingers over the snakeskin leather of his robes, shaking her head.
“The Starlight Angel was able to heal people,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Can you heal people?”
“Yes.”
“What about Grand Nanna?”
When he had last seen his maternal grandmother, she had been in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Jason’s mother had her placed in a hellaciously expensive private care community in Castle Reach.
“Is she still at Garden Shore?”
Emi nodded.
Jason called up a portal arch, startling Emi once again. He reached out and took her hand.
Garden Shores was an expensive assisted living community with extensive staff and state-of-the-art medical facilities. A small number of large cottages nestled amongst a sprawling garden of native plants, situated along a picturesque shoreline of craggy rocks. Behind them were various buildings for administration and other services.
In a secluded part of the garden, in a copse of eucalyptus, a line of shadow drew its way across the ground. An arch of glossy obsidian rose up from the shadow, the darkness rising to fill the arch. A short while later, Jason and Emi emerged from the dark arch, her hand grasping his in a rictus grip. She looked around, wide-eyed, before doubling over with nausea.
“It’ll pass,” Jason said. “Most people throw up, the first go around.”
“I’m all right,” Emi, standing up straight but looking peaky. The same fortitude that made her adore theme park rides helped her to endure her first taste of dimensional translocation. She turned her gaze back to her surroundings, then immediately began moving off, touching the grass and the trees.
“It’s not a holodeck, Emi,” Jason said, amusement in his voice. “We’re really here.”
“That’s thirty kilometres,” she said.
“Yep.”
“Did you drug me?”
“You think I drugged you?”
“Getting dosed with something that makes me suggestible and knocks me out long enough to bring me here is more plausible than magic powers. A hallucinogenic makes more sense than your car disappearing, and the nausea could be a side effect of the drugs.”
“I went through what you’re going through now,” Jason said. “The sceptical mind, as it turns out, does not handle the truly outrageous all that well.”
“Are you complaining that I’m not more gullible?”
“Not at all. You’re going to experience a lot of strangeness and sorting out the real from the unreal is only going to get harder.”
“So why should I believe it wasn’t drugs?”
“Think about your own thought processes. They’re lucid, clear and analytical. Which is weird, because you’re twelve. Shouldn’t you be obsessed with a boy band or video games or something?”
“Just because you were basic at twelve doesn’t mean the rest of us have to be, Uncle Jason.”
“I’m getting owned by someone who can’t reach the high shelf,” he mock-complained. “Loving this day.”
“Get to the point, Uncle Jason.”
“Right, yes. Your thoughts. Lucid, analytical. Admittedly, it’s a subjective viewpoint, but if you were dosed up on the kind of drugs that made the impossible possible, then your head shouldn’t be as clear as it is.”
“You isolated me,” Emi said. “Took away any comparative viewpoints to measure against.”
“That’s a good point,” Jason conceded. “I originally intended to show your parents all this first, but I think that you and I can show them together. You can help me.”
“You really haven’t told Mum and Dad?”
“The only ones from the family who know are you and your Great Uncle Hiro. Come on; let’s go see Nanna. I haven’t been here in a long time, so I’ll need you to tell me which one of these is hers.”
Emi led the way, leading Jason by the hand.