“Can you do it too, Aunt Ash?” I asked, bouncing in my seat.
“Yeah Ash, can ye still conjure up your air devil?” Mama asked her, grinning.
My aunt’s slightly disapproving expression vanished at the challenge, her eyebrows raising almost to her hairline.
“Oh, ye think I forgot, do ye?” she asked. Power flowed around her and I watched closely. My aunt was an Air witch, not Earth and Fire like Mama and me. Anytime she used magic, I was fascinated.
The calm air of the living room suddenly came alive, swirling around us, flicking our hair before moving close to the big pillar candle at the center of the table. The flame went out, a tendril of white smoke rising steadily from the still-glowing wick. The smoke stopped climbing four inches above the candle, forming into a ball as more and more sooty plumes joined it.
“That’s more than enough,” Mama said and I felt a pulse of power flick to the candle, which relit itself.
“Hmpf,” Ash said, giving her a mock glare and winking at me. The ball of smoke shifted about, turning and twirling in on itself, compacting and forming new shapes. Wings appeared, smoky and gray, then a body and head, complete with long, flowing white hair. It was a little woman, with tiny curves and delicate features. The wings began to flap and the smoky female suddenly flew straight at me.
I didn’t move a muscle, confident even at six that my aunt’s magic would never harm me. The girl of smoke flew all around me, then dove at my mother’s dirt person, who had also taken on a female form, although not so delicate of feature.
“Can I do it? Can I?” I asked, suddenly beside myself with the need to get in on this game.
“I don’t know, lad. Can ye?” Mama asked. I recognized the same challenge she had thrown at Aunt Ash.
I grabbed a clump of dirt and held it in my hand.
“Use your other hand, laddie, the Pushing hand,” Mama suggested.
Chagrined, I dumped the soil from my left into my right. I knew better than to use my receiving hand for channeling but in my defense, this was about the coolest thing I had ever seen, and I was overexcited.
I focused on the grains of earth in my palm, but my excitement had my thoughts fluttering like Ash’s smoke girl’s wings. Taking a breath like they had each shown me, I held it for a second, then let it out slowly, my focus drilling down on the particles of rock and organic matter. Seconds ticked by as I fell into the dirt, feeling each grain with some part of my mind. A picture of a little dirt boy appeared in my head and the grains in my hand shifted and jumped. I added details to the image and the soil began to rise up into first a mound, then almost a cylinder. Legs split apart at the lower half, then tiny arms each raised to the side. He had no face, his body straight up and down, his head just a round lump, but he was real, and he was moving.
Beside me, I sensed my mother and aunt exchanging a glance, but I was too focused on my dirt person to pay any attention. They were always giving each other looks whenever I did anything, and I had stopped trying to figure out what each meant. At that moment, feeling my dirt guy begin to walk, however clumsy, was amazing.
“I’m doing it!” I yelled and he fell apart, still in my hand.
“That ye did, kiddo,” my aunt said, reaching out to rub my hair. “Aww now, there’ll be none of those long faces, ye hear? Ye did clever Craft jest now and ye should be honored that the goddess has favored ye so,” Ash admonished and encouraged at the same time.
“We dinnae start this game till we were eight and nine, so listen to your aunt and put away your disappointment,” my mama said. “There is nothing for it but to do it again.”
So, I did. And I did it every day after that, at least once I was done with my garden chores, had helped in the restaurant, completed my daily reading practice, and practiced my control exercises. The last were never to be forgotten or skipped. Fifteen minutes of just sitting, breathing, and pulling in the tendrils of magic that constantly slipped out of me and into the world around me. It was a practice I had started so long ago that I couldn’t remember a day when I didn’t do it. It started small, just a minute or so, then gradually grew to a full fifteen minutes every day.
Mama made me spend even more time at it and six months later, I was responsible for a full forty minutes of control time, but afterward, I got to spend hours playing the game that I had come to call Wytchwar.
I was only allowed to play and practice inside our back barn, within the warded circle that I had laboriously helped my mother make. Each day’s fun began with a careful renewal of the runes around the circle’s edge. My mother had been adamant that not a trace of power could ever leave that circle or the game would be banned.
“What have ye done now, lad?” My mother asked upon entering the barn where I was playing.
“I’m making other players, Mama. This is going to be a dragon,” I said, pointing at the sticks and wire I was working on.
“Hmm, that’s pretty advanced, boyo. Can ye do it?” she asked.
“He’s just another kind of dirt guy.”
“Well, I guess he is at that. Now,
