behind her. “I’ve heard that me nephew has mentioned the game me sister and I created for him when he was a wee lad. Most young witches begin to exhibit power at about eight or nine. Now, if I understand it right, were children don’t change till puberty, although they are always stronger and faster than regular kids. Anyway, always being a bit of a cheeky lad, Declan started in the cradle. His toys would be floating about his head all on their own like some great spooky mobile. So we needed something to train him with even as he learned to walk and talk and stop crapping his nappies.”
Oh my god. Did my aunt really just reference my toilet training? Half the class was giving me amused glances.
“Made it tough to keep sitters, it did. They always thought our home was haunted. But I digress. We came up with this game, what Declan eventually called Wytchwar. I understand ye were all going to get it going here,” she said, frowning at the bricks, wood, and Barbies. “So we’ll dive right in. First, I’ve marked out some parts of the floor. I need me witches to come down and do some preliminary spellwork before we put in the course. So come on down, ladies,” she said, waving the girls forward but ignoring me.
She quickly organized them by affinity and took them to various parts of the floor. She took each group, explained what she wanted, and put them to work with chalk, sharpie, ink, or whatever they wanted, marking spells on the floor. “No, ladies, use yer own spellcraft. I’m sure it’ll work just fine,” she said to Erika and Paige when they asked how the spells should be done.
Michelle ended up teamed with Miss Berg, both listening as Aunt Ash described something in the middle of the floor. They started to draw out spells, Miss Berg directing most of it. Tami and Zuzanna were working together on another section, Tami using colored ash she produced from her bookbag. Both Britta and Erika, who were working with Ryanne and Jael respectively, were weaving straw, vines, and small sticks together into little shapes and figures, which they set down on the floor where the spell was to go. A big ziplock bag of weeds and stick stuff was sitting on the concrete in the space between them.
Most of the witches used chalk although Zuzanna was using an artist’s paintbrush and a jar of black paint, while Jael used a bird’s taloned foot as her brush. It looked like it might have come from a big crow or maybe a raven.
When all were paired up and working, my aunt came back to the bleachers.
“The rest of you could be so kind as to move the wood and bricks and use them along the chalk outline of the entire space. Space the bricks and the wood out, no need to stack or have them touch.”
Aunt Ash put them all to work, moving the material out of the game space. The weres just picked up whole pallets of bricks, two weres to a pallet, and hauled them away with casual ease. The rest of the students started creating a physical outline of the course, one brick and one board at a time. The course was huge, at least in outline, easily thirty feet wide and seventy feet long.
When everyone was employed but me, Aunt Ash finally turned and looked me in the eyes.
“Warlock,” she said loudly. Everybody stopped what they were doing to watch. “Go out and bring me Earth,” she said pointing to the big overhead door at the other end of the basement. “Enough to fill this course,” she said, holding my gaze until I nodded.
Things were different between us. Strained and new, and she was really mad and hurt. But you get maddest at the people you love, right?
There was a person-sized door right next to the big overhead, and it unlocked easily from inside. I wandered up the concrete ramp that led to the parking lot at the rear of the building, thinking about how bad I had screwed up with my aunt. Blacktop stretched for fifty yards, mostly bare but with scattered patches of ice and snow that squeaked in the frigid air where my boot treads pressed down. At the end of the asphalt were large mounds of plowed snow. After looking around a bit and not seeing much visible in the bright sodium lights, I closed my