dozen witches watching. “Can I get anyone under twelve to come up here, please? And can I ask the rest of you to collect into groups of five or six and practice? We’ll come around to you and help as we’re able.”
The back yard settled into the relative order of witches hard at work.
After a few minutes with the dozen or so Nova Scotia witchlings, a couple of things were clear. One, the children with Net power caught on fast. Aervyn had figured out a way to piggyback onto their channels, kind of like a pair of guiding hands, and it got results very quickly.
And two, while Net power was evidently quite common, most of them were like Nell—a spark or two, but nothing more. The exception was Kevin. His initial, Aervyn-assisted fireworks were almost as bright as Ginia’s—and then he repeated it on his own seconds later.
His quiet grin snagged Nell’s heart. She looked over at Elorie, who had been watching with silent pride. “Looks like you have a training buddy.”
Elorie pulled Kevin in for a hug. “I guess I do.”
~ ~ ~
Preparing tea for her guests, Moira smiled in satisfaction. Apparently you could teach an old witch new tricks. She was a Net witch—imagine that!—and a strong one, if Ginia and Lauren were to be believed.
What an irony that would be. Her entire life, she’d been the witch with a little bit of a lot of magics, but never a big dose of anything. It had made her a good trainer, and she had thought that her life’s purpose. Now, it appeared she would be joining her granddaughter in the history books as part of the first wave of witches with an entirely new form of power.
She felt positively giddy.
“Don’t rub it in,” said Marcus, coming into her kitchen. Nell was right behind him, not trying to hide her grin at all.
“I’m hardly doing that,” Moira said. “You’ve been a powerful witch since you were three years old. Surely you don’t begrudge others a little power of their own.”
Marcus picked up mugs of tea to carry to the table. She was pleased; hospitality was not one of her nephew’s stronger traits.
“I don’t,” he said. “It just seems rather unfair that those of us who have used our Net power the most are actually the most restricted in what we can do with it.”
“Tell me about it,” Nell said. “I have an entire crew of seriously unhappy Realm players.”
Moira sat down at the table and gestured for them to join her. “So explain this to me—I haven’t really understood it just yet. Why is it that some of us are so different? That would be the wee bit I’m not understanding.”
“None of us do,” Nell said. “But it looks like those of us with a lot of spellcoding experience are limited in how we can use Net power. Marcus gets powerful readings on our scans when he’s spellcoding, but he can only access a tiny fraction of that in the way we tried today.”
Marcus scowled. “It’s as if our brains have gotten hardwired.”
“It’s not the only kind of magic where that happens.” Moira stirred her tea contemplatively. “It works that way with astral travel as well. Mediums and travelers are fueled by the same power source, but generally witches with that talent can only do one or the other, unless they’re carefully trained in both while their talents are first emerging.”
Marcus raised an eyebrow. “That’s interesting. So if both are trained early, then a witchling retains both abilities?”
“That’s what our histories say.” She reached out to touch her nephew’s hand and hoped he might accept a small bit of comfort. “As you know, it’s a great sadness that we lose most of our astral travelers far too young.”
He said nothing, but she noticed he didn’t take his hand away, either. Her healer’s heart was gladdened by the small victory.
Marcus looked over at Nell. “If Aunt Moira’s correct, we need to think carefully about how we proceed with training.”
“Yup.” Nell topped up everyone’s tea. “We’ll need to teach all our Net witches to work with their power offline and online.” She grinned at Moira. “We need to teach you to spellcode.”
Ginia had been teaching her for several days now, but old witches knew how to keep secrets. “I think you’ll have better luck with young Kevin. His mind likes new challenges.”
“She has a point,” Marcus said. “We have seven Net witches with decent strength of the non-spellcoding variety. We clearly