Page 15 of Circle of Death
“Just curious,” says Maddy. “How come you weren’t there to protect us?”
“I’m a teacher,” says Dache, “not a fighter.”
“Okay. But you see everything. You know everything. Who sent the drones? Tell me!”
“Not my purpose this morning,” says Dache. “Let’s begin.”
Maddy is in bare feet, and the dewy grass tickles her ankles. Dache is standing next to a large marble sphere, about three feet across. It’s not clear where it came from. Maddy’s never seen it. But it must weigh a couple hundred pounds. Dache stretches his arms out toward it. As Maddy watches, the giant ball starts to roll back and forth on the grass.
“Thisis your purpose?” says Maddy. “Showing me magic tricks?”
Dache says nothing. He looks totally at peace. He shifts his hands, and the heavy sphere rises slowly up off the grass. It hovers in midair, rotating slowly a few feet off the ground.
Maddy perks up. Okay. This is kind of cool. She takes a few steps forward. “How long did it take you to learn that?”
“Longer than you can imagine,” says Dache. With a slow turn of his wrists, he lowers the ball gently back to the ground. “Anything worth learning takes time.”
“Too bad,” says Maddy. “I have a short attention span.”
“So the record shows.”
Maddy cocks her head. “Whatrecord?”
“Second grade, age seven,”Dache recites.“Demonstrates impulsive behavior at play. Difficulty in focusing. Fourth grade, age nine. Intelligent, but scattered. Sometimes fails to complete assigned tasks. Fifth grade, age ten…”
“You saw myschoolreports?”
“As you say,” says Dache, “I see everything.” He taps the marble sphere and nods at Maddy. She wrinkles her face.
“What?Me?I’m supposed to make that thing move? I have no idea how to do that.”
Dache stares at her. “You know more than you think you do, Madeline.”
Maddy shakes her head. This is a waste of time. She closes her eyes and raises her arms like a sleepwalker, aiming her fingers loosely toward the sphere. “Abracadabra,” she mutters.
“Why are your eyes closed?” asks Dache.
“I’m concentrating. Isn’t that the idea?”
“That’s theoppositeof the idea. Relax your thoughts. Tension is counterproductive. It accomplishes nothing.”
Maddy blinks. Opens her eyes. Moves her palms sideways. The ball starts to roll slightly to the right. “Holy shit!” She glances at Dache. He nods slightly. She moves her palms in the opposite direction. The ball rolls to the left. Maddy’s eyes open wider.
The ball keeps moving. It rolls down a long incline toward a garden bed. Maddy flicks her fingers. Tries to stop it. But the ball just picks up speed. Maddy waves her hands back and forth. No effect. “Hold still, dammit!” she shouts. The ball jumps the border stones and crushes an entire row of chrysanthemums.
Maddy flushes with frustration. “See that? Itoldyou this was useless!”
Dache stands, unperturbed, hands tucked into the sleeves of his robe. “Failure is not useless. It is a necessary step.”
“Don’t fortune cookie me!” says Maddy.
She has a headache now. And she hates feeling embarrassed. She thinks back to the night a year ago when Lamont and Margo first tried to teach her how to turn invisible. It was humiliating. Since then, she’s discovered more powers. Like the power to shoot lightning from her fingertips. And she’s learned them on her own, without any help from some wizened instructor.
She has no patience for this.
Maddy whips her arm forward. A bolt shoots out and blasts the sphere into a thousand fragments. She turns on her heel and heads back toward the house, raising her middle finger straight into the air.
“Class dismissed!”
