As she watched Ralin pull himself nimbly up the rope, she still found it hard to believe that someone so small could be so strong and agile. If he hadn’t been so big for his age, the sight would have been even more disconcerting.

  “Did you play up in trees when you were young?” she asked Rave, all the while keeping her eyes fixed on Ralin, who had just swung himself off the rope and onto a thick branch. He stood upright on the limb, balancing easily while he decided what to try next. Leesa’s bad leg had kept her from climbing trees when she was young, so she had no idea how it felt being up there. It sure looked scary from down on the ground, though. The height did not appear to faze Ralin at all. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. A little more caution certainly couldn’t hurt, she thought.

  Rave gave Leesa’s hand a gentle squeeze, pretty sure he knew what was going through her mind.

  “We climbed all the time. Dral, Bain and I were like little monkeys. We were always trying to outdo each other, running and swinging through the branches, but we never fell once.” Rave decided to leave out that they were a bit older than Ralin was now before they started climbing. “Of course, we didn’t have mothers watching us and worrying. Perhaps we would have been a bit more careful if we did.”

  Leesa smiled. Rave always seemed to know exactly what to say. It was just one of the million or so things she loved about him.

  “Thank you for that. Does this mean you think Ralin is being extra careful up there? Because I have to say, it doesn’t really look that way to his mother right now.”

  Rave shook his head. “He’s only eighteen months old. He’s smart, but I doubt that kind of consideration is part of his makeup yet. Try not to worry too much—we volkaanes are pretty gifted physically, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  Leesa smiled again and ran her hand slowly down Rave’s muscular thigh. “I have noticed that, yes, at least once or twice. But if I shouldn’t worry so much, why are YOU watching him like a hawk?”

  Rave grinned. “I guess because I’m a father. That does seem to put a whole different spin on things.”

  Leesa took his hand again. “I’m glad to hear you admit that. It makes me feel a little less like an old worrywart.”

  She had no sooner finished her sentence when her breath caught in her throat as Ralin hoisted himself up with one hand onto an even higher branch.

  “Tell me again, please, how I shouldn’t worry so much about him up there.”

  “I will,” Rave replied, his eyes glued onto their son. “Just as soon as he’s got both hands on a branch again.”

  “Be careful up there,” Leesa called to Ralin.

  Ralin looked down at his parents with a smile. “Yes, Mommy. Ralin careful.”

  What might have seemed careful to Ralin didn’t seem all that cautious to Leesa. The longer she watched him, though, the more relaxed she became with his antics. Even so, she still kept her eyes locked on him the entire time.

  Finally, Ralin seemed to grow tired of playing in the tree. He grabbed onto the rope with both hands and began to lower himself. Leesa finally allowed herself to relax a little.

  Suddenly, Ralin’s hands lit up with the familiar bright green glow. His magic must have manifested itself as heat, because even from her spot on the grass below, Leesa heard the thick rope begin to sizzle and burn. A scant second later, the rope split. Leesa screamed as her baby plummeted toward the ground.

  Rave reacted instantly. From a sitting position he leapt forward, moving so quickly he was little more than a blur to Leesa. His volkaane quickness got him beneath Ralin before the child could crash to the ground. Rave caught him easily and pulled him close to his chest.

  Leesa barely had time to get to her feet, but she was now hurrying across the lawn. Ralin giggled happily, as if the near disaster had all been part of the game. His hands no longer glowed green.

  “Magic,” he said to Leesa from over Rave’s shoulder.

  “Yes, that was magic all right,” she acknowledged as Rave handed Ralin to her. She squeezed her son tightly to her breast as the adrenaline slowly left her system, allowing her racing heart to begin to slow. She was far more anxious about the whole episode than Ralin appeared to be.

  “Magic can be dangerous,” she told him. “Especially when you can’t control it. Do you understand?

  Ralin nodded. “Magic dangerous,” he repeated.

  Leesa had no idea whether her son actually understood what she was telling him or if he was merely parroting her words back to her.

  “No more climbing,” she said. “Not until you can control your magic.”

  From the frown on Ralin’s face, Leesa was pretty sure he at least understood the no climbing part of her admonishment. Whether he grasped the concept of controlling his magic was another matter entirely.

  “No climbing,” he repeated sadly. “Ralin no go up tree.”

  Satisfied that Ralin understood his new boundaries—at least until he forgot all about them—Leesa lowered him to the ground. How long it might be before Ralin achieved some control over his magic she had no idea, but it couldn’t come soon enough for her peace of mind.

  33. BUMPING

  LEESA SAT AT THE TABLE in the living room, gripped by a feeling she could neither understand nor explain. Her book of magic lay unopened in front of her—for the first time ever, she felt hesitant to lift the cover. She was troubled by a nagging sense that events were combining to drive her toward a dangerous future, and that by opening her book this afternoon she might be taking one more step in that uncertain direction.

  It wasn’t just Ralin’s brush with disaster the day before, though that was almost surely part of it, as was his increasingly powerful yet uncontrolled magic. She wondered if perhaps some innate wizard sense might be warning her of portentous events to come, or if her feelings of foreboding were simply a normal reaction to the unpredictable way things were unfolding.

  She felt foolish for hesitating. There was no way she wasn’t going to open her book, the same way she had done pretty much every day since Dominic had given it to her. Even when she was immersed in trying to master a recently introduced spell or power and was not seeking anything new, she still checked the book daily to see if IT had something it wanted her to learn.

  So, she was going to open the book—that much was clear. Now was the perfect time to do it, with Ralin curled up on one of the cushioned chairs enjoying a rare nap. Rave lounged in the other chair beside him, where he could keep an eye on Ralin and watch Leesa at the same time.

  She rested her fingers on the edge of the book’s cover. The aged leather felt familiar and comfortable. All she had to do was lift the cover and a few pages with it, and the book would reveal whether it had anything new for her or not. Yet still she hesitated.

  “Is something wrong, sweetheart?” Rave asked from across the room.

  Leesa wasn’t surprised that he might think so. He was always so in touch with her moods, and he had never seen her sit with the book for so long without opening it.

  “Not really,” she replied, twisting her head around to look at him. “For some reason, I’m a bit hesitant today, that’s all. I’m not quite sure why. I guess I’m still a little shaken by Ralin’s fall yesterday, and by not knowing what to do about his magic.”

  Rave came over and began kneading Leesa’s neck and shoulders. She sighed with contentment as his magical heat flowed into her muscles. She immediately began to relax.

  “I don’t blame you,” he said. “Watching Ralin fall had to be scary from where you were. I knew I’d get there in time to catch him, but you had no way of knowing that.”

  Leesa reached back and laid one of her hands atop Rave’s. “I thought my heart had stopped there for a minute,” she admitted.

  Rave increased the pressure on Leesa’s shoulders slightly. “What does all that have to do with your book, though?”

  “That’s the part I’m not sure about. I’ve just got this general sense of foreboding. I don’t really think it’s about my book at all, but who knows? There’s still so much about this wizardry stuff I don’t understand.”

  Rave leaned forward and kissed the top of Leesa’s head. “Perhaps you should just open it up and see what it shows you. Maybe there’ll be nothing to worry about, and you’ll have one less thing on your mind.”

  Leesa took her hand away from Rave’s and laid it back atop her book.

  “I think you’re probably right.” She drew a deep breath and flipped the book open to a spot about halfway in.

  No blank pages awaited her this time. The old parchment paper was filled with writing in the beautiful ancient waziri script. At the moment, she didn’t think there was anyone left alive besides her who could read the writing, except for Dominic of course, if he still survived somewhere inside the Necromancer’s table. Leesa wondered for a moment if she would ever be able to transfer her knowledge of the old tongue to Ralin the way Dominic had done for her. She pushed the thought away—she was getting way ahead of herself.

  As she slowly scanned down the pages, reading the words as easily as if they were written in English, she could feel her eyes widen in wonder and surprise. This selection was the longest and most complicated the book had yet shown her, almost five pages in all. Still, she was able to get the gist of it on her first read. She read the whole thing a second time to be sure she was actually seeing what she thought she was.

  “Anything worrisome in there?” Rave asked when she finally lifted her eyes from the book.

  “No, not at all.” Leesa slid her chair back and turned it around so she was facing him. “It describes a power I never dreamed wizards possessed. I’m still not sure I actually believe it, even after all I’ve learned about magic.”

  “What is it?” Rave asked, obviously intrigued by Leesa’s reaction.

  “Dematerialization,” Leesa replied, the complex word almost tripping up on her tongue. “The book is telling me how to walk through walls!”

  This time it was Rave’s eyes that widened in surprise. Clearly even he had never heard of such a thing.

  “Really?” He thought about it for a few seconds. “I suppose that could come in handy if you run into a locked door and don’t have a volkaane around to rip it open for you.”

  Leesa smiled, remembering how easily Rave had torn open the locked door to the armory building on campus when they left the Halloween party. That seemed so long ago now, but the memory of their wonderful first slow dance together remained fresh in her mind.

  “It might have other uses,” she said, “though I have no idea what they could be right now. In any case, I don’t think it’s going to be very easy to master.”

  “I can think of a few other spells and powers which initially fit that description,” Rave reminded her. “The air shield, for instance. That one took you forever to get good at, but look how easily you can whip up shields now.”

  Rave was correct, of course. “You’re right. Very little about magic comes easily.” Leesa glanced over at Ralin, who was still curled up asleep on the chair. “Since it’s probably going to take quite a bit of practice, I may as well get started. This is one new power I can try right here inside the house. Give me a minute. I want to read this over another time or two.”

  She turned her chair back around and started reading. The book made walking through walls—or any other solid surface—sound easier than she guessed it actually was. The main thing was to remember that all things, including wizards, were made up of matter and space, and that when you got down to the level of the tiniest particles, there was a whole lot more space than matter, even in the densest of objects. So in the most basic of terms, walking through a wall simply meant aligning your particles with the spaces in the wall, and vice versa. The key was in creating the proper alignment, which is where magic came in.

  Leesa read through the pages a couple of times to make sure she understood everything. Finally, she was ready. She left the book open on the table and stood up, turning around to face Rave.

  “If this works, I’ll be in the bedroom in a few moments, without having to go through the doorway. Wish me luck.”

  “Good luck, my love. Can I make one small suggestion before you begin?”

  Leesa was a bit surprised. Rave seldom made suggestions about her magic, unless she was struggling with something.

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “I suggest you walk slowly.” Rave flashed her a grin. “In case it doesn’t work the first time, I don’t want you smashing that beautiful face into the wall.”

  Leesa laughed. “Well, I had been thinking of getting a running start,” she replied playfully, “but I guess you’re right. Slow it is.”

  She walked toward the wall, stopping when she was only an inch or two from the painted surface. She resisted the urge to reach out with her hand first to test how solid it was. Her book had warned against such behavior, saying that testing in that manner displayed an uncertain mindset. Being confident you could do it was one of the keys to succeeding. As usual, a good visualization was another key.

  Surprisingly, the visualization was not all that difficult. Leesa had seen people appear to pass through walls in any number of movies, including Harry Potter and The Matrix. She liked the image of Harry disappearing into the brick wall of Platform 9 3/4, so she decided to use that. It had the added advantage of being wizard magic, even though the magic was fictional—as far as she knew, anyway. She closed her eyes and visualized the scene from the movie a couple of times.

  When the image was clear in her mind, she stepped confidently forward and promptly bumped her nose into the wall. The rest of her body thumped against the plaster a split second later.

  She stepped back, gently rubbing her sore nose. At an atomic level, the wall might well be more space than solid matter, but she clearly had failed to align her matter with the open spaces in the wall. Was this really possible, she wondered? A screen door was much more space than solid, but no one seemed to be walking through them—crashing through one now and then, maybe, but not walking through.

  “Good thing you were going slowly,” Rave said from behind her.

  Leesa turned around. She could tell that Rave was trying hard to stifle a grin.

  “Good thing,” she agreed, smiling. She shook off her doubts and the screen door image. “But if at first you don’t succeed….”

  She spun back toward the wall, recalling her Harry Potter visual once again and telling herself she could do this. I believe, she thought. I believe I can do this. I can walk right through this wall.

  She stepped resolutely forward and thumped into the wall a second time, bumping her nose and face even harder than before.

  Familiar young laughter sounded behind her. Resisting the urge to rub her nose again, she turned around and saw Ralin had awakened. He was perched on the edge of his chair, watching her with a big smile on his face.

  “Mommy bump,” he said, and then started laughing again.

  Leesa smiled at her son. At least someone was enjoying her failures.

  “Yes, Ralin, Mommy bumped.”

  Ralin slid down from the chair and crossed over toward Leesa. She thought he was coming over to give her a hug, but he walked right past her, not stopping until he’d plowed face first into the wall and then fallen back onto his rump. Laughing, he looked up at her.

  “Ralin bump, too.”

  Rave was laughing now as well. “See what kind of example you’re setting for your son? It’s a good thing you’re not trying to fly off the roof or something.”

  “Hush, you,” Leesa scolded, but she couldn’t stop herself from grinning. She WAS going to have to start watching what she did in front of Ralin, she knew. Practicing her magic without him around was unrealistic, since she needed to be nearby to shield him in case his magic erupted. The best she could do was to be careful, explaining what she was doing and hoping he understood. She reached down and picked him up from where he was still sitting on the floor, hoisting him up into her arms. She hugged him, then extended her arms so she could see his face.

  “No more bumping, Ralin,” she admonished. “Mommy bump, yes. Ralin bump, no. Understand?”

  Ralin nodded solemnly. “Ralin no bump,” he repeated, then let out another long giggle.

  Leesa wasn’t sure whether her instruction had gotten through to him or not. She decided there was no time like the present to find out, while her words were still fresh in his mind.

  She carried him over to the chair he’d been sleeping on and set him down. Rave sat down beside his son on the other chair as Leesa moved back toward the wall.

  “We’ll sit here and watch Mommy, okay?” he said to Ralin.

  “Watch Mommy,” Ralin replied, his eyes glued on Leesa. “Mommy funny.”

  Leesa smiled again, hoping she wouldn’t be funny this time. She cleared her mind and began her preparations from the beginning. When she felt ready, she stepped toward the wall again. For the third time, her face flattened against the plasterboard.

  “Mommy funny!” Ralin laughed from behind her.

  Leesa sighed and shook her head. At least he hadn’t gotten up off his chair to mimic her again.

  34. JUST PASSING THROUGH

  FOR THE NEXT FIVE DAYS, Leesa continued to try to walk through the living room wall. And for the next five days she continued to thump into the plaster wallboard. She was convinced her nose was growing flatter and wider from the constant punishment, like some grizzled old prizefighter. She never seriously considered giving up, however.