Last Trip down Memrie Lane

Chapter 7
Chapter 7

7

The world swam into life again.

“No, concentrate!” he was telling her. “Your mind. The power within you. Not your body. Give into it.”

“I am trying!” Harley said back, close to tears. She had been doing this all day and the most she was able to do was make it turn color.

Her mage-crafter sucked his teeth and looked from her to the rat and back again. “You are thinking too hard on the rat. Think of its aura, its channel. What realm it exists in.”

Harley rolled her eyes. He had been saying this all day but it didn’t make any different. She was only thirteen. What did she know about auras and channels? She had been studying this for two years and she had only made a little bit of progress. The most she had been able to do was turn inanimate objects into other things. But she couldn’t get the hang of changing living creatures. “I can’t,” she said. She saw concentrating so hard by now it was almost painful.

“Enough doubt, Bella” he said. Harley wanted to shout out at him and tell him that she wasn’t Bella. She was a girl who was long and confused and she just wanted to get back to her friends Tania and Laura and go home. But she still didn’t. She looked at her feet and dropped her concentration. The man spoke again. “Again, Bella. You need to learn this. It is part of what you need to experience.”

She looked at him. She didn’t dare contradict him. He was powerful and wise and educated. He had trained so many of her family. She didn’t want to be the one failure in her family. She looked back at the rat, held out a hand, palm-up like he taught her, and looked at the rat. It seemed ordinary and pathetic as ever.

“Breathe,” he told her, “reach out with your inner strength… Concentrate…”

It was hard to. The breeze was cool and the setting sun was warm against her face. There were birds chirping, people moving around the outdoor yards. How did he expect her to concentrate?

She stared at the rat in its cage. She could never make this thing turn into a bird, no matter how hard she tried. After what seemed ages the man spoke again, “feel it’s aura. Find its channel.”

She let her hand drop. It was so tiring. “I can’t!” she shouted, before gathering up her skirt and running back to the house. She didn’t want to be a failure. But she couldn’t understand why it was so hard for her.

A knock came to the door. She wiped the tears from her face and called out from beneath her pillow. “Go away!”

“Bella…” her father called from behind the door. “Let me talk to you.”

Harley sniffled. Now she was in trouble. Her father was going to yell at her. And it was all because she was a failure. She didn’t have any power. She hugged Molly in her arms even tighter. The door creaked and she didn’t look at him as he entered and sat on the bed beside her.

“Bella would you like to talk about it?” her father said calmly.

Harley hadn’t expected this. He had heard this man scream and yell and hurt people with his mind, but she hadn’t expected him to sit by her with so much care in his voice. She was so startled that she didn’t answer. So instead, her father continued on, taking her silence as an invitation to speak his mind.

“It can be difficult, Bella. I know. The powers are hard to control and hard to understand. We are an ancient line of Magi. You have a lot to live up to. I understand that you are feeling pressured. But we all have to go through the training. It is our duty to the world.”

“But why did I have to have such a bad power?” Harley heard herself say suddenly. “Why did I have to get the one that is the most difficult to use?”

Her father smiled at her. “My child, that will only mean that it is all the more powerful and important. The hardest things in this world to obtain are the things most worthy of obtaining. You have a rare gift. You will learn to use it in time.”

He lifted her up to sit next to him. She held Molly in her hand tightly. Her father looked at the doll and slowly took it from her grasp to look at it. “Does she seem real to you?”

The question wasn’t odd or strange to Harley. For some reason, the answer came to her lips without any fear of embarrassment. “Yes. She is real.”

Her father handed the doll back to her. “Then my child, I would only give you this bit of advice: When she is real to you, try to think of how and why that is. Understand her and you will find her in yours”

He smiled at her and left the room gently.

Harley looked at Molly and placed her on the bed beside her. She turned to the mirror in the room to look at her reflection. Why was it so hard? She wanted someone to hold onto. She needed to let her emotions out and have someone understand her without contradicting her. She needed someone to care for.

“It’s ok…” said a small voice. Harley looked down next to her. The doll was facing her.

She caught her breath. The doll looked different. It wasn’t raggedy or uneven. It looked as real and alive as any human. Its small chest rose and fell as if it was breathing. Eyelids that weren’t there before blinked slowly over newly-glassy and shining eyes with brown clothes buttons for pupils. It smiled at her. “M-Molly?” Harley said, not daring to believe her eyes.

“Yes.” The doll said simply. Its lips didn’t move, but its yarn lips spread into an unmistakably loving smile.

“How?” Harley said.

The doll smiled wider and held up her arms, wanting nothing more than to hug the large girl next to her. “You,” it said.

Then before she knew what she was doing or why, Harley scooped up Molly, not as a girl does with her dolls, but as a mother does to her child: carefully and tenderly as though the small living breathing creature in her arms was as delicate as glass lace. She pulled the child into a tight motherly hug, supporting Molly with one hand on the doll’s diapered bottom and the other on its back. The doll swung its hands around Harley’s neck and hugged her.

She was doing it. She was making something that was not alive into something which was living and breathing against her body. It wasn’t turning a rat into a bird, but it was more than she ever had done before. Never once could she make felt and cotton and string reach out for a hug.

She tried as hard as she could to understand why and after a while, the doll still hugging her tightly, she stumbled on her answer. She had used her power because of her need to feel something beneath the surface. She didn’t have to physically turn the rat into a bird, she had to feel the rat turning itself into a bird. She simply provided for it.

And when she took Molly and laid her down on the bed, Molly was as real a child as any newborn baby. Her whole body had changed. Its face was soft and fleshy and real. She was moving and twitching like a real baby. Molly giggled happily.

Harley looked at her doll. It was beautiful. And Molly was all hers. She could pour her heart out to it and instead of laying motionless on the ground it would respond and react. Someone who understood.

Knock! Knock! Knock! “Bella!” called her mother from outside the door. “What are you doing in there! You are supposed to be attending to your studies!”

“I’m coming mother!” Harley called, and as she looked back at Molly, she saw that it had turned back to a doll, the doll with the large unblinking button eyes and crooked yarn smile. Harley’s face fell and realized that she needed a lot more practice to keep Molly the way she wanted her.

Slowly Harley got up and let the room, and the world around her faded again.