Chapter 15 – Resistance

The scene blurred around Jonah causing his stomach to lurch as a wave of vertigo swept through him. When he felt the world shift and settle around him he dared to open his eyes. He stood in the middle of an empty street surrounded by empty stalls where he assumed a market should have been. No one was within sight but a lone dog barked mournfully in the distance. His ears became accustomed to the eerie silence and he began to detect the wail of a baby and voices rising in argument. 

“You’re wasting your time,” a teen girl said to her companion. “Let the doctor attend to these…” she screwed up her face in ill disguised disgust. 

“He can’t do anything for them,” the boy said as he gently picked up the screaming baby and began to soothe it.

“Even if they don’t die now they’ll die later, “ she pointed out, arms crossed as if she feared he’d try to give her the baby. 

Shaking his head, “don’t worry I’d never give you a baby. You wouldn’t know what to do with it.” The baby’s screams softened to coughs and sniffles while its red face lightened to pink. 

“What’s that supposed to mean,” the girl demanded.

“Where’s your empathy? Your humanity?” He asked, carrying the child outside the hovel he’d rescued it from. 

Eyeing him closely the girl followed. “You’re not bringing another brat home to mother are you?”

“What else should I do with it?” He asked as he laid the now sleeping baby in the basket he brought with him for just this circumstance. 

Rolling her eyes, “you should leave it.”

“Its parents are dead,” the boy spoke softly as he swung up onto his horse. He had been too late to save the young couple but he had managed to heal their son before it had succumbed to the disease ravaging the city. 

Following him, she demanded “what are you going to do with it? You can’t expect mother to care for it and I certainly will not.”

Rolling his eyes “I wouldn’t dream of giving you a child to care for, Orla, it would die an excruciating death from neglect far worse than the disease that killed its parents.”

She stared at her brother, offended by his cruel assessment “you don’t have to be mean.”

“I’m not,” he shrugged. “I’m stating a fact. People are dying all around you and your only concern is for yourself.”

“What do you expect me to do about it? It’s not my fault they’re dying. I don’t see why it should be of any concern to me or yours for that matter.” she said.

“You could help me heal them,” he said, swaying a little as they rode towards home.

“Heal them yourself if you want but don’t expect me to help,” she scoffed. “Besides, what’s in it for me? It’s not like they’ll appreciate it.”

“It’s the right thing to do,” he said “with your abilities you could help so many…”

“It’s about time you recognize my superiority,” she gloated.

Rolling his eyes, shaking his head a little. Even though he knew her answer he continued “so you’ll help?”

“Pfft,” she shook her long hair back causing it to ripple around her shoulders “you suppose wrong my dear brother. I have better things to do than waste my time and energy on a lost cause.”

***

As the scene blurred and faded away Jonah opened his eyes and found himself lying in bed with the comforting warmth of Cecil beside him. “It felt so real,” he murmured as he tried to make sense of what he’d seen. 

“What was,” Cecil asked, moving to reach for the bedside lamp.

Sitting up, Jonah ran a hand through his hair, thinking he ought to get a haircut. “The dream I just had. I guess everything you told me about my ancestors really got to me.”

“Tell me about it,” Cecil requested, putting an arm around Jonah.

“It was just a dream…”

“That woke you up,” Cecil said, smiling a little when Jonah moved to rest his head on his shoulder. “Tell me about it,” he repeated, pressing his lips into his husband’s tousled hair.

“It started off with me meeting the mother of all magical beings,” Jonah began, “she’s not what I would have expected. Kind of ordinary but she had this aura that you knew she was who she said she was.” Sighing, he gave in to the urge to tell Cecil everything, even the minutest details like the fluffy cat asleep in the cat bed next to the fireplace and the siamese cat staring at him from the counter in the small kitchen. He knew he was dwelling upon those details to keep from dwelling upon the two kids he’d seen. 

Cecil could sense Jonah was edging around what had disturbed him the most from his dream; although he was almost positive it was more than a dream. “Did she tell you something that frightened you?”

Jonah let out a puff of air through his nose as he smothered a chuckle. “I wouldn’t say I was frightened, at least, not for myself. For the kids, yes.” He went on to tell him about the siblings he had seen and how much they reminded him of Eli and Jolene. “Do you think this is a warning? That history is repeating itself? Are my children being tested to see if they’re worthy of their magical heritage?”

Cecil didn’t say anything for several minutes as he thought over everything Jonah had told him. “She certainly provided you with more information than Morgyn was able to give me.”

“Oh,” Jonah felt his heart thud against his chest “so it wasn’t a dream after all.” Despite everything he still clung to the hope that it was nothing more than a dream. He wanted it to be a dream. 

Cecil shook his head “sorry. I think it’s meant as a warning.”

“What do we do,” Jonah asked.

“First you need to separate those kids in the vision from your own kids,” Cecil said. “They may be similar but they are different. Jolene and Eli are not those kids.”

“I know,” Jonah nodded in agreement, “but what do we do?”

“We give Eli and Jolene all the support and training we can,” Cecil said “the fact that we’ve been given advance warning means we can affect how things go. We are not locked into a no win situation.”

“I know,” Jonah repeated.

“But,” Cecil prompted, hearing the doubt in Jonah’s voice.

“No matter how much we believe I doubt Ethan’s going to be convinced,” Jonah sighed. “Ethan hates it every time I mention magic and how the kids need to practice on the weekends they’re with him. I doubt very much he’s going to agree to Jolene attending magical school.”

Cecil sometimes wondered what it would have been like if he had eliminated Ethan from their lives. There had been a few occasions in the past when he could have done it. He hadn’t because he knew how that would have affected Jonah. The temptation was real though. “Let’s give him a chance to do the right thing,” he heard himself say. 

“Right,” Jonah snorted, “we both know how Ethan’s going to react.”

“Try not to worry about it,” Cecil suggested as he reached for the light. “Try and get some sleep.”

Jonah closed his eyes but all he could think about was how he was going to explain this to Ethan.

***

Jonah jumped at the sound of Ethan’s hand slamming onto the table top in front him. He’d known Ethan wouldn’t like the idea. He had been prepared for him to object. What he hadn’t anticipated was his anger. 

“I won’t allow it,” he shouted as he rose to his feet, almost knocking the table over as he got up. 

“Ethan you don’t understand…” Jonah snapped his mouth shut as Ethan glared at him.

“Jolene is a perfectly normal little girl without all this magic stuff,” his hands sliced through the air as if he thought he could dispel anything magical with his daughter. “This all started with that thing…”

“Don’t call him that,” Jonah pushed away from the teetering table and stood. “Cecil’s the best thing that could have happened to me and the kids.”

Crossing his arms in front of his chest “I thought I was the best thing to have happened to you.”

Stunned into silence Jonah looked away. “This isn’t about us,” he said, taking deep breaths wishing he had let Cecil come with him. “It’s about the kids. Jolene needs more training than we can give her at home. The Sages think it would be good for her to train everyday.”

“In ROM,” Ethan’s voice seemed to thunder in the room.

“Yes,” Jonah nodded. 

Ethan glared at Jonah for several long seconds before turning to pick up his chair that had toppled over. “Did you speak to the sages yourself?”

Jonah blinked, he hadn’t expected him to ask that. “No, they spoke with Cecil.”

“And where were you during all of this,” Ethan somehow made it sound like there was some type of conspiracy happening between Cecil and the sages.

“I was at home with the other kids,” he forced himself to keep his arms at his sides instead of crossing them in front of himself as some kind of barrier between him and his ex-husband. “I trust Cecil. He wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to Jolene.”

“You have an awful lot of trust in a blind guy,” Ethan muttered.

“Just because he’s blind doesn’t mean he can’t read people.” Jonah couldn’t help but add to himself that Cecil had sized Ethan up before Jonah had begun to suspect there was even a problem. Shaking his head, Jonah pushed back the unwelcome memories “Jolene has abilities she needs to learn to control. ROM is the best place for that.”

“Sounds like a good excuse to get rid of her,” Ethan said, his lips twitching a little as he saw the stricken expression on Jonah’s face and eyes. 

“I want what’s best for her,” Jonah said, his hands bunching into fists at his sides. “She could seriously hurt someone or herself. Do you really want that on your conscience?”

Ethan’s eyebrows rose giving him a comical surprised expression “Jolene wouldn’t hurt a fly. Just because she teased her brothers into doing something they shouldn’t have doesn’t mean she meant for anyone to get hurt. That was an accident. Kid stuff.”

“Ezekial could have lost his hand..”

“And he didn’t,” Ethan shrugged. “You said, yourself, Jolene healed him. I don’t see what the big deal is. Seems to me that you have a bigger problem with her abilities than she does.”

“Things could have been worse,” Jonah stammered as he groped for a way to make him understand. 

“Maybe. Maybe not,” he shrugged.” Tell me again about this dream you had.”

“You’re making light of this,” Jonah sighed, wishing he hadn’t even mentioned it to him.

“I’m just trying to make sense of it,” he gave Jonah a pitying look “after all. I just want what’s best for our daughter.”

Jonah reached for his chair and sat down hating how Ethan had thrown his own words back at him. He’d tell him the whole vision as many times as it took if it meant getting Jolene the help she needed.