Page 61 of Found Objects
“Nothing to be sorry for. I don’t have a dog in that fight.”
She nodded. “Sadly, these men here are missing the importance of that.”
“Narah?” Abel said sharply.
“You insulted him the other day, and Justin doesn’t see what he should.”
Abel shook his head. “I don’t understand what that has to do with—”
“Merritt.” Evan sounded a bit annoyed, and I had to smile. He wanted his answers. “I don’t get how the bones of someone related to me ended up under the machine shed. How could that happen?”
“That part might scare you, but I need you to understand just a bit about magic.”
He gasped. “You are magic! I knew it.”
“It’s not the kind you’re thinking. Alongside what is scientifically known, like dinosaurs, pieces of Pangea breaking apart, the fossil record, and evolution, we have, running concurrently with that, religion, mythology, and lore.”
Evan was excited, so he scooted as far over on the bed as he could, to the very edge of the thin mattress, to be close to me.
“In certain places, there are ancient pockets of what we call magic because it’s an easy word to parse, but are actually abandoned workings of things outside your realm of understanding.”
He scoffed. “Use smaller words, please, Mere.”
I chuckled. “When the old gods walked the earth, my boy, and performed their rites, sometimes they left behind places that we call magic.”
“Oh, I see. Like those vortices in Sedona. We studied those in class.”
“Those are actually earth energy. There are a lot of them clustered together there, and it’s awesome.”
“Have you been?”
“A long time ago, yes.”
“Okay, so you mean something different.”
“Yes. The places I’m talking about are much smaller, but when you cross one, depending on what was done there, for good or evil, you can feel cold, or scared, or excited, or happy for no reason that makes any glimmer of sense.”
“I’ve felt like that. Sometimes you go to a place and it just makes you wanna cry and you don’t know why.”
“Right. And I mean, certain places you understand from a history book or a giant sign that tells you horrible things happened there, and that can be overwhelming, and you’ll cry.”
“Sure.
“But sometimes, for no reason, out of the blue, you’re having the best day, and then suddenly you’re scared to death, and you feel like you’re—”
“Drowning in mud,” Evan said, shivering.
“Aye.”
“What?”
“Sorry. I meant yes.”
“And this time, for me, that’s because the magic left behind allowed the bones to be there, and then the ghost moved from their bones into me.”
“Exactly right.”
“Okay, so since our pack lands are new, how did the bones get there?”
