The 13th Mage (29 page)

Jennifer looked around expectantly.

“She’s gone my love,” Aeoife said, “you Mommy has gone back to where she belongs for the time being.”

Jennifer wiped her eyes and looked somewhere no one else present could see.

“Time for a nice cup of tea I think,” said Aeoife, she had baked a cake in the morning for the occasion.

“We’ll come along in a little while, you go ahead,” Jennifer said, taking Owen’s hand and walking toward the stones Aeoife and Rossini had been sitting on just a few minutes earlier.

They
sat and
watched the sma
ll crowd depart. The mages walked away
chatting as though they had never met before.

Owen and Jennifer looked at each other, t
here were so many unspoken words, so many thoughts in their minds.
Jennifer would never be the same again, never be an innocent mortal again.
She was
mage, an old mage at that, one of the first.
Her memories and skills went back
thousands of years
more than Owen or Rossini, she remembered Rossini’s Challenge, it had been good.
The best.

Breaking away from the
Staff
voluntarily the first time and allowing Rossini to have it had been the hardest thing she had done in her entire existence.
Now
the Staff
held no a
ttraction, it was merely a toy.

“I’m not sure changing their natures was a good thing or an evil thing Owen.”
Jennifer said, looking at the Shadow mages in the distance.

“This is just a small battle in the war between good and evil, I don’t think it is evil to give them Light, they can just as easily put it out if they so choose.”

He was right.
She felt the sea, it was busy, it was large, and she felt her essence expand throughout the world.
It was witch magic, Owen’s legacy.

They held hands and watched the sea.

“Come on, we have a life to get back to,” Owen said kissing her forehead.

“But Mommy is gone.”

“I don’t think she’s gone too far.”

“No, but that is a world I have no access to.
I cannot go where she is.
I cannot hold her or talk to her, never will.”

It was true, once a mage chose the immortal path they couldn’t enter the realm of the dead.
He knew it was a space between lives, another dimension, but a dimension which was denied to them due to the way in which they kept their bodies integral.

“I told Harry that Heather was yours.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I wanted to make him happy, I didn’t think I’d see him again, Heather wouldn’t exist.”

Owen looked down at his feet. H
e picked up a pebble and threw it toward the sea.

“I like the idea you know, of Heather being yours,” she said and blushed from head to toe, “but now Sean is back and he might want to claim her.
Where is Sean by the way?”

“Oh, I took him to my house in
Brazil
, he
's
decided to stay there a while.
He needs to live on earth, learn to live here, and learn to become a mage.
You could say he is my
other
foster child.”

They laughed.

Jennifer was happy.
She was confused.
She still loved Sean, always would do, but it was Owen who was her true love.
He was the one she had seen in her mind’s eye as a child, not Sean.

“What do we do now Owen?”

“What do you see?”

“I see war and famine.
I see destruction, devastation, pollution and suffering, great suffering.
I also see joy and laughter, victories for the human race, peace agreements which are kept.
I see technology which we can’t possibly imagine could exist.
I see great people coming forth and
empowering
humanity.
I see humans evolving beyond anything we can possibly conceive.
I see the
Old Ones
making themselves known
to humanity
.
I see beings from other planets coming to meet us, some in friendship, some not.”

“What about us? What will happen to us?”

Jennifer looked into his eyes and concentrated.
She started blushing again, quickly she searched the world for a spell that would make the blush stop before it reached her face, but by the time she found one it was too late, she’s was red as a beetroot.
Then she was glad, because the embarrassment she felt was not thousands of years old, it was Jennifer, it made her feel herself.

“Are you okay? You look a bit flushed, must be all the stress,” Owen offered Jennifer a hand up, “let’s go for that cup of tea Aeoife was talking about, it will make you feel better.”

She hid a smile, “yes, let
’
s.”