The Settlement
11th June 2012
03:00 AM
Set traps, set wards, bundle up children and assistant and luggage, then off to the wider world. Clear steps. Clear aims. Clear path.
It should be easy.
But I forgot one thing: At least half of the children must be naturally resistant to magicwork, given their own innate magic and/or not-so-human selves.
Loki the baby is the first one awake. I scoop him – or rather, them – carefully, carefully, carefully up out of the communal basinet, when… they’re still looking round blearily. Their temperature is far cooler than normal for a human, but maybe – hopefully – it’s fine for their race, whatever it is.
Well, but, unfortunately, the baby is quicker than I am. They shriek and thrash, alerting the half-awake little ones. And kiddy Thor, noticing the baby in my arms, immediately rushes at my legs, while screaming, “Heimdall! Save us!”
“Hey, you, come here!” I shout – well, shriek – in turn at the living weapon turned wallflower who’s still standing at a corner of the room. Because a great beam of energy is bearing down on our exact location, and I’m not in the mood to know what it’ll do to us despite the wards protecting this hideout. Fortunately, I’ve turned the basinet into a versatile portkey, so I just need to dump the children back into it and have the adults – me and the fleshy robot – grab a hold of it.
I forgot to prepare everyone for the trip, though. I forgot, too, that, given where I’m going, the spinning sensation is far more horrible and lengthy than it usually is.
And, the ultimate mistake of all, I forgot to layer a comfort-and-safety-charm set to the portkey for when it lands.
Bodies, small and big, fly away from the basinet when it pops into existence in our destination, as if thrown aside from the centre of an explosion. They – and I mean us – thump uncushioned and unprotected onto grassy dirt before I can try to do something about it. And soon, the clamour of moaning, wretching, crying and squawking children fill the air, before a childish roar sounds and frightens the other juvenile sounds into shrieking.
Damn. I. Hate. Portkeys.
Still dizzy from the impact against the ground and the prolonged whirlwind of portkey magic, I scrape myself off of the grass, then hobble across the mess of vomit and flailing limbs and high-pitched noises to reach the source of the roaring.
Fists wack at my thighs extra enthusiastically, coming from at least three pairs of them. I ignore the throbbing bruises the little blighters leave, and scoop the literally green Bruce Banner – the roarer and one of the little impromptu boxers – up into my arms.
“Sssh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, okay? Didn’t mean to hurt you.” I try to convince him. At the same time, I desperately attempt to prevent him from tipping or wriggling out of my arms, with an adaptation of my hand-to-hand combat skills. “Come on, stop it, little one, or you’ll fall down, then you’ll get hurt again. Don’t blame me if you do, if you keep this up.”
And, while doing those frazzling things all at once by necessity, I have to dance away from the punches and kicks that most of the others still try to land on me, with eyes roaming and senses alert. Because while most of the little ones are… well, not so tiny, and I and my new assistant can take the impact with grassy dirt rather well, we’ve got one teeny tiny baby in our little company who must have also been thrown away from the damn portkey when it arrived. I must check if they’re all right!
“STOP IT!” I snap, at last, roaring into the yammering cacophony, when I trip against little bodies and littler feet and over the imbalance caused by the flailing child in my arms, for the third time in a row.
Guilt swamps me in an instant, as the sunlit clearing we’re in is suddenly deathly quiet and motionless, including the bundle of energy currently residing in my arms. But I tamp it down, as well as the magic that I wasn’t aware flaring out, and continue sternly, “I’m sorry, all right? I didn’t prepare well. Now I’m trying to sort us all out, and I need help from everyone.”
I give kiddy Thor a particularly stern look at the end of my little speech, and continue further just for him: “This also means no calling for anyone who are not any of us here, unless you are in danger and can’t ask me or my partner over there.”
He opens his mouth, looking belligerent, so I zap him silent with a little bit of magic.
Damn. I forgot how spoiled and attention-seeking some of them were in their respective childhoods. And I’m just one person.
And I already made them my family. Irrevocably.