Trios

Not all things that come in groups of three are bad.

Dan and his younger twin brothers, Pat and Simon, live in a fairly ordinary Yorkshire village and enjoy a mostly quiet life. The only unusual thing about them is their strong affinity for water, which has something to do with the special cottage in which they grow up. The cottage just so happens to sit over a natural source of magic that saturates the three brothers and primes them to reach their true potential. All they need is a magical makeover and they'll have a chance to make a difference in the endless conflict between good and evil.

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Trios
by Terry Volkirch

Chapter 5: Ominous Encounters

Friday arrived, cold, wet and very gray, reflective of the mood of those gathered for a funeral. Umbrellas kept long coats and black dresses dry for all except three teenage boys who stood well back from the circle of people that surrounded the graves. The boys preferred getting soaked to letting anyone see them cry, something they seemed to do with increasing ease. Raindrops provided the perfect camouflage for their tears.

As an Anglican priest said a few words to send the girls on to heaven, a sudden gust of wind swirled around the gathering. The air shimmered just behind the priest and something vaguely humanoid appeared. The humanoid stood two heads taller than the tallest man at the cemetery, with gray-blue skin and straight long black hair that stuck out stiffly in all directions. It wore a long black trench coat and dark sunglasses to block out the daylight. In spite of the gloom, the light still bothered it.

No one screamed. No one pointed at it or ran away. As Jenna predicted, none of the mundanes could see it, but that didn't include the three boys who apparently had advanced beyond novice practitioners of magic. The boys saw through the illusion of the rain filling in where the creature stood. They saw the creature itself. They saw the pointed ears, skin color and very long, bent nose that would've identified it as a troll to anyone knowledgeable about dark creatures.

Simon carefully nudged Pat with his elbow, and Pat nudged Dan who then sent the same signal back through Pat to Simon, just as they'd planned. The boys kept their eyes fixed on the three coffins and controlled their thoughts. They focused on their grief and the tragedy that led to the funeral, anything to keep from acknowledging the presence of the troll.

The tall humanoid slowly wandered around the main group of people in a counterclockwise direction, occasionally stopping to tilt its face up and sniff the air. It sounded like a large man blowing his nose in a handkerchief. The mundanes had to be able to hear the sniffing but it blended in fairly well with the sounds of grief so it didn't alarm anyone.

After circling twice, the humanoid stopped sniffing and shambled diagonally towards the boys from their left. Simon flinched once and just barely held his ground when the troll blocked his view of the coffins. Pat sensed the problem and quickly draped his arm on Simon's shoulders to steady his brother.

The dark creature didn't respect the dead. It trod over graves that laid between it and the boys, its large bare feet making squishy sounds and leaving vague footprints in the wet grass. No one noticed the trail left by the troll, not even the boys. They continued to look in the direction of the coffins, staring through the troll when it blocked their view so they wouldn't give themselves away.

The tall, hideous creature stopped when it got to within an arm's reach of Dan. It stood just off to the right of Dan's view of the coffins and looked about to sniff again, but it held back, realizing that it would give itself away. It was given strict orders not to do that unless it found a new trio. 'I remember, I do,' it thought, sending out waves of fear that the boys actually felt.

Dan's knees trembled and he quickly pulled a tissue out of his coat pocket and rubbed his nose with it to distract himself.

The rain intensified at that moment, causing the troll to glare up at the clouds. It didn't like rain. The rain interfered with its keen sense of smell, and out of desperation, it carefully took a quick, short sniff in the air, trying very hard not to make a lot of noise and succeeding. The sniffing wasn't heard over the sound of the pouring rain.

'I smell magic,' it thought. 'The nose knows. The nose knows.' The tall humanoid looked around and then gave the boys a good long look.

Dan could see the huge thing, bent over and staring right at him and his brothers. He had to close his eyes and pretend to rub them like he was crying. He didn't care if he showed weakness. He couldn't look into the large, black eyes of the troll. He rubbed his eyes for several seconds but when he dropped his arm back to his side, the troll still stood there, staring at him. He waged a tremendous battle with his eyes not to change his line of sight ever so slightly and lock eyes with the hideous thing. It took all of his willpower and still he wavered. Just one little glance and his life would be over.

'Help me, Jenna. Goddess. Someone,' he thought. 'Please help me.'

Just then, he heard a young woman start singing as part of the ceremony. Her clear, soprano voice cut through the steady hiss and spatter of the rain, and he clung to every line, every word. The song gave him the strength to resist the troll's gaze.

In times of trouble, look ahead.
Look past the gloom and doom and see?
The sun shines clear and bright.

And even in the darkest hour,
The Earth keeps spinning endlessly.
We can escape the night.

Time flows ever onward,
Starting off a brand new day.
Leaving graveyards in its wake,
Forever now. Time flows.

He looked ahead, imagining a time in the not so distant future when the sun would shine again. Life would go on. The boy sighed with relief as the singing continued.

The troll snorted with disgust and turned to shamble back towards the coffins. When it circled back around close to the priest, it bent down and gently sniffed the ground around the priest's feet.

'I smell death,' it thought, smelling the girls in their coffins as they were lowered into the graves. 'Death and magic. Fire and a trace of earth magic. Must be them. Must be. It is done.'

The troll stood up and disappeared in a shimmer of light a fraction of a second before the priest tossed a small handful of dirt down onto Jenna's coffin.

The timing startled Simon. He let out a gasp as if he'd been holding his breath and shuddered. Pat's arm still draped across his shoulders, giving him a little comfort.

When the priest tossed the last handful of dirt down onto Kate's coffin, the rain let up and the sun suddenly peeked through the clouds, causing a rainbow to flare up behind the boys. Most everyone took it to be a good sign, thinking that the girls were in good hands.

~o~O~o~

The boys had got lucky and Jenna made sure they understood just how lucky they were. The rain had diluted their relatively weak scent of magic, confusing the troll's very sensitive sense of smell. If it had been a warm, sunny day, the troll would have smelled magic on them and attacked in spite of the presence of normal humans. The Dark Forces had grown bolder every day.

Over the next two months, unusually heavy rains took their toll on the countryside with widespread flooding. Swollen lakes connected wide streams. Rivers overflowed their banks to invade farmlands. The Goddess worked to balance out the effects of the Dark Forces in her own mysterious ways.

By the end of July, school would let out for the summer holiday. The incessant rains would upset most of the kids, but not the Green brothers. They'd take full advantage of the wet weather. The rain would help hide the boys and also provide a potential source of ammunition for magic battles, allowing the boys to continue their training in relative safety. It would also help the girls to communicate with the boys away from the pool. When it rained hard enough, the girls could speak directly to the minds of the boys.

The boys hated to leave the safety and comfort of the pool. They learned so much there and loved the water. But they had to move on to other magic besides elemental water. They had a lot more to learn. Dan actually felt some relief too. His budding breasts continued to develop and quickly became impossible to hide in the pool. He had to start binding them soon after leaving the pool to keep them hidden under his clothes.

The girls finished the water magic lessons by the end of June with air magic lessons lasting another few weeks after that, finishing just as summer holiday started. Air magic had been relatively simple to learn compared to water magic. Everything got easier as they went along since a lot of what they learned could be related to many different kinds of magic.

They started the lessons in the pool with the water-breathing spell — a combination of air and water magic — and timed the rest of the lessons outside during some of the heavier rainy periods. The boys got drenched as they mentally spoke with the girls in the rain but they didn't mind.

'It's time to start learning about earth magic,' Jenna told them, ' and these are perfect conditions for the next spell. The rain water mixes with the heavy clay soil here to make it easy to form pottery.'

'Pottery?!' all three boys said in unison and groaned.

'It's a useful spell! And anyway, you never know when it might come in handy in battles. Virtually all spells can be tweaked to use for either attacks or defense. It's part of what we know and we're teaching you everything.' Jenna left no wriggle room for the boys and they dutifully learned what she had to teach. They retreated to the shelter of some trees so they wouldn't get too much water in the spell.

In addition to being attuned to water and air magic, the boys also found it easy to detect and manipulate earth magic, and even a little fire magic. They decided not to tell the girls right away. They wanted to surprise their teachers when they thought the time was right.

Dan pulled purified clay from the soil and formed a small urn as inspiration struck. He could dry his urn with water magic by drawing out the water according to Jenna's instructions but he knew about kilns and firing the clay to set it so he decided to fire his urn with magic. After spinning the clay in mid air under the branches of a large sycamore tree, he used air magic to send a whisper to his brothers, asking for some fire magic. They answered with a nod and sent back a small but significant source of the requested magic.

All of the spells so far had consisted of at most two types of elemental magic. Dan's attempt involved three forms, with fire in addition to earth and water. It was more complicated than he was used to but he figured it was still simple enough for what he wanted to do. After finishing the shape of the urn, Dan had his brothers stand back in case the fire ball got too large and he cast a shield spell on himself. Then he hit the urn with a small, concentrated blast of magic fire and the results were spectacular. The water in the clay superheated and the urn exploded in a ball of pottery shards and steam. The shield blocked all of the damage from the exploding urn. It didn't provide any protection from Jenna's verbal explosion though.

After Jenna stopped screaming, she managed to calm herself enough to explain why she was so upset. Dan had just created a beacon that would undoubtedly attract the attention of the Dark Forces. There wasn't enough power released to attract any creatures that lurked nearby in other dimensions but those responsible for the trouble down in London would be near enough to detect Dan's use of fire magic. They'd all be on high alert.

~o~O~o~

A small, gray salamander popped out of thin air and plopped a short distance onto the damp grass not far from the girls' graves. It wriggled and squirmed over the short grass and stopped to take a deep sniff of air once it got to the Jenna's grave. Looking around, it decided the area was safe enough and settled down for a nap. It didn't go unnoticed.

Jenna felt a strange tickling sensation as she worked with Dan. It took her a few minutes to realize it was somehow connected to her remains. Someone or something lurked near her grave. She was sure of it.

'I need to check something out at the cemetery,' Jenna told everyone.

'Why?' Kate asked. 'What's wrong?'

'Just stay here. I'm not sure what's happening but it can't be good.'

Jenna rushed to the cemetery and slowed down to carefully approach her grave. She almost missed the tiny intruder as she hovered over her name plate. After giving it a good, long look, she went back to the others.

'We've got a salamander problem,' the girl said to the others.

'You mean a newt?' Simon asked.

'Well… newts are salamanders but this salamander is definitely not a newt. It's a creature of fire.'

'Fire?!' Simon said, looking a little concerned.

Pat voiced his thoughts as he looked up. 'I remember reading about salamanders in my gaming books. They're fire elementals.'

'That's right,' Jenna said. 'I warned you about the use of fire magic. Now we have a little work to do.'

Jenna taught her pupil a couple of spells that could prove useful, including a stun spell, and with all of their preparations done, the six of them headed off to the cemetery.

~o~O~o~

The three boys crouched low in the wood just to the west of the cemetery. A steady rain continued to fall, helping to discourage people from visiting their deceased loved ones. The young magic users had the whole cemetery to themselves.

'What's the plan?' Dan asked Jenna.

'You get as close as you can to my grave and hit it with the stun spell.'

'Then what?'

'I don't know. I'm not sure. Crush it with a rock? It's small enough.'

'Do I have to kill it?' Dan wrinkled his nose. He didn't like the idea of having to kill a young creature, even if it was evil.

'if there's no other choice you do. I don't think we can hold it prisoner now that I think about it. It'll slip through to another dimension and go back to warn its dark master.'

'I'm not going to kill it.' Dan folded his arms and set his jaw.

Jenna rolled her eyes. 'You had no trouble with the serpent in Lake Askern.'

'That was different. It was much bigger and knew what it was doing. That salamander looks like a baby.'

His last comment made the girl think. It actually didn't make sense for a young salamander to act as a spy. It had to be enhanced somehow. Perhaps a mind probe could figure out the truth of things.

'Salamanders don't have babies like you're probably thinking, Dan. It's newly developed and they tend to be smaller when they're newly developed, but they don't give birth. You're right about one thing though. A newly developed salamander wouldn't be mature enough to handle a spy mission. Something is off about this one.'

'New plan then?' the boy asked.

'We still need to stun it. After that, I'll see if I can probe its mind. I'll try to figure out what's been done to it so you can reverse it if possible. Satisfied?'

'Yeah. Let's get going.'

Pat and Simon hung back in the wood with the girls while Dan crept towards Jenna's grave. He got within two strides of the grave when the salamander opened its eyes and hissed a small cloud of steam.

"Flippin' heck!" Dan shouted out loud.

The salamander turned and ran, trying to buy itself some time. It needed time to build up enough magic to escape into another dimension. It detected strong magic coming from the boy and had to report it.

Dan recovered quickly enough and formed the stun spell in his mind as he gave chase. He stayed close enough to easily stun the little salamander. Jenna arrived just as he reached down to pick up the little creature by its tail.

'Careful,' she warned. 'It might be a little hot.'

The salamander could easily fit in the palm of Dan's hand but he didn't dare hold it. Instead, he used a water skin spell on his hand and pinched the tail between his thumb and index finger. The water covering his fingers sizzled and steamed.

The boy and girl returned to the wood and Dan gently placed the salamander on a rock. Then Jenna probed the salamander's mind, getting angrier the longer she probed. After a couple minutes, she stopped and fumed. 'Those bastards! They brain blasted the poor thing. They completely overwrote its mind with their own selfish thoughts and orders. Oh!'

The boys wisely let her get her anger out of her system before Dan asked what, if anything, could be done.

'I'm not sure if any of its original mind can be saved,' she said. 'I can have you erase what's been done to it but I'm not sure if anything will be left. It's awful. That's one of the worst things you can do to another sentient being.'

The girl wished she could cry, but as with Emma, as with all spirits, tears can't form without a body. It was so unsatisfying, and so unfair. The two other girls embraced her to give what comfort they could and Jenna got on with the plan.

'I'm sorry,' Dan said. 'Maybe it would be better to kill it then.'

'No, you're right. It's an innocent in all this. I say we at least try to remove the brain blast spell effects and see what's left. It's young enough that it couldn't have had much of a personality.'

'Right then. Just show me what to do.'

Jenna sent him a thought form and after analyzing it for a short time, Dan cast the spell on the small salamander and hoped for the best.

~o~O~o~

The girls eventually decided they liked the salamander. They thought it was very cute, though they warned the boys about thinking of it as a pet. Salamanders were intelligent creatures and wouldn't allow themselves to be held captive. Beyond that, the girls didn't know much about them. They floated back to their graves and left it up to the boys to discover what they could.

After the short walk back from the cemetery, Dan carried the salamander up to his bedroom, using a large, flat rock so he wouldn't burn his hands. The twins followed and sat on his bed, watching and waiting while their older brother tried to awaken their little guest. He traced a tiny magic flame along its side as Jenna suggested and it didn't take long to wake.

With Dan's face down close, the little salamander opened its eyes. The first thing it saw was Dan and an instant bond formed. The young creature imprinted on the boy, kind of like a baby animal to its mother, but stronger. Salamanders didn't have parents. They only had one older salamander to create it out of elemental fire.

The little creature made cooing noises and lunged forward to rub against Dan's face. It left a bad burn that Dan later used magic to fully heal, after Jenna taught him a simple healing spell. She'd planned on teaching healing and other biological spells soon anyway.

"Flippin' heck!" the boy said as his cheek sizzled. He quickly backed away only to be followed and have his pants burned by some enthusiastic nuzzling. "This thing's trying to kill me!"

"No," Simon said. "It's like it thinks your its mum. I'm sure it's just showing affection."

"Salamanders don't give birth, Simon."

"Creator then. Whatever. It's easier to just say mum, Mum."

Dan scowled but didn't feel like arguing, not when he was busy keeping his clothes from burning through to his skin. He used some water magic to block the elemental heat and fire given off by the salamander.

Simon looked pensive for a short time before speaking. "I think it's pretty much a baby," he said. "It doesn't seem to want to do anything other than bond with its mum.

"Very clever, Simon," the older boy said. "But I just want it to stop burning me."

"You'll have to give it a name," Pat suddenly added. "I'm not going to keep referring to it as an it."

"That might be difficult without knowing its gender," Dan said.

"Do salamanders have gender?" the twins chorused as they turned to look at each other.

"No," the older boy said. "I doubt they do. That means it needs a name that can refer to both boys and girls… something to do with fire I think."

The three boys looked down at their tiny new house guest, hoping for inspiration and soon getting it. The salamander waddled over to one of a pair of open back slippers near the foot of Dan's bed and began nibbling along the front of it.

"Oy!" Dan said. "That's my slipper!"

Pat couldn't help himself. "It's going to be hard to not think of it as a pet if it keeps that up."

"I wonder if it's teething," Simon said, thinking aloud.

The oldest boy moved to save what was left of his slipper and Pat held him back as the salamander started coughing, sending little puffs of smoke under the bed. The poor little thing didn't look happy. It moved slightly to position its head over the heel of the offending slipper and spit up, leaving a little pile of ashes.

All three boys blurted out, "Ash!" Dan looked at Simon. Simon looked at Pat. Pat looked at Dan. And all three brothers smiled and said, "The perfect name," at exactly the same time.

~o~O~o~

The tiny creature proved to be quite a handful. Dan had to feed it elemental fire several times a day to keep it happy, and he continued to accumulate burns before and after each feeding. Ash nuzzled Dan to get his attention when it was hungry and nuzzled to show gratitude after being fed. Without his healing spell, the boy shuddered to think what he'd look like after caring for the salamander for any extended period of time.

Ash grew quite rapidly. All of the elemental fire that it consumed was instantly added to its size, which tripled after only a week. At the current rate of growth, it'd reach full size — about Dan's current weight — in well under a year. In spite of growing larger, it kept its cuteness, and it insisting on following the boys wherever they went.

After giving the matter some serious thought, Simon got out his old toy metal wagon and had Ash ride in it. WIth its short legs, the small salamander had trouble keeping up with the boys otherwise, and they couldn't leave it behind. They didn't dare try to lock it in Dan's bedroom for fear of the house burning down. They tried keeping it in the garden shed one afternoon and gave up on that idea when they came back to the charred remains of several wood-handled tools. The shed itself was safe, having aluminum walls, floor and ceiling, but Ash got a little upset and got the hiccups. It belched fire every time it hiccuped so it was just a matter of time before the vulnerable tools got torched.

Early on, when Ash was small enough, Dan could carry it in a ceramic bowl. The little thing seemed to like that, and it loved all the attention given to it by the girls. Being an elemental with access to other dimensions, it could see and hear spirits well enough. It outgrew the bowl though, and that led to using the wagon. Simon volunteered to do all the pulling of the wagon to leave Dan free to concentrate on spellcasting, if necessary, until they got to their destination and began practicing their magic.

Ash's arrival during the summer school holiday proved convenient. At least the boys didn't have to worry about what to do about Ash during school. They only had to worry about what to tell their parents as the fire elemental grew well beyond the normal size for a mundane salamander. Dan thought of some convincing lies but he didn't like the idea of lying to his parents. He hoped to put off any talk of magic and magical creatures as long as possible. Adults seemed to have a lot of trouble with the subject, even when presented with convincing evidence — or perhaps especially when presented with convincing evidence.

Ash wasn't the only thing that the boys kept hidden from their parents. After a few months, the boys were as much girls as they were boys. They had all the working reproductive parts of both. The twins were young enough that they didn't have noticeable breasts. Dan couldn't say the same though. He ended up binding his chest the last few weeks of school, and he kept them bound at home except when he bathed and slept. It started getting uncomfortable for him, physically as well as psychologically.

Dan sat on the edge of his bed one evening after his bath. He reached inside his bath robe and sighed as he cupped his bare breasts in his hands. They'd gotten to be a little more than a handful so far and he could tell they weren't finished growing.

He bent forward and had a quick look under the bed to check on Ash, knowing well enough to hold his breasts to keep them from flopping around. The salamander sat in a large, flat metal pan, snoring quietly. The boy — or boy-girl as he started thinking of himself — briefly wondered what salamanders dreamed about, or if they dreamed. He didn't think elemental creatures would even sleep, and guessed that Ash was only sleeping because it was young and growing.

More questions for Jenna.

He got up to turn out the light but it wasn't quite time to sleep yet. He had a sudden visitor.

Simon burst into his bedroom looking quite upset. Tears rolled down his cheeks and he quickly pointed to his crotch, mouthing the word "blood."

Dan got up and quietly closed his door. He draped an arm across his brother-sister's shoulders and began having a talk that would normally take place between a mother and daughter when the daughter came of age. It was going to be a long night.

~o~O~o~

 © 2013 by Terry Volkirch. This work may not be replicated in whole or in part by any means electronic or otherwise without the express consent of the Author (copyright holder). All Rights Reserved. This is a work of Fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional and any resemblance to real people or incidents past, present or future is purely coincidental.