Part 5 - Dreams and Other Magicks

After her little beat-down with the cheer and dance coach, Amanda hadn't heard anything further on that subject from Christie. Nor had she been called by any school administrators to come to pick up her erring daughter after she'd cleaned the clock of one of Wilson's girls. She wasn't sure which thought pleased her more.

It was a lovely Sunday morning in early October. She was about ready to start cooking brunch, so she wandered over to the patio doors to check on her daughter. At first glance, Christie seemed finished with her usual morning exercises, but she was still doing . . .something - and very energetically, too.

Cracking open the sliding door just a bit, the rousing notes of the song 'Maniac' from Flashdance were playing. Oh my God, Amanda realized Christie was DANCING and quite well, too. She was barefoot in the grass, her eyes closed, hair-free and loose, with just the tiniest little smile curving her lips. Amanda couldn't recall ever seeing her daughter perform this choreography before. It wasn't ballet - not really. It was more free-form than classical ballet, but it was beautiful, and her daughter was delighted doing it.

Carefully, to not disturb Christie's bliss, Amanda closed the door and slipped back from the window glass. She could still watch through the crack in a curtain. Amanda waited until Christie finished her dance before opening the door noisily and calling out, "You going to come in and eat my delicious breakfast or not, girl?"

Christie still jumped and momentarily looked like the proverbial kid with her hand in the cookie jar before she relaxed. "Just finished, Mom. Do I have ten minutes to get cleaned up?"

"Oh, I think we could even make it fifteen if you don't mind your omelet getting a little cool."

"Can't have that!" Christie crowed as she grabbed her gym bag and raced into the house. "Ten minutes! Time me!"

~-~

When Christie hustled into the kitchen, her hair still wrapped in a fluffy white towel, Amanda overtly checked her watch. Shaking her head in mock sadness, she said, "Nine minutes and fifty-two seconds. You have to be the only teenage girl in the United States that can say ten minutes to clean up and mean it. Where oh where did I fail you, girl?!?"

Christie giggled as she poured orange juice into the glasses her Mom had set out on the breakfast bar. "Well, I guess there's a couple of places, now that I think about it. First, you started with a son named Charlie and did a great job raising him."

"Harumph," Amanda growled as she set the plated omelets down and started the toaster. "What!? So you're saying I had faulty materials, to begin with?"

"Maybe," Christie smirked back as she reached for the pepper grinder. "And the second place is that you threatened me with a less than perfect omelet! Trust me, I was highly motivated!"

"Well, I must say that I appreciate cooking for you more now that you are a martial artist and not a ballerina. Whole-grain cereal, skim milk, and yogurt just didn't satisfy my culinary, artistic bent."

After sampling her omelet with a happy nod, Christie looked up at her Mother. "That likely would have happened, anyway. I checked this morning before going outside, and I've grown another half inch and gained another half pound since September. I couldn't have kept to the dietary regimen I was on for ballet much longer. It would have been unhealthy. I guess Christie just wasn't meant to be a Prima Ballerina."

Amanda nodded as she chewed, filing that observation away along with the memory of her daughter's Sunday morning dance session for future consideration. "Well, I haven't heard anything from you about the cheer team girls in the last few weeks since I met with their sponsor. Any problems there or with Ms. Wilson? Or are you still being all stoic and male and handling it yourself?"

"No, not really. That confusion of weasels has pretty much backed off and left me alone."

"Wait, What? Confusion?"

Christie giggled. "A group of weasels can be called a confusion - I googled it and thought it fit them perfectly!"

"So, they're not a problem anymore?"

"Oh, they're trying to be subtle. Seems I am supposed to be shunned by all the 'cool people.' However, their subtlety broke down when they tried to harass some girls eating lunch with me for engaging in such unacceptable and antisocial behavior."

"Really?"

"Yep. Seems my Taekwondo girls aren't all that impressed with the queens of the school either. Oh, and get this! Lisa Brandt even crossed their supposed picket line! She's now my lunch buddy, too."

"The girl you had issues with at Madame Coulters? I thought you two didn't get along at all."

"Surprised the heck out of me, too. Seems Lisa has been taking the brunt of Renee's grief since I left, but unlike me, she's decided she really wants to be a professional dancer. So she puts up with her crap to get the benefit of Rene's admittedly excellent skills. She came to me because she's decided she needs to improve her strength and stamina but doesn't want to bulk up doing it. I work with her after school on nights I don't have a class with the Kims."

"Well, I must say that I never saw that coming. How does it feel? Working with ballet again, I mean."

Christie took a sip of her juice and thought about her answer for a few moments. "I like it. Mom, I think I told you that art and the ability to do it well motivates me. I never wanted to compete with Lisa; I just wanted to dance and create art. She never understood that, so she saw me as a threat. Now I'm not, and I like helping her. I still love dance, and I enjoy working with her. 'Course, we're careful not to let Renee know about our arrangement. She'd throw a fit!"

Another piece of the Christie dance puzzle to ponder, Amanda thought. "So, besides being a semi-social outcast which I can tell bothers you greatly. NOT! Any other problems with your boogle of weasels?"

"Boogle? Is that a word?" Amanda's smug nod almost had Christie reaching for her iPhone, but she didn't.
"Not really. They just don't matter, which I think bugs them even more than my saying 'no' did in the first place."

"Yes. It's hard to be the Queen Bitch if your chosen subjects can simply ignore you. What about Wilson?"

"Oh man, Mom, whatever you did to her? She's been declawed, defanged and dehorned! In Women's Health? My last three homework assignments and quizzes have all come back with only one red mark. An 'A' at the top of the first page. She basically ignores me in class since I don't ask her questions because I'm positive I know the material better than she does. Oh, and get this. On her most recent quiz? I intentionally wrote a wrong answer to one of the questions and STILL got the 'A' and no other red marks. I mean, really! I put down 'curds and whey' when the correct answer was 'yeast infection .'You really put the fear of the Goddess in that woman!"

"Just as well, I suppose. Just make sure you come to me if Wilson pulls any more of her tricks. She's just not worth your time or trouble." Amanda stood and began to clear the breakfast bar. "So remember. Moms just want to have fun, too."

Christie helped her Mother with the cleaning up. Together, they soon had the kitchen set to rights and the dishes cleaned and dry. "Let's have our coffee on the patio, okay, Mom?" Christie asked as she poured fresh cups for them both, "Should be warm enough outside by now, and I wanted to ask you about something else."

Amanda agreed but went and fetched her hair tools before following her daughter outside. Amanda unwound the towel from Christie's head after setting the brushes, combs, and her coffee down on the patio table, "So, what's the big question you've waited until brunch was over to ask me, love?" Amanda asked as she began to brush Christie's hair.

Christie leaned back sensuously into her Mother's deft handling of her hair and nearly purred. "Well, this is gonna sound a little strange, but do you dream a lot, Mom?"

Pausing in her brushing, Amanda tried to look at her daughter's face before shrugging. "I dream, Christie. As I understand it, everybody dreams. Whether I dream a lot or not? I've no idea. Why do you ask?"

"Well, it seems that I dream a lot more than I remember dreaming as Charlie, now that I've become Christie. Something else is a little bizarre, too. When Charlie remembered dreaming, he usually remembered the whole dream. I don't. Remember what I dreamed, I mean. I'm pretty sure I DID dream, and I think . . .mind you, that's THINK the dreams were pretty repetitive, but I can't remember what I saw or heard in them."

"Is this a regular thing? And if so, do you recall when it started?"

"Hmmm. Maybe the middle of August to the first of September? It was pretty sporadic then, and I only noticed it because it was so different from what Charlie usually experienced. Anyway, it seems like every night over the last couple of weeks. And I don't really have any particular Christie memories of dreaming like this, either. I guess I wondered if this might be some girl thing - like maybe puberty or a magical thing."

"Well, I don't think it's a pure girl thing, but on the other hand, I've never heard of anything like that in our family, either. I'll call your Grandmother later, and we'll both go through our family records to see if we can find anything that might be similar."

"Maybe I should look at them, too? I might see a hint that would clue me in? You know, because I was there in my dreams?"

Amanda frowned and shook her head. "There is a longstanding McKellar tradition that no one looks at our records until their powers have fully emerged. I'm not quite sure why. It might only be one of those 'secret handshake' things you only learn after completing an initiation, or it might be something more. Since it is magic, our family has always chosen to be safe and abide by the stricture. Sorry, dear."

"No problem, Mom. When you think about it, this is all pretty scary stuff! Look at what it did to me, right? Better safe, 'cause I don't even want to know what I might need to be sorry about."

Amanda made one last slow brushstroke through Christie's hair, took her own seat and sipped her coffee. "I think that is perfectly sensible. So, any plans for the rest of today?"

Christie grimaced. "Not really. I've got a paper due in two weeks that I need to finish researching. If I've got everything I need, I'll start the paper. If not, I may have to check out the local libraries. Their databases are better than the ones I can access at home for free."

"Hmm, okay then. Oh, I just remembered. When's your next test day at the dojang? It's not on my calendar yet."

"Last Saturday in October. I think I'll be ready for the 6th Geup Green Belt test by then. It's a little early by the WTF standards, so we'll have to see what Master and Grandfather Kim have to say. I'm not stressing over it. Grandfather explained his concerns about my current level of physical readiness. I agreed with him, so I've accepted that I won't be ready for my black belt test until well after my next birthday ."

"Thanks," her Mother said as she punched the testing date into her phone's calendar. "Let me know if you need to hit the public libraries. And you might find what you need in my law office's subscription databases. Lexis-Nexis is pretty complete regarding current events and the like."

Christie stood, collected their empty coffee cups, and leaned over to kiss her Mother. "Thanks, Mom. I'll be sure to let you know. See you later."

As for herself, Amanda just leaned back on her chaise, closed her eyes, and savored her memory of a Maniac dancing about in her garden earlier this morning.

~-~

Several days later, Amanda came downstairs to discover that Christie was not outside doing her morning exercises. Immediately concerned, she hurried back upstairs and found a rather bleary-eyed girl staring at her hand as if she were minutely inspecting her manicure. "Christie? Are you all right?" She asked.

It took Christie a few seconds to register she'd been addressed. She almost snapped out of her fixation with her hands to look up at her Mother, then blinked several times rapidly. "Oh, good morning, Mom," she said, seemingly still distracted.

"Christie, What is wrong?" Amanda demanded, growing more concerned by the moment.

Christie shook herself. "I guess I didn't sleep very well last night. I was dreaming again, only this time, I seemed to remember some of it. I kept staring at my hand and fingers like something was wrong with them. I never figured out what that was before the whole dream started again. I knew I was dreaming, but I couldn't seem to wake up - not until my alarm finally went off. Weird, huh?"

"Well, when I came in, I thought you were checking out your manicure. Maybe your inner girl has decided you need to take better care of your hands?"

"Well, if so, she could have been a little more clear about it, darn it! That kind of dreaming just wasn't restful!"

"Do you feel all right to go to school? Any other symptoms? Maybe you had a fever last night?" She asked, putting her hand on her daughter's forehead.

"I'm fine. Just a little tired, and I woke up kinda disoriented. I'll go to school, but I won't drive myself today, just in case."

"Okay. I'll drop you off at school. Don't hesitate to call me at work if you need me."

Christie stood and hugged her Mom. "Have I told you recently that you're the best? No? Well, you are. Thanks, Mom. Love you. Now, I need a shower and some coffee, I think."

"Love you, too, kiddo. I'll have coffee ready when you come down."

~-~

It was a little after eleven o'clock that night when Amanda had finally settled into her bed. Her review of the family journals and other records for any mention of dreaming, lucid or otherwise, had thus far been fruitless. Still tired from the previous night, Christie had headed up to bed earlier than usual. She'd been sound asleep when Amanda had peaked in on her a couple of hours ago, but she'd kept a Mother's ear on her daughter, just in case.

Her hand was just reaching over to turn off her bedside light when a hellish scream of terror ripped through the silence of the darkened house. Amanda was out of her bed and running to her child before realizing what had happened. When she reached for the doorknob, she noticed her hands glowing with power and did her best to get that back under her control.

Stepping inside and flicking on the overhead light, she saw her daughter shaking both hands in front of her terror-widened eyes. "Christie, what is it?" She demanded as she rushed to the bed.

"My hands! Oh, god, Mom, my hands!"

Turning on the bedside lamp, Amanda snatched the closest hand. She held it under the light for a better view. Power rippled through her and into her daughter as she scanned with her sorcerous healing senses only to find. . . Nothing. A quick check of Christie's other hand revealed no problems there either. "What happened to your hands, dear? There is nothing currently wrong with them. I checked. Now, breathe deeply and tell me what happened."

It took the ordinarily controlled young woman several minutes to gather herself. Finally, she replied, "I . . . I think I was dreaming again. The same start, too. Just staring at my hands like I expected something to be different. Then . . .then it was almost like a whisper, but it wasn't - more like a thought. And. . . And. Oh God, Mom! My fingers caught on fire! I shook them and shook them, trying to get the flames to go out, but they wouldn't and then I started screaming . . .and then I woke up."

"Did it hurt? In your dream, that is?"

Christie started to answer and then caught herself, her forehead wrinkling in concentration. "No. . .I don't think it did. It was freaking scary, and I . . .I expected it to hurt, so I screamed. But now that you mention it . . . No, I'm pretty sure it didn't hurt. That's so strange."

Seeing that her girl was calmer now, Amanda settled beside her on the bed. "How about you spend the night with me? That way, I'll be there if the dreams come back, and you won't scare me out of ten years of my life when you wake up?"

Christie threw back the covers and clamored out of bed. "Best idea I've heard in ages!" Laughing, the pair headed for Amanda's room. Christie was again looking at her hand when she had a thought. Almost as if . . .

"HOLY SHIT, MOM! MY FREAKING HAND! LOOK AT MY FINGERS!"

Spinning, Amanda saw Christie's hand, out at her arm's entire length away from her body, with little licks of flame dancing merrily from each fingertip. Relief, humor and a sudden urge to cry cascaded through the older woman. Finally, with a sniffling chuckle, she took Christie's hand in hers and extinguished the tiny flames.

"Congratulations, Miss McKellar. You are a sorceress. Remember that pistol analogy I used to explain your initial transformation? Well, your gun just got locked and loaded with live ammo. Now, let's go do some basic training so we can both get some sleep without you inadvertently setting my bed on fire."