Episode 65: A Car and an Ostrich (Niels)

Niels and Ach were playing some kind of game with the kids. It involved a famous green monster stomping its way through San Francisco and sometimes stopping to throw a car or two.

The kids loved it – the destruction, the building-smashing, the way Niels had rigged it so ten of them could play at once.

Ach was harder.

“But he doesn’t actually exist. How did they make it look like he does?” Ach asked. “The buildings are getting smashed.”

“It’s CGI,” Niels explained. “Just like any other video game. This one is just more realistic.

Ach squinted at the screen, dubious.

“Throw!” Ella bellowed. She threw her controller at the tv, but luckily she was too bad at throwing for it to actually hit.

“At least it’s teaching them violence,” Ach decided.

Well thank Christ for that.

Niels would love to see Ach go up against an army of a certain kind of mom, the type who would drop dead of a heart attack if they heard Ach talking about wanting his kids to be violent.

It would be great.

He was willing to bet Ach would be all calm and civil, talking about violence, while all the moms got violent talking about civility. Ach just had that knack with people.

He was about to tell Ella off for throwing the controller, when he got a dragon message from Zero, about their cars and wicca lessons meeting.

He stood up. “I have to go,” he told Ach. “You’re okay?”

“I bet,” Ach said, pointing at the screen. “I bet he is real, and there’s another San Francisco in a different realm and he destroyed everything there.”

“And made a game out of it?” Niels countered.

“Oh,” Ach said. “Then how did they make it look so real, without magic?”

He had a feeling Ach was going to spend the next month learning how to program video games.

“To them, it’s like using math and logic as magic. I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” he said. He passed Ella the controller. “Don’t throw again, or you’ll have to buy a new tv.”

“We don’t buy tvs,” Fort scoffed. “Uncle Nell gets them for us.”

“I’ll tell him we don’t need a new one, if you break this one,” Ach threatened. He looked up at Niels. “Have fun with cars.”

“You know it,” Niels said.

Wicca lessons made him wary. That was like asking him if he wanted to be involved in designing the next nuclear bomb. Sure, sounded cool and fun, but what about the repercussions?

He was comfortable with it if it protected his family, but if others discovered it and used it against them in the future…this was how wars escalated. It amused him that he was fine with it as long as he was on the escalating side.

Zero waited in the conference room, looking all cool and casual like he always did.

Niels was aware that when people saw him, they didn’t see Meldrick’s calm or Zero’s collected-ness. Usually the first word that came to mind when people – who weren’t fangirls, they were in a category of their own – described Niels, was intense.

Intense was great, but probably not the best trait for a ruler.

He had to learn to fake calm.

“Sorry I’m late,” Zero said. “Aadya had a project for me.”

“Did you learn anything?” Niels wondered what project Aadya could have, with Zero’s daughter missing.

“You could say that,” Zero said.

Niels waited a second for more before he quipped, “I could, but I wouldn’t know what I was talking about.”

Zero laughed and transported them to his house in Sylem. At least, Niels assumed that was what it was.

Everything was log cabin-y with wood paneling and enormous sofas and exposed beams. It was very masculine and very Zero.

And just like Indigo to not need to make the place all feminine.

Niels had heard rumors about a river in the basement, but he decided to be a good boy and focus on school and not on super amazing things he didn’t own…yet…

There had to be a way to put a river in their apartment somehow. One that flowed into the rift or one that was self-contained, he didn’t care.

“That German girl?” Zero said, leading Niels through the massive kitchen and into the garage. “She’s been revived after all.”

Well Aadya would be happy. That was something.

“Yeah?” he asked. “What about Camilla?”

“Nothing,” Zero said. “But we will be trying a few other spells again. Orris and Olida are related to the family. How has your morning gone?”

Zero was either not interested in talking more about Camilla, or not interested in talking about her more.

Niels could take a hint. He shifted to his own day, which Zero would probably want to hear about. “Court was fun,” he said, remembering an especially annoying argument between two farmers. “There were a lot of pigs.” And domesticated boars, but he didn’t think the animals had done anything to deserve his complaint.

“These are the cars,” Zero said. Apparently he didn’t want to talk about Niels’ day either.

Niels focused on the cars. Zero had some sexy machines – Niels didn’t know what one of them was, but he had an Echelon and a Nobex. And in the third bay, where Zero had stopped… “An Empirion?” Niels asked. They were impossible to find. “How?”

“Tracking spell,” Zero said. He removed the rest of the canvas cover, to reveal a solid body on a gorgeous chassis. It needed work, but it was in great shape. “I tracked a few down,” Zero continued, “and asked for a price. I thought the one in the worst condition would be the most rewarding to work on.”

He was absolutely right.

Learning wicca magic or not, this would be fun.

“So you’ve always been into cars?” he asked Zero.

He hadn’t. When he first moved to America, someone had showed him a movie about a Danish prince who was obsessed with race cars. After that, Niels had decided he needed something fancy to complete the image of Niels Poulsen. He hadn’t expected the hunt for the perfect car to be so alluring, and he hadn’t expected to fall in love with it when he found it.

“Do you want to look inside my Echelon?” Zero offered, not answering about his love of cars.

Apparently they just weren’t talking about anything personal today.

Niels tried not to be frustrated. He knew Zero and Indigo were at least as much leaders in the family as Mel and Aadya were. If he couldn’t get to know them well, he worried about how they’d work together when he and Talise took over.

The pressure of that had just skyrocketed with Aadya’s announcement this morning. Niels couldn’t afford to let things grow casually between him and Zero; it was either going to start to happen or it was in danger of being a problem soon.

“Yeah,” Niels said. He patted the hood of the Empirion. “And thanks for this.”

“No problem,” Zero said. He unlocked the Echelon and opened it. The interior was all smooth leather and polished wood, even a wooden dash that looked well-maintained. The exterior was sleek and dark.

“I installed racing belts with the upgraded engine. Heated leather seats…just a few upgrades.”

It was gorgeous.

If it was a horse, Bentley would have mated it with all his best racers.

Too bad cars couldn’t be bred. If they could, Niels would be first in line with his A110. It and the Echelon would have beautiful baby cars.

“You know what the Dells needs?” he asked, looking for more of a way to connect with Zero.

“A racetrack? Roads? A garage…”

“Yes,” Niels agreed. “All of that, and people who care enough to want to see it. We should teach a cars and driving class.”

Zero would be a great teacher for cars, and it would give him something outside of medicine to focus on. Now that Spence was training with Konrad, Konrad was probably more likely to ask Spence for help with magic stuff, leaving Zero with more free time to get bored in.

A cars class – maybe about engines in general – might be a good way to fill that void with something Zero cared about.

“I agree,” Zero told him. He hoped they were both talking about the class thing, because it had real potential. “I’ve always wanted a train in the Dells too. Maybe an underground bullet train. And some system available for getting around the palace grounds.”

“Trolleys?” Niels suggested. It actually wasn’t a bad idea, despite being an insane idea. “We could get double-decker ones just to look posh,” he joked.

Zero laughed. “Maybe.”

Progress!

Niels shifted things more toward what mattered to Zero, besides cars: “So, how does this language work?”

“Every plant has a meaning, but color matters too. Every combination of plants, like a combination of words, forms a message. That message can be mixed with intention to form spells. All a spell amounts to is a message you are sending. Know the meanings and you can make any spell you want.”

Zero closed and locked his Echelon, moving back towards the Empirion.

Niels thought about Aadya’s flower messages she liked to leave. She always left romantic ones for Meldrick, but sometimes she left encouraging or praising flowers for him and Talise.

It was almost the same.

“So you layer the plants to get what you want?” he asked.

“Yes. Order matters when it comes to strength.” Zero passed Niels a black plastic case full of tools for working on the car. “A value system, most important first and least last.”

“How do you know what’s most important?” he asked. “Like, looking for someone. Does the looking come first, or the person?”

“It’s preference,” Zero said. Something in his tone told Niels he’d tried both orders this morning in his search for Camilla, and come up empty each way. “If you lost Jo, would you care more about her safety or her being with you.”

Safety, hands down. “What kind of spell did you do for that?” he asked. Zero had probably at least checked to see if Camilla was alive.

“You layer the spell with your intention – to find them, their safety, your relationship to that person, how they make you feel – and the spell calls to them and locates them. It’s your job to go to them directly. You can mix spells, but mixing transport and tracking can be perilous or dangerous. Your intention, and having a familiar, is very important.” He looked at Niels over the top of the car. “We can get you a familiar if you want one.”

Spence’s familiar was a serval, and Spaden’s was a bear that was as goofy and gregarious as he was. Zero had a midnight-black giant cat of some sort, while Indigo had a sugar glider.

Familiars were supposed to be a representation of the personality. According to Talise, Spence had some kind of ferret-like familiar before he died a few years ago, and he’d gotten the cat post-death.

Which meant that personalities could change enough to alter which animal best fit a person’s character. It made Niels wonder why they gave permanent familiars to kids who were still growing and changing.

“Yeah, I do,” Niels stated. “They seem like they’re important.”

They probably were, but really…Niels just wanted to know what kind of animal the universe thought represented him.

“Keep unbolting that panel. I brought spell supplies.”

Zero went over to a workbench area in the garage while Niels worked on dismantling the Empirion. After a few minutes, Zero turned to look at him. “I just need your hair or nail.”

“Does the dye mess with hair?” Niels asked. He wondered if something as simple as hair dye could serve a purpose in warding off unwanted magic.

“Nail, then,” Zero said.

Niels peeled off a fingernail and dropped it into the dish Zero offered him.

Everything in the dish vanished in a puff of bright green mist.

Something tugged at Niels, at his himness. It felt weird and way too invasive to be comfortable.

A minute later, an ostrich that was about the same height as Zero appeared in front of Niels. It peered at him with narrowed eyes, the size and shape of massive seeds, before it clicked its beak once and turned around to explore the garage.

Niels watched it strut away and laughed because it was so comical to see a giant puffy bird strutting around a garage.

“They ran out of fierce jungle cats, I guess,” he said to Zero.

Name. It needed a name.

No it didn’t, he knew what it’s name was. Her name.

“It’s supposed to be a representation of you,” Zero said. “I guess you’re not a fierce jungle cat underneath.”

Zero was. Spence was.

Niels was a bird that shouldn’t ever have evolved.

“What does an ostrich represent?”

Zero followed the bird with his eyes. “It represents that you’re quick-thinking, acting, or both, and that you can be creative in a confrontation and you understand your environment.”

“And fierce,” Niels joked. He was secretly pleased about his ostrich because he could see himself in her already. The way she paced around the cars, her glare, the angle of her head whenever she looked his way. “I’m pretty sure the ostrich’s spirit animal is a fierce jungle cat. Plus ostriches are part dinosaur I think.”

Zero laughed. “There are two ways to do this car – magical restoration or hard labor.” Niels gave him a frown at the mention of magical restoration and Zero laughed again. “As for the ostrich, she represents you. Don’t shy away from what she is. There’s power in acknowledging it and accepting what she says about you. I’ve seen more odd familiars.”

Niels almost laughed at odd because of the ostrich’s name, but instead he made himself not think about it. If he never thought her name, Nell would never figure it out. He could come up with some kind of hybrid name to cover for it. Audrey, maybe.

“I know she’s mine,” he assured Zero. He pointed to where Aud stood gazing proudly at a glob of her own spit on the hood of the Nobex. He hoped Zero wouldn’t be mad. “Look, she already loves your car.”

Zero looked at Aud, a small smile on his face, before he turned his attention back to Niels and the car. “What do you want for an engine?”

“Racing belts,” Niels said automatically, because Zero had them so obviously they mattered to people who loved cars. “An whatever else you did to yours. I’m still learning this stuff.”

“That sounds good,” Zero agreed. He slid his head and torso under the car.

“How’d you get into cars?” Niels asked.

Zero’s voice came out tinny and distorted, from under the car. “It was something none of my siblings loved. But I only found that out after I crashed my dad’s car. I was trying to fix it and no one bothered me. My dad knew, and parts kept showing up in the garage, and I kept working.”

Not for the first time in his life, and absolutely not for the last, Niels felt that dad-hunger he got sometimes, that envy. “You close to your dad?” he asked.

“No. He abandoned my half sister – I adopted her.”

Right, Niels knew about that already. He shouldn’t pester people with unnecessary questions, even if it was to cover his own soft spots.

“That’s Mara?” Niels asked, for the sake of it. “I think I already knew that, sorry.”

Zero went on like Niels hadn’t just made the most unnecessary interruption ever. “It’s a difference of values; we get along fine otherwise. In spells, we like the number five. It’s powerful. We revive with a person at each of five points. Mara is the sixth child, so she’s useless in his eyes. Weak.”

At least Niels’ dad, Viggo, had abandoned him for love and not because he was inconvenient.

Or maybe those were the same things.

“Ouch,” Niels said.

Who knew, he had something in common with Mara.

Mara was a few years older than he was, so he didn’t spend much time with her. She kept to herself and her family, and had a crush on the very oblivious assistant head groundskeeper.

Niels kind of felt bad for her about that, too.

“When these twins are born,” Zero advised, “don’t fixate on birth order. Someone may try to take advantage of them.”

“They’re not our fifth anyway,” Niels said with a laugh.

“They’re the fifth and sixth she’s carried,” Zero corrected.

Niels peeked under the car so he could see Zero’s face. “Do we need to protect them more?”

“That depends on Spence’s election,” Zero said, bafflingly. Niels wasn’t sure where the connection between his kids and Spence was.

Actually, he knew exactly where it was. He just didn’t like it.

“Are you worried about that?” he asked.

“No. Xander supports him; he’ll win. But there may be more volatility than we’d like.” Zero shifted and moved out from under the car to standing, so Niels stopped crouching and stood too.

Zero met his eyes. “How do you feel about him training to replace Konrad?”

How did Niels feel about his wife’s ex becoming the person in charge of protecting her?

Great, actually. They weren’t hostile exes, they were exes that practically still lived together.

“I think he’s going to be good at it and focused on Talise,” he told him.

“I agree, even if it was surprising.” Zero went back to his toolbox and Niels went back to whatever kind of monstrous combination of metal held the door to the car and got to work removing it.

“Are you ready to take over?” Zero asked.

Aud came and stared at Niels, like she wanted to know what he thought he was doing, messing around with a car he knew nothing about.

Niels laughed. It answered Zero and Aud equally, he thought.

“But your mom is seeing Meldrick?”

Hm. Maybe Zero needed him to come off all strong and king-y. That hadn’t occurred to Niels. But if Zero was worried, other people might be. He needed to step up and act like he was ready, even if he didn’t feel like he was.

“Apparently she sucks at reasonable expectations of reality.” Niels said as a reply.

Zero set his tool down and came over to stand next to Niels. “What part is unreasonable?”

Which part wasn’t?

That wasn’t how Meldrick would answer. He sighed. “She’s up against seven hundred years. Four or five bad ones isn’t that big of a deal, on the scale of things.”

“Aadya only remembers twenty of them,” Zero pointed out.

Not even twenty, if the stories were true.

Niels never wanted anyone messing with his memories. That would be the most violating thing anyone could do to him, personally, outside of what someone could do to his family. His memories were him.

“Which is almost as long as my mom has been an adult,” Niels said, back on point.

“True,” Zero agreed. He patted the door. “She’s about the same age as me.”

What, was Zero trying to prove Niels wasn’t ready to rule yet? Niels already knew that.

He laughed. “By your age I probably won’t want to be considered young either. I just wish my mom was more careful.”

“In what way?” Zero asked.

Well, a ton of ways. Niels suspected she wasn’t on any birth control, because why would she be. He also thought she was too open with her heart. She’d gotten closer and closer to Meldrick, like watching a slow motion train wreck, and Niels just wanted her to be okay when everything was said and done. She’d had enough heartache in her life, with his dad.

“You think he’ll stay with her?” Niels challenged. “I think any time, any day, an apology from Aadya will change his mind.”

“I’m not sure,” Zero said, with a thoughtful tone. “She’s not carrying his children,” he pointed out.

Niels, like everyone in the family who cared enough to notice, had seen the pink eggs in the barn. They were a pretty good indicator that Aadya’s kids weren’t Mel’s.

Unless Zero meant Giana wasn’t carrying Mel’s children.

Niels scowled. “She better not be.”

“I meant…” Zero began, and then decided against it. “Do you want me to talk to your mom?”

Niels gave up on the car. They were talking serious stuff and he wanted to be focused. He set his whatever-it-was down on the ground and stood, leaned against the car and facing Zero over the top of the door. “What about?”

“Tea.”

Niels laughed. “She’s the queen of tea. She’s either being careful or she isn’t; you talking to her isn’t going to make a difference.”

He knew how much his mom had wanted more kids before. Now she had immortality, a boyfriend, magic…

“As for outcomes,” Zero began cautiously, “the youngest Alandrial heirs are not Meldrick’s. You should be aware of that when thinking about your immediate future.”

Maybe Zero knew what pink eggs meant. “What do you mean?” Niels asked him.

“They’re Nell’s,” Zero said flatly.

Nell’s.

Fuck.

Ach was going to freak.

“Aadya is expecting half-pixies,” Zero said, just in case Niels didn’t get the picture.

“They can’t hide that,” Niels stated.

“No, they can’t.” Zero bent over to pick up the tool Niels had left on the floor, and put it in the toolbox with the others. “It will change things.”

Niels followed hm. “Yesterday you said Aadya wouldn’t back down. Did something happen to make you change your mind?”

Niels and Talise hadn’t exactly spread the word about what Aadya had told them about the transition.

“Nellie,” Zero mused. “The way Aadya acted. Yes.”

Great. Just fucking great.

“Okay,” he said, because it wasn’t and the ostrich was getting agitated.

“She may stay queen,” Zero said. He sounded like he wanted to soothe Niels’ nerves more than he might actually believe that. Niels appreciated the effort. “But I doubt the marriage.”

“No,” Niels agreed. “That’s already over.” Six kids, four pregnancies including the one Aadya lost, that weren’t Mel’s. He had been so patient, but everybody had a breaking point, especially with someone as warm and playful as he knew his mom could be. With her waiting in the wings, he could see why Mel’s attention would shift.

“You have support,” Zero assured him. He gestured around the garage. “Cars to relieve tension. You’re welcome here anytime. Maybe we can build a palace garage.”

“This weekend?” Niels asked.

God that would be nice. Just to do something that wasn’t pressured, just for a little bit.

“Sure,” Zero said.

Niels swallowed. He may as well pass the news along. “They announced this morning that they’re starting the transition. That’s why Talise and I did court. I thought it was a bluff.”

“It doesn’t sound like it,” Zero said. A nice friendly confirmation of all of Niels’ anxiety. “I’m curious if there’s a spell driving them apart. They’ve managed for years. The use of Wicca on Camilla may only be the surface of what they’ve done.”

A spell driving them apart.

That would hurt Giana, to be nothing more than a tool in someone else’s game, a way to hurt the kingdom.

Niels had a bad feeling.

“How do we check?” he asked.

Zero patted his spellbook he’d brought with him. “Do you have time to work on a spell? I have a small garden here for some plants I’m waiting for Aadya to bring up.”

Niels wondered how Zero could anticipate which plants he thought Aadya wouldn’t have thought of yet.

“Yes,” he said. He followed Zero out onto a steep hillside terrace garden full of varieties of plants Niels had never dreamed of. Some looked toxic and dark, others so vibrant they had to be poisonous. Some looked healthy and normal too.

He saw Zero looking out across the bay toward the land, squinting at something. Niels wondered what he was looking at.

He picked some plants out while Niels stood around feeling useless.

Niels needed to figure this king thing out, fast. How to look, seem, and feel competent even when he was the student.

Then again, Aadya always admitted when she didn’t know something. He and Talise had gotten into a bad habit of avoiding what they didn’t know, in an effort to seem competent.

So he asked, because he needed to do better. He asked the names and uses of plants, which Zero picked the combination he chose, what order he would use them in. Zero was there to teach him, right?

They carried an armful of herbs inside and Zero taught him how to cut them evenly, how to tell if any parts of them were rotten enough to ruin a spell. He explained the drying process for most of the plants he used.

Then he mixed the ingredients, and together they watched the mixture turn a deep orange and then burst like clusters of fireworks, leaving scorch marks on Zero’s workbench.

Niels assumed that was bad. He swore.

“We should bring Konrad into this conversation,” Zero decided. “Do you mind waiting while I get him?”

“I’ll be here,” Niels promised.

He stared at the scorch marks and imagined each one an individual scar on Mel and Aadya’s lives. On his mom’s life.

Someone had done this to them.

Niels met the ostrich’s eyes.

Camilla, Aadya, Mel, who knew what else. This was the beginning of a war, he could feel it in his gut. Whether Aadya and Mel continued to rule, or whether he and Talise took over, the kingdom was on its way to war.

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