“Daddddd! Are you going to come up and watch the launch?” Sol’s shout echoes from the stairway to the roof all the way into the kitchen, two stories down. How many times has Lionel told him not to raise his voice in the house? If he responds, he’ll have to shout back, and, in Earth “psych lingo,” he’ll wind up modeling the very behavior he wants Sol to stop.
Frowning, Lionel steps into the kitchen … and hears a crunch beneath his feet. He takes another step, and hears another. Lifting his foot, squinting in the low light of late evening, he sees the remains of crushed Cheerios on his sock. He lifts the other and sees the same.
From the breakfast nook, he hears a clink and then munching. Lionel follows the sound, each of his steps punctuated by a crunch. Rounding the corner, ears flattening against his head, he finds his daughter Zari, eating a bowl of Cheerios. Cereal and milk are puddled around her on the table, but Zari seems not to have noticed.
Tara has a theory that baby mammals are cute so their parents don’t eat them. Lionel sighs and leans against the wall of the nook. He’s in one of those moments when he really feels the meaning of those words. Lionel’s and Tara’s children are growing faster than elves but slower than humans, and Zari looks like a three-year-old human even though she is six. At the moment, her chubby toddler-like cheeks jiggle with each spoonful. Thankfully, her brown curls are pulled away from the mess in a charming poof at the back of her head. Her tiny, delicate pointed ears are perked slightly forward, and her large hazel eyes are focused on the back of the cereal box. Whatever she is reading obviously has her enraptured.
Crossing his arms, Lionel clears his throat. Zari starts and spills the contents of her spoon on the table.
“Daddy!” she says with a wide grin. She drops the spoon into the bowl, and more milk splashes onto the table. Lifting up the cereal box, she swings it in a wide arc toward him and Cheerios go spilling out the bottom everywhere.
Apparently not noticing, she says proudly, “I was hungry but I made my own snack!”
Lionel rubs his temple. “There’s a hole in the bottom of the box.”
“What?” says Zari, inexplicably, shaking the box and spilling even more cereal.
Lionel holds up his hands. “Just. Put. The. Box. Down.”
Zari’s face crumples. “I made my own snack.” Her lower lip starts to tremble.
She’s going to cry. Lionel drops down into a crouch. “And I am so, so proud of you.”
She beams.
From the stairwell, Sol shouts, “Are you coming or not? They’re gonna launch any minute now!”
Zari looks in the direction of her brother’s voice, her eyes getting wider.
“Do you want to see the launch?” Lionel says.
Zari nods.
Lionel takes the box from her hands. “Just this once, I’ll pick up for you.”
Hopping from the seat, she runs toward the stairs, feet crunching the whole way.
Lionel quickly puts the box on the table, takes a step to the light switch, hears the crunch of cereal beneath his feet, gives in, focuses, and creates a pea-sized sphere of ball lightning. It’s enough to illuminate the whole kitchen and the nook, and to see that Cheerios are everywhere. If Chicago was still under the gremlin infestation they had a few decades back, Lionel would suspect their involvement.
“Dad!” shrieks Sol.
Giving in, Lionel shouts back, “I’ll be there in a minute!”
He and Tara have guests on the roof. He can’t leave the cereal on the floor. Their guests will crush the little Os and deposit the crumbs in every cranny in the house.
He hears Tara’s voice from the stairwell. “What happened?”
Using his feet to sweep a path through the Cheerios, Lionel makes his way to the broom closet. “Zari made a snack.”
“But they’re everywhere …” Tara gasps.
Lionel reaches the broom closet, and Tara says, “The vacuum is broken …”
Lionel nods. “I’m going to use the broom.”
“Throw me the Dustbuster!” Tara says.
Lionel tosses it to her, and she catches it midair. She’s wearing a pretty white party dress.
“Are you sure you want to—?” Lionel starts to ask.
“Yes,” she says, grabbing the pleated skirt and bending over to “dustbust” the kitchen. “It might attract gremlins.”
Lionel grabs a broom, puts the dustpan under one arm, and begins frantically sweeping.
“Dadddddd! Mommmmmm!” shouts Sol.
“We’re coming!” shout Tara and Lionel over the sound of the Dustbuster.
Lionel pauses his sweeping to grab a dishtowel to mop up some milk, wincing at the dirt that he sops up with it. “There’s more over there,” says Tara.
Flinging another dishtowel on the other puddle, Lionel goes back to frantically sweeping.
“The joys of parenthood,” Tara mutters.
Lionel only manages a “Mmmf.” A long time ago, he thought that the reason the name Odinson didn’t work on him was because he rejected Odin’s ways. Now he thinks that the reason it didn’t work was because for all practical purposes, Odin really wasn’t his parent. Parenthood is sometimes swooping in to make a heroic save, but mostly it’s boring, mundane things like cleaning up milk and cereal, and keeping your temper when your child is only trying to be helpful.
He sweeps all of his herded Cheerios into the dustpan and dumps the mess down the garbage disposal. Tara grabs the milk-soaked towels and races past in a blur of white fabric. “I’m throwing them in the washing machine. We’ll have to do a load tonight or they’ll stink!” she calls. Lionel’s too busy capturing renegade Os to reply.
A few moments later, they’re both standing, slightly breathless at the stairs.
“Ready?” she asks, smiling up at him.
It’s been decades since they met, but Tara’s hair is still full and black, and her dark skin is still smooth. Tara isn’t magical, although there are treatments humans have concocted to make themselves so. The treatments sometimes have adverse reactions on developing fetuses, and Lionel and Tara have a crazy idea that they might have another child someday. Still, in the past few decades, Tara hasn’t aged any more than Lionel. Lionel’s magic is in stasis, in holding things together. The energy he once poured into making himself small, he pours into her telomeres, holding them together, letting them age together. Their relationship hasn’t always been easy. Their children have made it harder in many ways, but also bound them together in ways he couldn’t have imagined when they met. Tara may not be his soulmate in the Elvish sense of the word, but she has left an indelible mark upon his soul. He can’t imagine facing his own old age without her.
“Ready,” he says. He motions for her to go up the stairs in front of him. Snapping his fingers, he winks out the ball lightning and follows her up.
When they reach the top, the sun has already set. Dr. Eisenberg—Gil—and his wife, Irma, are relaxing on lawn chairs, fruity drinks in hand. Rosa’s new husband John, and Tavende’s husband Eric are sitting near them. Lionel’s mother and Rosa are hovering just behind Sol and Zari.
To the east of the house, a beam of blue light shoots up into the sky.
Bouncing, Sol shouts, “It’s starting!”
The adults all ooh and ah.
“What’s happening?” Zari says.
Sol stops bouncing and says in a serious, scholarly tone, “It’s a magical space elevator. It counteracts gravity, much like a flying carpet. It allows space ships to take off.”
Wrapping his arm around Tara, Lionel finds himself chuckling at Sol’s very grown-up reply.
“Maybe I can get him to lecture for me!” Gil says.
“Is the spaceship magic?” Zari asks.
“No, dummy, it’s engineering,” Sol replies.
“Which is pretty magical,” says Irma as Tavende whispers something sharp in Sol’s ear.
The number ten flashes in the sky, and then a nine. Throughout the neighborhood, voices rise from the roofs in a countdown. Everyone on Tara and Lionel’s roof joins in.
And then the space ship, a sleek disk, leaps up into the magical space elevator in a streak of silver. People clap and cheer.
“Technology and magic together,” whispers Tara, the blue light of the space elevator reflecting in her eyes.
“As it always should be,” Lionel says.
Tara smiles up at him. He kisses her, and the magic between them still works.
~FIN~
Thank you for reading Soul Marked to the very end!
Want more? If this is your first visit to this universe, you can start at the beginning of the saga with Wolves.
Or if you want to see more of the world Tara and Lionel live in at the end of Soul Marked, pick up Magic After Midnight.