Prologue
Geckos on a Hot Ceramic Roof


June 2nd, 1995

“Get it, Kalama! Get it!” Ewa screamed, as her older sister reached for the gecko climbing up the siding of their house.

Kalama might have shouted back down to her sister, but at the moment, she was too busy trying to keep her balance. The tricky thing about going after geckos was that their feet could stick to anything. They could climb up the walls, under the cabinets, even hang from the ceiling. They were also very fast when they ran and scared really easily. So if you wanted to catch one, you yourself had to be fast, but also be completely fluid in your movement, make absolutely no sudden jerks. Especially when you had climb up to the-

“KALAMA ANNE JAMESON, WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”

Kalama froze and glanced to the side. Down on the ground was her father, his facial expression a combination of fury and pure shock. An expression that only appeared on his face whenever he caught his older daughter climbing on the roof, just like she was doing today.

Kalama turned her vision straight ahead, sighing as she watched the gecko skid across the gutter and down the drainpipe. Those geckos were smart. They knew that if they got into the drainpipe, then she couldn’t get to them. Better yet, when her father started yelling, they knew they were safe for the rest of the night.

“Kalama,” her dad began again, “I am not going to stand down here and yell for all of Honolulu to hear. You get down from there this instant!”

Very, very reluctantly, Kalama made her way to the drainpipe, moving the same way she did as when she tried to catch the geckos, so as not to scare her father. She hooked her ankles around warm metal, grabbed the top of the pipe tightly, and slid down like a firefighter. Of course, firefighters normally received a much warmer greeting than she did.

Almost as soon as her feet touched the ground, the lecturing started. There was a time in her life when this would have gotten to her, but after of lifetime of ‘don’t climb on the roof’, ‘that’s not a toy’, and ‘don’t eat off the floor’, she had heard all there was to hear at the ripe old age of ten. As her dad’s voice buzzed on, all she could think about was how her prey had managed to slip through her fingers, and was probably off regaling its friends of the tale of his escape. Now she was more than likely grounded, her hands and knees both were burnt bright red from the hot tile roof, and all for nothing.

Glancing behind her father, she could see her mother, still sitting in the car. The weary expression on her face had become a constant in these past few months, right along with the doctor visits, the silk scarf wrapped around her head, and the line of pill bottles spread across the kitchen counter.

It wasn’t just the doctor’s visits that had changed life for the two young girls. Normally, their mother would simply brush these minor infractions off as no big deal. Although ever since her mother had gotten sick, even the smallest difficulty seemed to be a trial.

So Kalama and her sister didn’t get away with anything these days, even with things they had never gotten in trouble with before.

“Are you listening to me, young lady?”

Kalama was jolted back to the here and now by her father’s shouts, much sharper than she had been used to in the past. When she looked up, she saw her father’s face had turned a deep shade of purplish red, his eyes bulged, his nostrils flared. If Kalama had not known what it was she were in trouble for, she might think she were about to be accused of murdering a preacher.

“Kalama, what were you thinking?” her father began again, grabbing her by the shoulders. “I’d thought you’d be smart enough to know how badly you’d get hurt climbing up the side of the house!”

“But I never get hurt!” Kalama justified.

It was true, this was not the first time Kalama had climbed up the roof. In fact, it was a rarity when her father actually did catch her. Usually she wasn’t climbing up after geckos, but simply sitting on the roof, watching the city pass by in that slow way that it did. Watching the smoke from Honolulu sink down into their neighborhood like it did every evening, watching children play in the street, watching teenagers fix their rusted heaps called cars. Listening to the endless chatter that, by now, had given way to it’s own rhythm: the Rhythm of the Lower Valley. There were times when Kalama even found herself swaying her head along with it.

But now, she watch her father glace around her to the porch, the railing for which he had ripped out by the nails the first time he caught Kalama on the roof.

“How did you even get up there?” he asked, his anger melting into confusion.

“I climbed,” Kalama answered, as though her father had just asked the simplest question on earth.

“You mean you climbed up the drain pipe the way you slid down it?” he asked, trying to make sense of what his daughter was telling him.

“No, I climbed after the gecko,” she explained, slowing the slightest bit of exasperation in her voice. “I though if I could beat the gecko up to the roof, I could catch him.”

Kalama watched the purple drain from father’s face and shift through different shades of pale. It was all she could do to keep from sighing and shaking her head in bored frustration. People never wanted to hear the truth. The truth about tooth fairies, menehune, or ugly dresses. People seemed so much happier when you allowed them to exist inside their own little dream world. Kalama felt as though she were one of the few people on earth who lived to know the truth; the whole truth.

Looking up with an expression of expectance, Kalama watched her dad’s face turn that funny shade of yellow-white that it always did when the truth was something that he didn’t like. He had been getting that look a lot lately whenever he asked Kalama for an explanation. Like why every water pipe in her school happened to burst the day of her math test a month ago, or how the car had been turned upside down the day she was supposed to go into the doctor for a shot. Especially the time after Easter when Ewa couldn’t speak for a week after Kalama had screamed at her to shut up.

“Why don’t you go help your mom get out of the car?” her dad finally said, without really making eye contact with her.

That was the last thing her father said to her before he made his way up the porch steps and shut the door behind him as he entered the house. Ewa flinched with the sound of the slamming door, and turned her gaze towards her sister, biting on her bottom lip and kicking at the pebbles around her feet. Even when it wasn’t even her who was trouble, Ewa would spend the time after every argument slinking around like a whipped puppy.

Suddenly remembering her mother, who was still waiting in the car, Kalama dashed to the door, pulling it open. Upon meeting eyes with Kalama, her mother cast her with a look of severe disappointment. The newly developed lines in her face creased deeply around her eyes and her mouth, and the heavy weight of her stare forced Kalama to cast her eyes downward.

Allowing her mother to take her hand, Kalama helped her step out of the car, steadying her mom as she stumbled slightly.

“Mama, I-”

“Not now, Kalama,” her mom answered, in a tired tone that had also become a constant in the past few months. “I’m just too tired to hear it.”

Kalama bit the inside of her cheek as she lead her mother up the stairs. Those two short sentences cut deeper into her than any amount of yelling her father could have inflicted on her. Right now, life revolved around making sure that her mom was comfortable, that she was happy, that she was healthy. After opening the front door, Kalama watched her mother brush past her and make her way towards the bedroom, just like she did after every visit to the doctor. Ewa nibbled on her pinkie nail, shifting from her left foot to her right. She still hadn’t moved from her spot she had been in ever since their parents had gotten home.

Not ready to go into the house, Kalama plopped down on the porch steps with her head in her hands. Knowing that her mother was disappointed in her was worse than any mere punishment for breaking the rules.

---

“Here, Ewa,” Kalama sighed, passing a damp serving plate into her sister’s waiting hands. “This is the last one.”

Later that night, the previous chaos had died down. Dinner was long over, the leftovers put away, the table wiped clean. The two sisters were standing on identical stools as the worked their way through the pile of dirty dishes. Even though they were just about done, steam still rose from the sudsy water, fogging up the windows and making the tiny kitchen even nearly as humid as it was outside.

She and Ewa weren’t being punished. The two have then had been doing the dishes every night since their mother “got sick”. Now that she didn’t have to clean up after dinner anymore, their mom usually spent her evening sitting on the porch; watching the clouds string through the mountains, and the colors of the sky change with the passage of the day. It was a small thing for them to do for their mother, but it was something that the children could actually do for her.

“All done!” Ewa smiled, setting the last plate off to the side before leaping to the floor. “Can I go over to Jessica’s house?”

“Did you finish cleaning your room?” Kalama asked, holding her damp hands up in front of her as she searched for the dishtowel.

“Can’t I finish in the morning?”

A snide remark came to Kalama’s mind, but she bit at her tongue to keep the words from forming. As much as Ewa had been helping out around the house, she still wasn’t used to taking orders from her older sister. It was almost as though admitting that Kalama had any real authority over her would be like admitting that things were going to be changing soon. Something Kalama knew that her sister would probably never be able to admit to herself, no matter how much evidence was piled up in front of her.

“I guess,” she sighed as she resigned herself to wiping her hands on the material of her dress. “Just tell Dad where you’re going.”

With a triumphant little smile, Ewa skipped out of the kitchen, stopping by the refrigerator to slip on her discarded sandals. Kalama pulled the plug from the drain and watched the water swirl away.

She was soon distracted, however, from the sound of the screen door slamming shut. Dad was in the garage, so there was no way Ewa had asked for permission to leave. So, of course, now Kalama would be the one to go and break the news to him...

Racing out of the kitchen, Kalama made her way for the front porch. If she hurried, she might still be able to catch Ewa before she was too far gone. Skidding across the wood floors of the hallway and leaping over the collection of shoes piled in front of the door, Kalama threw the screen door open and shouted her sister’s name loud enough so she was sure that all of Oahu heard it.

“Ewa’s already gone, sweetie,” she heard a gentle but exhausted voice say from the porch swing. “I told her it was alright.”

Turning to her right, she saw her mother relaxing on the swing, her foot pushing herself back and forth. She seemed so much calmer now, serene even; but after what had happened earlier that afternoon, Kalama wasn’t quite sure what the tone of this conversation was going to be.

“Kalama,” her mother sighed, as she smiled and beckoned her daughter towards her. “Come here, sit with Mama, okay?”

Confident that she was not being lured into another lecture, Kalama made her way to the porch swing, and leaned against her mother. The western sky was just beginning to change with the setting sun, and Kalama sighed as the colors shifted with it. One hand reached around Kalama’s shoulder, pulling her closer, while the other took her hands and held them in her lap. Kalama’s hands still smelled like dish soap.

A gecko scurried across the porch and climbed up the wall, stopping just at eye level with Kalama. It stopped for a moment, glancing her way, as though to taunt her. Then, first flicking its tongue across both its eyes, it continued on its way up to the roof.

“They know if I go up after them, I’ll get in trouble,” Kalama muttered, more to herself than her mother. “They’re mocking me!”

Her mom laughed, but the sound almost sounded far away. As though her mind was not truly on the geckos crawling all over the house, and there was another reason for asking her daughter to sit with her.

“Kalama, you know how I have always told you about how you’re different from Ewa?”

Kalama nodded. She and her mother had had this talk many times before. It always started with how her father was not her actual father, and how she and Ewa were only half-sisters. Then, it would go on to talk about Joseph: the man who was her father and whom Kalama didn’t even remember. Sometimes the talk would also include how her mother and Joseph had gotten married barefoot on the beach when they were little more than children. Others would be about how he knew more about cooking mahi-mahi than anyone else, or that when Kalama was little more than three months old, he insisted that she could say the word “gimme”. In the sadder stories, she would talk about how he had gone to drive on the coast one windy night and two solemn faced police officers had arrived at their door later to tell them that Joseph was never coming back.

And then, there were the…“stranger” stories that her mom would tell about her father…

Most children were told stories about their dead parents to make them seem real. But hearing about what her father was, what he could do, just made him seem more like a fairy tale than if she had never heard a thing about him.

“You know how I’ve told you about how Joseph was not like me or your dad; that he was a wizard,” her mom continued on. “And you know because he was a wizard, that means you’re a witch.”

Kalama nodded. That was why she never used to get in trouble for some of the weird things that would happen around her. Sighing, she leaned against her mother’s shoulder and waited to hear something new.

One of the reasons that this talk was never the same was that her mother would always pick different parts of the story to burst into tears. In fact, this was the only actual constant in these talks: Kalama, confused; her mother, her heart torn open all over again.

“What’s in the newspaper today?” Kalama asked, hoping to change the subject before the tears started, gesturing towards the paper resting off to her mother’s side.

Kalama’s mother never read the Honolulu paper, or any other paper known to the general public. It was yet another thing she had learned from her marriage to Joseph. And she continued to get it every week, and to read stories that she barely understood. Stories where the pictures moved…

“A boy was killed in England,” her mother told her, picking the paper up and turning it over to the front page: a photograph of a crying crowd in robes took up half the page, “During the Tri-Wizard Tournament.”

“Hmm?” Kalama wondered; her mother would often forget Kalama had been raised among those without magic, and knew next to nothing about the people or the world in her mother’s newspapers.

But Kalama’s mother kept on, as though she had not even heard her. She wasn’t even looking at her daughter. Her gaze seemed fixed on the ridges of the valley, but her eyes somewhere much further away.

“The officials are saying it was some sort of accident,” she continued, “but they have a quote from one of the other competitors saying it was murder. That he was killed by a Dark wizard.”

This was defiantly a new portion of the talk. Normally, it would be restricted to cutesy stories from the past, or, at worst, stories from after Joseph’s funeral.

“If what he’s saying is true, it means there are going to be some dark days ahead of us. Some dark days for you.”

Kalama nodded, hoping that if she just kept agreeing with her, her mother would stop the story sooner.

“Joseph told me about the man they claim committed this murder. That the last time he was at large, his world was at war,” her mother muttered as she nearly glared down at the paper. “So if he truly has come back, that may mean that another war is not far away.

“You know, Kalama,” she said, turning back to her daughter. “This is probably the exact kind of thing I would have turned to your father for advice for. Not that I don’t already know exactly what he would say…”

“What would he say, Mama?” Kalama asked. She had never been included in ‘the conversation’ before, save for a few minor roles. This time, it seemed to revolve completely around her, and only her; and the words her mother spoke would also only be known by her.

“Do you think you’d be able to follow your father’s advice?” her mother asked, tugging insistently at her daughter’s shoulders. “Do you think you could promise me that?”

The sky to the west had begun to turn a brilliant scarlet with the setting of the sun, more so to the south than to the north.

“Yeah, Mama,” Kalama agreed with her mother’s terms. “I promise.”

“That’s my girl,” she whispered as her hand smoothed through her daughter’s hair. “That’s Joseph’s girl…”

Chapter 1
Summer in the City


Two years later

“Kalama, are you still not packed up yet?” Rachel peered around the corner, an exasperated look on her sun burnt face. “The ferry’s going to be in Honolulu in ten minutes!”

Kalama didn’t answer, but continued to race as she shoved whatever she could into her bag. Anyone who had ever walked passed her on the school ferry would always be shocked at how much Kalama needed to entertain herself for a three-hour boat ride. The plastic deck table was completely covered with playing cards, music, paperbacks, candy wrappers, and even a few sheets of her summer homework.

Since the first days of class at the Kailani Shamanic Institute, Kalama’s days had been completely occupied with learning the wizard way of life, learning her school subjects, and learning how to do pretty much everything students who already came from wizarding families could do in their sleep. She had never minded this, though. Kalama’s brain was the type that needed to be occupied every moment of every day; something the school was more than capable of handling.

But to be suddenly cut off from all that and leave the school was nothing less than a shock to her system. The little red backpack stuffed with distracted material was all that was keeping Kalama from climbing up the ship walls like the geckos that climbed the sides of her house.

“Here,” Rachel offered, setting her own backpack on the deck floor and making her way over to the table, “let me help.”

“Mahalo, Rachel,” Kalama thanked her friend in a frazzled-sounding voice.

Kalama had met Rachel roughly fifteen minutes after getting off the ferry that had first brought her to her new school: the Kailani Shamanic Institute.

Rachel’s life seemed to be everything that Kalama’s wasn’t. She was a pureblood witch who had spent her entire life growing up in a wizard community, not even being fazed by every little thing that seemed to shock Kalama. Rachel was the only child of two older wizards who were researchers of some kind. She had tried to explain their job to Kalama once, but the explanation had only left Kalama’s head buzzing with a flood of words she only half understood. It was much easier just to know the simpler things about Rachel: she loved Gum-E-Racers, she passed Potions by the skin of her teeth, and she was the first witch friend Kalama had ever had.

“Five minute warning, kids!” a member of the crew shouted as he strolled by the two girls, announcing their arrival to the Honolulu harbor. “Five minute warning!”

“I’m almost done!” Kalama shouted at the announcer as she shoved her notes into her backpack, though she wasn’t sure why she thought that the ship employee would care, or if he would have the power to do anything to stop the boat if she wasn’t ready.

Once the table was completely clear of Kalama’s belongings, she and Rachel ran for the bow of the ship to catch the first glimpse of the city. The choppy waves sparkled as the crashed against the shore and the marina. Waiting families stretched all the way out to the end if the pier, shouting out names that all seemed to merge into one collective noise.

“What are you going to be doing this summer?” Kalama asked as the two girls looked out onto the waving crowd.

“My parents have plans to go up to Alaska on a cruise in July.”

“Another boat trip?” Kalama had to restrain herself from laughing at the irony of it all. “You can ride a boat twice a year for free, you know.”

Even though Rachel’s parents were both wizards, they had been going on Muggle vacations every year since Rachel could remember. Not because they worked with them, but more because they found the way of life ‘rustic’. If they hadn’t been wizards, Kalama was convinced that Rachel’s parents would have been the types to move to Wyoming, miles away from electricity, running water, and any form of modern civilization.

“Don’t remind me,” she groaned. “Well, what are you going to be doing that’s so wonderful?”

Kalama shrugged her shoulders, not really sure herself. “I’ll probably just be staying in the city with my dad and my sister.”

“Exciting,” Rachel said with a wrinkled nose. “Summer in the city with the Non-Magical.”

Kalama laughed at her friend’s sarcasm, but the honest truth was that there was probably no place in the world she would rather spend her summer than exactly where she would be going. Will, her stepfather, and her little sister, Ewa, were all she had been thinking about since she started packing her trunk to go home.

Kalama could just imagine her dad right now. Will and Kalama had no blood relation to each other and didn’t look a thing alike, but he had been Kalama’s father in every sense of the word since she was three years old. She couldn’t even remember a time when he hadn’t been a part of her and her mother’s lives. And he had become all the more important to her ever since her mother had died…

Kalama shook her head as she pushed that particular thought out of her mind.

And Ewa, before Kalama left for school, she might have thought of her as just her annoying baby sister. Now, all she wanted was to tackle her into a hug and squeeze the air out of her. Maybe that would finally be what it took to keep her out of her room.

“Last call!” the same member of the crew shouted again. “Everyone off the boat!”

One by one, the students were shooed of the boat by the members of the crew. Some of the children could see their parents even before they reached the steps; Rachel was one of them. The older couple stood arm in arm, looking every part the tourist Kalama had seen wandering the island her entire life. Rachel’s family was actually from Washington state, but they would use picking up their daughter from excuse to take a long vacation on Hawaii; half of which would be done before Rachel even got off the boat.

“Promise you’ll write me as soon as you get home,” Rachel ordered before the two girls would lose each other to the crowds.

“Only if you promise to write me from the cruise,” Kalama stated her conditions.

“Are you kidding?” Rachel laughed. “Trapped on a boat with my parents and a hundred other old cheek-pinching geezers �“ writing to you will be my only form of entertainment!”

Kalama hugged her dear new friend one last time before she watched her dash off into the sea of people, knowing exactly where she was going.

After pushing her way through about three family photos, she finally found them. Standing between a fighting family and a crying one were two wonderfully familiar figures: a tall man with cargo shorts and permanently sun burnt skin and a small girl with sun-bleached hair and a fair amount of baby fat left.

“Ewa! Dad!”

At the sound of her voice, Kalama watched as the two members of her family began searching in every direction for her. Ewa was the first to see her, pointing Kalama out to their dad and screeching at the top of her seven-year-old lungs.

“Daddy, there she is!”

As soon as she was sure he father could see her, Kalama raced straight forward into his arm. Not caring who saw her or what they would think about a girl of twelve years acting this way, Kalama leapt up to hug her dad around the neck while he spun around, holding her by the waist. But as soon as her feet were firmly back on the ground, her attention instantly shifted to Ewa.

“Oh, I missed you two so, so much!” she exclaimed as she hugged her younger sister.

“Did you have a good time at school?” Ewa asked as soon as Kalama stopped squeezing her and she could breathe freely.

“The best,” Kalama answered, making her tone sound almost teasing. “If, of course, you ignore the homework, the final exams, and the fire I accidentally started the very last day of Potions.”

At this, her father laughed out loud. Kalama laughed too, but it was a more nervous sounding laugh. Of course, she had just confessed to nearly burning down her school, and had planned on breaking it to him in a way that wouldn’t get her locked in her room for the rest of her break.

“Oh, we are going to have the mother of all celebrations tonight,” her dad regaled her. “First, we’ll probably have a little down time at home, naturally, but then we are going to paint the town red.”

“And we can go out for pizza and ice cream for dinner tonight.” Ewa looked up towards their dad. “Right?”

“Yes,” their dad agreed, “it’s the law!”

The happy family chatter continued all the way down the docks, across the hot concrete of the parking lot, and into the car, the floor of which was still as cluttered with litter as it was the day she had been brought to the harbor.

So many of the more mundane details of the once familiar setting fascinated Kalama to no end. Even the drive home captivated her attention completely, though she could have pictured the entire journey in her head if she truly wanted to.

“Alright, girls,” her dad told his daughters as he pulled into the driveway, “seatbelts off and out of the car!”

The house was more or less the same as she remembered it. But like the car ride home, being away for so long allowed her to see everything through what felt like new eyes.

“Okay, Kalama,” her dad said as he kicked off his shoes, setting them in the closet. “I told Mr. Kim across the street I’d take a look at his transmission, but as soon as I finish, then we can go into town.”

But even after he had put his shoes away, still he rummaged through the closet. “If I can find the flash light, then I’ll be able to find my tool box.”

The two girls waited side by side, but winced simultaneously every time they heard something fall, clunk, or their father swear.

“I got it,” Kalama told him as she pulled her wand from her pocket, not wanting any further injuries to get in the way of tonight’s planned celebration. “Lumos.”

With that spoken word, the hall closet lit up as bright as the rest of the house. Within a few seconds, Kalama was able to find her father’s metal toolbox herself, dragging the box into the hallway. “Here it is, Dad.”

But instead of thanking his daughter, Kalama was only met with an almost frightened-looking stare.

Of course her dad knew she was a witch; it wasn’t the kind of thing one could keep a secret anymore, once the letter from Kailani came. Still, it must have been a little bit of a shock to see his stepdaughter perform magic right before his eyes.

“Oh, don’t worry, Dad. It’s not a big deal,” Kalama assured him, trying to pass the simple charm of as something mundane, the attitude everyone at her school took to the spell. “I learned this spell my third day of school, it’s real easy.”

“You’re allowed to use magic outside of school?” he asked, confused. “I thought that was against the law; didn’t your mom-”

The way her dad stopped speaking mid-sentence was so sudden, it almost reminded Kalama of someone pressing the stop button on a tape recorder. But she understood the reason perfectly. No one in the house mentioned their mother anymore. It had been an almost unspoken law ever since the day of her funeral.

“No, that’s just in European schools,” Kalama quickly changed the subject. “See, here, at the end of the school year, you have to take this type of placement exam called the Wizard’s Authorization for Non-supervised Daily use of magic to see the extent of the magic you can perform outside of school.”

“Hey, that spells W.A.N.D.!” Ewa laughed.

“Yeah, I wonder if they just looked for some way for that word to stand for the test.”

But Ewa had long since lost any interest in the politics behind wizarding education and had begun staring at Kalama’s wand, her eyes gleaming with an almost greedy quality.

“So what can you do?” she asked, her tone heavy with wonder and curiosity.

“Well, there are about ten different tiers for magic you can perform before you graduate. Right now, I’m a tier two, which means I can perform simple charms and brew potions with mundane ingredients, but no Transfiguration and no defensive spells unless…”

Kalama stopped as soon as she noticed the glazed look in her sister’s eyes, as well as a very in-over-his-head look on her father’s face. Kalama remembered what all her professors had reminded her just before she left the island. That she would have to make sure to ease them into the transition slowly. Kalama may have come from a Non-Magical family, but she had spent the last nine month completely submerged in wizard culture and lifestyle.

The point was that she was going to have ease them into this gently.

“Well, I’m beat,” Kalama sighed happily. “I’m going to go to sleep in my own bed for the first time since Christmas. I’ll see you two in the morning.”

Leaving her trunk to rest in the middle of the floor, Kalama glided across the wooden planks and through opened the first door on the left. Her bedroom was dark, save for the sunlight seeping in through the blinds. But she didn’t bother to reach for the lights, and flopped down onto her bed, allowing her tense muscles to relax against the cool, cotton sheets. She hadn’t slept in her own bed since January, and it was still the same rumpled mess she had left it in.

For the past couple years, there had been no more cleaning in the Jameson household than was necessary to keep the country Board of Health away. Nothing in the room had been moved, or even touched; from the dirty pair of red socks hanging from her footboard to the wrinkled itchy skirt she had worn to Christmas church service, tossed in a pile in the far corner. Nobody in the house had gone in Kalama’s room since she had last been home, so it was in the exact same state of mess she had left it in. She still hadn’t made up her mind as to whether or not this was a good thing.

There was no way Kalama’s mother would have allowed this type of system to exist under her roof.

Kalama reached over to her nightstand, grabbing the framed photograph that was beginning to gather dust. It was a very old picture of her mother, before she got sick, and before she had ever met Will; back when she was still married to Joseph. Her face was still full of color and life. She smiled broadly and waved with energy while her other arm was hooked around Joseph’s. Kalama was in the photograph too, little more than two years old. Perched on top of Joseph’s shoulders, she laughed and threw her head back. It was a picturesque image of a young family she couldn’t even remember, but it was an image devoid of any type of pain or suffering.

“Hi, Mama,” Kalama spoke softly as she lounged back against her pillows. “I’m home.”

“Kalama,” her sister called. “Dad says were leaving for dinner now; and that you get to pick what pizza we’re getting, so you better start thinking.”

Oh! Kalama thought to herself as she suddenly remember her wand. Her first few weeks at school, she had forgotten to bring to wand to class at least once a day. Reminding herself to check that she had her wand whenever she left the room had become near reflex now. It was something her professors had insisted on since the first day of school.

“Kalama!” she heard Ewa shout for her yet again.

“Coming, I’m coming!” she called out, slipping her wand into her jacket pocket.

---

“Morning,” Kalama called out the next morning as she pranced into the kitchen, still in her bed-rumpled hair and pajamas.

Her dad stood at the counter watching the coffee brew and Ewa stood on her chair pouring milk into a very large bowl of chocolate cereal. Kalama smiled as she took her usual chair at the table. In every way, it was a scene identical to every day before she had left home.

“Is the paper here yet?” Kalama asked as she took the cereal box from her sister.

Wordlessly, her dad passed a wrinkled section of the Honolulu paper to Kalama, the comic section facing up. But after glancing at the heading, she shook her head.

“No, not that one.” Kalama pushed the paper away and reach over to her sister for the milk. “The one Mom used to read. I order a subscription to be sent here while I’m home this summer. It really should have gotten here by-”

The crashing sound of broken glass interrupted Kalama’s sentence. Shards of glassed sprayed across the kitchen floor and a rolled up newspaper landed on the kitchen table, just shy if the butter dish. There was no sign of the owl that had delivered it, if it even had been an owl. A lot of wizards used owls to send mail, Kalama had learned, but her mother had been subscribing to her newspaper, the Pacific Current, for years. Kalama had never seen neither hide nor hair of the invisible deliverer did bring the paper.

“WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?” Kalama’s dad shouted, holding out his open hands out towards the broken window and the glass scattered across the floor.

“Yeah, remember how Mama used to always keep the kitchen window open in the morning?” Kalama answered as she reached gingerly for the newspaper with on hand, and reaching for her wand with the other. “We’re gonna have to start doing that again. Reparo.”

In an instant, the glass flew to the windowpane, the cracks sealing over and the glass appearing better than new. Kalama smiled to herself as she admired her handiwork. Maybe if she just continued to use magic in the casual way her friends did at school, eventually her dad and her sister would get used to the idea of her being a witch.

But Kalama kept this hope to herself as she flipped from page to page.

“Who’s You-Know-Who?” Ewa was able to ask the question despite her mouth being half-filled with cereal.

It took a few moments to realize what her sister was talking about, but then Kalama turned to the front-page story that Ewa was pointing to with her cereal spoon. Spread across the cover was a story that had been in the news everyday for more than a year. A dark wizard whom the papers refused to name had been terrorizing the wizards of Britain and the Non-Magical citizens as well, although the Muggles were kept in the dark as to the true goings on of seemingly-natural disasters.

“Oh, it’s nothing you need to worry about, Ewa,” Kalama replied. “It’s something that’s happing halfway around the world and it’s nothing that’s going to effect us anytime soon.”

“Then why’s he on the front page?” Ewa asked after gulping down the mouthful of cereal.

“Well, he’s a very bad man,” Kalama replied, “and the people he is hurting, he’s hurting horribly.”

“How?” her dad asked, making the request for her answer sound more like an order.

“Well,” Kalama began, considering her words very carefully, “some wizards…actually, a lot of wizards are obsessed with this thing called blood purity. The idea behind it is that wizard who come from wizard families are…better than people who come for ordinary families, or that have only one wizard parent.

“None of it’s true,” Kalama insisted once her dad began to connect the lines between his stepdaughter’s lineage and her place in this caste system, “but that doesn’t stop people from thinking it. And this You-Know-Who wizard, none of the papers will print his name, is a ringleader in the movement. The last time he came power, it started a war. A lot of people died.”

The tiny kitchen fell quiet. All was silent, save for the few singing birds and the louder echoes from the city above.

“Is there going to be another war now?” Ewa asked softly, the corners of her mouth twitching as though torn between facial expressions.

“Probably,” Kalama answered, not really feeling right about sugarcoating the truth for her family. “There’s a resistance movement working against him, but it’s a very uneven balance of power…”

Once again, Kalama allowed her voice to trail off when that frighten, pale expression appeared on their faces, that expression that seemed to be coming around a lot since she got home. Maybe they would have preferred it if she had sugarcoated her responses.

“Let’s not talk about the news,” Kalama half-begged her father. “It’s so depressing these days. Say, Ewa, are the Kili’e’o girls still living in the neighborhood? I wanted to go see them today.”

Ewa nodded before taking another massive swallow of cereal. “Are you going to bring your wand along with you?” Ewa asked, a few fragments of cereal flying out into the surface of the table. Ewa still seemed to possess the same greedy interest in Kalama’s magic that she had the first day she came home.

“No, the wand’s going to have to stay here. I can’t have all of Oahu knowing I’m a witch - believe or not, teachers tend to get mad about that kind of thing,” Kalama told her sister. “Say, Dad, can you put my wand up in one of the cabinets?”

“Huh?” her father answered, seeming somewhat distracted as he did so. “Oh, yes; certainly. Kalama, you don’t mind if I read your paper while you’re out today, do you?”

“No, go ahead.” Kalama thought nothing of her dad’s request. “Are you almost done with breakfast yet, Ewa?”

Ewa nodded as she held her cereal bowl up to her face and finished off the rest of the milk, three small trails dribbling down her chin.

“Ewa can’t go out today,” their dad said suddenly.

“What?” Ewa exclaimed in a wronged-sounding voice. “Why?”

But the girls’ dad didn’t answer Ewa’s whining question. “Kalama, make sure you’re home before supper, alright?”

“Um, okay,” Kalama agreed. “I’ll see you later, okay Ewa?”

Ewa nodded in a sullen sort of way, kicking her bare feet against the kitchen floor in silent protest.

Kalama’s dad waved good-bye to his daughter, but didn’t look up from the paper. His gaze became more and more intense as his eyes took in the printed stories.

---

One thing Kalama had missed especially when she had been away from home was the opportunity to have the bathroom all to herself. It was a natural law of physics that if you stuck a large group of preteen girls in a room together and, to make matters worse, made them all share a bathroom, the privilege of not having to look over you shoulder to make sure there wasn’t a line forming behind you was one that was heavily relished.

Kalama took extra time getting ready that morning, taking full advantage of the freedom and the time allotted to her. She reclined against the bathroom wall, one foot stretched out in front of her on an old magazine as she painted her toenails bright red. Her fingernails were already painted the shade of crimson and were taking forever to dry. Once her toenails were all painted, she killed the time by painting the red nail polish onto the cover of the magazine itself. On the cover model, she painted red streaks in her hair, gave her solid crimson palms as though they were covered in blood, and changed the cover model’s sandals into calf-high boots.

Still waiting for the polish to dry, Kalama stared out the window. The midday sun was already hanging high in the sky, casting an almost crimson glow onto the neighborhood streets. Students on summer vacation had slept in as late as they could and were racing across the window pane’s line of vision. Running, bike riding, rollerblading…

Confident that her nails were dry enough, Kalama picked up the warming curling iron from the counter surface. Watching her reflection in the mirror, she carefully began curling the ends of her hair. Before Kalama had left for Kailani, and even while she was there, she had never put very much effort into her hair. Normally she would be content just to allow her hair to hang loose and free, never taking more than three minutes to become satisfied with it. But for some reason, Kalama had found herself putting more effort into her entire appearance in general, not just her hair.

Kalama’s actions with the hair curler became more automatic as she allowed her thought to wander. What would the Kili’e’o girls say when they saw her back in the old neighborhood? More importantly, what would she tell them about where she had been? All her dad had told the neighbors was that Kalama was away at school. But Kalama would need to come up with more details than that. Maybe she could tell them she had gone to Kamehamehaa; but that school was right in the city, so that wouldn’t explain why no one had seen her. She could have said her school was on the mainland, but she had never been off the islands in her whole life, so she would have no idea what to tell them about-

“OW!” Kalama screamed as she felt the searing burning against her neck. Kalama threw the red-hot curling iron against the counter surface and yanked the extension cord out of the socket. She pushed the iron as far out of the way she could before climbing up onto the counter herself to examine her neck in the mirror. A rosy, crescent shape burn was already rising on her skin and seemed to become darker by the second.

Kalama glared at her reflection and her half-styled hair, deciding her hair was styled enough before walking out of the bathroom and slamming the door shut. Her burgundy sandals sat side-by-side just outside the bathroom door. Kalama slipped her shoes onto her feet, trying to adjust them even as she began walking down the hallway.

“Bye, Dad. Bye, Ewa,” Kalama shouted as she passed by the kitchen. “I’ll be home in a few hours.”

“Kalama…”

There was a solemn way that her father said her name. It was enough to make Kalama turn back and see what was wrong.

There was a deep graveness in his face that Kalama had only seen once before; the day he told the girls that their mom was going to have to go into the hospital. Secretly, the two sisters referred to it as “The Death Look”.

“Kalama, please sit down,” her father said firmly, pulling the chair out for her. “We need to have a talk.”

Chapter 2
The Proposal


“I don’t want you to go back to school next fall.”

Kalama could not have more dumbstruck if her father had asked her to join the circus. Here she sat in the kitchen chair, her father staring down at her, the sunlight from the window shining brightly into her eyes, leaving her feeling very much like a clichéd criminal in a police interview. Ewa stood far away and off to the side, her hand wringing against the kitchen door as though she was just waiting for the first opportunity to bolt. Maybe it was the frightened look in her sister’s eyes that made Kalama think this more than Ewa’s actual stance.

“Excuse me?” Kalama gaped at her father, eyes wide.

“Kalama, I think I-the whole family has been a very good sport about your…education.” It was clear that her dad though about his choice of words carefully as he paced, circling around the chair. It made the conversation seem very unnerving. “But…it is becoming obvious that events beyond anyone’s control are making your…way of life extremely dangerous.”

Kalama didn’t like the way her father was speaking about magic. The way he talked about her education was the same tone a wizard might use to talk about their child smuggling illegal potion ingredients. She could hardly believe he would wait until now to voice any objection to her schooling. He had been quiet about it when she first started getting ready to leave, but had never flat out refused to allow her to go to Kailani.

“You can’t be serious!”

“Kalama!” her dad shouted, getting down to her eye-level and right in her face. “You heard me! I don’t want you going back to that God-forsaken school, and THAT’S FINAL!”

Just then, something inside Kalama snapped. She almost couldn’t believe the thoughts blaring inside her own head. She was furious with Will; yes, Will! How dare he, a Muggle tell her what she could and could not do! What right he did he have to pass proclamation over her education in magic, an education he himself could never hope to understand?

In an instant, Kalama had leapt to her feet, glaring her father right in the eyes. She could almost swear that her dad looked intimidated by her.

“Well, you’re not the first person to disapprove of a wizarding education!” Kalama shouted back at her father. “All I have to do is write the school saying you’re not going to help me anymore, and the school will take care of everything I need in order to go back!”

For that small moment in time, the balance of power shifted. Kalama’s father stepped back and seemed to regale his daughter with a sense of quiet awe.

“Well, Kalama,” he said slowly, “I guess that means you have a choice to make. You can stay here with your family, or you can decide to go back to school and be on your own.”

Kalama’s dad kept his voice calm, but there was a near icy quality to it. It would have been a lot easier to handle if he had just kept yelling. If he had done that, she might have had some clue to what he was feeling. But the way he kept his tone so devoid of emotion, it left Kalama with no idea of what was going to happen.

Kalama couldn’t stand it. She ran from the kitchen, raced through the hallways, and slammed her bedroom door shut behind her. Slowly, she slid down to the floor, her back against the door while the tears began to well in her eyes. She couldn’t be sure who had won the battle tonight, but she knew it wasn’t her, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t her father either. And she didn’t even want to think about what would happen come August when it would be time to leave for school again.

He can’t really mean it, Kalama though to herself, with her back against her bedroom door. He just can’t!

---

“Kahea mau ‘o ia me ka leo aloha…”

“Alright, ladies,” Mrs. Kapahali shouted loudly over the music, “let’s try to keep the beat now!”

“Kali ‘ana i ka ho’i me ke ahouni, Ku a’e ka paila o ka waiwai…”

Kalama took a deep breath in through her nose and out through her mouth. She tried as hard as she could to keep the movements of her feet and the movements of her hands in the same mind; even though they each wanted to go off in opposite directions. Her nails were still covered in their bright red polish, and this only proved to be even further of a distraction.

Summer hula had been a tradition that no amount of change in the Jameson family could end. Kalama’s mother had been the one to say the girls should take up hula when the family had first moved into the neighborhood, and she’d noticed every girl on their street running off in headdress and hula skirts. She’d signed the girls up for the classes at the same time, even though Ewa was barely old enough to walk back then.

“Malama ‘ai i ka lumi.”

The hula studio was normally large and airy when Kalama walked through it alone. But on a summer afternoon, when the room filled wall to wall with about thirty other dancing girls, and there was loud music blaring, it was about all Kalama could bear. Not to mention how the heat bounced around the studio in echoing waves. And the noise only adding to the chaos; the simultaneous rhythms of the stomping feet and the clapping hands added a rushed feel to the environment.

All that together made the whole practice feel nothing less than torture.

“Me na maka ‘oi’oi hiki ai, Ke ike pono i ka po’ele’ele…”

At the same time, however, everything that made the hula torturous almost made it energizing. A large group of racing hearts; flashes of the red skirts spinning in rhythm with the beating drums, reflecting in the wall of mirrors; suntanned feet sliding against the polished cherry-stained floors - it was almost as though the dance had power of the world. When one dancer sped up, everyone sped up. Everyone moved with the same amount of grace, the same jerks in motion. As futile as it may have seemed to the rest of the world, for that small moment in time, the dance was all that mattered.

“Pa’ani mau ana me ka pala’ie…”

Kalama’s scarlet practice skirt swirled around her as the routine came into its final rapid spin, before she and all the girls alongside her came into the finishing pose.

“’Aue ho’ohala e.”

“Okay, ladies,” Mrs. Kapahali announced to the class, “that was a very nice practice! We have our first public performance next Saturday, so make sure you all have your costumes ready by then. Other than that, I hope you all have a lovely week.” Mrs. Kapahali clapped her hands together. “Make sure you all practice your foot movements until then. We want them to be spot on! Class dismissed!”

The class of girls didn’t as much as nod before racing off in every direction. As strong as the collective rhythm had been moments before, it seemed to dissolve into near nothingness. The red tones that pulsed through the room faded, leaving the studio in only the faint white glow of the sunshine. The air cooled rapidly, and the noise dissolved into the thinning oxygen.

“Kalama!” she heard her sister call out from the doorway. “We need to go home now. Dad says we have to be home early tonight.”

Kalama nodded to her sister and raced for the door, stopping by the doormat for her burgundy sandals. Ewa stood in the school hallway, waiting for her sister. Ewa wasn’t even tapping her foot as she normally did whenever she became impatient. Kalama finally caught up to her sister, waving good-bye to Melia and Oleana, two of the Kili’e’o sisters, as she passed them running out. Kalama still hadn’t found time to go visit them yet in the two weeks she’d been home.

Once the two sisters left the school, a still heat crept back into their bones, devoid of any energy that they had felt in the dance studio. Warmth radiated off the concrete street and the tar patches on the street were soft and sinking. The June air was humid and heavy with the scent of plumeria. The noise from the city above was smothered by the leadenness of the air, and the very movements of the natural world around them seemed slowed by the weight.

“How early did Dad say we needed to be home?” Kalama asked Ewa suddenly, glancing down at her watch as she did so. “If we hurry, we might be able to catch the ice cream man before he leaves our neighborhood, and right now, I could kill for a strawberry-”

“Kalama, I don’t want you to leave forever,” Ewa whispered in a pouting voice, after Kalama had already began racing ahead.

Kalama looked back behind her shoulder to see her sister standing still and small-looking. Her feet didn’t shuffle, she didn’t wring her fingers, and she kept her eyes cast down towards the heating pavement.

“Oh, no one’s leaving home forever, Ewa,” Kalama answered, walking back slowly towards her sister. “Dad’s just bluffing. All he needs is a little time to cool down, and-”

“No, Kalama,” Ewa replied. “Dad read about the war in your newspaper. He says that in wars, people die all the time! Innocent people!”

Kalama felt taken aback by her Ewa’s words. These weren’t the kind of things that typically came out of the mouth of seven-year-old. It almost hurt Kalama to hear such thoughts come from her baby sister.

“And that because you don’t come from a wizard family, you’re probably going to be one of them…”

Kalama fidgeted where she stood, wringing her skirt in her hands. What her little sister was saying was hardly news. Everyone in Kailani knew what the war in Europe was being fought over, but they had all been told it was nothing they need to worry over. The fighting was at least years from reaching American, much less Hawaiian, soil. Another thing the teachers had stressed to the students was that they had much more to fear from their final exams than they did from being carried off in the night by Death Eaters, or whatever they were called.

“I don’t want you die, Kalama!” Ewa took a sharp intake of breath, almost cracking as she did so. “I’d be so sad!”

Kalama didn’t speak right away, feeling the need to deeply consider her choice of words. She could hardly tell Ewa that people wouldn’t die because of the war, but she also had to convey to her sister that she had no chance of dying because of this war. No one from America was being called over to fight yet.

“You remind me of Mama…” Ewa pouted. “You look like her, you sound like her…and now you going to leave, just like her.”

It was those last words that Ewa spoke that caught Kalama completely off guard. Not talking about their mother was still an unspoken law in the Jameson house: invoking the name of Nora Jameson was like evoking the name of an ancient deity. And to compare to Kalama to their mother…it was something Kalama couldn’t even fathom thinking about. It made Kalama seriously rethink the position her family saw her in. It even made Kalama’s father’s behavior seem less irrational, if they saw Kalama as some kind of link to the girls’ dead mother.

“Please, Kalama,” Ewa begged, hugging her sister tightly around the waist, “promise me you won’t go back to the school!”

Wordlessly, Kalama pushed her sister away from her. When Ewa looked up at her sister with sad, shining eyes, Kalama knelt down and looked into Ewa’s face. She grasped Ewa’s shoulders tightly, as though she were clinging to a life raft.

“I’ll think about it,” Kalama promised her sister.

Even though it was the last thing she wanted to do.

Chapter 3
Candles on the Water


The concept of mana can extend to any form of magic, not just the branch of Shamanism. Magic is an energy that exists all around us, and the very definition of a witch or a wizard is one who has the ability to harness this energy. Think of it as being similar to living in a home where everyone is either blind or deaf, and you are the only one who still retains all their senses.


Scritch, scritch, scritch…

The limbs of the trees scratched against the window, distracting Kalama from the passage in her copy of Hawaiian Shamanic Studies, even though she could afford no time to be distracted. As part of her summer homework for Shamanism class, Kalama had to pick a research topic and write an essay on it. Not as easy an assignment as it had seemed before, given that her Shamanism class had never had an official textbook, so the paper involved a lot of independent reading and researching the texts themselves.

And even after that was all over, Kalama still had an Astronomy chart; essays for Wandwork, History of Magic, and Defensive Magic; and a plant collection to start for Herbology she hadn’t began yet. She hadn’t even looked at what she needed to do for Potions class.

It could all be over a lot faster, however, if she simply went to her father and…

Kalama shook her head rapidly as she pushed the thought from her mind, although it was not easy. Ever since she had made her promise to Ewa, the decision of whether or not to go back to Kailani in August was all she could think about. And even though the thought of not going back to school seemed awful, it was one that wouldn’t leave her alone. Even as she tried to study, the idea of simply throwing the books out and telling her father that she really would stay with them wouldn’t go away.

It was already July, but she had yet to give her answer. Something inside her wouldn’t allow her to say yes.

Kalama continued to try and push such thoughts from her mind as she went back to her reading.


The concept of mana can be divided into three physical plains: the upper self, the middle self, and the lower self. The upper self, in actuality, is all the magical energy that exists in the world. It is the only way of thinking of yourself in connection to the collective power of the world. The middle self is the energy that exists immediately around you, and what you actually have the ability to harness at any given time.


CRACK!

Kalama jumped at the sudden sound. The tree limb that had only moments ago been scratching against the window had been broken off by the howling wind and was now held only by a small shred of bark. Kalama set her book down and reached the window just in time to see the branch tear from its last strand of bark and blow down the street, carried by the gusts.

When Hawaiian storms hit, they hit hard. The rains had only just started when she sat down to read, the wind barely blowing. But now, the sky was darkened, air howling through the trees and the houses, and the raindrops pounded against the pavement as though they were made of solid stone. The only thing that offered some peace to the outside scene was that although the tropical storms appeared violent, the were normally nothing to worry about. As long as you stayed low until they were over, they weren’t usually dangerous.

Moreover, it gave Kalama an even greater reason to finish her homework.


The lower self is, at the same time, the simplest form of energy, and yet the most complicated to understand. It is the actual energy inside of you, what allows you to harness magical energy itself. What makes it complex is not only the circular logic of the concept, but how this energy passes to some people and not others. Family plays some role in it, but is not the sole role (e.g. Muggleborns). Of course, there is also the concept of Squibs that seems to complicate the subject even further.

Perhaps there is no rhyme or reason to why some are granted the inner self and others-


Suddenly, Kalama’s vision went dark, as did the whole room around her. The storm clouds blocked out the sun, taking away even the hope for natural light. For a moment, she flicked with the switch to her desk lamp light, even though she already knew what had happened. The wind or the lightning or the pelting rain had caused a power outage, and now the entire lower valley was completely devoid of electricity.

“KALAMA!” Ewa shouted from the living room.

“Don’t panic, Ewa,” Kalama called back, slamming her textbook shut. “You know what to do when the power goes out. Round up every candle in the house and I’ll be out to light them in a minute.”

She heard her sister scutter around the house, occasionally colliding with pieces of furniture. Kalama felt blindly across the surface of her desk, searching for her wand. Finally, wedged underneath a copy of Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1), she found the rod: hibiscus and menehune hair.

“Lumos,” she whispered into the dark, the tip of her wand glowing brightly, illuminating the entire bedroom.

Gingerly, she stepped over the messy obstacle course that was her floor, being careful to avoid a dirty plate and half-filled glass as she hopped to the door. The hallway was pit black, not being graced by the minimal light the windows had to offer. Kalama stood still for a moment, debating between left and right, trying to remember where she had heard Ewa’s voice come from.

“Kalama?” Ewa called out to her again.

“Ewa?” Kalama shouted back, waving her wand through the air, cutting through the darkness. “Ewa, where are you?”

“In here.”

“Where’s ‘here’?”

“The living room ‘here’!” Ewa’s frustration laid thickly over the tone of her voice.

Kalama couldn’t help but laugh as she turned left towards the living room. She kept her left hand on the wall, giving an extra feeling of security as her wand hand offer a light she didn’t fully trust. Normally the sight of her lighted wand would give her enough comfort to survive on, but today it wasn’t reassuring enough - soon to be shown for good reason.

“KALAMA!” Ewa jumped out from around the corner, screeching her sister’s name at the top of her lungs. Kalama felt her heart skip three beats and was soon thankful to have her hand steady against the wall, for it was the only thing that kept her from falling flat on the floor. Kalama wanted desperately to yell at her sister for scaring her so, but her voice kept getting caught in her throat, just like her heartbeat seemed to have trouble getting back to normal. She was certain that all the color must have drained from her face too.

Clearly not willing to wait for Kalama to calm down, Ewa yanked on her sister’s arm and led her the rest of the way into the living room. Pointing her wand towards the floor, Kalama was able to find the table just before she would have crashed into it, along with the dozens of candles that Ewa had gathered. Not a single candle seemed to match: some brand new, some with the wick burnt beyond any use. A copper candleholder held four tapered candles, all different colors and different lengths, dripped wax falling all the way down to the base. There were also heavy jarred candles that smelled deeply of exotic fruit, citronella candles that stung Kalama’s nose, and white emergency candles that were scented like clean air.

Ewa handed her sister the first pillared candle and then began feeling around the surface of the coffee table for something to light it with. Kalama, on the other hand, had a much more efficient idea.

“Incendio,” she recited, her wand pointed toward the candlewick, which quickly combusted, giving a dim light that allowed Kalama to at least see her sister’s face, which held the saw quiet sense of awe it always got whenever Kalama had used magic in front of her.

Kalama handed the candle to Ewa before picking up a second candle. She spoke the incantation again and again, until every candle spread across the coffee table was lit. Finally, the living room was enveloped in a warm, red glow, reminding Kalama very much of the lanterns and the torch lights at Kailani. With every candle lit, Ewa would choose a different place in the room to set it: back on the coffee table, on top of the television set. The copper candleholder, with its rainbow of dripped wax, rested between the girls’ last school pictures: Muggle pictures, where the sisters remained as still as statues.

Although the light was still far too poor to do anything besides stare at the walls, at least it was better than fumbling around, searching for one another in the dark. Kalama almost considered using the Lumos charm so she could finish her reading, but at the moment, she didn’t feel it was in her to do homework right now. Kalama set her wand down next to one of the horrid smelling citronella candles, the Lumos charm dissipating as soon as she let go.

“Sit down with me, Kalama,” Ewa begged, taking a seat on the faded material of the living room couch.

Hearing the cracking fear in her little sister’s voice, Kalama did not argue and simply took a seat on the cushion left of Ewa. She picked absent-mindedly at the balls of lint on the upholstery while Ewa scratched at the denim material of her shorts, flinching every time thunder rolled and lightning flashed. The two girls didn’t look at each other for a long time.

“You know, Ewa,” Kalama told her sister, hoping she would be able to distract her, “Mama once told me that you can tell how far away a storm is from you by counting the seconds between the thunder and the lightning.”

Ewa looked up at Kalama, eyes still wide with impending fear, but a small glimmer of interest behind it all.

“One second is the same as one mile,” Kalama went on to explain. “And the more seconds apart the two are, the further away the storm is from you. Do you want to try counting?”

Ewa lowered her eyes back down to stare at the floor, but Kalama was able to make out a small fraction of a nod. She took that as a yes and proceeded to count, even though it was without the help of her sister.

“One one-thousand,” Kalama started counting, only to be interrupted after a second by a loud clap of thunder. Ewa cringed and huddled against her older sister, but Kalama remained stiff and calm, eyes staring at the shadows dancing across the brightly-painted walls.

“One one-thousand,” she began again, her voice soft, with a slight rasp to it, “two one-thousand, three-”

This time, it was the lightning that stopped the series of numbers.

“One one-thousand,” Kalama began yet again, as though she were making it clear to the brewing storm outside that she was not afraid, “two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four one-thousand-”

Thunder clapped, still loudly, but Kalama didn’t feel the need to count anymore. She had already proved her point, feeling she needed no further evidence to prove the girls’ safety.

“You see,” Kalama said in a reassuring tone. “That storm is plenty far away from us. It can’t hurt us now.”

Ewa seemed to relaxed just slightly, but her posture was still extremely stiff, as though she expected the storm to sneak up on them at any moment, right when Kalama wouldn’t be expecting it. But if Ewa truly was thinking any of these things, she did not share them with Kalama. The two sisters simply sat in silence, watching the shadows and the candlelight flicker across the walls and the floor.

“Well?” Ewa finally said, as the shadows began to cease movement.

“Well, what?” Kalama asked.

Ewa was still staring at the floor the whole time she spoke, but that didn’t stop her from carrying on the conversation.

“Have you decided if you’re going to stay home or not next year?”

Now it was Kalama’s turn to shift stiffly on the cheap material of the sofa. Of all the things she could have talked about with her sister right now, this had to be at the bottom of the list of what she would have liked to discuss.

“Not yet, Ewa.” Kalama tried to brush off the topic as though it were something completely mundane. “It’s been a very busy summer. I haven’t had a lot of time to think about it.”

Ewa focused her eyes on the grains in the hardwood flooring.

“Dad said to me that if you don’t make up you’re mind soon, he’s going to make it up for you.”

Kalama snapped her head to the left, glaring down at her little sister, taking on the embodiment of the phrase ‘killing the messenger’. Ewa must have sensed these feelings, because she flinched as she continued to stare down on the floor.

“Then why doesn’t Dad say those things to me?” Kalama snapped, wanting an answer as though it were gold.

Even in the dim light, Kalama could see Ewa pursing her lips tightly, refusing to divulge anymore secret conversations between Ewa and their dad. Certain that she would not be getting any more information out of her little sister, Kalama pushed herself up off the sofa, bounding over the shadows dancing across her bare feet.

“Hey, where ya going?” Ewa shouted in a whining voice.

“I’m gonna go outside,” she replied.

“But it’s still raining out!”

“I’ll live.”

“What if you get struck by lightning?”

“I-um,” Kalama stammered as she searched her brain for an answer, “witches can’t get struck by lightning, Ewa. It’s part if what makes us magical.”

In truth, Kalama had no idea whether or not witches could get struck by lightning. But she certainly couldn’t tell sister that she just didn’t want to be around her.

It took every piece of strength that Kalama had to push the screen door open against the natural force of the brewing storm. She couldn’t be sure how much common sense a person had to lack to go out into a storm like this, but Kalama was pretty sure that at this moment in time, she certainly fit the bill.

The harsh winds whipped her hair all around her, her wet bangs clinging to the sides of her face and longer strands snapping against her back. Thunder cracked loudly, shaking the physical world below, and lightning danced under the billowing clouds, spreading a ruby glow around the spidery strands. Beads of rain pelted down, near the point of leaving welts on Kalama’s bare skin.

Steadying the porch swing under her, Kalama took a seat against the damp wood and began to kick against the floor.

---

“You know, Kalama,” Nora Jameson said, turning back to her daughter. “This is probably the exact kind of thing I would have turned to your father for advice for. Not that I don’t already know exactly what he would say…”

“What would he say, Mama?” Kalama asked. She had never been included in ‘the conversation’ before, save for a few minor roles. This time, it seemed to revolve completely around her, and only her.

Her mother leaned back against the back of the swing and let out a deep sigh.

“He would say that when things are at their worst, all we have to cling to is each other,” Kalama’s mother spoke in a relaxed tone, one that her daughter had seen become rarer and rarer in the past few months. “Family, the community, who we are, and who we will become. That is all we can really know we have in times of trial.”

Kalama chewed on her bottom lip as she considered what this wisdom meant. Although she couldn’t remember her father, Joseph, his words seemed to echo truer to her than any words she had ever heard from a living person. If something big and violent was about to occur in the wizarding community, Kalama would have to depend heavily on the community of magic, given she had no living relatives of magic. But she would also have to depend on her family. Even though they had no powers and barely any idea of what she would be facing as a young witch, blood was still thicker than anything.

“Do you think you’d be able to follow your father’s advice?” her mother asked, tugging insistently at her daughter’s shoulders. “Do you think you could promise me that?”

The sky to the west had begun to turn a brilliant scarlet with the setting of the sun, more so to the south than to the north.

“Yeah, Mama,” Kalama agreed with her mother’s terms. “I promise.”

---

Kalama sat on the porch swing, kicking violently at the wood-plank floor, creating a horribly jerky ride. But Kalama was by no means sitting there to enjoy a nice, relaxing swing. It was the closest thing she had come to throwing a temper tantrum since she was four years old.

Joseph and her mother…they were her true blood family. It was their history she carried now, and their legacy she would carry on; especially Joseph’s. The man who had been her mother’s first true love: and whose crimson blood, and natural power, now ran through her own veins.

But her dad, Will, he had been the one who had helped to raise her from the time she was three. He was the one who held the family together after her mother’s death, and who loved her as though she were his own. And, Ewa, she may have been someone who came along long after the magic had vanished from Kalama’s family, but her little sister was still a part of her. These people were just as much a part of her as the magical abilities she possessed, and she was now fighting to keep them both.

People she was supposed to love, and people she now found herself tearing herself away from…

Then there was an obligation to her mother, who wasn’t even with her anymore, who wanted her to carrying on the traditions of a man who not only wasn’t alive anymore either, but that she didn’t even remember anyway.

Torn between two impossible circumstances, Kalama did the only thing she felt someone in her position could do: she cried. Her hands clutched at the seat of the swing, her fingernails scratching away at the peeling red paint. Tears fell from Kalama’s eyes almost as hard as the rain fell around her.

Chapter 4
So Why Are You Running Away?


Hot grains of sand shifted uncomfortably over the soles of Kalama’s sandals as the younger children raced as around her: some locals, some the children of wealthy tourists. Shovels scraped against the surface of Waikiki beach, digging for wet fragments to be used in the basic construction; while the drying, white sand was shifted of to the side of later use. Piles of shells, beach glass, and even bottle caps and other pieces of disguarded trash grew next to pillars, towers, and mounds while the children shouted orders at one another.

Kalama had never been able to understand why people thought this was fun.

Certainly, making sand castles could be enjoyable when it was done at a leisurely pace and simply for the sake of creating something beautiful. Even if it would only be a matter of hours before the tide swept it back into the ocean to be used again in fifty years when the sand was pushed back to the shore.

But the people who competed in the Waikiki Sand-Towers Competition had no understanding of this concept. The people were all given a set amount of time, six hours, in which they had to remain on the beach. They would fight one another for small patches of sand, as though they didn’t see the stretches of land covered in it, and horded pieces of garbage like rare jewels.

Nothing about the spectacle appealed to Kalama, and everything about it appealed to Ewa and her dad.

No matter how many times Kalama insisted she hated this competition, her father would always sign the family up to compete; and Kalama would always stand off to the side while her family went mad, watching the sun travel across the sky and wander into the ocean so she could allow the waves to lap against her feet. When her mom had been alive, she would find some way to distract her father, usually through Ewa, and the two of them would wander over to the marketplace or into the narrow corridor streets to shop through the tacky Hawaiian souvenirs, never buying a thing.

Kalama found herself thinking of her mother a lot lately, ever since the storm and the breakdown on the peeling red porch swing. Nearly every moment of every day, she found herself breaking the unspoken rule among her family, even if she was the only one who knew it. It had placed an invisible barrier between her and her living relatives, pushing her back toward her family buried in the ground.

Will picked up a stray piece of beach wood and began using it as a makeshift carving tool to create ridges in the barricade wall. Yes, Will; she had stopped calling him ‘Dad’ in her mind days ago. The only problem was that every time she forced herself to make this distinction, the knot in her stomach grew tighter and tighter. To have her only father dead and rotting in the earth, and to consider that she was sharing a home, being raised by someone whom she now felt so emotionally distant from, it was almost more than Kalama could bear.

“TIME!” a judge’s voice blared through a blow horn. “Fifteen minute break, people! The clock is ticking!”

A wave of competitors rushed away from the construction area to merge into the crowd of spectators. Once the clusters thinned out, Kalama was able to find Will and Ewa, still lingering over their ‘masterpiece’, smoothing the walls of one of their quarter towers and then bleaching it with handfuls of dry sand.

Will let loose a long whistle of exhaustion and Ewa wiped the sweat from her forehead before it could drip into her eyes. “So, Kalama,” he asked as he made his way to a drink vender’s cart, the two girls trailing behind him, “you’ve been watching the other families. Where would you say the Jameson castle ranks?”

There was an overly happy tone in his voice when he asked Kalama this. It was clear that Will did feel the current level of animosity in Kalama’s tone, even if he didn’t know the reason behind it. From the lack of concern, he might have believed it was just the beginning of puberty.

“You’re doing good,” Kalama replied flatly. “There’s one castle off to the far left being built by that family with the eight kids, they’re building a scale model of a Japanese palace. But the wall are shaky and it looks like a soft breeze could knock it over.”

“Do you think we’ll win?” Ewa begged her sister to answer, jumping up several times onto her tiptoes in an attempt to reach Kalama’s eye level.

“Maybe.” Kalama shrugged her shoulders and continued to follow after Will. “Who knows?”

The drink cart (this particular one at least) was not a typical part of the Waikiki scenery: it was one of those easily moved models that could be taken anywhere the money was. And today, the dirty white cart with its commercial stickers and scratched paintings of fruit, had found its way to the Sand-Towers competition and right in front of Kalama’s newly critical gaze.

“Oh, look at this, girls. They have those blended organic juices you always get,” Will remarked as he pulled his wallet from his pocket, a good amount of sand coming out with it. “You like pineapple-papaya, right, Kalama?”

Kalama nodded absent mindedly, even though she had never even tried pineapple-papaya. It sounded like a busy tasting drink that would probably be disgusting.

The aged Japanese woman who ran the cart reached into the chilled bin and retrieved the glass juice bottles without even needing to look down to read the labels. Maybe she’s a witch too, Kalama found herself thinking. Lately, Kalama noticed that the more she obsessed about magic, the more she began to notice the places that it might be hiding. Was it possible that older witches and wizards could see magic in younger children just the same way older Muggles could predict a rainstorm. From the way the juice vender seemed to be acknowledging Kalama and only Kalama with a knowing stare, it certainly seemed that way.

“You daughters are adorable!” She smiled, gaps in her teeth clearly visible as she did. “They look just like you.”

“I’m not his daughter,” Kalama informed her as she took one of the juice bottles from her.

Kalama glanced to the side just in time to see the mortified expression on Will’s shocked face, the drink in his hand barely remaining held in his grasp. Ewa let lose a tiny yelp and seemed to choke on her strawberry-melon juice. Even the drink vendor appeared to be taken aback by Kalama’s sudden statement.

From the direction of the conversation, Kalama knew she must have sounded like one of those pureblood fanatics she had gone to school with; students who would say whatever it took to separate themselves from any shred of Muggle blood they might have had. However, despite what Kalama intellectually knew what she was saying may have sounded like to this strange woman, she didn’t care. While those students disavowed their Muggle lineage out some old world bigotry, Kalama did it in an effort to finally live the truth.

It was something she should have started doing since the moment she knew that she wouldn’t be a part of the Muggle world, no matter how effectively she had been able to convince herself and everyone else otherwise.

“My father died when I was three,” Kalama continued to explain as she unscrewed the bottle cap. “My mom married Will later. Ewa’s his daughter, but I’m not.”

Kalama took a sip and made a face; pineapple-papaya was an awful flavor.

Cautiously, Will handed the vendor a few crisp new bills, all the while keeping his eyes on Kalama as though the words were a precursor to a transformation into some horrific creature more fitting of her recent words.

“C’mon, girls.” There was a restrained stillness in his tone, allowing all the spectators around them to predict the great storm of harsh words that was to come, even if none of them would witness it. As they walked, Ewa pressed the rim of her juice bottle to her lips, but didn’t drink. She regaled her sister with an odd expression: a combination of shock, worry, and a small touch of excitement that all small children got when they watched someone just about to get in trouble. Kalama was the only one who appeared calm. She had been the one who had manipulated the situation to make this happen. She wanted this to happen, even though there was no ‘why’ behind it.

Suddenly, Will grabbed her shoulder and spun her around so she would have to look him in the eyes while she answered for herself. “What the hell was that?!”

Ewa jumped as her father shouted. The two girls had always known that Will had a bit of a temper, but neither sister had seen it since their mother had died. The passing of Nora Jameson seemed to have left a hole in the man that all previous anger had been sinking into ever since. Two years later, that had certainly changed.

“What are you talking about, Will?”

“THAT is what I am talking about!” Willed yelled, though keeping his voice somewhat hushed to avoid garnering too much attention. “How dare you say the kinds of things you just said?”

“Why?” Kalama asked with a raised eyebrow. “Was what I said a lie?”

That last reply held Will aback for a moment. Up until now, Kalama had never forced him to account for the fact that he was her stepfather. She could remember when Will and her mother first started dating and even after they got married, he had tried to sit Kalama down and talk to her using words he had read in secondhand self-help books. But there is only so much a four-year-old is capable of understanding, so most of what was said simply washed over her. In her simple little mind, her daddy was gone and now she had a new daddy. And with all the special privileges and treats she had gotten from him in an attempt to earn her love, she hardly saw any reason to complain.

That had been so long ago that now, that when a real test surfaced, Will didn’t know what to say.

“K-Kalama,” he stuttered, “that is hardly any excuse for you to say what you just said. I have been you dad for more than half your life, and that entitles me to somerespec-”

“And the ability to decide whether or not I’ll be allowed to reenter my own world!” Kalama snapped.

“Alright, Kalama,” Will huffed under his breath, “I was hoping that you would love me and you sister enough to make this decision on your own, but seeing all this has shown that is certainly not the case.”

Kalama felt her blood boiling and she reached into her pocket to grip her wand.

“I’m doing what I think is best for you,” Will tried to explain evenly. “You might not understand today, but someday you will thank m-”

Not able to take anymore of this, Kalama pulled her wand from her pocket and pointed it directly at Will’s chest. His eyes flashed around the beach, looking for anyone who might have seen the wand as more than just a pretty stick.

“Kalama, you put that away this instant!” Will hissed at her. “I do know something about wizarding in laws. If someone sees you doing magic, you will be in a world of trouble!”

“And what if I don’t? put it away” Kalama raised the question. “You’ll forbid me from going back to school again before I turn you into a parrot!”

“Threats are not helping your case, young lady,” Will warned with a tone of finality. “I am the adult in this household, and my decision is final! There is a war going on, and I will not have you going to some school who’s only interest is to train you to die in combat. They have an alternative motive, but we are your family, Kalama. No one can ever care for you and know better what is best for you than we do-”

“SHUT UP, MUGGLE!” Kalama screamed.

The sudden sound of breaking glass and a piercing scream from Ewa soon stopped the argument right in its tracks. When Kalama looked over to her sister, she saw that Ewa’s juice bottle had spontaneously burst in her hand. Slivers of glass lay scattered all around her feet, deep cuts slashing across her face. The ruby-red juice splashed across her face, mixing with the blood until Kalama could not tell the difference between the two. Salty tears seeped into the pronounced cuts, causing Ewa to screech even louder.

Will rushed right over to Ewa, but Kalama’s fight-or-flight instincts took over and before she knew it, she was sprinting into the narrow, crowded alleys of the shopping districts. She didn’t look back, even when Will yelled for her; she kept her eyes forward and allowed the voice shouting her name to merge into the collective noise.

Chapter 5
Closing Time


After what felt like hours of waiting, the store lights finally clicked off. The owner stepped outside, locked the doors, and, at long last, left for the night. After waiting a few more moments, Kalama crept out from her hiding place behind a large stack of garbage cans, keeping her head low as she snuck across the alley, even after she reached the door. Kalama must have checked over her shoulder a half dozen times before she finally felt safe enough to pull out her wand.

“Alohomora,” she whispered, hearing the locks shift and the latch open.

Gingerly, Kalama pushed the door open and stepped inside, walking slowly and carefully as though waiting for some sort of alarm to go off. But her surroundings remained quiet, cast in shadow and unfamiliarity.

For all the times Kalama and her mother had visited this particular alley, she had never been inside this store before now. All the other stores in the alleyway sold cheesy Hawaiian souvenirs make from coconut wood, moldy seashells and plastic that Kalama and her mother would laugh at. This store, however, was an antique store. Not one of those junk stores that reeked of stale smoke and where spider webs laced the ceiling beams. No, this store seemed filled with real treasures. Oriental rugs shown brightly against the gleaming hardwood floors, while jade statues and silk paintings graced the spotless walls.

As Kalama’s eyes passed over the lovely relics, she found her mind beginning to wander, eventually leading her back to her back to the actions which had led her here in the first place. When she ran from Will and Ewa, Kalama really hadn’t had any plan of what she was going to do once she actually got away. She couldn’t really see Will calling the Muggle police on her, especially after the outburst which had led to her flight. Will just didn’t seem like the type who could easily explain away a missing daughter while the other one had glass cuts all over her face without divulging the involvement of magic Magical Law Enforcement didn’t seem very likely either; Kalama doubted Will would know how to contact them, that is if he even knew such a thing existed.

Every child thinks about running away from home at some point in their lives. Childish fantasies are one thing, a child actually putting logical thought into the process of running away is another entirely. Kalama had been able to survive one day by herself solely by running around the marketplace. Whenever any tourist began paying too much attention to her and seeing Kalama for what she was�”a child running through the city all by herself, she would hide behind one of the booths and pretend to be the bored daughter of whichever vender owned it. And not one of the venders ever noticed her, all of them far too busy advertising their wares to notice the half-grown girl hiding in the corner.

Money hardly seemed an issue. A desperate father from Nebraska had paid her twenty Muggle dollars for being able to tell him the way back to his hotel, and then another ten for pointing out the nearest restaurant when his three chubby children began to whine that they were hungry. With the cash, she had been able to buy herself a wonderful feast from a food cart owned by a man with a missing front tooth with enough left over that Kalama was sure she would be able to feed herself for the rest of the week. And the spell she had used to unlock the door of the antique store was the first magic she had used since she ran.

So Kalama decided that this would be her life for the rest of the summer: living in the market, moving from booth to booth during the day, finding empty stores to sleep in at night, making money by acting as a guide to the thousands of clueless tourists that were sure to pass through the city. And once she finally did get back to Kailani, as soon as the boat reached the shores of the school, Kalama would track down Professor Kim, the dean of students, and tell him what had happened with her family that summer. Then he would find a way for Kalama to live at the school during summer vacation or find a wizard family to board her during the school breaks. And the school would become Kalama’s home until she was old to live by herself.

And she would never see Honolulu or her old home again.

Kalama felt her eyes begin to sting, but in such a polished place, she could hardly blame it on dust. As much as she had tried to distance herself from Will and Ewa in these past few weeks, she still could not ignore the fact that they had, in essence, been her only family for the past two years. Even before then, they had been a part of Kalama’s life just as much as her mother had been.

And as many faults as Will had, Kalama admitted to herself that he had been a good father to her for all these years. A five-year-old is hardly capable of any true manipulation, and yet Will fell for every single one of her little tricks. But time went by, and as clueless as Will had been about kids when he had first met Kalama’s mother, he had certainly proved himself capable of learning on the job, even more so once Ewa was born.

And then there was sweet little Ewa, who Kalama could never have forced herself to be angry with, no matter what the circumstance.

In many ways, Ewa had proved to be the link that eventually connected them all as a common family. This time, it was both Will and Kalama that proved to be clueless. Kalama’s mother was the only one in the equation who knew anything about babies, and she became their teacher: in how to care for an infant, and how to unite a group of otherwise strangers as a family.

All of them somehow connected to Kalama’s mother.

But Kalama had more to think about than just the family she had come to call hers in the part few years.

Kalama rubbed at her eyes in an attempt to cure her blurring vision as she wandered back further into the store, behind an entryway where "Employees Only. No Admittance" was written is bold red.

Kalama had barely passed through when a shiny glint caught the corner of her eye. But even after her eyes became sharp and focused once again, she still found herself confused by what she saw behind the mahogany counter, blocked away from any wondering customer.

Swords, samurai swords stuck into the plaster of the wall, at different angles and at different depths. It nearly resembled a piece of modern, obscure art more than a display belonging in a fine antique store. Only one was low enough for Kalama to reach. She reached up slowly, as though the red jasper handle might snap back and bite her. Gingerly, her fingers stretched forward, just barely brushing against the polished stone.

Suddenly, Kalama felt a hook-like sensation grab at her naval and tug her at a rapid speed through the rushing air. It startled Kalama at first, but she soon forced herself to relax and went with the flow. As adrenaline rushing as the sensation was, it was hardly a new feeling to her.

The sword she had touched was a Portkey. Unlike other markets on the mainland, the Hawaiian wizarding market was scatted across every island, each story nowhere near one another, geographically speaking. Hawaii had several dozen islands beside the main islands, and the state’s witches and wizard were spread across every one of them. They were simply all too scatted with too many wandering Muggles running all over tha place to have a huge amount of land dedicated to a large single market.

Not to mention a large city with Muggles from all over the world who could spot incidents of magic and run off before the Department of Magic could track them down wasn't terribly good place for wizards to live.

And so the Portkey System was devised. People would walk in through the front door; the store would appear Muggle and mundane in every sense of the word, because that’s exactly what it was. Store owners would operate a legitimate business directed to Muggles with a Portkey located somewhere in the store, normally behind the counter or in a backroom for employees only where very few customers would wander past by accident.

And it would figure that the only sword low enough for her to reach would have been the entrance into the true store.

Upon further examining of her surrounding, Kalama began to see why she had never been in this particular shop before. Like the fine antique that had been on display in the cover store, all the wizarding devices in the true shop were foreign to Kalama, but obviously of very fine quality. Dangling from the rafters, fine wiry instruments of gold shifted slightly from side to side, even though there was no wind or draft to do so. Other heavy metal items cast darker shadows over the floor and glass materials glimmered on high shelves. The store had no windows, and there was no natural light to cast shadows, just the way there was no draft to shift the objects hanging from the ceiling.

But it was one item, tucked away in the corner and out of site to most customers, however, that caught Kalama’s attention and would not let go.

Even though Kalama had never seen one of these things in real life, she didn’t need anyone to tell her what it was. This was a Pensieve: a device that could be used to peer into a person’s deepest memories and have them played in front of you as though you were there yourself, even if the person whose memories you were viewing wasn’t able to recall the scenes themselves. It was common knowledge around Kalama’s school that there was a Pensieve hidden in the dean’s, and that lots of other magic schools in the world had them too. Although, exactly what all these schools needed these things for remain a mystery.

Slowly, Kalama traced her fingers around the cauldron-like rim of the object, her still-lingering child-like curiosity wondering how she could go about making it work. Kalama had heard some of the older students at Kailani talk about how the teachers would sometimes go into the Dean’s office late at night so they could use the Pencieve, although none of them had ever seen one used either. So even if Kalama did want to use it, she still wouldn’t even know how to start it. And then, thoughts about memories only brought Kalama back to thinking about her recently broken family…

Then, before Kalama could wipe her watering eyes, a tear dropped into the device, more silvery than she had ever seen a tear appear before. The silver drop rippled in the Pencieve, giving way to images that first appeared in front of Kalama. As though she were years younger than she actually was, Kalama reached down into the mist-like liquid to touch it as though examining some strange new creature. The moment her fingers touched the surface, the still-forming images in the Pensieve rose from the surface and swirled all around her, as though she were actually there.

Soon, Kalama found herself standing on the front porch of her house. The sun was just going down, casting the valley in a brilliant, scarlet glow. The creaking sound of rusted metal drew Kalama’s gaze to the right where she could see the peeling red porch swing, along with her mother and herself at ten years old. Kalama could have recognized this scene anywhere, even if she hadn’t have known what a Pensieve was. This was the scene that had taken place two years ago, just after Kalama had made her promise to her mother, the one where she promised to honor her family legacy. The conversation had been much too heavy for the little girl at the time, so as soon as it was over, Kalama had jumped off the swing and left the house through the kitchen door to go after Ewa, just like she was doing now right before her own eyes.

And now Kalama’s mother sat on the porch swing alone, kicking slightly against the floor. Silently, Kalama walked over to her mother, eventually taking a seat on the swing beside her. Her mother did not look at her. Nora Jameson’s eyes remained on the setting sun and the growing amount of color that was spreading over the horizon. Before Kalama even knew what she was doing, she reached out her hand to touch her mother’s cheek, only to watch her fingers pass right through her, the tips of her fingers rising up through the red silk scarf that covered her mother’s head.

“Joseph.” Kalama heard her mother speak out onto the horizon, eyes not focused on any particular object. “You were always so much better at these kinds of things than me.”

Suddenly, Kalama’s mother began a loud coughing fit, hunching over and clutching at her sides as though every breath were pure agony. Desperately, Kalama wanted so badly to hug her mother, even though the logical part of her brain reminded her that this was impossible, that she would only pass through her just like before.

But slowly, the scene around her faded away and the picture once again became just an image in a cauldron resting in front of her eyes. Two more tears plopped into the Pensieve.

The same woman from before, younger and healthier than she appeared previously, but shaken by grief this time. She stood dressed from head to toe in black, her thick hair bound up on top of her head. In her arms, she held a small child, also dressed in black, but the adult emotion of sorrow was absent from her expression. Instead, the small girl appeared confused, the events surrounding her and the feelings they generated all to much for her little mind to grasp.

Every now and then, another human body would drift past the two of them, sometimes touching Nora Jameson’s shoulder or smoothing Kalama’s hair, mumbling words of condolences. Kalama’s mother would nod, but never made eye contact, clinging to her daughter the way a small child would hold a rag doll.

Suddenly, Kalama found herself back in her family’s old house, a smaller house that she could almost remember on her own. The floors were covered nearly wall to wall with vases of colorful flowers. Kalama’s mother was still holding the younger version of Kalama as she took a seat on the moth-eaten sofa.

“Kalama,” she sighed as she spoke, rubbing the child’s back. “Kalama, Kalama, Kalama. How am I supposed to raise you as a witch when I have no idea what it even means to be one.”

Once again showing her oblivious nature towards the events, young Kalama reached over backwards to grab one of the brightly-colored blooms off a flower arrangement resting on the coffee table.

“Here’s a present,” the small child spoke to her mother in a soft voice. “Be happy, Mama.”

With a smile on her face, Nora Jameson took the flower from her young daughter. The real version of Kalama stood off in an entryway watching a memory she couldn’t quite recall. These old memories of her mother were all well and good to watch, but Kalama couldn’t understand why exactly she had made herself decide to see all this. What was the point?

Before Kalama could have this question answered, the scene faded away once again to yet another suppressed memory.

It was her mother again, even younger still, sitting on the same sofa, appearing newer and less faded this time. Beside her, a man with long black hair seemed to be arguing with her, his hands moving expressively: a man Kalama had only seen clear pictures of in photographs, but still recognized as Joseph, her father, her real father. The vases of flowers had now been replaced with brightly-colored baby toys and dirty dishes and clothes. On a patchwork blanket, a dark-skinned baby rested off to the side, laying on her stomach and doing some sort of push-up movement in an attempt to scoot across the floor.

“Nora, they’re your parents!”

The young woman beside him shook her head in an almost joking manner. This was a version of Nora Jameson that Kalama had never seen before: young, energetic, healthy, sorrow completely absent from her expression. This was a Nora Jameson who had yet to feel the grief from a dead husband or the pain from a wasting disease that would devoir her from the inside out.

“It’s a package deal, Joseph.” Kalama’s mother gestured towards the baby with the crown of her head. “If they want me and Kalama, they have to take you too.”

It took the real Kalama a few moments to entrench herself into the conversation, but eventually, she did know what they were talking about. Kalama knew her grandparents on her mother’s side were very much alive, although she had never met them that she could remember. Whenever Kalama would ask her mother why, she would always give her some sugarcoated answer about how they just weren’t close and would leave it at that. Kalama always had a feeling that there was more to it, but she had never found reason to push for more information.

“Well, it is hardly a secret that your parents do not approve of my…condition.” Understanding finally dawned on Kalama: Joseph was talking about the fact that he was a wizard. “Ever since you told them. Most parents throw parades when they find out they’re going to have their first grandchild. Yours offered you a small fortune to leave your husband.”

And now she knew. She never thought she would ever her such a callus response from members of her own family. It was no wonder that Kalama’s mother had never allowed her to meet them. She had been so hard on Will whose dislike for the world of magic only stemmed from a desire not to see Kalama hurt: her own grandparents’ dislike for magic came from pettiness for something they had never even seen. Someone they had never even met.

And as much as it pained Kalama to hear these words said about members of her own family, she planted her feet where they stood, as though this would somehow stop another memory from shifting into play.

“And if that is their reasoning,” Nora said, “it’s only going to be a matter of time before they decide they don’t like Kalama for the exact same reason.”

On the blanket, baby Kalama took a few deep sighs, the kind of sounds infants made just before baby talk.

“There’s no middle ground in this decision, you know,” Kalama’s mother continued. “Leave you husband, and we’ll take care of you for the rest of your life. Don’t, and as far as you and I are concerned, you don’t have parents anymore. That is what they are saying to me, Joseph.”

Joseph shook his head and sighed, appearing very defeated. His posture gave the image of a man of much greater years than the rest of his appearance would suggest.

“But at the end of the day, you still have to play their game,” Joseph explained. “You’ll pick one choice, even if you never tell them what that choice was.”

“I’m not being forced to make a choice, Joseph,” she told her husband. “They are.”

The infant Kalama gurgled on the floor and then somehow rolled onto her back. She lay there, struggling like a turtle rolled onto its back, until Kalama’s mother finally pushed herself up of the sofa and picked up her daughter. As she bounced and patted baby Kalama’s backed, she looked back to her husband.

“I’m going to stay with my family here, Joseph,” she told him, hushing her daughter before she could start to cry, “but I’m also going to try and maintain contact with my parents too. If they decide not to acknowledge me, that is up to them. Ultimately, if we no longer have a relationship, it will be because they made the choice, not me.”

The last word of her mother’s sentence seemed to give an unearthly echo in the tiny room. Eventually, while still holding the infant version of Kalama in her arms, Nora Jameson looked up, her dark eyes meeting with the real version of her daughter. Kalama was not certain in the images in Pensieves could see the people who were looking in on them, or even if they were capable of intelligent though. But that did not stop Kalama from recognizing the familiar, knowing gaze in her mother’s eyes; a look that she seemed to reserve only for her eldest daughter during the years she was alive.

Finally, the memory began to fade away, taking far longer than all the others had. This, however, allowed Kalama time to reflect on her mother’s philosophies. Nora Jameson’s life had been one all about love. Despite when those around her left or even refused to see her, she would go on loving them, even if they never knew it. And she did it on her terms, leaving no rooms for regret.

Kalama rubbed her eyes, wiping the tears against her arm and clearing her vision. The liquid had gone clear again, and Kalama could see how red and bleary her eyes had become in just a short amount of time. But even such a mundane image as her own reflection saddened her, for it only reminded her of everything she had done, everything she had caused, and everything her own ignorance and pettiness had caused to happen.

Suddenly, a rush of air against Kalama’s back informed her that she was no longer alone in the store, that the Portkey had been used once again. Her Defensive Magic teacher would have dropped dead if he had seen Kalama turn to a stranger without drawing her wand, but Kalama couldn’t have cared less what any of her teachers thought of her at this point. She felt so ill and shaky, even more so now than she was sure her mother had ever felt.

But the person who stood in the store with Kalama now hardly cast an aura of being dangerous. He had not been in Hawaii for very long, or at least he was not planning to stay. Kalama could tell all this from his clothes: dark brown legging and a long trench coat-like robe. It was enough so that Kalama was sure he would not draw any attention from Muggles, but anyone of magical blood looking at him could tell that he was not one of the mundane.

“Kalama Jameson,” he spoke in a calm, collected voice, “gather up all your things. I’m here to take you home.”

Kalama nodded in a resigned sort of way and walked over to the stranger, not even putting up a fight. And when he offered her his hand, she took it.

Chapter 6
As Long as You Love Me


The early morning sun had just begun to light the valley. The sunlight warmed the pavement beneath Kalama’s sandals as she kept her slow pace beside the wizard Officer. It was clear that he was no more in a hurry to get back the little ceramic tile house than Kalama was. In fact, shifting her eyes up to look at the man’s face, he seemed to be the one who was afraid of facing Kalama’s dad. She still did not know what his name was, and with no plans of becoming a career criminal in the near future, she made a point not to ask.

There had not been any real conversation between the two of them ever since had taken her from that store in Honolulu. Other than asking her what year she was in at school, where she lived, and if there was anywhere else he should take her�”typical police questions�”he wanted to know nothing more about her. Also, he apparently didn’t want to know that you had to watch your step on the last step up to the porch either. But as soon as he fell flat on his face, he pushed himself back up without asking for Kalama’s help.

The still-rising sun cast his more frantic expression in shadow, but once he found his footing and was able to stand calm and dignified, the valley’s glow seemed to flatter him perfectly. His hair was bleached a brilliant gold and his skin tanned a perfect brown bronze with none of the reddish burn seen in so many pale-tone residents of the warm island. He was dressed far too warm, however, to appears as though he would be staying in the climate for very long, but he was incredibly handsome. How things stood now, though, Kalama had no name to call him and no word to refer to him in her thoughts.

If Kalama had met him under any other circumstance, she would have wondered if they could be friends. She never would have thought of being friends with an adult before she had gone to Kailani. As soon as any member of the staff learned she was from a Muggle family, they would go out of their way to make sure Kalama was getting everything she could out of her experiences in the magical community. By now, Kalama could tell just by looking at an adult whether or not they would be capable of becoming friends with a child. It was too bad she would never have a chance to find out. Although, in the back of her mind, she still hoped that one his duties, whatever they were, would someday bring him back to Kailani so they could meet once again.

“This is your house?” he asked her, stopping in front of one of the neighborhood homes.

At a slow motion speed, Kalama shifted her eyes to where he was pointing, despite the fact they were already standing on the porch. Even though most of the boxy houses were the exact same space with the exact same wrap-around porch, Kalama could recognize the peach-tinted paint on the outside of the house and the red swings shifting back and forth beside the front door. Wordlessly, she nodded in reply.

“Well, then, Miss Jameson,” he said, barely making eye contact with her. “I hope you’ve learned an important lesson from all this.”

Kalama nodded again with enthusiasm.

“And I’m never going to have to see you again, I trust.” Had this been said under any other circumstance, Kalama might have been extremely insulted, but this time, the words captured her sentiments exactly.

Rising to her tiptoes, Kalama peered in through the door window. The inside of the house was quiet. At the very least, there were no policemen racing through the hallways and no candle light vigils in the entryway. Slowly, she pulled the door open just a crack, miraculously not making a sound as it passed by the latch.

“Hello?” Kalama called out into the entryway.

“Kalama?” the voice of her stepfather called out in a questioning tone at first before finally finding his yelling voice. “KALAMA ANNE JAMESON, GET YOUR BUTT IN HERE THIS INSTANT!”

The Officer jumped at the loud sound and seemed very uneasy when he saw Kalama’s calm stance in the face of imminent trouble.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to stick around?” he asked her, attempting to peer inside the house. “It can never hurt to have a …witness around in these situations.”

“I’ll be fine,” Kalama answered, a relaxed, serene tone gracing her voice that seemed uncharacteristic of the situation. “Will makes a racket, but really, he’s harmless.”

Offering a nonchalant wave, Kalama turned her back on the man and stepped into her house. She was no more than a few feet in when she was thrown back by her little sister tackling her with a hug. Looking down, Kalama could see the healing cuts that her uncontrolled burst of magic had caused, but thankfully saw no stitches or gauzy bandages. She doubted, however, that this fact would mean she was in any less trouble. The serenity in her voice towards the Officer fell down to her feet and allowed to her walk into the kitchen, Ewa following, but hiding and shielding herself awkwardly behind her sister with every step.

Will’s face was bright red, like a chili pepper, and Ewa remained towards the back of the kitchen, her legs dangling over the edge of her chair. And so commenced the shouting�”shouting so loud that Kalama wondered if the neighbors would be calling the police any time soon. Every now and then, Kalama would nod, but she was never truly paying attention. The calm and peace that swept over her now, from the knowledge in knowing what she was going to say and what she was going to cling to, could not be shaken so easily.

“DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME, YOUNG LADY?” Will finished, he lack of breath finally catching up with him.

“Yes,” Kalama answered. “I know what I did wrong. It was stupid of me to think I could run away from my family in such a big city. I could have been hurt, I could have been kidnapped, I could have been brought home by the police.”

Technically, she had been, but she wasn’t going to choose now to split hairs. Will had finally calmed down, and his face was returning to its normal, sunburned shade. Even Ewa was beginning to take interest in the new demeanor of her old sister, leaning forward in her chair in order to hear better.

“You two don’t have to worry,” Kalama finally finished. “You’re my family, the only one I have. I’m not going to abandon you.”

Will seemed shock. “Kalama, that�”that’s wonderful!” He reached forward and hugged his stepdaughter. “I know things are a little confusing right now, but we have the whole summer to figure them out. We’ll put you back in school�”we can start you at a brand new school if you want, but�””

Kalama took a deep breath as she prepared for her next words. “I didn’t say that.”

“Excuse me?”

“I want to stay a member of this family,” Kalama explained, “but that doesn’t mean I’m giving up on the other world I’m a part of either. I’m going back to Kailani this fall, and I’m going to finish my education there.”

“Kalama,” Will said, his voice sounding unmistakably shaky, “don’t you remember the talk we had? We established that you could either stay here with the family, or go back to that school of yours. Choosing both was not one of the options.”

This was where things were going to start getting complicated.

“No, I’m not making that choice,” Kalama told her stepfather. “You are.”

For the first time in her life, Kalama watched her stepfather find himself at a loss for words. She took the window of opportunity even further.

“I’m going back to school in the fall, but I’m still going to do my best to be a good daughter and a good sister,” Kalama explained her plan and the reasoning that went with it. “Whether or not you choose to accept these efforts is entirely up to you.”

That slightest shade of purple-red was just beginning to return to Will’s face once again.

“Kalama, who coached you to say these things?” His ranting tone began to pick up again. “Was it that Officer? Because if it was, I swear to�””

“Mama.”

And by citing that source, Kalama’s reasoning became as solid as gospel. Several times, Will tried to get his anger up to the level it was before, but he kept stammering and stumbling over his own words. Eventually, he just gave up and stomped down the hallway, slamming the bedroom door shut. In a strange combination of flinching and falling, Ewa scrambled to her feet and raced across the kitchen floor and into the hallway herself, her own bedroom door cracking loudly against the latch. Kalama was left alone.

A lot of people might have said Kalama had won, but she did not considered what just happened here to be a battle. Her mother had not considered this a battle when it had been her in this situation either.

---

August 31st, 1997

Groaning loudly, Kalama strained to shut her over-stuffed trunk. Even with her entire body weight pressing down on it, the latch refused to click into place. Why couldn’t the school just give in and get the students bigger trunks? she thought to herself. This is not the eighteen hundreds. A students entire collection of worldly possessions does not consist of a work dress, a church dress, and an oil lamp! Out of habit, she found herself nearly call out for Will to help her, but stopped herself just as the name brushed over her lips.

Finally, by some sort of miracle, Kalama heard her trunk latch shut. Exhausted, she slid down to the floor. She hadn’t remembered packing her things being so much work when she had done it last year. Of course, last year the idea of school was all so fresh and exciting. Maybe now she was just beginning to see it as a boring yearly chore.

And last year, she had had a lot more help in throwing everything into her trunk.

One more mental survey of her trunk contents, and Kalama determined that she had, more or less, everything she needed. She contemplated prolonging this further, but there seemed to be little point in it. Throwing her rose-red school robe over her shoulders, she made her way to the kitchen. Will and Ewa were both sitting at the table. Everything for breakfast was displayed out in front of them, but neither of them were eating.

“Will,” Kalama said as she came into the kitchen, the use of her dad’s first name still resting strange on her tongue, “the Kellers will be here in about ten minutes.”

But Will did not even look up from his morning newspaper. This situation had been playing out just Kalama had seen with her mother in the Pensieve. True to his word, Will Jameson had done nothing to help his stepdaughter get ready for school. He had even, at the last minute, refused to drive Kalama to the harbor, forcing her to enlist the help of an emergency owl and send a very last minute letter to Rachel’s family, begging to tag along with them.

Although that just added a whole other host of worries about what would happen what would happen once Rachel and her very wizarding parents paraded into her home.

A sudden rustling sound in the living room, however, soon made worrying about what could happen irrelevant, because it was all happening right now.

“Uh oh,” Kalama gasped as she heard the rushing movement. She had forgotten to tell Will that the Kellers might be taking the Floo Network. Come to think of it, she didn’t think she had even told him and Ewa what the Floo Network was.

Please don’t be them! Please don’t be them! Kalama found herself thinking. But all the wishing in the world couldn’t stop the two full grown adults from jumping out of the rarely-used fireplace, and one very sooty twelve-year-old from crashing head-first into the coffee table. Will and Ewa hadn’t overlooked the ruckus coming from the living room and arrived just behind Kalama, receiving a complete show of their first wizarding family entering their home.

“Kalama!” Rachel scurried to place herself on her feet once she saw her friend. She had cut her red hair into a short bob over the summer, but remained much the same Rachel see had last seen at the end of their first-year. “Well, we’re here, just like we said we would be.”

“Yeah,” Kalama gave an airy reply, taking a moment to observe her best friend’s traveling companions.

Rachel had told Kalama about her parents on several occasion, but it wasn’t until she had actually met them face to face that she was able to see even the most outlandish of Rachel’s tales had a touch of truth to them.

“Hi,” Rachel’s father greeted Kalama’s family enthusiastically, shaking Will’s hand with one hand, and brushing the soot off his robes with the other. “I’m Ben Keller, this is my wife, Lizzy, and you have probably heard all about Rachel by now.”

Will nodded curtly as he shook Mr. Keller’s hand, his jaw looking painfully tight. Kalama had been relatively vague about the reason why she would be needing them to take her to the harbor.

“Well, Miss Kalama, it appears you will be accompanying us on our next great trek,” Mr. Keller said as he turned his attentions to Kalama. And with every single word that came out of the mouth of Rachel’s father, Kalama watched Will becoming wound tighter and tight. She wondered how long it would be before he finally snapped.

Luckily, Rachel appeared to be a lot more receptive than either of her parents. “A great journey and following adventure that will be leaving without us if we don’t get out of here ASAP!”

“Calm down, Rachel,” Mrs. Keller said. She appeared to be the more level-headed of the two parents, if such a label could be attached to such an eccentric couple. “The ship knows that you two are coming; they won’t leave without you. But I’ll bet Kalama would like a minute or two to say good-bye to her family.”

“And we should wait outside while they do so,” Rachel prompted her parents as she began pushing her father towards the door. “Mom?”

Mrs. Keller promptly followed her daughter out the screen door and Rachel slammed the solid inner door. At the very least, Kalama was thankful that her best friend was doing everything possible to make things go smoothly.

Turning to her small family, Kalama looked up at Will with at least some hope that now he saw that she was actually going through with her plan, he might feel some softness towards her. No such luck. Will maintained his stance just as stiff and cold as ever. Best to start at the weaker point of the barrier first.

“What?” Kalama teased her little sister in the same way she did before all the ugliness started. “You’re too old to give your big sister a hug?”

Ewa couldn’t help but giggle like she used to, and hugged her sister tightly around the middle. There was nothing fake, insincere, or dishonest to it. It was incredibly refreshing. Once Ewa was done, Kalama decided it was finally time to give her second target another go.

“Will?” Kalama asked, holding her arms out to him. “Dad?”

That last word was what it finally took to make her stepfather finally break down. He too offered his daughter a firm hug, bending down to her ear to whisper, “Make sure you write us to let know when to come get you for Christmas.”

Kalama would have started jumping up in down in spontaneous dance if it weren’t for her impending departure becoming closer and closer.

“Hey, Kalama,” Rachel shouted through the open screen door. “What my mom said aside, that ship is not going to wait for us forever. We have to go!”

Not even a matter of ‘when’ anymore. She was leaving now. After all she had gone through, fighting to go back to Kailani, now she wanted to do nothing more than to stay her with her newly reconciled family. Family: that word had a nice ring to it right now.

Ironically, however, this new reconciliation did not allow that as an option.

“Aloha,” Kalama breathed, saying both hello and good-bye, and neither at the same time.