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.”
War Torn by OliveOil_Med
Chapter Notes: Kalama comes home from her first year at the Kailani Shamanic Institute to the non-magical world of her family. But it doesn't take very long for her to see that the gradual changes that have happened to her over the year show clear as day to her dad and her sister.
Thank you, thank you, Anna!