“This one here!” Friar Ignatius said through tight lips, pointing at a burn hole over his elbow.
Mama frowned down at the raw, ugly flesh beneath and chanted in a soothing tone. Before their eyes, the burn faded into pink and healthy flesh.
Friar Ignatius stared, then drew a deep breath. “Yes. It seems that you have more talents than one, Dame Mantrell.”
Mama shrugged off the compliment. “Every mother learns something of healing, Father.”
“Then you must teach me,” Papa said, frowning, “for I shall have to heal men wounded in battle.”
Mama smiled up at him. “You have learned a little already, Ramon, when Mateo was ill.”
“Well, yes,” Papa admitted, “but I do not think we will find aspirin or thermometers here.”
“Why not?” Friar Ignatius asked.
They both stared at him. Then Mama said, “You have such things?”
“No, but why should that stop you?”
Mama smiled slowly, then nodded to Papa. “Even as he says. You should be able to conjure up penicillin, if you need it.”
“True,” Papa said doubtfully, “but we cannot make it out of nothing, can we? From where will we steal it?”
“Your magic can duplicate anything you have seen and know,” Friar Ignatius explained. “How it takes materials and assembles them, I have no idea… but I have seen wizards make all manner of things appear from thin air.”
“Thin air, eh?” Papa gazed off into space. “Yes, the molecules of air could be combined to form heavier compounds.”
“But why might your spells not gather molecules from earth and trees too?” Mama asked. “We do not need to see them rise for them to be there.”
Friar Ignatius nodded. “Even as you gathered fire, Senor Mantrell. Did you think where it must come from?”
“No, I did not,” Papa admitted. “It seems the magical forces themselves seek out the raw materials.”
“Your mind supplies the pattern,” Friar Ignatius explained. “The magic constructs the artifact as that pattern directs. You could supply arms and armor for a legion, though I suspect it would be exhausting.”
“So this is the magic of war,” Papa said slowly.
“Some of it,” Friar Ignatius allowed, “though you will find there are many more spells to learn and, I am sure, even more that you shall invent. But when last comes to last, Senor Mantrell, you will find that the greatest war magic of all is the ability to inspire men to fight, and make them want to follow you and obey your commands.”
“Perhaps that is why the boys obeyed you,” Mama said.
Chapter Ten
Friar Ignatius pounced on it. “What boys?”
So they told him about Liam and his buddies. The friar heard them out, frowning, then nodded. “It would seem, then, that some quality in you overawed them.”
Papa shrugged it off. “It is as I have said… to them, I will always be as overpowering as I was when they were little boys.”
“And as kind?”
“He was,” Mama said instantly. “When their own papas ignored them, Ramon talked with them and counseled them and listened to their tales of woe.”
“Yes, and for thanks, they bedeviled my son,” Ramon said darkly. “I cannot say we were any longer friends when they strove to shut down my store.”
“Grown boys seek to defy the men they knew in childhood,” Friar Ignatius told him. “There must have been some quality in you that wakened their old feelings of awe and reverence.”
Papa frowned. “Do you say that ‘quality’ was magical?”
“There is an old word for it in our world,” Mama told him. “It is ‘charisma.’ “
“And in this universe, that ‘charisma’ manifests itself as magic. Yes.” Friar Ignatius nodded. “But that quality only gathers magical force; you must direct it with your verses.”
“If that were so,” Papa argued, “why would they have continued to bully my customers and tried to drive them away?”
“Because that charisma is not magic, in your universe,” Friar Ignatius told him. “It only works within the minds and hearts of people, not within the very forces that constitute the matter of your world. They obeyed you only so long as you were there in person; away from you, the magic faded, for in your universe, it was metaphorical, and a matter of metaphor only.”
“I do not believe that Good and Evil are only metaphors in any universe,” Papa said flatly.
“Nor are they.” Friar Ignatius’ eyes gleamed. “You do not mean to tell me that people in your world think they are!”
“Some do, and highly intelligent, educated people among them,” Papa told him. “Myself, I believe that actions may be evil, but that no people are really, truly evil by nature… only confused or sick in their souls.”
“But they can turn to doing only evil works,” Friar Ignatius reminded him, then smiled with gentle sadness. “Are you so heartsick, then, that your own goodness could not overcome the evil that sought to draw these boys into its grip?”
“I do not think of myself as a very good man,” Papa muttered, and Mama clasped his arm, as though trying to lend him strength.
“But you do think there is goodness in the rules by which you try to live,” the friar pointed out. “Are you disillusioned to discover that such goodness could not triumph in your own neighborhood?”
“I suppose I am,” Papa admitted.
“You should not be,” Ignatius said. “You were only one man, Senor Mantrell. How many were arrayed against you, to twist the souls of those boys?”
Papa stiffened, staring off into space, astonished. “Why… the drug dealers… the older boys who had taught them that the Law only oppressed them, and did not need to be obeyed unless it could punish them… the businessmen who saw them only as a source of profit, and were willing to tell them anything, sell them anything, so long as it would coax money from them… the singers to whom they listened, who urged them to distrust the police and be brutal toward others, especially women… “
“And the list goes on.” Friar Ignatius nodded. “I doubt that you could tell me all who unknowingly conspired to twist the souls of the young. I doubt that you know of them all.” He shook his head. “How can you blame yourself for losing against such odds? You should honor yourself as a hero for fighting alone against them, still striving to lead the boys to Right!”
“He grew up listening to tales of Don Quixote,” Mama said, beaming up at Papa. “As a man, he studied those tales in depth.”
“I do not know this don of whom you speak, but if he strove for goodness when no one else did, and against odds so great as those that faced your husband, he must have been a hero indeed.”
“He was to our century, though the man who wrote of him meant to ridicule his romanticism.” Papa frowned. “But surely it was only self-interest that made me rebuke the boys! Surely it was only the desire to save my store! You cannot mean it was goodness!”
“Was it self-interest that made you kind to them when their own fathers were not?”
“Of a sort, yes,” Papa said, frowning. “I enjoyed their company, enjoyed seeing them relax into innocent boyhood games when I took them sledding with my Matthew.”
Friar Ignatius turned to Mama in exasperation. “Is he always so unwilling to admit his own goodness?”
“Yes,” Mama said, smiling. “He tries too hard to exercise humility. But in his heart, he knows it is goodness that moves him.”
Papa spoke quickly, to avoid having to admit she was right. He allowed his twentieth-century skepticism to show, telling Friar Ignatius, “But in this universe, surely the power of magic doesn’t really come from Good or Evil! Isn’t it only that our goals clash, that what we believe to be right is opposed to what they believe to be right?”