Chapter 3: The Thousand-Year Promise

“The Mystic Alliance, eh?”

Jia nodded and fiddled with her amulet for several seconds before letting it fall under her tee.

“She mentioned that? Really?”

“Yeah, she did. Why? What is it?”

“Your dear departed grandfather Sean brought up those people once or twice. It was nonsense, I told him. Magic. Alliances. It’s all foolishness. And dangerous foolishness at that.”

“Dangerous? But whi are they? Mom mentioned something about them being a group of sorcerers and sorceresses and wizards—but she was vague.”

“Probably she didn’t know and—”

“But she also said to ask my father.”

Constance stopped and stared at Jia, puzzled. “Your father? Kim? In Korea? She said that? That doesn’t make any sense. Why would he know anything about them? You sure?”

“Yes. That’s what she said.”

“It just doesn’t—why would your father know about the Mystic Alliance?”

“C’mon, Grandma. My mom gave me the Korean translation, so there’s got to be a reason for it.”

Constance sat thoughtfully for a few seconds, “What’s your father say?”

Jia shrugged, “I don’t know. I never heard back after he responded to my one email, saying he was sorry about Mom. He said he’d be in touch. But…” she shook her head and let the words trail off.

Her father had mentioned in the email that he had an important gift for her upcoming 16^th birthday, something he needed to get to her by then, but that it was too valuable to send via mail, but that he’d see her soon.

“You know, this might go back to that—argument your mother and I had,” Constance said, clearing her throat.

“How? Really? I thought you said it was nothing,” Jia was drawn back into the present.

“I said I didn’t recall, but that’s not true. I do recall, but I didn’t want to discuss it.”

“What changed? Why were you two arguing? Why did Mom get so pissed that we drove all night to get home?”

“Slow down, Peach! So many questions. Maybe narrow it down to one at a time.”

Jia paused. “Sorry. It’s just that Mom never told me anything. And at the time, she dismissed it. But I could tell it really affected her.”

“Well, she’s gone now, so I suppose it won’t do any harm. It was about her father—your Grandpa Sean. You never met him. Sean was a wonderful man. Crazy man. Would do anything for anybody. Give the shirt off his back to a stranger. But he didn’t take kindly to being mistreated. Hard to get along with and rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. He held a grudge for a lot of things throughout his life. Hard worker but never amounted to much in the world of work. Always going job to job. Carpentry. Woodworking. Construction. Logger. Hard labor—”

“He couldn’t keep a job?”

“Well, he got bored quickly and didn’t put up with incompetence and stupidity at all. But he had a knack for the magic. He was a highly skilled sorcerer. And he used it all for good. But he never made a fuss about it. Wanted your Mom to get into the life, too, but, as you know, she was more interested in education. She wanted to be a teacher. It’s not like the old days, Sean would say, when a sorcerer or sorceress passed the skill down to his firstborn along with the Triquetra amulet, and every firstborn embraced the powers without question, without argument. Oh my,” she shook her head slowly back and forth, “Sean and Sandy would argue about it. They loved each other but didn’t see eye to eye much, especially on that topic.

“When Sandy was about to turn sixteen, he sat her down and told her that she had to accept her destiny as a sorceress. That, unfortunately, she had no choice. She had to embrace it, or else.”

“Or else what?”

“Exactly. That was the 64-thousand dollar question, for which he only had a partial answer.”

“Which was?”

“His father. Brandon. Your great-grandfather. He said it was too dangerous, that no one should mess with the craft, as he put it. Your mother tended to agree, so she shied away from it.” Constance reached for a lukewarm cup of tea on the table adjacent to the couch.

“He did? Why? I thought you said firstborns always used it in the family.”

“Brandon was a drunk. He couldn’t control his powers, especially when he crawled into a bottle and decided to pull out his magic craft. He had to leave town a few times. Roamed a lot. Sean was embarrassed by his father and left home early at age sixteen. His old man was a ne’er-do-well, that’s for sure. He couldn’t keep a job to save his Irish soul. As a result, Brandon didn’t properly use the powers that had been gifted to him. However, he passed the Triquetra along to Sean right before he left home when Sean was just sixteen. Said he had no use for it. Said maybe Sean could figure out what to do with it.”

Jia looked at her grandmother and pondered the tale.

“What kind of sorcery skills did Grandpa Sean have?”

“Oh, gosh, he’d talk to the animals, talk to plants. He liked fire-conjuring on the Fourth of July, glamours, ESP, telepathy, and sometimes telekinesis. He once told me he was even working on therianthropy.”

“Theri-what?”

“It’s when humans can metamorphose into animals. It’s just an old wives’ tale, I presume. I never saw him do it. And I never heard of anyone else doing it.”

Jia raised her brows. “Seriously? You think he believed in that?”

“Well, he had some pretty good skills, especially as a younger man. But really, I think he did a lot of it to entertain himself. We lived out in the woods and kept to ourselves. I’m sure there was more that he kept to himself. Or did away from me.”

“And what do you mean by ‘glamours’?”

She paused. “It’s a sort of way of fooling people. By making them think you’re something you’re not. It’s also a spell. The word encompasses a lot,” she said.

“Wow. This family history is interesting, but you’re not answering my question: why did you and Mom argue?”

Constance’s face darkened for a moment, and she took another deep breath. “When your mother was sixteen, as I told you, her father Sean gave her the Triquetra. But he made her promise that she would use it or—”

“Or what?”

“Or if she didn’t, the powers would continue to build up, and if she gave the Triquetra to her firstborn, it would imbue them with powers that might be—” Constance hesitated, a glum look on her face.

“Might be what?”

“Uncontrollable.”

“Uncontrollable? Why would she say that?” Jia said, her voice catching in her throat.

“Frankly, I don’t know. Your mother clearly didn’t believe it, or at least didn’t want to believe it. She took the Triquetra amulet anyway. She had to. It had been passed down for a thousand years. She loved her father, so she accepted it. But I don’t know what she promised him, if anything. Or if she kept any promise she may have made to him when he gave her the Triquetra.”

Jia nodded slowly, deep in thought.

“That’s it,” said Constance.

“What’s it?”

“That’s what your mother was arguing with me that day about your father. And about you.

“About me? Why?”

“When Sandy was sixteen, as I said, she got the amulet from her dad. Sean told me he made her promise to keep it, use it if possible, and pass it along to her firstborn—which would be you, of course. Then, a week later, he left. He claimed he was going on a quest.”

“A quest? What kind of a quest?”

Constance’s fingers tightened around her teacup, her knuckles turning pale. “Something about searching for some group,” she said, her voice quieter now. “Which he referred to as a sort of mystical alliance.”

Jia caught a slight tremor in her grandmother’s hands before she set the cup down.

“What? He knew about the Mystic Alliance?”

“I have no idea if it’s the same thing that Sandy told you about.”

“What else could it possibly be?” Jia pressed, leaning forward.

Constance’s lips parted as if she had something to say, but instead, she exhaled and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she muttered. Then, quickly, “I never looked into it. It didn’t seem important back then.”

Jia wasn’t buying it.

“How did his quest go?”

Constance leaned back in the chair and let all the air out of her lungs. She set the cup of tea back on the table before speaking.

“I never saw or heard from him again. He just vanished. They sent search parties and looked everywhere in the woods for months. To no avail. It broke my heart,” she said softly, “and no doubt broke your mother’s heart, too.”

“You’re kidding,” Jia said, wide-eyed. “Never? He didn’t return?”

She slowly shook her head and wiped her eyes. Jia didn’t see any tears, but it was the first time she’d seen such emotion from her grandmother. Constance looked away before her eyes met Jia’s.

“So what was the argument about? C’mon, Grandma, you gotta tell me. You have this great story, but not what you and Mom were really arguing about. You’re like—nibbling around the edges.”

She sighed and fidgeted. “Yeah—you’re right. I guess I was trying to gloss over it. Before Sean left, he made me promise that Sandy would use the powers she had inherited, no matter what, and that I should see to it. When I told her that, she got upset because she insisted that wasn’t what Sean had told her. Apparently, Sean told us two different stories. Your mother claims she was told it was okay not to use the powers and that it wouldn’t affect her firstborn. Sean told me that your mother HAD to use them, that if she didn’t, then her firstborn—you—would have too much power. She refused to believe that Sean had told me. Said that he wouldn’t do that. Neither of us would budge an inch.”

“So…what? Because my mother didn’t use the power, I’d inherit —a bunch more—magic power?” She felt a shiver down her back. But she certainly didn’t feel magical, the sparks from her fingertips at the assembly notwithstanding.

“I always believed your grandpa Sean. I saw what he could do. I knew what his father, Brandon, could do before he stopped. And I also saw some of the magic your mother did when she was young. So I knew it was there. And—”

“And what?”

Constance let out a slow breath and tapped her fingers against the arm of her chair. “She didn’t want to believe that you would inherit anything more than—average—powers.”

“But she must have changed her mind,” Jia whispered.

That made Constance straighten, her eyes narrowing. “She did? Why do you say that?”

Jia explained her mother’s desperate insistence that she never take off the amulet.

Constance pursed her lips, nodding slowly. She opened her mouth, then stopped herself. Something flickered in her expression—hesitation, or maybe something else.

“What?” Jia asked. “What were you about to say?”

“Nothing,” Constance said, her voice oddly tight. “Just thinking.”

They sat silently for what seemed like a minute while Jia listened to the ticking of the wall clock. She finally spoke.

“She was scared. She said my life depended on holding onto the amulet. Like the Triquetra would protect me. And that it would surprise me, too, but in a good way. And she said she was sorry that she hadn’t told me more about it before then. I almost felt like she wanted me to have whatever powers I would inherit. Like she regretted not using them. I could tell she was holding back like there was something she wanted to tell me.”

“What was that?”

“I don’t know. She died before she told me.”