The Magic Rain

Chapter Ten: Our Magical Guest

My parents and I sat down and mapped out a schedule for the crash education of our magical guest.

The first issue was whether we could let him roam around town or even the neighborhood.

"What if he keeps learning this quickly?" my father asked. "How do we explain that he went from the vocabulary of a two-year old to being nearly fluent in English in what – two or three months?"

"So we keep him inside for the first two or three weeks," I said, maybe too quickly, because my parents stared at me with suspicion on their faces. "By then he ought to be able to speak at least well enough to say hello and goodbye," I hurried on.

"Hello and Goodbye," Jo-Bri said, and smiled.

My parents glanced at Jo-Bri, and then my father sighed. "Okay, but if you’ve noticed, he’s not exactly a couch potato."

"Oh?" I said, and my mother actually slapped my arm.

"He can use my workout stuff," my father said. "I’ll show him how, I’m sure it won’t be long before he’s lifting twice what I can. I want to see him try the elliptical trainer," he added, chuckling.

So do I, Dad, I thought.

"You can take him out at night," my mother said, "just around the house, down the lane, and the back yard." She frowned. "He looks like the outdoors type."

So we decided to keep him close to home. If anyone did see him, we would just have to go with the exchange student story and hope for the best.

The days that followed our momentous decision regarding Jo-Bri were the most amazing in my life, for a number of reasons, not least of which was that I found myself falling more and more in love with this stranger who was magic in more ways than one. He may have made my car disappear, but more importantly he made feelings in me appear that were torture, because I knew that he had no room in his heart for a silly girl, not while Kawille existed, even if just in his memory.

So it was with a conflicted heart that I worked with Jo-Bri. I took advantage of his unique mental abilities to teach him our world at seeming light speed. He could place his wonderful hands on my face and soak up my memories and knowledge at an astounding rate and it killed me to know he was also soaking up my thoughts about him.

Every night I took Jo-Bri by one of his big hands and led him out into the backyard, where we would sit on the patio and struggle through conversations about everything from the night air, the moon, the reason why the sky here was blue instead of green (my father the shrink came up with a reasonable explanation for that one).

A few times I even took him for a walk down our long driveway out toward the main road that led to the highway, always careful not to go too far, for fear we’d be seen by one of the neighbors driving by.

One night we sat out on the patio, sipping at herb teas I had made us, and I realized how much I’d enjoyed making even this much for him, this boy I could probably never have and who would, at any rate, probably be going back to his world as soon as he figured out how to.

Somehow zits and finding just the right dress to wear didn’t seem quite as important anymore.

"You are very small," he said suddenly, in that deep, rich voice of his.

I frowned.

"Oh…" he struggled for the words. "I am sorry."

I shrugged, though the remark had bothered me. "It’s okay," I said, "I’ve always been a bit of a shrimp."

He stared. "A tiny sea creature delicious with red sauce," he finally said, confused.

Damn, the things he pulled out of my head.

"Being a shrimp means that you’re small. I’m small, and you’re… huge."

He laughed.

"I’m a shrimp," he said.

"Right." This language thing was tougher than I thought.

He heard the cynicism in my voice. He put his hand on mine and a thrill went through me that almost made me drop the mug I was sipping my tea from.

"In my world," he said, "I am a shrimp. The… the girls are taller than I am, much taller."

"Really? But you’re even bigger than my father."

He laughed again. "Your father and me, we are… midgets."

Now it was my turn to laugh. "How tall is ‘tall?’ I mean, are the girls as tall as… a basketball player? I mean a pro?"

He shook his head. I guess Yao Ming was beyond him. I glanced around and remembered that the sliding glass doors leading from the house onto the patio were seven feet tall. "Are the girls as tall as those doors?"

He glanced at the doors. "Some of them. Some taller."

I gasped. "The girls in your world are more than seven feet tall? How tall are the guys?"

He thought about that one, and then raised his arm, indicating a height about two feet taller than he was.

"People are eight feet tall in your world?" I said. "You’re a midget in a world of giants?"

He smiled. "Yes. I am a midget. You are a midget." He took his hand off mine and indicated the entire planet with a sweep of his huge arm. "All midgets."

"Especially me," I said, laughing now.

He laughed with me. "Yes. Especially you."

I wished he would put his hand back on mine.

Another night, we were walking down the lane leading from our house to the main road. The moon was out, playing peek-a-boo behind a few clouds. I was painfully conscious of how close we were as we walked, and how much I wanted to reach out to take his hand – or even better to have him reach out and take mine.

"You love me," he said, and I tripped and would have fallen if he hadn’t grabbed me with amazing speed, holding up my 110 pounds as easily as he would a child. I had to remind myself that to him I was the size of a child – a small child, probably.

"What?" I asked, so embarrassed now that I found myself actually irritated at him for bringing this up. I mean, we had a great arrangement up until now – I loved him, he knew it, and neither of us mentioned it. Ever.

"I – "

"Oh," he said, and released his hold on me, and even though I was irritated with him, I did not want him to let me go. Ever.

"I am so sorry," he said, stumbling over the words, obviously mortified by what he had said.

Then it struck me – he had not meant "love." He had meant something else and had just misspoken because of his still-limited English.

"You –" he began, hesitating, and I began to relax. "You," he repeated and I raised my eyebrows and smiled in encouragement. "You would like me to…" he went on.

Oh God…

"To… build love to you."

My stomach sank. My knees nearly buckled. "Make," I said without thinking, then brought my hand to my mouth. What the hell was wrong with me?

He smiled broadly. "Yes. Make love to you."

I stared. He stared. Then, before I could reply, his smile faded. "Melinda," he said, and then corrected him, "Mel."

"Yes?" I asked, fear racing through my body.

"I… Kawille…"

I nodded and took his hand in mind, able to do so now because it was to comfort him, not to gratify my own desires.

"I know," I said, and realized that during our "lessons" he had often allowed me to read his personal thoughts in the same way that he had read mine.

He took his hand out of mine and I thought that he was gently rejecting me, until he then grabbed my hand in his, and my hand felt as swallowed up as I did.

He hesitated, looking anguished. My heart went out to him and I wanted to pull my hand away just to end it. It was killing me having to look at this huge, powerful man damned near crumbling in front of me, especially since I knew exactly why he was crumbling in front of me, and knowing that it was my thought, my desire for him that had brought on this moment that was so difficult for him.

"I gave Kawille a gift just before she was killed," he said.

I squeezed his huge hand. Thank God he didn’t reciprocate, because he probably would have broken every bone in my hand. That was unfair, I knew, because he had always been extraordinarily careful not to hurt me.

"That gift," he said, "it was filled with my magic. Hodon followed that magic to Kawille."

I gasped. Oh my God, how do you get over something like that, the feeling that you were responsible, even if indirectly, for the death of the person you loved?

"I – "

I squeezed his hand as hard as I could now, knowing that there was no way for me to squeeze too hard.

"I could never…" he searched for the word. He shook his head in frustration. "I could never take the threat," he finally said, "that I could hurt you like that."

"Risk," I said, finally figuring it out. "You couldn’t take the risk."

He nodded.

I honestly didn’t know how to feel. I mean… I think he was saying that he felt something for me but that the memory of Kawille’s death made it impossible for him to act on those feelings. Jo-Bri liked me so much that he couldn’t risk hurting me by being with me.

"Great," I heard myself say flippantly, feeling anything but flippant, "you like me too much to like me."

He shook his head, his grasp on the language not allowing him to "get" sarcasm yet.

"Never mind," I said, and gently withdrew my hand from his. "We’d better get back."

I turned and walked away. It was several seconds before I heard the crunch of the gravel beneath his feet as he followed me back home.

* * *

Over the next three weeks, Jo-Bri’s English improved at an amazing rate. We would spend part of every day listening to his descriptions of his world, of Hodon, his parents and village, and even of Kawille. This last was the hardest for me to listen to, especially given the sorrow and love in Jo-Bri’s voice as he described how they had met, and the precious few months they had shared together before having it all destroyed by Hodon’s attack.

Often it was quite simply hard to believe, especially when he spoke of magic, spells, dogs the size of horses that Jo-Bri and his people rode under green skies with birds the size of Cessnas circling overhead… But then Jo-Bri would illustrate a point by performing some little miracle, levitating an object, creating a flash of light from his bare hands…

As it became easier to communicate with Jo-Bri, we also discussed, among the four of us, what our plans were. It soon became clear that we did not in fact have a plan, at least not a viable or specific one.

One night, after more than two weeks of immersion in our language and world, to the point at which he was reading our encyclopedia and watching television obsessively, he said, "I cannot go return."

We were gathered in our living room after a long day of schooling, and we were, for the umpteenth time, trying to figure out what to do with him and with the impending arrival of Hodon.

"The witch sent me here," he said, and I beamed with pride at his relatively easy use of our language. "And I do not know a spell to send me backward."

"Then maybe Hodon can’t get here either," my mother said.

"Maybe," Jo-Bri said, sounding doubtful. "But he has ownership possession of all magic of my world, and to all alive wizards, and maybe power to make them work for him."

Damn he was cute. Then it hit me.

"What about the witch?" I asked. "If Hodon was there when she sent you through –"

Jo-Bri nodded. "He probably has her now."

"Would she work for him?" my Dad asked.

"Show him how to build a new portal?" my mother added.

Jo-Bri considered that. "She had been my father’s lover. I think she touched a little like she was my mother – "

"Felt a little like she was your mother," I said.

He nodded. "At least she wished she had. I think she would have resisted Hodon."

"Well," I said, smiling at his cute grammatical errors, "he isn’t here yet, so maybe you’re right. And if she’s the only one who knew how to build the portal, then she must be a powerful witch. Maybe she can hold out."

"Maybe," he repeated, sounding even more doubtful now. "But Hodon is powerful. My father spoke of him destroying entire armies simply by destroying their will to live, by filling them with so much fear and pain that…"

We stared at him.

"I felt some of that fear when I fought him," Jo-Bri finally said. "It was a fraction of what he could have made me feel, simply because I was attacking him and then escaped before he could fully counter my attack. Then, when he tried to stop the witch from sending me here – the fear was…"

"Was it bad?" I asked, feeling protective of this giant hunk with magical powers out of some fantasy movie, who could disintegrate an entire car right in front of my eyes.

He nodded. "I don’t know if anyone, even the witch, can resist him for long. Unless…"

We waited. Finally my father asked: "Unless what, Jo-Bri?"

He met my father’s gaze. "Unless she used her magic to end her own life."

We all gave that one some thought.

"So," I finally said, "If you can’t go back, but Hodon might be able to come here, what do we do?"

"We?" Jo-Bri said, and sounded suddenly much tenser than he had. He shook his head. "This is my battle."

"For our world," my father said, and I could have hugged him. Maybe I should do that more often anyway.

"If you don’t stop Hodon, we all die," my mother added. "You have to let us help you, because our lives depend on your succeeding."

Mom too, I thought. I should hug her more often too.

"So what do we do?" I repeated, worried, maybe even a little irritated. After all, this Adonis drops into my lap (I wish that was literally true) a few days ahead of the world ending? How unfair is that?

He shook his head again and I felt my heart sink. If this powerful wizard didn’t know what to do to save the world…

"I have to learn more," he said finally. "I don’t know what it is I’m supposed to learn, but my father always said that if you don’t know where else to turn, turn to learning and the answer will come."

"You’re in our world," my mother said.

"So that’s what you need to learn about," I finished her sentence for her, and my mom and I glanced at each other. I loved it when she smiled, even if it was a tight, worried smile that didn’t really touch her eyes.

"At some point," Jo-Bri said, "I’ll need to go out."

"Go out?" I said, suddenly feeling a sense of dread.

He nodded.

"He’s right," my father said, and I almost took back my hugging resolution. If Jo-Bri stayed here in the house, he’d be safe – and all mine, I immediately added, knowing I was being as selfish as I was protective.

"Besides," my mother said, "someone is eventually going to come to the house and wonder who this kid is who’s staying here."

"And your friends must be wondering why you’re not going out with them," my father added. "You haven’t gotten your usual summer job –"

"Teaching Jo-Bri is my job," I said.

"And you are very good at it," Jo-Bri said, smiling in a way that just… made me dizzy again. "But," he added, "if there is an answer here, I need to understand everything I can about your world, your people, your friends, what people are like…"

I wanted to argue but suspected he was right. "We need more time," I said.

Jo-Bri nodded. "A little bit," he agreed.

My parents were staring at me and I knew that they knew how I felt about Jo-Bri. Great, I thought, so everybody in the room knows that I’m madly in love with a guy I didn’t even know two weeks ago, a guy I can’t have because he’s devoted to a dead girl.

The guilt and shame flared all the way up to my suddenly red face. That had been a horrible thing to think. I glanced around, as if the others somehow heard me, and I saw from Jo-Bri’s expression that he might well know exactly what that thought had been.

Damn, where’s a rock when you needed one to crawl under?