Mariel's Magic

Chapter 6. Hello, Mommy

Immediately after the kidnapping and rescue, Jonathan and Adriana hired Janus to advise them and organize things to protect them. He had known Jennifer for several years and had spent hours with her during that time, talking with her about dark and light forces. Understanding these forces better sensitized him to unseen energies which aided him in his work. Jennifer had called on him before when encountering people in trouble who came to her for advice and information that only she could provide.

On the advice of Janus, they immediately rented a larger, more secure apartment and arranged to have a car and driver on call. Janus engaged a company to install security systems in the apartment and arranged to place tiny subdermal tracking devices under the skins of both Adriana and Jonathan to locate them if either one went missing again.

Shortly after they moved in, Adriana started showing signs of labor, and Jonathan called Jennifer, who arrived an hour later with a midwife in tow. The plan was to have the birth take place in their own apartment but with the nearby hospital on standby for complications. The fear of a hospital birth was that the child's magic would be out of control during the stress of birth and cause havoc in the delivery room. They wanted to keep the child's magic a secret. The midwife, Carla, was very experienced and was herself familiar with psychic phenomena. Jennifer would be there as well, preparing the space and producing sounds with her bells aimed at calming the child.

Carla, who was also a trained obstetrics nurse, checked Adriana as soon as she got there and immediately used a stethoscope to listen to the prenatal heartbeat to determine if the baby was in distress. She would continue monitoring the baby's heart rate and rhythm, looking for anything to be concerned about. She also took Adriana's vital signs and said everything seemed alright. She checked Adriana's dilation and said it would be at least a few more hours, and the best thing would be for Jennifer to continue the soothing sounds of the bells while Jonathan held her hand and talked softly to her.

She was correct in her assessment, and a little over two hours later, labor started in earnest. The baby was still fine, as was Adriana, but despite the calming sounds emanating from Jennifer's bells, the baby was starting to show her power. For a time, Adriana hovered a foot above the bed as Jonathan spoke soothingly to the baby, his face resting on Adriana's belly. Glad there were no doctors to see this, they all smiled at each other as labor continued. Half an hour later, Adriana was panting fast through the pain, and the baby showed its displeasure by rattling everything in the room for several minutes.

Jonathan looked up, "Even if she rattles everything in the building, our neighbors will just think it was an earthquake or a big truck rolling by."

When it was finally time to push, Adriana's entire body emitted a soft red glow.

"This is a healthy sign, I think," said Jennifer, and Carla agreed.

At about this time, although none of them knew it, the sky above San Francisco, which was perfectly clear, was lit up with hundreds of shooting stars. This event surprised everyone in the astronomical community and was a rare treat for the city dwellers.

Finally, the little girl entered the world as noisily as any other. Adriana and Jonathan were overjoyed. By this time, regardless of who sired the child, to Jonathan, the baby was theirs and nobody else's. The only unusual thing was that when the baby was placed at Adriana's breast, the child looked directly at her, with what she could only describe as a very knowing and intelligent gaze. Then, in her mind, she clearly heard the words, "Hello, Mommy."

They named her Mariel Stone-Peters. She was big for a girl, with dark hair and blue eyes.

Carla accompanied Adriana and the baby to the doctor the next day for a checkup. The doctor had an office in the city and was another in the group of people known to Jennifer. The baby was peaceful, and nothing magical happened, but if something had happened, the doctor would not have been terribly concerned. Carla stayed with them for a week, caring for both the baby and Adriana. During this time, the baby remained peaceful, doing only the things that such beings normally do.

Knowing they had a baby that carried magic, perhaps great magic, Jonathan and Adriana began the process of learning how to raise such a child in a world that did not recognize this kind of power. Jennifer assured them that, while their child was a rarity, she was not the only child that carried magic. She did not know anyone with power of the kind possessed by the child, but she was well-read concerning the world of magic and psychic phenomena and sought to share that knowledge with them as best she could.

"The most important thing, as I have said before, is to help the child channel her power to the light. There are many dark forces in this world, some magical and some not, and they can be attractive. Every one of us has the seeds of good and evil in us, and it's important to nurture the good. It's especially important for a being with great power because that power can magnify both the good and the evil. I've heard whispers of normal parents raising a magical child, who came to be a blessing for the world, and I've heard of others who have raised one who became bad, very bad."

From the moment they recognized and came to understand the possibility of magic in their daughter, they started thinking about how they could keep her on a path to being a good person. They remembered the maxim, "absolute power corrupts absolutely," and knew that the power in their daughter could lead her astray. They did not want that for their child; and given what they knew about the father, they feared he might have passed down to her tendencies that he obviously had.

Initially, they sought to create a safe and stimulating environment where her powers could manifest without danger. This required extreme babyproofing, where sharp objects that could be flung around while the child had a normal tantrum had to be securely locked away. They also sought from Jennifer ways of placing wards about the apartment, including special herbs and objects that could absorb and render harmless any outbursts of magic power.

Still on sabbatical, Jonathan and Adriana sought every scrap of old and new wisdom they could find about magical theory and folklore. Assuming Mariel would have to be homeschooled, they started accumulating teaching materials on normal adolescent subjects, plus elementary books on ethics and morality, especially from Buddhist sources, that they could use to prepare a path for their child.

Through Jennifer, they began to reach out to magical communities, which lived quietly in different corners of the world, looking for those experienced with handling and teaching magic, to guide Mariel and guide them as well.