Magic Spawn Origins

Magic Spawn: Chapter 4

by Meredith Skye

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Time to drive over to the campground to meet up with her cousins, Rian and Kyran for Halloween, after picking up more candy for trick-or-treaters for Lauretta. Anya got in the car with Aldena.

Aldena was Anya's adopted mother. Not legally. They'd sort of adopted each other, a year ago.

Anya, was not, in fact, an orphan.

At least, she didn't think she was.

She'd looked it up once in the dictionary—to be an orphan both your parents had to be dead. She didn't think they were, they were just ... missing.

They had abandoned her when she was born. Did her mother do it because she was unmarried and had no husband? Or did her mother and father decide they were just too busy to raise a little girl? Anya didn't know. They left her in an old shoe box the day she was born, out behind a dumpster on the bad side of town.

Maybe they could sense that Anya was trouble! She never did anything right. And adults always expected you to do what they said, even when it was stupid.

By the time she was twelve and three quarters old, Anya had been through a lot of foster families. Maybe because she asked too many questions. Or maybe because all the rules seemed so arbitrary. Maybe it was because she was sure she could get away with things that just didn't work out.

Harlan called her a "kender," and the name stuck. She couldn't find it in the dictionary, but the others said it meant someone who always wanted to go wherever they weren't allowed.

So, one by one each foster family found a reason to send Anya back to the orphanage (though nowadays, they didn't really call them that).

The last family to send her back got angry at her. Probably because Anya climbed up to the highest cupboard, the one above the refrigerator that is too inaccessible to be very useful, and found the supply of fireworks they were saving for the holidays.

Apparently, you are supposed to set those off outside—not in the kitchen. It didn't seem very clearly labeled.

That's when she'd met Aldena.

That last mishap fixed Anya on the decision that she should leave, at age twelve and three-quarters, and seek her fortune elsewhere. Maybe in California. At least they had movie stars there. And even if you never met one of those—they had beaches! And Disneyland.

She'd stolen aboard a train, the kind that looked new in the fifties or sixties, with light green leather seats that matched the light green painted metal walls, with accents in dark green and orange.

When she first met Aldena, she meant to pick her pocket ... but it never worked out. She and Aldena became fast friends. Aldena was an odd, lonely woman, who had just turned forty. At first, it seemed that she had no reason to be lonely. She'd been married and had a family, but she'd left her husband, who was rather wealthy, and her son to go traveling all over the world.

Aldena had lost a daughter, you see. A daughter who would have been about the same age as Anya. Maybe that's why the woman took her in. Maybe it was because Aldena herself was a bit of a "kender" prone to wandering and not always following the rules.

They had similar tastes in clothes, books, and in their sense of humor. Most importantly—Aldena was fun! Not stuffy and boring like most grown ups. She knew how to sword fight and shoot a bow. She had an adventurous streak, not adverse to camping in the wilds or taking a chance. Anya liked that. There weren't enough potential moms like that waiting for her in the world.