Chapter 112 - Out of Control

Dipple scrambled on all fours, frantically rushing toward the landline.

In his haste, he bumped into the astronomical telescope he'd moved over, the one he'd planned to use to stargaze with his daughter.

His left hand reached for the phone. His right hand shot out to catch the toppling telescope. For one frantic moment he was stretched between both, unable to manage either, and the one he wasn't attending to was already going.

Then a miracle happened.

The telescope didn't fall. It defied gravity, slowly righted by an invisible force, eased back into place as if by a gentle hand.

Through the tripod legs, a stunned Dipple met his daughter's pitch-black eyes.

......

"Dipple William! You've been a father for over four years now. Over four years, and you still don't know that a pregnant woman must not be upset!" Doctor Margaret had rushed over and she was furious. "Has your brain been snatched by a dog and thrown in the rubbish heap?"

Dipple stood stiffly to the side and let the gray-haired Mrs. Margaret vent.

Margaret was one of the few doctors in the Southend-on-Sea area, and the oldest of the lot. When Dipple had colds and fevers as a boy, this old woman had been the one to treat him.

GURGLE!

Praeris's stomach rumbled. She looked up nervously at her father.

Dipple was quiet for a moment. Then he turned and walked toward the kitchen.

Praeris followed instinctively, trailing behind him like a duckling after its mother.

Dipple stopped dead. "Don't follow me."

Praeris lurched to a halt.

Doctor Margaret's eyes went wide. She opened her mouth to say something.

Dipple drew a slow breath and softened his voice. "Stay with Mama, alright?"

Praeris nodded, confused, and turned back to Doctor Margaret and Sylvia.

She was still so young. She couldn't understand why, after she had helped her father right his beloved telescope, he wouldn't give her so much as a kind look.

Not long after, Doctor Margaret left.

Before she went, she made a point of telling Dipple to stop picking fights with his wife, or she would personally report him to his mother, Sofia.

Dipple nodded along vaguely.

The moment Margaret's figure disappeared around the corner, Dipple shut the door.

He turned slowly and faced Sylvia. She looked worn. Haggard.

His throat moved.

He wanted to say something. He didn't know where to begin.

After a long pause, he finally spoke. "Sylvia, is there anything you want to tell me?"

"Pubby said you've already seen it," Sylvia said. Her voice was calm.

Dipple closed his eyes. "I don't want to see. I want to hear it from you."

"You've known for a long time, haven't you?" Her voice dropped. "What did you think made that beast on the Siberian snowfields turn and run? What did you think let someone start a fire on wet wood in the single second it took you to turn around? You're so clever." A beat. "Tell me."

"I thought it was a miracle," Dipple said. The defense came out weak.

"There are no miracles in this world," Sylvia said. "Only inevitabilities under logic. You said that yourself."

Dipple instinctively resisted the truth. Sylvia instinctively resisted speaking it.

Sylvia hinted, hoping he would arrive there on his own. Dipple rejected every hint and pretended he'd found nothing. These two were made for each other, and so they reached a strange, unspoken agreement, and maintained a marriage of false peace. Until their first child, Praeris, was born, and the lie was shoved to the edge of a cliff.

To preserve the family's harmony, Sylvia made Praeris hide her power. Dipple therefore took it as given that Praeris was no different from any other child.

"This power," Dipple said carefully. "Can it be passed on to the children? Every one of them?"

"Not necessarily. But mostly, yes." Sylvia answered plainly.

Saying it out loud seemed to lift something off her. But Dipple grew quieter after that, day by day.

Praeris dragged a stool over to Sylvia's side, climbed up, and looked at Mama's "equipment."

These things, before, Mama only ever brought them out when Papa wasn't home.

Now that she had confessed, Sylvia could finally work openly. She was a seer with a modest talent; fate had led her to Siberia, where she had met Dipple William.

Before Dipple, she wrote articles on fortune and fate, and interpretations of ancient divination texts. Her Ancient Runes were quite good.

After Dipple, she became far more interested in love divination. Though she rarely divined for herself.

Praeris stood on her toes and peered at the patterns swirling inside the crystal ball. "Papa's unhappy. He's making smoke."

"Making smoke" meant smoking.

The Williams had never explained smoking to her, and Dipple had quit before the wedding. Praeris had only her own words for it.

Sylvia's expression turned wistful. "Pubby, I really do hope your little sister or brother turns out to be a Squib."

"What's a Squib?" Praeris asked.

"Someone who doesn't have this power of ours."

Sylvia was a witch. A wizard's child who couldn't use magic was a Squib.

"Mama, I heard Papa calling Uncle Antonio, "

BANG!

Dipple pushed the door open. "Pubby, go outside for a bit. Papa needs to talk to Mama."

Praeris's fingers dug into the edge of the table. She looked at Sylvia.

"Go on," Sylvia said.

Praeris jumped down from the stool, grabbed it under her arm, and pattered out.

She hadn't been very obedient about going upstairs in the past, and she wasn't now, either. She crouched just outside the door and listened.

"What kind of joke is this!" Sylvia's voice rose. "I'm not throwing away my crystal balls! They're the same to me as your camera and your telescope are to you!"

"I'm not telling you to throw them away," Dipple said. "Just — during the pregnancy — put them somewhere else. Sofia's storage room, for instance."

Sofia had moved back to the place she'd grown up in once Dipple was an adult.

"What does that mean?" Sylvia's brow creased. "I understand now. You think they're what gave Pubby her magic, and that's why you want to, aren't you the one who believes in science above all else? This is heredity. Genetic inheritance, not external influence."

"The end of science is theology," Dipple said, as if it were perfectly obvious. "Do you know how many scientists turn to alchemy in their later years? Don't you wish Bailey didn't have this so-called magic?"

"What Bailey! Did I ever agree to name the child Bailey?" Even though she had said she hoped the baby would be a Squib, Sylvia said now, "There's nothing wrong with magic. Magic is just a tool."

"But it's dangerous! It makes our child different from everyone else!" The words came out before he could stop them. "Pubby is already like this — there's no changing her now — but Bailey can still be saved!"

BANG. BANG. BANG.

Every light and pane of glass along the second-floor corridor burst in quick succession.

Sylvia wrenched the door open. One look at the corridor and she knew: Praeris's magic had spiraled out of control.

She ran back into the room, pulled her wand from the drawer, and moved to stop Praeris from losing herself further.

"Pubby!" Sylvia pulled her daughter close and held tight. "Mama's here! Mama's here!"

How strange, the things people feel. How fast people change.

Sylvia had spent years suppressing Praeris, forbidding her from using magic in front of Dipple. But the moment Praeris lost control, Sylvia didn't think twice about her pregnant body. She was the first one through the door.

Dipple, who had sent Praeris upstairs before every argument so she wouldn't hear, that same man had just said Pubby is already like this. Had looked at his own daughter and decided she was beyond saving.

Dipple stood in the doorway. The corridor was littered with shattered glass, bulbs, windowpanes, all of it. Sylvia had her arms around Praeris. Praeris was crying, lost, not knowing what to do with herself.

For the second time in her life, Praeris felt something she could not understand. The father who had always doted on her looked at her with an expression like ice, and said: "Hill, you see. This is necessary."

Sylvia's crystal balls, teacups, enchanted mirrors, astrolabes, everything was locked inside a chest. It would be sent to Sofia's house.

Right in front of Dipple, Sylvia raised her wand and sealed the chest. "I don't want them getting out and hurting anyone."

Dipple's brow furrowed at the phrase "getting out."

The only person who seemed to improve after the divination tools were gone was Dipple himself.

Ever since that first loss of control, Praeris had trouble managing her magic. She would accidentally break this, wreck that. She was terrified of Papa finding out, desperate to hide every mistake. The more anxious she got, the worse her control became. In two weeks, she lost control 4 times.

Sylvia was pregnant and exhausted from caring for a daughter who seemed to be falling ill. She wasn't doing well.

Without her tools, Sylvia, having finally coaxed Praeris to sleep, could only sit at the astronomical telescope and watch the stars.

"Pisces," she murmured. "Pessimism and evasion."

"Hill." Dipple's voice came from behind her. "What do you think about letting Pubby go stay somewhere else for a while?"

"What kind of joke is this!" Sylvia didn't hesitate. "Pubby's magic goes out of control constantly. If she leaves my side, who's going to keep her stable?"

"But your belly is already starting to show," Dipple said gently. "If Pubby stays here and something happens, what then? Antonio will take good care of her. You remember him, don't you? He's a doctor."

"Do you really think I would give up one child for the sake of another?" Sylvia shook her head. "A Muggle doctor doesn't understand magic. How could he possibly take care of Pubby?"

Antonio was a doctor on Dipple's team, reliable, but still a Muggle.

"Only for a while. Once you've had the baby, Pubby will come home..." Dipple held firm, patient, wearing Sylvia down steadily, fixed on getting Praeris out of the house.

"Seeing me doesn't make Pubby happy either, does it?" Dipple sighed. "She heard what I said. Didn't she?"

Thinking of Praeris, heartbroken over words Dipple hadn't even meant to say, Sylvia finally gave in. "Alright. Send her to London. My best friend from school, her name is Winnie Brown. She lives at 12 Black Rose Lane, London. I'll write her a letter. Take it with you."

"She's also a magician?" Dipple asked.

"A witch," Sylvia said. "Let me check the calendar, it's nearly Christmas. Maybe we should wait until after the holidays."

"Before Christmas," Dipple said, easy and light about it. "We can bring the witch a Christmas present while we're at it. What do you think?"

"Her name is Winnie. She's my friend, not 'the witch.'" Sylvia couldn't let it go.

The Dark Lord had been dead nearly 4 years. Winnie should have realized by now that the path she'd taken wasn't the right one. Though Sylvia had never imagined that her own calm, rational self would end up here, like this...

Sylvia wrote a very long letter. She had so much she wanted to say to Winnie, and never quite knew how to say any of it. Maybe this was the chance, she thought. Maybe they could start again.

She held the envelope in her left hand and her wand in her right, walked to Praeris's bedside, and called softly: "Pubby? Pubby?"

Praeris furrowed her brow in her sleep, uneasy, clutching her little blanket.

A young witch who had spent so long suppressing herself, with no one to guide her, she was exactly the kind Obscurials hunted.

Before the confession, Sylvia would wait for Dipple to go out and play small tricks with Praeris in secret. After the confession, she'd stopped asking Praeris to hold back.

There was no need to guess what had caused the loss of control. Praeris had heard every word.

Forgetting was a mercy. If she could forget, maybe she would stop losing control. Maybe she could grow up like an ordinary young witch.

Sylvia raised her wand, closed her eyes, and held still for a long moment.

Then, quietly: "Obliviate."

My child. Praeris. Mama was wrong.

Forget all of this. Papa and Mama both love you.

It's just, we are both far too immature. We were both wrong. We don't deserve to be called parents.

Dipple carried the soundly sleeping Praeris to the back seat of the car. Sylvia packed up the little blanket and the small stuffed bear and tucked them into the boot.

"Winnie has a temper," Sylvia said, worried. "Just tell her Sylvia needs her help. She'll say yes. Actually — maybe I should come with you, "

"You're pregnant," Dipple said. "If I actually brought you, Margaret would go straight to Sofia."

"I'm not at the point where I can't walk," Sylvia said.

Dipple pressed his cheek to hers. "But I'd worry."

Sylvia pressed her lips together. She stepped back 2 paces and waved him off.

"Then be careful."

➤ Next: The Sins of Dipuer