Alexandria Lane
Ungifted
One other thing you should know about my family—we’re witches. Well, the family prefers gifted, but let’s be honest, we’re basically witches. My mother is even descended from Rebecca Nurse, the beloved grandmother hanged during the Salem Witch Trials. Family secret? She was actually a witch.
Don’t worry, we’re the good kind. There are Rules about how we use magic—or our gifts. Rules that MAY NOT BE BROKEN. There’s a superior coven called the Diet (after some medieval tradition), led by a Witch King. No, he doesn’t swoop down on a broomstick made of eldritch fire to strike you with astral lightning. He’s just a nice old guy from Hungary. (Probably a distant cousin.) But the Rules? They’re real.
The Rules protect mundanes from magical interference—and protect witches from the more narrow-minded mundanes. What happens if you break them? I don’t know. And no, this isn’t a story about me breaking the Rules to find out.
I don’t know because I didn’t go to coven class. (It’s not called coven class.) It’s like catechism class for witches, but I didn’t go because…well…I’m not a witch.
I can’t call the power.
I’m not gifted.
Where Magic Doesn’t Mix
I come from a family dripping with magic. Or at least, we used to.
Momma can soothe people with a touch. Daddy has a thing with plants—he grows the best roses in all of Raleigh. Jamie’s studying forestry because of his connection to greenery, and Tommy’s into herbs and potions. Beth knows things—lose your car keys, and she’ll touch the car and tell you where they are. Bobby’s a healer, and George…well, George is basically Aquaman.
And then there’s me—no gifts, but not completely useless. My knack for technology sets me apart in a family where magic and machines don’t mix.
I’m not really alone, though. According to the older witches, magic has been weakening for centuries, and mundane kids like me are becoming more common. But I can do something no one else in my family can: I’m a wizard with technology. (See what I did there?)
Magic doesn’t play nice with tech. If a witch wants to visit space, she’d better find a ritual for it because the space shuttle won’t work with her onboard. Daddy can’t touch a computer without blowing the fuses and frying the hard drive. His clerks think he’s old-fashioned, making handwritten notes and clacking away on his typewriter.
Momma’s better—everything loves her—she at least drives a car made in this century while Daddy’s is nearly as old as he is. My brothers and sister? Better, but not much.
As for me, I just finished my master’s in computer engineering at MIT. I’m hoping to design tech systems insulated from magic interference. Momma would love Candy Crush if I could ever figure it out. Imagine her glued to a phone, swapping candies instead of soothing tempers. The world might just implode.
“The stories we read have glimmers of truth in them. Just enough to give a warning, maybe.”
– Alex
Of Magic, Monsters, and Mundanes
Everything you think you know about magic and monsters? It’s not that far off. Stories reflect life, as they say. The tales we read and whisper about have glimmers of truth in them. Just enough to give a warning, maybe.
Magic exists, usually manifesting itself in families with long and proud traditions of gifted abilities. My own family’s magic runs deep, going back generations. But every so often, there’s a fluke. Sometimes a mundane family has a gifted child. Other times, a gifted family like mine ends up with someone like me. From what I’ve heard, being the odd one out either way is…loads of fun. (Not.)
And then there are the creatures. Vampires exist. So they tell me—I haven’t met any, but I’ve heard the stories. Were-creatures are real, too. They prefer the term shifter. I didn’t know about them either until recently. Maybe I should have gone to coven class.
Even dragons used to roam the world once upon a time, or so the elders say. All of them—gifted or afflicted, depending on your perspective—walk among the mundanes every day, blending into the crowd as if they belonged.
But not everything magical is benevolent or even neutral. My father used to tell me about the monsters that live in the dark and forgotten places, the ones even witches fear to speak of. Shadows that move when they shouldn’t. Things with claws, too many teeth, or hungers that never end. He said they’re why we have rules—why we stay in the light.
Maybe he was just trying to scare me into staying out of old, abandoned houses. But maybe not.
Because here’s the thing: monsters are real.
