Brena the Brave

“I will.  I will.  Stop, Gran.”  Bent over and panting, Brena Fisher put out her hand toward her grandmother. Another scream pierced the dark, wet night.  Pain was evident in the woman’s cry. Whoever was torturing that woman wanted Brena, too.
​
She looked around the corner of the rain-streaked building covered in slime.  Between the slime, stink and wet, Brena wanted out of there.  She also wanted to know who and why she was being hunted.  Huge black wings of an otherwise invisible predator flapped across the street above the empty town square. She pulled her head away from the street and back into the alley. Where could she go, who could help her?
​
The windows were dark on the upper floors of the buildings along the alley.  No one looked out to help her.
​
She felt a familiar pressure on her forearm and heard a loving voice, “Remember, save Henry,” her Gran insisted.  She nodded and mouthed, “I will, Gran.” 
​
Brena’s brother Henry was three years younger and “clueless,” which probably was the reason Gran wanted Brena to protect him.  
​
She felt Gran squeeze and pat her arm.  Brena’s attention recoiled from the street and town square.  Her Gram would know what to do.
​
She turned to where she had felt her grandmonther.  No one was there.  With a shutter she remembered that her grandmother had died the previous year.
​
Brena stood alone, shivering.
​
As close to the wall as possible without actually touching it, she walked to the opposite opening of the alley and peered out onto the larger street.
​
How long had she been running? Her feet were bare, cold on the rain-slathered cobblestones, her pantlegs drenched.  In the shadows of the night, she pulled close her hooded cape and dashed alley to alley, across the deserted road.
​
The drizzle pelted sideways.
​
She heard the distant baying of hounds.  Closer still, she felt the batting of those large wings that broke up the horizontal droplets.  Dim streetlights flickered as if a colony of bats swarmed them.  Shadows formed and disappeared.  
​
A high-pitched screech pierced her heart.  Was that a woman in pain or a bird of prey?  She had to go faster.
​
Too wet, too deserted.  She ran full-out down the alley.
​
Not good, she thought.  Another shriek ripped the night.  She slowed.  
​
“Remember, save Henry,” her Gran pleaded.
​
“Yes, yes, I will,” Brena mouthed as she tried to melt into the slick stone wall.  Hands on her knees, she panted and listened.  Were they close?  She heard the hounds, straightened and ran again.
​
“Remember,” her grandmother’s voice returned and surrounded her even as talons attached to a hand too claw-like to be human began to materialize over Brena’s head.
​
“Come, little witch, all of you Fishers soon will be mine.”  
​
That wasn’t Gran’s voice.
​
The talons reached for her.
​
“Gran?  Granlo?  Where are you?  Brena twisted but could not raise her arms.  Ropes tightened around her as she squirmed.
​
She rolled across a firm smooth surface, away from the talons.  
​
“Wake up.  Remember.”  That was Gran.
​

Where was...Brena strained to come fully awake.  Horror lingered.  How could a dream stink?
​
The crash was enough to shake Brena from her nightmare and spin her out of her bed sheet.
​
She bounced to her feet in a fighting crouch.  Birds chirped outside.  
​
Birds chirped?  There’d been no chirping birds.  She looked around at her radiantly yellow bedroom.  Night had disappeared.  No storm.  Instead, the day’s brilliance cascaded in.  She almost collapsed in relief.
​
Silly me.  Brena of the Fisher Clan swung her head to shake her hair out of her eyes before remembering that she no longer had waist-length hair.  She was no longer a child, she was a woman now, and she was alone in her own bedroom.  
​
Safe.  No boogeymen.  No Gran.  Despite or maybe because of the closeness of Brena’s family, Gran’s death had been a major loss for all of them, and had been particularly hard for Brena.
​
The clock read six-thirteen.  She shut off the alarm that would have roused her and Henry in two minutes.  She stood before the mirror.  Looking ahead and behind her, something felt off.  Nothing seemed out of place, but there was that feeling.
​
She shook herself.  The nightmare was like a lingering tangible odor that covered her body, crawling around under her skin.  
 
What had her grandmother told her to remember?  What was it?  The claw, I remember the claw, the dark, and the creepy wet streets, and Hobo.
​
“Henry,” Brena bellowed and dashed into the hallway and her brother Hobo’s bedroom.  Hobo was Henry’s “birth name,” the name he carried until his naming ceremony when he was six.  After he received his naming ceremony, his birth name became a nickname. Her birth name had been Bluejay.
​
“Henry, are you all right?”  She faced a mound on a bed.  
​
Puddles gurgled merrily from his bassinette across the room.  He pulled himself up to stand.  Gripping the bars, he bounced up and down.  He released the bars to put out his arms to her.  With a plop, he fell back onto his bum.  After blinking and looking around, he beamed up at her.  
​
“Good one, Puddles.”  She turned back to the inert object.  “Henry, wake up,” Brena shook the heap.
​
“Huh” came a muffled grunt from the mass of sheets and blankets.
​
“Are you okay?”
​
“’Course I,” and the answer ended.
​
Brena turned back to her baby brother, “Keep an eye on him, okay?”
​
Puddles gurgled his response.
​
“Love you, Puddles.”
​
The baby nodded vigorously again grasping the bars of his crib.
​
“Time for school, Hobo,” Brena swatted Henry’s bulk, more bed linens than boy.
 
 
Something’s missing, she thought.  She showered, dressed and towel-dried her hair. Her hair’s texture was soft and, just like her mother, aunt and grandmother, like all of the women in the Fisher family, her hair was robust.  Head hair on Fisher women ranged from curly to frizzy.  When dry, Brena's “Fisher hair” resembled a shiny new penny, her mother’s gleamed black as obsidian.  

Brena mentally went through the morning’s checklist—room’s good.  Everything’s picked up, but there’s still something missing.
​
“Earbobs,” she said aloud, that must be it, and rummaged through her box of pretties.  Aunt Geri had told her that Gran called earrings “earbobs.”  “Yes, the green glass droplets that look like emeralds.”  They would bring out her hazel eyes.
​
She inserted the earrings and looked carefully at herself in the mirror.  “Sun sprinkles,” commonly known as freckles, dusted her nose, shoulders and the tops of her arms. 
​
Next time, I’m choosing Hobo’s complexion, she thought.  She did not know if reincarnation existed, but she knew that Hobo’s complexion was less trouble.  Even with sunscreen, her skin turned from “peaches and cream” to painful lobster red and peeled.  
​
Without sunscreen, after a day in the sun, his olive skin turned pinkish tan and then golden, the hue deepening daily until his skin became the same bronze color as his hair, which perfectly set off his blue eyes.  Yep, next time.
​
“Breakfast is ready,” her mother called up the stairway.  “Let’s shake a leg.”
​
“Another magnificent day,” Brena pronounced her beginning-of-the-day mantra then stopped to wonder, Did I say the phrase quickly to anchor the delights of a new day or ward off something else?
​
She pinned aside her still wet auburn bangs to better see the world. 
​
Opening her bedroom door, she snagged her feathery knit boa and shouted, “Coming.”  
More softly, she pronounced her new word, “Panache.  That’s what I have.”  But this morning, it was not what she felt.  
​
Something is in my house that shouldn’t be here, something I can’t see or hear, but can feel.  She refocused her sight, looked around and shrugged again.  My imagination.
​
“Nightmare forgotten,” she pronounced.  At fourteen Brena often spoke aloud to herself. As Gran said, Brena was her own best counsel.  
​
She jumped two at a time down the stairs, her backpack bouncing with each leap.  She deposited her bag and boa next to the backdoor and swung into the kitchen.
​
“Good morning, Mamá,” Brena said.  She kissed her mother’s cheek, and received a steaming bowl of cereal and cup of cocoa with marshmallows.  
​
“You look lovely this morning, my dear,” Glenda said, assessing her daughter.  “But, is that skirt just a bit too short?”
​
“Thank you, Mamá, but you’ll find that I am one-quarter inch inside the rules.”  Brena smiled triumphantly before blowing on her cocoa.
​
Her mother winked, “That’s my girl.  Stay within their rules.  I don’t want you sent home for dress code violation, and you do look wonderful.”  Humming softly, Glenda checked the kitchen clock, and turned back to the stove where she stirred simmering cocoa.
​
Brena was in the second week of the tenth grade.  She considered her friends as wonderful, but her classes were not yet what they should be.  According to Brena, the school’s administration listened to parents but not to students, whom they considered children without the right to advocate for themselves.
​
Her family and the rest of their Fisher clan saw her differently.  To them, Brena was an adult, and had been for over a year.  
​
From her stool, she stretched out an arm and snagged a discarded section of newspaper from the kitchen table and flopped it onto the island counter.  She glanced at the front-page headlines, skimmed the photos and stories. 
​
“How’s Henry?” she asked her mother while she ate and read.
​
“Hmm, let’s see how our Hobo fares.”  Her mother winked at the kitchen corner’s TV screen. It came on seemingly by itself.  Henry was struggling into a navy-blue pullover sweater, nearly dressed.
​
“Remember your shoes, Henry,” Glenda said softly.
​
“I got it, Mum, no worries.  Did Bren tell you she accosted me this morning?”  Henry fell onto his knees to look under his bed.  He pulled out one of his shoes and looked around his bedroom.  “Dang, where’s the other one?”
​
“Your other shoe’s in your other hand.  Hurry along.  Cocoa’s waiting.”

“Thanks, Mum, I’ll be right down.”
​
“Good morning, Puddles,” Glenda crooned.  “I’ll be up after the big kids are off to school.”
​
“Want me to bring Puddles?”  Henry asked as he looked for his comb.
​
“No need, just remember your backpack, okay?”
​
“Backpack, check.  Guys’ room out.”
​
Brena’s mother blinked again at the television screen that went blank.  “Tell me about accosting Henry this morning?”
​
Brena turned to the newspaper’s astrology section.  “Sure.”  She looked up.  “I had a weird dream.  Gran kept telling me to save Henry.”
​
“Granlo or Granbe?”  Granlo would be Grandmother Louise, Glenda’s mother.  Granbe would be Grandmother Beatrix, her father’s mother.
​
“Granlo.  When I woke up, I went in to check on him.  He moved, but who could tell with his pile of blankets.  Henry sleeps like a burrowing critter.  So I kept poking until he told me he was okay.” 

Brena deposited her empty dishes into the sink and retrieved her lunch and Henry’s from the refrigerator.  She placed Henry’s lunch sack on the counter.
​
As usual in the morning, Bob sat at the kitchen table.  Bits of eggs and toast remained on the plate in front of him.  He was sitting back, reading the sports page, and occasionally sipping his cup of coffee.  They had a truce.  Unless in public, he took no notice of her, and Brena appeared to ignore him.
​
As always, she told herself, It’s not Bob’s fault.  She named the real problem, He looks too much like Pa.  He looked like her father, sounded like him, walked like him.  In fact, Bob was a perfect duplicate.  He was the golem magically created to stand in for her father so their neighbors would not question his absence.  When Normals were around, she called him “Pa” and acted like he was her father, but he was not her father.  
​
Someday, we’ll all be together again, was her frequent refrain.  I will not be upset, she quietly repeated and stood straighter.  I’m in charge of my own attitude.  This is going to be a wonderful day.  She glanced at the clock.
​
“Where’s Henry?” Brena asked, perhaps too pertly, as she folded the newspaper.
​
Ladle in hand, her mother softly muttered a familiar spell.  The television again came alive.
​
“Henry’s still in the bathroom, working on his hair," Glenda reported.  "The baby’s sound asleep in his bassinette.” 
 
Brena pointed her index finger and flicked her wrist.  Instantly, her emptied bowl and spoon were washed and resting on the drainer.  
​
“Thank you, my dear,” her mother said.
​
She seems preoccupied today, Brena thought.  
​
“Will Hobo be ready on time?” she asked as she inserted her lunch in her backpack.
​
Her mother swept her hand clockwise at the television screen.  A chronometer in the screen’s corner rapidly advanced 10 minutes but Henry still was in the bathroom.
​
“Not without help.”  Her mother blinked and the television screen darkened.  “Henry,” she called loudly.  “Get ready.”
​
“Ah, Mum,” he called down.  “I can do it, really I can.”
​
“Here it comes,” she replied, snapped her fingers and flicked her wrist.  
​
Instantly, Henry appeared in the kitchen, book bag in hand, hair combed, fully and neatly dressed, shoes tied.
​
She squeezed his book bag.  “I remembered your lunch,” his mother commented and smiled.  “Did I include breakfast as well?” 
​
“Don’t think so,” he answered as the clock struck seven.
​
“What would you like?” she asked.
​
“Eggs and cinnamon waffles, please,” Henry answered perking up.  His mop of sandy brown hair began to slide down his forehead.
​
His mother patted his shoulder.  The slender young man belched.  
​
“I like the cinnamon, but I thought they were going to be on a plate,” he lamented.
​
“If you’re on time tomorrow, they will be,” she smiled.
​
“Right.  Thanks, Mum,” Henry said looking a bit disconcerted. 
​
Brena flicked her pinkie.  Her book bag transported onto her shoulders and her boa to her hand.
​
“Remember, you two, magic in the house, not outside.”  Their mother smiled.  She blew Brena a kiss before turning back to Henry.  “As for you, my young man....” She squeezed his nose, patted his tummy, and kissed his cheek.  “Have a great day and keep the magic capped.”
​
He nodded solemnly. 
​
“Come on, Hobo, or we’ll miss the bus,” Brena said.  She opened the door and pushed Henry through.  “Love you, Mamá.  Bye all,” she called over her shoulder.  
​
She followed him through their side yard, under the trees, and across their neatly trimmed front yard.  After she closed their white picket fence's gate, a breeze tousled her hair interrupting her thoughts.  The accompanying energetic tweak informed her that this was another magickin, not an ordinary breeze.
​
Good morning, she sent telepathically to the invisible magical being who played with her.
​
Good morning to you, Brena the Brave, the air current sent back to her.
​
Gosh, I like the title, though undeserved.  What’s your name?
​
Sophie, the voice answered, and your title will be deservedly earned.
​
Uncertain of that comment, Brena asked the name of Sophie’s Group, What kind of Current are you?
 
Watcher, the breeze replied.
​
Are you watching anything in particular today, or just visiting? Brena asked.
​
We’re watching you, Sophie answered with a twinkle in her voice.  A giggle rose from what sounded like several young people.
​
Me?  I’m honored, but think you’ll be pretty bored watching me go to school.  You must have seen this millions of times, Brena said.
​
Today’s special, Sophie replied.
​
Special how? Brena asked.
​
Beware, another voice said in a rushed whisper.
​
What? Brena began a question, but the Currents were gone.  Only stillness and sunshine surrounded her.
​
“You coming, Slow-poke?” Henry called to her.  The large, marigold colored school bus rounded the curve two blocks away.
​
She smiled at him, “Not to worry, young-un.”
​
“Don’t Speed.  You know what Mummy says,” he called back to her.
​
He was right.  To Normals magic was silly tricks or the stuff of madness.  After all, what normal person would ever chat with the wind?
​
The Dexter boys ran around the other corner nearing the bus stop.  If she did Speed, she would have an audience, which required rearranging memories to forget what they had seen.
​
“Hardly worth the bother,” Brena muttered to herself.  Instead, she ran to the bus stop in the normal way, greeted the Dexter boys, and took her seat in the back.  Feeling another energetic tug, she looked out the rear window and heard tingling laughter.  All was still and calm in her neighborhood, except the dust devils trailing the bus.