My car broke down today. It’s 24 years old. The odometer was broken when I bought it but it was over 400,000 miles whenever it stopped worked. I regularly drive over a thousand miles a week. I’ve had it about nine months. I don’t know anything about cars or maintaining them. Oil change is all I know and I’ve never done that.
Given those facts it’s not a surprise that it broke down. But we have to ask why did it work at all? It’s never failed me before. Since it’s my home and has everything I own in it I’m very reluctant to let anyone else ever drive it or borrow it, but one time I did. I tried to, I mean. It wouldn’t start for them. As soon as I got behind the wheel it roared to life.
I don’t know enough about magic to know if this is possible but my theory is that I’m keeping it running without casting a spell through ambient magic. Working magic is based on focusing your thoughts on something – that’s what all that chanting and stuff is, just a way to focus. My car is my entire life, without it I’m dead in the water. I’m like a shark, I need to keep moving to stay alive.
Since in a way I’m focused on it all the time, I think it’s possible that because this car is so important and I spend so much time with it that I’m channeling magic into it without realizing it or being aware of it. It’s times like this I really wish I could contact Royale Fantastique to find out if this is possible. And to know if he’s still alive.
Let’s assume it is possible. Why would it break down now then? My plan was to get to Silver City tomorrow morning, the show Eterno Corazon Inmortal is on is tomorrow night. Maybe there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to get there. Maybe there’s a part of me that’s afraid of what might happen when I confront the man who may have killed my first mentor. And maybe that’s interfering with the magic.
Maybe what I’m really afraid of is not that Eterno will hurt me but that I’ll be at the show and I’ll see him and I won’t do anything. That I will be in the same room with the man that may have killed Obaluaiye and I won’t be able to speak to him or accuse him or do anything. That I’ll just stand there.
I got some flack after my last post. It seems like whenever I try to address people’s complaints, I only make things worse. My intention was not to say that I am some kind of ultimate badass who’s never afraid of anything. I am harder to scare than most women. I’m confident of that. But I get scared sometimes like everyone.
I’m scared that my car is actually busted and it has nothing to do with magic. That fear is always with me. Like I said, this car is my whole life. I’m scared about how little I actually know about magic. When I try a spell and nothing happens, did nothing really happen or did I just give the guy in the next room in the motel an aneurysm?
A few weeks ago in the crowd at a show, I saw a guy that looked like one of the guys that attacked me when I was younger. It couldn’t have been him but I got scared for a moment. I had to remind myself that the girl I used to be is gone. She’s not trapped inside me waiting to come out whenever something scary happens. She’s gone.
If my car stars tomorrow when it’s too late to make it to the show, we’ll know if I’m right with my theory.
The Shine 