Read Online An Unlikely Witch by Debora Geary - Free Book Online Page B

of the spells a little and the dragon would jump, or waggle its tail, or roar, or whatever they wanted it to do.”
    Interlocking, user-driven layering spells.  Nell gaped.  That was insane. 
    He eyed her, having no trouble reading her thoughts.  You guys do it all the time with coding in Realm. 
    Realm was an online world.  One where all the dragons were virtual and the programming code held still if you told it to.
    Aervyn’s eyes turned obstinate.  “Uncle Jamie explained it to me.  You guys write chunks of code that do all the little stuff, and then you stick them together to make big stuff happen.”
    More or less.  “Coding and magic don’t always work the same.  It’s hard to get magic to repeat itself.”  She caught up with her own words and realized exactly what her kiddo was trying to do.  Damn.  “Unless you loop a layering spell.”
    “Yup.”  He flashed a grin and popped up something on his hand that looked like a wriggly cucumber.  “I got the idea when I was playing with Kenna and reading her Hungry Caterpillar book.”
    Nell watched, captivated, as her son’s fingers fluttered.  He only did that when the magic was really complicated.  One layering spell, then another—and she could see how he was connecting lines from each of them to various parts of his holographic cucumber.  A few seconds later, he set the caterpillar down on the table, much more solid in form now.
    Nell laughed, a mix of awe and amusement, as the tiny green creature wiggled its way across the table.  “That's a heck of a spell, hot stuff.”  The kind she might pull off with a month of practice and a cookie IV.  And he was doing it to amuse his little cousin.  
    He held out his hand to turn the caterpillar back their direction.  “Can you see where to push on the little spell handles to make it move?”
    She squinted again, looking at the complex, iridescent flows of magic driving the caterpillar’s wiggle. 
    Hang on.  Aervyn flashed his fingers again and the spellshapes magnified.  That’s a good idea—I can make it do that all the time.  Uncle Jamie has old eyes too.
    Nell knew an insult and a dare when she heard one.  Punk child.
    He grinned as she stared at the power flows.  The handles were clear enough.  Using them to wiggle a caterpillar wasn’t, and Aervyn was no longer demonstrating.  Gingerly, Nell pushed on one of the controls.  And then a second one in a hasty attempt to fix things as the poor creature convulsed and nearly swallowed itself.
    Her son sat absolutely still—with wild, irreverent giggles shaking in his head.
    Nell stuck her nose down at table level with the caterpillar.  She was one of the best gamers on the planet—she could handle a magical inchworm.  It took a couple of minutes, and a surprising amount of focus, but she eventually got the poor beast back over to Aervyn’s waiting hands.  “Kenna will love it.”  And get in a whole lot of practice with very delicate magics, something she normally resisted mightily.
    Aervyn’s face crinkled in concentration.  “She’ll love it even better if I can figure out the dragon.  It’s hard, though.  Dragons have more parts than caterpillars, and they need to roar and stuff.”
    There was a time when she’d been able to help her boychild with his more complex spellcasting.  Nell squeezed his spare hand, deeply aware that time had largely passed.  Which made her proud and scared and a whole bunch of other things mamas didn’t unload on almost-seven-year-old boys.  “You’ll figure it out.  Or you’ll get an even better idea.”
    Her words met thin air.  Aervyn wasn’t listening anymore, his whole body tuned into something else.
    Nell leaned in sharply when his face crumpled.
    And then he reached for her, one very distressed boy.  “Auntie Nat’s really sad.  She wants to throw all the plates in the world until they smash into a bazillion pieces.”
    Oh, hell.  There were very few things Nell