Birth of a Titan
By Gary IasconeAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2010 Gary Iascone
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4490-5872-2 Contents
"I'm Coming to Get You"..................................1Walk Down Memory Lane....................................4Home Sweet Home..........................................9A Happy Reunion..........................................18The Ancient Order of the Crones..........................23A Strange Dinner.........................................26Lessons in the Car.......................................32No Rest for the Weary....................................39Robins and Eagles, Women and Pool........................43The Best Defense.........................................49The Best Offense.........................................53A New Roommate...........................................55Orientation..............................................60The Unbinding Ceremony...................................64What Happened?...........................................69A Change of Plans........................................75Hugs, More Hugs and Kisses...............................82Homework, Homework and More Homework.....................90In the Mean Time.........................................93An Unexpected Visitor....................................95Back So Soon?............................................98Pizza and Worms for Dinner...............................102A Father and Son Talk....................................106New Revelations..........................................110Private Lessons..........................................114It's a Date..............................................121School Board Requests....................................132The Best Laid Plans......................................141Assistant Headmaster?....................................146Friday Night.............................................150I Love You Too...........................................160Another Father and Son Talk..............................165Halloween Dance Disaster.................................169Secrets Revealed.........................................175I Never Want to See Him Again............................180The Whole Truth and Nothing But..........................183November Blues...........................................187A Mother Daughter Talk...................................192Uninvited Guests.........................................195Rules Meant to Protect, Not Punish.......................204School Work Just Got Harder..............................212Strike Three; You're Out.................................220Apology Accepted.........................................228More Pieces of the Puzzle................................236A Well Deserved Break....................................248Meeting of the Sisterhood................................253A Little Detective Work..................................259Timing is Everything.....................................262Caught in the Act........................................264Paying for One's Mistakes................................266Wanted Dead or Alive.....................................268Birth of a Titan.........................................274Epilouge.................................................278
Chapter One
"I'M COMING TO GET YOU"
"Cory, I'm coming to get you," an unknown voice said in a low, almost guttural growl.
Cory heard the threat loud and clear, but he couldn't determine who was speaking or where the voice was coming from. He was walking home from his friend's house, as he had done a hundred times before without incident. It was only ten o'clock at night, and there was plenty of light coming from the almost full moon. Up until the moment he heard the voice, he had been care free and glad that he had the opportunity to hang out with his best friend, Vinny, on the night before Cory would go off to school.
In an instant, all of that changed, as his senses went on high alert. For a reason he couldn't explain, Cory wasn't afraid. In fact, the hair on the back of his neck was bristling with what he determined could only be anticipation. It was almost as if he had been expecting the upcoming confrontation and couldn't wait for it to get started. Even when the world around him suddenly began to change, fear didn't dictate his actions.
Thick, dark clouds smothered the moon, quickly extinguishing the generous light that, just moments before, had bathed the street Cory was walking on. The only remaining light came from well-spaced streetlights, but all they now showed was a heavy, smoky fog that began to appear out of nowhere. The temperature dropped fifteen degrees in a matter of seconds, while visibility was reduced to no more than a foot or two.
Cory immediately stopped walking and slowly started to circle, peering intently into the fog, hoping to get a glimpse of his adversary. Every muscle in his body was taut, ready to react to the slightest movement or sound, whether real or imagined. As he began his third full turn, he noticed the glow of a pair of sickly yellowish eyes, stealthily approaching him from the sidewalk across the street.
Although it was impossible to see who or what was making those pale globes move, Cory was sure that the eyes' owner was much larger than the biggest man on earth. Still, fear wasn't an issue. Cory's biggest concern at this point was whether or not this was the best place to face his foe. After all, he had no idea what he was up against, and for all practical purposes, he was blind. As these and other tactical thoughts raced through his head, the decision to fight or take flight was no longer up to him.
"And I'm coming now," the voice roared.
Just before the unseen limbs of the being attached to the owner of those eyes grabbed him, Cory pulled his head straight up from his pillow and looked around him, his arms flailing at an unseen opponent. It only took him a few seconds to realize that he had been having a nightmare, and it was his mother's voice he had heard yelling. The wave of relief that swept over him was soon replaced with apprehension when he heard the exaggerated sound of his mother stomping up the steps, literally coming to get him.
"It's okay, Mom. I'm up," Cory yelled, hoping his mother wouldn't barge into his room. As much as he loved her, he wasn't going to miss her flare for the dramatic whenever the mood struck her.
"What's all this yelling about, Mom?" Cory heard his sister Ashley ask. "We're both up and we'll be right down."
"About time. I've only been calling the both of you for the past half hour," their mother yelled back to them. To Cory's relief, the sound of her voice was somewhat muffled and she could be heard retreating back down the stairs.
Cory grabbed his robe from the floor and put it on before entering the hallway and racing to the bathroom in the hope of beating his sister. If he won, it would mean having to face his mother alone, but it was better than waiting the inevitable ten to fifteen minutes his sister would take. His quick thinking was rewarded, and less than five minutes later, he was the lone object of his mother's wrath for taking so long to wake up.
As is often the case with dreams and nightmares, the memory of Cory's faded away long before his mother was done giving him a lecture on the virtues of responsibility. Of course, having to listen to the entire lecture a second time after Ashley finally joined them for breakfast made Cory rethink his weekend morning routine, and, unlike that of his nightmare, he promised himself it was a lesson he wouldn't soon forget.
It might have been better for him to remember his nightmare.
Chapter Two
WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE
"Hey Sebby, tell me again why we're out in this retched heat, beating on rugs like we were newbie employees?" Bleaker asked as he inhaled a lung full of dust and dirt that hung in the air all around him.
"I'll tell you why. It's because that miserable old bag, Algeera, had to go off and visit her mother, on this of all weeks. If only thoughts could torture," Sebby replied, beating on his rug even harder.
The pair were deep in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains, where the last vestige of an untypical upstate New York summer was holding on with unusual tenacity. Highs in the low nineties with eighty-five percent humidity were making this August one to forget for most folks. Not that the weather was a problem for Jeeves, the head house elf for Prescott Academy for Witches and Warlocks. The same couldn't be said for his staff, however.
With only two weeks to go before the start of the fall semester, Jeeves was grumpier than the uncomfortable weather could account for. The combination of the two was making Bleaker and his best friend Sebby more miserable than they had been since they first came to Prescott.
Jeeves was only the assistant head house elf at the time, but one of his most cherished assignments was making newly recruited house elves as miserable as possible. He felt if they could put up with his mistreatment in the beginning, they would learn discipline as well as gain an appreciation for his normally drab personality, a trait he held in common with his boss Franklin. As Bleaker and Sebby continued to beat the rugs that hung on seemingly endless clotheslines in the midday heat, Bleaker changed the subject as he began instead to reminisce about their first two weeks at Prescott those many years ago.
"Remember that day you tripped and knocked down the stack of clean dishes, which in turn knocked down another and another like they were dominoes?" Bleaker smiled as he spoke, but remembered that neither of them were smiling when Jeeves entered the dish room, a witness to the tail end of the disaster.
"Yeah, I remember it well, you klutz. I was putting the last few clean dishes on top of the last stack when you backed into me and tripped me," Sebby replied, although unlike Bleaker, he wasn't smiling.
Bleaker ignored the barb and said, "Boy was old Jeevesy mad. He made us pick up every piece by hand. No broom, no gloves and no magic. Three days later when we finally got it all cleaned up, he fixed them all, only to break them again."
Sebby sighed, still remembering all the cuts they got, cuts that took days to heal because they were denied healing. After cleaning it up a second time, Jeeves made them cut up the lemons, limes, grapefruits and oranges for all the various meals over the course of the following week. After those first two weeks, though, Jeeves had calmed down and everything had gone smoothly until this past week. Not that Sebby really blamed Jeeves.
This wasn't just any week. With two weeks left before the start of the new school year, Jeeves wanted everything to be perfect for the incoming students. Even more important, though, was the uncertainty of the arrival of the school's new headmaster. Nobody knew much about the man who would take over, but Jeeves wasn't the type of house elf to take any chances.
The old headmaster, Professor Archer, was a kindly, middle aged gentleman whose untimely and rather surprising retirement shocked the entire staff at Prescott. The mystery which shrouded his act was on the tongue of everyone at the school. It was also the cause of Jeeves' insistence that everyone do their part in creating a good first impression for the incoming headmaster. Nothing was going to keep him from his goal, especially not something as trivial as unusually hot, sticky weather. Hence, all of the ridiculous chores Bleaker, Sebby and the rest of the housekeeping staff was being subjected to.
Normally, Algeera would clean all of the rugs with her enchanted supervac machine, but it was refusing to work for anyone other than Algeera. Unfortunately for them, Bleaker and Sebby had drawn the task of flogging the dirt and dust out of the rugs the old fashion way. There was supposedly a spell that would accomplish the job automatically, but when Algeera perfected her supervac machine, the spell was no longer needed and thus had been forgotten.
Bleaker looked at the giant stack of rugs still to be cleaned, then up to the sky where this ungodly weather emanated from. It looked like it was going to be a long uncomfortable two weeks, he thought as he wiped the sweat from his brow. Sebby, on the other hand, was thinking of ways to get back at Algeera and that awful machine of hers.
* * *
The last week of August wasn't much different from its predecessor. However, Professor Jonathan Longbeach was in much too good a mood to let the heat and humidity rain on his parade. He still found it hard to believe in his good fortune. He was the first educator under the age of one hundred to ever be given the job of headmaster in any of the magic schools. The unexpected retirement of Professor Archer was a stroke of luck that he still found to be surreal.
Professor Archer was widely regarded as the most powerful active wizard of modern time. His untimely retirement at the young age of 392 was almost as big of a shock as Professor Longbeach becoming the headmaster at the extremely young age of 76 years old.
No one was more surprised than Jonathan Longbeach, however. He was still reeling from the good fortune he felt he had received when he had become the youngest assistant headmaster in history at Brockton Academy in Alabama two years ago.
Before that, he had been a level I History of Magic teacher at his alma mater, Stackhouse Academy in northern California for twenty-one years. He then became a level II History of Magic teacher at Wakefield Academy in northwestern Michigan where he taught for thirty-one years. While he was the assistant headmaster at Brockton, its regular headmaster, Anna Marie Tillman, had come down with an extremely rare case of lingering menafenalitis. Among other things, the disease caused its victims to sleep eighteen to twenty hours a day and was the only disease that doctors in the magical community were unable to cure.
The term lingering was aptly applied to the disease's name because its symptoms usually lasted anywhere from one to two years. So shortly after Longbeach became her assistant, he was called upon to run the school in the capacity of headmaster. Again, luck played its role to perfection as Professor Tillman had recovered from her illness in time for Jonathan to apply for the recently vacated position of headmaster at Prescott, the oldest and most prestigious of America's six magic institutions.
Needless to say, Professor Longbeach was ecstatic. His ideals, hopes and dreams were all at once being given the opportunity to be fulfilled much sooner than he had ever dreamed possible. Ever since he had decided to become an educator, he felt compelled to change the ancient ways used to teach future magicians. He had already been instrumental in getting curriculum changes made, to the point that new classes were now being taught in every magic school in the country.
It was his innovation that got the series of Life Studies classes introduced into the curriculum. He could only wish that the American education system for mortals would do the same. He also got the school board to eliminate classes previously required for level I students.
Classes like geometry, trigonometry, and even the majority of algebra were nothing more than a waste of time for the majority of students in his opinion. He had devised a course called Math for Life that combined all the essential ingredients of math from the various disciplines that would be needed and actually used in the daily future lives of his students. He had created a similar course for the sciences called Science for Life.
His biggest innovation, however, came in the creation of levels for English. First, he eliminated the need to hammer grammar into students. What good is knowing what a preposition or a gerund is if a student couldn't read, or he could read but didn't understand what he was reading. He then created English courses that emphasized reading and writing where each level got progressively harder.
A student wasn't allowed to progress to the next level until he successfully passed the previous level with a high degree of proficiency. He also integrated what was taught in the English classes into the other subjects being taught so that there was constant reinforcement on the necessity and importance of learning how to read and write well.
Of course, when students graduated to level II courses, all of the eliminated courses were available for students, depending on their likes and dislikes, as well as their chosen field of future employment. At the very least, however, all of the subjects taught in level I classes were useful to all students for the rest of their lives. Now that he was a headmaster in truth, he hoped to build on and improve his innovations so that all students in the magical community would get the best quality education available.
His thoughts about his past successes were interrupted when Clifford, his personal house elf, rolled down the window between the front and back seats and announced, "We're here Master Jonathan. Isn't it exciting?"
"Yes, Clifford, it is," Longbeach replied. "We're home at last."
Chapter Three
HOME SWEET HOME
Situated in a basin on the eastern shore of Prescott Lake, the tiny town of Prescott looked peaceful, nestled in a grove of tall pines, maples and majestic oaks as well as being surrounded by New York State's tallest peaks. The road leading to the school slowly meandered around gentle twists and turns before the landscape opened up, providing a breathtaking panorama of the front of the school.
Its six towers stood out against the majesty of the nearby mountains, each proudly flying a huge Prescott flag with its light blue and purple crest bordered in black against a cream background. The flags were billowing softly in a light breeze that was the only bit of relief from the staggering heat which could be seen shimmering off of the calm surface of Prescott Lake. This was the Professor's first visit to Prescott, and he was properly impressed so far.
The limo followed a bend in the road which blocked his view in all directions, so Jonathan settled back in his seat while Clifford negotiated the final turns to bring them to the front entrance of the school. He was met by a valet who opened his door for him and asked if there was anything that needed to be carried from the car. Clifford had already transported all his luggage, trunks and personal belongings prior to leaving Alabama, so the Professor shook his head no and was immediately led into the climate controlled comfort of the front entrance.
The look of surprise on Professor Longbeach's face was readily apparent when he saw that his welcoming committee consisted of none other than Professor Archer himself.
"Jonathan, my boy, how are you, son? It's so good to see you again." The Professor greeted him as he held out his hand to shake.
Professor Longbeach took his hand and replied, "I'm fine, sir. A little tired from the trip, but extremely excited to be here. I'm also quite pleased to see you here, sir."
Professor Archer said, "Well, no cause for alarm, Jonathan, I assure you. My presence here is strictly business and most certainly for your benefit. Come, let us retire to a more comfortable place than the front foyer of this grand school. I've taken the liberty of having prepared some refreshments for you, and we have a great deal to talk about. Please follow me. On our way there, you can tell me how your trip was."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Birth of a Titanby Gary Iascone Copyright © 2010 by Gary Iascone. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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