I woke up the next morning with my mind full to bursting with a seemingly endless lesson on Evocation magic and how to safely manage my lightning spells. It had been such a long lesson - and an even longer conversation to help me pick apart the details - that it lingered, disorienting me a bit, the way an intense dream will if you wake up in the middle of it.

I sat up slowly and rubbed my temples, trying to convince my brain to digest the information and let it settle back into my memory. It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant sensation, but left me feeling a bit…jumbled.

Sparkle fluttered down from her nightlight and settled on my blanket-covered knee. “Are you okay, Mistress?”

I gave her a little smile and nodded. “I’m fine, Sparkle. There’s just a lot going on in my head.”

She giggled and sat down. “When Mistress Chessie felt like that, she used to go sit in the field outside and play with the fairies.”

“Ken said it wasn’t safe for me to do that yet,” I said uncertainly.

Sparkle considered that, apparently with the utmost gravity, to judge by her very serious expression. After a moment she nodded a little. “You don’t know as much about the Otherworld as Mistress Chessie did, so I guess he’s right.”

I leaned forward a little and rested my arms on my thighs as I looked at her. “The Otherworld?”

“Mmhm!” She nodded eagerly. “The Otherworld is what’s outside your windows. Mortals sometimes call it the Spirit World, but I’m not a spirit, and I’m from the Otherworld. So are a lot of the monsters that have bothered mortals since the beginning of time! It’s…” She gestured to the windows. “It’s the Otherworld.”

I looked at her as I tried to formulate a way to ask her more questions in such a way that we wouldn’t end up running in circles. After a minute, I gave it up as a bad job…I wasn’t awake enough. “Sparkle, could you do me a favor?”

She almost seemed to levitate to her feet, she rose so quickly. “Of course, Mistress!”

I hesitated, then shrugged a little. There was nothing for it but to ask. “I was wondering…would you call me Caley instead of ‘Mistress’?”

She looked at me quizzically. “But you’re my Mistress.” She pointed to the ring on my hand. “I belong to you.”

I nibbled on my bottom lip for a moment. “But…I’d like you to be my friend, Sparkle, not just a…a servant. Please?”

She almost seemed to vibrate, her gentle purple glow brightening a bit. “I…I’m your friend…and your servant…” she said, not uncertainly, but as if trying to understand why I wanted this.

I smiled gently. “Sparkle, I’m not used to having servants. I really appreciate the help, and can accept that I’m in charge, but…I feel very strange having people call me mistress. If neither you nor Ken use my name, I might forget it.”

I added that last bit teasingly, but from the look of horror that settled onto her face I thought I had hit a nerve. “Oh no! We can’t have that! Names are important!” Her expression shifted from alarm to shy happiness. “You really want me to use your name, Mistress?”

I nodded. “Please, Sparkle. It would mean a lot to me. I want us to be the best of friends.”

Her purple glow brightened another notch as she smiled up at me radiantly, and I swear she actually grew a centimeter or two before she replied, “Thank you, Caley!” She collided with my chest an instant later and clung to my sleep shirt in what passed for a hug, then zoomed around the room a few times.

Ken entered during her aerobatics and gave me a curious look.

“I asked her to call me by name,” I said, shrugging.

He laughed. “Ah. Yes, I can see how that would make her happy. It’s a big deal to fairies.”

“What about you?” I asked, then hesitated for a moment, feeling unaccountably shy as I added, “I know you felt there was some matter of propriety involved, but…I think we've gotten to know one another well enough by now for you to use my name. I mean, if you want to.”

Ken smiled warmly, and - much the way Sparkle had grown a bit - his physical form seemed to take on greater definition. A little bit of color even leaked into his shirt and jeans, which now appeared to be faintly green and blue respectively. “Thank you, Caley. I would like that very much.”

I thought there might be relief in his voice, and wondered if he was still worried about me cracking and doing a runner.

But then, I was still wondering that myself. It wasn’t impossible. The human psyche wasn’t really built to handle so many world-changing revelations in such a short time.

Well, never mind. I’d handled it so far, I’d continue as I’d begun.

"Ken, can you clarify something for me?" I asked, curling my legs under me and sitting up a bit straighter.

"If I can, I will," he said.

"Sparkle was just telling me about the Otherworld, outside my windows. But…I'm afraid it didn't make a lot of sense to me."

Sparkle huffed and plopped down in my lap. "I did my best," she sulked.

I patted the top of her head gently. "Yes you did, but you know I still have a lot to learn. It helps me to learn from both of you."

She beamed up at me. "That makes sense!"

Ken and I exchanged smiles, then he drifted toward the window a bit. "Otherworld is a broadly general term for the dimension that exists alongside the…the real world, for lack of a better term." He turned to face me again, lips pursed and frowning a bit. "Rather like 'Earth' describes out world, and then we name nations, Otherworld is…it's the connective tissue that holds many other realms together. Outside your window is Faerie, the realm of the Sidhe, and the nearest portions of Otherworld, at least to the House.

"But it has many other names, as well," Ken continued, spreading his arms wide. "Wonderland, Arcadia, the Ghostlands, Outworld, Faerie, Barsoom, Lilliput, the Dreamlands, pick one of a dozen names for an 'unreal' place that still very much exists. It doesn't matter what you call it because only a few beings know it's true name and you'd best hope never to meet them. But as a general term, 'Otherworld' has been its collective name for longer than the House has stood."

I stared at him. Most of those names had meant at least something to me, as both a student of history and an avid reader of fiction. Faerie I could accept, especially since I had one of its residents sitting in my lap. And Dreamtime, as a place as much as a creation myth, was also surprisingly easy to accept the existence of. But had he really just said that places like Wonderland, Barsoom, and Lilliput were real?

Were Dejah Thoris, John Carter and Tars Tarkas still going on adventures somewhere outside my window? Or perhaps Alice was having tea with the Mad Hatter? Perhaps some part of H.P. Lovecraft was living a peaceful afterlife in Ulthar, surrounded by the town's beloved cats.

"Wait a second," I said. "I've read Burroughs. Barsoom was just his name for Mars."

Ken smiled, obviously amused. "Astral projection to Mars with what, a corporeal body made of ectoplasm? Don't be silly."

Because that was somehow more unbelievable than being transported to…what? Some kind of parallel plane of existence?

"Not everything you read is true when it comes to Otherworld and its denizens," Ken continued. "In fact, most of it isn't. It can't be, really. Most of the places and things in Otherworld either can't be understood well enough for mortals to fully describe them, or are simply too…mercurial…to be defined by language for long. But parts of the truth can sometimes be found in myths and fiction."

Wow. That was a mind-bending concept. I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose, hoping to stave off the impending headache. After a moment, it faded, and I looked at Ken. "In practical terms, what does this mean for me?"

He smiled gently. "At the moment, very little. In the long term, also very little. Aside from the residents of Faerie, very few of the denizens of Otherworld ever visit our world."

That was a relief. And…perhaps just a hint of disappointment too? Perhaps I could go looking for those place someday. Intellectually, I knew that it would likely be dangerous…none of the locations Ken mentioned had ever been safe places in the stories about the, but the lure of them was powerful. To visit Ulthar and its cats. Or to walk the streets of the city-state of Helium, the jewel of Barsoom…

Was this why Sister Sarah had gotten me into reading Sci-Fi and Fantasy? Had she known? Or had she just wanted to help me escape the dreary reality of the orphanage in the only way she really could.

I shook my head a little. The past was past, and exploring potentially dangerous places was a distant future that I was definitely not prepared to give any thought. So I put it out of my mind, swung my legs out of bed and rose, stretching. “Good, now that that’s settled, what’s on the agenda for this morning?”

“I thought we’d take a stab at casting a genuine bolt of lightning,” Ken said.

I blinked at him. “Is that…safe?”

“Perfectly,” he said with a nod. “I have a target in mind for you that should eliminate the potential for any damage, and the lab -“

I held up a finger, cutting him off mid-word.

Ken sighed. “Workshop…is perfectly capable of absorbing any errant spell energy.”

“What about everything in it?”

He hesitated.

“That’s what I thought,” I said, heading for the bathroom. “Let me get dressed and have a spot of breakfast, then we’ll see. I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t completely exhaust me though…I still want to go into town this evening.”

Ken tipped his head, then smiled. “Ah yes. Darts night at the Oak & Ivy. That’ll be a good way for you to start making some connections within the community.”

I nodded. “Mr. O’Day thought so too.”

“Good! I’ll try not to wear you out too much.”

Once I was dressed and fed, we made our way down to the workshop, where Ken unveiled his master plan.

“That,” I said, looking at the new object in the center of the room, from which he had just whipped a concealing drop cloth, “is a Tesla coil.”

Ken nodded, beaming at me. “It most certainly is! This is going to be your target from now on while you’re learning to cast lightning. It’ll draw your lightning spells to it and ground them, so they won’t do any damage to anything until we’re ready to try actively destroying something.”

I sat down on one of the stools and look at him. “Ken…”

“You have your mother’s shield ring to defend yourself with,” he said, “and that’s an excellent start.”

“Ken…” I tried again.

“Defending yourself,” he rolled on, pacing a little, obviously prepared to try and steamroll any arguments I might have, “is not just about being able to stop an incoming attack or spell effect. Sometimes, you need to strike first, and you most certainly will need to know how to retaliate.”

“That’s the hard part for me to process,” I said, finally getting a word in edgewise. “I’m a peaceful person, Ken. I’ve always avoided conflict. I mean…I dropped out of fencing after two semesters of it at university because even though I was enjoying the discipline of it, it was becoming too competitive, and I was uncomfortable with that. I’ve certainly never attacked anybody!”

Ken looked at me for a long moment, then sighed. “Your mother was the same way when she started learning combat magic, and she’d had years to get used to the idea. Part of being the Guardian is defending this House. Once the outside world realizes it’s inhabited again - and is thus potentially vulnerable beyond a brute force assault - there will be attempts.”

“Why?” I asked, starting to feel frustrated. “You still haven’t told me what’s so special about this House.”

Ken and Sparkle, who’d settled on a nearby stack of books, both stared at me blankly.

“I mean, beyond the obvious,” I added, feeling a bit silly. “Granted, there’s an apparently bottomless pit of knowledge to be plumbed here, but that can’t be the only reason this House needs to be defended. It seems, from what I’ve seen and heard, that it’d be pretty good at doing that by itself.”

Ken nodded. “True, on all counts.” He sighed. “All right. I was going to hold off explaining this a bit longer, until you had more of the basics under your belt…so bear with me, because this is complicated.”

“Boil it down to basics,” I said gently. “Save the technical details for later.”

Ken considered that for a long moment, then nodded again. “All right. The House sits on a convergence of about a dozen Ley Lines - pathways through which magical energy flows -“

I held up a hand to forestall the explanation. “I’ve heard of Ley Lines before in fantasy literature and games. It’s probably sufficient for now that I know they’re real.”

Ken blinked a couple of times, then nodded. “Of course. So…there are two major Ley Lines that converge here, and ten other smaller ones. In fact, there is reason to believe that at least three of those actually begin here rather than passing through.” He paused to see if I was following so far.

I nodded. “All right, so that means that there’s an enormous amount of magical energy that can be tapped into here, if you know how.”

Ken nodded. “Essentially, yes. That’s correct.”

“All right,” I said, “so I’m the owner and protector of a seemingly bottomless pit of knowledge and power. I can see why people would covet that.”

“Not bottomless,” Ken said with a little smile, “but certainly immense.”

“How immense?” I asked.

Ken pursed his lips and considered that. “I don’t want to scare you, Caley, but the easiest way to get the point across is to speak in terms of destructive potential.”

I nodded, my stomach turning a little. “All right. Go ahead.”

“On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being a firecracker and 10 being the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima,” Ken said slowly, “the amount of potential energy available to be effortlessly tapped here is somewhere in the neighborhood of 50.”

It took a moment for that to sink in. My hands and feet felt a little cold and tingly.

“With a bit of effort, that could scale up to 100 or so,” Ken said quietly. “With a major effort, you might be able to tap enough energy to take a large chunk out of the Moon.”

I put my hand on the nearest workbench to steady myself, feeling a bit light-headed. “Oh.”

“That’s why I was trying to approach this more obliquely,” Ken said gently. “On top of that, one of your ancestors - before the House was built - accidentally opened what she called a Nexus of Realities here. The House was originally built to cap that and keep it from spreading, which is why the House itself is, to some extent, dimensionally fluid.”

“That’s why it’s bigger on the inside,” I said. My voice sounded kind of far away.

Sparkle was suddenly right in my face, her wings a purple blur behind her, her little hands touching my cheeks. “Caley, it’s okay, take a deep breath.”

I did, resisting the urge to try and focus on her, not wanting to go cross-eyed. After a few deep breaths the world sort of snapped back into focus, the tingling in my hands and feet started to fade, and I realized I’d been pretty close to a panic attack. “Okay,” I said quietly. “I’m okay.”

Sparkle backed off a bit and looked at me closely - I was, at least, able to focus on her now - before nodding. “Okay…”

I gave her a small smile. “Thank you, Sparkle.”

She beamed, that adorable ‘I’m helping’ expression appearing on her face again. “You’re welcome, Caley!” She flitted back over to her mound of books.

“It is,” Ken said, watching me carefully, “of course, incredibly unwise to try to tap the available power here without being very well prepared to do so. And yes, that’s why the House is bigger on the inside. It’s also why many of the doors go to other places.”

“Not just around the world, I take it,” I said, feeling intuitively certain I was on the right track.

Ken nodded. “Correct.”

“Which is why all of the doors in the House are locked, unless I unlock them,” I said.

“Also correct,” Ken said. “It’s a defensive measure, both to protect the house, and to protect the Guardian…until you’re really ready to start actively managing things here.”

“And part of that,” I said, breathing slowly to keep my roiling stomach under control, “is learning how to protect myself and the House.”

Ken simply nodded.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Sparkle interjected, “Mistress Chessie told me she’d had a couple of panic attacks early in her education about the House too.”

I smiled at Sparkle. “Actually, that does make me feel better.” I looked back at Ken. “This is a lot to take in.”

Ken spread his hands. “That’s why I was trying to take my time about getting to it.”

“It’s not the first time I’ve tried to take a bigger bite of the knowledge pie than I could chew,” I said, carefully compartmentalizing the new information in my mind and forcefully shoving my nerves and unease down. I wanted to stay here, to set down roots in this place that had been my parents’ home. That meant accepting this and growing beyond who I'd been up 'till now. I could do that.

I wondered how much more I’d be able to process before I needed a break.

“Okay,” I said slowly, “so, dial it back down to knowing next to nothing.”

Ken smiled. “We’re going to try your taser spell again.” He gestured to the Tesla coil. “And once you have that down, we’ll try something a bit bigger. So, remember what you learned yesterday -“

Had it really only been yesterday? It felt longer somehow.

“- and cast your fulparum spell.”

I gave myself a little shake and concentrated on the Tesla coil.

“Remember,” Ken said quietly, “to moderate just how much energy you channel into the spell, and how vigorously you cast it, as represented by the verbal focus.”

I took a deep breath and let it out. “All right. I can do this.”

“Yes, you can!” Sparkle said encouragingly.

I lifted my right hand, curled it into a fist, and then extended my first two fingers and pointed them at the Tesla coil. I envisioned a spark of electricity arcing from my fingertips to the steel sphere at the top. I felt the energy gathering in my hand, and envisioned it flowing the way water flows from a garden hose. I put a mental thumb over the end of the mental hose, forcing the flow of energy down to a trickle.

Then I gave my hand a little thrust towards the Tesla coil, said “Fulparum,” and cast the spell.

At the last moment, I felt my control over the mental garden hose slip, and a torrent of energy rushed into the spell, far more than I’d intended. More than I’d even realized I had access to.

What leaped from my fingertips was not a small spark, but rather a small bolt of lightning. There was a sharp crack and for a moment the room was cast into harsh relief by the blinding light of the electricity that arced between my fingertips at the Tesla coil.

With a loud *BANG*, the bolt of lightning smashed through one side of the sphere and out the other, before arcing back into the metal as smaller streamers of electricity before I could cut off the flow of energy. As soon as I did, the lightning vanished.

At the same time, the electrical outlet that the Tesla coil was plugged into - to help ground it - sparked violently and lit on fire. The power cord itself melted and split.

Fortunately, no pieces of metal went flying.

“Holy shit!” Ken blurted out, bolting for a nearby fire extinguisher.

Sparkle and I just stared in wide-eyed silence at the remains of the Tesla coil as Ken put out the little fire burning at the outlet. I slowly lowered my hand and sat down on the nearest available stool.

Sparkle whistled appreciatively, then giggled and clapped her hands together. “That was so cool! Do it again!”

“I think,” Ken said as he put the fire extinguisher down and examined the remains of the Tesla coil, “that I might be rushing things.”

“You think?” I asked weakly.

He turned his attention to me. “How do you feel? You look a bit pale.”

“A little bit light-headed and winded,” I said, feeling a bit dazed, “like I ran up a couple of flights of stairs.”

Ken nodded slowly. “That’s not bad, considering what just happened.” He turned his attention back to the Tesla coil and folded his arms. “I believe that you instinctively mixed some force magic into that spell, along with the electricity. Perhaps,” he said after a moment, “we should focus on control for the time being, until you get a better feel for controlling the raw power you have available to you.”

I nodded slowly as my head started to clear, looking at the ruined Tesla coil. “My god,” I said after a moment, “I did that?”

Sparkle giggled. “You sure did! Emphatically!”

Ken and I looked at one another, and I knew that he was thinking the same thing I was. Sparkle had enjoyed the show, but I was shaken by it. Intellectually, I understood that I had some destructive potential at my fingertips…but I had just seen a demonstration of how much, and what could happen if my control of that power wasn’t up to snuff.