Practicing magic comes with a price. Always.
All magic, even small magicks, like a good luck charm or a vanity for a blemish, would result in a consequence, like a counter balance, somewhere, like saying the wrong thing at the wrong time or an extremely bad hair day on a first date. Some might call it karma.
Great magicks tended to rebound wide and harsh, not always to the person practicing the magic, but could include those around them. Carole had considered magic after her third miscarriage, but couldn’t do that to her family. She’d heard about others using magic to help them have children; but, as they said, grief stricken afterwards, great magick understands the meaning of a life for a life.
She finally got Bradley, but lost Nick anyway.
While practicing magic was uncommon for males of the Kelly line, the moment Bradley started showing signs at 10 years old, Carole taught him everything she could. She taught him to know magic: the why and the how and how to find information when his knowledge was lacking. She taught him how to manage the flow of magic around him and how to move with it, not against.
She taught him how to feel the different forces at play: the quarters, the winds, the water, the air, the earth, the fire, and the living. She taught him how to breathe it in and live alongside it. Bradley once called it conducting, and likened it to how he saw music. He was naturally better at conducting the flow of magic than she was.
(He’d once asked about another force, a force that Carole hadn’t felt herself - the dead. Somehow, she knows her response was inadequate. They never spoke of it a second time.)
The one magic that never seemed to rebound a consequence for the Kelly family: protection magick.
Carole taught him every protection magick she knew. He might’ve been a Bradshaw, but he was also half Kelly, so she taught him his family history. She taught him how the Kellys escaped Ireland only to be persecuted in America. She taught him how the family hid their talents, how those without magic protected those who had magic by staying silent. How both words and silence, used with intention, can manifest as protection. Discretion not only protected those practicing, but also protected a practitioner's energy and the magic itself.
Carole’s mother, Mama Kelly, taught Bradley control before she passed. She taught him how to harness magic, and tried to teach him the required self-control to direct it into something usable. Mama Kelly taught Bradley how to settle into his magic, breathe magic in and hold it, and make peace with this part of himself.
Mama Kelly taught him how to bend and shape with intention, until the pieces found a new form. She taught Bradley how to reach, how to open up his magick and build on it to strengthen it. She taught him the fluidity of magic, and how intention can manifest in a person as passion or willpower. She thought Bradley’s had settled into his stubbornness.
Carole’s sister, Cathy, taught Bradley courage and how to anchor before she passed. She taught him the risky nature of magic, especially if the one practicing doubts themselves. She taught him how to anchor to something (or someone) that can provide stability or a foundational support. (Cathy said it’s best to anchor to someone who believes you, and believes in you.)
Cathy taught him the purpose of reflecting on one’s own fears, facing the shadows within and not letting them influence the magick being conducted. She taught him that he should accept the consequences that might rebound, to be thoughtful in what magic he did and the intention for each. She hoped she taught him to have faith in his own abilities, to be brave, but insecurities glow ugly in teenagers.
When Carole got sick, she wouldn’t allow Bradley to use any magic to help in any way. She was terrified this would rebound back on Bradley, or Ice, or Mav. She didn’t want anything to tear her little family apart.
As it turns out, they didn’t need great magick consequences to destroy her little family.
Small magick consequences, something as small as a mother’s protection, would do it all on its own for the very first time.
