Our parents kept chickens and a goat in the backyard when I was little. I remember helping Mother collect the eggs each morning. But neither Temra nor I care for such responsibilities, so the land mostly serves as an area for me to demonstrate my weapons.

When I judge myself to be a safe distance from the house, I grasp the mace tightly before taking a swing in the direction of the old cedar tree.

Nothing magical happens.

Though rare, there have been a few times when I’ve unwittingly magicked a weapon and had to figure out how it worked.

It’s rather frustrating.

I try bringing the shaft down against the dirt-packed ground, but that does nothing either. On a whim, I breathe onto the mace, since my face had been so close to it during my attack.

Still nothing.

“Let me try,” Temra says.

“Absolutely not. You might hurt yourself.”

“I’ve handled your weapons before.”

“But oftentimes my weapons have long-range effects. Until I’m sure what it does, I won’t let you—”

Temra falls to her knees, her hands going to her throat as she makes a gasping noise. I’d started twirling the weapon over my head, and I immediately stop and rush over to her.

“What happened?” I ask. “Did you swallow something?”

A burst of air fills her lungs, and she stares wonderingly at the weapon. “I didn’t swallow anything. It’s the mace. Do that again.”

“What?”

“Spin it over your head in a circle.”

I give one full rotation of the weapon, and this time Temra is ready. “I can’t breathe when you do that.”

I stare at the mace in shock before handing it over to her. “Now you can try.”

She does, and I feel the effects instantly. The mace is sucking the air away from me, toward itself. I step farther and farther away. Once I reach about ten feet, I can breathe again.

Temra stops the motion. “Incredible!”

“I’m glad my sheer panic is good for something.”

Temra looks on me sadly. “It’s all right, Ziva. Whenever it happens, I’ll be here for you.”

As the older sister, I should be there for her. But more often than not, she is the one saving me. Temra should have been the one to receive our mother’s gift for magic. She is so much stronger and braver than I will ever be, but I don’t think she realizes how much my gift took away my own childhood.

I’m glad that, at sixteen, Temra is able to concentrate on more trivial tasks, like flirting with boys and focusing on her schooling. But me? I’ve been providing for us since I was twelve. I often wonder if spending so much of my formative years locked in a forge somehow made me fearful of everything else. At eighteen, I hate to leave the house and be around people.

Or maybe it’s simply an effect of the magic itself. I’ve no one to ask for answers about magic. Mother was killed when I was five, long before my gift manifested.