Mara Morales
April 30, 2020 4:47 PM
Learning the Land. by Mara Morales
There was a clattering from the kitchen, a window opening and a racket as an owl came through the window and onto the counter. There was a thud, an exclamation in Spanish, and then a voice calling - "Mara!"Reluctantly, Mara put down the heavy spellbook she was studying and walked into the kitchen, just in time to see her mother grimly waving a large owl out of the window and back into the mercilessly cloudless Atlanta sky. The air seemed to shimmer just outside the window, and Mara could feel the heat coming through it from the kitchen door. Her mother was frowning as she turned to her.
"All this bird-mail," she complained. "You will make us pay twice the usual for the air conditioner! And someone is sure to see, eventually. They will send people from the University to find out why this building has owls flying at it during the day, and then what will you do?"
"Dad doesn't care how much we use the air conditioner," said Mara, a touch defensively as she darted forward to retrieve the rectangular brown parcel the owl had dropped on the kitchen table. "And he's the one who told me to order whatever I wanted."
This argument did not improve her mother's scowl. "Your father, he works hard for his money," she said. "You should not take advantage."
Mara bit her tongue before she could say the thing she really thought, which was asking what, exactly, Mamá thought she was doing these days, continuing to live in their nice apartment all year when Jessica was clearly far too old to need a nanny during her summer vacations. That would not help at all. She tried a different tact.
"Mamá, I can't survive in this new world if I don't read," she said. "It's almost like I need to learn a new language - like you did when you came to America," she pointed out. "I didn't choose to be a witch, but I am - so I need to learn about their world, and Jessica was right. They don't teach us enough at that school."
Her mother hmphed slightly, but Mara suspected she had hit the mark, a theory which was supported when her mother spoke again. "I learned English before I came here," she said stiffly. "But even then, there was much to learn."
"Exactly," said Mara, and retreated before she could talk herself out of the better position she was pretty sure she had talked her way into.
She would, she thought grimly, have to tidy her room if she was to avoid hearing more about this later. Right now, it was covered in books - her school books, Jessica's school books (her sister had no interest in looking at them until it became strictly necessary to do her summer homework, and she had therefore allowed Mara to borrow them without complaint), and the books she had bought over the past few weeks from magical bookshops. She had a couple of large-scale histories - overviews of magic in North and Latin America - and, since she had started on those, some biographies. She had also found an official history of MACUSA, which was probably little more than propaganda, but it was a start, and a Muggleborn's Guide to Basic Magical Law. She had even bought a couple of what she was reasonably sure were novels, to try to get more of a feel for what the culture really was.
So far, she was displeased with her findings. They confirmed some of her suspicions and introduced her to other things that made her raise her eyebrows. Still, though, there was a lot of summer and a lot of pages left to go. She would figure this place out, and try to figure out how to make herself a place in it.
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Mara Morales
Learning the Land.
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