from "Win a Whistle"Summer and Joy stood some ten feet apart, facing one another in an attitude of waiting, anticipation like ozone in the air. Chris had taken a seat with a clear view of the two women, his temporarily batty sisters, watching with a bemused smile on his face.
"C’mon, Summer, do something - it’s my birthday; try it and let’s get back to the party... and you shut up, Chris, or I’ll come over there and smuck yuh."
Chris said nothing, having learned long ago that his big sister wouldn’t hesitate to do just that if he gave her any lip. Proud of Joy and her discipline in the martial arts, he’d seen for himself more than once that she was easily capable of completely disabling someone twice her size with an economy of effort that was as beautiful as it was startling.
As often happened when together with his sisters, Chris looked at them both and marveled at their differences, their contrasts and their obvious beauty, obvious even to him as brother whose job it was to try and keep them at least a little humble. Like his father, Chris had them titled in his mind: Joy as Love, Summer as Beauty. Not that either was the more beautiful or loving than the other. It was a moot point as to which sister was prettier, or more dedicated to that wonderful principle fast becoming so important in their world, Love. He let his mind wander a bit and thought of these two dynamos he was privileged to call ‘sister’.
Joy, the oldest, compact and round in all the right places, he supposed, perfect face framed by waves of thick chestnut hair with dark blond streaks - she’d been demonstrating a new kick and was presently standing in the ready position that was second nature to her now, toes turned slightly inward and body a bit side-on to Summer, relaxed but ready, always ready. A small pin on the breast of her sweater attested to her world champion status in last year’s full-contact karate tournament in New York. A hobby, one that made her the strongest woman Chris knew, pound for pound, anywhere.
Summer, two years his senior, and the most beautiful (if it was possible for him to pick between the two) woman Chris knew next to his wife. Hell, he’d heard it said that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and he could hardly argue, looking at her now as he thought: Mom’s coloring, like me, while Joy got Dad’s darker hair and brown eyes. Me and Summer with Mom’s blue eyes and fair skin, Summer’s hair blond, mine sandy brown. I can well understand why men say they can’t look at her too long without getting a bit goofy. Tall, maybe five-eight, long body dressed in customary black, model-thin, her tattoo peeking out of one sleeve of the clinging gown, her only other adornment a tiny gold peace symbol on a chain around her neck, a gift from Dad. Long, long golden hair, thick and straight where Joy’s curled, and that face... yeah, my sister Summer is very beautiful, big blue eyes known to reduce any and all of the very coolest of men to stutters and cold sweats - even Dad sometimes blown away by her, his old volubility out the window whenever Summer decided to turn up her personality an increment or two.
My sisters, God love ‘em. Let’s watch this and see what happens.
"Don’t close your eyes, Joy. If this works, it should be visual as hell... Aunt Jeri and I have been practicing, and it’s really something when it works."
"Okay, Summer, but let’s go, there are people here -"
"Dad and Freddy can handle them. Shush now, look at me. Chris, keep your eyes on the space a couple of meters above the floor halfway between us."
Chris would later try to describe to his father what happened next, but couldn’t find the words, while Paul had laughed and said, "About time I showed you a few things, my son," and Chris finally understood how Paul had gotten away from those thugs that had taken him for three of the scariest days the family had ever experienced, Dad held in an old apartment in Toronto surrounded by SWAT and damn near every peace officer in the city while negotiations dragged on for his release. Chris had been there when his father had walked out of the building, arms in the air, yelling, "It’s me, you assholes, don’t shoot. The crazies are upstairs, sleeping." Sleeping, shit, they hadn’t wakened for forty-eight hours. Dad had been questioned, and questioned again, and finally ended up giving a small demonstration at RCMP headquarters, supposedly causing more than one officer present to soil themselves.
Subsequent digging concerning what had actually happened in that dirty little apartment had finally got this from Dad; "Ah, son, I just got tired of trying to reason with them and put a whammy on them. Eddie helped, from a distance. I’ll show you sometime."
What Summer showed them the night of Joy’s thirtieth birthday was something... wondrous. Ultimately indescribable, certainly. Chris would tell a friend later, laughing and shaking his head, "Well, you know, you just had to be there."
Summer said, "Since it’s the three of us, I’ll do a memory, something with us when we were kids, before Dad moved out. Mom and Dad and us as central focus; the surround is the joy I remember - I’m never sure how that part will turn out. It feels something like creating one of Aunt Jeri’s paintings out of the molecules of air in front of me. Bad way to describe it, I know. Wait... here, see, look, feel, can you get a sense of the power here?"
A tumult of colour, a man and woman and three children, dancing, laughing.
Joy grunted, loud, and sat down in a lotus, hands to her cheeks. The image danced and swirled there, then disappeared with a small popping noise as if someone had snapped their fingers.
"Alright, now, just for a second, here it is as if we were in a roomful of people and I wanted only you two to see it."
"Oh, sweet Jesus," Chris said as he fell off the chair and hit the floor, rolling -
image, centered and brilliant, mom and dad, and i want to sit with daddy
Joy and Summer singing and dancing mommy comes in and supper ready
daddy picks me and Summer up and we bounce and laugh to the table
oh it’s so nice
oh please Summer stop please -
"Stop!" Chris yelled, on his back on the carpet. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Joy curled up in a ball, small sounds coming from her. "Summer, stop, please."
"Pretty neat, huh?" Summer said. She walked over to Joy and helped her stand. "Happy birthday, sister."
Chris walked over and gathered his sisters to him and held on.
"Oh, my, I gotta fix my makeup," Joy said. "And maybe I have to change my underwear, too."
And they started to laugh. They were a little while longer getting back to the party.
