Vree’s Journal Entry 6

It took me a while to dig up this information. Here it is:

Balen Renfrew, My Wizard Uncle

Balen James Renfrew is my maternal grandmother’s 45-year-old son. He has thick, dark-brown hair, beard stubble (he calls it 5 o’clock shadow—he always looks like he needs to shave before the end of the day), dark blue eyes that sometimes look black, and very white teeth, which shows often when he smiles. He has a thin build but is strong. I saw him once without a shirt and he had a well-toned chest and muscular arms. And he walks with a small limp—he favors his right leg.

He often wears buttoned shirts with collars and sharp-pressed trousers, though he does wear jeans. His shoes, however, are dark brown leather oxfords, and his socks are black. Oddly, when the weather cools, he wears a long, knitted gray scarf around his neck.

Balen is a wizard with limited magic. He can move small objects with his mind, see an hour into the future (in short flashes and not always clearly), communicate/converse aloud and silently with animals, see auras (energy fields), hover up to 3’ off the ground for almost 5 minutes, leave his body and travel in spirit to locations less than a mile away, sense psychic impressions (vibrations) left on an object by someone connected with it, and sense the needs, drives, and emotions of people nearby. Really weird and unsettling is how well he can communicate mind-to-mind with me, read my thoughts and hear me when we’re miles apart, and how quick he can start fires with his mind.

Although he is 45 years old by mortal standards, his wizard blood has slowed his aging and he looks younger. (At 100, he will hardly look any older.) His eyes, however, reveal the truth, if you look hard enough. Because he lives on Myers Ridge, he battles every second the effects of the curse a witch named Margga Dekownik unleashed years ago. He has to take a special medicine to survive the curse and not lose his magic to it.

Since wizards can live to be 800+ years old—Balen is a child at 45. By comparison, his father Trevor Renfrew is in his “senior citizen” years at 693. Like many wizards, Trevor Renfrew has the unique ability to appear a tenth of his age for every 100 years. When my grandmother lived with him, she discovered his true age after Balen’s birth and felt deceived by his dishonesty. When she left Balen in his care, he raised the boy in Paris, France. Balen returned to his birthplace three years ago and moved to Myers Ridge three months later, secretly watching over his birth mother, his half-sister Karrie, and me.

Balen has 2 stepsisters and a stepbrother sired by Trevor: Phoebe is 516, birthed by Trevor’s first wife Bianca (who died from complications while giving birth), Dextra is 475 and Julius is 401—both birthed by Trevor’s second wife Floris (who presides over the Council of Magic).

Balen lives in a double-wide trailer on a tiny parcel of property along Russell Road on Myers Ridge, though he is tremendously wealthy, with 90 million dollars in various banks, local and abroad—wealth given him by his father, earned and stolen over the years. His father and stepmother belong to the Council of Magic that executed Margga and imprisoned her ghost/spirit to Yalendora. I accidentally released Margga’s spirit to return to Myers Ridge where she tormented my friend Lenny Stevens and his family and tried killing them before she destroyed herself while fighting me for my psychic powers.