Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

my eyes, looking out the window with a frown. I recognized the street we were on. Joan and Roy Sheldon – my latest foster family, the one whose kitchen I had burned – lived just a few houses down.
    “Why are we here?” I asked.
    “You remember when I first gave you your Oculator’s Lenses, lad?”
    “Sure.”
    “I asked you a question then,” Grandpa Smedry said. “I asked you why you had burned down your family’s kitchen. You didn’t answer.”
    “I thought about it, though,” I said. “I’m figuring things out. I’m getting better with my Talent.”
    “Alcatraz, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said, laying a hand on my shoulder. “That question wasn’t just about your Talent. You keep asking about your parents, keep wondering why they were so willing to abandon you. Well, did you ever think to wonder why you abandoned so many families?”
    “I have thought about it,” I said. “Or, at least, I have recently. And perhaps I was a little hard on them. But it wasn’t only my fault. They couldn’t handle it when I broke things.’
    “Maybe some of them,” Grandpa Smedry said. “But how many of them did you really give a chance?”
    I knew he was right, of course. And yet, knowing something is very different from feeling it. And at that moment, I was feeling all the same emotions I felt every time parents gave me away.
    I felt a twist in my gut. It was happening again, and this time it wasn’t my fault. I’d tried. I’d tried not to push Grandpa Smedry away. And now it was happening anyway.
    “You’re trying to get rid of me,” I whispered.
    Grandpa Smedry shook his head. “Information, lad! It’s all about information. You thought those families were going to give you up, so you acted first. You made them get rid of you. But you had bad information.
    “I’m not trying to abandon you. We have a lot of work to do, you and I. However, you need to go back and spend some time with those who have loved you. You need to make your peace with them if you’re ever going to understand yourself well enough to help us win this war.”
    “Blackburn didn’t think information was all that important,” I snapped.
    “And how’d he end up?” Grandpa Smedry said, smiling.
    “But he beat you,” I said. “In the Oculator’s Duel. He was stronger.”
    “Yes, he was,” Grandpa Smedry said. “He worked very hard to be able to beat a person like me in a contest like that. He put out his eye so that he would be stronger with offensive Lenses, and he collected other Lenses that would let him fight effectively.
    “But, in doing so, he gave up the ability to see as well. Alcatraz, everything we do is about seeing! If he’d seen just a little better, he would have noticed your trick. If he’d seen a little better, he’d have realized that by putting out his eye and focusing on the powers that let him win battles, he handicapped himself in larger, far more important ways. Perhaps if he’d seen a little more, he’d have realized that those Translator’s Lenses you have are far more powerful that any Firebringer’s Lens.”
    I sat back, trying to sort out my thoughts – and my emotions. It was hard to focus on any one feeling – regret, anxiety, anger, confusion. I still couldn’t believe that Grandpa wanted me to stay with Joan and Roy. I glanced at the house. “Hey, there’s no hole in the side of it!”
    “The Librarians would have fixed that before your foster parents got home,” Grandpa Smedry said. “They try to keep things quiet, work on the underground – something like that hole would have attracted too much attention to this house, and therefore to you.”
    “Won’t it be dangerous for me to be here?” I asked.
    “Probably,” Grandpa Smedry said. “But it will be dangerous for you everywhere. And, we have some… means of keeping you safe here, for a little while, at least.”
    I nodded slowly.
    “They’ll be happy to see you, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said.
    “I don’t know about that,” I said. “I burned down their kitchen.”
    “Try them.”
    I shook my head. “I still can’t control it, Grandfather,” I said quietly. “My Talent. I thought I was getting the hang of it, but I still break things all the time – things I don’t wasn’t to.”
    Grandpa Smedry smiled. “Perhaps. But when it counted, you broke that Firebringer’s Lens in exactly the right way. You didn’t just shatter it or make it stop working. You made it work wrong, but made it work right for