You know how every family seems to have a crazy uncle, or a crazy aunt? Well, imagine living in a town where everyone seems a little bit touched. Maybe it's the cold, maybe it's the isolation, maybe it's the relentless snow and sun. But it seems as if you're living in the outskirts of Nome, Alaska, you'd be hard-pressed to step outside your door and not meet at least one person who seems as if they've stepped off of the pages of the funny papers. Still, it was a good place to raise a family, in a place where the environment has seen fit to teach everyone to look out for each other. At least that was the thought of my father, Morten Logan, a commercial sailor who brought his young wife, Emily Carmondy-Logan to settle at his family's dog-breeding ranch, just a few months after they were married. With my father spending so much time away at sea, it seemed best to give my mother the security of friends and family to stand in for him during the long months of separation. Two sons, Isaac and Paul, both born in Nome, later, and they had settled into a comfortable routine, with the boys helping our uncles and grandfather to raise the sled dogs that provided income for our family, and my mother teaching at the local Junior/Senior High School, Nome-Beltz. And life continued to be comfortable, until there was a bit of an oops. A female oops to be exact.
My mother was forty-three, when she discovered that, much to her surprise, her mood swings and body changes weren't the precursor to menopause. Instead, she found herself, after a stretch of almost twenty years, pregnant. With her age and the health of her unborn daughter a factor, my mother traveled down to Kodiak, accompanied by her mother-in-law, my grandmother Dorothy, and her sister-in-law, my aunt Symone, to stay close to better medical care, until the delivery. And despite my parents' fears, I was born healthy and by all accounts, according to the stories the family likes to tell, happy. They named me Paige Carmondy Logan. The now four women, one more interested in eating than sightseeing, returned to the family home in Nome. My father was away at sea, and would not see me until I was almost three months old. But a child, no matter the circumstances, is a happy occasion, and I was welcomed home with love and it was that love that would see me and support me through me early childhood. That same love that would see me through the difficult road of my later childhood and early teen years.
I can't recall the first day that I realized there was something a little, alright, a lot different about me. Most of my memories of growing up are happy. From tagging along beside my older brother Paul, and soon with his children, who were almost of an age with me, to spending time with my uncles at the dog-runs, helping to clean and feed them. There was school of course, and friends in the playground, when there was enough ground showing to play on, that is. And my grandmother, Oma D, who took care of me when my mother was at work, and Dad was away. Dad was almost always away, but he always found a way to celebrate with me, when he came home. He used to tell me I was the little girl he always wanted but never thought he would ever have. He even used to take me out on the boat, sometimes, when they were making short trips to the neighbouring ports. I got seasick every time, but I always insisted so much, he'd take me anyway. We kept extra medicine around just in case. Thinking back now, it must have been when I was about twelve, or so. We were playing hide and go seek. I was the hider. My niece Carrie and my nephew Joseph were the seekers.
I ducked down behind the tall pine tree just outside of the barn, and they ran around me, circling, back and forth and they couldn't find me. I thought it was a very clever hiding place, until my Aunt Symone came out of the house and looked right at me, calling me in to see my Oma. That was when I discovered that not all of the kooks in Nome were really as kooky as they like to pretend. Nome is a safe place, a quiet place, a place of sanctuary. And that sanctuary now extended to include me, as well as some of the members of my family. My aunt, my grandmother, my Uncle Jacob. We don't have many witches in my family, but the ones we do have are strong. My aunt is skilled in protection, and she made me my first talisman, to keep me safe from prying eyes. My Oma was skilled in the elements. Jacob was an elemental too, mostly fire. He used it to keep his dogs warm during their sled races. I always thought it must have given him an unfair advantage when he was out there. Me? Illusion was my special focus, and I had to learn that, for the most part, on my own. The last illusionist in my family was my Oma's grandmother Melinda. And she had passed away almost 30 years before I was even born.
But Great-Great-Grandmother Melinda did keep a diary, quite a few actually, and she kept a record of all of her spells, and Oma gave those to me when I turned fifteen, and more of my powers started to manifest. It had started out just as being able to hide, you see? But the older I got, the more I could do. Make people see things, hear things, smell things. Make myself look taller, shorter, darker, change my hair. Only for short amounts of time, but I think my Oma was afraid that I would let it get out of hand. And she did the best that she could with me. She and Jacob taught me as much as they could about their own abilities, and I learned how to do most of the small elemental magics, though water and air come more easily to me than fire and earth. I always thought that must have been a result of the environment. Snow and wind are common in Nome. Earth, uncovered earth, and free fire, not so much. Symone's protection magic I can't do at all. And believe me, I have tried.
Somehow, between those three members of my family, I managed not only to make it through my early and middle teenage years, but to do so without letting my parents know what abilities I had. I didn't want to frighten them. I tried to get away from Nome as soon as I could, as soon as I graduated high school. I went down to Seattle, and enrolled at the University of Washington, majoring in Journalism. Thought it might be a nice compliment for me, with my abilities. And I tried to pay for as much of my schooling and upkeep as I could. Even started working at one of those occult shops, selling potions and jewelry, books and knickknacks. The man who ran the store, Matthew Carver, he actually was a witch, but knowing that most of the people who came into his store didn't really need or want real magic, most of the good stuff was kept in the back for special customers. I used to work with his coven, although I never fully joined, as it were. I was marketed as the resident medium, though it took all of us to work real magic.
That's the funny thing about people in the world today. They want to buy into the illusion of magic and what it can do to and for you, but really, when they're pressed, it's the fantasy they want, not the truth. That's why mediums and palm readers, telephone psychics and tarot card readers, most of them fake, are so sought after. People want to believe that their loved ones are at peace, that they're watching over them, but they don't want to really know what's going on. That's why being a medium isn't really about giving people the truth, it's about giving them what they want. Protecting them from reality. And if you learn how to read someone just right, you can do a little bit of illusion, a little bit of air gusting and candle flickering, and along with knowing just how to ask the right questions, you can watch them walk out of your shop happier than when they walked in. That's the real magic…for them.
After I finished my undergraduate degree, I applied for graduate school down in Dallas, I suppose because I wanted to go to a place almost the exact opposite of the sorts of places I had lived in all of my life. That's when I met Alicia Watts, local underground television personality. She and a group of her friends used to put out shows on the local cable stations, whatever topics might be popular, whatever made them a little bit of cash. That is until vampires decided to come out of the coffin and all of a sudden, the supernatural was prime time, and Alicia never turns down a chance to go prime time. I suppose I finally threw my lot in with her to keep her from getting too close, from delving too deep. Thankfully, she decided against vampires themselves. Ghosts and the paranormal were her focus. And I was 'happy' to join her group of researchers, if only to make certain that what was buried stayed buried, and to keep them off the trail of anything dangerous. To protect them and the people watching her show. Not too hard to do when you can make people see what you want them to see, is it? So that's me. Medium and Paranormal Investigator, revealing the deep dark secrets of the the South. At least all the secrets that are fit to print.