Chapter Five: Lessons in Magic

Three days ago, I'd blown up over the Oise when my knife triggered an explosive charge, hopefully destroying the bridge in the process. That's how I'd made it from Earth to limbo. Three days ago, three assassins nearly succeeded in taking the Princess Laeanna's life, which is how I made it from limbo to Alfheim. And I was going right back to limbo to be 'claimed by the demiurges' (Meliswe's wording) if those assassins had any say in the matter. I needed a way to defend myself from them, and the means that most readily came to mind was magic - to hear Meliswe say it, Laeanna was prodigiously talented. And I'd already seen the impressive things that Meliswe, a 'mere adept' (her wording) could do.

For instance, she could effortlessly command our zephrylite around to accomplish any manner of cleaning chores. If I haven't mentioned it before, we soon discovered that Laeanna's grimkey skull was not empty - when attempting to summon the spirit of my body's former occupant from the limbo, Meliswe had accidentally snagged a zephrylite, a sort of minor daemon of the air. Since it lacked the 'purity of soul' that I, apparently, possessed, it was unable to possess Laeanna's cleansed* body, but the grimkey was just fine. That's why I'd snapped back out of the grimkey after a few seconds: like a magnet flipped the wrong way, the zephrylite and I flipped into the appropriate vessels as soon as Meliswe summoned it down from out of the aether. We didn't even discover the beastie until the next day, when we discovered Meliswe's ritual notes strewn all around the antechamber floor. Zephrylites can be a godsend for cleaning things up but, when left to their own devices, they do pretty much the opposite.

*Never attempt a resurrection with an uncleansed body - very bad things tend to come home to roost, so to speak.

"Why can't I command the zephyr light?" I whined - a habit I was trying to nip in the bud. Even if a princess could get her way by whining, she ought not to.

"You can," Meliswe insisted. "When you're commanding it, it does whatever you want…"

"And then it stops as soon as I do. You give it a command and the thing goes for hours."

With a wave of her hand Meliswe had the thing sucking up dust from the hard-to-reach heights of the atrium and depositing it in a little dustbin. "Because I've shaped my mana to suit the command - if I shape my mana into a pattern, the zephrylite will follow the pattern until the mana is tapped. And then it will rest… and then, if I haven't given it another command by the time it gets restless again, it will start blowing things all over the place. Don't worry… it's a skill that takes many years to acquire. I've been practicing magic for forty years."

"Forty years?" Meliswe didn't look a day past twenty. "What about your Laeanna?"

"Closer to seventy years."

"Seventy? This body is seventy years old?" Honestly, if anything, Laeanna looked a bit younger than Meliswe.

Meliswe rolled her eyes, as she did when I said stupid things… which, if you went by eye rolling, was pretty often. "No, Laeanna is eighty-two years old. She didn't start learning magic until she was around twelve - fae children can do magic in little dribs and drabs but aren't any good at it until their wings unfurl around twelve. It's the same for the other races - though, obviously, most of them haven't got wings. I hear that humans grow hair on their nethers…" she giggled…. "That's how they know when it's time to learn magic… though most of them can't do much with it. Not the way you can."

"Maybe in seventy years," I sighed.

"But you've got…" Meliswe wiggled her nose back and forth, searching for the word. "You've got muscle memory. You said so yourself. So what if we go way back, back to the real basics, and then…" she bridged her fingers together. "We try to bridge the gap between what your mind knows and what your muscles know."

"Great. How do we do that?"

The answer to that turned out to be the library. That was the domain of Surburrus, the half-faun wizard, recessed back in the basement floors of a tower at the far corner of the castle. Meliswe led me from my suite and out to the ramparts, from which we could see the whole eastern side of the queendom, out to the mountains forty miles away, beyond which was a great tract of wilderness separating the Vernal and Estival realms of the fae. Vernal City spread in the valley beneath the palace, a city significantly smaller than Paris but significantly larger than Sioux City. The realm of the Vernal fae was a great wedge about twice the size of Belgium containing three cities (Vernal City was the largest, but not by a whole lot), a dozen significant towns, and hundreds of little villages sprinkled throughout.

Meliswe and I walked hand-in-hand along the ramparts, past guards standing watch, past functionaries scurrying to their various duties, walking in the sunlight with the wind whipping our skirts and our hair. I was still getting used to having so much hair, not to mention skirts, but princesses wore their hair long and they wore elegant skirts - at least bustles and corsets had never become a thing in Vernal, or else women's fashion had evolved past it. Women wore their blouses fairly tight against their bodies, with the option of tight or billowy sleeves… short sleeves for the especially daring. Skirts were worn tight down to the hips and loose below that for ease of motion - a bit more revealing than what you might see on the streets of Paris, but not by much. Some women even wore trousers, and this was not frowned upon, assuming you were not a princess or her handmaiden. The strangest thing about our jaunt across the ramparts was the vague suspicion in the back of my mind that somebody would see me walking about all chummy with this beautiful young woman and that word would somehow get back to Abigail on the home front and there'd be hell to pay. But, no… Abigail was on another planet and, around this time, likely learning about the fate of her poor husband.

"What's wrong?" Meliswe asked.

"Nothing. The wind's in my face." I wiped away the tear. I didn't want to bother her with my problems.

"Then let's go inside! The library's right here."

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

+++++

Only the top floor of the library had any windows, and below that it was a dim place lit by whatever lanterns you had available. Or by magic - there were magical crystals on little stands that Meliswe could light in whatever color she liked with ease and that I couldn't light at all, beyond little flickers and flashes. I wondered, and not for the first time, whether Laeanna's magical talents had flown the coop when she did.

Meliswe guided me to the children's corner of the library, where the most introductory volumes on magic were housed. It was a little nook about ten feet to a side with three brightly-colored bookshelves and a reading table with chairs too small for either of us. My handmaiden perused the shelf for a minute, selecting a slim volume and handing it to me. I cracked I open and flipped through the pages - they were half-filled with lines of utterly illegible script, as well as a few geometric diagrams and illustrations, mostly of brave princes and princesses battling monsters and evil wizards.

"What do I do?" I said.

"Um… whatever the book says. Like the cover says, it's ten exercises for shaping magic… you won't be hurling fireballs by the end, but it will teach you how to shape your mana, how to use your hands to help shape it, and maybe you'll be able to light those crystals."

I shot her a pained look… I'd avoided mentioning that I couldn't read fae, and now it was awkward. It was time to rip off that bandage. "I can't read your language. I… I can speak it… I just speak English, and I guess it comes out as faeric, but the letters look like moon language."

Meliswe sighed. "This may take a while… I'll see if I can find a letter book…"

As she searched, and as I puzzled over the strange curling symbols of the fae alphabet… it was unclear whether they ran right to left, left to right, or something else… diagonal?... somebody shuffled into the little nook and cleared his throat with a mighty garrumph. I turned and gasped, suddenly finding myself face-to-face with a scowling half-faun. His slightly-goaty eyes wheeled between Meliswe and myself.

"Meliswe? Princess Laeanna? What is this? Some sort of joke?" Propriety be damned, he snatched the book from my hands. "Ten exercises for beginning mages," he said. "I taught you by this book seventy years ago, when I was still a young man and you were but a girl. If I recall, you mastered it in two days. Indeed, you mastered my whole first year's curriculum in less than a month. And, suffice it to say, if you'd continued with that same feverish dedication, you would have since surpassed me in the craft… you might even be your mother's equal."

"Erm…" I glanced to Meliswe, who was no help whatsoever. "I'm going back to the basics. Trying to break it down…"

"No," he stated. He tossed the book to the low reading table and looked into my eyes. "Something else is going on - you do not bullshit a man who's one-sixteenth minotaur, my princess."

"She is your princess!" Meliswe snapped.

"And this is my library. She may be princess throughout all the Vernal realm, but here I am Regum Almighty. Why is the Princess of the Vernal puzzling over a book meant for novices?"

I took a deep breath and looked him in the eye. It was time to butter up the officer. "This information is not to leave this library," I said. "Swear to me."

The wizard licked his fingers and then rubbed his horns - apparently a symbol of oath among the fauns. "What is told to me in confidence stays within this library. Now speak, girl."

"Wisthelm seeks to destroy the upcoming union of our own realm and that of the Estival. To that end, they attempted to poison me with a death curse, and very nearly succeeded. As you can see, I am as alive as ever, but I fear that my memory has been shrouded. I cannot recall a thing about magic, nor even read our writing. It is as if great tracts of my life are simply gone…"

Surburrus stomped a cloven foot. "This is a serious matter. We must inform your mother at once."

"No! This doesn't leave the library - you swore your oath. The assassins must not know that their attempt was partly successful, and I do not wish to concern my mother. It may be that I can recover my memories if I can bridge…" I meshed my fingers together just as Meliswe had… "my knowledge with the instincts that no doubt still lie within. Look… I can still do the hand motions." I repeated the exact hand motions from the re-resurrection ritual I'd assisted with.

Surburrus nodded. "You have been attempting to summon the lost aspects of your soul. A novel idea, but I fear it will not work. But this other idea of bridging mortal mind with soul may yet prove true. Tell me, princess, can you repeat this motion for me?" His hands flickered in a dizzying array of motions, some of them anatomically improbable. Despite his mostly-faun lower body, the wizard had the deft hands of a fae.

I repeated the motions back as exactly as I could… perfectly, in fact, though maybe not quite as quickly. Surburrus smiled, his teeth a bit too large for his mouth.

"Your skill was always wasted on you, girl. Having to earn it back will be a good experience, I'd wager. You will repeat that very pattern and direct it at the book. If any scintilla of your knowledge remains, the divine sight will unlock the book… indeed, any book and any spoken language… to your comprehension. Now… show me."

I repeated the motion and directed… what? I directed my concentration, the vague sense of will, of energy, that rose up within me. I felt it pulse just as the motion completed, and I glanced to the book, expecting the same gibberish mishmash characters as before. Instead, the cover read: “Ten exercises for beginning mages,” I said.

"I already recited the title to you, princess. Read the first page."

"Almost anybody can learn magic, but even the greatest wizard needs training to get started. Inside of you, there is a universe of magical energy waiting to be unlocked, and you must learn to channel it. If one day you wish to be a great hero, a renowned scholar, or a mysterious sorceress, you must first learn to harness the energies within you and direct them so that you can shape the world. Turn the page to exercise one to begin your journey!"

The wizard nodded. "If I think your lacuna of memory is a danger to the realm, I will have no choice but to tell your mother, oath or no. As always, you are welcome in my library… but I'll be keeping both eyes on you."

“Thank you, Surburrus,” Meliswe said, and she urged the wizard away from our little learning nook. “No doubt you have more important things to attend to.”

“I do,” he admitted.

I sat cross-legged in the floor and pored through the book, mumbling and miming the motions as I practiced. Sometimes, I'd accidentally let a smidge of magic out and there'd be a pop or a flash that would make me yelp. Meliswe would look up from her book and giggle - she'd found something to read, though I didn't ask her what it was. For all I know, it was one of the cowboy pulps I used to love. When I'd finished the book and repeated the last few lessons to my satisfaction - they were a bit more complicated than the rest - I yawned, uncurled from my seat, and placed the book back in the exact spot it had come from.

"Well?" my handmaiden said.

"What?"

"Let's see some magic, my lady." She extinguished the nearest light crystal with a flick of her hand. "Go on… light it up."

That one was easy in theory - lesson four. The body's mana drawn up into a diamond shape - that copied the shape of the crystal - and then passed forth into the crystal. Just a smidge. I furrowed my brow in concentration, traced out the shape, and - voila! - the crystal blinked to life, a brilliant violet color. I suppose controlling the color was a more advanced lesson.

"I did it!" I shrieked.

"You did it!" Meliswe grabbed me and the two of us giggled and jumped around like a pair of teenagers (which, by fae standards, we were). I looked into her eyes, she looked into mine, and I figure we were pretty close to kissing. I blushed and looked away and she did likewise. "I'm so proud of you," she said. And, like a bandito, she darted in and pecked me on the cheek.