Julie sat hunched over the table inside Fife’s humble hovel. Though generously enriched, it was more junk, trinkets, and inventions rather than decor. Concepts and contraptions cluttered his cupboards, artwork hung gracefully on the walls, and books overflowed his shelves. Cramped and cluttered, seemingly random without a commonality. A thief would not take anything, confounded by the lack of apparent value, but there was more here than what Julie’s eyes distinguished.

She could feel it.

Fife hobbled over to where Julie sat and took up a chair opposite of her. “Tell me, what importance is history?”

“An ambiguous question answered several ways,” she parried, seeing if he would reveal anything more. She hated getting anything wrong. Fife never revealed everything on the first sparring.

Fife nodded and brought his left hand up to stroke his beard thoughtfully. “Take liberty to explain your answer, and I won’t interrupt until you finish.”

“History to you and me would mean learning from the mistakes of the past, but for future generations, it will show where the mistakes were made in my time, as well as in your time. However, the past also tells us who prevailed as right or wrong regarding philosophy and principle, but not necessarily who was right at the moment.” She stopped and took a deep breath before trudging on. “It is both accurate and false, depending on the observer, how the observer relates what happened in words and the observer’s feelings. More than anything, history is determined by the victor. Had Xilor won the First Wizard’s War, how wrong would Ralloc had been in a book written by him?”

“So, it is important, yes?” Fife asked her.

“Yes and no. Yes, so we do not make the same mistakes in the present or future. No, because someone biased may have written the book, or someone who chose to leave certain views, ideals, beliefs, or events out.”

Fife grew pensive, absentmindedly stroking his beard, his eyes had gone distant. He spoke after a long pause. “Good answer.”

Hopping down from his stool, he waddled over to the bookshelf nearest to his desk. His tiny fingers rustled over the bindings of the books, much like a spider would crawl over its web. When his hand swept across the book he sought, he tucked it under his arm and returned to the table.

“History is fickle,” he declared, clearing his throat. “I have found that the best way to record events is to put your very own memories to paper.”

“I don’t understand,” Julie blurted before she could stop herself.

Fife looked at her coolly before continuing. “Most people don’t. In fact, none except the exceptional few of us.” He flipped through pages in the book and muttered to himself. Julie regarded him as he sifted before she noticed something troublesome: the pages were blank. Not a few, but all of them. Whatever Fife sought, Julie prized he’d never find it. She almost pointed this out when he spoke.

“Ah, here we are,” he murmured, laying the book flat on the table between them, his eyes boring into Julie’s. “Would you like to see history in the making?”

Uncertainty clouded her mind, unsure what game Fife played.

Cautious curiosity tickled her brain, but she was wary of falling for another one of his teaching schemes. “Who is it about?”

“I think you will find this particular person to be of great interest to you. You know this person, but this happened before your birth.”

“Show me.”

Fife reached across the table and held out his left hand. Julie reached out and grasped it. Fife then took his right palm and laid it flat on the page. To Julie, it felt like her soul was sucked out of her seat and into the book, but her body had stayed in the present, sitting in the chair, while her consciousness drew into the blank page. As she neared the page, she could see images, flashes of light and memory as she hurtled over treetops, up the steep slopes of mountains she recognized.

The Melodic Mountains.

Before she could fully grasp all the images that whirled by, she landed outside Fife Doole’s hut. The door creaked open, and Fife waddled out but without the help of his staff. He worked his way to the edge, looking down at the forest below.

Julie followed his lead. In the distance, flashes of light peppered the night like lightning bugs. The flashes lasted a few moments, and then a faint scream drifted up the mountain.

Julie turned to ask Fife what was happening, but she remembered that this was a recollection of something he witnessed. The gnomling shifted on his feet and waited for a few heartbeats. The sounds of stomping, scraping brush, and clattering of falling rocks from the trail reached their ears.

Who is he waiting for? she wondered.

The footfalls pattered heavily, the person treading the path most likely a male, the steps uncertain and erratic, varying from hurried to ponderously slow. A face appeared, then the torso and legs as the figure came over the rise, climbing the trail. The person, still too far for Julie to discern, halted.

Fife Doole straightened a bit more, drawing himself up taller. The stranger halted still within the grasp of the shadows. “I told you not to seek me out till you were ready,” Fife’s voice rang out. “You are still too young, but there is a profound threat hanging over you. I can sense this in your thoughts. If you are indeed who you should be, what did I tell you to remember?”

“Above all else,” the young voice said, “people will fear what they do not understand.”

Julie’s mind raced. She had heard that before, from someone, long ago, but the recognition evaded her.

“Come inside, then.” Fife returned to his hut while Julie waited to see the newcomer. A young Judas Lakayre stepped out of the shadows, approximately her age, maybe a little older. He looked boyish and helpless, but still carried an aura of authority about him.

Julie felt the pulling sensation as Judas passed, her mind and consciousness were being sucked back from the memory, back into her body.

“He started just as you did,” Fife intoned quietly.

“Not precisely. Judas had prior training before coming here; I didn’t.” Julie was surprised by the bitterness oozing out of her voice, but not the fact that she was bitter. Every day that went by, Fife annoyed, antagonized, and irritated her, and her memories of Judas brief tutelage turned darker and virulent.

“Yes, but the essence is the same. You both came here, Starriace.”

Julie ground her teeth; the ring called, taunting her.

As the days progressed, the Grand Maghai found new ways to bruise Julie’s ego. His newest method came in the form of pointing out the gaps in Julie’s education.

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“Massive gaps, is that not so?” he would say.

Though able to speak Myshku, she couldn’t read very well and couldn’t write at all. She knew some history of Ermaeyth but not all. Once, Fife told Julie to recite the chronicles of Na Laa Lusen and the rise and fall of Borus the Evil. The tale started easily enough, but soon, words failed her, revealing one of many gaps in her knowledge. Fife only sucked his teeth in response.

When her lack of knowledge became apparent, Fife changed his instructional periods, alternating between magical lessons and rudiments of language and grammar skills, arithmetic, and history. Teachings from books became more prominent than her mystical ones. When she made leaps and bounds with her Rumigul, her erudition, and history, suffered. With quantum leaps in mathematical skills, her Rumigul staggered. She constantly shuffled her mystic and cognitive feet in a vicious and monotonous dance.

Julie started to hate life under Fife’s tutelage. Each passing day the ring seemed like a bounteous notion, but she recognized that Fife held a fount of knowledge yet revealed. Determination, not loyalty, kept her there, and the accessible escape via her ring was never far from her mind.

Fife worked her from first light to the last sliver of sun, each day ending with her mind fogged, like clay molded too many times by an obsessive sculptor striving for perfection. When she wasn’t exhausted from her studies, he mentally taxed her with Rumigul lessons, and if neither applied, physical weariness took its unique toll.

The weather turned, the days cool and the nights a brittle cold. At dusk, Julie would walk outside and lean against her favorite tree, the willow tree that splintered and almost crushed her in the mind battle with Fife. Fogged breath plumed from her mouth as she surveyed the rainbow of colors setting against the cosmos. At night, Julie awaited her favored color of turquoise, a bleeding effect from the lime green and cobalt blue, until she saw the infamous ‘silver lining.’ From then on, silver became her preferred color. She rummaged through what little possessions she had accumulated to see if she had anything in silver. She didn’t.

Whenever I depart, I am going to buy me a robe of silver. It seemed like a suitable celebratory gift.

Nights and days passed in a haze, the weeks slipped into months. Every night, Julie examined all three moons as each went through their individual phases, full, waxing, waning, crescent, and new. Eventually, all three moons aligned again, marking the start of another season. From there, the days were colder, the nights haunted by the howling wind. The clime cooled, and Julie saw her first snow and her second. By the tenth time, the magical white powder lost its magnificence, and she prayed for a swift return to warmer weather. Fife assured her that winters were mild here. Though Fife’s cottage resided on the mountainside, in truth, she climbed less than an eighth of the mountains’ full height. She tried to imagine climbing the daunting beasts and was grateful she didn’t have to.

Another intriguing part of the changing of seasons: Praema and Apor no longer rose in the same segment of the sky. The shift started in the season prior, but by now, grew apparent. Praema ran nearly perpendicular to Apor. While the blue giant sun broke the north horizon and set in the south, Praema ascended in the northwest and set in the southeast. It didn’t matter where the celestial bodies progressed or what phase they were in, each day brought more knowledge and grief for Julie, though she couldn’t be certain which one was more.

Fife, satisfied she had made enough progress in her studies, returned to grueling instructions on Rumigul. Her first lesson was an answer to what she sought. Why hadn’t she been able to lift the boulder at the edge of the clearing?

“Small things rise smoothly enough, is that not so? This we know! Small objects we can displace with enough channeled power, but there is another factor that fights against your ability to lift.” Fife picked up a small stone and dropped it. “Why did it drop, Starriace?”

Julie ground her teeth before answering. “Gravity, master.”

“True!” he proclaimed. “We must fight against gravity as well as displace the air beneath it, is that not so? To fight gravity is hard. To displace the air is hard. Together, the Rumigul is difficult to master, but in the end, the feat is simple. It requires less energy to do both together than apart. Do you understand?”

Julie nodded. “Displace the air while negating the effects of gravity. Pulling weight away from the ground is difficult on an object of great mass, and lifting the same mass with displaced air is even more difficult. Channeling both of the spells require a degree of mastery I haven’t attained, both abilities working in tangent to produce an effect is easier than each by themselves.”

“I see the studying of vocabulary has paid off, is that not so?”

Julie smiled briefly at his praise.

Both types of lessons took up much of their time, and the Grand Maghai combined Rumigul exercises with assignments of text.

“Incorrect!” Fife growled. The towel in his hand whipped out, the end cracking smartly against the back of Julie’s writing hand. The giant boulder above them dipped a half foot due to Julie’s instant lack of concentration. “That is not the correct symbol. You say you can speak this language, but you can’t even write it. How are you ever going to learn Thymulous?”

“I try, master,” she said, anger rising against his ridicule.

“Try harder,” he bit out. He knew he was a demanding teacher, especially to her. She had learned her powers, but she couldn’t perform rudimentary skills of reading and writing that a novice half her age could perform with their eyes closed. Fife did credit her with the progress she made.

Old habits and muscle memory deteriorated, the figments of her previous life—what she could glean—and the mild curiosity faded to silent echoes. Julie didn’t know if that was a good thing or something tragic. Only time would tell.

“Patience and concentration are the two biggest things you lack. They will be your undoing if you cannot master them. Without mastery, we waste both of our time, is that not so, Starriace?” Julie ground her teeth at the name. Fife spoke with a serious and firm voice as Julie sat with crossed legs. He paced around her. “Your objective today, and every day until mastery, is to sense the aura in all things. Feel it, touch it, draw it into you and channel it back into them.”

“Them, master?”

“Yes, them,” he barked. “Are you a deaf, Starriace? Must I repeat everything?”

She waited for him to elaborate but when he didn’t, she spoke again. “What, exactly, is them?”

“Everything. I thought that would be obvious by now.” He shook his head as he padded around her, leaning on his staff for support. “Everything has magical properties; everything can feed you. To draw upon it in dire need is acceptable. Having spent yourself and death is moments away, the life around you will give you magic. However, to take from another being of sentience is unforgivable.” He muttered something under his breath and walked further around her, shaking his head and mumbling things. Julie couldn’t catch everything, but she swore she could hear another voice talking to Fife Doole, almost too quiet to hear.

“… you shouldn’t have told her that.”

“It matters not. Cannot change what hasn’t happened and what may or may not come.”

For a moment, Julie thought she was going insane, hearing another voice talking to her master, but since Fife answered back … he might be cracked. She vowed to pay closer attention to him.

“How will I know—and how will you know—when I achieve what you instructed?” Julie voiced. When he answered, it seemed like he did not address her but someone else.

“I will know because I am shifting through the changing currents of time and events. You will know because you will detect the change and”—he paused and stopped in front of her—“I will tell you.”

Julie took this into consideration as she pondered the outcome of her next question. “Master, when will you teach me true magic?”

“True magic?”

“Will you teach me to fight? You have taught me so many things that I can use to turn inward. You’ve taught me basics of healing, of protection, even to test the air for poisons, but you never once showed me how to attack.”

“Why would you need to attack, Starriace?”

“To defend myself against those who would make me suffer. To protect others against people like Xilor.”

“Who said he was a person?” He waved the question away, shuffling towards his cottage. “You can defend yourself and others when you master defense, not before.”

Through her conflict of emotions, her curiosity outclassed her. “When can I learn more of Judas?”

“Master the task before you and worry not about Judas,” he said, without looking back. Then, he stopped and added, “And when you find yourself.” He left her sitting, facing away from him and his house. “Do not come in until you have done both.”

She turned from her perfect sitting posture to look back at him. “Where am I supposed to eat and sleep?”

“Not my problem,” his answer came, along with the sharp and resounding crack as the door slammed shut behind him.

Put the ring on! Leave! How many times must you be shunned and pushed aside before you act?

She nearly rose to do as the voice bid, but at the last instant, she resisted.

Not yet, she told herself.

But soon.