Instruktanto Miratova dropped several small, shiny stones into her mortar and began to grind them to dust. “The key to understanding a prophecy,” she said, “is understanding that human beings are not real.”
Kylie, sitting cross-legged on the classroom floor, looked up from her bronze bowl of water and frowned. “What?”
“Human beings are not real. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that human beings are not real in the same way that humans are real. And humans are not real in the same way that humanity is real. And, of course, none of these things are real in the same way that life is real, and reality is the least real thing of all.” She glanced at our faces, and sighed. “Let’s start simply. We can all agree, yes, that the bowl in your hands – if you could be said to have hands, which in one sense you don’t – is not real, yes?”
Kylie looked at the bowl, and then back to Miratova. “It looks pretty real to me.”
“You are surrounded by things that look real, but none of them are real; or at least, many of them are real in very different ways from each other. That bowl is an arrangement of atoms, and the sense in which it is a single obect that can be called a ‘bowl’ is arbitrary. ‘Bowl’ is a human concept that we impose upon objects that have particular shapes and characteristics – most notably, the ability to contain liquids – because it is convenient for us to imagine them as a category. There is nothing outside our minds that makes a bowl a thing that exists. It is an arbitrary piece of a larger web of interacting atoms that also do not, in any impartial sense, exist; the ‘atom’ is merely a collection of subatomic particles that behave in a way that it’s convenient for us to pretend are a unit, but ‘atom’ is a concept we’ve imposed on that organisation. We divide the world into atoms because it’s the simplest and most convenient way for use to model and categorise the organisation of subatomic particles, which are also an arbitrary categorisation, being made of quarks which are, themselves, arbitrary. One could argue that the only things that exist are… vibrating strings of nothing, I think? I’m not a physicist. The point is, everything above that is a model, layers of abstraction conceived and curated and prioritised by us based on what we find most useful. It is all imaginary.”
“I don’t think that’s right,” I said. I didn’t know much science, but I had half-listened to a lot of Max’s enthusiastic rambling. “About the strings, I mean. Don’t the models go the other way?”
“The other way?”
“Yeah. Like… atoms and quarks and strings and all that, they’re models that we use to explain bigger stuff. I mean, something’s there, with those properties, but it doesn’t look like the models because it doesn’t look like anything; that’s just how we conceive it. Like how quantum physicists talk about many worlds and probability waves and stuff, but they’re not implying there actually is more than one world, or that ‘probability’ is a thing that exists; it’s how the maths works out.” I was pretty sure on the quantum physics point, at least; I’d once started a sentence with “Do you think that in another timeline – ?” and hadn’t been able to get away from Max for forty five minutes.
“Interesting. So would you say that the bowl exists?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, we decide to call it a bowl, but it’s right there. The atoms it’s made of all together make that shape, and we call it a bowl.”
“So the atoms do exist?”
“Yeah. Don’t they?”
“But you said the vibrating strings they’re supposedly made of do not?”
“I… don’t think I know enough about physics for this.”
“Me neither.” Instruktanto Miratova walked around Kylie, sprinkling crushed stone powder in a large circle around her. “Kayden, set up and light those candles outside the powder ring, would you? I need to move the mirrors into place. If we don’t know enough physics to go small, let’s go large. Is money real?”
“Uh… sure. Isn’t it?”
“What about justice? Is justice real?”
“Not really. Justice is an ideal, right? It’s not supposed to be real, it’s just something we all agree to strive for. An idea of how things should work – you do this, you deserve that.”
“So is money. Money is an idea, an abstraction of value that we all agree to treat as that value. It’s not a real thing, it’s a shared delusion.”
I finished setting up the circle of candles and started lighting them. “Pretty sure it’s real,” I said. “I still have some Australian coins in my room.”
“Coins are real, yes; but money is an abstract notion attached to coins, and bits of paper, and cowrie shells, and cups of grain, and data stored in a computer somewhere. It’s a notion that’s treated as real by those who agree to pretend, and ignored by people who don’t.”
“Money’s not ignored by people who don’t agree that it’s money,” I said. “They still use it as money, right? You’re here saying money isn’t real, but I bet you buy things, so you use it as a real thing, and you can do that because everyone agrees it’s a real thing and will accept it from you. So it’s real.”
“You could say the same thing about justice, and the systems of law we build around it.”
I shrugged. “Okay, maybe they’re both real then.”
“Even though they only exist in your mind? If humans stopped believing in money, it would no longer exist.”
“And if I melted down that bowl of water Kylie’s got it wouldn’t exist either, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist now. Everything that exists is impermanent.”
“Interesting. What do you think, Kylie? Who’s right?”
“Both of you,” Kylie said impatiently. “You just keep changing what you mean by ‘real’ and ‘exist’ every couple of sentences. Neither of you are sticking to one definition so you’re not disagreeing on anything, you’re just having the messiest and most pointless semantic discussion ever.”
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Miratova grinned brightly from behind the large mirror she was moving into place. “And being able to jump straight to that is why you are a prophet, and Kayden and I are not. Prophecies gravitate to minds that have an instinctive grasp of them.” She carefully adjusted the mirror so that it was directly facing Kylie. She’d set one up behind her, too, outside the circle of candles, so that the two were reflecting each other infinitely, with Kylie between them.
“We are mental models, living inside mental models. Everything we perceive, experience, and analyse is an abstraction – and there are many, many levels of these abstractions. A prophecy is a sense organ, like an eye or a tongue, but while most sense receptors receive information from the physical world and translate it to impulses for our model worlds, a prophecy receives information from a different level of reality; which one and what information is, of course, dependent on the prophecy. The limitations of a prophecy are rarely about the spell’s power or level of refinement; they’re usually about communication. Prophecies don’t speak in nerve impulses that their mages trained as infants to understand. The trick is getting intelligible information out of the deluge that a human mind can’t comprehend. Different prophecies communicate differently, of course.”
“Like in bad rhyme in a weird accent?” Kylie asked.
“In fact, we can make a lot of inferences about your prophecy by its method of communication. We know, for example, that it spent a lot of formative time in Scotland; if you’re interested in pinpointing a more specific time or location, we can consult a linguist. We also know that it’s community-minded. It communicates using language, a very influential human social tool, and functions in a way where it doesn’t communicate with you at all; somebody else must be present to hear it. This is very unusual; it suggests that it is used to working for a group. And, of course, its grasp of grammar and use of archetypical descriptors for agents in its prophecies shows a great degree of sophistication and a decent fabrication of cultural understanding. It is a very impressive spell.”
“It’s mostly a bother.”
“Ha. Hopefully, we can change that. Prophets attempting to cast effectively must keep in mind the layered nature of reality as humans experience it, and that they do not experience the same reality as their spells. Tools that help one get in this frame of mind – reflective surfaces, smoke and flames, psychoactive drugs – can help a lot in casting, and because spells adapt to how they’re used, they frequently become triggers for prophecies.”
“So that’s why I’m sitting here with this water and candles and mirrors?” Kylie asked.
“Yes.”
“And the psychoactive drugs?” I asked.
Miratova shook her head. “I’ve been specifically banned from giving students any more psychoactive drugs. There was an incident involving some very overprotective and very vocal parents. Some people just have no investigative spirit. Kylie, I’d like you to try casting, please.”
“I can’t,” she said. “It prophesies when it wants. I have no control over it.”
“We probably won’t get a prophecy unless someone is in danger, but if you can go into the receptive state without prophesying, that would be very helpful in learning to better control the spell.”
“She can,” I said. “Well, not on purpose. But sometimes she’ll get false alarms where she zones out but the Eye doesn’t say anything.”
“Great! Let’s see if we can learn to do it on purpose. Relax, and open yourself up to possibility. Your job is not to direct the situation; it is to bear witness. There is no point deciding what to look at until you have learned how to see.”
Kylie nodded. She looked up from her bowl of water, into the eyes of her reflection beyond the wall of candles. And she went very still.
“Kylie?” Miratova asked.
No response.
“Kylie. Are you here?”
Nothing.
“Huh.”
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“Oh, no. I just didn’t expect her to be able to cast so easily. It feels like setting up this many aides was kind of a waste of time.”
“Well, she has been doing this since she was a baby,” I pointed out. I shouldn’t feel annoyed that she could cast and I couldn’t. It made perfect sense.
I shouldn’t feel annoyed.
Miratova let her cast for a little while. Then she said, “Kayden, do you know how to wake her?”
I shrugged. “Normally we just have to wait for the spell to be done with her. Should I be worried?”
“Oh, no. The cast will end of its own accord fairly soon; continual casting is exhausting. I just don’t want her to wear herself out.”
I stepped into the circle and put a hand over her eyes, breaking her staring contest with her reflection. She flinched and brushed my hand away.
“Agh! My eyes.”
“You did just stare directly over a line of candles for like a minute. I bet prophets must go blind a lot, huh? You should take better care of yourself.”
“I once watched you literally run into a fire; you shouldn’t be giving anyone advice on self care.”
“This is probably enough for today,” Miratova said. “You’re unusually good at casting under these conditions. In the future, we’ll practice under harder conditions, but first it might be prudent to teach you how to stop casting.”
Back in our dorm, a box of mail was waiting for me. I opened it, but there were no letters from home; just a single red rose. I went to pick it up, immediately stabbed my finger on a thorn, and dropped it.
“What is this?” I asked, picking it up. “Some kind of threat?”
“Someone sends you a rose and you think it’s a threat?” Kylie asked.
“Well, it’s clearly a weapon.” Sucking my injured thumb, I inspected it. There was no message; just an attached paper tag with a complicated sunburst design on it.
“No, you’re just clumsy.”
Max came over and inspected the tag. “Well, that’s the Cottingly family sigil, so I doubt it’s a threat unless your date went really badly.”
“Why would Magistus send me a rose?”
“Isn’t that… what boyfriends do?”
“Sure, in movies and stuff. In real life it’s kind of overdramatic and weird to just… oh, it’s Magistus, I answered my own question. Fuck, now I have to do something more over-the-top. I wonder how public a gesture I can get away with?”
“You two are weird,” Kylie said. “What you have is weird.”
So the Madja family had a flower, and the Cottingly family had a starburst… “Max,” I asked, “do you have a family sigil?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s a clover that’s kind of… you know, it’s difficult to explain. Gimme a sec.” He went to his desk and pulled a stack of letters out of the top drawer. He pulled the letter out of the envelope on the top of the stack, then tossed me the envelope. “It looks like that.”
I looked at the envelope. Beneath Octavia Acanthos’ return address was a wax seal, unbroken. (Magistus had opened the letter with a letter opener.) It was imprinted with the design of a three-leaf clover inside a triangle. It looked like the design could be drawn without lifting the pen, all in one continuous line. There were no sharp bits or corners; at corners, the line looped, giving the whole thing a Celtic knot sort of vibe.
“Huh,” I said. “Neat.”
“It looks simple, but it was a pain to learn to draw,” Max said, returning the envelope to the stack. “I always used to get the stem length a little off.”
“How often would you need to draw it?” I asked. “It’s supposed to be stamped, right?”
“That was always my point! Anyway, I was just glad it wasn’t as complicated as the Cottingly one.” He put the letters away, and something struck me.
The letter had been from Octavia Acanthos.
The person that Simon had said had a lot of forger friends. The person whom, if Max was framing Simon, he would have had to contact for help during the week I gave him to ‘contact some people’. If Max was framing Simon, the evidence was probably in that stack of letters.
I needed to get a look at those letters.