“Alright,” Lydia said, reviewing her notes. She’d been taking them on paper, with a pen, which was a weird thing to see an adult do in Refujeyo. Alania always had a lot of paper lying around and some of the students like Max preferred to take written notes from books, but the last time I’d seen an adult in refujeyo actually write down anything other than runes would be… what, Casey? My lawyer? Mostly they used tablets. Lydia had been given one for the duration of her stay at Refujeyo (the tunnels were kind of difficult to navigate without one), but she looked kind of disgusted every time she had to actually touch it.
So for the past hour, she’d been taking physical notes in a spiral notebook with a ballpoint pen, like we were sitting in a cafe in a nemaganti town or something, while Kylie explained everything she knew about how her spell operated in exhaustive detail and I sat quietly and regretted my decision to come. I was bored, Lydia wasn’t rude but made no attempt to hide that she didn’t want me there, and I already knew (or at least suspected) most of what Kylie described from previous prophecies.
“Alright,” Lydia said again. She frowned. “So the Destiny is only prophesying potentially fatal danger, that’s going to happen very soon in the future, to members of your family?”
“And friends,” Kylie said. “People who are like family, you know? It prophesies for Kayden and Max, and a few unrelated people at home.”
“People not of your bloodline? How…? Okay. Right. But people you live with, yes? In your town, or your dorm here?”
“Uh… I never really thought about that. Maybe… no. No; it’s worked for people who live pretty far away. Not often, but I think that’s just because I tend to live close to the people I’m close to.”
“Hmm.” Lydia tapped her pen on her notebook. “That’s very strange.”
“Is it?” I asked. “I mean, that’s what the spell’s for, right? Looking after its mage’s community?”
“Well, yes, but more specifically, it’s for looking after Fionnrath. It usually prophesies for the town and its people, and can provide some limited help to visitors, if they’re worthy. The idea that it’s tied specifically to people its mage happens to like is… new.”
“Is it?” I asked again. “Until now, it’s been in people who don’t leave Fionnrath, right? They spend their lives in a small town, being raised to protect it. The people they’re close to and the people of Fionnrath are going to be one and the same. Maybe it’s always been like this.”
“Hm.” Lydia didn’t look too happy about that possibility. I was probably speaking sacrilege or something. “It’s probably a function of the spell’s very limited capabilities outside of its locus. It should be far more flexible than this. If we could practice at home – ”
“No,” Kylie and I said together.
Lydia huffed in exasperation. “Then I suppose we’ll be making extremely slow progress until you are free from your obligations here, Kylie,” she said, her voice edged with irritation. “After all, why not endanger the fate of an entire town for a few more years?” She frowned back down at her notes. “I knew to expect far less of the Destiny when it’s outside its locus, but I didn’t think it would be this limited. Only fatality and serious misfortune, and only in English? And it only speaks in rhyme?”
“Yes,” Kylie said.
“Mostly,” I said. “It’s spoken without the rhyme a couple of times.”
Lydia and Kylie both stared at me.
“What?” Kylie asked, in the sort of dangerous ‘why am I only hearing about this now?’ tone I was used to hearing from my mother after I’d been caught doing something stupid.
“You’ve heard it,” I told her. “Haven’t you? We recorded it the first time, I’m sure.”
“Kayden, what are you talking about?”
“When we…” I glanced at Lydia, considered the wisdom of mentioning going to Duniyasar in front of her, and decided against it. “When the Destiny first prophesied about the hero who dreamed a thousand dreams? Before that, you were channelling the spell, and I asked where we were, and you – it – said, ‘we’re not here yet’. Which wasn’t helpful, but definitely didn’t rhyme with anything.”
“Huh. Are you sure you recorded that part. I’m certain I would’ve remembered hearing that recording.”
“So it has spoken without rhyming once?” Lydia asked.
“Twice,” I said. “At the end of last semester, right before the Destiny nearly killed you and we had to…” I gestured at the familiarity mark on my arm, “it said to me, um… something about a crumbling spine and running out of time. I tried to memorise it at the time but a lot happened pretty fast right after that, so…”
“But it didn’t rhyme,” Kylie said.
I shook my head.
“Hold on,” Lydia broke in. “Did you say you completed the familiarity rite to stop the spell from killing Kylie?”
“Um, yeah. Why’d you think we did it? For kicks?”
Lydia looked away awkwardly. “I have seen teenagers do many silly things for silly reasons.”
“Yeah, well. We had good reasons.”
“Well. Good.” Lydia cleared her throat and glanced at me with considerably less annoyance than she’d been treating me with so far. “At any rate, I suppose we will have to find an abundance of magic for advanced training. Fionnrath would be ideal, but I’ll see if I can find a potioncrafter who can come up with a more portable substitute. For now, Kylie, let’s start with the basics. Perhaps I can teach you to channel the spell at will, and that might – ”
“Oh, I can do that. It just won’t predict anything unless there’s danger. It stays quiet.”
Stolen story; please report.
“Really? Could you show me?”
Kylie pulled out a little compact mirror and let her gaze settle on the reflective surface. It was a cheap one, the kind you could pick up in miscellaneous discount stores, and I wondered if she missed the elaborate silver mirror broken and abandoned in the spell storage tunnels beneath the school. She’d had a lot of practice at channelling down there, and I wasn’t surprised to see her slip immediately into the fugue state without difficulty.
It was the first time I’d seen her channel since making the prophecy that had nearly killed us both, and I was sort of curious as to what it would feel like for me. It felt like… nothing. I thought maybe I could feel the magic tingle as it flowed through me, fully waking up to fulfil its purpose, btu the sensation was so slight that I could very well have been imagining it. Kind of a let down, really.
I glanced at Lydia. She was gazing at Kylie with an expression akin to someone seeing their newborn for the first time. Kylie channelling a prophecy that wasn’t prophesying anything wasn’t all that interesting to watch, in my opinion, but I supposed it was different if you were technically witnessing the long-lost legendary protection magic of your people in action once again. She learned forward, reverently, and whispered, “Destiny?”
The spell, predictably, didn’t respond.
Then Lydia snatched up her pen and jabbed it straight at Kylie’s right eye.
I’d like to say I leapt to Kylie’s defense, but in reality, it was over before I had even registered what she was doing. Kylie didn’t move, didn’t even flinch, as the tip of the pen froze a centimetre from her eyeball, grazing her lashes.
Then Lydia put the pen down and sat back, looking disappointed.
Then I caught up on what was happening and leapt to Kylie’s defense, darting forward to grab Lydia’s wrists.
“Leave her alone!” I snapped. “What the fuck? What the fuck was that?”
“I wanted to see if I could get it to prophesy by creating the illusion of danger,” Lydia said, matter-of-fact. She made no attempt to pull away from me, which made it feel kind of stupid to keep restraining her, so I let her go.
“You could have blinded her!”
“If there was any chance I was clumsy enough to hurt her, I wouldn’t have done it,” she explained. “She wasn’t in any actual danger. Which is probably why it didn’t work.”
“She was! You can’t just go around stabbing at people’s eyes and just expecting that there’s no chance you’ll slip up!”
“I don’t think you understand how important it is that Kylie learns to control this spell. Thousands of people are relying on her competence. She’s relying on her own competence – if she were properly trained, the spell wouldn’t have nearly killed her. Even if I could have hurt her eye, and I guarantee that wasn’t a danger, I’m not that clumsy, a temporary injury is a small price to – ”
“Temporary??”
“Your little magic school here houses the kuracar, does it not? I’m sure the most powerful magical healer in the world could – ”
“Powerful! Not infallible! Have you ever met Malas Aksoy? Have you seen that he doesn’t have any fucking eyes? They’re made of his magic constructs! If he could magically heal eyeballs, I’m sure he would have done so with his own! And even if he could, you can’t just go around injuring people like ‘oh, they can heal, so it’s fine!’”
“She was not in any danger,” Lydia insisted calmly. “Trust me, Kayden. I have been doing this since before you were alive.”
“Yeah, and only before I was alive, because for the past fifteen years you’ve lost track of the damn spell,” I spat, which was admittedly a low blow but not as low as threatening to stab a girl in the eye while she was helpless.
But Lydia was perfectly calm when she said, “Yes. We did. And that is why you can trust that I would not recklessly endanger our prophet, now that we’ve found her. But I do need to hear a prophecy before I can construct any long-term training plan.”
“We have recordings of prophecies. You know that. We were talking about it five minutes ago.”
“I need to see what’s happening.”
“Well. With the way things always seem to be going around here, I’m sure you won’t have to wait long. Frankly I’m surprised nobody’s almost died yet this semester.”
“The semester didn’t start all that long ago.”
“When we were initiates, she predicted my death on the very first day.”
“Ah.”
Kylie moved. She blinked a few times, and looked up. “Did I miss anything?”
“No,” Lydia said. “Okay, so you can channel, and the spell won’t prophesy. Interesting.”
“She already told you that,” I mumbled, and was of course ignored. The two started talking about training strategies and, despite my best efforts, I found myself quickly tuning out. But I didn’t have to wait long before Lydia was bidding us goodbye, and Kylie and I started the journey towards the cafeteria for a late and well deserved lunch.
Knowing what we knew now, even walking the halls of the school felt sinister. I couldn’t help but muse about what runes I might be leading the spell in my heart through, about what those runes might do. About the tiny, cumulative effect of the day-to-day motion of living my life, whose ends and purposes I did not know.
“Are you alright?” Kylie asked.
“Huh? Yeah.” How to explain without freaking her out? “Lydia, um. When you were out. She tried to stab you in the eye.”
“She what?!”
Upon reflection, that was a very bad way to explain without freaking her out. “Not for real! I mean, she, she stabbed at you, with a pencil, and stopped. She was trying to make you prophesy the danger, but didn’t want to actually hurt you.”
“If the danger’s not real, I won’t – ”
“That’s not the point! She could’ve slipped and hurt you, and you were completely out of it and couldn’t defend yourself! You can’t just do that to a helpless person without asking them!”
“Yeah, that’s…” Kylie rubbed at her eyes. “That’s not great behaviour. From a teacher.”
“Or from anyone.” I bit my lip. “I’m sorry.”
She shot me a puzzled look. “What?”
“I couldn’t do anything. I was only there so you wouldn’t be alone, and when that mattered, I… wouldn’t have been able to stop her. If she’d actually hurt you.”
“It’s fine,” Kylie said.
“It’s not fine! She put you in danger!”
“No, she didn’t. If I was in danger, the Destiny would’ve prophesied it. That doesn’t make it okay, though.”
“Damn straight it doesn’t! It’s not ‘fine’!”
“I didn’t mean that was fine, I meant you were.”
I blinked. “What?”
“I don’t know if it’s a friend thing or a familiar thing or a macho boy thing, but ever since the holidays you’ve been… you know it’s not your job to protect me, right?”
“I… didn’t think it was?”
“Are you sure? Because you’ve been acting… I mean, you can relax, you know.”
“Relax? With everyone freaking out about this familiarity thing, and your existence apparently being an international political time bomb, and we’re still walking around inside this – ” I lowered my voice to a whisper – “this giant spell prison we’re trapped in, but that’s fine I guess, it’s just life now, and we haven’t even talked talked about the prophecy that almost killed you, and I’m not even sure what to talk about there because I have no idea what any part of it means, and now your new mentor almost stabbed you in the eye and I couldn’t stop it, so no, I don’t think any of us can relax.”
“Hmm. Yeah. All those things you mentioned are true. Can we do anything about them right now?”
“No; that’s what’s so stressful!”
“It’s also why there’s no harm in going to the cafeteria, eating something really unhealthy, and chilling out. Come on.”
I shut up ad followed her. It probably was best for her to stay relaxed and focus on controlling such a powerful spell. But me? I couldn’t. I felt like we were on limited time to do… something. Running down a clock, somewhere.
And I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to be doing.