PERFECT WORLD

The aurora ended. Kalen’s leaking pathways finally solidified. And to his own surprise, he returned home just as he had promised Lander he would.

Then, there was time—just a small, precious bit of it—to decide what he would say to his mother to persuade her to see him off.

Because it was Shelba who had to be convinced first and foremost. The other adults in the house would follow her lead.

And Kalen would have to do it himself because when he’d asked Caris to speak to Shelba first, she’d said no.

“You plan to travel the world, yet you’re afraid to tell your own mother so? I’ll give you my support, but I won’t lead the way for you. Where is your courage?”

Kalen groaned and flopped back onto his bedding to stare up at the rafters.

He hadn’t pursued courage as one of his guiding principles since he was seven. He much preferred to strive for cleverness or patience or occasionally even kindness…which were all fine virtues in his opinion and not nearly so difficult for him to succeed at.

My courage is very out of practice.

Around him, his books lay scattered. The ones that had been used to power his array had mostly survived, though they looked much the worse for the wear. Being stripped of their protective enchantments then blown off the rock into a rainstorm hadn’t been good for them.

And a tree had landed on Theoretical Advancements of the Fourth Age. The poor tome had been completely impaled by a limb, so Kalen hadn’t even bothered to retrieve it.

He’d been searching through the texts, telling himself he was looking for information about wind magic and chaotic pixies when really he was just delaying what would most likely be the most serious and difficult conversation of his life so far. Now, he squinted up at a cobweb, wishing good ideas and bravery would miraculously come to him.

They didn’t.

He sighed and rolled over. The binding of the nearest book caught his eye.

It was the healing magic text Lander had bought him. It didn’t even have a proper title, just the words “Volume the Twelfth - Sigerismo” written on the first page. Kalen had read it thoroughly, of course, but only once. He’d flipped through it a second time in a useless panic on the night his mother had given birth to Fanna.

The workings were all extremely advanced, and beyond that, it seemed like you needed to have a complete understanding of the human body before you could actually perform any of them.

Kalen was still unsettled by the notion that he was made of lots of invisible cells. He didn’t think it was a good idea to try casting spells on parts of people so tiny you couldn’t even see them.

I’ll probably never have a use for this book. I should really sell it.

The notion surprised him as it crossed his mind. He’d never wanted to sell a single one of his precious books before. Even more surprising was the sting of regret that came with the thought.

Kalen now knew for certain where his talents lay. He was sure he would still find a need for basic workings from other disciplines, but no more than that. If he pursued a practitioner’s life seriously, then a deep exploration of healing magic, or any other magic he wasn’t suited for, could only be viewed as an indulgence.

He didn’t think he had a lot of time to spare for those.

Oh, he thought in dismay as he stared at his scattered texts. There are so many things I’ll never be.

A week ago, he hadn’t known anything at all about where he was headed. But that lack of knowledge had been freeing in a way he’d been too naive to recognize. In his ignorance, he could imagine his future as a practitioner in a thousand ways.

Now, with his affinity for wind confirmed, his options had narrowed.

What do people do with wind magic anyway?

He hadn’t read anything about it at all. He didn’t have any spells. He couldn’t recall many stories or fables or songs about wind users.

Can I really just spend the rest of my life blowing things around?

Surely not. An entire category of magic couldn’t possibly be that limiting. Kalen assumed there had to be a world full of uses for wind magic, but after racking his brain for ages, he could only come up with a couple of reasonable ones.

He spent the rest of the afternoon pondering the matter, feeling guilty all the while that he was ignoring the real problem before him. But, in the end, it was just what he needed. Maybe due to his recent talks with Lander and Caris about growing up, Kalen’s attempts to come up with ways for a wind practitioner to be a useful member of society turned into a serious exploration of his own wants for his future.

I’ve been thinking so hard about the stupid Orellens and about running away and about time and secrets and…I don’t even know what I what I want to do with my own magic. What am I supposed to do with my life anyway?

He didn’t come up with the answer. It was impossible. There were too many unknowns weighing down on him like stones. But when he stripped those away and thought about who he was apart from them, he came up with an answer. One that felt serious and important and different from the childish whims and interests he’d pursued in the past.

And somehow that answer was just the one he’d needed from the start. Kalen didn’t know how his mother would react, but he finally knew what he wanted to say to her.

#

The next morning, he woke early and rushed through his chores. Though every day still saw more visitors than it had before Fanna was born, their home was no longer filled to the brim with helpful neighbors at all hours, and Kalen enjoyed the relative peace as he let the pigs out for their daily explorations and cleaned the barn.

Then, he walked with Salla and Illess to collect their portion of eggs from a large coop shared with three other families. The girls didn’t need his help with the job, but they were happy when he offered, which was what he’d been trying for anyway.

Afterward, he washed up and ate breakfast with nearly the whole family, minus Uncle Holv, who’d left to see to a small problem with the Ayagull, and Veern, who’d slacked off on his own chores and disappeared in a misguided attempt to avoid a scolding.

The scoldings are always worse when you try to run away from them, Kalen thought. Veern always had been a little slow to catch on to things.

He watched his mother all through the meal. She smiled and laughed easily. It was good to see her up and about, but although she was no longer confined to bed for most of the day, she was still tired and sore.

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Instead of helping with the heavier work, she spent the rest of the morning shelling vinebeans into a bowl in front of the cold hearth. Fanna, wriggly and fussy, was tucked into a cushioned basket beside her. Kalen joined them, sitting on the floor by the basket. His fingers were soon sticky with the clear sap the bean pods oozed as he broke them open.

They talked about simple things. And Fanna.

Other family members were coming and going through the cabin’s great room too often for there to be any privacy.

But when the beans were finished, Shelba headed upstairs with Fanna to nap. Kalen followed them.

“Are you sneaking up to steal your sister again while I sleep?” Shelba asked, a smile in her voice as she paused halfway up the narrow staircase to catch her breath.

“She’s hard to resist,” Kalen said, noticing her pale face. “Do you…are you really feeling all right, Mama?”

“I’m just tired still. Don’t worry about me.”

He hesitated, then asked, “When you’re done with your nap, can I talk to you about something?”

“Have you finished all your work in the barn?”

“Yes.”

“Then come up and talk to me now.”

“Oh.” Kalen bit his lip and examined her in the dim light. Her braid, usually so neat, was half undone. She held a hand against the wall for support. “It’s not urgent. I can wait until you’re not tired and busy with Fanna.”

Shelba snorted. “If you intend to wait until a new mother is not tired and not busy, then you are going to wait a few years at least. Come up. You haven’t read our storybook to me since you came home from your latest adventure in the woods.”

“I’m pretty sure the priests of Veila wouldn’t like it if we called their holy text a storybook.”

“Veila seems like the kind of god who wouldn’t mind.”

True enough, thought Kalen. His heart was pounding in his ears. He had a feeling they wouldn’t get around to any Veila stories today.

When they reached his parents’ room, Kalen hovered awkwardly by the door while his mother hummed to his little sister. He knew he looked nervous and probably guilty, but he could hardly help it. He felt so anxious it was a wonder he hadn’t gone mad from it and fled into the woods to found a hermitage after all.

“I want to talk to you about the future,” he croaked out.

The single, rehearsed line cost him as much effort as any cantrip.

Shelba smiled over her shoulder at him. “The whole future all at once?” she teased.

Kalen returned her smile with an awkward one of his own. “Actually, yes. Or a lot of it anyway. I want you to let me—”

No, not that. That wasn’t the way he’d written it down last night when he was finalizing his thoughts. He couldn’t get ahead of himself. Or get the words wrong. This was more delicate than any spell.

“I need you to help me with my plans for my future. As a practitioner.”

Shelba turned around to face him. Fanna was held gently to her chest. Her expression was suddenly unreadable. “That’s a talk for later, don’t you think?”

That was a quick change of mind. She just said we should talk right now. And Kalen didn’t know how much later she meant. Maybe she only meant that they should wait until this evening so his father would be around.

Or maybe she meant to put it off for a couple of years.

“I don’t think we should wait, after all,” he said. “Some things…everything has changed recently, and I’ve been thinking about a lot. There are some things I’d like to do with my magic. And I won’t be able to do any of them on my own.”

“All right,” said Shelba.

“All right?” Kalen asked, surprised.

She nodded once. “Tell me what it is you want to do.”

Kalen told her the truth.

Not the truth about the Orellens or the truth about what his life would probably be like because of that. But the truth about what he thought he wanted for himself. He told her about the future he had imagined for himself yesterday, the one that he might have if the world aligned to suit him perfectly and no danger ever found him.

“I’d like to be a mage one day,” said Kalen, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Not a mighty Magus who could rule the world. Not even a great sorcerer like Arlade. Just a mid-level mage. That’s much better than average for a practitioner, but it’s not really special. Only it is. It would be very special to be a mage here, on Hemarland, in our village.”

He stared down at his clasped hands.

“I cast a spell a few days ago, one that helped me figure out what kind of a wizarn I’ll be. I’ll…tell you more about that later. It was a little too successful. But I’m good with wind magic. Isn’t that interesting? I really…maybe I suspected it, but I didn’t expect it. If that makes sense. And it’s a nice power, I think. Because with it, I’d be able to do so much to help sailors like Uncle Holv and Lander.”

It was one of the few useful things he could imagine doing with wind magic. And it was a uniquely valuable talent on Hemarland, too.

“With a good education as a wind mage, I could make sea journeys faster and safer. During the shipping season, I could travel with the Ayagull. We would always have fair winds. On the continent, I’d trade for new books and magical supplies. Then, during the off season, I would stay here in the village, and I would…I think I could learn to brew decent potions. Like Arlade does.”

His disappointment at the knowledge that he would probably never learn the advanced spells in his healing magic book had been a clue for Kalen that such skills were something he valued after all. Potions like the ones Arlade dispensed would be even better, on Hemarland, since he wouldn’t have to hope for convenient auroras in order to help people.

“When you were having Fanna, I was so afraid…I kept thinking about what would happen if you died in childbirth. Or she did? And here I was with all this magic but no clue how to use it to make things safer for you. I’d really like it if I didn’t have to feel that way ever again. And I think everyone would appreciate my magic more if I was our village’s healer.”

The only real doctor on the whole island was in Baitown. And people called him Mr. Bonecracker, which didn’t inspire much confidence in Kalen’s opinion.

He looked up at his mother. Fanna was pressed to her chest, and she was watching him closely, scarcely moving except for one of her hands, which was gently stroking the baby’s back.

“That’s what I want to do in the future. It can take a magician a really long time to become a mage, but Nanu and Zevnie and…Sorcerer Arlade say I have a lot of potential. She offered me an apprenticeship if I could complete that spell I just mentioned, and now that I have, I think you should know about it.”

Kalen hated to lie at this moment, when he was trying so hard to be honest about important things. But maybe, if she’d known what he really was and what he could do, the sorcerer would have set him such a task and made such an offer to him. He hoped it was only half a lie.

“I don’t think it will take me a long time to reach mage. If I work hard and I have training. Real, proper training. The kind you can only get with another practitioner for a teacher. If I had a master, I think maybe I could do it in…”

Kalen hesitated. He only had a brief conversation with Zevnie and a few lines from his books for reference when it came to progression timelines for practitioners. They varied widely. Education was important. Most people trained from a much younger age than him. Talent mattered.

Kalen was hanging onto that last bit.

Talent mattered. Nanu thought he had talent. Zevnie thought he had talent.

It has to count for something.

“I hope maybe I could do it in five years,” he said.

That was fast. Absurdly fast.

Born-a-prodigy-in-a-wealthy-family fast.

But he had set it as a goal for himself, and it sounded so nice that he decided not to budge from it until time proved him wrong.

“If I could meet up with Sorcerer Arlade soon, before the next tournament even starts, I could begin training right away. If we send a letter ahead to Zevnie’s clan on Makeeran, they’ll forward it to her for me. She said she had ways of exchanging messages quickly with her family. Arlade might not be willing to come all the way back to Hemarland to get me, but she would pick me up on the continent and take me with her on her travels from there.”

It was only a possibility, but it wasn’t a distant one, in Kalen’s estimation. The logistics of it were a little flimsy, but surely if a letter could reach Arlade, she could find her way to Kalen in short order. Any city that still had portals would do. There had to be some. The Orellens wouldn’t be hunted there, and Arlade liked to travel by that method.

Kalen could just wait to be picked up.

“She won’t charge anything for teaching me. That’s not how the apprenticeship works. I’ll be her apprentice for at least a year, and if I perform well, she’ll teach me for longer. Maybe even until the beginning of the tournament. There, I’ll try to find a master who knows something about wind magic. I’ll take a contract with them, and I’ll finish my education. If all goes as planned, I’ll be home in six or so years. And I’ll be a well-trained mage who can make a better life for myself and everyone else here in the village.”

By then, he would know for sure how dangerous it was to be an Orellen. And he would have time to find out if anyone was looking for him, specifically. In a perfect world, they wouldn’t be. In a perfect world, he would come back home powerful enough to protect himself and his family. Fanna would still be young enough that he could be a good older brother to her.

Kalen was clenching his hands together so tightly that it was almost painful. He forced himself to relax them and meet his mother’s eyes.

“That’s exactly what I want to do,” he said. “That’s the future I want to work toward.”

For several heartbeats, Shelba said nothing. And then Kalen found himself grabbed around the head in an awkward, tight side armed hug. One of Fanna’s tiny bare feet almost smacked him in the nose.

His mother didn’t say yes.

But she held him for so long that he knew her answer anyway. He clutched at her and pressed his face into the soft wool of her dress.

This is what I wanted. It’s what I need to do, he thought. It’s the right thing for everyone. Why does it hurt so much?