Life returned to semi-normality after what happened in the metrology lab. If any of the metrology students thought anything strange about her, she didn’t have a clue. She’d never go back to the metrology lab again. Classes continued, with their scattering of homework and essays, and life at Grave street became comfortably regular. Leopold was patient—more patient than she had any right to expect—and he waited as she slowly emerged from the stupor of what happened in the lab.

Carl had wanted to see her the next day in his office, and she arrived there to find Annabelle waiting with the accordioned table as well. He told her that he thought it was time to grant her access to her left hand, and she didn’t complain as Annabelle guided her face-down onto the fold-out bed. She slept through the operation and when she awoke her left hand was twitching and seizing just like her right hand weeks ago.

It was easier this time bringing her psychokinetic spells under control. Was it because she’d been practicing with her hand already, or was something different about her? It was almost as if she had more control over her psychokinesis, and she found it nearly trivial to remove their influence from her arms above the wrists—unfortunately resulting in her arms flopping about uselessly.

Leopold took her out into the city again and again. They went to a glass-enclosed garden where plants from all over the world thrived. She’d never seen so many colors or smelled so many strange smells. Slowly she came back to herself and felt the cotton padding between her and the rest of reality fall away. Sensations became sharper, feelings stronger. Her feelings for Leopold were strongest of all.

They went to Geoff’s shop with a small wooden box tucked under her arm, and he closed up and took them into the back room—but not before Willow spied one of her wan magelights on a shelf in the display room. In the back Willow opened the box and revealed five brilliant solid magelights which Geoff took out to inspect one by one. Leopold bartered with the shopkeeper—never Willow’s strong suit despite her father’s attempted instruction—and managed to procure a silver apiece. They ate out that night to celebrate, and Willow took him into her bed again for the first time since that day in metrology.

Things were going well—better than well—when Willow arrived at Carl’s office for their scheduled training to show him the single magelight she’d saved from Geoff. To show him how much better she’d gotten at throttling her essential power without the glove.

She knew something was wrong the moment she opened the door. Carl was hunched over his desk, head in his hands, staring blankly at a stack of papers. He was muttering to himself, and his eyes looked sunken and dark.

“Professor,” Willow asked, and he jumped at her voice.

“Willow! Oh, Willow,” he sighed in relief and attempted a smile which resembled nothing so much as a grimace. “Please come in.”

He took a paper from the top of the stack and slid it into a drawer as she walked in.

“What’s wrong,” she asked, beginning to weave the privacy spell. It was technically an advanced form from the end of the second year, but Carl had used it for their simultaneous-layering practice. She finished the triple-layer spell in a single movement and it spread out across the walls like a ripple of water.

“Ah, nothing. Nothing,” he said unconvincingly. He shifted some papers around on his desk, then shuffled them back to where they were before. Willow sat in the uncomfortable wooden chair between his desk and the door.

“Did I ever, ah, tell you what Steph and Daniel found? In their botched experiment with you?”

“No. I just assumed they weren’t able to get any results.”

“Nothing stable, but they got a range. Or an estimate. Some inkling anyway, before things went wrong.”

“How did you find out,” Willow asked. “Where are they now?”

“They’re with a colleague,” Carl said nervously. “A colleague.”

“And…,” Willow prompted. “What did they find?”

“What,” Carl asked, his eyes a million miles away.

“Steph and Daniel. Their experiment?”

“Oh, yes. Well, after filling you up to the brim they were able to siphon off somewhere around five hundred em. Somewhere in that range.”

“Five…,” Willow breathed, her mouth lolling open. It wasn’t possible, was it?

“Yes, five hundred,” he gave a nervous laugh. “Five hundred. What a catch.”

“What do you mean,” Willow asked.

“You’ve got more essence in your body than all the mages in the Arcanum combined,” Carl said. “The stakes are so much higher,” he muttered to himself.

“What stakes,” Willow said. “I’ve learned how to control it, at least mostly. I made this all by myself.” She opened the box and handed over the solid magelight. Carl took it but barely seemed to notice.

“I didn’t use the glove. That’s how good I’ve gotten.”

He turned it in his fingers, then handed it back across the desk. The shadows in the room moved strangely as Willow took the small sphere and replaced it in the box.

“We’re going to change tack,” Carl said. “You’ve got to start training to release this power safely. To shove as much essence into a spell as you can without killing yourself and everyone around you. We’re already so far behind.”

“Wait, I thought the most important thing was to learn how to control my essence. To turn it down to other people’s level.”

“And you’ve done so admirably,” Carl said, and shook his head a little. “That magelight, really exemplary. I wonder how long it’ll last—ah, but that’s not the point.”

Willow could’ve told him they lasted at least three weeks. Her original pale magelights still hovered among the rafters of her bedroom like a luminous cloud.

“The point is, we’ve got to start channeling this power. Learn how to release it in a savage attack.”

“But I don’t want to become a battle mage,” Willow said. She’d been considering going into construction magic—raising walls and supplies to assist in superior fortifications.

“We don’t always have the luxury of choosing if or when we’re forced to protect the ones we love.”

🜛

From that day on, her training regimen resembled what it had during those first two weeks at school. Carl somehow procured a device which resembled a tunnel of inscribed rings welded to each other. Each one contained a powerful nullification field, and all together the effect was slightly disorienting to be close to. He set it up in an abandoned workshop at the edge of the Arcanum, and Willow made the mistake of asking him why they were practicing there instead of in his office.

“Because,” he’d said as she got her breath back after casting a gust of directed wind into the device. “If this thing fails, or you overwhelm it, you’ll take out half the school if we’re in my office. Here, you’ll only blow the building down and kill us. It’s just the responsible thing to do.”

He had her practice with wind, with water, with fire. She shot beams of light into the dark tunnel of rings, and the luminous lance that was impossible to look at directly as it erupted from her fingertips diminished to nothingness just past the second ring.

For Carl, it wasn’t good enough.

“You’re not pumping the spells. Not enough essence is getting through.”

“Then heal my arms,” Willow huffed, covered in sweat. She was overcharging the spells as much as she could, but so much essence was still locked within her body behind those resistive psychokinetic spells. If only she could access that power.

“You’re not ready for it yet.”

“Ready how,” Willow said, and turned to him in a fury. “I’ve been busting my ass in here with you. I don’t even seize up anymore.”

“You can’t take it,” Carl said, and grabbed her arm. She winced.

“Look, look at this,” he shook her limb. “There’s almost nothing here. Nothing! Do you know how much pain you’ll be in when we reconnect these nerves. It’ll be excruciating.”

“You have to do it sometime,” Willow screamed at him. Something in her voice made him back away. “I’m nothing. Nothing! I need this power, or I’m useless. I’m just a cripple.”

Carl’s mouth opened in shock and he gaped for words. Willow turned away in embarrassment. Did she really mean that? Was that how she felt about herself, deep down?

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Willow, you’re not nothing,” Carl said. “I misspoke. You’re doing fine. Great even. Better than I could’ve hoped.”

“But you’re pushing me,” Willow said. “What’s going to happen? What are you so afraid of?”

Carl was silent, and when she looked back, he was shaking his head slightly.

“I don’t know,” Carl whispered. He reached out and touched the ring device.

“Let’s get back to work.”

🜛

It wasn’t hard to find Annabelle at the Sisters of Mercy. She had to be a surgeon there, or a nurse, and there were only so many of the white-robed figures fretting about from bed to bed changing bandages and delivering food. Willow found her in a subwing dedicated to burn victims.

The smell was almost overwhelming.

“Annabelle,” Willow said softly, and the white-robed woman turned around in surprise.

“Willow, was it,” she said, then continued on with a tray of food in her hands. Willow hobbled behind her, the clacking from her cane echoing off the stone walls.

“Yes,” Willow said, not for a moment buying that Annabelle didn’t remember her name. Not after what she’d done.

“I need you to fix my arms.”

Annabelle let out a bark of laughter, but never once broke stride as she pulled up beside the bed of a man covered nearly head to foot in white bandages. There was a smell, and in some places the bandages had been stained with a leaking yellow fluid. The man’s eyes were unwrapped, but he appeared to be asleep.

“This is Patrick,” Annabelle said as she sat in the chair beside his bed. There was no second chair, so Willow remained standing.

“Okay,” Willow said. “Did you hear what I—”

“Patrick here won’t last the week,” Annabelle said, and adjusted the bowl on the tray ever so slightly. The matter-of-factness of the statement caught Willow off guard.

“But why,” Willow asked. “Couldn’t you heal him?”

“Yes, I could,” Annabelle said. “In an hour I could have most of his skin regrown. He’d be going home to his wife in two days. He has a daughter, you know.”

“Then why don’t you,” Willow asked.

Annabelle plucked at her robe. “Do you know what this means,” she asked. Willow shook her head.

“It means I’m a glorified servant. I change bandages, I make notes for the doctors and surgeons. I take things here, I move them there. And I give comfort to the dying.”

“But you healed me,” Willow said. Annabelle sighed.

“Carl’s one of the few that knows of my… education,” she said. “You were lucky you knew Bryan when he brought you to the Arcanum. You’d have been laid up for at least a month waiting for your operation, even if you could’ve paid for it, if he hadn’t pulled about every string he could. Would your hands have even made it? Or would the bone have rotted away?”

“You can’t heal him because they won’t let you,” Willow said, realization slowly trickling in. “Because they won’t let you be a surgeon.”

“You’re not the only one who’s held back, Willow, by the way things are,” she said. “There are customs here, norms, in the cities. Things that can’t be bent, that can’t be broken. Only by working outside those systems, outside the law, can we begin to see who we truly are. What we could become, if not for all this.”

Annabelle gestured Willow closer, then grabbed her hand and pushed her sleeve up. Willow winced at the sudden exposure, but Annabelle’s fingers were gentle even as they played upon the stripes of bruise that Carl’s grip had left earlier that day.

“You’ll not know pain like this,” Annabelle whispered. “You think you’ve felt pain? You’ll be using muscles that have never moved unassisted. I can’t even imagine how it’ll feel. Laudanum won’t help, if you want to work through it.”

“I can handle it,” Willow said. Annabelle dropped the sleeve and picked up the spoon beside the bowl.

“Meet me in your little practice arena after sunset,” she said, and gently pressed a spoonful of broth to the bandaged man’s lips. Surprisingly, he responded and drank the thin liquid.

“I’ll be there,” Willow said, and took a step back, but Annabelle fixed her with a stare.

“When the time comes,” Annabelle said. “Don’t be like these… men. Don’t keep us out. Remember what you’re fighting against.”

“And what is that,” Willow asked, fascinated.

“Control,” Annabelle said, and turned back to her patient.

🜛

The pain hit like a wall before Willow came completely awake. Her eyes flung open and she took a shuddering breath to scream, but Annabelle shoved a rag in her mouth. Still, the piercing scream filled up her whole world, temporarily blotting out the cascade of torment.

Her arms writhed with seizures. They burned and twisted like someone was wrenching them out of their sockets. Like someone was breaking them in a vice. Muscles she’d never used before tensed at the conflicting signals from her psychokinesis and her newly connected brain. The excruciating pain was almost so much that she forgot where she was, why she was suffering.

Almost.

“Shh,” Annabelle hushed, and laid her hand on Willow’s forehead. Willow moaned in response, lost in a tempest of torture and suffering. A pain she’d never imagined coursed up and down her arms between her wrists and shoulders. Slicing, like she was being flayed. Burning, like she was in a bonfire. Freezing, as if she were encased in ice.

A wave of nausea rose up and Willow spit out the cloth. She gritted her teeth and willed herself not to vomit. She wanted to be strong, especially in front of Annabelle.

Willow moaned again, but Annabelle seemed to catch her intended question.

“The operation was a success,” Annabelle said. “Connection restored up to your shoulders on both arms. Your muscles are jumping, I’m not sure why though.”

“Carl said… it would happen,” Willow said, catching her breath. She focused on calming her muscles, of releasing the bones from her psychokinesis. Slowly, in her mind’s eye, her arms flickered between clear and opaque. It was going to take a lot of work.

“Can you make it home,” Annabelle asked. She took Willow by the shoulders and gently tilted her up until she was sitting on the accordioned table. It was hard for Willow to catch her breath, and her mouth kept filling with saliva, but she answered.

“I have someone… waiting for me,” she said, and spit on the ground. The nausea was only increasing, and she wanted to be out of here before she vomited.

“That boy,” Annabelle said, which snapped Willow out of her pain for a moment as she jerked around to look at her. Annabelle was staring into her eyes.

“You must keep him a secret from Carl,” Annabelle said. “You’ve already told him too much. If Carl finds out…”

“What,” Willow asked. She knew she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about what was happening to her, but she was fuzzy on the why of it.

“There are powerful interests that want to ensure word about you doesn’t get out until the proper time,” Annabelle said. “This boy is a hitch in that.”

“This colleague Carl was talking about,” Willow asked, and a look of surprise crossed Annabelle’s face for an instant before she nodded.

“Who is he?”

“He used to be a professor here,” Annabelle said. “A long time ago. He was pushed out—they thought his ideas were too… extreme. Too subversive.”

“What were they,” Willow asked.

“He’d read these old economic texts,” Annabelle said. “He was convinced that the only way the city could thrive would be if all the other cities were subservient to us. Some kind of central state. He pushed for reactivating the warbeast program, for taking a first strike at the others.”

“Wouldn’t the other cities just repel the attacks,” Willow said, trying to keep her mind off the pain. Her arms were writhing less now, as long as she kept them completely still. It was hard to concentrate on doing nothing at all.

“He had some ideas about that,” Annabelle said, and smiled as she shook her head.

“You’ve met him,” Willow asked. Annabelle nodded.

“A long time ago. Carl introduced us. He was Carl’s mentor, years ago. I doubt you could even find mention of him in the records anymore. It was like they scrubbed him from reality when he was told to leave.”

“But he’s out there. In another city?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Annabelle said. She leaned closer to Willow.

“He’s a dangerous man, if you get in his way. If you’re some kind of obstacle to him, he won’t think for a second to blast you apart. That goes for anything else that muddies his plans. Carl is a little like him, but not nearly as ruthless. If the order came down… I don’t know what Carl would do.”

“Order came down? To what?”

“To get rid of any witnesses,” Annabelle said solemnly.

“Oh come on,” Willow said, and only just barely stopped herself from laughing. “Carl wouldn’t… wouldn’t…”

“Don’t be so sure about Carl,” Annabelle said. “I’ve known him a lot longer than you, and even I’m not sure where his allegiances truly lie. He’s been forced to walk a tightrope for years, there’s no telling what the pressure might make him do. It’s a long way down for people like us, and the end is almost in sight.”

“What end? Is something going to happen?”

Annabelle sighed. “Maybe. Someday. But not yet, not unless I’m further out of the loop than I thought.”

Willow remembered Carl’s ashen face, his sunken eyes and the way he couldn’t keep track of their conversation, like something else was on his mind. Then of their changed training regimen.

“Are you safe to leave now,” Annabelle asked. “It’s late.”

“Yeah. Yes, I am,” Willow said, and gingerly scooted off the table. Her arms spasmed as she tried to push off the bench and Annabelle had to catch her.

“Thanks,” Willow said. “For this. For everything.”

Annabelle pressed her lips into a tight line and said nothing, but steered Willow toward the door to the large building. It opened out on near pitch-darkness, and Willow fumbled weakly in her overcoat for the wooden box she’d brought Carl. Sliding the lid back just a bit let out a strong beam of light.

“You have been improving,” Annabelle said as she saw the box.

“That’s the goal,” Willow said and took her first shaky steps out into the dark.

“Maybe,” Annabelle said to herself, as Willow stumbled toward the edge of the Arcanum grounds. “Maybe it will work after all.”