Midnight Magic Page 11

  "That's very kind." Aurelai said, and brushed the last remaining bird seed from her hand in swift, jerky movements. "I feel like I know you better than I actually do. I've seen you through Borrowed eyes for months, watching, making sure that you were the one I could trust. And I did. Do. But you didn't even know I existed until yesterday. I was presumptuous in how you would respond."

  "Aurelai… you presumed correctly. We're wizards. Contact between us is important. I don't doubt it was instinctive. I'm not offended. At all," Vimika added.

  "You aren't?"

  This conversation couldn't be happening. Illusion or dream, it was at least lucid, and waking up once was enough for today. "No. I wouldn't change anything about last night."

  "Neither would I. Well, a little less cold, perhaps," Aurelai said.

  Then who would keep me warm? would have been the suave thing to say, but Vimika's tongue was busy trying to swallow itself.

  Amidst an impossible spring, they stood not an arm's length from one another, neither sure about what to do next. Then the very last remnants of the storm suddenly gusted along the wall of the house, blowing loose strands of Vimika's hair in every direction at once, exploding around her head to wrap her indecision in threads of dark brown.

  Through the fog of her own hair, she saw Aurelai smiling.

  "Would you like me to brush that out for you? I don't think it's used to freedom yet. You can eat as I do it. Take whatever you like, but please finish whatever you take."

  Vimika's stomach gave the thunder a run for its money as the loudest, grumbliest sound of the last twelve hours.

  ~

  At a small garden table on a spring day in winter, the sun was shining and even the trees were cooperating, whispering with only the wind. It was warm enough Vimika had forgone the robe and sat with the sleeves of her tunic rolled up.

  With melon juice on her chin and Aurelai's fingers in her hair, she was coming dangerously close to being happy. Well, perhaps not happy, her magic was still scrambled, but something that at least hailed from the same neighborhood. And with each gentle tug, each bar of the nothing Aurelai was humming, the closer she got.

  Oliver was a tight coil of sparkly fur curled up on the ground beside them. Ears the size of Vimika's hand stood up from what was otherwise one contiguous ball of fuzz, only twitching when he seemed to notice he was being addressed. He had put away his own share of melon with impressive eagerness for a being animated purely by magic without need to actually eat, but thinking about that any deeper would make Vimika's own portion quickly unappetizing.

  She was quite enjoying appetizing.

  "You have such beautiful hair," Vimika said between bites, "how do you manage to keep it like that all by yourself? I guess you spend every evening brushing it out."

  "I never do anything to it," Aurelai said, taking up another fistful of Vimika's and running a brush through it.

  "How is that possible?"

  Aurelai shrugged as she began work on the set of snarls she found. "Doesn't yours take care of itself?"

  "Does it look like it does?"

  She had been stupid not to put it up before bed the night before, but in her defense she had been both exhausted and distracted. With how the morning was shaping up thus far however, she was no longer sure that was such a bad thing.

  "Well, no, but… you flew here, right? With the wind and all…"

  "No, I usually do a better job of keeping it tame, if you can believe it. I have a whole drawer full of ties, and if there's one thing three sisters with long hair learn to do, it's braid. But you, all by yourself? I guess there's something to strong mage blood after all. I wouldn't have guessed perfect hair among the benefits, though."

  "Father was bald."

  "I stand corrected. And a little jealous," Vimika said. "You are quite possibly older than my grandmother, but look my age. You can talk to animals and you can have hair down to your thighs that takes care of itself. Is that right?"

  "I don't… talk to them. Well, I do, but not to them, more at them really, since they're not terribly good at carrying a conversation. I more… suggest where I'd like them to go, what to do. I only speak out loud to hear myself talk and confirm I still can..." Aurelai's hands dropped into her lap. "You must think me very peculiar."

  Vimika shot a look of commiseration over her shoulder. "Does that have to be a bad thing? I would say you're more normal than some wizards I've met, especially given what's happened to you. I can't imagine. How did you not go insane?"

  Aurelai spun the lacquered wood brush, casting little glints of sunlight into her eyes. "By working very hard at staying sane. Borrowing requires focus and discipline; if I wanted to see outside, I had no choice but to learn both. Though there were many times where I was tempted to simply lose myself in the animals. To let them carry my mind away from this place forever. In this body, it's trapped here, but in the birds, I could go anywhere. I think I thought I was a bird once."

  "What made you come back?"

  "Inhabiting a bird isn't true escape. A bird's mind is too simple and too small to contain ours. Only a withered, diminished piece of me would be free. What good would that do? This mind, this body are too… precious to simply throw away in despondency."

  "On that we agree," Vimika said.

  Another handful of Vimika's hair was lifted up and Aurelai resumed her brushing. "Thank you for understanding."

  Several snarls and two knots fell to Aurelai's labor in silence. For having so little experience, she was proving adept at it without causing pain or giving up and reaching for a pair of scissors. She was patient and methodical, traits that had more than likely also served her well. Vimika was happy to let her exercise them if it meant undoing the mess she'd made of herself.

  When the worst had been taken care of, Aurelai settled into a more rhythmic stroking that, had it not freed up her concentration, Vimika would have been content to sit for until the sun went down.

  Unfortunately, it had.

  "When you were in the Forest… what did you see?" Aurelai asked without preamble or warning of any kind.

  Vimika's jaw stopped moving, and she wiped her chin with the back of her hand. "What makes you ask?"

  "I've tried to not think about Father very much, but if we are to begin undoing his work, I no longer have much choice. He let you through, and I can't figure out why. You weren't sure you had even made it through the illusions when I met you. You were covered in snow and dirt, which was real, but... did you overpower the illusions, or did they collapse? Did you see any hint of Father? Did you know it was magic right away? Didn't you feel it before you went in?"

  The questions sped up the more they accumulated, piling on top of one another until Vimika felt crushed under the weight of the reminder of why she was here in the first place.

  She had been so enjoying her morning, too.

  "I suppose I would have to talk about it eventually."

  Aurelai's hands slowed, but didn't stop. "Was it so awful?"

  The melon settled into its own greenish reflection, wobbling in a puddle of juice before stilling. "I saw… myself."

  "Yourself?"

  Vimika nodded. "I talked to me, but it wasn't me. She was… mean. Showed me things. Used my own memories against me. My fears. Made me remember things I ran all the way to Durn to forget. Things that make me glad I live under a tavern so I can try to every night."

  Following a tidal wave of questions came a tidal wave of answers. That the two were only slightly connected revealed that there was a lot more that needed saying still. It was inevitable, but even a few minutes of escape made it that much harder to get back to work. Vimika's hands were trembling with just how hard.

  "I had no idea they were strong enough to access memory," Aurelai said. "They only confused me, turned me in circles. That's a sign that there's more out there than I'd known, or feared. If the illusions know what you're thinking, then they'll be able to counter whatever we try to do while inside them. But how can w
e act on them from the outside? Perhaps working to crack the base spells, soften the foundations, but those would be the best protected. Tapping thoughts is very advanced, maybe to the point of being unstable, we could..." she trailed away, flattening one palm against Vimika's back as if to steady herself. "No. No, Father assaulted you. That's... Vimika, I'm sorry."

  "Not your fault."

  Aurelai didn't remove her hand. "He was my father, and he hurt you to keep you away. He never weaponized my memories beyond making them in the first place."

  Vimika looked down at her reflection looking back from the puddle of melon juice on her plate. Warped and unstable, it was even more accurate than Not-Vimika had been. "And I chose to continue on through it."

  "For Oliver," Aurelai said.

  "Yes. In my defense, I didn't know you were here. If I had, I…" Vimika had to stop herself. As far as she could tell, the melon wasn't fermented, but it had almost loosened her tongue all the same.

  Alone for too long, Aurelai wasn't about to let anything go unsaid, or didn't know that she was supposed to. Either way, Vimika was doomed.

  "If you had, you... what?"

  Vimika glanced over her shoulder. "Might have come a lot sooner."

  Aurelai set aside the brush and began running her fingers through the length of Vimika's hair. As they descended they grazed along her shoulders and down her back, and she leaned into the touch without even realizing she was doing it.

  "If that's the case, I'm sorry it took me so long to work out a way to get you here," Aurelai said, her voice coming from a lot closer than it had been.

  Vimika's arms and neck erupted in gooseflesh, but she said nothing in the fear that it would settle back down again. "You're lucky the old woman pays so well. Or, I thought she had. I turned back once, you know."

  "I saw," Aurelai said.

  "Sorry. If I had known…"

  "Ssh." Aurelai ran her fingertips along Vimika's temples as she began gathering hair to be braided. "You didn't. That's sort of the point of the illusions, isn't it?"

  Somehow that didn't make Vimika feel any better. "Still, knowing that you've been here all along, and no one had any idea… It must have been torture to be so close and so far at the same time."

  "It wasn't easy, no. Especially after the mines opened. I always hoped they would come out this way to prospect at the very least, but they haven't come close yet," Aurelai said as she separated Vimika's hair into sections.

  Vimika glanced down at Oliver and thought about the astronomical cost of his creation, and of what would have enabled the Tarsebaums to pay it. "There's no reason to. The mines that are already open are going to be enough to supply demand for decades, and the four houses have a total monopoly on all of it. Didn't you wonder why their house wizards are so strong for being out in the middle of nowhere?"

  "No," Aurelai said.

  "I guess you wouldn't have. I forget how much you don't know, you're so easy to talk to," Vimika said.

  "I've been waiting a while for my chance. And… I like talking to you." Aurelai folded Vimika's hair over itself into a single, simple braid.

  "Me, too," Vimika said.

  Why was she being so stupid? She shouldn't be feeling anything other than suspicion and mistrust. Aurelai had been waiting for her, had all but summoned her.

  Because no one has touched you in ages and you're starved for companionship. Of course you're going to let the most beautiful woman you've ever met braid your hair, and smile when she bats those big black eyes at you. It'll only hurt if you're dumb enough to believe that it means anything.

  She needs you.

  And you need her, another part of her countered traitorously.

  So traitorously, her heart rate sped up.

  At the sensation of such familiar motions being carried out by unfamiliar hands, Vimika was forced to acknowledge that there might be some truth to it, however. It had been ages since she'd let someone braid her hair, and once again, it was something she hadn't even known she'd been missing. She'd been so tied up in what she was avoiding, she hadn't spared a thought for what she'd given up in order to do so.

  But after Aurelai was finished and had tied off the braid, Vimika was made acutely aware of other things she'd been denying herself when Aurelai's thumbs found her shoulder blades and began to trace along the edges. It wasn't quite a massage, more an exploration, which made sense since it was unlikely Aurelai had ever worked out a way to feel her own shoulder blades, unless she had flexibility to equal her balance.

  And wouldn't you just like to find out?

  "Well!" Vimika squeaked, "I think I need to get out of the sun. Thank you for doing my hair."

  A wooshing noise blew across her ear that might have been a laugh, or a sigh. Without being able to see Aurelai's face, Vimika couldn't tell. But when strong, cool fingers began idly stroking the back of her neck, she had a much better idea.

  "You're welcome." Aurelai already had a dusky voice, but from an only an inch away, it was thick with night, the kind that you could put on and wear like a cloak.

  "Ah, well... perhaps we should get to work?"

  ~

  With breakfast cleared away and Oliver off doing whatever it was a magical creature that couldn't die did all day, the question of where to even start with a problem of the scale they were facing needed tackling. Without being able to access magic, there weren't many avenues open to Vimika that could hope to bear fruit. Luckily, her years in school gave her an idea.

  "This level of magic is too complicated to memorize. Your father had to have kept books on it, right? I don't need magic to read. I hope."

  "Yes, of course. Some have been ensorcelled to keep me from opening them. You're welcome to try, though. Did… you like breakfast?" Aurelai's voice was light and thin, nothing like what she'd sounded like earlier.

  Vimika held back from mentioning it. "Yes, thank you. And again for taming my hair. It's been a while since I'd done much more than enough to stuff it under my hat."

  "I could tell. Oh! Oh, no, that.... you're welcome! Ah, we should probably get started," Aurelai said, slow to take her eyes off Vimika before leading them back to the laboratory.

  After a night's sleep, some food and not being laid out on the slab that dominated it, the lab was much less intimidating than the first time Vimika saw it. Now (mostly) free from the fear of having the tools hanging on the wall used on her, she found herself drawn to them. They were spotless, and bore almost no sign of wear.

  As a wizard's research and experimentation was mostly done with words and not hammers, it wasn't surprising. Then she thought of Oliver, and just what was holding up that outer artifice, and they took on a patina that was altogether less innocuous.

  "I don't use them," Aurelai said with a look of sympathy. "Come."

  At the touch of a nondescript point on the wall, a hidden door popped open, the edges jagged with teeth made of wood panels. Aurelai pulled it the rest of the way to reveal darkness beyond.

  "You have a secret passage?" Vimika asked without bothering to hide her jealousy.

  "Father never took any chances. I suppose I should be glad he even showed me that it existed," Aurelai said as she stared into a hole as dark as her eyes.

  "Where does it go?"

  "The library."

  It was a short, cramped crawl, with Aurelai's magelight leading the way, to a space Vimika immediately knew was big by how much darkness it contained. The light was more than enough until it suddenly wasn't, and Aurelai had to add another to help.

  The moment Vimika set eyes on the collection however, she knew she was in more trouble than she'd imagined. There were books, and then there were books. The kind that have a self-evident amount of import and weight that makes it impossible for them to be spoken or written about in any other way.

  Then she started reading the titles.

  "Time Can't Run Out if It's Standing Still? Levitation is Like Flying Only Easier? These must be original copies!"

  There was
a time when a wizard's greatest defense was a cracking sense of whimsy. It was terribly disarming and had been thought to make magic seem less scary. How they got from there to body snatching (and making) was a history unto itself, and not one that Vimika had any desire to sleep through more than once. Now, however, she wished she'd drunk more coffee in school.

  "This… this is the foundation of magical theory! The copies I have at home are half this long! What's in here?" Vimika asked as she flipped madly through one of the books. It had to be hundreds of years old, but felt like it had been bound a decade ago. Worn and well-read, it still hung quite nicely together. A wizard wasn't one to put a price on knowledge, but when it was written in the original hand of the one who'd thought it up and in such good condition, it was worth somewhere between an amount that required swearing to properly convey and one that just made you faint dead away. Or get a cramp from writing all the zeroes.

  "'Before Levitating a subject, adding Lightness is advised. This will reduce strain on the caster and get them into the subject's good graces. If the subject is inanimate, the added Lightness can be displaced upon the next casting of Weight.'"

  Vimika looked up, her eyes working in her head as a thousand thoughts banged against each other behind them.

  "Does that make sense to you?" Aurelai asked.

  "Only because I already know how to do it. Who writes like this? 'Ascent is achieved by subtracting gravity.' 'Weight is subjective. If subject is resistant to being acted upon, turn your attention to the ground and reduce its pull instead.' This is so much more complicated than it needs to be."

  "It's a first draft," Aurelai said.

  Vimika turned to her like she'd just said the sky was green. "What makes you say that?"

  "Father thought he could sell it someday if he needed money."

  "He wrote this?" Vimika riffled through the book until she found the name of the author on the very last page. The word that usually preceded Azrabaleth Kalinostrafal's name in history books was either 'wicked' or 'evil,' unless it was written by a revisionist, then it was 'misguided'. 'Genius' was only whispered about in dark rooms full of wizards and the smell of alcohol. She'd never seen 'by' before, and had no idea if the reason was prudence or whitewashing.