Midnight Magic Page 14

  The stars in Aurelai's midnight eyes came out. "Apologies, I must have misspoken. You are lovely."

  Vimika swallowed. "No one's ever said that to me before."

  Aurelai took Vimika's hand in her own and brought it to her lips. "Then there are more fools in the outside world than you've led me to believe."

  Heart racing away from her in a gallop, Vimika felt as though she'd just taken on a lot more than a new wardrobe, but there wasn't a mirror fine enough to tell her how well it was going to fit.

  ~

  Days and nights began to blend together after that, as did Vimika and Aurelai, now that they were sharing clothes as well as sheets. Aurelai proved time and again to be the master of the former, while Vimika was happy to continue playing instructor in the latter. But the talent they shared was magic. Through their close contact, Vimika's had shown tantalizing hints of life, but until it was resurrected fully, their only outlet for hoping to crack their predicament was the library.

  Sitting at a desk in a dress wasn't all that unlike doing it in robes, and Vimika had grown accustomed to it with surprising ease. She had never had the occasion or imagination to do so, but the fabrics were so soft, they felt like nothing Vimika had ever worn, which went a long way to helping the transition. This was further aided by Vimika being not at all displeased with the fact it was impossible to put on most of her new garments without Aurelai's help. That they were so easy to get off was, Vimika would admit, suspicious, but she was grateful for Aurelai's help with that, too.

  What Vimika had needed her help more for, however, was sorting through the library's deceptively vast collection. Between the dimness and how cramped it was, it was hard to get a sense of the scale. But when Aurelai had started pulling down both books and books to reveal that they had been stuffed onto the shelves in layers, Vimika began to wonder how well her fancy dresses could stand up to sweat and the true wizard lifestyle: hunched over for hours at a time, reading or experimenting, day after day.

  After having trawled through countless such layers without much of a catch to show for it, Aurelai produced from under a dust-riddled blanket that had very much not been the beneficiary of any preservation magic, the 'forbidden' books. With a description like that, Vimika had expected them to look different. Having been bespelled by one of the most powerful mages to ever live, she'd expected chains of gold, or for them to be encased in arcane frost, hidden in a pocket dimension or at least full of teeth.

  Instead, they were blank.

  That was it. From the outside, they were like any other book in the library, like any library anywhere: pebbly covers, gilt lettering, the musty odor of reams of dead trees having been pressed against each other for ages. The only difference was that when they were opened, there was nothing to see. Not a single figure, illumination, diagram, inscription, big block letters saying something like 'PROPERTY OF HIGH COUNT MUCKETY-MUCK, IF FOUND, RETURN IMMEDIATELY ON PAIN OF YOUR FAMILY BEING DROWNED IN SACKS LIKE UNWANTED KITTENS'.

  Books were expensive, and owned by a lot of awful people.

  These books were both and neither.

  Anyone who would imprison their own daughter was objectively terrible, but this anyone was dead. The magic was priceless, but the books themselves outwardly worthless. Vimika strongly suspected, however, that any attempt to destroy them would be met with resistance of some sort, probably of the spectacular and painful variety. A literal dead man's switch.

  At least she knew Kalinostrafal wouldn't return as a ghost. Leaving your own child imprisoned for two centuries warranted a place in an especially deep hell, which Vimika suddenly needed to believe in more than she already did in order to continue to live as anything other than a complete nihilist.

  She would admit, however, that simply leaving the pages blank was quite clever. A trap or a lock invited poking around, trying to undo it, sever it, break it. To remove something, in a sense. To be staring down at literally nothing meant she had to figure out how to add something. Anything.

  Or…

  "Shit," Vimika said suddenly. And more effectively, since it came out of someone wearing a dress worth more than the Double C.

  Of course.

  "I have to find it." Like a recalcitrant cat, or the impossible mechamagical miracle asleep in the corner, she had to figure out where it had run off to and track it down. It had to be here, or why else would the books exist at all? So she knew where to look, she just didn't know how.

  "Can you do that without reliable magic?" Aurelai asked from her perch atop a chair they had dragged in from the dining room.

  Vimika flicked the corner of one page under her thumbnail. "I doubt it. There's nothing here for my non-magical senses to even start with. Though it would be clever to hide it that way, wizards have all the same senses as everyone else. You couldn't make it physical. The spells would be useless to a non-wizard anyway, except as ransom or blackmail."

  Which, without her magic, was exactly what they were.

  She flipped the book closed and inspected the back cover embossed with the device of a man long dead, yet all too present. Though Azrabaleth Kalinostrafal was legendary, it was not for being stupid. He, more than anyone, would know the value of what he'd created, and wouldn't leave them lying about for anyone to find and use against his daughter.

  Or by her.

  Vimika looked over the heap of leather and parchment to the woman sitting on the other side.

  Whatever Aurelai's father had been, she was not. She was a victim, arguably the worst. Leaving your daughter all alone, trapped in a prison of your own making? How could he be worse than what history said he was? But Aurelai wasn't history, she was flesh and blood, and very much alive. She'd worked so hard just to keep her head above water, she deserved better than to drown now.

  The book was blank. Useless. Just like Vimika had been up to this point.

  How long have I been here? she asked herself. Long enough to lose track already, but what had she accomplished in that time? All she'd done was taken, what had she given back? She'd given Aurelai pleasure, yes, but had she made so much as a dent in her happiness? Vimika had raided Aurelai's closets, her garden and her body, but for what?

  Whatever hints Vimika's magic had shown passively, it remained beyond her ability to actively access, and now she couldn't even read a bloody book. And that was just the start of what was going to be necessary to keep her promise.

  She was clad in a dress of sapphire blue from another age, her hair done up to match, but she was no princess. Pointed ears, slitted eyes, but without magic, she was no wizard. It all suddenly seemed so petty. Pointless.

  "Vimika?"

  Blinking away the burning in the corner of her vision, Vimika came back to herself to find Aurelai gazing across at her with eyes full of concern. At the sight, something insidious and all-too familiar seized Vimika's heart in talons tipped with acid-soaked razor blades: fear. This lonely wizard had put her hopes in Vimika, and she'd failed to deliver. What made it more acute was that the source behind the concern in Aurelai's eyes was affection, and the talons squeezed all the harder.

  She called you lovely...

  Vimika flipped the book shut and stood. "I need to go for a walk. All my thoughts are crashing together and making too many sparks, and I'm afraid they'll catch fire. Could use some cold air on my face."

  "Of course. Would you like me to come with you?"

  "No, no. Stay warm. I'll just be a minute."

  Outside, the stars were waiting. In a clearing in the middle of a forest at the edge of the world, they were as bright as Vimika had never seen them. The white light somehow made the winter air seem colder and crisper, snowflakes that would never fall.

  Vimika had always loved the stars. Bright with possibility, they could be anything. Holes in the sky, portals through which the gods checked on their people as they slept, the filter through which dreams could enter the world. Tonight, however, she could only see the space in between. The void in which the answers to all he
r problems lay. Unknowable, impenetrable and far away.

  Black. Black as Aurelai's eyes, with the same shining light. Black as her hair, a river in which to drown her senses. Vimika could lose herself in either of them if she wasn't careful.

  You're doing it again, she thought. A pretty face and a kind gesture from someone who wants something from you, and you want so badly for it to mean more than that. When have you ever been right? As if this entire situation is anything other than insane to begin with. Even if she's never seen it, she's read books. She knows how to use her wiles to get what she wants, and it's not hard from you. She wasn't lying about her lack of experience, but that only makes it even more convincing, doesn't it? More sympathetic. Makes you weaker.

  It always does. All a girl has to do is touch you and you fall at her feet to promise her anything so she'll to do it again.

  Vimika was a wizard. A curiosity. A mark on some rich woman's bedpost. A means to an end.

  They only see the hat and the robe. Once they get them off, what's left?

  Well, they were off now, only to reveal there was nothing underneath.

  Time and time again, she'd been courted by the well-to-do of Maris. Wined, dined, sexed to within an inch of her sanity, but she hadn't known how to play the game. She had never and still didn't want to learn, and so she'd been torn apart, crushed into a slurry of shame and self-hatred and dumped into the gutter.

  And now it was happening again, except she didn't even have her magic to justify being here in the first place.

  Aurelai was the daughter of perhaps the most powerful mage to ever live, the upper echelon of what they had been at their peak of influence and power as a people. Though in the present Aurelai may have been poor in gold, her blood was liquid platinum. And now she had a problem she needed Vimika to help solve. Lured here, then dined and sexed, all that was missing was the wine before she was thrown away.

  Sooner than later, if her magic didn't return.Would it be worse this time if she had no magic to offer? It was the only thing sparing her. Until Aurelai knew for a fact that Vimika couldn't help her, the great mage's daughter had to keep up the ruse.

  And Vimika, sad, lonely Vimika, would let her.

  Aurelai was unspeakably beautiful, with the same slant to her talents as Vimika. That, she couldn't fake. But her kindness? Her gentility, her strength, her vulnerability?

  Vimika didn't doubt that Aurelai's need for help was all-too real, which meant the opposite had to be true for her overtures.

  But so what if they are? What do you want from her? What are you expecting? You had sex a few times, so what? You've done that with a lot of women without having a crisis over it. Isn't that enough? Consider yourself lucky you got that much out of all this.

  As much as Vimika told herself Not-Vimika was out there in the forest somewhere, she didn't need to be seen to be felt. Not-Vimika only existed out there because she already did somewhere much closer, whispering instead of shouting. And Vimika would believe her.

  So she would do as she'd promised, and help Aurelai escape, then wash her hands of all of it. Start over again, put extra locks on her heart. Run.

  She called you lovely...

  Clouds of breath puffed from Vimika's mouth, joining the steam that rose from the trails down her cheeks. Up they climbed into the night, to fog over the stars. At least, she thought, they helped just as much to cover the blackness in between.

  Once. Just once, couldn't I be part of something beautiful that was real?

  The chains she'd been keeping her heart shackled down with were heavy, and she longed to strike them off. But they had been forged at great cost, and the price to be paid for removing them prematurely would be even higher.

  And yet...

  In the silence of a night stilled by artificial spring, the approach of footsteps from behind were impossible to hide, even if they were barely a whisper above the one being shared amongst the trees.

  "I know you said you wanted to be alone, but... I was worried," Aurelai said.

  Vimika dabbed at her eyes with the corner of a sleeve. "You didn't have to come all the way out here."

  "I know. I wanted to. Do you want to talk about it?"

  "About what?" Vimika sniffled.

  "That."

  "No, it's all right. You have more than enough problems without adding mine."

  "If that's how I can help, then that's what I'll do," Aurelai said.

  Vimika regarded her with naked disbelief. "How are you so nice? I cannot fathom how you lived your life and came out a good person. You should be completely mad, or speak your own private language or something. But you're a better person than many I've had the misfortune of knowing."

  Better than me.

  "I worked hard at it," Aurelai said.

  "At being nice?"

  "Yes. The animals don't respond very well to those who are unkind to them. They taught me empathy, I taught myself discipline. To only worry about what I could control, to act when I could, instead of spewing my frustration and anger aimlessly at the trees. I think they like me better now too," Aurelai said, nodding at the jagged border gathering up the stars as the world turned.

  Vimika shook her head. "You are truly remarkable, you know that? Where did you get the strength? The hope? I've had nothing but freedom my entire life, and all I seem to do is find ways to throw it away."

  "I've only been disappointed by one person in my life so far. Perhaps it takes its toll."

  "It does that, yes." Vimika looked back at the house. "I almost wish we could stay here."

  "No you don't."

  Aurelai took Vimika's hand, considered it much the same way she had the first time, only now her touch was familiar and gentle, while the magic, again, was the torment of magic so close and yet so far. Like finding a skin of ice on the surface of a lake she'd been swimming in when she desperately needed air. Her fingers pulsed, twitching slightly with every beat of her heart, while Aurelai's were still.

  "Can I ask what happened to make you this way? The Vimika whose hair I braided, who I fed mushrooms to, help to dress every day… is not the Vimika standing here now. Where did she go?"

  The sigh that issued from Vimika's lips wasn't strong or swift. The thin wisp of white breath that leaked from her was more akin to dust rising from something within her that had just collapsed.

  "I'm afraid," she said when it had cleared. "That I won't be able to keep my promise. Or that I will. I don't know which one will hurt more."

  The subtle twitches in Vimika's fingers became violent throbs that pressed their fingers tighter with every beat.

  But Aurelai's eyes were only for Vimika. "I have no desire to hurt you. I wouldn't dream of it. Why... why would you fear that if you wished we could stay here?"

  "If we're here, then it's because my magic hasn't returned. What am I without it? It's all anyone needs from me. I'd be useless to everyone, especially you. And if we escape... then I'll have fulfilled my purpose. You'll have the whole world before you, and you deserve better than to spend a second of it cooped up under a tavern in the middle of nowhere."

  "And if I choose to? Do I not get to decide that, Vimika? You said you would show me the world yourself, are you taking it back?"

  "No! It's just- that's how it goes with me. I learned the hard way the pain of indulging in optimism."

  Aurelai took Vimika's other hand but kept her in place with more than physical strength. Something in Aurelai had shifted, demanding Vimika meet her eyes. She didn't want to, she wanted to look away, to run, but the sound of that twilight voice arrested her every impulse, giving her no choice but to listen.

  "And what if that was the lesson I'd taken from my captivity, hm? Just given up, let Father win without a fight? Without trying? At least if I'd done so, the only person I would have hurt is myself. That you care so little for my feelings about any of this hurts, Vimika. I feel guilty about bringing you here, please don't make me outright regret it. You made a promise, and I trusted you. I'
m still struggling to accept that I may have been trapped here for centuries, but never once in that time did I ever indulge in this sort of maudlin self-pity. I worked. I tried, and I was rewarded." Aurelai squeezed Vimika's hand. "I've only known the you unable to access her magic, and I'm still here beside you, am I not? It was the magicless Vimika I fed, bathed, braid the hair of every night, take by the hand and lead into my bedroom... and you fear I won't want you without magic?"

  "What if it's not temporary? What if I'm like this forever? I'd just be a burden to you."

  "How can you say that? How can you dare presume how I would feel about you if that were the case?" There wasn't a wisp of anger in Aurelai's voice; the only thing clouding it was confusion.

  "Because it's never not been true! Wizards and magic are useful, not necessary. I'm nothing beyond my usefulness."

  Aurelai dropped Vimika's hands to cradle her face. She searched the facets of Vimika's eyes, through the doorway to her heart and the seat of magic that they'd always been taught the slits represented. "Who did this to you? How can you say such hurtful things about yourself?"

  Vimika tried to look away, but Aurelai held her fast. Firmly but gently, she forced Vimika to meet her eyes again, to bring through those doorways the noxious, rotting thing within her.

  To bring out Not-Vimika.

  "People I'd worked very hard to forget. But they... your father-- it's what the forest showed me. Brought me right back there, as if it was happening again. I could feel everything, smell it. He pulled it out of my memory, forced me to experience it again, and it's all I can think about when we're not together."

  "Who?" Aurelai didn't bother to blunt the edge in her voice.

  Arrested by twin pools of obsidian, Vimika had no choice but to dive in. "Rich women who just wanted a pet wizard, I won't dignify them with names. Humans of influence who wanted to show me off, to have magic done for them. Their friends had wizards working for them, so they should have one, too. But so did their enemies. Sometimes I felt like a tool, other times like... a puppy. Coddled, presented, doted on, made to fetch and do tricks when company came over. But puppies become dogs. Or they're no longer fashionable, or sometimes a cuter puppy comes along, or I would refuse to bite strangers.