“Hopeless, then,” said Kuro.
“No,” responded Ms. McCutcheon. “But it will be challenging for you. We do our best, but we can only teach magic in the way we understand it ourselves. However, the methods we teach are not the only methods which work.”
“They’re not?” That was at odds with everything he’d been taught so far.
“Consider the spell for summoning a familiar, for example.” She picked up the manual. “It assumes a certain upbringing and outlook as it tries to establish the correct thought processes for the conjuring through words and actions and preparatory meditations. However, none of it is necessary. Do you think the first person to conjure a familiar performed that entire spell?”
“Um, no?” Kuro hadn’t ever thought about it, but the way she asked it made it seem like a foolish idea.
“Quite right. It was something that came quite naturally to them, much like Marie’s ability to make things change colours. The spell we learn was developed as a way for others to reproduce the same effects. But with practice, some of the steps can be skipped.”
She stopped speaking, and her eyes lost focus. A few moments later, streamers of blue light peeled out of the air and coiled into the shape of a tall bird. Without so much as a wave of her hand, she fully and completely summoned her familiar. Kuro applauded the impressive display of skill.
“The critical component of conjuring a familiar is self-understanding,” she explained. “One must know who one is, and to project that with confidence and certainty.”
“Why don’t they just say that in the book?” Kuro complained.
“Because if we tell a student to be themselves, they will inevitably think about who they want to be, or who they believe they should be. Instead, the meditations guide most students through situations where they feel most at peace with who they truly are.”
“So, I should think more like a wizard,” said Kuro. “Ms. Crawley told me that last year. I need to be more lazy.”
Ms. McCutcheon’s face tensed as if trying to hold in a sneeze. “Not quite, Kuro. I suspect that trying to change yourself to suit the spell, particularly this spell, will fail. Instead, you might try to change the spell to suit you.”
With that cryptic advice, she sent Kuro to the lodge for dinner.
He wandered home while trying to make sense of Ms. McCutcheon’s advice. Just like the instruction manual, he understood everything she’d said, and none of it made any sense to him. As he walked in the front door, an explosion of noise shook him from his thoughts, and he found himself entangled in the rafters for a second time that evening.
Below him were all the other second-year Lodgers, teeth bared. “Surprise!” they had shouted. Behind them was a dining hall table, which had been moved to the lounge and set with dinner and a cake in the middle that was slightly on fire.
“Were you surprised?” demanded Charlie as though Kuro might have jumped into the ceiling for some other reason.
“Yes,” Kuro said, confused at why everyone seemed so eager for his response. “Is that good?”
He turned to Marie in hopes she’d make some sense of the situation, but she just said, “McCutcheon kept you longer than I thought she would.”
“What?” said Kuro. “She didn’t keep me. I stayed.”
“And whose idea was that?” she replied with a sly grin.
“I don’t understand. Why would you make me stay late just to scare me?”
Jennifer Tanaka groaned. “You seriously don’t get it? It’s a birthday party. Your birthday party. Now come eat. The food’s going cold.”
He sat at the table and had the flaming cake shoved toward him. It was lopsided and unevenly iced, with over a dozen burning candles jammed in the top of it. “We made it for you,” said Charlie proudly. “Or Marie and Ali made it for you ’cause they know how to bake, but I got to lick the spoon for the icing, which was pretty great, so are you going to blow it out or what?”
Kuro did as he was asked. He summoned up a little gust of wind, which blew out the candles and peeled off a chunk of icing that splattered across the table.
“You are so weird,” said Magna Singh. “Have you really never had a birthday before?”
“Nope,” said Kuro. “First time. I’m not really sure what to do.”
“Usually, you get presents and eat too much sugar and hang out with friends,” said Sean Cassidy as he dug into his dinner. “Sometimes you go bowling. At least that’s what we do in the Blandlands. Don’t know what y’all do here.”
“Depends a bit where you’re from,” said Gregory Zimmerman. “I think the Acadians get new clothes, and Alfheim kids have duels. Proper Tirnanog families just sit around drinking tea and being boring. Lowborn folks like me do pretty much the same as you Blandos, except the bowling part.”
Kuro had been flustered by the attention at the beginning of the meal, but soon everyone started talking to each other about their various birthday parties and the strange traditions of their homes. The fireflies were all curious about the fey realm, and the fey realm kids were fascinated by the peculiarities in the Blandlands. It let Kuro relax and eat for a while.
When dinner was finished, Charlie cut and served the cake. It made a couple of the others uncomfortable that she did it without using her hands. A long sharp blade flying around of its own accord was unsettling on its own, but the way it drifted around weightlessly when she was delivering a slice made people nervous.
It wasn’t a good cake. They apparently hadn’t had all the ingredients they needed, and they had to bake it from memory, so it was a bit mushy and didn’t really taste of anything but sugar. Still, that was enough to be delicious. There were even some leftovers, which Kuro put on a shelf in his bag for Bindal.
Dinner ended for everyone else in the dining hall, and a few people started to occupy the lounge, wandering through to their rooms or taking up space by the fire, but none invaded the party—except a bullfrog.
Oliver’s familiar had made its way onto the table, where it hopped around, inspecting people’s plates and croaking occasionally. It was uncanny how like Oliver it was. It didn’t look like him, but something in the way it moved and sat just seemed right. It was confident but halting in its movements. It sat like it would fight anyone at the slightest provocation but at the same time looked ready to bolt, and despite having the impassive face of a frog, it wore the same expression as Oliver of having just been caught in a lie.
“How did you make your familiar?” Kuro asked.
Oliver was surprised and confused by the question. “I c-cast the sp-spell,” he stammered in response.
“I mean, why did you get it so easily?” asked Kuro. “You were the first Lodger to do it.”
Oliver blushed a little at the recognition. “Oh. I d-don’t know. I j-just like c-casting spells. It’s the only t-time I don’t stutter. When I p-practice the w-words enough, they c-come out right and it f-feels good. I w-was just k-kind of en-joying it, then it worked. All of a sudden there was a f-frog. It just happened. What about y-you, Arthur? Y-you had an easy t-time of it.”
“I was surprised,” said Arthur, expressing none of the said surprise. “I just thought about home like it said.”
As the conversation involved familiars, Charlie was drawn in like a moth to a flame. A very noisy moth that knocked things over when she got excited. “You are so lucky. I’ve been trying to cast it every night, and it’s always the same. I keep trying to make the fluff stick together, but it never listens.”
“I told you that it doesn’t work if you force it,” said Arthur. “You have to let it be what it is.”
Charlie nodded sagely at the wise advice she’d already received a dozen times before forgetting it completely. “What about you, Sean? It was easy for you. What’s your secret?”
Sean flushed so red that it could be seen through his orange hair. “I wouldn’t say it was easy,” he said. “It was actually really hard. There’s a bit in
the spell about being honest about your desires, and I’ve been kind of feeling something for a while. So, I cast the spell when I was thinking about that, and the whole thing just clicked, y’know? And then when I saw my familiar, it was obvious.”
His hummingbird familiar buzzed twice around his head and then perched on Gregory Zimmerman’s shoulder and nuzzled his cheek. “See,” he said. “It likes Greg.”
“Familiars can’t like people,” sneered Ali. “It’s not even a real animal.”
Gregory elbowed Ali in the ribs. “He means it’s the same as him, you twit.”
Sean turned redder than a tomato, and Gregory just looked pleased with himself.
Charlie was, as usual, the first to find words. “Are you two going out? That is so cute! I mean, we all knew, but we didn’t know know, but we pretty much knew. You have to tell us every little detail, who asked who and when and were there flowers?”
The whole table engaged in the interrogation of Sean and Gregory. As the first of their lot to have the misfortune of being openly engaged in a romantic entanglement, the questions were relentless.
Kuro had little to contribute and didn’t pay it much attention. Instead, he noticed Magna Singh’s behaviour. She had gone very quiet as Sean explained his summoning. She slid out of her chair and quietly performed the ritual while the others were arguing.
A tangle of glowing orange cords grew up from the floor and twisted together like vines. First, they formed what looked like four trees, which then branched out and expanded to form a tall, powerful caribou, with antlers that threatened to knock the wagon wheel chandelier off the ceiling. It shook itself along its length and a full coat of brown fur emerged.
Magna looked at it in stunned amazement, and it nuzzled her gently.
Then the table erupted in applause. Morgan threw her arms around her roommate in celebration.
“You were right, Sean,” said Magna. “It is kind of obvious once you see it.” She patted the huge creature on the flank.
Magna’s sudden success spurred into action the others who had not yet manifest their familiars. Everyone except for Marie and Kuro started casting or coaching. “Are you not going to join them?” asked Marie.
“Not right now,” said Kuro. “I think I’ll watch.” He thought he might learn something from seeing the successes of others. “What about you?” he asked.
“I will not bother with it,” she said. “Like Ms. McCutcheon said, it is not important. It is better to spend the time on other things.”
What other things she spoke of wasn’t clear, as she didn’t go anywhere or pull out her homework.
Kuro watched as his fellow Lodgers tried to teach each other how to summon their familiars. Older students stopped by and offered pointers and demonstrations, occasionally forcing curious first years out of the room.
The advice from the older students was inconsistent and often contradictory. They said certain parts weren’t important, and then others would insist those same parts were critical. Some said it was best to cast in a place they knew well, like their bedroom; others explained that their first success was trying to cast in the environment their familiar would naturally live in.
What slowly became clear was that not a single person was casting the same spell. They all said the same words and made the same movements, but their focus was all different, and everyone adapted it just a little to better suit themselves.
Ali Khaldun was the next one to get his familiar to form, and it raised a lot of panic. Eagles, bears, and lions barely raised an eyebrow, but the fluffy little black creature with a pair of white stripes down its back sent people diving for cover.
“It’s not a real animal,” said Ali, defending his skunk. “It doesn’t have the internal organs to spray.”
Morgan Greenwood also succeeded and conjured an otter, which was both playful and friendly, and proved much more popular than Ali’s familiar.
The most earnest of participants was Charlie, by a mile. She cast over and over with the same results that she got in class, a cloud of glittering white fluff that swirled and failed to converge into anything. “She’s trying really hard, isn’t she?” Kuro said to Marie, noting how unusual it was for her to spend more than a few minutes on anything.
“Yes, and it is always the same,” Marie observed. “She gets distracted at the end and gets clumsy, so it falls apart.”
Kuro watched again. It was true, Charlie did get clumsy at the end, but lots of people’s casting was sloppier than hers. What seemed to be happening was that she would start watching the fluff swirl around her, so while her mouth and her body were still going through the motions, her brain was too busy watching the show.
“I have a dumb idea,” said Kuro as he climbed off his chair. “Could I borrow your headband?”
Marie was suspicious but curious enough to pass over the band of stretchy fabric she used to hold back her explosion of curly hair.
He wove through the room full of creatures and spellcasters to where Charlie had cleared herself an area to practice. “I think you should stop watching what you’re doing,” said Kuro.
It was a strange enough thing to say that Charlie paused her endless repetitions. “Huh?”
“You keep watching your fluff, but that isn’t working,” Kuro tried to explain. “So, don’t look at it. Put this over your eyes.”
Charlie thought about it for a split second before pulling the band over her head, effectively blinding herself. “You’re a genius, has anyone ever told you that?” she said to the space to the right of him.
“Definitely not,” he replied as he stepped back to give her space.
She began again. Soon the drifting cloud of glowing dandelion fluff began to stick together, but undistracted by the scene, Charlie kept going. More and more fluff emerged and coalesced until the form it was creating was unreasonably large for the space of the lounge. In a final bright flash of light, the outer coating of fluff burst off, leaving the fully formed creature beneath.
“Did it work?” demanded Charlie to the room, which had been stunned into silence.
A string of multilingual profanity from Marie summed up the feelings of everyone present.
Charlie ripped off the headband to see her familiar, gleaming white, a full head taller than Magna’s caribou, with a single white horn and feathered wings that spread across the whole room. She ran her hand along the flank of the winged unicorn in disbelief.
After a minute of stunned silence, Charlie suddenly turned and thrust the headband at Kuro. “You go next!”
It was a silly idea. Kuro didn’t have the same problems as Charlie, but he also knew that she would not leave him alone until he tried. He covered his eyes and thought about all the things he’d learned that day. He contemplated what it meant to be his true self, what he was distracted by, what deep truths he was struggling with, and then to let all of that just be as it was.
He began to cast. He did feel something. Maybe a tingle of connection to what he was saying. There was some reaction from those around him, too, but he tried to ignore it. Yet, that reaction quickly grew to be a series of coughs, shouts, and demands to stop.
He pulled off the blindfold to find the room swirling with thick grey smoke, with him at the center of the maelstrom. People and familiars pounded past him, blindly seeking an exit. He was buffeted and trampled, and just as the storm was starting to abate, someone spooked Ali’s skunk, and it sprayed the room.
In less than a minute, the building had evacuated, and Kuro was left alone surrounded by lingering smoke, toppled furniture, and broken dishes, absolutely stinking of skunk.
It was the best birthday party he’d ever had.
Seventeen
Stale Cake
The residents of Autumn Lodge learned several interesting facts in the following days.
The first was that the behaviour and abilities of familiars largely reflected their summoners’ understanding. Related to that, they
learned that Ali Khaldun had a remarkably thorough understanding of a skunk’s scent. The next fact was that nobody, or at least nobody on Avalon, had an effective spell for removing the stink of skunk from fabric, furniture, or people. And finally, though it took several days for anyone to fully appreciate the fact, that the smell could linger for weeks.
These fascinating details combined meant that despite burning most of the furniture in the lodge lounge and scrubbing the floor and walls till the polish wore off, it still reeked, as did Kuro after a similar treatment.
The pungent aroma that surrounded him at all times made Kuro the second least popular person in the lodge, only slightly ahead of Ali Khaldun. While some had sympathy for Ali’s argument that an imaginary animal shouldn’t be able to produce real chemicals, their compassion was somewhat tempered by the fact that passing through the lounge made their eyes water.
Kuro wasn’t blamed for the incident, which he would have appreciated more if it hadn’t been so insulting. He was forgiven for inciting the stampede because everyone should have known better than to encourage him to cast a spell indoors. He was broadly considered a natural disaster.
He was, however, exiled. Nobody could reasonably bear to be in his company for any length of time. He alone occupied the lodge lounge, he had a special seat in every class far from other students and near to open windows, and he spent as much time as he could outside, as much for his own relief as for that of others.
It was a familiar way to be for Kuro. Alone, smelly, and unwelcome was how he’d spent most of his childhood. Wandering Avalon while trying to avoid people as they worked to avoid him was a comfortable routine. Creeping towards Solstice break while sleeping in the lounge instead of his bedroom felt almost like part of the holiday tradition.
Volume 2: Burglary Page 16