by Dan Wingreen
I hope I don't burn down the hotel.
It was probably a good idea to keep that one around, actually.
He took one last steadying breath, and thought of fire.
Eallair was right, fire was easy. The warmth in his chest always came easily when there was something to burn. He reached deep into himself and felt his magic, vast and strong, like a second heart pulsing away inside him. The memory of using it, the rush he'd felt in the cave, started to rise and he pushed it down, smothering it. He didn't want a rush. He wanted a trickle. He wanted the satisfaction of casting a spell, of making his magic do what he wanted it to and nothing else. His grip tightened around the wand.
He thought of the candle, sitting on the bedside table in front of him. He thought of the way it felt, the way it smelled, everything about it so he could fix it in his mind. He didn't think about the bed, soft and inviting. He didn't think about the wooden night table that could so easily go up in flames. He didn't think about Eallair and all of his damned infuriating faith. Just the candle. And then, less than that. He focused his thoughts only on the wick. The part he wanted to ignite with just the smallest flame, the tiniest fraction of what he was capable of.
Aidan raised his hand and pointed his wand where he knew the candle was. Gestures like that were important, Eallair had said. They helped the mind visualize what the magic was supposed to do. That's what he did now. He visualized the tiniest spark of flame lighting up the tip of the wand. He visualized it moving through the air, from the wand to the wick, in a perfect, straight line. He pictured that over and over again until he was almost convinced it had already happened, just like Eallair had told him to.
Okay….okay. I'm ready.
Ever so gently, he tugged at his magic.
It came even easier than it had in the cave, like a trained animal eager to obey its master's command. He grabbed it, pulled it towards his arm and pushed it out into the wand. As he felt the slight tingle of magic moving through his body, he thought about turning the knob in the shower back at his apartment, and let the magic out.
He smelled the unmistakable scent of freshly born flame almost right away. He didn't even need that, though, because he could feel that he'd succeeded. His magic told him. He grinned to himself as he pictured turning the knob back and the water from the shower head being cut off.
It didn't work.
It poured out of him again, not a shower but a tidal wave of fire and chaos. He cried out as his whole body burst into flames. Again.
He never even noticed when the wand turned to dust.
"Son of a bitch," Eallair swore. Then, he was in front of Aidan and he could smell the familiar, hated scent of the knockout herbs. He breathed them in, and immediately felt his legs buckle under him. Eallair caught him before he hit the floor, and there was just enough time to hear him murmur "sorry" before Aidan passed out.
◆◆◆
Aidan woke up a few minutes later, lying on one of the beds with a pounding headache.
"Lee," he croaked.
"Right here," Eallair said, his voice soft as he placed his hand on Aidan's head. There was a white flash and Aidan's headache disappeared. He groaned in relief and turned his head to see Eallair sitting on the bed beside him.
"I hate that stuff."
"Aye," Eallair said with a half-smile. "I know."
Aidan sighed. Now that his head wasn't resting under a carriage wheel, the only thing crushing him was the disappointment. He really thought he had it that time. He wrinkled his nose as he smelled the singed fabric of his clothes. At least he'd been wearing his least favorite pair of pants and a t-shirt that already had a hole in it.
"Your wand didn't work." He tried to make it sound light and teasing, but all that came out was bitterness.
I'm never gonna be able to use magic.
To his annoyance, Eallair apparently didn't pick up on how much this was bothering him because he just grinned.
"What?" Aidan asked sullenly.
"I wouldn't exactly say it didn't work."
Aidan blinked. "What?"
Eallair just grinned even wider and leaned back so Aidan could see past him. Just behind the sorcerer was the candle, sitting on top of the night table—not that Aidan was surprised by that since, after several hours of concentrating on it, he was pretty sure he had some kind of mental link with the stupid thing. What surprised him, what caused his breath to catch in his throat and his heart to skip a beat, was that the candle was lit with a soft, flickering flame.
"D-did I…?"
"Aye." Eallair nodded, still grinning. "You sure did."
"I lit the candle?"
"Aye."
"With magic?"
"Aye!"
Aidan stared at it, the beautiful, impossible flame, as wonder and hope sprang to life inside of him.
The stupid wand actually worked.
"Where's the wand?" Aidan asked, pushing himself up so he was sitting and looking around.
"Dissolved," Eallair said cheerfully.
"Wh-what?"
"You don't remember?" he asked. "Melted to dust right in your hand when you lit up."
"But it worked! I need another one, now!"
Eallair raised an eyebrow. "The wand," he said flatly, "didn't work. Terrible idea in hindsight, really; you almost killed us both."
Before Aidan could say anything Eallair jumped off the bed and started pacing around the room, practically vibrating with excitement.
"But," he went on, "you did light the candle with it."
"Yeah, so it worked," Aidan said impatiently, trying not to focus on the annoying pacing.
Eallair stopped moving for a moment. "No, it didn't. Did you miss the part where you exploded into flames again?" The pacing resumed. "The wand was a total failure, but now we know your focus is somethin’ physical. We just need to find out why the wand worked."
Aidan bit back what probably would have been a moderately inventive string of swearing. It worked, it didn't work… Eallair was even more stupid and infuriating when he was excited. But, Aidan decided, it wasn't worth focusing on as much as the fact that he'd used magic. He'd actually gotten it to do what he wanted it to without killing himself or burning everything around him to dust!
Even if the only reason I didn't burn everything down was Lee's stupid plants…
"Okay, so it's definitely somethin’ physical," Eallair was muttering as he paced. "But why the wand? That really shouldn't have worked. Wands never work, not halfway like that. A staff, maybe. But wands? Oh! Maybe a staff?" He shook his head. "No, staffs are too big. And we don't want the halfway thing anyway. Argh! If I could just figure out what it was about the wand… Somethin’ personal maybe? But he said he hates wands so…"
Aidan lost track of the monologue after that. Something personal?
"What do you mean about something personal?"
"—special about that tree? Bloody hope not, we can't haul the thing around… Oh, what?" He looked at Aidan but didn't stop moving. "Oh, focuses tend to work better if they have some personal meaning to the person usin’ ‘em, sometimes. That's why the shaman-people bind themselves to their land, and why it takes them a while to get set up again if they move. But you don't have any personal connection to anything that can be used as a focus, especially wands, so—"
"Actually!" Aidan burst out. He winced slightly, not sure if he wanted to admit this, but if it could possibly help him use magic again… "I, um, I used to play Kerrigan Cauliflower when I was a kid…"
That stopped Eallair in his tracks. "You did what now? What's a Kerrigan Cauliflower?"
Aidan looked away. "Um, a kids' book…"
Actually, it was his favorite book when he was a kid, aside from the Agent Arthur comics. Looking back now, he could see it was more about always listening to the government and the joys of conformity than a kid getting into magical adventures, but at the time he'd loved it, and he used to pretend he was Kerrigan all the time. The embarrassing thing was, Kerrigan Cauli
flower was a girl in a book series written for girls.
He made the, probably wise, decision to leave that part out.
"I used to read it as a kid and the main character used a wand…"
Eallair's face lit up. "So you do like wands? Wands are brilliant, aren't they?" He shook his head. "No, wait. You do have a personal connection then?" He laughed. "That's it! You're like the shaman-people!"
Aidan's shoulders drooped. "So, I need to bind myself to the ground?"
"Nope, not at all," Eallair said. "We just need to find something personally connected to you that we can use as your focus."
"Oh," Aidan said, relieved. "Good."
"But what should we try?" Eallair murmured as he went back to his pacing. This time, Aidan listened to him intently, seeing as some good was actually coming out of his annoyingness. "What's he connected to? Sweaters? Being clean? Me?" Eallair smirked slightly to himself at that and Aidan had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from yelling at him. Stupid smug sorcerer. "No, that's stuff he likes. We need a personal connection…"
He trailed off then, lost in thought. At least Aidan hoped he was lost in thought and not completely out of ideas. He tried, but he couldn't think of a single thing he was personally connected to, which was more than a little sad really—
"Ha!" Eallair exclaimed, spinning around to face Aidan.
"What?" Aidan asked, trying not to get his hopes up.
"I think I got it." With that, he rushed over to his duffel bag and started rummaging through it. Aidan shifted to try and get a better look, but before it occurred to him to just move closer, Eallair spun around holding something.
"Let's try this," he said, holding a book out to Aidan.
"A…book?" Aidan looked at it skeptically. It was kind of thin and ratty looking for a book, with a scuffed up, dark gray cover and several pages obviously loose. There was no title or author's name or any writing at all on it from what he could see. As disappointing as Eallair's forbidden books turned out to be—one was a badly written, slightly subversive novel about burning books and the other one was a journal written by a boy whose family managed to hide that he was a wizard for almost eight years. Interesting, but the handwriting was mostly unreadable gibberish. Apparently Eallair had lost all his really good books years ago—at least they'd been actual books.
Somehow, he didn't think this one had the secret to using magic in it. And if it did, he was definitely hitting Eallair for not bringing it out sooner. He took it hesitantly and opened it. A page fell out, but before he could bend over to pick it up, he noticed that all the other pages were completely blank.
"There's nothing written in it," Aidan said.
Eallair made an exasperated noise. "Of course not! The idea is for you to write in it."
"Like a journal?" Aidan frowned. "How is that supposed to help me use magic?"
"No," Eallair said with the ghost of a grin. "Like a spell book.
Aidan blinked. "You want me to use the book to cast spells?"
"No!" Eallair paused. "Well, yeah, actually."
"Did you miss the part where I burned up the wand? Paper isn't exactly less flammable than wood."
Eallair sighed. "You didn't burn up the wand because it was wood, you burned it up because you didn't connect to it right."
"And I'm gonna connect to your old, grungy journal?" Aidan squinted at it. "Is that blood on the cover?"
"Yes," he said. "And probably."
"What?" Aidan asked, confused.
"Look, your whole life you've been around books, yeah? You've been reading them since you were a kid, you worked as a book binder, and you were interested in forbidden books back when you still felt guilty if you crossed the road without getting’ to a crosswalk."
Aidan started to protest that he hadn't been that bad, but then he remembered telling Eallair about the time he jaywalked and thought, for the next three days, that every siren he heard was coming for him, and he slowly closed his mouth.
Eallair looked him right in the eye. "Books have always been a part of you and who you are. There ain't another thing in your life that you'd have a more personal connection with that ain't an actual person. Just try it."
The last time he 'just tried' something it didn't work out so well, but instead of arguing he sighed and looked down at the book. If he was being honest with himself, he was mostly arguing because he was scared to try again. It would have been so much easier if he didn't have hope. He could have tried it and if it failed then it would have just been another failure. But he did have hope, and it seemed like this was his last hope too, so pretty much everything was riding on this stupid, battered book being the thing that gave him his magic.
It'd be kinda fitting though. It was a stupid, battered sorcerer that gave me my life.
A tiny smile plucked at his lips. "A spell book, huh? Does this mean I get the robe and hat if it works?"
Eallair grinned. "Aye. It might take you a while to grow the beard, though. And I'm warnin’ ya, it' ain't a look everyone can pull off."
"And I bet you can, right?"
"Of course," Eallair said, acting affronted. "Practically perfected it back in the old country, I did. Mind you, no one much liked it. Unappreciated in my own time, that's me."
Aidan laughed and rolled his eyes. "I have no idea why I find you charming."
"You do?"
"Shut up." Aidan felt his face warm slightly. "Just tell me how this thing works."
Eallair smirked, but let it drop. "Exactly like everything else," he said, taking on his 'teacher' tones again. "Except this time, you write down what you want the magic to do, then read what you wrote while picturing it in your head. If it works the way it's supposed to, it should cut off on its own after takin’ enough to do what it needs to do."
"That…sounds really easy," Aidan said slowly. "No showers or pushing through my arm or anything. Why didn't we start with this?"
"Because," he said, "it ain't the best way to use magic. You can't really use it in the middle of a fight since you'd have more'n a fair shot of getting’ killed while you're scribblin' your spell down. And, uh, also it don't really work for most people."
Aidan blinked. "So…my last hope to use magic is actually useless and probably won’t even work anyway?"
"It'll work," Eallair said. "Trust me. It's got the personal connection and everything. And once it works, we can figure out the rest. Really, it's all about good prep work, and since you're always tellin’ me how I should think ahead more, I'm sure you'll pick it up in no time," he finished with a grin.
"Okay," Aidan said, not in the mood to take the opening Eallair left. It was really sinking in that this was his last chance. If Eallair's book didn't work, he'd probably never be able to use magic. "Right."
Eallair stepped close to Aidan and brushed a lock of hair off his cheek. "It'll be fine," he said, smiling. "You can do this."
Aidan smiled back shakily, suddenly almost unbearably nervous. This was it, his absolute last chance. Good thing there isn't too much pressure… "I'll hold you to that."
Eallair kissed his forehead, then walked over and blew out the candle. "Whenever you're ready."
He licked his lip unconsciously as he looked at the notebook and tried not to think about how ridiculous the whole thing seemed. What was he even supposed to write down?
Better question, what am I supposed to write with?
"Um, do you have a pen, or something?" he asked, glancing up at Eallair through a few stray strands of hair.
Eallair's face went blank for a moment, then he laughed softly. "See what I mean? Always plannin’ ahead, you are."
He got a pen from his bag—is there anything that he doesn't have in there?—and gave it to Aidan. With another encouraging smile, he took several steps back, giving him space. The pen was one of those newer ones that didn't need constant refilling. Which was a relief, because he was too anxious to try and deal with inkwells and all that other stuff he'd never really been very good with
.
He bit his lip this time, tapping the blank page in front of him with the tip of the pen as he tried to figure out what to write. Finally, he decided he was just procrastinating, and forced himself to scribble out light the candle. He frowned.
"Does it need to be readable?" he asked, looking dubiously at his terrible handwriting.
Eallair cocked his head thoughtfully. "I…have no idea, actually. No one's ever thought to ask before."
"Great," Aidan muttered under his breath. He looked over his chicken scratches again, crossed it out and rewrote it as neatly as he could. Then frowned again as he crossed that out, wrote it once more and added without burning the hotel down at the end. He nodded, relieved he'd thought of that.
"Okay, what do I do now?" he asked.
"Tear the page out, then read what you wrote and think about it happening," Eallair said. "If it works, it should just happen. If not…" He held up the damned box.
"Right," Aidan grumbled. He shook his head and tried not to think about failing as he tore the page out of the book, wincing as he did it. After so many years of painstakingly putting books together, it felt obscene to damage one. He put the book on the bed next to him and cleared his throat.
"Light the candle without burning the hotel down," he said as clearly and precisely as he could, holding the page out in front of him. The first part was easy; he just pictured the candle flickering to life. When it came to the second bit, he had a brief flash of panic as he wondered how in all the ancient hells he was supposed to picture something not happening, but decided just imagining the hotel staying exactly the same as it was, was probably good enough.
He hoped.
Either way, it was too late, because he could feel the faint stirring of something happening inside his chest. It felt different than when he'd used magic before, more hesitant. There was just enough time for a small rush of hope and excitement to flash through his body like a lightning bolt before the page burned to ash in his hand.
"No!" he cried. In front of him, the candle flickered to life. And then—
Nothing.
Nothing at all. He didn't burst into flames, the table didn't catch fire, the building didn't start to burn down around him. No screams. No heat. No stupid herbs.