Stray Magic

by Jenny Schwartz

  Tineke squeezed my arm before she released me. “Remember, you can trust us. There are laws in place. No Faerene should hurt you.” She raised her voice. “No Faerene at the trials should hurt any of you. If they do, tell me.”

  All that achieved was for the last woman in line to dive into the shower. The woman who’d just vacated it scurried past us.

  Tineke’s mouth drooped with disappointment.

  “Trust takes time to build,” I said.

  The cliché wasn’t much, but Tineke brightened. “Yes. Yes, it does.”

  Koos heaved what seemed to be a long-suffering sigh and followed her as she strode away, obviously struck by some new idea.

  Being last to shower, I had time to linger, but the cold water discouraged it. Nonetheless, I took the opportunity to wash my hair before I squeezed as much water from it as I could and braided it wet. I hoped the Faerene had the fire pits going or the evening chill would make me regret it.

  “Scarf.” Melinda met me at the laundry tent where I’d gone to place my dirty clothes. The white linen scarf dangled in mid-air.

  I plucked it thankfully, shook it out, and draped it loosely over my head and shoulders. I immediately felt warmer. “Thank you.”

  She walked with me to the food tent. The fire pits were alight. The flames seemed translucent in the early evening light. Most people had already served themselves. We had an Indian feast, tonight: vegetables and spicy dahls with rice, all to be served on banana leaves laid across wooden boards. The Faerene’s catering was interesting. Some of the food didn’t seem to be made on site. Did they use messengers like the copper dragon Dorotta to transport it or a spell of translocation?

  So far we hadn’t learned much at all about the nature and rules of magic.

  I balanced a cup of chai on a corner of my makeshift plate and walked outside. Eating inside the food tent would be warmer, but the price of it—sitting among a crush of strangers—deterred me. I walked across to a fire pit that had only four people sitting around it. The fact that one of those people was Tutor Marton momentarily slowed my steps, but I didn’t think he’d want to talk with me.

  I placed the board on the ground and sat cross-legged behind it, with the fire between Marton and me. I ate without looking at anyone and certainly without talking. I’d exhausted my capacity for social activity. Eating with my fingers was messy, but oddly satisfying.

  The evening shadows lengthened, becoming moving bars of darkness as people crisscrossed the field. When I’d finished my meal, and drained the last of the chai, its spices leaving my mouth tingling and fresh, I disposed of the banana leaf in the fire, and carried the board and cup back to the food tent.

  After washing my hands, I returned to the field.

  Rory fell into step with me. “I missed your fights. I had my own to supervise. How are you?”

  Had he heard about the stasis spell Lajos had struck Chen and me with? “I’m fine.”

  His arm brushed mine as we walked too closely for strangers. Yet I didn’t draw away.

  The Faerene and their intentions puzzled me. After considering the events of the day, it wouldn’t have surprised me if Lajos’s action had been designed to provoke protectiveness in some of the potential magician partners. Us familiar candidates had to be trained to trust them. Already Melinda’s care of her tutorial group inclined me to like her, and I respected the healers.

  I regretted that when Chen and I had been dismissed from fighting, he’d had the self-control to go and assist the healers by supporting their patients and carrying supplies. I had watched him while I’d run, but despite my desire to be a doctor and to partner with a healer, I hadn’t been able to force myself to copy him. The terror that Lajos had instilled in me by freezing my body hadn’t been easily shed.

  Actually, it still coiled in my stomach.

  Whether Rory had a shred of honesty in the attention he showed me, or if Pericles was right and the werewolf flirted with me as part of his tutorial duties, having his solid presence beside me made me feel safe.

  I hated feeling weak. I hated that Lajos had revealed this cowardice in me. I’d survived most of my life alone even when I was surrounded by people. But now my sense of isolation had an element of nightmare to it.

  “Amy!” Tineke called. She patted the ground beside her, inviting me to sit and join the group at her fire pit.

  I’d been headed for where Winona and the others in my tutorial group clustered.

  Should I retreat to the human group or join the mix of Faerene and humans?

  Rory clasped my hand. “Sit with us.”

  I sat beside Tineke, with Rory close at my other side. Introductions around the circle revealed that the shadowy forms I’d mistaken for human were actually elves, werewolves and a vampire.

  I squeaked. “Vampires are real?”

  “Indeed,” Dries, the vampire, answered. “It is fascinating how many stories humans have of the Faerene even though none of us had previously visited Earth. The details may be wrong, but you were aware of our existence prior to the Rift. Personally, I believe that the angels and demons must have been telling stories.”

  “Angels and demons exist?” I gasped. “You mean, there’s truly a heaven and a hell?”

  Lajos clapped his hands, silencing conversation across the field. Twilight was deepening fast. “The final lesson for today is on the history of familiars.”

  I pushed aside thoughts of angels and demons, heaven and hell. The Faerene’s history of familiars would reveal their attitude toward us and their expectations for our future. History was like that. It reflected the concerns of those who recounted it.

  “Faerene can be as prejudiced as any human society,” Lajos told us.

  My body remembered Magistrate Istvan’s lesson before my conscience mind made the connection. I swayed sideways, leaning into Rory. Werewolves were one group that suffered prejudice.

  I’d always sided with the underdog in life. My parents might have emotionally neglected me, but I’d enjoyed every other advantage of wealth, health and social status. Awareness of the good life I’d had without any effort had inclined me to support others both out of guilt (akin to survivor’s guilt) and a sense of justice. Now, faced with the Faerene, I was experiencing the social stigma of being regarded as lesser for the first time. Expressing solidarity with Rory came naturally.

  He responded by changing his position. His hand went down on the ground at my left hip. He sat at my right. He braced himself there with his shoulder behind mine. If we’d been at a movie theatre, he’d just pulled the classic yawn-and-stretch that placed his arm around me. The move was possessive.

  I turned my head for a second, my chin grazing his shoulder. I felt the rumble that went through him at the slight caress.

  Whether other aspects of his interactions with me were for public display, this was just between the two of us.

  Hyper-aware of Rory, I had to force my concentration back to Lajos’s lecture.

  “Millennia ago, when the Faerene first began to use magic, the emerging magic users of what were then considered the lesser races were bound to the shamans, and then, to the magicians of more powerful groups. Elves, nymphs and unicorns were ranked among the ‘lesser races’. At the same time as the Faerene improved their understanding and use of magic, the ability to employ it spread to all of them. This took many centuries, and is an era remembered through myth and legend rather than contemporary texts.

  “As magic became commonplace, like any skill, only a few chose to specialize in it. Those that did, soon found it more efficient to rely on the magic they channeled themselves, than to bond with a familiar. Faerene society grew more open, accepting and equal, and the role of familiars fell out of favor. It came to be seen as a dispiriting inequality, disrespectful of magic and the talent to use it, and an unnecessary complication in one’s life as a magician. It was shunned.”

  Lajos seemed to be stating that for Faerene, the idea of becoming a familiar had been rejected as akin
to embracing slavery.

  Rory remained relaxed against my shoulder. This was old news to him. However, his lack of tension was interesting. It suggested that he thought I would accept what Lajos was saying.

  What could possibly justify coercing humans to act in a role Faerene rejected for themselves? The coercion was undeniable. If we refused the role of familiar, or even that of familiar candidate, we were executed.

  “However, new circumstances require new attitudes,” Lajos announced. “Here on Earth there are relatively few Faerene and many needs. This is one half of the equation. The other half is the fragility of Earth’s shield and its ecosystems. Frankly, neither can sustain untrained mages spraying magic wildly, as you have been doing. To ensure the security of the shield, the magic channeled by humans must be controlled. Bonding you with a Faerene magician resolves the dangerous question of how to control your magic, and will enable the magician to act with greater power and endurance.

  “Along the way, you will learn about magic. Listen well.” Lajos paused. “Humans, I am not promising that your magician partners will teach you about magic or permit you to wield it yourself. It will likely take several generations before humanity acquires the sophisticated understanding of magic that defines a magician. However, you are the starting point. Just as elves were once dismissed as lesser for our pacifistic tendencies, and yet, I now stand before you, as a representative of all Faerene, so too humanity can invest in its magical maturation. You will plant the seed for future generations.”

  He clapped his hands. “Faerene, as you sit around the campfires, share with our human guests the stories of familiars. The tale of Ludo and Tineke is recommended.”

  Lajos’s lesson had contained less history than I’d expected, and far more emphasis on the nature of our situation as familiar candidates.

  “I guess I should tell the story,” Tineke said. “Since it is of my namesake.”

  The other Faerene would know the story, but none got up to leave. The story was for me, but all of them would listen.

  I wondered if Tineke guessed how little attention I paid to the fantastic tale of the orc and elf’s rescue of a thousand orcan children from slave traders, and how Ludo and Tineke created a mountain chain to foil the fleeing bandits. Surely even the most powerful of magicians couldn’t create a mountain range?

  But I had a more personal question to consider.

  At the beginning of the apocalypse, I’d traded my skills and energy for a place at Stella’s homestead to ride out the troubles. Was trading a magic I had no idea how to control for a position of unique if not respected status in Faerene society so different?

  But then, if I was trading, I needed to optimize what I gained. After all, I would prefer to stay in human society, safe at home in Apfall Hill with my family, so if I was going to give that up in sacrifice for the future that Lajos spoke of with such political beguilement, I should guilt my assigned magician partner into providing me with satisfactory compensation.

  And I’d completely ignore the fact that I would be bargaining from a position of absolute weakness. It was bond as a familiar or die. However, some Faerene, like Tineke, seemed unhappy with how humans were being treated. My actions would depend on who I was partnered with.

  The story of Ludo and Tineke ended.

  Before another story of familiars could begin, Rory spoke. “Amy, tell us about your life for the last few months.”

  The Faerene around the fire pit, who’d been moving restlessly, settled back.

  “All right,” I said uncertainly, and then, with more decision. “Yes.” If I wanted the Faerene’s sympathy, I had to win it. “Let me tell you how I survived the apocalypse, about my new family, and the town we saved.” I sought for where to begin, and it was obvious. It began with the camp for sick kids, Patti, and her introduction of me to Stella. “It all began with pee-soaked sheets.”

  Chapter 10

  In the shadows, Istvan listened to Amy’s story of survival. He was trained and experienced in sorting truth from fiction, and prior to the Migration he’d studied humans extensively in preparation for delivering justice for them as well as for the Faerene in his territory. The translation spell on the trials meant that he understood her despite the strange English language she spoke. Now, there was an idiosyncratic language.

  She spoke the truth. Her stories about the people she’d adopted as family reminded him of werewolves adoption of a pack. She barely mentioned her parents, but her pain from their neglect and from her current lack of knowledge of whether they still lived deepened her voice when she spoke of them.

  Her voice quickened with enthusiasm and warmed with love when she described her new family and their activities. That she missed them was obvious. Equally clear was her belief that they’d be missing her. She’d found, no, she’d built, a home. As a Faerene who’d joined the Migration, Istvan understood the value of what she’d lost.

  Depending on who took this human as a familiar, she might never see her family, again.

  By the way Rory edged closer and closer to her until he’d all but wound himself around her like a boa constrictor, he worried about what her loss of family, of pack, would mean to her; the damage it might do.

  Had the Fae Council considered the specific trauma of dislocation the familiar candidates would suffer? Some likely had no home or place where they belonged and a pairing with a Faerene magician might actually bring them relief and security. However, for self-motivated and community-minded survivors like Amy, the separation from their old lives was a new cruelty.

  By the time Amy finished her story, she sat between Rory’s legs, his arms around her and a log he’d magicked into place at his back. The other fire pits had been abandoned, the flames dying away. The humans there had retreated after a single retelling of a familiar tale, and sought sleep and oblivion in their tents.

  Istvan suspected that Amy was acute enough to realize that more Faerene than were visibly gathered at her fire pit listened to her story.

  “Dorotta, a messenger dragon, collected me from the middle of the harvest festival and here I am.” At the point of successful survival and celebration, she’d been snatched away.

  No one could miss her message.

  “Do you have a preference for who you’d like to bond with, what type of magician?” Marton asked. Even the haughty griffin had been entranced by her storytelling.

  “I don’t know what sort of magicians there are.” Abruptly, she appeared to become aware that Rory had wrapped himself around her. She turned her head to stare at him, her stiff posture indicating shock and uncertainty.

  He rubbed his temple against hers.

  Strangely, the nuzzling gesture of a werewolf comforting a packmate worked on the human woman. She relaxed back against him.

  Koos watched them from across the fire pit.

  For all his earlier flirting, tonight Rory hadn’t treated Amy as he would a woman he intended to seduce. No, it was potentially more worrying than that. Rory acted as if he was preparing to adopt her into his pack.

  He didn’t have a pack.

  As his commanding officer at the Rift, Istvan had gotten to know the man. Istvan respected Rory as a magician, soldier and honorable individual. He’d expected that once the shield was restored, Rory would roam a short while before selecting one of the existing packs and applying for membership. None of them would reject him.

  But now, Rory acted as if he might start his own pack; one which included humans.

  When the Fae Council had assigned Rory to act as a tutor, had they ever imagined this outcome? Admittedly, Amy wasn’t one of Rory’s assigned students, but this was still disruptive. How could a human balance the pressures of a new familiar bond and a pack bond?

  The short answer was that she couldn’t.

  Koos looked worried for a reason.

  In pursuing Amy as a potential pack member, Rory did her no favors. She hadn’t protested his physical proximity, which meant she trusted him.

&nb
sp; “Demon dung,” Istvan cursed beneath his breath.

  Rory was staking his claim to the “trusted Faerene” position that Amy’s future magician partner needed to occupy in her life.

  Istvan raised a paw, claws extended, and scratched his chest. Perhaps, if Amy was matched with Koos, Rory could join Koos’s pack and the potential problem of strained loyalties would resolve itself? Rory would be a valuable addition to any pack. His performance as a Rift magician had proven his power magically and his military experience on Elysium fitted him for a number of protective roles.

  At Istvan’s soft curse, Rory glanced in his direction.

  The acuteness of the werewolf’s hearing astonished Istvan. It intrigued him, too. For all his seeming focus on the human woman, to hear Istvan’s barely-breathed curse at that distance meant that Rory maintained at least one active defensive spell.

  “Enough for tonight,” Koos said. “Rory, we should shift and hunt as wolves.”

  It was a statement starkly formed to remind the human among them of how different and predatory werewolves were.

  If it scared Amy, she didn’t show it. Then, again, her story of survival had revealed her courage. She accepted Rory’s help in rising, said a general “goodnight”, and walked with Tineke in the direction of the sleep tents.

  The Faerene, or those of them who sheltered inside tents, slept separately to the humans. Tineke walked with Amy to the second of the human women’s tents, the two females talking privately, before Tineke left her there.

  When Amy ducked inside, Rory turned to Koos. “Let’s hunt.”

  Chapter 11

  Tineke linked her arm with mine and strolled toward the sleep tents. All the other humans appeared to have retired for the night. Only I’d remained outside with the Faerene.

  “Thank you for sharing your story with us,” Tineke said. “We’ve been so busy that we haven’t been able to interact in a meaningful sense with individual humans or track your lives. You should know that I serve on the Reclamation Team. We are the magicians returning your technologies to the earth.”