The Warped Forest

by Thomas Carpenter

  Similar items could be accomplished. When Alex managed to apply the stiffness of a metal fork into a plastic spork left over from a fast food restaurant, she cried tears of joy. The original fork disintegrated into a slag of goo, but the new spork had the strength of the metal one but still looked plastic.

  Before long, she'd burned through the kitchen, stripping the utensils and cooking pots of their qualities, producing a drinking glass that didn't break when she dropped it, a rolling pin that weighed as much as a barbell, and a spoon so slick she couldn't hold onto it, among other things.

  Next, Alex went outside, tackling the living world with her Transference spell, reassigning the purple from the Frank's lilac bushes to a patch of grass, or taking the faint licorice smell of goldenrod and applying it to a mouse she caught in a Dewdrop Orb.

  When her mother was asleep, which was most of the time, Alex practiced viewing her aura with the spell, trying to understand the nature of the human body. She would have used herself but using a mirror was confusing.

  Alex took note of the nodes on the surface, sketching them in her notebook. When she could, she verified that her body contained the same nodes, though they were sometimes in slightly different areas. She began to understand that the mystical chakras and other bodily forces were just the major nodes associated with the body.

  After her long study, she realized that taking properties from one person and applying them to another would be nearly impossible due to the complexities of the "nets" and number of nodes.

  She delved into the mathematics of topographical transference to help her understand, studying every paper she could find on the internet. It gave her a wider range of transference as the mathematical tools provided shortcuts in certain situations. But it wasn't until the end of April neared that Alex had her big breakthrough.

  She was studying her mother again, notebook and pencil in hand, sketching the faint nodes near her shoulder. Alex let faez soak into the skin. As the raw magic sunk through the flesh, bits of it collected around the collarbone, revealing a node. She kept going, adding more faez, hoping to learn more about that node, but then a second node appeared deeper inside her mother's shoulder.

  This was new for Alex. She'd only been studying the surface nodes and hadn't thought that more existed beneath, but it made sense, considering the human body was a three-dimensional bag of flesh and bones.

  Staring at her mother, whose face was sunken, her mouth open slightly, a little "O," while her eyes fluttered with the vibrations of dreams, Alex started the spell again. She poured faez into her mother's head, letting the raw magic sink deeper than before.

  As the spell worked, the first nodes appeared—six majors on the face alone—but that wasn't what she wanted to see. Despite a background level of exhaustion, Alex kept pouring in faez, desperate to see inside.

  The skull seemed to resist her intrusion at first, but when she remained persistent, it revealed the truths hidden beneath. When she saw the outline of the tumor, Alex almost ended the spell.

  It was the size of a baby's fist, settled against the back of the skull. It was larger than she’d expected, but also smaller, in the idea that something so innocuous could kill her mother.

  Seeing it made her dizzy, but she refocused, not wanting to lose her progress. She let faez trickle into the tumor, hoping that wouldn't hasten its growth in any way. As the first nodes appeared, Alex squeezed her lips tight.

  Healthy growing things had an orderly existence, nodes that seemed logical in their placement. But the tumor was a malignant twisted thing, a warping of nature, with nodes scattered across it haphazardly. Only when she expanded her sight to the brain matter around it did she see how it had burrowed its way into her mother's brain like a parasite.

  The only thing that gave her any relief was that the tumor was a singular mass of cells. It hadn't metastasized yet, spreading to other areas of the body, or she would have seen faint lines leading south. Maybe it never would, because its existence alone was enough to kill her mother.

  With a shaking hand, Alex spent the next hour sketching the tumor in its misshapen glory, including the surrounding brain matter and how it was connected.

  When she was finished, her forehead was covered in sweat. Alex gently set the notebook down and wandered outside in the cool evening with her hands on her head. As soon as she'd seen the nodes on the tumor, a plan had formed in her head. Confirming the connections had only proved that what she wanted to do was possible. There would be some planning, some mathematical sleight of hand, but it was possible. She knew she could do it.

  Alex was going to save her mother.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The first thing she did the next day was call Golden Willow in Invictus and schedule an appointment for herself. Alex wasn't sure how she'd feel once she'd completed the procedure. She wanted to make sure everything was planned out to the last detail.

  The call was one of the strangest she'd ever made in her short life.

  "No, Dr. Fairlight, I do not have any medical records about my tumor. It's, uhm, a rather new development, but I assure you this is not a prank call and I am a student at the Hundred Halls, you can check with Gamemakers," she explained.

  After a long silence, the woman's voice came back. "If this is not a prank, and you really are who you say you are, then we will see you when you arrive. There's really no need to make an appointment. We're here to serve, and if you truly have a tumor of that size in your head, we can take care of it."

  "Thank you, Dr. Fairlight," said Alex. "I'll see you in a few days.

  After she hung up, Alex went through the laborious process of examining herself with the spell. She had to understand the nodes inside her own brain so she could transfer the tumor without causing damage to either herself or her mother.

  She knew it was a risky procedure. There were a million ways it could go wrong, but there was no way she was going to let her mother die without trying.

  Once she had mapped her brain, Alex spent the next two days working out the math. The tumor had disturbed the shape of her mother's brain, requiring some stretching to make them fit, but once Alex had triple-checked her calculations, she was sure she could accomplish it.

  A few times, Alex thought about trying to find someone else who would take it, but she couldn't convince herself that was the right course of action for two reasons. The first was that it would be completely unethical and the second was that she'd seen enough differences between her and her mother to guess that a non-family member would be even more difficult. She was barely convinced she could pull it off as it was, let alone if there were more complications with the node transfer.

  On the day of the procedure, Alex splurged, eating a full meal of bacon, hash browns, a cup of ramen, an orange, and a dessert of two chocolate squares.

  "You must be hungry, dear," said her mother from the couch, her eyes like thin slits, ringed with angry red lines. "I'm glad you're eating for the two of us."

  "You'll be eating soon enough, Mom," said Alex.

  "That's nice, dear."

  Alex gave her mom an extra dose of painkillers so she would sleep through the procedure. She didn't want her moving and screwing up the transfer. The whole thing was going to take at least four hours by her calculations, which would tax her stamina for faez generation.

  In a perfect world, she would have spent the next few weeks practicing, but Alex suspected her mother was running out of time. It was now or never.

  Alex set up a mirror next to the couch, holding it in place with duct tape and broom handles, while she placed her notebook with diagrams on the nodes she would have to transfer against the wall.

  She started with her mother, slowly feeding the faez into her skull until she could see the tumor. Alex took extra time, making sure the tumor hadn't shifted since her last viewing. Once she established the nodes were the same, she kept a light amount of faez on her mother, while shifting her focus to herself.

  This part took much
longer because she had to keep her mother's tumor in sight while working on her own brain. It would be much easier to work on someone other than herself, but she was the only option her mother had.

  After two painstaking hours, Alex had fully immersed both brains and the tumor in the requisite faez. Her knees trembled with the exhaustion of focus, but she was only halfway done.

  Alex risked reaching over to grab a cup and wet her lips with water, fearing a full drink would upset the precarious balance of her vision.

  Next, she started the process of connecting the nodes. The prework made this part go smoothly, despite the strain of maintaining. Once she had set the scaffolding, Alex coaxed the tumor away from her mother's brain. She wasn't really moving it, but the nodes had to be unanchored before they could transfer.

  Despite wanting to be finished, Alex took her time so she didn't cause damage. It felt like trying to tease a soap bubble away from a thorn without popping it.

  When sweat rolled into her right eye, stinging it with salt, Alex had no choice but to ignore it.

  Once she had the many nodes unhooked from her mother's brain, Alex prepared herself to finish the spell. Once she did, she didn't know what was going to happen.

  A glance to the kitchen clock revealed she was five and a half hours into the procedure. As her eyes fell back upon her mother, she realized the pain pills were wearing off, and she was beginning to stir. Too much movement would change the shape of her thoughts, upsetting the nodes, and break the spell.

  She needed another few minutes to finalize the transfer, but she was out of time. Alex refocused her energy because the final part of the spell was going to need more faez than she thought she had to give.

  The strain was like pulling a compound bow back with only one finger. The string bit into her flesh, and she found herself moaning aloud in the final efforts.

  Alex had a vague awareness that her mother's eyes were fluttering open, so she made the final push. When the tumor shifted, it felt like the moon had crashed into the earth. Alex's head snapped backwards, and her vision went black.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Alex woke to a brutal headache and an unfamiliar view. She was lying on the couch, looking up at the water-stained ceiling.

  She heard noises in the kitchen, and after straining to lift her neck, found that her mother was there, placing noodles into a steaming pot.

  "Alexandria, sweetie, you're awake," said her mother.

  Alex groaned as she sat up, holding her hand to her temples to ward away the migraine.

  "Awake, but wishing I wasn't," said Alex, squinting. "How are you feeling?"

  Her mother paused as she leaned against the counter for support. "Like I ran a hundred consecutive marathons without stopping and now I finally get to eat."

  "What about your head?"

  Her mother placed her hand on top of her head. The hair had grown thin and stringy.

  "Better, but I don't know how." She squinted at Alex. "Did you do something while I slept? Is that what the mirror and the notebook full of strange diagrams meant?"

  "It was," said Alex. "I might have removed your tumor, but you're going to have to get it checked out at the hospital when you're feeling better."

  "Removed the tumor? I don't understand."

  "Don't worry about the details, Mom. But it was something I learned at the Halls," said Alex.

  "But where is it? The tumor?" asked her mother, glancing around as if she expected to see it on the counter.

  Alex had no intention of telling her mom where the tumor was if she could help it.

  "Gone, and that's all that matters," said Alex.

  Her mother made her way to the couch, using the furniture to keep steady. She sat by Alex, stroking her hand as she looked her in the eyes.

  "I don't know how you did what you did. It feels like a miracle to me, but I think it shows that you deserve to be at that school. Whatever happened to make you leave, you forget about it. Go back, take up where you stopped. If you can do that, if you can fix me, then you can do anything."

  Her mother's eyes glistened.

  "Don't worry, Mom," she said. "I'm headed back to school as soon as I feel better."

  A relieved smile broke across her mother's face. "Oh good."

  She searched her face for a moment before glancing back to the kitchen.

  "God, I'm hungry."

  "Go eat, Mom," said Alex. "I need to pack."

  Alex stumbled into her room and started throwing her stuff in her backpack, including her notebook of spell notes. She felt bad that she was withholding information from her mother: that the tumor resided in her head and that she was only going back to school to have it removed. If she could have continued in Gamemakers Online, she would have, but there was no way to gain twenty levels in the final month before the end of the year.

  That night, her mother ate three plates of pasta and drank the rest of the orange juice. By the time she was heading to bed, the red rings around her eyes had disappeared and she was able to walk without trembling.

  The morning of the next day, after hugging her mom for what seemed like twenty minutes, she hiked to the bus stop because Frank was at work. The initial headache from the tumor transfer was gone, but she felt like there was a pressure behind her eyes that wasn't there before.

  When she arrived at Golden Willow, Dr. Fairlight seemed surprised to meet her. The doctor had long blonde hair and kind eyes that reminded her of Frank.

  "If I didn't deal with strange ailments on a regular basis I might have thought you were lying to me, but here you are," said Dr. Fairlight, clutching a clipboard against her chest. "Though for your sake, I wish it was a prank."

  After the scans, both medical and magical, Dr. Fairlight returned with a set of X-rays and her blood test results.

  "I'm sorry I don't have good news for you, but you are correct, you have a brain tumor. Based on the blood work, it hasn't metastasized, but the location is problematic," said Dr. Fairlight.

  "Location?" asked Alex as worry tugged on her heart. "Where's it at?"

  Dr. Fairlight jabbed her finger onto the X-ray where the blob of white rested at the base of her skull. "See this area? That's the part of the brain that helps control the use of magic. Think of it as a muscle for the faez conduit."

  The doctor searched her face, eyes scanning for understanding.

  "And?" asked Alex.

  "The good news is the tumor is removable. But the bad news is that you'll likely never use magic again. Messing with that part of the brain can cause unforeseen complications. We could cut it out, but that pent-up faez would try to go somewhere, resulting in messy events that I'd prefer not to speculate about."

  Alex couldn't breathe. It felt like a rope had been wrapped around her chest and cinched until it was biting into her flesh. It wasn't the result she was expecting.

  "What about treatments? Can it be reduced first and then cut out later when it's not a danger?" she asked.

  The tightness in Dr. Fairlight's face gave Alex the answer. "I'm sorry. That region of the brain is extremely problematic. The existence of faez complicates any treatments. We can try, but it'll take a long time, maybe years to work through it."

  "Years," she said. "But I don't have years. I'm not going to be able to stay in my hall past the school year. I'm not going to pass."

  Dr. Fairlight sucked a breath through her clenched teeth. "I'm sorry, Alexandria. That is bad news. If you're not a student and you don't have health insurance, I'm afraid I can't help you. We could do the procedure and remove the tumor now before your coverage lapses, but that would have to be up to you."

  The air seemed to be sucked out of the room. Alex gripped the counter with her right hand, holding steady. Neither option was remotely palatable. She'd just figured out she could do major magic and now she had to give it up to live?

  "When do I have to start if I'm going to have the tumor cut out? Do I have time to decide?" she asked.

  Dr. Fairlight's lips tu
gged downward. "I'm afraid you have to start right away. We have to take extensive scans of your brain to map the area we have to cut during the surgery. And the recovery won't be easy. We'll have to keep you here for a few weeks afterwards."

  Alex looked out the window at the buildings and trees across the parking lot. It was springtime in the city of sorcery, and the cherry blossoms were in full bloom.

  "I see."

  "Shall I call a nurse to get you started?" asked Dr. Fairlight.

  "No," said Alex, shaking her head. "No thank you. I should go."

  "You should go?" asked the doctor incredulously.

  Alex looked up into Dr. Fairlight's face. The woman's forehead was hunched.

  "I need to pass my classes," said Alex.

  Dr. Fairlight blinked slowly before adding a nod. "I see. Are you sure?"

  "No," said Alex with a laugh. "But I've made my choice. Now I need to carry it through."

  "Good luck," said Dr. Fairlight, not looking like she believed her.

  Alex left the hospital room. "Luck's never had anything to do with it."

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The first person Alex saw after she returned to Gamemakers Hall was Martina, who was sitting in the arcade room reading a book. She set the book into her lap when she saw Alex.

  "Hey, I thought you quit," said Martina.

  "I thought I did too, but here I am." Alex glanced around the room. "Where's Bucket?"

  Martina's shoulders deflated. "I don't know. He was supposed to meet me here a few days ago. He was really close to level eighty a month ago. I'm not sure why he's not out yet."

  "I'm sure he'll be out soon," said Alex.

  Martina touched her chin. "I hope."

  After throwing her gear onto her bed, Alex returned to the room with the giant obsidian cube. She found a comfy spot and took a big breath.

  There was a non-zero chance that the game wouldn't let her in. Either because Professor Marzio had blocked her access after she quit, or that deleveling to zero was considered permanent failure. Of the first, she assumed that Marzio couldn't be bothered to do anything for his students, so it was doubtful he'd blocked her. The second she would learn in a moment.