The Language of Ghosts

by Heather Fawcett

  The salty wind rustled through the ivy that wreathed the courtyard. Astrae was chugging along at a nice pace toward Greenwash Strait, and hopefully another lost language, which should have felt satisfying, but Noa found that becoming a magician had temporarily driven many of her plots and schemes out of her head. She was filled with fantasies about the wondrous feats she would surely be able to perform soon. She wondered how magicians got anything done.

  A number of Julian’s mages were standing about or sitting on shaded benches. They had all heard about Noa’s new power, of course, and had come to see it for themselves. Noa was glad she had worn the boots, though she did wish they would squish a little more quietly.

  When Julian finally arrived, he was carrying a single book. Noa was unimpressed. She had expected him to come to their first magic lesson with stacks of books, as well as rare magical objects—she didn’t know what kind, but certainly rare ones.

  “What, am I just supposed to read this?” she said when he placed the book in her hands with an elaborate flourish. It was the dictionary from Evert. “That’s not much of a lesson.”

  “You’re going to read it aloud,” Julian said.

  “Oh, well, that’s something I couldn’t have thought of myself.”

  Julian gave her a look. He seemed a little more well-rested, though his eyes were still shadowed. “A part of you already knows every word in this book, but you need to get comfortable with the language. Maita Marchena,” he added, turning, “get out of that fountain. If you ruin another cloak, Petrik will tear out what’s left of his hair.”

  “I don’t see the point of this,” Noa said. She was still tetchy from yesterday. “You don’t want me using my magic to fight Xavier.”

  “There are other uses for magic besides getting rid of traitorous, murdering kings,” Julian said. “We’re going full steam ahead to Greenwash Strait, Noa, but we won’t arrive for a few days. We may as well figure out what you can do.”

  Yes, Noa thought. Let’s figure out how I can get rid of a traitorous, murdering king. “What if the ghosts come again?”

  “They shouldn’t unless you summon them,” Julian said. “That’s how magical languages work—speaking random words in Briar, for example, wouldn’t cause that vine to flower. I have to command the vine to do my will. That’s all spells are—commands, precisely phrased.”

  “I know,” Noa said impatiently. “But the ghosts came before without me summoning them.”

  “Yes. If that happens again, I’m going to anchor you.”

  “Oh, good.” Noa let out a sigh of relief. That was what Julian did when he and Mite practiced magic, to keep her from blowing things up. A mage could anchor another mage, or keep them from losing control of their power, if they had the opposite power.

  “What’s the opposite of death magic?” Noa said.

  “Blood magic.” Julian smiled. “Yet another reason why I knew the Lost Words weren’t a myth. Marrow has no opposite, yet all the other languages do. They aren’t in perfect oppositional harmony—at least, given what I’ve seen so far. But then, a lot of mages make the same point about Salt and Spark, or Worm and—”

  “Uh-huh, right.” Noa wasn’t in the mood for Julian’s tangents, or rather, she was further away from the mood than usual. “So what’s the language of death called, anyway?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You tell me. You’re the only one who can speak it.”

  “Oh!” She got to name a language! She tapped her chin. Most of the magical languages were named for what they reminded people of—Worm, for example, the language of earth and stone, was a moist, slippery, undulating language. Briar, the language of plants, sounded sharp and unpleasant. She remembered the words slithering across the page of the book, and how they had chilled her.

  “Shiver,” she said quietly.

  Julian accepted this with a nod. “All right. Let’s hear a few words.”

  Noa hesitated, then opened the book. As before, she understood at once that she was looking at a dictionary, that the strange symbols on the page were arranged into lists of words. An odd sense of calm washed over her, and she no longer felt afraid.

  “Flower,” she read. “Flicker. Florean Archipelago. These are just normal words! There’s nothing magical about them. This really is just a dictionary.”

  She looked up and found Julian’s blue eyes narrowed in a wince. Mite, who sat dripping in the leafy shade, had her hands over her ears. “I don’t like that,” she said with finality.

  Noa blinked. “Was I speaking Shiver?”

  “Yes, you were.” Julian seemed to make an effort to relax his face.

  “What did it sound like?”

  “Awful,” Mite said.

  “I don’t really know how to describe it,” Julian said, after a moment. “Sort of . . . dry. And crunchy. Like walking on dead leaves.”

  “Leaves don’t sound like that,” Mite muttered.

  “It’s normal to slip into a magical language without realizing it,” Julian said. “At least at first.”

  Noa nodded. After all, some of her earliest memories were of gazing out from her crib at a dark-haired boy babbling nonsensically at her.

  “I find that thinking about the element can help,” Julian said. “When I say something in Spark, I picture fire. Try picturing the ghosts, or something else you saw in Death.”

  Noa would rather not picture the things that had dragged her from the castle. She tried thinking of the otter, and imagined she was speaking to it. She waved her hands about as she had sometimes seen Julian do. “I command you to leave me alone!”

  She knew she had spoken in Shiver, now that she was paying attention. But she was also aware that something was off. It was like trying to speak a foreign language—her mouth couldn’t form all the words properly, and she had to guess how some things sounded.

  “Good,” Julian said. “What did you say?”

  Noa told him, and he nodded. “As you already know, or I hope you know, whether a spell is successful or not depends on a mage’s fluency in the language they’re using. All mages are born able to speak at least one language of magic, but that isn’t the same as speaking fluently. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Noa said slowly, for she had always been a little fuzzy on that point. “But I don’t understand why some mages are more fluent than others.”

  “No one does,” Julian said. “Some people are just born with a talent for magic, I suppose in the same way that certain people are born with a gift for music or speaking. However, even if you aren’t naturally gifted, you can improve with practice, just as a poor orator can. Take Asha, for example. She’s one of the most powerful light mages in Florean, but when she was a child, she could barely speak Hum. She had to work hard at it.”

  “She’s still not as good as you,” Noa said. She wasn’t trying to flatter him; it was just a fact.

  He shrugged. “Like I said, no one knows exactly how it works. But you shouldn’t be discouraged if it takes a while before you can cast effective spells in Shiver.”

  “What kind of spells? Can I kill people? Or summon the ghosts of the ancient mages?” She asked the question that had haunted her since she found out about her magic. “Could I . . . could I talk to Mom?”

  Julian’s face softened. “I don’t know.”

  Noa was frustrated. Julian was supposed to know everything about magic. “Why not?”

  “The records relating to Shiver—or whatever it was called in ancient times—were destroyed. It’s anyone’s guess what your powers entail. We’ll have to work it out as we go. One thing we do know is that you can cross great distances quickly in Death. When I looked for you that night, the blood spell told me that you were somewhere in the Ferral Sea.”

  Noa’s jaw dropped. “That’s hundreds of miles away!”

  “Yes. It makes sense, though—in the stories, ghosts pop up wherever they feel like it.”

  Noa liked this. It was a little like having a magical doorway that could t
ake her anywhere in the thirteen seas. “What about the shadows? Is every shadow a doorway to Death? Or out of Death?”

  “I suspect so,” Julian said. “I guess they’re all connected somehow, even if Death is more compact than the living world.”

  This was convenient, if creepy. So Noa could use any shadow to get into Death, if she wanted. “So what are we going to do?”

  Julian scanned the courtyard. He motioned to a passion flower vine dangling from a trellis. “Let’s try to answer your first question.”

  Nervously, Noa approached the vine. “You want me to kill it?”

  “Start smaller. Try just one flower.”

  Noa focused on a large bloom at eye level. It was a rich orange with delicate yellow stamen. It was hard to think about the flower and the otter at the same time. She ended up picturing an orange otter. “Ah, all right,” she stammered in Shiver. “Die. Please?”

  The flower did nothing. A bee alighted among the petals and dug around hungrily. Noa considered trying to kill the bee, but she knew Mite was watching.

  “No, no,” Julian said. “You’re asking a question. You have to tell it what you want it to do. Here.” He let out a stream of words in Briar that snagged at Noa’s ears like thorns. The vine sprouted dozens of new flowers and coiled along the stones.

  “What did you say?” Noa demanded. “That was more than just one command.”

  “I told the vine to grow. But I also told it how—where to point its leaves to gather the most sun, which stones to grasp hold of. Plants often need instructions.”

  Noa thought this over. She looked back at the flower. She told it to stop taking water from the vine, to brown and wither and go to sleep. She tried saying it a dozen different ways, but still the flower was unchanged. The bee fluttered around her head, as if in mockery.

  “The words don’t feel right,” she said, frustrated. “It’s like trying to speak backward or something.”

  “Come here.” Julian led her over to the fountain. He showed her several Salt spells, ordering the water to churn, to freeze, to slosh over the side in waves. He even made a wave form itself into an eerie, lurching figure with foam for hair.

  “I invented that one,” he said, after the water creature dissolved. “Mages used to think you couldn’t use Salt to make the sea take on unnatural shapes, but I found that if you command it to assume a state between water and ice—which requires fluency to keep it there—you can then shape it into whatever form you wish.”

  Noa was still staring at the place where the figure had disappeared. “How did you work that out?”

  “Patience. That’s the only way to master your powers.”

  That only made Noa more frustrated, though she wasn’t sure if she was annoyed with herself or with Julian. It felt worse to fail at magic when he stood there making success look so easy.

  “Make a dolphin, Julian!” Mite said, leaning over the fountain. She let out a cry of delight when Julian slashed his hand out dramatically, rings flashing, and summoned a watery dolphin. It sailed over their heads and shattered against the courtyard.

  Noa’s gaze was drawn to a weed poking up between the flagstones, where there was now a dolphin-shaped puddle of water. The weed was brown and clearly dead. She knelt beside it.

  “Could you—” She stopped. No asking questions, Julian had said. “Drink the water,” she said. “Open your leaves to the sunlight. Live again.”

  She knew that it was impossible, and indeed, the weed did nothing. But she felt, somehow, that something was listening to her. Not the weed, exactly. But something.

  “All right,” she said, “how about you move this leaf here? Just a little bit.”

  The leaf twitched.

  Noa leaped back, her heart pounding. “Did you see that?”

  “Yes, good!” Julian knelt beside her. “Try it again, my Noabell.”

  She did. The dead plant didn’t always move when she asked it to—it seemed to depend on how she pronounced the words in Shiver, and the words weren’t easy to pronounce. It felt a little like trying to roll shards of ice around in her mouth while singing in perfect tune.

  Julian made her practice over and over again until she had made every brown leaf move. Noa’s head began to pound, but she forced herself to focus. Next, Julian brought out one of the fish Anna was planning to cook for supper, still alive and swimming in a bowl. She had just as much success with that as she had with the flower. She thought the fish looked even more energetic than before.

  “Interesting,” Julian said. The sun was overhead now, filling the courtyard with sunlight. Most of the mages had left, having realized that Noa wasn’t going to open a gaping portal into the Beyond or summon an army of ghosts, or anything else entertaining. A bead of sweat kept trickling into Noa’s eyes. She was beyond regretting her boots; she wanted to throw them into the sea, then herself after them.

  “Perhaps death magic doesn’t give one the power to kill,” Julian went on in a musing voice. He was looking past her, his thoughts somewhere else. “If so, it may not be in opposition to blood magic at all. I’ll have to do more research. . . .”

  “I’ll help,” Noa said, standing up. She welcomed the idea of spending time in the cool library. “It’s my magic, after all.”

  “Your Highness,” Renne said, appearing from one of the castle doors. “The scouts’ reports are ready.”

  Julian nodded. He turned back to Noa, but his attention seemed far away. “Thank you, but it will be quicker if I work alone.”

  “But—”

  “We’ll continue your lessons tomorrow,” he said, following Renne. When Mite made to go, too, he said, “Not now, Maita. Stay with your sister. I’ll see you at supper.” Mite’s face fell, and he winked and murmured something to the fountain. A cloud of droplets rose into the air, humming like bees. Mite squealed and set to chasing them around the courtyard.

  Noa stared at Julian’s retreating back, a flush rising in her cheeks. For a moment, she wondered if he was disappointed in her for not being better at Shiver, and felt an awful, prickly shame rise inside her. But no, it wasn’t that. As usual, Julian just wasn’t thinking about her.

  Noa didn’t understand. She had always wanted to be a magician, even before Xavier, before Astrae. Now that she was one, why wasn’t she happy?

  She turned and fled the courtyard.

  15

  Tomas’s Biggest Fan Strikes Again

  Noa rose before the sun. She dressed quickly in the darkness, then slipped out of the castle through an unguarded back corridor, pausing only to grab a cake (caramel apple) and a piece of dried fish.

  Julian thought they were going to have another lesson that morning. But Noa had no intention of being there. When Julian came looking for her, she would be far, far away. Her lesson yesterday had given her an idea, one that Julian wouldn’t like one bit.

  Tomas was waiting for her by the cove where they’d met Beauty, just as he’d promised when she went to see him yesterday. He had the wagon again, covered with a blanket. When he saw Noa, he started.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Noa said with a snort.

  “Have I?” Tomas’s gaze darted left and right. “Have you brought one with you?”

  “Why would I bring a ghost? They’re not dogs.”

  Tomas rubbed his face. He gave her a look that Noa recognized—it was how he looked at Julian.

  “What, are you afraid of me now?” Noa asked, pleased.

  “Well, yes,” Tomas said. “People in the village are saying you can summon ghosts just by whistling, and kill a man by tossing your hair over your shoulder.”

  Noa liked the sound of that, but she shook her head. “So far, I only know how to get attacked by ghosts and make weeds jiggle.” She added, “You don’t have to tell anyone that.”

  Tomas sighed. He drew back the blanket, revealing another huge cake, lemon-lime again. “I hope I don’t have to tell you how difficult it is to keep my father from guessing who these cakes are
for. I’ve tried saying they’re for the king’s dragon, but—” The rest of the sentence was overtaken by a scream as Beauty lunged from the water and snatched up the cake, nearly taking Tomas’s arm with it.

  Noa marched up to the water’s edge. “Beauty! You have to stop doing that.”

  The sound of gnashing teeth and a horrible snort was her only reply.

  “I have another question,” Noa said.

  “Mmm. I’m all ears, dear,” replied the serpent’s voice from the darkness. Noa could barely make out her enormous silhouette against the predawn sky. “You’ve earned it. Or, rather, your talented friend has. He outdid himself this time.”

  Tomas was blushing. Before they could get into baking techniques, Noa said, “I want to know about death mages. Tell me how they moved through the Beyond.”

  “Do I look like a mage?” Beauty spoke around the mouthful of cake, though she covered her mouth politely with her tail. “That’s a question for dear Julian.”

  “No,” Noa said. “All the books about death mages were destroyed. Nobody knows what their powers are, or how they use them. But you said you were alive when Evert was turned inside out. That means you were alive when there were still death mages. And I’m willing to bet you know a thing or two about their powers, given how much you love spying on people.”

  Beauty let out a low chuckle and crooned, “Clever, clever little Marchena.”

  “Well?”

  “Perhaps I do know something about death magic. Perhaps I know about other magics, too, lost magics that dear Julian couldn’t even imagine. . . .”

  Noa’s interest was piqued. “Like what?”

  Beauty blinked slowly. “Is that another question? I don’t see another cake. . . .”

  Noa gritted her teeth. “Let’s just stick to death magic, then.”

  “I don’t know how the mages moved through Death,” Beauty said. “I know only that they used guides.”