by Paula Guran
“Just say what you’re looking for and the spheres will show you images from our collection.”
“Familiars,” he snapped.
Willa’s eyes grew wide. No wonder he was distressed and struggling with his magic. He’d probably lost his familiar!
“Did you lose yours, too?” she asked.
The young man looked mortified now, his face pinching, mouth twisting into a grimace, eyes smashed closed.
Finally, he nodded and glanced at the shelves and the tomes, still looking for something. Why didn’t he just tell her what he needed? She couldn’t help him if he wouldn’t talk to her.
“I lost my familiar, too, so I know how you feel,” she said, touching his sleeve. He didn’t pull away. “I’m here to help though. Just tell me what you’re researching and I’ll point you to the appropriate resources.”
He stared at her in silence, a battle warring behind his eyes.
“I’m Willa,” she said, extending her hand.
He pursed his lips. “Brant,” he replied, his voice clipped. He smiled at her now.
“You’re from House Trenerry, aren’t you?” she said as she approached the glass spheres. “I recognize the staff.”
He nodded.
“There are volumes written on familiars, Brant,” she said, returning his smile. “Our new online system should help narrow down our choices.”
She chanted a Calefaction spell, a force that controlled heat and light, and focused it on the books.
Across the room, two massive tomes floated off the shelves, scattering dust and sparks as they moved toward her. They hung in the air to her right. One had glowing orange runes on the cover and the other had blurry images rushing across its face.
“Here are two volumes on the subject,” she said. “They haven’t been digitized yet.” She smiled, pointing to three small runes that sparkled red on the spine. “But I’ve barcoded them so the new system can find and retrieve them.”
“That’s n-n-nice,” said Brant. Embarrassment flushed his face and he turned away, gripping his staff.
“What’s wrong, Brant?”
He pitched the staff at the leather couch. It bounced off and hung in the air for a moment. Then it clattered against the marble floor.
“It’s m-my f-fault!” His face burned with shame. “The f-f-familiars.” He squeezed his eyes closed, balling his hands into fists. “I—I bungled the spell. I would have . . . been a full-fledged House Trenerry wizard. But that w-won’t happen n-now.”
Willa winced at his comments, feeling terrible for him. Tonight was the poor man’s birthday! All wizards received their full power on their twenty-first birthday, but something had gone wrong for him. She laid a hand against his arm.
“Tonight was your twenty-first birthday, wasn’t it?” she asked. “You were summoning your power, weren’t you?”
He nodded, gritting his teeth. “I didn’t u-update the spell. My fault.” He let out a frustrated growl.
“Is that what happened?” Willa asked, turning him around to face her. “You crafted your spell using the original House spell?”
He cringed, nodding again.
“Do you have your family’s grimoire with you?” she asked. “The one containing both spells?” She needed to see the whole text, including the spell he’d crafted.
“Y-yes,” he answered in a quiet voice as he lifted the heavy tome out of his satchel.
The cover had a frosty sheen, inlaid with aquamarines and polished silver. It sparkled as he handed it to Willa who cradled the book in her arms.
She took his hand, flushing at the touch of his fingers against hers as she led him to the summoning spheres.
“I’ll digitize the contents,” said Willa. “Then we’ll compare it to all known spells dealing with familiars.”
She laid the book on a nearby table and summoned a crystal sphere. She pressed her fingers against its smooth surface, reciting a Calefaction spell that lit Brant’s grimoire. The spell illuminated every page, every pen stroke, every indentation as the sphere shifted colors and hummed with energy. Words and symbols burned images into the air as they traveled out of the book and into the sphere, turning and spinning.
Heat from the symbols and the Calefaction spell warmed Brant’s face. He looked panicked now, as if he were reliving their casting and Willa couldn’t help but feel badly for him.
“Once we get the spells captured, I’ll compare them to the familiars spell.” She smiled at him. “Don’t worry, Brant. We can fix this.”
“Hope . . . you’re right.”
It took several long, painful minutes before the sphere finished and went dark. Only then did Willa approach it.
“Locate all spells dealing with familiars,” she said to the sphere.
Images and symbols flashed over the sphere’s misty surface, whispers hissing as the runic signs glowed in the air. Willa walked among them, studying the information. Brant joined her, his shoulder touching hers now. He smelled of spring rain and a clean, woodsy scent that clouded her brain for a moment as she leaned closer to him.
Willa pointed at a cluster of pulsating runes.
“Do you remember this part of your spell, Brant?” She smiled. “It’s beautifully crafted. Such a nice balance of Camber and Compulsion that builds with power into the Calefaction summons at the end.”
“Yes,” he replied, his face flushed. “It was-was tough . . . to cr-cr-craft.”
Willa lifted a grouping of blue runes from the sphere. They floated in the air to her left, four double-spaced lines. She recited another spell as she reached into the sphere, teasing out a group of gold symbols. Four rows of double-spaced, gold runes hung at her right shoulder. She glanced left to right, reading each symbol, comparing one against the other.
“There it is,” she said in a quiet voice.
Brant moved toward the symbols, studying them in silence.
“The blue symbols are part of the original Trenerry spell you spoke tonight,” she said and motioned to her right. “The gold symbols are the spell you crafted.”
Brant reached out and gathered the gold symbols in his palm. He dragged them over to the blue symbols and dropped them on top. Together, they compared the overlap of every symbol, the curve and brilliance of each one, blue against gold.
“Look for missteps,” she said in a soft voice.
Brant nodded. “Right, anything that might have changed the spell’s outcome or ruined the incantation somehow.”
Brant’s voice filled the room as Willa’s spell called back the echo of his cast spell. The words floated through the world forever and she could call them back like a little capsule of time. She watched Brant wince at the sound of his own voice.
“My parents always w-worried about m-me,” said Brant, bowing his head. “Guess they—they always knew I’d amount t-t-to n-nothing. That I’d n-n-never capture the energies of H-House Trenerry.”
Willa’s heart broke at his despair. She slid her arm around his shoulders. “Don’t you talk like that, Brant! They believe in you and so do I. You will become a full wizard tonight. I just know it!”
At last, his face brightened. “Hope you’re r-right, Willa.” He paused a moment. “I s-stuttered as a kid, but now, only b-beautiful women make me s-s-stutter.”
She couldn’t hold back her smile as she watched him concentrate on the symbols again, studying the agreements in the magic. Looking for the green tint wherever the blue and gold symbols matched.
They stood in silence for a long time, studying the symbols, but finally, Brant cried out and pointed at three, tiny symbols that didn’t match.
“Here . . . they are! Three symbols that broke the familiars’ bonds,” he said, pointing. He winced. “I used an old h-homonym from my grimoire.”
“It strictly meant a wizard’s talisman once.”
Willa nodded. “Yes, you’re right! That symbol’s become slang for familiars. Any wizard might have used that symbol to mean staff, Brant.”
“Th
at damned cat’s gonna gloat for weeks over my mistake.”
Willa captured the three symbols, scattering the rest into a shower of sparks that dissolved in a puff of smoke.
“Show counter signs to this magical break,” she said into the sphere. “Then show us the spell to re-forge our familiars’ bonds.”
“And focus only on the staff,” Brant added.
Vivid purple letters appeared beside three gold symbols. Brant read through the line of purple symbols and then studied the three gold signs.
“That’s the fix then,” he said, his hands shaking. “I’ll uh—recast with those symbols. But without my familiar, it won’t work.” He sighed in exasperation and kicked the leather couch.
Willa grabbed his arm as she turned toward the sphere. He didn’t understand that he controlled the power he was summoning, not his familiar. Familiars were there for focus and tempering, nothing more.
She laid a crisp piece of blank parchment onto the table. With both hands, she lifted the symbols out of the air and pressed them against the parchment, a spell of Calefaction on her lips.
Her words were precise, the diction flawless as thin blades of fire carved Brant’s eleven symbols into the parchment. She blew on the paper until it cooled and all the blackened edges had hardened. Then she rolled up the scroll and handed it to Brant. She loved the feel of his warm, strong fingers against her palm, wanting to entwine her fingers in his.
“There,” she said. “You won’t have to rely on memory.”
With a loud thud, the library doors slammed open as dozens of wizards poured inside, demanding assistance. They brushed past Willa and Brant, making their way down the long hallway toward the library’s main service desk. A big, round walnut desk stood in the center of the vaulted foyer. Four librarians cowered behind it as the herd descended on them.
A huge chandelier hung over the service desk, dripping with hundreds of multifaceted, teardrop crystals. Swirls of light danced across the cold marble floor as the growing crowd clacked across it, heaping themselves around the desk in tangles three and four people deep. The roar of their voices echoed through the chamber. On either side of the round, ornate desk were two sets of wrought-iron staircases winding gracefully upstairs to special collections and more reading rooms. The two staircases met at the top in an elegant balcony overlooking the marble foyer. Brant eyed the balcony and Willa worried that he might jump from it.
“My familiar’s just disappeared,” someone shouted. “Now, I can’t cast any spells! You’ve got to help me!”
“Please, my familiar’s missing!” shouted another wizard. “I need that hawk to strengthen my Compulsion spells!”
Librarians huddled behind the desk, calling up tomes that flew off reading room shelves to the hands of Willa’s colleagues who were desperate to help.
Brant tugged on her sleeve. “There’s only one way to f-fix this. Will you. Help—me?”
Willa nodded. She was afraid he wouldn’t ask. “Of course!”
Brant retrieved his staff and then folded her arm in his. He fought his way through the growing crowd of wizards, pulling her along until they reached Seattle’s rain-swept streets.
Brant signed his way through a series of Camber spells that shifted and refracted space, allowing him to twist magical forces into a portal that brought them back to Kerry Park. He tugged her up the red brick stairs to the strange, steel geometric sculpture.
Through the steel’s round cutouts, he gazed at Elliot Bay through a haze of blackness and rain-smeared city lights framing the Space Needle and Seattle’s unforgettable skyline. The storm had passed to the east, clouds faded to wispy trails allowing stars to burn through the swath of midnight sky.
Brant lifted the staff toward the sky. He unfurled Willa’s parchment that burned with the new incantation. Eleven symbols that would re-bond the familiars and make him Seattle’s newest full wizard.
“Ready?” Willa called above the rush of wind.
She stood beside him, so encouraging, so inspiring. Maybe she’d see him as more than a stuttering fool?
Nodding, he gripped the parchment and the myrtlewood staff, staring at the fiery symbols. He whispered them, practicing each one.
Fear gripped him as he clenched the staff and cast the corrected spell. Only eleven symbols stood between him and his birthright. This time, he would get it right.
Brant cleared his throat and held the parchment out to Willa.
“Will you hold this while I cast?”
She nodded, taking the stiff parchment and holding it in front of him.
One last time, he ran through the spell in his head, pausing to insert the eleven corrected signs.
Then, concentrating on each symbol, Brant spoke the crafted spell with precision, working through each section with confidence. He felt the uneven flow of energy through him, untempered and unfocused without his familiar. He continued the spell, pausing for the final eleven symbols to correct the incantation. Fix what he’d broken. Summon his birthright at last.
The myrtlewood staff gleamed brilliant red, the surface warm against his fingers. A fiery glow pulsed, rushing down the length of the staff and then rolling back again, turning deep orange, then gold, then white. And finally blue.
His hands shook as he took a deep breath, focusing all his concentration, and chanted the last symbols. Without a stutter or bobble.
Energy crackled, the sound like a gunshot. With tremendous force, the entire flow of magical energy contained in House Trenerry slammed into the myrtlewood staff and then Brant’s body. The impact threw him across the brick stairs and onto the cold, wet ground.
Dazed, Brant laid there listening to the staff sizzle as rain misted the air and grass.
The sudden flutter of wings startled him, a deep, thrumming purr resonating across his cheek. Something brushed against his leg, beating past his stomach to hover at his shoulder.
Zip! The winged tortoiseshell cat arched her back, wings thumping the cool air as she lifted a fat, cream-colored paw to her mouth and licked it with her tiny, pink tongue.
You fixed the spell, little wizard, she said with a throaty purr between licks. Well done.
Brant reached out to pet the winged furball, but she slid just out of his reach.
“You did it,” said Willa, kneeling beside him. “Great job, Brant! It took courage to recast that spell.”
He smiled as she helped him up from the cold grass.
“I couldn’t have done it without your help,” he said. “And the library. How can I thank you?”
A gleam touched her deep green eyes. “Actually, you might be of some help at the library.”
He raised an eyebrow. “How so?”
Willa sighed. “A testimonial on having your family grimoire digitized might go a long way with your fellow wizards.”
Brant laughed. “You mean showing them it was painless and I still have the intact book?”
She nodded. “Exactly.”
“Anything to help,” he said. “It’s the least I can do.”
He reached out and stroked Zip who licked his hand then nipped it. He sighed. Cats.
He stepped closer to Willa, staring into her eyes as he held her hand.
“As Seattle’s newest full wizard, I could give a talk reminding wizards to always um . . . update their spells.”
Willa smiled when a white dove landed on her shoulder. Laughing, she squeezed his hand and moved closer to him.
“I’d love to discuss it over tea.”
“Love to,” he said, squeezing her hand.
Lisa Silverthorne has published nearly seventy short stories and novelettes of many genres. Isabel’s Tears, her first novel, was released last year.
Palimpsest, as author Valente has stated, is a “sexually transmitted city.” The only way to reach it is through the magic of streetmaps that appear on a lover’s skin.
Palimpsest
Catherynne M. Valente
16th and Hieratica
A fortunet
eller’s shop: palm-fronds cross before the door. Inside are four red chairs with four lustral basins before them, filled with ink, swirling and black. A woman lumbers in, wrapped in ragged fox-fur. Her head amid heaps of scarves is that of a frog, mottled green and bulbous-eyed, and a licking pink tongue keeps its place in her wide mouth. She does not see individual clients. Thus it is that four strangers sit in the red chairs, strip off their socks, plunge their feet into the ink-baths, and hold hands under an amphibian stare. This is the first act of anyone entering Palimpsest: Orlande will take your coats, sit you down, and make you family. She will fold you four together like quartos. She will draw you each a card—look, for you it is the Broken Ship reversed, which signifies perversion, a long journey without enlightenment, gout—and tie your hands together with red yarn. Wherever you go in Palimpsest, you are bound to these strangers who happened onto Orlande’s salon just when you did, and you will go nowhere, eat no capon or dormouse, drink no oversweet port that they do not also taste, and they will visit no whore that you do not also feel beneath you, and until that ink washes from your feet—which, given that Orlande is a creature of the marsh and no stranger to mud, will be some time—you cannot breathe but that they breathe also.
The other side of the street: a factory. Its thin spires are green, and spit long loops of white flame into the night. Casimira owns this place, as did her father and her grandmother and probably her most distant progenitor, curling and uncurling their proboscis-fingers against machines of stick and bone. There has always been a Casimira, except when, occasionally, there is a Casimir. Workers carry their lunches in clamshells. They wear extraordinary uniforms: white and green scales laid one over the other, clinging obscenely to the skin, glittering in the spirelight. They wear nothing else; every wrinkle and curve is visible. They dance into the factory, their serpentine bodies writhing a shift-change, undulating under the punch-clock with its cheerful metronomic chime. Their eyes are piscine, third eyelid half-drawn in drowsy pleasure as they side-step and gambol and spin to the rhythm of the machines.