by Colin Sims
Chapter Four
Everyday Objects
After pouring a bowl of cornflakes the next morning, I got out Intro to Magic: A Beginner’s Guide to Spellcasting. The first twenty pages were written in a strange script that didn’t look entirely human. (Think: “Elvish” from Lord of the Rings.) I studied each page, trying to make sense of it, but nothing looked familiar. Starting on page twenty-one, though, the book became shockingly normal. The writing was flat and utilitarian, while the print itself looked old, like something you’d see in a historic newspaper.
The introduction was only a couple pages. It explained that learning magic is like learning a musical instrument—it’s tedious and frustrating in the beginning, but gets easier as time goes on. It also explained that there are nine Disciplines of Magic. They are, in no certain order: Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Evocation, Illusion, Necromancy, Transmutation, and Alchemy. For each discipline, there are twelve levels of mastery. A full wizard is expected to achieve a minimum of Level Eight for each.
Once I was finished with the intro—and my cornflakes—I flipped to the first chapter. It was titled, Forming a Spell: The Basics.
As I started reading, I remembered Rosewood telling me to do all my practicing inside the Solitar—that little magical Zippo he gave me. I retrieved it from my room and turned it over in my hands. It was real gold. Not brass. I’m not sure how I knew, but somehow the human brain just knows real gold when it sees it. There’s a reassuring heft that’s unmistakable.
Anyway, I figured this was something I needed to do with my door securely locked. I laid out all the necessary materials on my desk. I had the spellcasting book, the Solitar, and a small fire extinguisher from the kitchen.
Then I sat there for ten minutes procrastinating. The memory of Rosewood getting sucked into the Zippo like a bed sheet kept flitting through my head. He hadn’t looked like he was in any pain, but wouldn’t the laws of physics/biology insist that he was?
I picked up the book as well as the Solitar and gingerly opened the cap. Nothing happened. I needed to spark the wick first. I put my thumb on the little wheel, took a deep breath, and flicked.
It’s hard to describe what happened next, but I’ll give it my best shot. I flicked the lighter, my room turned into liquid, and then all of it—including me—swirled into the Zippo like water down a drain. The next thing I knew I was standing on the fifty-yard line of a football field. I recognized it, too. It was the field at my old high school, complete with modest bleachers along the sidelines and bright yellow goalposts at both ends. The sight of it triggered some distant memory of Becky Altman and the way she looked when I caught her eye that one time during the homecoming game. And then, there she was—standing in front of me in her cheerleading uniform. She smiled brightly and said, “Hi!”
“Becky?” I asked.
“That’s me.”
“What are you doing here?”
She shrugged. “I guess you want me to be.”
I stared at her a moment and slowly turned, doing a full three-sixty. By the time I returned to Becky, she was gone. Now there was a fire hydrant. I recognized it as the exact same one that was near the house where I grew up. It had a faint, ethereal glow to it, which I noticed was on everything inside the Solitar. It wasn’t much, but enough to tell the difference between here and the real world. I blinked in surprise until eventually I figured out what was happening. If I thought about something, even for an instant, it appeared. It was like being inside my imagination. Every thought became a reality, and every reality could change at any moment. There was a strange, slippery sensation to it all. Being inside the Solitar was like ice-skating. If I couldn’t control my thoughts, then the world would keep shifting until nothing made sense at all. And then the tank from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade appeared and a German soldier popped the hatch and shouted, “Er kommt weg! Lass uns gehen!”
I wasn’t sure which was weirder—the tank or the fact that I understood the German guy perfectly. He said, “He’s getting away! Let’s go!”
I almost took him up on his offer, but I shook my head and he was gone. I had to stay focused. I brought up the spellcasting book, and a big, lavish desk—like an Oval Office desk—appeared in front of me. I took a seat and opened to Chapter One.
As soon as I started reading, I noticed an abundance of Latin words like Formatio, Cantus and Imago. The writing was even more formal than the introduction. Plus, there were precious few explanations on how to do anything. It seemed like the book was meant to accompany a class—not be used on its own.
Either way, I read through the Latin terminology until I got to the first, introductory spell. It was called, “Firelight.”
The first order of business was to bring my hands into Formatio. (Fortunately, there was a little picture that demonstrated this.) It simply meant to bring my hands even with my chest, keep them a foot apart, and have my palms face each other. I remembered that Rosewood had made the same gesture back in his office. The next thing to do—and this was the magic part—was to form the Imago. The Imago was that soccer ball-sized sphere of light that reminded me of a plasma globe. The problem, though, was that the book didn’t tell me how to do it. It just said to “make it.” Nothing more. So—taking my best guess—I tried to picture the ball in my mind.
Nothing happened.
I flexed and squinted and did everything I could think of, but there was nothing.
I tried for a good ten minutes, and had a quick flashback to when I was a kid trying to move the TV remote with my mind. I had the same realization back then that I was having right now: Damn. Perhaps I’m not a Jedi …
I was about to give up, when a wooden cane smacked the desk in front of me. I looked up to see a tall, bespectacled man with a long, severe face and thinning red hair. He wore a coal-grey, Victorian suit, complete with coat tails and a checkered waistcoat.
“You are doing it wrong,” he said, giving me a stare. His accent was a strange brand of New England American—yet very old-fashioned with a snooty, academic air to it.
“Who are you?” I said.
“Alroy McFadden,” he announced proudly. “I wrote the book that you are presently mangling. You do not ‘imagine’ the Imago. Although, I suppose you could make that leap of course if you were never schooled in Latin, which I see that you were not. You form the Imago by doing precisely the opposite of what you were doing. You think of nothing. You clear your mind, which in your case will be easily accomplished, and what remains is magic. Do you understand?”
“Nothing. Clear mind. Magic,” I repeated.
“Very good.” He nodded crisply. “I see that you have reverted to your natural state of ape-like communication, and I recommend you continue to do so until you learn to speak properly. Now,”—he smacked the desk again—“clear your mind and form the Imago.”
I nodded and raised my hands back into Formatio—a.k.a. Evil-Wizard-Lurking-Above-A-Crystal-Ball Pose. I had plenty of questions for McFadden—like how he was suddenly inside my head—but I figured that could wait. He was exactly what I needed right now—a tutor.
So, without further ado, I closed my eyes and tried to think of nothing. At first, I thought of a large, empty white space and me hovering inside it. (I was slightly influenced by The Matrix.) I thought it might be working until I opened my eyes and saw that I was hovering inside of a blank white space with McFadden floating in front of me. He didn’t look pleased.
“Ah. This is your conception of nothing, I take it?”
I looked around. Endless white in all directions. I shrugged and gave him a weak smile. “Sort of?”
With the speed of a viper, his cane smacked me on the shoulder.
“I suggest you try harder,” he said. “Nothing means nothing, do you understand? Not ‘large empty white space.’ Now try again.”
I thought of the football field first, bringing us back to the fifty-yard line. This time, however, it was night with the game lights on. M
y brain apparently thought it looked cooler that way. I went back to concentrating on nothing. It was hard to do with my shoulder smarting from the blow. Or at least, so I thought. It took several seconds, but I came to understand why McFadden hit me with the cane. By focusing on the pain, I stopped thinking about anything else. So when I opened my eyes …
Bingo.
Hovering between my hands was a brilliant Imago—a blue-tinted ball of light with wispy lightning bolts twisting inside. My jaw dropped as I stared at it like I’d just discovered fire. In fact, I felt a unique kinship with whoever the guy was who discovered fire. He and I were equals now. You see, even after all I’d witnessed—after Vampettes, Rosewood, Cassie and slipping inside the Solitar—I still had my doubts. I mean, me, François, a wizard? There was no way. Yet nothing erases doubt like a glowing ball of electricity between you hands. It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. It also meant that yes, yes I was. I was a freaking wizard.
“Hardly,” a voice said sharply. It was McFadden.
I looked at him blankly and he gave an exasperated sigh. “I’m in your mind,” he explained. “I can hear your ridiculous thoughts. The ‘guy’—as you say—who discovered fire no doubt appeared infinitely more intelligent than you do. Would you care to see your face?” His cane morphed into a large mirror and he showed it to me. “Look at that,” he said. “That is the face of a baboon doing a crossword puzzle.”
“Hey man,” I said. “I’ve got a glowing ball of light between my hands. I’m good.”
“Clearly,” McFadden snorted. “But if you are quite done congratulating yourself on a feat fit for a two-year-old, I suggest we get on with forming the spell.”
I’d already read the basic concept of spell formation at the beginning of Chapter One. Basically, it was just like playing a musical instrument. I pressed my fingers—like pressing piano keys—to manipulate the patterns of lightning bolts inside the ball. Each finger movement was called a Cantus (the plural was Canti), and the lightning bolt thingies were called Fulmen. So, to use the proper spellcasting Latin, I performed a series of Canti to manipulate the Fulmen to produce a specific spell. The easy spells were like remedial piano songs with only a few simple notes. Firelight was, apparently, the easiest of all spells—like the magic equivalent of Chopsticks.
The book assigned a roman numeral to each of my fingers and then provided a letter from the Greek alphabet to each number. The Greek letters denoted the strength with which I was supposed to use each finger. Easier notes used lots of strength while harder notes required a more delicate touch. Each note caused one of the Fulmen to adopt a fixed point inside the Imago. (Just like when you touch the surface of a plasma globe.)
Anyway, the point is that each spell had its own version of sheet music. Firelight looked like this:
IVW XY IIIY IIY VIIW IIY
Confusing, right?
I thought so. I set to work on pressing my fingers but I could never get the strength right. After a few minutes, I sensed the growing frustration of McFadden as he watched in horror. Eventually, he let out a long sigh and told me to take a break.
“Watch as I do it,” he said testily.
He raised his hands in Formatio and easily formed the spell. He moved his fingers slowly and deliberately, giving me a chance to imitate him. He did it over and over, but it was hard to follow. It reminded me of learning to play a song using a YouTube tutorial. I kept wishing I could rewind McFadden’s movements, but I couldn’t. I had to watch the whole thing over again.
At least an hour had gone by and I still couldn’t make it work. When I suggested we stop, McFadden slumped in relief.
“The best idea you’ve had yet,” he said. “Perhaps you’d care to leave the Solitar altogether and never return?” The idea seemed to brighten his mood a little.
“I’m gonna get it right,” I said. “But first, how’d you get in my head? I’ve never seen you before.”
His eyebrows shot up as he adjusted his cuffs. “Dear me. I would’ve thought that to be obvious. But then again, I suppose when conversing with the hoi polloi, one must never assume any level of intelligence. Very well. As you may recall—and don’t strain yourself trying—when you first opened my book, you found twenty pages written in Endruvian, did you not? Those twenty pages contained—”
“What’s Endruvian?” I said.
For a split second, I caught a spark of confusion in McFadden’s eye, but then it was gone. Its replacement—Massive Irritation—let it be known that it was here to stay.
“As rude as you are imbecilic,” he said flatly. “What is Endruvian, you ask? It is the script you mistook for ‘Elvish,’ which is not even a real language. To say so, would be like saying you wrote something in ‘human,’ which of course no one does. The Endruvian script is an ancient form of magic created by an elder race in another realm. Every one of its letters contains more information than all the libraries on Earth. Thus, the twenty pages you read contained the memories of my former self, as well as a small percentage of my vast knowledge regarding the uncanny.”
“So …” I said slowly. “It’s like I downloaded you into my head?”
“I suppose you could say so, yes. Much to my joy.”
“Then why can’t I do the spell?” I asked. “If you know so much, how come I still don’t know anything?”
McFadden shook his head, and to my surprise, gave a light snort that almost sounded like laughter. “Your condition, François, as a man who doesn’t know anything, is, I’m afraid, irreversible. The reason you don’t have access to my knowledge is the same reason you can’t recall every single word of a novel you read two years ago. Technically, the knowledge is in your brain, but you can’t get at it because you’re dumb.”
“Can you remember everything you read two years ago?” I asked.
“Two years ago I was dead. Just as I was dead a hundred years before that. But in answer to your question—yes. I could. We didn’t have The Food Network back then, nor Facebook. When a man read something, he remembered it. He didn’t fill his head with senseless pap.”
“Hey, you can learn a lot from The Food Network,” I said. “Nothing impresses a girl more than a guy who knows how to cook. Just the other day, my girlfriend was upset and I made her this—”
He leaned forward and interrupted. “Women,” he said importantly, “are impressed by a man’s intelligence and good character. The rest is a sideshow. Now, if you’re quite finished, I suggest we get back to practicing. It is my sincere hope that once you succeed, we shall ‘call it a day,’ so to speak, and I shan’t see you again for some time.”
So I got back to practicing. And you know what happened then? I got it right on my first, mother f-ing try. Booyah. Firelight.
This is how it happened: I formed the Imago, I did the Canti, the Fulmen stuck to the sides, and on the last “note,” the Imago flashed and disappeared. What remained was a teardrop of flame hovering a couple inches above my palm. It was about the size of an apple and the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. (Besides Cassie Chu in that dress.) ((Or Cassie Chu wearing anything at all.))
“Cassie who?” McFadden asked. “Ah. You’re lusting after a succubus. Why am I not surprised? Now I understand why your brain is barely functioning. You’re thinking with the wrong part of your anatomy. I suggest you—”
McFadden suddenly disappeared as I noticed Cassie skipping toward me. She was wearing Becky Altman’s cheerleader outfit, except … sexier. On Cassie, it looked more like a slutty Halloween costume. And right as I thought that, her outfit became a Cat Woman costume, which was even better. She halted with a stomp right in front of me and grinned.
I knew she was just my imagination, but I still turned red. She was standing so close … I mean, her breasts, good God, were about a millimeter from my—
Okay stop. Close your eyes and think of anything else. Anything else. Anything else. Anything else.
When I opened them, Cassie lay supine in black lingerie on a pool table that ha
d materialized out of nowhere. Her fingertips lightly toyed with one of the balls and she gave me a suggestive look.
I closed my eyes again.
My first thought was of a bulldozer moving large mounds of earth. I focused on it until I heard the telltale beeps of it backing up. I opened my eyes and Cassie—still wearing the lingerie—was driving it. Then there was a massive thunderclap to my right and a mushroom cloud blossomed into the sky.
Then I thought: Getting weird. Time to exit the Solitar.
And just like that, I was in my room again. The lighter fell with a heavy thunk on my desk as I reappeared in a swirl of liquid. As soon as I did, a familiar voice chirped, “How’d it go in there?”
I whipped around to see Cassie lying on my bed with her head propped on an elbow. She was wearing her usual outfit of jean shorts and a tank top with her hair loosely pulled into a ponytail. I jumped in fright and did my best to sound righteously outraged as I demanded to know how long she’d been there.
“A few minutes.” She looked at me with a smirk. “Why? Were you fantasizing about me?”
“What? No!”
“It’s okay if you were,” she said. “I’m very pretty.”
Jesus Christ, did she know? Could she see inside the Solitar somehow? The lingerie? The bulldozer?? Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“I was learning a spell,” I spat angrily. “That’s all I was doing.”
“Okay, okay. Jeez.” She looked like she was holding back a laugh. “So what are you doing today?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe go to the gym?”
What the hell did I just say that for? I never went to the gym. Why would I say that now? Was I really that lame?
“I have a better idea,” she said, and sat up on one arm. “How about a tour of LA’s Magic Community? You’ll need it if you’re going to help me track down that Steinberg guy. Oh, and I also brought this for your face.” She pulled a tiny vial from her shirt and held it up. “It’ll fix the swelling.”
“What is it?” I asked.