“A magical spell, yes,” Nora said. “That’s right.”
“Has anyone else traveled to this other world?” Adam inquired.
“Yes, the Faitoren came from this world. That’s why we have legends of fairies. There’s another magician from the other world here now, I believe. A friend of Aruendiel’s—I don’t know him. Mitch—” She stumbled over the name, the tequila slowing her tongue. “Micher Samle.”
“What’s the name of this other world?”
Nora spread out her hands. “What do we call our world? We call it the world. They do the same.”
“And do they speak English there?” Adam smiled, too broadly.
“Of course not. I learned how to speak Ors—the language they speak in Aruendiel’s country—when I was there.”
Adam laughed. “You always were good at languages, Nora.”
“Thank you,” she said, pleased that he had remembered.
“And you say you were able to come back because a door opened up, just like that, between this world and that one?”
“It happens sometimes. Not often.”
The restaurant was quieter now, only a few other tables occupied. How long had they been talking? Nora took another draw at her straw and discovered that her glass was empty. Adam looked around the room, too, and then back at her with an odd smile. “And you were studying magic there. What kind of spells?” After she had rattled off a few—levitation, mending pots, light-casting—he asked genially: “And can you do magic here?”
“Well,” she said, “remember when I knocked the wineglass over, that night at Petrarch, and it floated back up to the bar?”
Adam hunched his shoulders. “I didn’t really see what happened.”
Nora felt deflated. “But you were right there,” she said. “You said, ‘Fuck, what happened?’ ”
“I’m sorry, I just don’t remember.”
Nora shook her head. She didn’t really care whether Adam believed her story about the other world or not. She was content simply to have told it and to be free from having to lie again. But she felt disappointed in Adam for conveniently forgetting what he could not explain, when it was something he had seen with his own eyes. She had expected a little more intellectual integrity from him.
Adam, meanwhile, was studying her again. “That’s quite a story,” he said. “You should write it down.”
He didn’t believe her. “You think so?”
“It’s amazing stuff.” He gave a rueful laugh. “So many wonderful narrative elements. So much resonance. An anti-Cinderella story that’s also reminiscent of Cupid and Psyche. This Jane Eyre situation with your friend—Aruendiel? And he’s kind of a Jungian archetype, the Magician.”
Nora laughed, too. “Not bad. You could look at it that way,” she allowed. “I didn’t, since I was busy living it. Although certainly I agree, one lesson is that fairy godmothers are not all they’re cracked up to be.”
“Thank you for sharing this with me, Nora. All I can say is—” Adam paused, then threw up his hands and emitted a long sigh, like the air hissing out of a balloon. She was startled to see what looked like real concern in his face. “I don’t know what you went through, what kind of trauma you experienced out there, but I—I want you to know that I have nothing but admiration for the way you’ve survived. It’s amazing to me.”
Taken aback, Nora shifted slightly in her chair. “Thanks.”
“And the way you’re dealing with it now—” Adam paused. “Again, I admire you. You’ve been through hell, and you’ve found a resourceful way to process it. Fictionalizing a bad experience is healthy, my shrink used to say. Better than so many other ways of dealing with it.”
“Mmm.” Nora thought of those short stories Adam used to write, where not much happened. “I see. You think this is all a fantasy—a metaphor—to cover up a terrible reality. I guess that makes sense.” She grinned at him. “Yeah, we all have our own ways of handling the truth when it’s hard to understand.”
“I can tell how bad it was, just from your story.” Adam looked intensely uncomfortable. “This place wasn’t good for women, was it? A keep-’em-barefoot-and-pregnant kind of culture?”
Nora gave him a sharp look, surprised that this particular insight would strike him, and wondered how much he might have guessed about some of the parts of her story that she had chosen to keep to herself. But then Adam took some pride in his ability as a feminist critic; it had been useful more than once in forging intradepartmental alliances.
“Yes, basically. Women aren’t educated, no legal rights, they’re like livestock, basically. What made it bearable was learning magic.” Why Aruendiel would have chosen to teach her in the first place—to spend hours each day correcting her mistakes, drilling her on the most basic of spells—Nora was still not entirely sure. There were very few female magicians. The only one whom Nora had ever met had also been taught by Aruendiel.
Adam apologized. This development was so unexpected that at first Nora could not take in what he was saying, but as she listened, she gathered that he was sorry for whatever he had done that had driven Nora to get lost in the mountains; he hoped that he hadn’t contributed much to the trauma that underlay her fantastic story. He spoke haltingly, his eyes troubled behind the glitter of his eyeglass frames. Nora thought about telling him how attractive sincerity looked on him, he should try it more often.
Then she felt ashamed. For a moment, she had the urge to reach out and squeeze his hand.
He finished up in a more self-justifying vein, talking about how they’d grown apart after he’d moved to Chicago. He’d thought she was secretly ready to move on as well.
“That wasn’t true,” she said. “It really wasn’t.”
“I know. And I’m sorry.” He looked at Nora as though expecting something. She nodded gently, which seemed to satisfy him. “I’m glad we talked about this,” he said.
“Me too,” Nora said.
She was still luxuriating in the warm sense of freedom that came from being able to finally, finally talk about the other world. She hadn’t expected that Adam would be the one to open that particular door, and she felt oddly grateful to him for doing it.
But she lived in this world now. The other world—and magic, and Aruendiel himself—might as well be a fantasy for all the good it would do her.
The waitress slipped the check onto the table. Adam grabbed it, and Nora let him. She was starting to feel poor again, grad-student poor, after weeks of reveling in the incredible luxuries of electric light and hot showers and owning more than two changes of clothes. The fellowship stipend was generous, but it didn’t start until September.
Outside, Nora said that she’d walk home, it was only a few blocks, it was not that late.
Adam said that he’d walk with her. It was almost eleven, he said in a serious tone, as though he were concerned for her safety. He added: “I’d like to see where you live.”
He can’t possibly be that interested in my sublet, Nora thought as they turned down a street of tidy brick houses. What exactly is he getting at? It was a luscious spring night, full of fresh green leaves, promising summer. She was picking up odd signals—Adam’s hand brushing her elbow, a sideways glance infused with a confident energy that she recognized from the past. Could he possibly want to spend the night? Surely not. She felt unaccountably distracted. He was confusingly real—annoyingly obtuse about some things and yet kinder and more perceptive about others—not like she had been remembering him for the past year.
She was casting about for a suitably neutral subject of conversation when someone came up behind them, slightly out of breath.
“Miss, I’m sorry to bother you.” She couldn’t place the voice, but it sounded familiar.
In the streetlight’s orange glow, she recognized the hardscrabble beard and the red plaid shirt: Farmer Dahmer, the homeless man who hung aro
und the campus. She experienced a twinge of unease that he was so close, standing right next to her and Adam, then felt guilty about her distaste. He’s weird but harmless, she reminded herself.
“It hasn’t closed up,” Farmer Dahmer said earnestly. “Not completely. You want to be careful with that.”
“Don’t worry.” Nora shook her head politely. “It’s fine.” Now she remembered how she had bumped into Farmer Dahmer once before and how he had babbled about peanut butter. And something about a reward. She had noted then, as now, that he carried himself with remarkable dignity. But perhaps you needed more dignity when everyone thought you were crazy.
The collision with Farmer Dahmer had happened the same morning she’d freed the mouse, Nora thought. Funny. Hadn’t there been peanut butter in the trap?
Adam rounded on him. “Sorry, we don’t have any change.”
“I’m not asking for money. I’m just warning the lady.” To Nora, he said: “You could fall through again, if you don’t watch out. Or someone else could.”
“Thanks for the advice.” Adam took Nora’s arm and pulled her firmly away.
They walked on. “Farmer Dahmer’s not dangerous,” she said. “I used to see him sometimes in the library, writing notes to himself.”
“I used to smell him sometimes in the library.”
“I never noticed before—he has some kind of accent, doesn’t he?” Like a Scottish burr, but more guttural, almost Russian sounding.
As they passed under a streetlight, Adam gave her a look that indicated Farmer Dahmer’s origins were of no concern to him. “So, this magician of yours—” he began.
“What about him?”
“Did you and he ever, well—make magic together?” Adam asked. Nora frowned. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make fun.”
“That’s all right. He never—well, no, we just didn’t.”
“No? Why the hell not?” The outrage in his voice was rather cheering. “He didn’t appreciate a beautiful, intelligent woman like you?”
“It was complicated,” Nora said, giving the answer that should have ended the matter. But once again the chance to talk more about that lost, secret year was too enticing.
“He was complicated,” she said. “I think, um, he did care for me, but he didn’t act on whatever feelings he—he had.” She laughed, with some bitterness. “He tried to get me to marry someone else at the end, a younger man he thought would be more suitable.” Thinking about that interview in Lord Luklren’s library, when Aruendiel had all but ordered her to marry Perin, still made her wince inwardly with rage—at Perin, for his tactless, blockheaded good intentions; at Aruendiel, for his blindness and his pride; at herself, for a failure she could not even begin to name.
“Another beau? You were racking them up,” Adam said. “Why was the other man more suitable?”
Perin was the obvious better choice: honest, stalwart, shrewd, innocent. Nora wondered, in an abstract way, why she hadn’t preferred him.
“He was more respectable. Safer, perhaps. Aruendiel had done things—well, he murdered his wife when she was unfaithful. A long time ago,” Nora added hastily, as if it would reassure Adam to know that Aruendiel had not been violent recently. “He knew he’d done a terrible thing. He felt guilt over that, and for being alive.”
Nora was trying to decide whether to go on and explain that Aruendiel had died and then been returned to life by a couple of other magicians, against his own wishes—another reason for the darkness that edged all his humors—when Adam broke in, wanting to know how Aruendiel had killed his wife.
“He stabbed her,” Nora said.
She felt the sudden weight of Adam’s arm on her shoulders. He pulled her close in an embrace that felt correctly fraternal but nevertheless—she had an inkling—could still develop into a more passionate clinch. “Jesus, Nora,” Adam said into her ear.
“It wasn’t that bad,” she said, trying to get her balance.
“I hate to think of you surrounded by people like that.”
“He was good to me, I told you. And look, I survived.”
“I’m so glad you did,” Adam said. His arms tightened around her.
Adam’s body was an adamant, familiar presence. He was still working out, she guessed from the feel of his shoulders. He was exactly three-and-a-half inches taller than she was. Nora knew the precise angle to tilt her head to meet his lips. Against her thigh—hello, hello—she could feel his cock wedged into his jeans, the way she had so many times before.
I can’t believe this, she thought, Adam’s turned on by the fact that I was in love with a murderer. Men are so weird. She felt his breath warm against her neck, shorter breaths now. This is all wrong, she thought wildly. But this is now. Adam’s here. She sighed.
“I missed you,” he said.
On some level—Nora realized, pressed against him—she had wanted him to say those words for a very long time. Adam was no magician, certainly not, but there are some incantations that never lack power. I missed you. Under the circumstances, she could extract all kinds of delicious meanings from those words: I was wrong. I love you. Let’s go back to the way it was. She saw that, in sharing confidences, she and Adam had begun to rebuild their old alliance, and tonight or not much later she would likely follow him into bed again. Why not? He was tangible, close—not a ghost in her memory, like Aruendiel.
His lips touched her cheek. He always liked to come in from the side, finding the corner of her mouth and then working around to the front. She ran her hands over his shoulders and down the compact muscles of his back, her palms slipping over the thin cotton of his shirt.
Her old life back, but better. Was that what she really wanted?
Be careful what you wish for, Nora thought with rising panic. She wished, absurdly, that Farmer Dahmer would happen along to interrupt them again. Then a couple of different thoughts came together in her mind, like a chord.
You want to be careful with that, Farmer Dahmer had said. Careful of what? You could fall through again, he’d said. And she knew where she’d heard that accent before.
Nora jerked free. “Oh, my God,” she said. Adam looked at her with surprise and some annoyance. “I have to go back. I just remembered—” She gestured vaguely, trying to think. “I forgot something. Back at the restaurant. Um, my bracelet.”
Turning, she broke into a half run, heading back the way they had come.
There was no sign of Nora’s lost bracelet at the restaurant, which was not much of a surprise to her. Nevertheless, while Adam waited next to the cashier’s desk, she searched diligently under the table where they had sat and in the restroom.
Adam said that he didn’t remember her wearing a bracelet that evening, but Nora said she was sure she’d put it on—she’d had some trouble getting the clasp to fasten. He looked aggrieved. “Well, no wonder you lost it.”
There was no sign of Farmer Dahmer, either, on the streets near the restaurant. His absence Nora found much more disappointing. All the way back to her apartment, she was on edge, swiveling her head to look down side streets, until Adam asked whether she expected to run into someone else wearing her bracelet.
“It’s not especially valuable, is it?” he asked.
“Sentimental value, that’s all.”
“Did the magician give it to you?” He sounded as though he were trying to be funny.
“Of course not,” Nora said. “My grandmother.”
Adam did not attempt to embrace her again. The low hum of erotic attraction that she had detected before had dissipated. But when they reached her apartment, and Nora pulled out her keys, she could feel his eyes on her, as though he were taking the measure of her readiness, her desire.
She told Adam that it had been very good to see him, and she would love to offer him a drink, but that the apartment was a mess and she had to get up early the next mor
ning.
Did a flash of relief cross his face? He said that he had to get up early, too; his parents were expecting him. “Something about dismantling a sideboard.” He smiled to show how ridiculous the task was.
“Well, have fun,” Nora said, feeling relieved, also wistful, and she smiled back more warmly than she would have a minute before. On an impulse, she added: “Thanks for listening.”
“Anytime.” Adam looked at her for a moment, and she thought she saw both concern and wary bafflement in his face, as though he were trying to figure out just how crazy Nora might be, and exactly how he felt about her. He swiped her cheek with an ambiguous kiss. “I’ll talk to you soon,” he said.
Closing the door behind her, Nora briefly considered waiting a few minutes for Adam to disappear and then going out again to scour the neighborhood for Farmer Dahmer. Reluctantly she abandoned the plan: it was almost midnight, and she had no idea where to look. He could be a mile away by now or bedded down in whatever alley or abandoned building he called home.
Nora woke early the next morning, Saturday. It was cooler than the day before; there was dew on her landlord’s lawn when she left the apartment just after seven. She had dressed a little more carefully than she normally did on Saturdays: her lovely clunky handmade boots that had gotten so many compliments; a denim skirt; her new blouse in the cool vintage print; the bead bracelet that she’d described so carefully to Adam last night, the one that had been in her jewelry box the whole time, right where she knew it was. She wanted to make a good impression. She also had a faint, squeamish feeling that her feet should be well protected.
Farmer Dahmer was not near either of the coffee shops she passed; nor was he on the main drag or any of the side streets in the business district near campus. A man was sleeping on the bench in front of the post office, but it wasn’t Farmer Dahmer. She tried to think about all the times she had seen him in the past. An eccentric street person was ubiquitous until you actually wanted to find him. She decided to try the campus. Scanning for the red shirt, she looked for him in the main quad, then the two side quads, then circled back past the student union.
How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic Page 4