How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic

by Emily Croy Barker

  But there was a reflection on the surface of the water, almost at her feet. A woman’s face, dark hair—Nora gave a start of excitement. Was she visible again?

  As soon as she leaned forward, though, she saw that she was mistaken, because the reflection did not move. It belonged to another woman, standing on the bank next to Nora. Except that there was no one there.

  “You thought I was you, didn’t you?” the reflection said. “And you are disappointed.”

  “No, no,” Nora said, reflexively polite. The face in the water was too dim for her to make out its features clearly, but the voice was somehow familiar. Not Olenan’s, thankfully. “We’ve met before, haven’t we?” Nora asked slowly.

  “Do you remember?”

  “Yes. In that cave, the goddess’s cave. You told me to leave.”

  “I did.”

  “You saved my life!”

  “Quite likely, although I only pointed out the obvious course of action.”

  Nora frowned. “Was there another time, too?”

  “Oh, that never happened,” the reflection said.

  “No?” For some reason, Nora found herself wanting to laugh. It was hard to tell, but she thought the woman smiled. “That’s what you said before, I remember. Why are you here?” A hopeful thought occurred to her. “Are you going to break my invisibility spell?”

  The woman shook her head. “I never learned enough real magic to do something like that. I will tell you this, though: all spells can be broken, but the answer is not always found in books.

  “Sometimes you have to feel your way out of an enchantment. Olenan told me that. Aruendiel knows it, too, but often he prefers to forget.”

  Her Ors had a slightly antique flavor. Nora wished that she could see the woman’s face better. “You knew Olenan—and Aruendiel? How?”

  “Olenan? She helped me, long ago. Aruendiel—” The reflection shrugged. “It’s difficult to explain.”

  “You’re a ghost, aren’t you? Are you—” Trying to piece together fragments of the stories she’d heard, Nora made a guess. “Aruendiel’s wife?”

  “After my time,” the woman said severely.

  “Hmm.” Was there to be no end of Aruendiel’s old girlfriends? “Are you Warigan?” Nora asked suddenly.

  “Very good. Perhaps you are as clever as Aruendiel thinks you are. He has learned to appreciate clever women, I will give him that. But cleverness isn’t enough for a woman. Do you know that? It won’t help you live to a good old age.”

  What had Olenan said, at the end, when she had flung Warigan’s name at Aruendiel? Nora tried to remember. An accusation—she’d called Aruendiel ruthless. “Aruendiel did something to you, didn’t he?” she asked with some apprehension. “What was it?”

  “He never raised a hand against me, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Warigan said. “No, I died to save his life.”

  Nora was aghast. “Why? What happened?”

  “He wouldn’t want me to tell you. And I can’t talk about it, even after all this time.” She smiled grimly. “I was pleased to die. I didn’t want to live. But sometimes I regret it, now.”

  So many hints, so much obscurity. Nora wondered if Warigan was deliberately trying to distract her. “I’m very sorry. That sounds painful. Is that why you’re here, with me?”

  “Oh, I don’t have the chance to converse with many people these days. It must be your idiotic invisibility spell that lets you hear me. Or you’re excessively fatigued. How are you going to break the spell, by the way?”

  “I don’t know.” She could hear an appalling bleakness in her own voice, but there was no reason to put a good spin on things when, after all, she was talking to someone who was also invisible. “I’m wondering if I’m going to be this way forever. A ghost, like you.”

  “You’re not a ghost.” The woman almost snarled at her. “Don’t be absurd. You have a body, a living body.”

  “Right,” Nora said quickly, seeing that she had been tactless. “Sorry.”

  “I’m not offended!” Warigan said, although Nora did not believe her. “What I mean is, it’s always more difficult to enchant a living body than a ghost. Obviously it can be done, but the flesh is harder to deceive.”

  “That’s what Aruendiel said. When I pinched him.”

  “It’s an old axiom about transformations—why they’re so unstable. Usually.” She grimaced.

  Nora was silent for a moment, then she asked: “Where is he?” She was fairly confident that Warigan knew this, although she could not say why. Sure enough, Warigan said: “Sleeping.”

  “Good. Take me to him,” Nora said.

  “Why?” For the first time, Warigan seemed surprised.

  “Because you’re right, I’m tired, and I’d like to sleep, and I don’t want to be alone anymore. And if I set out to find him by myself, I’ll get lost or distracted, or he’ll wake up and go wandering away, thanks to this damned curse of mine.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes!”

  “Very well.” Nora felt strong, rather bony fingers wrap around her wrist. They tugged her away from the riverbank. “Come this way.”

  Nora followed, stepping cautiously in the darkness. The woman led her up the sloping bank toward the hospital complex. The burble of the river grew quieter.

  “Why do you ask if I’m sure?”

  “Because I think Aruendiel meant what he said today, that he does not want to lose you again.”

  “How did you know he said that?”

  “I heard him say it.” The ground was level now, easier to walk on. They skirted the hospital building, where threads of light gleamed through the shutters. “He’ll want to marry you, you know. He’ll insist on it. Will you enjoy being a great lady? Now that I’ve seen you, I wonder. Well, it’s better than starving.”

  “You’re jumping ahead,” Nora said dryly. “I don’t want to lose Aruendiel, either, but no one has said anything about marriage. He was talking about the spell, anyway. And he would never marry a commoner.”

  “Perhaps. I think that after a ridiculous amount of shilly-shallying, he has finally decided what he wants. Men often have trouble figuring it out. What do you want?”

  “I want to be visible again, I want to be with Aruendiel, I want to be a great magician, but first of all, I want some sleep.”

  Warigan laughed, not unkindly. “You have some dangerous ambitions. Well, sleep is a blessing, usually. Rest well.”

  Abruptly the grip on her wrist loosened and was gone. “Warigan?” Nora called softly. “Warigan?” She heard only the distant chuckle of the river. “Rest well yourself, whoever you are,” she whispered.

  Nora turned in a slow circle to get her bearings. The hospital was behind her. To her left, a darkened, low-slung building. The visitors’ dormitory. The entry door creaked in mild protest as she went inside. She could smell hints of the vinegar that was used to wash the floors.

  His was the second room on the right. There was a locking spell on the door, but it was one that he had taught her. Interesting.

  She pushed open the door slowly and caught the sound of Aruendiel’s breathing, soft and regular. The room was almost but not completely dark. Gradually she could make out his shape on a bed across the room, the rumpled blanket not quite ample enough to cover his long limbs completely.

  Nora slipped off her gown and sandals and padded across the floor. Aruendiel lay with his back toward her, a coil of his dark hair just visible against his pillow. She lifted the blanket and inserted herself under it, folding herself against Aruendiel. He grunted in his sleep as she put her arm around him, but he stirred only slightly. She doubted that even if he were awake, he could feel anything; for herself, it was as though she were embracing him through layers and layers of wrappings, like a statue swaddled for shipping.

  If you break one pa
rt of the spell, she thought, you break it all. She nestled closer to the almost imperceptible warmth of Aruendiel’s body, and her nostrils found the pleasing sharp scent of his skin.

  Her mind drifted as she let herself relax into the slow rustle of his breathing. Lazily she pictured her mother cocooning her grandmother’s cut-glass pitcher in plastic. Her mother was planning to mail it to Nora, but Nora wasn’t sure she had given her the correct address.

  It was growing warmer under the blanket. Nora poured Aruendiel lemonade from the glass pitcher. Her mother must have sent it to the right address after all, she realized. That was a relief. But how was it delivered?

  Nora woke dozily to find that Aruendiel had turned over, and that one of his arms was draped over her waist in a pleasantly possessive way. Aruendiel muttered something sleep-jumbled. “It’s only me,” Nora said, closing her eyes.

  When she woke again, they were entangled further, Aruendiel having taken more territory as she slept. He pressed solidly up against her from behind, one hand cupping a breast. Men had an instinct for that, always, awake or asleep, invisibility spell or no invisibility spell, she thought.

  “Are you awake?” she whispered. No answer. Nora rubbed his arm, feeling the silky friction of his arm hairs under her fingers. She wriggled gently in his arms, making enough space to uncurl her right elbow, which was full of pins and needles, and then she said, “Aha,” because in jostling against him she had just discovered that one part of Aruendiel, at least, was paying her close attention.

  “Apparently,” Nora said, “the flesh is harder to deceive.”

  Aruendiel groaned something that might have been assent, and his arm tightened around her. His fingertips slid down her body, making an unhurried survey of its angles and concealed crevices. Licence my roving hands, and let them go, before, behind, between, above, below, Nora thought, turning toward him. And his hands roamed everywhere on her body, reaching all the way down to pet and pinch her toes, as though he were intent on mapping every inch of her.

  His kisses were swift and hungry, not always precisely aimed. Nora saw, as the air in the room grew gray, then brightened, that Aruendiel’s eyes were shut. She knew why. He was afraid of what he might not see if he opened them.

  She kissed his skin and savored its salty tang. “It’s not a dream,” she said. But it was not until he thrust his way inside her, fierce, gentle, and insistent, that she knew for certain that the spell was dissolved.

  For a moment she thought about Aruendiel the magician, and it seemed to her that she held a sky full of stars in her arms, while an answering brightness was dawning in her own body.

  Aruendiel shuddered and subsided to lie next to her. Nora let her finger trace one of the hard white scars on his torso, and then felt suddenly bashful. He still had not opened his eyes.

  “Aruendiel?”

  He turned his head. His eyes held the silvery calm of the dawn sky, and they looked at her as though they would never stop. “Nora,” he said.

  Acknowledgments

  This book was a long time in the making, and it would never have come out into the world if not for much encouragement, support, hard work, and sage advice from many good friends and lovers of books. I can’t begin to express my thanks to Margaret Sutherland Brown and Emma Sweeney for their belief in this book and their brilliant counsel all along the way. I am incredibly grateful to Catherine Wallach, David Gassaway, Jeff Tabnick, and everyone on the Recorded Books team for the fantastic work they’ve done to bring this novel to readers as an audiobook original, and I am still swooning with delight over Alyssa Bresnahan’s absolutely perfect narration. Thank you to the amazing designers who have shaped this print edition, Patrick Knowles and Iram Allam, and to copyeditors Tricia Callahan, Judy Lopatin, and Kelli Rae Patton, who saved me from myself countless times. If there are any errors of usage in the text, they are solely my responsibility.

  As this novel went through its many drafts, it benefited enormously from the comments of many brave and discerning early readers. Catherine, Denise, Emily, Trever, Gail, Heather, Kathy, Lesley, Pam, Jim, Robin, Sally, Tonie, and Xenia, thank you for the thoughtful advice that made the book immeasurably better, gave me inspiration, and kept me sane. I am very fortunate to have you as my friends. Thanks to Beth and Laura for generously sharing their medical knowledge so that I could better describe the healing spells that Nora casts; any errors or incongruities are mine alone. I can’t begin to express my gratitude to Dave, who offered wisdom and good cheer when I needed those things, and who has been more than humanly understanding about all the hours that I’ve spent in other worlds.

  Finally, I owe a great debt to all the readers of The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic, especially those who asked with kind impatience about its sequel. I’m grateful that you have let Nora and Aruendiel live in your imaginations as they live in mine.