February Thaw

by Tanya Huff

  "Sometimes wizards have trouble fitting in," Colleen explained, hovering over the book and trying not to set her friend's hair on fire. "They can't cope with being so incredibly different and they finally snap."

  "We're talking a street wizard here? Eating out of dumpsters, sleeping on vents, freaking out the tourists?" Alynne's lip curled. "That sucks. You've got unimaginable powers and you're eating someone else's spit off used pizza crusts."

  "And thank you for that image. Just dial the first number."

  "There's no name."

  "Of course not. Names have power. Wizards don't give them out to just anyone."

  "The number's in Sweden. What if this wizard doesn't speak English?"

  "It's a wizard; just dial."

  Dialling involved rather a great many numbers, including a few Carlene hadn't seen for the last twenty-four years. Alynne either didn't notice, or didn't care that there were suddenly numbers between eight and nine. But then, in all the years they'd known each other, Carlene could only remember Alynne actually taken aback once – after a grade eight track meet when Tommy Elliot had stripped off his sweaty T-shirt and spontaneously...

  "Rude bastard didn't even say hello." Alynne's announcement dragged Carlene's attention back to the present. "He's demanding to know who I am and why I'm using this phone. Sexy accent though." She turned her mouth back to the phone. "Hey, say that you knew our passion was doomed from the start. Why? Because I’ve always wanted to hear that from a man with a sexy Swedish accent." Her fingers tightened around the receiver. "Yeah? Same to you and your mother!"

  "Alynne!"

  "Should you be burning that colour?"

  Carlene got herself under control just as a number of magazine pages began to curl. "Tell him Beth Aswith is dead."

  "He says he knows."

  "Tell him that while she was alive, she gave a fire elemental a body."

  "He says he knows and when she died it returned to fire."

  "Tell him it's still around and it wants another body."

  "He says that's impossible and that you don't exist and then he called me something that probably wasn’t an endearment and he hung up." Holding down the button with one finger, she pointed the receiver at the smouldering edge of the worktable. "Should I put that out before I call the next number?"

  *

  Six of the other seven wizards were even less inclined to believe or help. The seventh's line was busy.

  Carlene thought over everything she knew about wizards and, had she a mouth, she would have smiled. As it was, she burned a bundle of lavender. "They must be calling each other."

  "And that's good?" Alynne asked, waving the heavily scented smoke away.

  "Oh yeah. They know someone's in Beth's workshop."

  "That's bad?"

  "Well, they can't just leave you here, there's dangerous stuff lying around."

  "Oh yeah, I could really give someone a major hernia asking them to lift those boxes of National Geographic. So one of them's going to show up?"

  "No, all of them. They can't leave you here, but they don't trust each other not to try and rip off Beth's spellbook, making the rippee significantly more powerful than the others 'cause he or she would then have access to all Beth's spells as well as their own. Wizards maintain a very delicate balance of power."

  "And once they're all here, they'll give you a body?"

  Carlene burned brighter. "They may not want to, but I'm sure we’ll figure out a way to light a fire under them."

  *

  The only uncluttered area in the room was on top of the workbench so that's where all seven wizards appeared – four women and three men of various races, every one of them looking annoyed. The crowded conditions resulted in a lot of pushing and shoving and the experience didn't improve their moods.

  Carlene finally ended the bickering by moving just a little too close to a flask of mentholated essence.

  The magical resonance of the explosion faded into a stunned silence broken by Alynne's impressed observation. "Cool. Cough drops."

  Seven jaws dropped. Seven right hands rose and traced the sign of banishment.

  Carlene felt herself flicker, felt the pull of pure burning, and suddenly remembered that in spite of syndication on three networks, she'd still never seen the episode of Friends where Rachel moves into Monica's apartment and loses the big hair and she wasn't going anywhere until she had.

  Seven sets of silver brows drew down.

  "That should have worked," a small Asian woman muttered, staring down at her hand in confusion.

  Burning a little more oxygen, Carlene danced forward. "You have to know something before you can banish it."

  "We know fire."

  "Yeah, but you don’t know me."

  A tall man in a turban sniffed disdainfully. "It is clear you have been corrupted by human thoughts and feelings."

  "Well, duh."

  "You should never have been given a body," declared a blond man hiding most of his face behind impressive whiskers. "In creating you, Beth Aswith created a perversion."

  "Perversion!"

  Alynne leaned away from the sudden heat. "Have you, like, really considered the consequences of making her angry."

  One hand clutching the smoking edges of his beard, the blond man added weakly, "And, quite frankly, we have no idea how she did it."

  *

  "We have found the spell." The tall man in the turban moved out of the clump of wizards, spellbook open across his hands. "But we still do not understand it."

  "No, no, no!" The Asian woman snatched the book from him. "We understand it. We just can't repeat it."

  "Oh, you understand it, yah?" asked the bearded wizard, grabbing the book in turn. He snapped it shut. "There is nothing to understand. She has left out whole sections."

  "She leave out only basics," someone back in the pack announced. "If you study basics..."

  "Basically, you're an idiot!"

  It degenerated into a seven part shouting match fairly quickly after that.

  "If you're going to have to blow something up again..." Alynne tossed another piece of charcoal into the brazier. "...could you wait until I cover my pudding cup? The last time you got their attention, you dusted ash over my sandwich."

  *

  "We have decided..." An indeterminate noise caused the bearded wizard to pause and glance back at the semi-circle of wizards behind him. "We have all decided," he began again, returning his attention to Carlene. "That since we can not banish you, we had best do as you wish and contain you. We have figured out the spell, but there is a problem, yah?"

  "Yah what?"

  "We have no... What do you call them? Raw materials. Usually, we would use straw, or leaves, or other organics. But the wizard you called Beth Aswith used..." He looked a little embarrassed. "...herself."

  "Say what?"

  "You were the spark of life added to an inert ovum. Flesh of her flesh, contained by her magical force."

  "Wait." Carlene flared, the wizards stepped back in unison, and Alynne covered the mouth of her glass. "Are you saying she really was my mother?"

  "In all essential particulars, yah. Your mother. But unless you want to be an infant again, we can not repeat the spell."

  "We?" the Asian wizard muttered, her eyes boring holes in the reindeer knit into the back of his sweater.

  He ignored her. "We know how to build a body from organic matter and we know how to animate it, creating a golem of flesh as it were, but none of us..." One hand waved in the general direction of the wizards behind him. "...know how to keep it together more than a few days. It would not hold the magic necessary to hold you and to truly live."

  "She really was my mother." Burning couldn’t express what she was feeling. Grief. Joy. Loss. Confusion. Overwhelmed, Carlene burned up a bundle of sage, Alynne's two sugar cookies, and Beth's old apron.

  "Fire should not have emotion," the bearded wizard observed as Alynne smothered a spark that had fallen from the apron into t

he chair.

  "So give her a body," Alynne snorted.

  "I have explained why..."

  "Use Beth's."

  Carlene flickered and nearly went out before she remembered to begin combustion again. "What?"

  Alynne settled back into the chair and took a deep breath. "Look, she died two days ago right? But Carlene disappeared so they don't know where to send the body so it's still in the hospital morgue. Beth isn't using it any more so you guys use it as the organic matter to build another body. Wizards hold magic so this new body made out of an old wizard will hold the magic needed to contain Carlene who does that whole spark of life thing again and voila! That's French for bride of Frankenstein lives," she added when all seven wizards reacted by staring at her in confusion.

  Seven pairs of eyes blinked.

  "But I don’t want to be the Bride of Frankenstein," Carlene protested as the wizards went into a huddle.

  "You won't be; they'll make you a new body."

  "Out of a dead body! That's just gross. How can you even think of something like that?"

  "Oh, yeah, that's fine talk from someone who crispy crittered the body she was in."

  "That was different. I am fire!"

  "Yeah. And you don't want to be."

  Carlene could see herself reflected in Alynne’s eyes – a yellow white flame, four inches high. Magical. Elemental. She turned away first. "You're right. I don't want to be."

  "All right. It might work." Once again the bearded wizard spoke for the group. "But how do we get the body out of the morgue?"

  Alynne snorted. "Well you all poofed in here without any trouble."

  "This is a wizard's workshop. We can not poof in, as you say, anywhere."

  "Figures. If I can get you into the morgue, can you poof the body out?"

  "It will need two of us."

  "Whatever." She checked her watch. "Oh look, Mickey's little hand is almost on the seven. Day shift'll be on in an hour. I'm heading upstairs to shower and borrow some clothes from Carlene's closet and that ought to give you time to decide which two are going with."

  Fitting actions to words, Alynne pushed past the wizards. They watched her go, sharing varying expressions of disbelief. The bearded wizard leapt back out of her reach.

  "But how she get into morgue?" asked one of the less fluent English speakers.

  "She used to date one of the morgue attendants," Carlene told him.

  "Somehow, I am not surprised," the bearded wizard muttered.

  Carlene burned blue. "Look, if she keeps pinching you, just tell her to stop."

  *

  "Was that Mr. Chou you were talking to?"

  Alynne sat down on the bottom step and watched Carlene burn slowly up a broom handle. "Yeah. I told him you were crashing at my place and I just came by for some of your stuff. He says if you need anything let him know. He's a sweet old guy. Those two turkeys get back with the body okay?"

  "A few hours ago. I didn't want to watch. I mean, it's just organic matter to them, but it used to be my mother." She sped up a strip of varnish to the top then back down another strip to bare wood. "Doesn't it weird you out?"

  "After my best friend turned out to be fire? No, not really. Besides, dead bodies are cool. You know what Gordon told me? If you catch them at the right time, you can pose them and they'll stay that way."

  "That didn’t help."

  Alynne shrugged. "Sorry."

  "So, how was Gordon?"

  "I lead him on, I left him hanging. Same old, same old."

  The workshop door opened. Unable to maintain a steady combustion, Carlene flared.

  "We are ready now, yah?"

  "You go ahead," Alynne told her. "I'll put out the broom."

  *

  The organic matter no longer looked anything like Beth Aswith. That helped. The seven wizards had taken it down to its component molecules and totally rebuilt it. It didn't look like she remembered Carlene Aswith as looking either – probably because she'd never looked at herself from a fire's point of view. The hair seemed a little dry and she had to remind herself that wasn't necessarily a good thing.

  "We will use the spell that inserts the spark of life, which is you," the turbaned wizard told her. "When you become conscious of it picking you up, do not resist."

  "I'm ready."

  The words of the spell were eerily familiar. Seven voices with seven accents overlaid a memory of a single voice and a single pair of hands holding her cupped in power.

  "I've enjoyed being your mother. Watching you grow and learn was the most fun I ever had."

  "I've enjoyed being your daughter."

  It was happening. She could feel it happening. Feel herself settling into the body. Arms. Legs. Head. Heart.

  "You're not human, you know."

  Doubt.

  The chanting grew louder. A little frantic.

  Not human.

  She could smell something burning. A horrible, final smell.

  Then cool fingers slipped into hers.

  "You're not going anywhere, girlfriend. You never gave them two weeks notice at work, you have a dentist appointment next Tuesday, your winter coat's still at the dry cleaners, and you still owe me a Princess Leia Star Wars glass."

  You couldn’t get much more human than that.

  "Alynne?" Carlene opened her eyes. "Where'd all the smoke come from?"

  "You burned your hair off. Looks like hell. But don't worry, we'll tell people you belong to a cult and it's a weird mourning ritual."

  "We have done it, yah?"

  Cautiously, not wanting to shake herself loose, she moved all the bits that were supposed to move. "You have done it. Yeah."

  As Alynne helped her to sit up, the wizards cheered. By the time she was standing, the mutual admiration they'd built rebuilding her had begun to fade. By the time she'd walked carefully over to the chair and sat down, they'd begun fighting again.

  The small explosion took them totally by surprise. Shocked into silence, they turned to face Carlene who blew out the match and tossed the rest of the firecrackers back on the shelf. "Thank you for what you've done. With your help, my mother has given birth to me twice. It's been a long night, you're probably all very tired. Go home and rest."

  "That is all then?"

  She looked down at her hands then up at seven identical expressions. "Unless you want to stay for breakfast."

  They had to fight about which time zone left which wizard the most tired, but eventually they left – simultaneously as they'd come, unwilling to allow any one of them to have the last word.

  When the workshop was quiet, Alynne sat down and picked up the Slinky. "Can I ask you a question? What happens when this new body grows old and dies? Do you become fire again?"

  "I don’t know," Carlene admitted, running her fingers through the ragged remains of her hair. "But then, you don't know what happens to you when your body grows old and dies either. No one does."

  "...I was so looking forward to seeing how the experiment came out."

  The Slinky whispered from hand to hand. "I’m having myself frozen so I can come back to a better world."

  "Better?"

  "Well, George Lucas'll have the Star Wars movies done anyway."

  Which reminded her. "You know, the wizards didn’t bring me back. You did."

  Alynne looked up and grinned. "Yeah, I know, but let them have their moment."

  "You've been great right from the beginning of this."

  "Why not? Your whole problem was that in spite of being fire, you were still Carlene."

  "Well, yeah but..."

  "If you were still Carlene, then the only thing that had changed was your appearance."

  "True, but..."

  "You were still you and I was still me and I'd be pretty small if I dumped you because you looked different. If I was going to do that, I'd do it now. At least until your hair grows back in."

  "I guess if you put it that way, it's elementary."

  The Slinky stilled. "You’ve been waiting to say that all night, haven’t you?"

  Carlene grinned. "Hey, I’m only human."

  This story takes place in the same mythos as “Burning Bright.” I had so much fun with my cranky wizards, it seemed a shame not to use them again. Or some of them anyway. Because I'd left Toronto in 1982, the Toronto in this story didn't exist when I wrote it ten years later and now, well, now it's a little piece of Toronto preserved in amber. (You can trust that I'd have had something to say about the addition to the Royal Ontario Museum had it been completed when I was writing.) Oh, and Isabel's answer in her chemistry class... I got part marks for that on a grade 12 test. I suspect that by the time he got to my paper, the teacher was looking for something, anything that would make him laugh.

  I almost seem to remember that I'd intended to write a couple more stories about Isabel and Godfry, but it just never happened. Or, more precisely, it hasn't happened yet...

  When the Student is Ready

  The first time Isabel saw him, he was rummaging in the garbage can out in front of The Second Cup at Bloor and Brunswick. He wore a filthy "I love New York" T-shirt, a pair of truly disgusting khaki dockers barely hanging from skinny hips, and what looked like brand new, high top black canvas sneakers of a kind that hadn't been made since the sixties – at least not according to her father who moaned about it every time he had to buy shoes. His dirty blond hair and full beard were streaked with grey, as well as real dirt, and both skinny arms were elbow deep in cardboard coffee cups and half eaten snack food.

  She couldn't take her eyes off of him, which was just too weird. Having lived her entire life – almost seventeen years – in downtown Toronto, she'd seen street people before. Seen them, avoided them, given them her loose change if she was feeling flush and they weren't too smelly or too old. This guy was nothing special.

  Thumbs hooked under her backpack straps, she took a step closer. Considering the heavy, after-school foot traffic, he had rather a large open area around him. Which turned out to be not at all surprising when the breeze shifted.

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