The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

by Emily Croy Barker

  “What do you mean?” Nora felt suddenly ashamed, without understanding why.

  “I thought that might fly right over your pretty head. Well, you can rest assured that you will hear no more reports of my dallying with other women.”

  Nora thought hard, trying to understand why his promise didn’t sound completely satisfactory. “Does that mean you’ll stop seeing other women, or you’ll just make sure that I don’t hear about it?”

  “Ah, that’s my clever girl! Sometimes you surprise me. Sometimes.”

  “Raclin—” She tried to be reasonable. “I wouldn’t mind so much about Oon or anyone, if I could see more of you. We need to be together for the baby’s sake. We’re a family now.”

  “Oh, I’ve done my part,” Raclin said. He stood up and moved a few steps away from the bed. “I’ve given Ilissa a grandchild—incidentally, she believes it will be a grandson—and now I’m free to pursue my own interests. You and I will appear together in public when it’s appropriate, naturally.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’m moving to other chambers, and I will see somewhat less of you until my son requires a sibling. I’m sure you’ll find ways to keep occupied. I think you’ll be an excellent mother. Ilissa thinks so, too.”

  He was talking about a sort of separation, a marriage that was empty except for the begetting of children, and he sounded so casual about it, as though he cared nothing for her. Nora felt suffocating panic sweep through her. Clambering out of bed, she caught hold of Raclin’s arm. “But darling, you don’t understand. I love you. The baby isn’t enough. I need you—you! I’ll die if I can’t be with you.”

  “No, you won’t.” Raclin sounded bored. “You just think that. I made you think that.” He walked over to the window and looked out. The sky was a pearly gray. “This conversation is dull, my dear, and I must be going. It’s almost dawn. I suggest you get some sleep before the rest of the house wakes up.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked. Raclin only smiled. “You’re going to see Oon, right? That’s what you do every day. You’re with Oon or some other slut!”

  “Believe what you like,” he said, turning toward the door.

  “You’ve been cheating on me all along,” Nora cried, flinging herself on him. “You stay here with me, with your wife!”

  “Let me go,” he said. “It’s late. I lost track of time.” He pushed back, trying to disentangle himself from her embrace. She slid to her knees, locking her arms around his legs. “Nora, this is tiresome. You’ll hurt the baby.”

  “I don’t care,” she said, sobbing. “I want you to stay.”

  “Let me go, you idiot!”

  “Stay with me! Or tell me where you go every day. I want to know the truth.”

  “Is that what you really want?”

  “Yes, I want to know!” said Nora, gripping his thighs. “Tell me!”

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment, and then she felt a fierce shudder run through his body. She looked up. “Darling?” she started to ask.

  The first thing she saw was the jagged line of teeth, two separate rows of them in a long narrow jaw. Then there was the yellow eye, crossed by an oval, elongate pupil, looking down at her. Something was unfolding above her, big as a tent but not a tent, it was shaped wrong. Not a man, either, although there was something manlike in the muscled torso and hard, scaly legs that she was still clinging to.

  All Nora could do was utter a little moan of disbelief. It was a dragon, a dinosaur, a monster from a nightmare. Raclin was gone—where? The monster had done something to him. A claw raked her cheek. Letting go of the creature’s legs, she scrambled away, crablike, until she came up against the bed. She gripped the bedpost and pulled herself upright.

  At first she thought that the creature filled the room, but then she saw that she was mistaken, its body wasn’t much larger than a man’s. It was the leathery wings, brushing the ceiling’s plasterwork, that gave the impression of great size. Snapping its jaws, the thing dropped down to all fours, the joints of its legs protruding into the air, like a lizard’s. Almost lazily, it took a few steps toward Nora, and then reared on its hind legs again. The creature turned its long, vicious head back and forth, fixing her with first one yellow eye, then another.

  As she faced it, Nora had a terrible intuition. This outlandish, impossible monster that had made Raclin disappear—it was Raclin. Impossible, but the idea would not go away. She took a deep breath and cried out as loudly as she could: “Raclin! Raclin! Help me!” He must be nearby—perhaps hurt or stunned by the monster, but if he could hear her, he would surely come to rescue her. The creature opened its jaws again, showing the double row of teeth, as though it were laughing.

  “Raclin?” she said fearfully, then bolted for the door. The thing was too quick, leaping in front of her. She could feel its claws on her body, tearing into the flesh of her arms and belly. Oh, no, the baby, she thought. She struggled free and then slipped and went sprawling flat on the floor, so hard that the breath was knocked out of her. But she kept going, scissoring her legs, moving every limb like a swimmer.

  Then she was through the door and in the hallway. She had the wild hope that the creature was too big to fit through the door frame, but it simply folded its wings and slipped through. Nora ran as fast as she could, the streamers of her torn nightgown flying. It was a long corridor, the walls painted with cherubs playing cat’s cradle with pink and blue ribbons; they grinned at her as she fled past. She could hear the reptile thing loping along behind her, its claws clicking on the floor.

  The hallway divided. Nora took the left-hand turn and found herself at the top of a marble staircase that curved downward into dimness. There were tall windows to her left, light just beginning to filter through them. It was the same ballroom where a few hours ago she had been watching the dancers and worrying about where Raclin might be; she wished that Raclin’s indiscretions were all she had to worry about now. She started down the steps as fast as she dared, her body just bulky enough now to make her feel off-kilter. She couldn’t hear the monster anymore; perhaps it had taken the other turn.

  Then she looked up. The dragon creature swooped just over her head. With a scream, she dodged, and then screamed again as she lost her footing on the polished marble. Slipping, then tumbling, she rolled over and over down the cool, smooth stairs, and as she hit each new step, she thought, Now I can stop, but she kept falling anyway.

  At the bottom, she rolled once more and lay still for a minute, panting. It hurt to breathe. She saw a flash of dark wings in the corner of her vision, and she tried to get up, but her right ankle refused to take any weight. She didn’t want to think about what the fall might have done to the baby.

  She lay back, clutching her stomach, listening to the sound of voices and running footsteps.

  “Oh, Raclin.” Ilissa stood at the top of the staircase, her hair fanning out loose over her white dress. She called out to the monster crouching on the ballroom floor, her voice shaking with fury: “What have you done?”

  * * *

  Nora was in her own bed again, staring up at the silk canopy, willing herself to believe that everything she remembered from the past few hours was a bad dream. The pain told her otherwise. There seemed to be half a dozen different kinds of hurt warring over her body. The one that was hardest to ignore was the paralyzing cramp that kept seizing her lower abdomen. The bedsheets were soaked, sticky.

  People were crowded around the bed. Ilissa’s face appeared, white and angry. She was shaking her head. “She’s going to lose it.”

  Nora knew instantly what she meant. “No,” she said feebly. “Please, no.”

  “Be quiet, you ungrateful, stupid girl.” Someone leaned over to whisper to Ilissa. “No,” she said harshly. “There’s nothing to be done. We’ve failed again. Again.”

  Other faces hovered over her and disappeared. Then Nora was alone. Time passed, measured in waves of pain.

  * * *

 
Two voices that she knew, near the bed.

  “Vulpin, what are you doing here? Ilissa will be looking for you. She’s insane today. Insane.”

  “Moscelle?” There was surprise in Vulpin’s voice. “Oh, I see. She’s taken it out on you.”

  “She got the idea from what happened to you.”

  “You don’t look so bad. I got used to it. I sometimes wonder whether we should show our own faces more often.”

  “Ilissa will make you wear your own face forever, if she finds you here.”

  “My orders were always to look after Nora. Yours, too.”

  “Oh, you can’t do anything more for her. Look at all the blood. How horrid.” Moscelle came over to the bed and looked down. “Oh, Nora,” she said in a different voice. “You’re awake. How are you feeling, darling?”

  Nora thought that the fog of pain must be affecting her vision. Three or four pairs of blue eyes seemed to be peering out of Moscelle’s face. She tried to ask Moscelle about the baby, but none of the eyes showed any signs of understanding what she was attempting to say.

  “She looks terrible,” Moscelle said to Vulpin in an undertone. Nora couldn’t hear his response. “Well, I liked her, too,” Moscelle went on. “But we can’t help her now. Come on.”

  Her light footsteps retreated across the floor, followed by Vulpin’s heavier ones.

  Nora lay there for a long time. No one else came. Everything was very quiet, except when the cramps made her groan. She felt weaker than she had before. It must be afternoon now, but the room seemed drained of color. Words drifted into her mind: And then I could not see to see. If Nora had had the strength, she would have howled in frustration, but now even the thought of doing something like that made her tired.

  A small piece of dust floated across her sight. Ashes to ashes.

  Not dust, a tiny gray feather, a piece of down from the pillow or the mattress. It hung stubbornly in the air over her face. Her breath made it tremble, but it only shifted its position in the air slightly.

  Making an immense effort, Nora lifted her hand and took hold of the gray wisp between her thumb and forefinger. She looked at it carefully. Just a random feather.

  What was the name? She couldn’t even remember the name.

  “Help me,” she whispered. “You said you would help me.”

  She opened her fingers and let the feather go. Caught in an air current, it whirled away.

  It would be nice to have some hope, gentle as the tickle of a feather against your skin, but it was hard to feel anything at all but the rhythm of pain. She closed her eyes, waiting for it to end.

  Chapter 8

  The magician Aruendiel had a headache. The night before, he had worked late on a spell involving two of the constellations in the southern sky, the Weaver and the Goose, but the results were poor, the stars frustratingly unresponsive. Then he had slept poorly, the old injuries in his back giving him pain as they often did when he was tired. Shape changing gave him some relief, so before dawn he rose and flew into the forest. The exercise helped his back, but he misjudged the time, and by the time he got back to the castle, the morning sunlight had given him the beginnings of a headache, which persisted even after he changed himself back into a man and ate his usual breakfast of oatmeal and ale.

  Despite the headache, he spent the morning reading in his study, the shutters half-closed against the midsummer sun. A friend had sent him a scroll that purported to be the autobiography of the ancient wizard Rgonnish. It was certainly written in a very old dialect, which took a long time to read, but as Aruendiel got deeper into it, his initial suspicion that it was not Rgonnish’s own work hardened into certainty. You could tell that the writer did not understand all the magic he was describing. Certain details were left out; in other places, the writer had included extraneous, useless information or crude shortcuts. Rgonnish would no doubt have been infuriated if he had known that his own name would ever be associated with such trash. Aruendiel was massaging the bridge of his crooked nose between two fingers, wondering if he should give in and use magic to dispel the headache, when a small gray feather drifted across his line of vision. He brushed it aside. Dodging his hand, the feather settled on the page in front of him and quivered meaningfully.

  Aruendiel picked it up and studied it carefully. Then he sighed.

  “I warned her,” he said aloud. “She wouldn’t listen. And now I’m expected to drop everything and rescue this fool of a girl because it turns out I was right all along.” There was probably not much that he could do for her, anyway, he reflected. Years ago, Aruendiel had helped Lukl’s father rescue one of Raclin’s previous brides. She had gone mad and died anyway.

  He let the feather go, but it remained suspended in the air. He blew on it. It refused to budge. Aruendiel’s mouth twitched, and the feather turned into a pebble and dropped to the tabletop. He tossed it toward the window, but the pebble bounced off something and came skittering back to land next to his boot.

  “All right,” he said. “All right.” He had promised to help, after all. And a good, rousing piece of magic would help his headache. He already felt a little better, thinking of how much his intervention would annoy Ilissa. He rose stiffly, went over to the fireplace, and threw a log onto the bare grate. Instantly it kindled, burning brightly. Ignoring the heat, Aruendiel lowered himself onto a chair and bent over the fire, gazing intently into the flames.

  * * *

  In the park around Ilissa’s house, a breeze picked up, moving quickly through the trees, tossing leaves and limbs with more vehemence than breezes ever did in Ilissa’s well-mannered domain. Ilissa, walking in the gardens with an uneasy entourage, was too busy scolding everyone within earshot to notice.

  “—no appreciation of what I did for her,” Ilissa told Oon. “She’s a peasant, an animal! But you’re worse. You’re even stupider, and you don’t even have the excuse of being human. This would never have happened if you had kept your hands off Raclin, or at least had the sense to behave with some discretion.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Oon miserably. “But it was Raclin who—”

  “Never mind what Raclin did. You should have known better. Oh, stop your crying, you despicable girl!”

  A drop of water was trickling down Oon’s cheek, but she shook her head. “I’m not crying,” she said. “It’s raining.”

  Ilissa looked up. The sky had blackened, and big drops were falling, leaving dark splotches on bright silks. What had been an energetic breeze was suddenly a gale, crashing through the trees like a wild animal, scattering leaves, breaking off branches. It swept past Ilissa and her companions, pawing at their hair and clothing, and then careened toward the house.

  “Nora! Is anyone watching Nora?” Ilissa cried above the wind. “Moscelle? Vulpin? What are you doing here? Why aren’t you watching Nora?” Obediently Vulpin turned to run, but checked himself as a tree smashed down on the path in front of him.

  Dully, Nora listened to the rising wind and the clatter of rain against glass. It’s been so long since I felt rain, she thought. Since I came here, nothing but sunshine. Her mouth felt as dry as paper. She wished that she could get out of bed and open the window and feel cool rain on her face, just once more.

  The window frame creaked, first one corner, then another, almost as though the wind were deliberately testing it. Nora did not turn her head; it was too much effort.

  There was a roar, then breaking glass. All at once the room was alive with rain and swiftly flowing air. Nora gasped and struggled to sit up, as the bed’s canopy ripped away. The wind found her. It nudged, pushed, shoved her, so forcefully it felt as though she could touch it. The bedsheet wrapped itself around her, firmly and methodically, as though she were a letter being sealed into an envelope.

  Someone pounded at the door and shouted, but the door did not open.

  The torrent of air moved restlessly around the room, breaking chairs and tables into kindling, then into matchsticks. With another roar, it exited through the wind
ow, and Nora, gasping, went with it.

  At first she thought she was falling. The upturned faces in the garden below her were startlingly close—Ilissa’s among them, her mouth open and eyes brilliant with rage. Then they receded; Nora arced upward, higher and higher, skimming the treetops. So this is flying, she thought, strangely calm because this was too incredible to be real.

  She had flown in dreams, but never so far or fast. Ilissa’s palace dwindled. In a few minutes, Nora had left the rain behind, and she was moving over pastures flecked with small white and brown dots that were no doubt sheep and cows, perhaps the same animals that Ilissa had once demanded as reparations for Nora’s capture. A village of huts with thatched roofs. A wide, shallow river, its bed full of round stones. More forest, then fields striped green with young crops. Fierce gusts of wind hurried her along, flinging her up and down like a ball. The fresh air made her feel better for a time, but the cramping and the other pains continued, and after a while she began to feel airsick. She closed her eyes wearily. Maybe flying was always unpleasant, even if you weren’t on an airplane.

  An hour or more had passed when she felt herself dip suddenly. Startled, she opened her eyes. The current of air that carried her had slowed, as though it were casting about, looking for something. Please, please don’t drop me, she thought. There was another thatched-roof village below, surrounded by fields. A man driving a cart saw her and gave a cry. Farther ahead, she saw tree-covered hills out to the horizon.

  The wind picked up speed again, shifting course toward a hilltop crowned with a stone structure. She had the confused impression of thick gray walls and towers; of smaller, gabled buildings inside the walls. A couple of dogs ran across the grass below, barking.

  She swept toward the stone wall. She was going to hit it. No, she cleared the wall, then found herself dropping—too fast—into a dusty courtyard. Someone was waiting for her in the middle of it, a dark-clothed figure with a pale, dour, upturned face. The wizard.