Blue Magic
Page 37
As Roche took possession of a granite slab that might work, more or less, as a desk, Will beamed. “Told you we’d get them all here.”
“Except they’re not.” As Lilla Skye approached Roche, Astrid sent a ringer to find Juanita Corazón.
Juanita was home in Reno, arguing with her mother in rapid-fire Spanish. The sound carried through the open window.
“I gotta learn more languages…,” Astrid muttered, straining her mouse muscles to push the doorbell.
A diminutive niece opened the door. “Grandma wants Tía to wear a skirt,” she confided as Juanita rushed to the door, buttoning a pair of dress slacks. Her face fell when she recognized Astrid.
“Expecting someone else?”
“I guess not,” she said. “Everyone waiting on me?”
“Pretty much. Your judge friend didn’t show?”
She shook her head.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Juanita said. “Expecting him to forgive me, let alone join the witch-burners, was probably a bit much.”
“You’re not witch-burners.” Back at the talking meadow, Astrid’s ringer raised its voice. “Fyrefolk delegation’s on its way.”
A chilly murmur. Getting the Fyremen a seat at the table had been a hard sell, even though Juanita had taken over the group, promising to focus their attention on spiritual issues.
Astrid let her gaze roam to the dancers and drummers awaiting the official opening of the talks. Negotiations would go on for years, Will had warned. She couldn’t expect substantial progress today.
Elsewhere, in the unreal, a small hand tugged at hers.
Astrid had never finished high school, and to be heading up a class now felt … weird.
It helped that her classroom wasn’t in a real school. There were no blackboards or desks; she’d chosen a space near a standing pool of vitagua, erecting a gaily colored silk tent bordered by gardens. Jacks’s statue of her father stood half a mile away, down a path lined with Dad’s favorite flowers.
Astrid’s students ranged in age from eight to fifteen, and they came from across the globe. They carried books from more worldly classes—Will had recruited a math and science teacher, an English teacher, even a seasoned principal to run the school. The kids bubbled with energy.
Ellie and Carson Forest were among her students. Will’s daughter bounced with barely repressed excitement. Carson, as always, was more guarded. Walls up, so much like his dad.
All of them had the vitagua-flecked eyes of the initiated.
“Let’s start with a letrico circle,” Astrid said.
They formed up around a windmill, reciting the cantation. Power formed in tufts, and they each crystallized a hunk.
“Good.” She handed a chantment to Ellie. “Apple-spinning.”
“Praise the Goddess,” Ellie mouthed, raising the chantment and making fruit out of thin air. Apples for teacher.
Next, Astrid led the group to a shelf of random objects one of the Canadian kids had christened the Tickle Trunk, inviting each child to pick something with sparkle.
One after another, the students made chantments. They were minor items, imbued with random powers—only Ellie Forest seemed close to developing any control over what she made.
There was no rush; they had time.
In time, the students would return home to make chantments, improving the lives of their families and neighbors.
“Astrid.” That was Katarina, speaking to a ringer in the new magic science center at MIT. “There’s a quantum physicist in Sri Lanka I want on-site. Homeland Security’s blocking his visa.”
“Ask Pike to take it on.”
“Nyet, I need him. Disguise or smuggle the guy.”
“We can’t do whatever we want anymore,” Astrid said. Every hour, it seemed, imposed more rules on them. Laws on letrico use, agreements about chantment dispersal. Several U.S. states had already made vamping a capital offense. Humanity was fitting magic into a legislative framework, defining what magicians could do. Coming to terms.
She argued with Katarina, watched the Roused dancers opening up the peace conference, taught her class, and roamed the world. In Cleveland, Boomsday had caused tornadoes, but the electricity was back up, and most of the roads were fixed. Water was running. Life was getting, more or less, back to normal.
Olive was honeymooning in Cairo with Thunder. It was a working vacation—they were establishing a letrico mill.
In the talking meadow, Roche and Will were murmuring, feeling each other out on deals.
Roche: “We’re asking you stop giving private citizens extraordinary powers. Firefighting, road building—that belongs to the government. Healing chantments go to licensed doctors, that kind of thing. Superheroes are fine for comic books, but you can’t just go around sowing chaos—”
“We might agree to that,” Will murmured.
“Astrid has to publicly accept our position that her U.S. citizenship expired when her body died. She’s no longer American. And you renounce your citizenship too.”
“Why?” she asked, startling them both.
“You two killed thousands on Boomsday. You can’t be Americans anymore.”
It hurt, strangely: the sense of rejection bit deep.
A rustle among the spectators drew their attention. George Skagway was weaving his sports chair through the crowd. He braked to a stop between Clancy and Juanita, nodding to them both. Juanita was staring at the dancers, her jaw clenched. Fighting tears, Astrid wondered, or a smile?
An hour later, in her classroom, she sent the kids off to gym class. She still felt a bit like an impostor as they filed out, chorusing good-byes.
North and east, in Saskatoon, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were having a standoff with a man who had vamped seven people. He was holding them off with a magical straight razor.
She asked: “Would you like a hand?”
“He’s had every chance to surrender,” one assented. Drawing vitagua out of the prairie soil, she flowed into the house, overwhelming the guy, freezing him solid.
A thousand tasks, time for everything. She worked, watched, wheeled and dealed, started learning Spanish. The day passed.
At dusk, she sent a ringer home to Pucker Hill.
Will was at the cottage with the kids, cleaning up dinner: corn on the cob and baked ham, from the look of it. Carson’s face stiffened as she came through the door: he was polite in class, but that did not mean she had won him over.
“Hey.” Will came to the door, kissing her cheek. It was a peck—he still found the ringers creepy.
“How’s the world?”
“Changing,” she said.
“What else is new?” He rinsed the plates and set them in a rack to dry. “Carson wants to see what’s left of our old neighborhood in Portland.”
Astrid eyed him gravely. “Is it okay if I come?”
The boy nodded, his face unreadable.
They took Stonegate to Blue Bone, stepping through to Portland. The city was half in and half out of Roused territory; it lay on the edge of an area flattened by quakes and overgrown by alchemized forest. Overnight, it had become a border town.
Will’s street had gotten a good shake. Heritage homes slumped in an untidy line along broken roadway and sidewalks, many cracked and slumping, none quite flattened. The trees around them had grown sky high, shadowing everything.
A trio of starlings flashed past, iridescent feathers glinting. Ellie waved: Alchemites who hadn’t lost their faith on Boomsday considered the birds holy.
Flying rats, Astrid’s father grumbled. He’d never much liked starlings.
“This is it,” Carson said, voice strained. “Ellie, look.”
Rhododendrons spilled over the porch of a three-story house. Will shoved the plants back, triggering a spill of red blossoms. Beyond the growth, the door was ajar.
Ellie darted in.
“Careful, baby.” Will trotted after her, leaving Astrid alone with Carson.
�
�So…,” Astrid said before the silence could stretch. “You’re looking for your old things?”
The boy shook his head. “Dad got them after Boomsday.”
“Just wanted to poke around?”
No answer. She stepped back, letting him decide if he wanted to chase his father and sister indoors. His discomfort was obvious.
Maybe coming along had been a mistake.
Casting about for something to say, Astrid spotted a glimmer of steel at the edge of the garden, metal buried under leaves. She bent, struggling to unearth whatever it was, but her mouse muscles failed her.
“Here.” Carson dug, coming up with a pair of ice skates, black leather boots with a touch of rust on the blades.
“It has that sparkle,” he said.
“Yeah?” A glimmer of foreknowledge. “The first time I learned to consciously choose what a chantment I was making would do—I talked as I was chanting. I said what I wanted.”
The boy shot her what she’d come to think of as his “wary dog” look.
“Your little sister doesn’t have to be the class superstar,” Astrid said, offering her hand, letting the tip of one finger soften to liquid magic.
After a second, Carson reached out, absorbing a bit of her essence. He bit his lip, bowed his head, and clenched the skates to his chest, whispering as the magic flowed into them.
“Any idea what they do?” Astrid asked.
He nodded, unable to hide a glint of triumph.
“It’s what you wanted?”
“Yes.” He hefted them. “Did you plant these here?”
“No,” she said. “Want to give them a try?”
He sat, kicking off his shoes. “There’s no letrico.”
“The forest can spare a little heat.”
Carson started spinning, just a little, and as the letrico coiled at his feet, he wound his hand in it, balling it around his fist in a cotton candy spool. He frowned that Will Forest frown, and Astrid’s small heart pattered, expecting some hard question: How could she have let his mother be murdered? maybe. But he rose onto the blades, flexed his legs, and took off like a rocket through the trees.
The sound, the rasp of a knife cutting ice, brought Will to the porch at a run. “What’s he doing?”
“Blowing off steam,” Astrid said, fists clenched, unwilling to admit she was terrified the kid would slam into a tree.
He put an arm around her. “You are not going to become one of those permissive stepmothers who lets the children walk all over her, just for fear of being disliked.”
“I don’t know. Am I?”
“That wasn’t actually a question.”
“Rules, rules,” she said, and he squeezed her as if she were still alive.
Ellie came out of the house with a stuffed elephant clutched in each hand. “Car-car! Let me try!”
“You’ll accommodate,” Will said. “We all will. We remade the world. How hard can building a family be?”
“It’s the thing I never got right.”
“It’s going to work out, Astrid,” he said, turning her so she was looking into his eyes.
“Do you mean that, Will?”
“I believe it,” he said. Carson swooped past, bearing his sister skyward. Both kids shrieked with laughter as Will’s breath began to fog on the steadily cooling air and he pressed his lips to hers.
TOR BOOKS BY A. M. DELLAMONICA
Indigo Springs
Blue Magic
PRAISE FOR INDIGO SPRINGS
WINNER OF THE 2010 SUNBURST AWARD FOR CANADIAN FANTASY LITERATURE
“The theme here—the problems of power in irresponsible hands—is archetypal, but Dellamonica realizes it very well through characters you wouldn’t want in your neighborhood but who certainly hold your attention in what becomes an edge-of-the-seat thriller.”
—Booklist
“I loved this. An original and terrific apocalyptic fantasy set in the real world, Indigo Springs is terrifyingly insightful, sprinkled with bits of humor for leavening. Newcomer A. M. Dellamonica has deftly crafted a book that is both literary and a very good read. What a fine storyteller Tor has discovered.”
—Patricia Briggs, #1 bestselling author of the Mercy Thompson novels
“A psychologically astute, highly original debut—complex, eerie, and utterly believable. Stay tuned for the projected sequel.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“A fascinating and multilayered tale of people who get caught up with forces beyond their control. Not only is it a cracking good tale, it’s also an insightful look into the consequences of using great power selfishly.”
—RT Book Reviews (four stars)
“A lyrical and richly imagined world with a storyline that encompasses both eco-politics and the vagaries of the human heart.”
—Syne Mitchell, editor of WeaveZine
“This is an entertaining and terrifying tale of terrific characters who stumble into the practice of blue magic and find that it is neither simple nor safe. Astrid, Jacks, and Sahara will enchant you and lead you down unexpected paths of discovery and danger. A great read that will make you look for magic in everyday objects!”
—Toby Bishop, author of Airs Beneath the Moon
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A. M. Dellamonica is the author of Indigo Springs, a debut novel that won the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. She has been publishing short fiction since the early nineties, some of which has appeared in Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, and at Tor.com along with numerous anthologies. In 2005, her alternate history of Joan of Arc, “A Key to the Illuminated Heretic,” was shortlisted for the Sideways Award and the Nebula Award. She also teaches writing courses through the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.
Dellamonica lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her wife, Kelly Robson, and two very spoiled cats.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
BLUE MAGIC
Copyright © 2012 by A. M. Dellamonica
All rights reserved.
Edited by James Frenkel
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Dellamonica, A. M.
Blue magic / A.M. Dellamonica.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 978-0-7653-1948-7 (trade pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-4299-8719-6 (e-book)
1. Magic—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9199.4.D448B58 2012
813'.6—dc23
2011033199
e-ISBN 9781429987196
First Edition: April 2012
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
/> Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Tor Books by A. M. Dellamonica
Praise for Indigo Springs
About the Author
Copyright