Misfit Mage

by Michael Taggart

  Once she was wrapped in a power layer of my magic I looked to Annabeth on my left. “Touch Penny with the fingers on both of your hands. Be gentle, though. She’s really thin and I don’t want to hurt her.” Annabeth licked her lips nervously and very gently joined the circle with a light touch. Once she held the tiny wire for a moment and nothing happened, she started to relax.

  “Annabeth, have you seen where someone wet their fingers and then runs them around the surface of a glass to make a tone?” She nodded. “I want you to imagine something like that with this circle. Imagine you are running your magic around the ring and it is making a tone.”

  Annabeth closed her eyes and settled in. At first I felt nothing, then a rich textured magic started flowing around penny. I could see her signature pink color wrapping my emerald magic. Then a faint but distinctive tone filled the room. It sounded meditative and mystical. Annabeth’s eyes flew open in surprise. None of us had expected this, and Annabeth was clearly part of the circle in a new way.

  I looked to my right and nodded at John. He very gently held the wire like we were.

  “John, usually there isn’t anything you need to do, but this time I want you to try something for me. This time there is actual metal making the circle of magic. I want you to just sense it and wrap your magic around it. Like you were going to do something with it, only don’t actually do anything. I’m not sure what that would do to Penny.”

  “Sure.” John rumbled and immediately a gray magic raced around the ring. Actually, it wasn’t a solid color, it was a mix of just about everything from white to black that blended into a sort of pewter color. It also sparkled a bit, like it had ground diamonds mixed in with it. I sent a mental query to Penny. She replied that she was doing fine. Actually it sounded like she was having a lot of fun and enjoying the whole process.

  “Your turn,” I said to Sandy. “At this point just let your magic layer around the circle. We’ll spin it in a minute. You’re super powerful so be gentle.”

  “Of course,” Sandy said dryly. I’m sure I wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know, but I wanted this to work and I didn’t want anything to happen to Penny.

  Sandy gently touched the circle, and sent orange magic around the ring. It was the type of orange you see in a candle flame. This suited her. It was gentle and warming at the moment, but I’m sure it could rage if she needed.

  I let the circle rest for a moment, giving the people and the magic time to get comfortable together. Even though three feet in diameter sounds like a lot, it really isn’t when there are four people involved. We were standing close together, nearly touching.

  Parts of my theory were now proven right. We could make a perfect circle, and we could make it a lot smaller than before. Now I just need to see if it would spin and create a magic vortex, and if so, then how much energy it would take.

  Since I was the base layer, I gave a gentle push and started our magic spinning. I knew immediately this was going to work. The flow was so smooth, like there was no friction at all. It felt like an ice skater gliding around a rink. It could glide for forever.

  I checked for sparks or anything that indicated our magic was leaking off into the room. It looked smooth and beautiful. Time to put a little bit more magic into the circle. I started with myself, adding another measure of emerald magic into the base. I asked Annabeth to think about adding more magic to the circle. Maybe adding another tone or making the existing one louder? She tried a second tone but struggled a bit. Making the current tone louder seemed to work much better and I saw her pink magic strengthen.

  John was next and he knew how to add more magic on his own. His pewter gray doubled and then tripled in volume. Sandy was last and she effortlessly doubled her magic and then doubled it again.

  The magic in the circle stayed smooth and easy, although now it was a thick band of power. Magic called to magic, and I could see motes of natural magic starting to spin and cluster in the center.

  “The motes are circling,” I said excitedly.

  “Really?” Sandy was shocked. Annabeth looked so happy.

  “We don’t have a vortex yet but we have the beginnings of one. Magic seems to call to magic, and we need a bit more power in our circle. That will exert even more influence on the motes and then I’ll ramp up the speed.”

  “Before we do that, is anyone tired?” I asked.

  “I hardly feel like I am doing anything,” Sandy said and Annabeth and John agreed.

  “We are doing great!” I said. A team leader should always try to be positive. “Let’s stick with the safe approach like we have been doing. I’ll go first.”

  I doubled my existing amount of magic in the circle. It still seemed easy to me. I wasn’t feeling any of the effects that came with low magic. I could probably double it a few more times if I needed too.

  Annabeth went next with no issues. The tone in the room was much more noticeable now. It seemed like such a rich and vibrant sound, like a hundred monks humming in tune. John and Sandy followed with no fuss.

  “This is pretty neat. I can actually feel everybody’s magic,” John said. He did seem pretty tuned in to what we were doing now. I guess beer thoughts could wait till later. “I didn’t realize that what you were calling magic is what I feel like when I’m shaping. Now it feels like everyone has their hands on a piece of metal and we are all going to mold it together.”

  I didn’t want to get too distracted from what we were doing but I mentally filed that away for later. Maybe there was a way to shape with John? He was such an artist. I bet it would be intriguing to feel firsthand what his creative process was.

  Our magic ring was very thick now, at least as big around as my arm. Maybe even thicker. Our magic melded and flowed easily and the influence on the natural motes was even more pronounced.

  There was a large dense mass of neutral magic in the center of our circuit now. I hadn’t planned on this, but it was attracting more neutral magic just like our circle was. The overall effect of the neutral core and the circle was becoming much greater than the circle on its own.

  All that power still needed to get into the charms, though, and for that I needed a funnel. This is where it could all fall apart. I gave another push and our circle spun faster but not by much. It was already spinning pretty quickly.

  I thought about it for a sec, and realized this was like a merry go round. I didn’t just need to push, I needed to push faster. Instead of feeling like I was pushing the magic, I gave it a flick. Like a quick rapid tap to the circle. That worked much better.

  I flicked several more times and the speed of the circle doubled. What I had been waiting for happened, the neutral magic had speed up too and now it was moving fast enough to make a funnel. It was like the world’s smallest magic tornado and the funnel was small and dense with magic. I very gently increased the speed, until the funnel touched down on the charms.

  “We have a funnel!” I said excitedly. “Everybody keep steady.” Excited glances were shared all around. I didn’t want to lose our momentum, though, so I mostly ignored them and stayed focused.

  The charms in the center of the floor started glowing immediately. They glowed yellow and then orange like before with previous circles. This time, the color kept changing, though. It went to a red, then a deeper red, almost a black.

  Some of the magic was hitting the floor and then shooting outside the circle but the smaller funnel was keeping that mostly in check, though. The tighter funnel was a lot more efficient than the last time we had circled.

  A few of the charms in the center went from almost black to pure white. They shone like little stars. The charms were in a loose pile so the funnel wasn’t equally touching all of them. Normally that wasn’t a problem but in this case it meant the ones on the edge weren’t getting the full funnel treatment.

  Still, about half of charms turned white, a quarter were almost black and the rest a dark red, when the funnel ran out.

  I’d been so focused on
the charms I hadn’t been paying attention to the main mass of wild magic that was feeding the funnel. It was now less than half its original size. I looked around our circle room to see if there were any more motes to collect and it looked like we had them all.

  This was so exciting. We had never processed anywhere near this amount of magic before. I still wanted to keep going, though. I took a moment to fill everyone in on what I was seeing.

  “I want to keep going,” I said. “There is still a lot of magic in the center and all the charms are not fully charged yet. Does anyone have any suggestions?”

  “We can try making the circle smaller,” John said. “If it’s a smaller circle then it will compress the magic in the center and make it spin faster.”

  Everyone agreed this was a good idea so we tried it.

  It was a disaster.

  It turns out that everyone needed to make their magic fit a smaller circle and we needed to all do it at the same time. That didn’t go so well and the circle started wobbling and slowed down quickly. I was afraid we had completely lost the circle. I had Penny go back to her original circle size and had everyone adjust their magic to match. It took a good fifteen minutes but we finally got the circle going again. It wasn’t as good as the first time. Some of the layers were overlapping a bit. Still, it seemed to be spinning well and I had the speed back up again.

  “Any other suggestions?” I asked.

  “How about we just lower the circle?” Sandy suggested. “Then the funnel wouldn’t need to be as long.”

  Again, everyone agreed it was worth a shot.

  Since everything had gone haywire last time, we were all super cautious. We kept a very slow pace, but gradually we all moved the circle until it was about a foot off the ground. Of course, we were all bent over at this point and nearly bumping heads. Maybe it would be a good idea to try this kneeling next time?

  At this distance, I barely needed to make a funnel at all and the charms continued to charge. That only lasted a few minutes and the central energy had shrunk quite a bit more. It was just a bit bigger than a softball, and I decided to try one more thing.

  “Let’s try one last thing, guys,” I said. “Let’s take the circle all the way down to about an inch off the floor. Then we don’t need a funnel at all and hopefully the charms can get the very last of the energy.”

  I wasn’t sure if everyone was flexible enough to go all the way down. They still needed to be holding onto the wire after all. The person I was really worried about was John. He was so big and tall, but I needn’t have worried. Apparently mountain trolls can be quite flexible, which I’m sure Sandy knew about already.

  There wasn’t very much neutral magic left and the charms sucked in the last of it. One more charm switched over to white and a couple of charms went almost black. All the charms on the edge were still dark red. We were finished.

  I had everyone pull out of the circle in reverse order. Sandy went first and took back her orange magic. John pulled back his sparkly gray and then Annabeth pulled in her pink. The tone of her magic faded from the room.

  I pulled in my emerald green magic and Penny gradually shrunk back into a penny. She still sounded faint and distant, but she seemed ok. She trilled at me happily, as if to say she had had a great time. Then she switched back to a ring and wrapped herself around my index finger again.

  Sandy had picked up one of the charms and was examining it. “Well I’ll be cow-kicked. I haven’t seen a charm filled with so much magic in a long time.” She was holding one of the dark red charms from the edge.

  “When I was in Chicago, I got to take part in one charging circle that had a lot of the old timers in it. They were powerful, experienced mages. I was fairly new at the time and they let me be a part of it to see how a real circle worked. The charms we were refilling came out like this, stuffed to the brim. I thought that was just the way it should be, but I’ve been in lots of circles since then and I’ve never seen results like that. Until now.”

  She looked at me in awe. Her eyes shining. “Jason, this is amazing! What a breakthrough!” She was so excited she gave a happy twirl.

  “Actually, I don’t think you have seen everything yet.” I told her about the magic colors and that I think she was holding one of the least charged charms.

  She picked up one of the deep red, almost black ones. “Annabeth, check this out!” They started chattering like two magpies over a pile of corn.

  “You still haven’t seen the best yet.” I said, picking up a star white charm and handing it to Sandy. She almost dropped it. Her mouth opened and closed a few times. She had no words.

  She looked at me, Annabeth, and John and started laughing. “You know, what’s crazy is that nobody else here knows enough about charms to truly appreciate just how amazing this is. If we were back in Chicago we’d have the Head of Household herself coming down to check this out.

  “Of course, if we were in Chicago then we would have access to a regular charging circle and we would never have been forced to experiment like this.” She looked at me and I swear she teared up a bit. “This is what I love about magic. There is always something new to learn and discover. It’s so exciting and a bit humbling too.

  “Thank you, Jason for coming up with this. You’ve made my day. Actually, you’ve made my decade.” She came over and gave me a big hug.

  I was grinning from ear to ear. It felt so good to be accepted. I’d put my abilities to use on poker, but when I win there, I’m taking someone else’s money and they are not happy about it. This time, though, my ability to see patterns and figure things out was helping everyone. I was the newest member of this little team and it felt so satisfying to be able to pull my own weight and contribute.

  “How many more charms do we have left to charge?” I asked.

  “We’ve been unable to recharge for a long time.” Sandy said. “So I’m guessing we have about a hundred and fifty left.”

  “This room is almost completely out of magic now.” I said. “But I do know of a place where I saw a lot of natural magic. I thought they were fireflies at the time but now I’m thinking it was motes of magic.”

  “I’m guessing the park?” Annabeth said.

  “Yep. Right by where we were attacked by the golem. I was going to say something to you at the time, but then we had more important things to deal with.”

  “Penny seems to be ok with all this and I have a slight design change I want to try out. Do we want to take this out to the park?” I asked.

  “Oh yes!” Sandy said. “I can’t wait to get back to full power again. What about you two?”

  “Of course. I’m game,” Annabeth said.

  “Whatever makes you happy,” John said diplomatically.

  We agreed to meet at Sandy’s place in fifteen minutes and head out from there. I suggested we start out sitting down this time so everyone needed to wear something that would be alright in the grass.

  I went back to my place to change into long sweatpants. If I wear shorts then the grass tickles me and I think it is bugs crawling on me. I’m a city boy and I hate that. Bermuda was napping so I kissed him and headed out.

  Annabeth had one charm bracelet of hand-me-downs from Sandy. Sandy had three bracelets and a sack full of stuff. She wasn’t kidding about being out of power.

  I didn’t remember exactly which path we were on in the park when the golem attacked so we wandered for a bit before we found it. The picnic bench was still there, of course, and the air around it was filled with magic. I’m not sure exactly what it was about this spot, but it looked like someone had set off fireworks. There were some big fat motes too, much bigger than we had in the circle room.

  Annabeth made the commonsense suggestion of sitting on the picnic bench rather than on the grass. We could put the charms on the top of the picnic bench rather than on the ground and they would then be much closer to the circle.

  I asked Penny to form into a large ring again. This time we went with a two-foot diameter rath
er than three. I did change one little thing. I had penny take a small bit of wire, run it to the center of the circle, then bend and go about a foot down. I was hoping this extra part of penny would go through the center of the natural magic and then guide the funnel so it would be even more precise. It might not work, but then we could just reset and start the circle over without the extra wire.

  Penny seemed ready to go again so I started first and layered her in thick green magic. Annabeth went next and her magic tone filled the air. It didn’t bounce back to us like it did in the circle room, but instead wandered through the trees and grass in the park. It was night time again so we probably had the park to ourselves. I noticed that her music was attracting the motes already.

  John went next; his rocky magic a perfect complement to our new outdoor setting, followed by Sandy. I started the circle spinning at medium speed and let the magic gather. The smaller radius was making a big difference. It was spinning the core a lot faster and it seemed like it was taking less magic from the four of us to start the core forming.

  Soon the core was dense and seemed to be attracting as much new magic as our circle was. I just let it keep building; waiting for the right time to kick in the vortex speed when something surprising happened. The natural magic started peeling off from the core and flowing down the new wire Penny had added. It looked cloudy at the top, then flowed like liquid down the wire, until there was a drop of pure wild magic on the bottom.

  That was crazy cool! Talk about condensing magic! We were using even less effort than before and it was very easy to touch the tip to a charm. The liquid magic must have been very potent, because the first charm went straight to dark red, then almost black, and then to star white in a few seconds.

  The only problem was the magic tip was now so precise we need to move the circle a bit to touch down on the different charms. It took a lot of communication to make that happen smoothly.

  We’d filled up a few charms when Sandy had an idea. She took one hand off the circle. We all held our breath, waiting to see if the circle would collapse.