The snow was thick and her fingers
were numb, but she had found a tiny cave; actually more of a dent in the
mountainside. Night was falling and she had to get off the road and rest. The trek from the capital city had been quick and mostly along well-traveled roads, until she reached the mountains. Just the other side of these mountains was the village where she grew up. Her journey had been quiet, the road empty except for a few farmers going the other way, bringing their late crops to town. She had only stopped in one Inn because she didn't want to spend her coin. She didn't know when she would return to school, if at all.
Meister Ilbin had forbidden her to leave. Told her the roads
were not safe. Told her to wait until spring, until she could hook up with a
caravan. She had left that night, silently, stealthily, so no one could stop her. This was probably stupid. She would have been safer remaining at the academy,
but she couldn't shake the feeling that she had to get home. She needed to get
home. There was something wrong at home.
She
set down her pack carefully as it had all her worldly goods in it, limited as
those were. A couple books, her handwritten grimoire and her pens, a change of
clothing, two changes of under garments, her knife and her mug, one blanket.
Her hands shook with the cold as she gathered up twigs and moss, and several dead branches from a nearby pine. She scraped the ground in front of her niche clear of snow, then she constructed her fire. A circle first, then tinder, on top of that kindling and fuel. Now for the tricky part. Holding her hands on either side of the pile of kindling she prepared to call for fire. Fire is always such an elusive element. Half the time at school she could barely call a spark, the other half she might as well set a forest ablaze. The Meisters all said be patient, go slow, but she was never one to wait. Now it suddenly struck her how dangerous this cold could be if her magic failed her.
She positioned her hands again. She reached deep in her mind and saw the fire. She envisioned the red spark, the curl of smoke, the lick of flame as it swept around the logs she had stacked. There was a loud whoosh and she opened her eyes. A huge grin split her face. She wanted to dance with glee. She had done it. Now to control it. Moving her fingers in complicated patterns she dimmed the light of the fire, but turned up the heat. With another sweep of her fingers she set a stasis spell. That should hold the flames through the night allowing her to get some sleep without having to replenish the wood or freeze to death. She relaxed her shoulders letting go of the tension she had been carrying.
From her pack she retrieved a hunk of cheese and a piece of
candied ginger. She poured water into the tin cup and set it near the flames.
She crumbled a handful of the mint she had gathered along the way into the cup
and dropped in the ginger. While she waited for the water to warm, she nibbled
on pieces of the cheese.
It wasn't so much that she was bad at magic, she reflected. It was just that her magic did not always come when she called. As if it were a recalcitrant creature with a mind of its own. For all the other students at the Academy it was just a matter of learning the right words and the right gestures. Everyone there had magic. They were the privileged ones, gifted humans touched by the divine—or so said the instructors. To be honest, Noir thought, it was more likely some accidental combination of blood and ancestry. Meister Tobin, who was the best at water magic and who could call any beast, had slightly more pointed ears than most humans. She saw his ears once when the wind snatched his hat from his head. She wanted to ask him if he had Elven blood in his family, but that was not the kind of question that was considered acceptable among the polite society of Norrebrox. When she was first brought to the school by her grandmother, she had had it drilled into her that one did not ask personal questions. There were punishments—being slapped was the least of these, losing a meal, hard chores, and having her reading privileges cut were the worst. Especially having access to the library taken away.
In her first year at the school she had gone hungry a lot until she
learned not to speak out of turn. In her second and third years her tutor was Meistra
Cerrida, who took it as a personal affront when Noir’s magic went awry. Noir
suffered the slaps, but started to notice who among the students were never or
rarely slapped. What did they have that she did not? Most of the students had registered
an affinity for some form of magic by year two. The girls who had a way with
plants and making things grow, almost always came from one of the seven witching
families. The boys who could move metal and stone were invariably shorter and
sturdier, and probably had dwarf or goblin blood, albeit diluted by
generations, mixed with their human. Noir was the daughter of a witch, who was
also the daughter of a witch and although she knew all the Magica Medica,
the encyclopedia of plants and their properties, she would be as likely to wither
an herb as to force it to bloom if she called on her magic.
In her fourth year, Noir got Meister Ilbin as her tutor. He was would never harsh and never restricted her reading, but she knew she was a disappointment to him. She could command the elements—sometimes. “Focus, Noir. Focus!” he would say. “You have the magic, you just need to concentrate on the forms!”
Magic was either in your bones, your blood, or it was not. If you had magic, you could learn to use that magic. She had magic. She felt it singing inside her. The Meisters were stunned at the level of her power—when she could get it to rise. But sometimes no matter how hard she concentrated, no matter how perfect her gestures and chants were, she could not make fire, not even light a candle. Other times when she called the flames, she got wind, or water. It was so frustrating.
Maybe this time it was her need that brought out the fire. She did have a great need. To get to her village. To find her grandmother, Baba. To save . . . to save something. . . . She didn't yet know what it was, but it was nagging at the back of her mind. It would come, eventually.
She rolled up in her coat, tucked her hands in the sleeves, and using her pack as a backrest she fell asleep to the dancing of the firelight.
Her dreams as usual were of her childhood.
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