Awakening Magic

by Kayla Bashe

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  The next day, it’s your first magic class! At one point, they separate everyone—students with mainly offensive powers go with one teacher, students with more defensive or support-oriented powers go with another.

  You’re not sure which direction to head in, so you just kind of stand there.

  Miss Poppyseed, one of the teachers, comes over to you. “Is something wrong, then?”

  You explain that you’re not sure where you’re supposed to go.

  “Well, then, I’ll help you figure this out. What is it that you do, exactly?”

  When you rattle off your list of powers—in fact, you’ve discovered several new ones in the last week alone—Miss Poppyseed’s mouth quirks into a smile. “I think we may have to give you a few private lessons, Miss Lucy Angel. Because you’re different. And extraordinary. In fact, if one thinks about it, all differences are by definition extraordinary. Think about it that way, Miss Lucy Angel. Chin up, shoulders back, head high—right, splendid. Come along, then—let’s go be extraordinarily different!”

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  Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe

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  “I have a movie for us to watch,” Abby says one night, a week after you and Magda screened Messages by Moonlight.

  It’s a beautifully artistic film about a pair of rich, decadent siblings during the fall of the Roman empire—only the Roman empire is set in space, and instead of territories warring, it’s a battle between planets.

  Violence-as-art! An enigmatic agender narrative eye character who may or may not be an incarnation of Dionysus! Bacchinalian revels! Rich people behaving badly! “Per astra, ad astra” as the new motto of the Holy Roman Church!

  When the movie ends, Magda makes a show of pushing her mouth closed.

  The next week, Chant brings in a lavish musical.

  It reminds you of movie musicals produced during the first part of the 1900s—huge crowd scenes, lots of costume changes, everyone singing and dancing and smiling. The sky is always blue and the grass is always green—except when the more femme heroine breaks down crying in a resteraunt because she thinks her date—who’s actually been arested on false charges—has stood her up. In that scene, everything’s a tasteful dove-grey, and waiters spin langorously around pillars carrying silver-tray-covered platters of food. The plates turn out to be empty, a motivation for the woman’s mental state as she walks through the resteraunt, looking sadly at happy couples who eat together.

  (Chant blows her nose. )

  And she collapses into her seat at the end of her song, crying—

  “What, didja miss me?” It’s her short-haired lover, who escaped from jail by telling her woeful story to a surprisingly softhearted biker gang, who promptly felt sorry for her and raised money to bribe the police to let her out. With a cry of joy, the other woman springs to her feet and throws her arms around her lover, who carries her bridal-style out to the street, where they tap-dance while singing—and, of course, everyone else joins in. Even the biker gang.

  The screen fades out on a kiss and a triumphant chord.

  Chant vows to learn to tap-dance during the summer.

  From then on, movie nights become a regular tradition. Sometimes, students from other squads come. One week, a few students from down the hall even show a movie that they made! You’re proud of yourself for starting this tradition.

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  Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe

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  The next time you have a party, you invite a few guests—with everyone’s permission, of course.. They seem to really love both the food and your performance; afterwards, Anemone, a dark-skinned girl who habitually pins soft-petaled blossoms to her neatly braided hair, shyly asks Chant if she can display a few of her flower arrangements, and Rusalka from down the hall, blonde and pale and wearing a one-piece bathing suit under her school skirt, asks if she can play an Esther Williams-inspired music video that she made for a squadmate’s new single.

  By the end of the month, your small gathering has become considerably less small, but more interesting.

  You’ve started something amazing.

  A girl who makes pots collaborates with a student who writes poetry, creating several vases inspired by their use of imagery.

  One week, a girl reads a poem about a unicorn; the next week, a boy displays a painting he’s made, inspired by that poem, and another student stands up and offers to bake a giant cake in the shape of a unicorn in exchange for getting to hang the painting in xir dorm room.

  The next week, there’s sweet and tasty vanilla cake for everyone, and you couldn’t be happier.

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  Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe

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  One day, after magic classes, someone you’ve been hoping to hang out with one-on-one enters your room. It’s…

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  (1/3) Magda

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  (2/3) Abby

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  (3/3) Chant

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  Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe

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  One day, after magic classes, someone you’ve been hoping to hang out with one-on-one enters your room. It’s…

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  (1/3) Magda

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  (2/3) Abby

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  (3/3) Chant

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  Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe

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  Magda’s hair is in two neat braids, and the bright pattern on her dress seems to echo her mood. “In one of my classes, we were given the homework to do something that we never thought we’d be able to do. I thought I’d go into town. Would you like to come with me? We’d have fun, perhaps.”

  The thing is, with Magda, having fun is easy. You almost think that you could try not to have fun and still end up having a lot of it.

  Magda has the city maps in her head, and she knows wild shortcuts—through the alley, through a stranger’s garden, let’s sneak onto this tram even though it’s free for city residents! Let’s pretend to be delivery people and sneak through the back room of this restaurant, even though they’d let us through if we asked! Oh, someone’s coming—quick, hide behind these crates of oranges! (If you got caught, the worst that could possibly happen is that someone would shake their head at you and go “Kids these days.”) Still, it’s fun to live as if everyday things are some great adventure.

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  Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe

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  Abby slips into the commo
n room so silently that you hardly notice her. She tends to do that a lot.

  “Want to help me with my homework?” As usual, she’s wearing a thick knit sweater and a pair of dark jeans.

  “I’m listening. What’s your homework?”

  “A lot of the students in my personal development class got the same assignment: take something you remember from your home that was at least sort of good, or, like, a tradition or something, and do it with people you care about to create a new and positive memory.

  I was wondering… perhaps you’d like to go fake hunting with me. Like, foraging. “She smiles brightly.”We’d look for edible plants! I’ve been looking at a wilderness guidebook, and, as far as I know, none of the mushrooms in the forest here are poisonous. Plus, there are wildflowers that would be incredibly delectable in a salad.” Her vocabulary always seems to get larger when she’s talking about food and cooking, and you know she’s thinking back to her training. To be honest, it’s adorable.

  The forest connecting the Academy and the Academe Magia curves around the city in a sort of crecent shape, only without the pointy bits. Although you’ve strolled through it in the past—as part of a workshop on herbs with useful properties, and to attend a cookout at the Academe—never before have you explored it the way you’re doing now.

  It’s full of wonderful surprises—such as a large fallen tree, its roots spreading like a sunburst, that’s toppled in the perfect spot to form an impromptu bridge over a lake as clear as crystal.

  Abby coaxes a deer to eat leaves from your hand. Its face is soft, its tongue rough like a cat’s. Squirrels let you pet them, and birds fly down from the trees to rest on your shoulders.

  The sun filters down through the trees and everything suddenly seems vivid and emerald.

  “We are wild girls,” Abby murmurs, half to herself. Together, you run through the forest.

  That evening, there’s a beautiful wildflower-petal salad at dinner, and it’s all thanks to the two of you.

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  Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe

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  You’re hanging out in the common room, brushing your hair, when Chant enters, breathless and smiling. Her dark green dress has sweetly puffed sleeves. “Can you help me with one of my assignments?”

  “Sure, what?”

  “It’s to take something that our upbringing has given us and make something positive out of it. The nature of the assignment is up for interpretation, I suppose. But, anyway, there was this thing we used to do at home—one of the few things that made me happy. So, now, I’m trying to figure out how to turn it into something I don’t hate.”

  “What’s the thing?”

  “The harvest songs were the only good thing about where I came from. They weren’t technically religious, but the village had been singing them for so long that the priests had no choice but to go ahead and permit it.

  Sometimes one of the older woman would tell my Ma that even if I was only a girl, I did have a pretty voice, and that maybe I’d be a priest’s wife someday, and sing to him."

  She fiddles with her hair. Then: “Can I sing to you?”

  “Sure. Go ahead, Chant.”

  It’s the sort of song they sing in places where there are a lot of sheep and mountains and verdant meadows. You feel yourself bending over a cast-iron pot set above a smoky wood fire, stirring a thick soup with a wooden ladle, harvesting corn until your hands are red. Sitting on haybales in the back of a horse-drawn wagon on a cold autumn evening, laughing and joking with other girls your age as the wagon rattles over each bump in the dirt road, exceptionally large jolts making you whoop or clap or giggle..

  There’s a sense of community, and you could feel how easily such closeness, such isolation, could turn painfully stifling. Constricting, even. But Chant’s protecting you, letting you feel only the good things—and, in doing so, she’s comforting herself as well.

  As the song ends, you feel yourself returning to your body.

  “Chant, did you know you just-“

  She nods shyly.

  “When did you figure out you could do that?”

  She smiles and hides behind her hair. “Today, in choir. We were singing a song about a mountain, and I pictured something I’d seen in a book once—a mountaintop in springtime, covered with blooming red roses, and sunlight and wildflowers in the valley. When the song ended, everyone said they’d heard something, or seen something, or smelled rose petals, or felt sunlight.”

  I had a special extra private lesson right after that, and I worked with my teacher until I could control whether or not I transmitted what I was vizualizing.”

  “Do you have any idea how amazing that is?”

  She shrugs, clutches her hair, giggles.

  “You could heal, you could help people, you could—I don’t know, but—Oh, Chant, you’re extraordinary!”

  “I could help people. Maybe, someday, when I’m older… I could even go home and help my sisters. Help them learn to see things the way I do, and that being female doesn’t make them worthless. The place I came from…it got everything sort of tangled up in my head. Loving someone because I want to and loving someone because I’ve been told to. Being silent out of politeness and being silent cause I’ll be beaten if anyone hears me. But I’m working on it. I want to get better, so I will."

  “Oh, Chant…” You spread your arms; Chant curls into your embrace, and you give her an enormous hug. She buries her face in your shoulder and hugs you back.

  After a while, she lifts her head. “I’ll teach you the harvest songs, if you’d like.”

  Chant ends up needing to get her pitch pipe to slow down the faster runs of a call-and-response song, one where the higher voice sings something and the lower voices sing it back to her; still, she’s pleasantly surprised at how fast you pick everything up.

  It’s fun to sing with a friend.

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  Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe

  * * *

  Magda’s hair is in two neat braids, and the bright pattern on her dress seems to echo her mood. “In one of my classes, we were given the homework to do something that we never thought we’d be able to do. I thought I’d go into town. Would you like to come with me? We’d have fun, perhaps.”

  The thing is, with Magda, having fun is easy. You almost think that you could try not to have fun and still end up having a lot of it.

  Magda has the city maps in her head, and she knows wild shortcuts—through the alley, through a stranger’s garden, let’s sneak onto this tram even though it’s free for city residents! Let’s pretend to be delivery people and sneak through the back room of this restaurant, even though they’d let us through if we asked! Oh, someone’s coming—quick, hide behind these crates of oranges! (If you got caught, the worst that could possibly happen is that someone would shake their head at you and go “Kids these days.”) Still, it’s fun to live as if everyday things are some great adventure.

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  Magical Girl Academy: Awakening Magic, by Kayla Bashe

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  Abby slips into the common room so silently that you hardly notice her. She tends to do that a lot.