Masters of the Veil

by Daniel A. Cohen

  “Why are we sitting in here? And how is that light doing that?”

  “Soon, Sam. Just hold on, we have to get out of here.”

  “How are we going to see where we’re going?”

  “We don’t have to.” She finally took her hand out of her pocket and Sam’s eyes widened. Stretched across her hand was some sort of glove, but it was like no glove he’d ever seen before. It had the texture of a diamond, yet it flowed with her fingers like silk and caught the light with its tiny, iridescent facets.

  “Nice glove.”

  She moved her fingers back and forth. “It’s called a second-skin.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, before I can explain the more advanced aspects, I have to tell you the basics. You see—”

  The vehicle shook as if a wrecking ball had struck the outside. Sam clutched the arms of his seat to keep from being thrown from it.

  “They’ve found us.” May’s eyes widened as the blood drained from her cheeks. “We’re out of time.”

  Sam furrowed his brow at the windowless walls. “Who found us?”

  Another violent impact slammed him back into his chair.

  “The Tembrath Elite.”

  “Um, who?”

  “Hold on tight, Sam. We have to get under. Now!”

  “Under?” He tightened his grip on the soft armrest. “Under what?”

  She thrust her gloved hand into a side compartment. Sam’s gut rose into his throat as his chair dropped beneath him.

  Huh? But we’re on solid ground!

  May closed her eyes and took a long breath.

  Bone-crushing force shoved Sam back against his seat. It felt like a missile launch.

  May finally let out a relieved sigh. She pulled back her gloved hand and the pressure lifted, allowing Sam to sit back up in his seat. He rotated his shoulders and stretched out his back.

  “We’re not out of the woods yet. But as of now, it is out of my hand.” She gave Sam a wry smile. “Let’s just hope they don’t catch up. They shouldn’t, though, since no one’s as good as I am at this particular skill.”

  “Okay, this is getting a little too strange. What’s going on? I’ve really lost it, haven’t I?”

  “Magic is real,” May stated matter-of-factly.

  Sam gave her a blank stare. “Excuse me?”

  “Basics, remember. As far as we’re concerned, that’s as basic as it gets.”

  Sam blinked a few times before answering. “You are joking, right?”

  “Magic is real.” She grinned. “That’s your first lesson. Trust me, the next lessons will be much more in-depth, but they’ll make the first lesson real for you.”

  Sam slumped back down in his chair. “So I’m not the only one who’s lost his marbles, then?”

  “Hey.” She raised her eyebrows. “You’re the one who made an entire crowd of people freeze.”

  Sam’s brows furrowed. “What do you mean, I made that happen?”

  “Congratulations, you’ve had your first hiccup.”

  “Hiccup?”

  May tapped a finger against her lips. “You know, you’re right. It was much more than a hiccup. Grip is probably more accurate.”

  Sam paused. “Huh?”

  “Magic… you grip it.” She flexed her gloved fingers. “We say gripping, although really you can grip it, push it, twirl it, caress it, manipulate it, drape it. And of course by ‘it’ I mean ‘Her’, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.”

  Sam squeezed his eyes shut and wondered when he’d wake up from this dream. “Riiiiight. Magic. Absolutely.”

  “I assure you, this is very real.”

  “And currently we are traveling...?”

  May touched the wall of the vehicle with her gloved hand and tilted her head. “Underground.”

  “Of course, underground.” He threw his hands up.

  She looked at him with a playful grin. “Once we hit the ocean, we’re going to speed up a bit, but we still have a long trip ahead of us. If you would like, I can explain a whole lot in that time. Or, you can stay in denial, with no answers.” She pointed up and the hovering light flickered. “In the proverbial dark. Your choice.”

  Sam sat back in his seat and let out a deep breath.

  “Okay.” He was too tired to fight against whatever hallucination he was having. “Explain away.”

  “Excellent choice. So, like I said, magic is real. However, it takes a lot to understand and use, and you won’t be proficient unless you work excruciatingly hard. But I promise, every headache, every sore muscle, every long night of practice is worth it. It is layer upon layer of unfathomable glory, every flake a miracle.”

  With that, she took her gloved hand and placed it on his naked one. A strange tingling traveled up his arm as she squeezed. When she removed her hand, the white tape had melted off his hand, and all the scrapes and cuts from playing football were gone.

  Sam looked at his smooth fingers, and then turned wide eyes to May.

  This can’t be real. I’ve gotta be dreaming. Either that, or he would shortly be needing a psych ward. He’d play along until he woke up. “How?”

  “I’ve been studying for a long time, longer than most.”

  Time to start the charade.

  He put on his most perplexed look and played along. “But you’re so young.”

  She shook her head with a knowing half-smile. “I’m much older than I look. You will learn that, where we are going, looks can be most deceiving. By the way, most people feel the same when they find out. Unfortunately, you had to find out in a different way than most. I’m terribly sorry it had to happen this way.”

  Sam rolled his eyes. “This can’t be real.”

  “If that’s what you need to believe, that is completely acceptable. All I ask is that your ‘dream-self’ keep an open mind.”

  Sam snorted. “Whatever.”

  “Good.”

  “So where are we going, oh wise figment of my imagination?”

  “That,” she flicked her index finger, “is going to be a surprise, a place I don’t want to insult by trying to use words to describe it.”

  Sam touched the image of a horse-like creature with a long furry tail in the painting next to him. “So if magic is real, how do you do it?”

  “It’s not so much that you do it, it’s more that you use it. Magic is a wonderful thing, but tales of magic in your world don’t quite capture what it truly is. Where it comes from, in our society, we call the Veil.”

  Sam absentmindedly cracked his knuckles. “Why the Veil?”

  “You will learn that magic, or rather, what you perceive as magic, lies all around us like a blanket that we cannot see, but some can feel and even use it. We do not know why only some can access it and others cannot, and we assume we will never know, as we have tried for so long to figure it out. The world would be such a better place, for everyone, if all could use the Veil, but it just can’t happen. In our society, some things,” her face turned serious, “are just not to be tampered with.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t tamper.” Sam humphed. “How can I tamper with something that isn’t real?”

  “Never mind that. What you will find interesting is that you are able to access the Veil.”

  “You’re telling me that’s what happened at the game?”

  Sam suddenly became aware that he was still wearing his football jersey. So much had happened, yet he had still not been able to change into regular clothes. This dream was too vivid, the details too precise.

  “That was the first time you were able to access the Veil, and with it, the wondrous properties and infinite possibilities it holds. Usually, the first hiccup is triggered by an intensely powerful emotion. In your case, I’m assuming it was the desire to win the game.”

  Sam was beginning to feel unnerved. This was getting too real.

  But it can’t be, can it?

  “But if this happens to everyone the first time, why have I never heard of anything like thi
s happening before? It seems to me that thousands of people simultaneously freezing in place would be a pretty big deal.”

  May looked him up and down. “So, you’re not all brawn.”

  Sam gave a coy smile. “Okay, I’m going to put logic on hold for a minute and play along. Explain.”

  “You see,” she began, “most of our kind—”

  “You mean wizards?” Sam asked in the most sarcastic tone he could muster.

  “If you must, we prefer ‘sorcerers.’”

  “Wait, why?”

  “Because magic comes from a source.”

  Sam paused. “Are you serious?”

  “You see,” she started again, not confirming or denying, “most of our kind come from our kind. Two sorcerers,” she smiled, “always produce a child who will be capable of accessing the Veil. It is a strange phenomenon when two flathands produce someone with abilities.”

  “Flathands? The Lieutenant called Officer Gaetani that,” Sam said. “What’s it mean?”

  May flexed her gloved hand.

  Sam let out a small sigh. “Right, gripping.”

  “We have a way of tracking these hiccups. Actually, we have a person, and you will study with him. His name is Bariv.”

  Sam gave her a skeptical look. “What kind of name is Bariv? Russian?”

  “Names have existed for a very long time and many are forgotten. But just because they are forgotten does not mean they don’t exist. In our society you will find many names that are unique. Normally, when Bariv feels the hiccups of new sorcerers, they are quite small. Things like making objects change color, or moving small amounts of water just by thinking it. We then offer to help these young people grow into their gift, but like I said, it is quite rare for new sorcerers to spring up. You are sort of a first.”

  “But I thought you said flathands, or whatever, can have magical children.”

  “Not a first for that. A first for what you have done.”

  Sam raised an eyebrow.

  “You seem to have tapped into an extraordinary amount of the Veil for your first time. You made thousands of people literally stop moving, prisoners in their own bodies. It’s something not even I can do.”

  Sam tried to hold back a smile. He could feel the hilarity of the situation bubbling up in his chest. “So what are you saying? That I’m some sort of super-sorcerer?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I’m saying that you could be great if you want to be. Gripping the Veil while unfocused and unlearned is dangerous, and it can start something awful. One must work to control the power that comes from it.”

  Sam sighed. “Can I just wake up, already?”

  “I could pinch you, but I doubt it would do anything other than sting.”

  Sam took a deep breath and let his muscles relax. He squeezed his eyes shut and smoothed his eyebrows with his thumb and forefinger. “So, are we flying? Does this machine, like, blast away the dirt and then float through the crevice?” The question sounded absurd to him as soon as it was asked.

  “If that was the case, we would have been caught by now.”

  Sam rapped the metal door a few times with his knuckles. “I didn’t realize my subconscious was so cryptic.”

  “I will tell you something concrete then.” She stared at her glove. “There are three types of magic that come from the Veil. There are natural magics,” she waved her hand through the air, “mystical magics, and power magics. Every sorcerer has an aptitude for one of these disciplines and they usually choose to study that path. I excel at natural magics: things that have to do with the world around us, born of this Earth, not from the minds of men. I have used my talent and mixed it with this technology to create a path for us underground. Things like dirt, roots, and rock are bending themselves to allow us passage to where we are going. They are closing after we pass so as not to leave a trace of where we have been.”

  “Of course.” Sam rolled his eyes again, turning away from May in the process. For the next few minutes, the only sound in the vehicle was the groaning from the metal walls. “So what kind of magic will I be doing?” Sam’s low voice just barely broke the silence.

  May continued in the same jovial tone as before. “That remains to be seen, but I have a pretty good idea. It—”

  Sam interrupted with a sharp exhale. “This is ridiculous.”

  All of a sudden, the light above them flickered and then turned blue.

  “Ah!” she exclaimed. “We are past the protective borders. I think we have some breathing room. For now, at least.”

  She stuck her gloved hand back in the compartment and Sam felt the vehicle decelerate and begin to rise.

  Then, with a loud thump and a jolt, they hit the ground.

  “Here we are. Take a step outside and get a good look.” She bit her bottom lip and then gazed at the painting on the roof of the vehicle. “I wish I could go back to my first look. Just remember, it only happens once. And whether or not you think you’re dreaming, I would advise drinking in every detail.”

  Sam started picking the dirt out from under his fingernails. “Whatever you say.”

  The lines appeared around the doors again, and Sam grabbed the handle and stepped out into the sunlight. The first thing he noticed, other than the bizarre change from night to day, was how soft the grass was, like a giant green pillow under his feet. The view was incredible—a vast expanse of lush greens and clear blue streams that flowed through a thick valley.

  This belongs on a postcard, he thought. I have a beautiful imagination.

  “You’re right.” Sam gave a satisfied nod. “This is pretty spectacular.”

  She chuckled. “Sam, you’re looking the wrong way. That’s just our backyard.”

  He slowly turned around, and his jaw dropped. In front of him was a truly unbelievable sight. Actually unbelievable, and that was when it hit him.

  He wasn’t dreaming.

  What lay before him was all the proof he needed, as his imagination was far too weak to produce what his eyes saw.

  Magic is real.

  Monstrous pillars of sandstone—each hundreds of feet high and half a football field thick—Sam counted twelve in all. They were almost uniform in shape, though different capstones created slight variations between them. One had a giant looping hole through the top—like a colossal sewing needle—another had a three-pronged tip, and one had protruding rungs.

  Beneath the towers were more colorful foliage than Sam had ever seen. Continuing all the way to the giant rocks were flowers, trees, and bushes of all different hues. He looked at the treetops and saw all sorts of leaves: some were square in shape, others glowed neon red, even some blue ones that were so large they blanketed the other trees around them. It was another world; it couldn’t have been the same one he had been living in his entire life.

  A path in front of them meandered along toward the stones.

  “Let’s get moving.” May took off her shoes and massaged her toes into the soft grass. “We have a little bit of a walk ahead of us.”

  “Wait.” Sam’s lungs weren’t filling correctly; it was becoming harder to breathe. “This… this is real, isn’t it?”

  She put a hand on his shoulder and nodded. “Take your time. I know it must be difficult. But remember, this is a good change.”

  He leaned over and put his hands on his knees. A bout of nausea struck him hard as the world began to spin. His breathing became rapid and shallow. “I… this…”

  “Here.” Her tone was quiet and soothing. “A gift.”

  Sam couldn’t see what she did, but something came over him. It started at the top of his head and made its way down through his body. It was gentle and calming, like a warm bath being poured over him. Once the sensation reached his toes, the anxiety vanished, replaced by a sense of peace, tranquility, and lastly, acceptance. All his cares melted away and he was left with wonder. Just like that, he was ready to see what lay ahead of him, magic and all.

  He stood back up and rotated his shoul
ders. “What did you just do to me?”

  “The Veil can be wonderful, can’t She?” May’s face gravitated toward the sun. “How do you feel?”

  He took a deep breath of air through his nose and exhaled slowly through his mouth. The air felt fresh and clean. “Amazing. Kind of excited.”

  “I’m sorry to say that this is not a cure, only a bandage. Over the years, you build up walls against things you can’t understand. That’s why youth is the easiest time for the surreal to be accepted. Normally, sorcerers have their first hiccup when they are small, making the transition into our society quite enjoyable. Unfortunately, you already have quite the fortress, Sam. Let’s just say I have provided you with a temporary ladder, but it won’t last. You will have to learn to accept this on your own. But in the meantime, you need sleep, and this will help.”

  “Forget sleep.” Sam’s eyes shot to May’s glove. “Magic is real. This is great!”

  May smiled and took Sam’s hand in hers. “I’m glad you think so! Just try to hold onto that feeling as long as you can. Remember, once your mind reaches a destination, it can always go back, even if it has to take a different path.”

  Sam’s heart was pounding in his chest. “This is amazing. Show me some more magic.”

  She let go and turned toward the pillars. “Why don’t we let the Veil show you?”

  She started down the path, delicately holding her shoes, as Sam trotted behind.

  “What is this place?”

  “We call it Atlas Crown. It is one of many magical communities. This happens to be the one I call home.”

  Sam looked at the pillars again and thought that the name fit perfectly.

  “Something that you should understand,” May led him from open space to woods, “is that in places where the Veil is tapped, and magic is frequently used—or where large amounts of the Veil are utilized—amazing things happen.”

  Sam’s eyes made a quick adjustment to the lesser light squeezing through the dense canopy. After a moment, he could make out a group of trees that had large, round fruit hanging from vines like tetherballs.

  May twisted her head back and forth until she found what she was looking for.

  “Ah!” She thrust her finger toward a colorful patch of forest sandwiched between two mounds of dirt. “Perfect example.”