Worldweavers: Gift of the Unmage

by Alma Alexander

  Ahead of them, the waters broke again. The Whale—there was only one now, the One Whale, the rest of the pod might have been pure illusion for all they knew—was swimming away from them, quite fast.

  “Follow,” Thea said, picking up her harpoon, which had turned back into an oar.

  The twins bent to their own oars. The two small coracles skimmed the surface of the ocean, following a sort of wake left by the dorsal fin of the whale that was slicing through the waters before them. It led them for a way, sometimes vanishing for an instant to come up behind them or below them, rocking them dangerously, threatening to upset them, but always it returned to the front, swam ahead a little way, circled, thrashed the water with fin and fluke, fought with itself and the black rider that Thea had saddled its soul with, raced away, challenging them to follow.

  Two things were warring in the body of the Whale—the spirit that had come to the ancestral call, ready to offer itself, and that malignant “other,” the dark foreign matter that had been implanted into it, wanting to deliver only death, not life—never life. It ran from the Hunters, from itself, from the Hunters again, and kept returning, being called to the music it had already accepted as its fate. It struggled and fought until finally something broke and it stopped, floating, exhausted, right in front of the two boats. Thea could see its eye from where she sat, and there was something in it that was infinitely old and wise and sad.

  I came when you called, as I have always done. Why? Why have you done this to me? It is not the ancient bargain between our kinds. It is not clean.

  Thea’s breath caught in sorrow that she should have to kill a thing like this. I am sorry. I am so sorry. I needed a strength that was a great and ancient good, and more powerful than my enemy. I needed the strength and the power of that bargain of which you speak. I needed the ancestral magic to cross with the newest magic of all. Either, by itself, is not enough. Together, they were. Barely. But they were enough. I am in your debt, Ancient One.

  A different voice then, a scream of hate and fury. I WILL NOT! I WILL NOT BE BOUND! I WILL NOT BE BOUND BY THIS!

  For a moment Thea could smell the carrion stench again, and the world darkened, like the falling of night, the air thick around her. She felt bile rise at the back of her throat; it was suddenly hard to breathe. The Nothing may have started out being a sending of the Alphiri, but here and now, it was a beast in its own right, a monster that knew itself, that roared with a rage all its own at being bound.

  I AM AIR AND DARKNESS! I AM POWER! I AM THE SEEKER, SENT OUT TO FIND! I AM THE HUNGER! I WILL NOT BE BOUND BY THIS!

  And then it was suddenly gone, chopped in mid-shriek, as if suddenly gagged—there was still a sense of outrage, of frenzy, but it was an impotent rage, locked behind bars of something stronger than steel.

  The voice that spoke again was that of the Whale, pure, untainted.

  I come, as I have always come. I understand. It was necessary. I bring the victory of life—and that is what I have always done, after all.

  There was a light in the Whale’s eye, a shimmer that played around its great head, and the trace of darkness that was the Nothing was gathered and locked away in a safe place, from which it could never escape. It was a great load, but the Whale would bear it. It had chosen to honor the old bargain.

  Take me. Take me now….

  They both heard it, felt it, Thea and Ben, holding on to their harpoons—and they acted as one.

  The harpoons quivered in the Whale’s great body, looking far too flimsy to do any damage—but then, through the mist, the ocean broke on a gray pebbly shore, and the ocean took the Whale and floated the great body forward, toward land. The boats followed, crunching onto the pebbles as the Whale was borne in and beached gently in the shallows.

  The first pale fingers of the sun had finally pierced the sea fog completely, turning it from dull, dark gray into a pale shimmering silver-white veil of cloud and then shredding even that until glints of sunlight began to sparkle on the waves lapping at the shore. The air smelled clean, salty, fresh with light and morning.

  Where you are and where light is…

  “What now?” Ben whispered, looking at the Whale’s lifeless body with tears of pity standing in his eyes. “I hated killing it. I feel as though I have an innocent’s death on my hands.”

  “You were one of the Hunt,” Magpie said, and her own face was etched with sorrow, but also with a fierce pride. “This was not death, but the seed of resurrection. Look.”

  A small band of women picked their way across the beach, keening quietly as they walked, carrying sharp flensing blades in their hands.

  “We can leave it to them now,” Magpie said. “Our part of the bargain is done.”

  “Did we do it?” asked Ben. “Did we really kill the Nothing? Can it have been that simple?”

  “Who said it was simple?” Thea said. She felt like crying, and yet some of that pride that Magpie wore so brightly was shining in her own face.

  “Isn’t it time we got back?” asked Tess. “How long were we here? They’re probably looking for all of us by now, they’ll tear the school down brick by brick if they have to….”

  “Home,” Thea said.

  As the beach and the body of the sacrificed Whale and the gleam of sunlight on the ocean began to fade around them, Ben flung out a hand and pointed into the shadows of the fir forest that marched almost down to the edge of the water.

  “Look!”

  It was almost too late, but Thea thought she glimpsed what he had seen: a small knot of shadowy shapes, drifting away through the trees, released into freedom. One of them, with graying hair tied into a straggly ponytail, might even have been Twitterpat’s ghost.

  The Nothing was gone. The spirits of the people it had taken were free.

  And then the five were back in the computer lab, all of them, sitting before a computer, scrolling gently down a document open on its monitor. Thea glimpsed the word WHALE, and then suddenly, there was a noise at the door of the classroom, and she grabbed for the mouse, dragged the cursor up to the menu bar, and clicked on DELETE.

  DO YOU WANT TO SAVE CHANGES TO DOCUMENT? the computer dialog box asked politely. “No!” murmured Thea, clicking on the right button.

  The screen blinked, the document winked out of existence, all record of a now-vanished virtual world erased, just as the door opened to allow a handful of frantic adults inside, led by Thea’s Aunt Zoë.

  “That should be erased off the hard disk,” Thea whispered as she turned, catching Terry’s eye.

  “Leave it to me,” he said.

  “What is going on here?” demanded the principal, only half a step behind Zoë.

  “We’re just finishing our assignments,” Tess said, with fingers firmly crossed behind her back.

  “You all seem very eager to do so,” the principal said suspiciously. “Working after hours. Show me.”

  “I’ve just shut down, sir, but I’d be happy to,” Terry said smoothly, swinging to another station and flicking the ON switch. The computer began whirring into life. “I’m the only one who’s finished,” he added. “My sister was stuck, and Thea was nearly done with hers in class this afternoon, and we came to try and get some work done while it was quiet. Twi…I mean, Mr. Wittering gave us all access codes, before he…went away.”

  “You don’t take computer science,” said another of the adults, a teacher who had watched over Twitterpat’s quiet class several times since his death, staring at Magpie and Ben.

  “I hate computers,” Magpie said, and smiled.

  “I was just keeping my friends company,” Ben said. And sneezed unexpectedly, shaking his head to clear his watering eyes.

  “Thea,” Zoë said, her voice shaking very slightly, “are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Thea said, presenting an expression of angelic sweetness and innocence to meet her aunt’s frightened eyes.

  “All right,” the principal said sharply. “We are all done here for the night. Y
ou will all pack up, please, and leave the classroom at once. And we will discuss this again tomorrow. As for the code, after-hours access to this place ends as of right now. I will see about changing the security code tonight. Out, all of you. Back to your rooms, please, now. Thea Winthrop, your aunt wants to speak with you. You may use Mr. Wittering’s office, Miss Cox, if you wish.”

  “Thea…,” Zoë began, as soon as they were alone.

  “You can’t tell anyone, Aunt Zoë. Not anyone.”

  “Tell them what? Thea, what are you up to? You scared the living daylights out of me on the phone. You were babbling about the Faele and something about doing what you were ‘made’ to do….”

  “It’s Matay’ta,” Thea said, offering a luminous smile to her aunt.

  “It’s what?”

  “The moon, it’s Matay’ta—it’s the moon of finding yourself, understanding yourself. And I think I have, Aunt Zoë. I think I finally have. Magic is where you find it.”

  LONG NIGHTS MOON

  1.

  “YOUR AUNT IS YANKING you home early because of a family emergency?” Magpie said later that night from the shadows of her pillow. “What’s the emergency?”

  “I am,” Thea said. The moon in the sky had changed: It was Raqu’ta, the Long Nights Moon, the moon of gaining wisdom, of coming of age. Thea knew there were many things she had yet to understand, but she also knew that she had crossed some invisible line, had emerged from what had been a chrysalis. She was not yet sure what form she had taken, but she could feel the change stirring her blood.

  “Oh,” Magpie said. “Figures.” There was a small, painful pause, and then her voice dropped into an even lower whisper. “Are you coming back here?”

  “Of course I am. I already told Aunt Zoë she couldn’t tell anybody about what happened. And since nobody knows, I am still a magical ‘blank slate.’ I belong here.”

  “But did you tell her what happened?”

  “Yes, but she still doesn’t quite believe it.”

  “I still don’t know what you did, exactly,” Magpie said.

  “What we did. You were with me, that first time, all of you. And the second time, you followed me on your own. And without you, Magpie, it would all have been a waste. When I called, the Nothing came, but it took you to call the Whale. And it took all of us to Hunt it.”

  “But what,” Magpie whispered, “did we do, exactly…?”

  Thea was about to reply when she heard the door to their room snick open quietly, and a thin ribbon of light briefly snaked into the dark room before the door was shut again just as quietly.

  “Are you guys awake?” hissed a familiar voice.

  “Tess?” Thea said, sitting up in bed.

  “Guilty,” Tess said, padding over and perching on the end of Thea’s bed. “Are you really leaving tomorrow?”

  Thea sighed. “Yes, I am. My aunt is taking me home.”

  “I’m not surprised. After what you did, they’ll want to do all sorts of tests—”

  “Tess,” Thea said urgently, “nobody must know about this. Not now. Not yet, anyway. Terry understands. When I said that the transcript of the Whale Hunt had to be erased from the hard drive of the computer—we don’t want anyone finding any trace of it.”

  “He’s already done that,” Tess said. “But I’m confused. What happened? What happens next?”

  “Tess, what was the Nothing?”

  “It was a…It was…It…How should I know?” Tess whispered. “The best mages in the world were trying to figure it out, and nobody seemed to understand it. You should ask your folks!”

  “Where did it come from? What exactly did it want? Why was it aimed at magic…at our people?” Thea continued, undeterred.

  Tess was staring at Thea, her eyes only a glitter in the soft light coming into the room through the uncurtained window. “You sound like you know,” she said. “What are you saying?”

  “Somehow, we dealt with this huge and dreadful danger that was threatening the entire magical community,” Thea said. “But we did it. We did it. A bunch of kids from a school for magical discards. And we did it in a way that is considered to be impossible. And it was the only way that it could have been done. The only way to challenge that thing and win was to take it into a place where it did not expect to be challenged, did not expect to lose. When others tried, they used magic, and they died for it. Right?”

  “I guess,” Tess said slowly.

  “But I heard you,” Magpie said slowly. “I heard you, Thea. You spoke to the Whale. You spoke of ‘the newest magic.’ What did you mean? The computers?”

  “Yes, the computers,” Thea said. “The only thing that was considered to be totally outside the magical realm—they’re inert, they aren’t supposed to respond to magic at all. And yet we used one to create something that nobody can deny was a pure enchantment. We opened the road into another world—”

  “No, you did that,” Tess said.

  “Thea, I really do hate computers,” Magpie said. “I have never understood them, I never wanted to understand them—”

  “And Terry and I are supposed to be allergic,” Tess murmured. “To real magic, anyway.”

  “But this was real magic,” Magpie said. “Just not something that anybody’s seen before. They’ll have a heap of questions for us before they’re done—I saw the look on the principal’s face. He doesn’t know what we were up to, but he knows we were up to something, and he didn’t like it.”

  “What? We were just doing the assignments we were told to do,” Tess said, her voice full of aggrieved innocence. “They cannot prove a thing. Wait a minute. Now I’m doing a Thea. Just why, exactly, is this supposed to be such a huge secret? You’ve just made an enormous breakthrough—computers can be magical, after all—what are you trying to hide?”

  “Me,” Thea said, her voice very thin. “I think all of this might have been…Well, they told me I had chosen not to do magic in this world, my world, the one into which I was born….”

  “Who told you that?” Tess said.

  “Long story,” Magpie said.

  “You can tell her tomorrow, Magpie,” Thea said. “The point is, the Alphiri knew the magic was there. They came for me before, you know. They knew they were looking for something, but they didn’t know what. They never do anything for nothing, so they might simply have decided to play their hand, and see what would happen.”

  “The Alphiri?” Tess said, astonished. “But what did the Alphiri have to do with…Wait a minute…. You mean to tell me that you think that the Alphiri brought the Nothing here?”

  “All I know is that the Alphiri are waiting for me to suddenly turn into…into that Double Seventh that I was supposed to be from the cradle and never was,” Thea said. “It was magic they were after in our world, and they always went for the strongest bargain that could be made—and if I could be triggered into being everything that they had been led to believe I could be, they wanted that. I have no way of knowing what they want to do with me. But whatever it is, I don’t trust it. I don’t trust them.”

  “But the Nothing was drawn to magic, and then destroyed the strongest magic that was turned against it,” Tess said. “What kind of bargain was that? What could possibly be gained by destroying the very thing you say they wanted? And besides…this wasn’t aimed at you, Thea. It ate up whatever…whoever…was in its path.”

  “They came to my parents when I was this tall,” Thea said, measuring an improbable toddler-height from the floor with her hand, palm down. “They wanted things, then. But…I didn’t do what they wanted, what they expected, what they bargained for. And in the meantime…there was other magic to be gathered.”

  “So if you had done what the Alphiri wanted and revealed that you had the magic after all, wouldn’t the Nothing have destroyed you? Besides, if you did have such magic, what did they think you were doing here in this school?”

  “That’s always part of the bargain,” Thea said mournfully. “That vow of, ‘I’ll h
ave it, or nobody else will.’ And if there’s a bargain, you can bet on it that there’s an Alphiri somewhere nearby. And anyway…we have no idea what the Nothing did with the people it took. Did you see, when we were leaving? On the shore?”

  “The ghosts,” Magpie whispered.

  “Are they still alive? Can they come back?” Tess asked. “Do you think…?”

  “I don’t know if that Portal leads in both directions,” said Thea. “I have no idea what really happened, or where they were taken, but I do think they were prisoners, and now they are free. Who knows? One day they might all find their way back here? But the point is, Tess, I did exactly what they wanted me to do. I don’t know if it’s what they expected, or if they can put a use to it, but they woke it, somehow, or I chose to let it wake up. And they wanted me all along. They offered to buy me from my parents, years ago, when I was still a baby. They were apparently rather taken aback when my dad told them that our people don’t sell their children. But Tess…my family doesn’t know about it yet, about what happened here, to me, to all of us, and I don’t want them to. I don’t want anyone to know about any of what happened here yesterday. Not until I am more sure of what happens next. Promise me you won’t tell. Please.”

  “Of course,” Magpie said sturdily.

  Tess hesitated. “But my family will ask…,” she began.

  “You and Terry at least have an excellent excuse,” Thea said. “You guys simply can’t talk about it. It is magic, after all.”

  “This is true,” Tess said. “Terry won’t be able to open his yap without choking on it.”

  “And you won’t tell?”

  “My lips are sealed,” Tess said theatrically, kissing her fingers.

  “What about Ben?” Magpie whispered.

  “He can’t stop sneezing long enough to get a word in edgewise,” Thea said, her teeth a white gleam in the dark.

  “Yeah,” Magpie said slowly, as if something had just become clear in her mind. “He did say he could smell something, way back, and he couldn’t tell what it was. Maybe it was a hint of Alphiri magic, Thea, the little bit that hung around you.”