by Rain Oxford
When I could picture it so clearly that I was half convinced it was already levitating, I heard him say, “You’re ready.”
I wasn’t entirely sure he’d actually said it, because his voice didn’t tear me from my concentration. “Djehoka sita megat.” Again, I imagined the rock lifting up into the air.
“Perfect.”
“What?” I asked, my attention lost. I looked at Keeper, who was studying me as if I was fascinating. Between us, the rock fell and clattered to the ground with a jarring realness. “That wasn’t… levitating.”
“It looked like it was to me,” Keeper said.
“No, I was just imagining it.”
“Maybe so, but it was real.”
“How can something be real and imagined?”
“Magic.” With that, he vanished.
I made an embarrassing and involuntary sound I hoped to never make again.
“Now I understand why Isis insisted you could help the gods.”
I damn near shrieked as I pitched forward. The Keeper was standing right behind me. “Why is that?” I asked, trying not to freak out entirely.
“The spell you just cast is the first one we teach to any apprentice, and it takes them at least two years to do what you just did.”
* * *
I practiced the spell for the next two hours and managed to make it levitate twice. Keeper said that once I mastered the technique, I could slowly cut the words down and make them more general. Eventually, instead of saying the equivalent of “make that rock levitate into the air,” I could look at any object and say “levitate” and it would. First I had to master visualization.
Finally, my growling stomach forced me to take a break. I stood and stretched my cramping legs for a while. To my surprise, I was alone. I made my way to the dining hall. Apparently, I had missed lunch, as there were only six people in the room. Five were apprentices, all about seventeen or eighteen. The last person was Luca, who the apprentices were harassing.
He was trying to eat while the younger boys sat around him. To anyone else, it would have looked like they were being friendly. Luca, however, was the friendliest person I knew and his posture revealed the truth.
I grabbed a plate quickly and filled it as I considered my actions. Potatoes, bread, and meat. I need coffee or heads will roll. I wasn’t going to hurt kids, but they weren’t much younger than me and they should have been pretty skilled in magic, so I expected them to hold their own. Besides, no one was supposed to hurt anyone else inside the temple, and I didn’t think the apprentices wanted to ruin their shots by breaking the rules.
With a solid plan in mind, I returned to the dining hall and approached my brother.
“We always wanted a pet who could do the cleaning, didn’t we, Katok,” the boy to Luca’s right asked his friend. The three boys across from Luca spotted me and turned pale. The boys to Luca’s right and left laughed.
“That’s my seat,” I said to the boy who had spoken. He practically fell out of his seat before he saw me and went paler than his friends.
Luca smiled brightly. The boy jumped up and ran around to the other side of the table. I had to adjust my billowy robe and noticed that Luca wasn’t wearing his. I sat and started eating, enjoying the silence as the apprentices didn’t know what to say. “So,” Luca said calmly. “Satka here was just explaining to me how anyone without magic was no better than a dog and should be waiting on the apprentices hand and foot.”
I glanced at the boy. “Do you know what I am?”
He nodded. “You’re Nathan, the new steward of the gods. Everyone has been talking to you. They say you can stop the Painter.”
“I’m stuck here, that’s what I am. I’m stuck here until I do what the gods want me to do. I don’t like taking orders, especially from gods I don’t believe in.”
He turned impossibly pale and a little green. Clearly, that was the worst sin he could imagine and he wanted nothing more than to tell me how wrong I was. At the same time, however, speaking against me would break those rules. Thus, he stayed silent and I continued.
“Luca, on the other hand, wants to learn and explore everything to do with this world and the gods. That means he’s happy to be here, unlike me. I’m liable to hate everyone here, unless he tells me they’re good people. If anyone offends my brother, I won’t let the rules of the temple stop me. Is that understood?” All five of them nodded, so I turned to Luca. “Are these boys bothering you?”
He smiled warmly. “I think they were just confused. How was your training?”
“I sat on the ground for five hours and lifted a rock.”
He gaped. “And I wasn’t there to play the part of Yoda? That sucks!”
“Well, you were too busy with your head in a book.”
“I was sure they would put your lazy ass through some strength training or some shit. Where did they learn to teach the force? I want to be there when you do your homework.”
“Nope. You have your own homework. I want to know everything about the Painter I’m supposed to fight and the book I’m supposed to save.”
“The Painter steals children,” Katok said. I made a gesture for him to continue. “He appears as a hideous monster, but the priests say it’s not what he really looks like. He’s taken three of us since I’ve been here and many others. He prefers girls.”
“He marries girls,” Satka said.
“That’s only a rumor,” Katok argued. “They say the Painter takes little girls, often younger than ten, marries them, and forces them to bare him more children to eat. They say he only eats the boys.”
“That’s disgusting, not to mention sexist,” Luca said. “Is there any evidence?”
“Commoners sometimes bring the remains to the temples. The bones were picked clean and usually burned. Sometimes they’re burned almost to ash.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Every murder is horrible,” I said.
“It’s not just that,” Luca said. “These people believe in the afterlife, and to get there, their body must be preserved. If someone is cremated, even partially so, they can’t move on to a better place.”
The boys nodded. “You five know about this place pretty well, right?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“Is there paper that I can write on?”
They frowned at each other for a moment before Satka finally said, “There is, but you can’t write the sacred language unless you’re a priest.”
“What do you mean?”
“We have the common language, which we’re speaking now, and you can write that. However, getatago and domatago both use the sacred language. Speaking it is the right of casters, but writing it is not allowed unless you have passed your trials.”
“I’m not going to write in the sacred language. I wouldn’t even know how to. I write stories to relax, and I really need to relax.”
“Stories?”
“Fiction. Adventure. Mysteries. You know what stories are, don’t you?”
“We have read the stories of the gods and adventures of men, but only the scribes write them. They are trained to do this.”
“He’s been trained as well,” Luca said. The teenagers’ eyes widened. “He was getting his degree in literature.”
“You record the history of your world?” the youngest teen asked.
“No, that’s Luca’s expertise. I write fiction.”
“What’s fiction?”
“Fake stories.”
They all looked offended. “Lies? You write lies to people?”
“In a way, but that’s what a lot of people want. People don’t pick up a fiction book if they don’t want fiction. It says on it that it’s fiction. Sometimes, people want to be lied to. Other times, it’s only okay as long as they know they’re being lied to.”
“Right. Like when I dropped Nathan’s phone in the toilet.”
“You did what?”
“He knew the truth, but he wanted me to lie,” Luca said, ignoring
me.
“That was a six hundred dollar phone, you asshole.”
“See? He didn’t want to know.”
“If I had known, I would have taken your phone instead of buying another one! Why did you have my phone in the bathroom in the first place?”
He gave me a patient smile. “Do you want to know, or do you want me to lie to you?”
I stood. “If you weren’t my brother, I would have drowned you by now.” I turned to the teens, who were all clearly confused and conflicted. “Ignore the banter you just heard. I need paper and something to write with. If you want to help me and the gods, help Luca with his research.”
I walked away.
* * *
I returned to the courtyard and practiced the levitation spell for another four hours. Nothing could have shocked me more when I opened the courtyard door to go in than to see a giant black jaguar blocking my path. This jaguar was wearing gold cuffs around her paws, gold loops in her ears, and a thick gold necklace with a lapis lazuli pendant resting against her chest.
Between our jobs, school, and geeky excursions, Luca and I never had time to devote to a pet. I was a cat person; they were mostly self-sufficient, had spunky personalities, and were usually pretty clean. I never met a cat that didn’t like me. Luca, on the other hand, was a dog person; they were loyal, had endless love, and could sense when trouble was afoot. He had a way with dogs that made them listen. I sometimes teased him about being the Italian dog whisperer.
The jaguar didn’t move to attack me or out of my way, which put me in the dangerous position of having to stand there and wait for her to act or push her out of my way. I wasn’t pushing a two-hundred pound cat for any reason.
When she stood and stretched, I relaxed slightly. Since I didn’t run or shake with fear, I wasn’t activating her hunting instincts. She sauntered away as leisurely as a house cat. I started walking slowly in the opposite direction, only to freeze when I heard her growl. I did not fancy being a cat toy. When I turned to her, I saw that she, too, had stopped in the hallway. She was expecting me to follow her.
“You have to be the greediest kitty ever to demand the mouse to follow you.” Then again, it was a different world and judging by the jewelry she wore, cats were not pets. I reluctantly followed her down the hall to the restricted area. There, she stopped, sat, and waited for me to open the door. “I don’t have a key.”
She narrowed her eyes.
I studied the lock carefully, wondering if it could be picked like a similar Earth lock. To my surprise, the hallway dropped a couple of degrees and I heard the soft sound of the lock releasing. I looked at the jaguar. “Please tell me you did that.”
She didn’t answer me.
I pushed open the door and let her go first. She led me to the end of the hall and stopped at a door. I opened it hesitantly, worried about mummy traps and curses. Instead, I found steps leading down. I figured it was another way to get to the rooms, but it wasn’t. We entered a round room, which was easily as large as the statue room. There were no statues, however, only three bookshelves in the middle of the room. Since I didn’t have a torch and there was nothing lit, I couldn’t see much.
There were twenty doors in the room, each with a design charred on them. They were also made of wood, which I found strange. “This must be very old or very important, because I haven’t seen much wood used here,” I said to the jaguar.
Other than that, I could see that there was writing on the walls, but I couldn’t make out what.
To my surprise, the jaguar went to the door that had a tree charred on it. I tried the knob and found it locked. She stared at me expectantly.
“Okay, I’m interested, but now isn’t a good time.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“I’m not blowing this off. I am too curious to do that. I want to come back with some light and my brother, though. If there’s any writing I need to understand, he’s going to be able to help with that.”
After a moment, she nodded.
Surprised, though not willing to give her the chance to change her mind, I left. I wasn’t lying; I definitely planned on returning. I was, however, more worried about Luca than I was about light.
By the time I found my room, Luca was asleep on the floor, surrounded by books. I picked him up and put him in his bed. It had been a long first day and I didn’t see the next day being any easier.
There was a stack of paper, three quill pens, and a bottle of ink on my bed. I tried to write coherent stories that I could publish, but no matter how solid my plots were, I couldn’t stick to them. I would get lost in my writing, only to discover I had written something that had no connection to what I wanted to write. They were often parts of scenes, as if they were taken from other books.
Chapter 5
I woke to Luca’s whimpers and sat up, confused as to why it was dark. It took me a few minutes to remember where I was and realize that the lamp on the desk had gone out. I stood and felt my way to the desk. Once there, I easily found the light stick. It was a metal stick with a small cap on the end like a pen. I shook the stick a couple times and then twisted the cap and removed it. The friction caused the wick inside the stick to light. I used it to light the lantern and sconces next to the beds.
The entire time, Luca cried, plagued by the nightmares he got when the room was too dark. I sat down and hugged him. “You’re okay,” I whispered.
“She’s dead,” he cried. In his sleep, he clutched the scarab amulet made of gold and lapis lazuli to his chest. He never took it off, not even to shower, as he was terrified something horrible would happen if he did. It had been his mother’s.
“They’re gone. It’s all over. You’re alive. I’m alive.”
He stilled as he woke. “I can still hear her screaming.”
“I know. So can I.” It broke my heart because it was my fault Luca had lost his mother. She was the first victim of my curse.
Luca slowly calmed down and fell back to sleep.
* * *
The next morning, I explained what happened with the jaguar to Luca and he said he would check into it while everyone was busy in class. Over the next few days, I did a lot of adapting. The food was plain and the only thing to drink was water. I really wanted coffee.
The priests provided us with more of the same plain tunics and slacks. Fortunately, they also provided semi-normal necessities, such as reed-stick toothbrushes and razors. No coffee, though; they’d never heard of it.
Although I felt ridiculous in my robe, the apprentices acted like they weren’t allowed to look at me without it and the priests would have been less appalled if I was actually naked. Luca took it in stride and came up with the most unusual places to hide his. They diligently replaced it, even going so far as to pile ten of them on his bed while we were out.
My curse hadn’t ended just because I was on a different world. On the second day, Deta, one of Satka’s friends, fell down the steps and broke his arm. Fortunately, Healer healed it in an hour. I didn’t find anything strange until later that day. A fifteen-year-old boy sat beside me at dinner and offered to show me the best books in the study. He got food poisoning, which affected no one else during dinner and had never happened at the temple. The priests said he must have displeased the gods, but I was used to this kind of thing.
The next morning, two boys asked Luca and me about our world. One slipped in the showers and hit his head while the other one cut himself on a sharp edge that was sticking up on the chair. Another apprentice mouthed off to me that afternoon that I was getting preferential treatment from the priests. He was bitten by a snake that night in his sleep. He nearly died.
It didn’t take much more before everyone caught on. A few of them asked me about it and I told them the truth; people around me got hurt. Within five days, no apprentice would go anywhere near me. Nothing happened to the priests, fortunately.
Luca was not experiencing the same issues. When I wasn’t near him, apprentices swarmed him like adoring
fans. He told them about our world and shared all the jokes every human was tired of hearing. I worried that he was also sewing dissent; several of the students became secretive around the priests, passed notes, and snuck out at night to visit the study.
It took me three days to master the stone levitating trick. It took me two more days to do it while cutting down the words. I had trained my magic to levitate the stone when I said those words. Then I had to train my magic to do the same exact thing when I said less of those words. Keeper said it was a state of mind.
After that, I started over to make a stick levitate with the words, ““Djehoka sita kegro.”
This only took me two days to master and soon I could make it levitate just by saying, “Dje.”
The next lesson was lighting a flame. I had to sit in front of a candle and imagine it lighting. Keeper only had to whack me once for daydreaming. When he said I was ready, I said, “Kitmas mortoa.” It took several tries, but it worked.
My confidence carried into my next lesson, which was to move something I was levitating.
“If I master this, I can throw burning rocks at the Painter,” I mused.
Keeper scoffed. “If only he were that easy to defeat.” Then he frowned, as if he had remembered something sad.
“It’s probably easier for me because I’m not a kid. Maybe if you took children when they’re older, they’d learn faster.”
“We take children when their power first starts to develop, because their power becomes more dangerous with time if they don’t learn to control it.”
My heart sunk into my stomach. “What do you mean? If a person doesn’t know the words, they can’t do magic, right?”
He shook his head. “Unfortunately, that is not the case. The sacred language is powerful, but the magic comes from inside you. The words and visualization I’m teaching you only focuses your power. I’m teaching you to control it.”
“So if someone has magic and they don’t know how to control it, what will happen?”
