“Okay,” I said rising. “Enough lying about then.”
Rei leaned forward and pushed me back into bed. “Hold still, my most fragile ex-package. We can’t have you dying of internal bleeding…people would talk.”
“Internal bleeding?”
“Indeed,” she said, gesturing to bag of light red fluid. “You pee blood as we speak.”
I felt down to my nether regions and blushed. There was a tube in my wee-wee. Rei smiled gleefully.
“You know, Rei…”
“Yes, Dieter?"
“Well I’m like totally cool if, you know, if you wanna take a swig. I mean, no judgment.”
Rei’s smile cooled. “They say you are bruised all over, but with the vigor of your tongue, I have trouble believing that.” Rei looked at me mischievously, and with a flash, slapped me on the chest. The pain from my many bruises soared to a new level.
“Ooouuch!” I whined.
Rei giggled to herself. “Oh shoot. The medics were telling the truth.” She shook her head sadly. “To think of all that clotted blood—such a waste.”
Rubbing my chest, I looked over at the nightstand.
“What are you reading anyway?”
“A monthly called M. A. D. Magazine.” I raised an eyebrow. She had pronounced each letter of MAD independently. This girl needed a cable TV subscription, ASAP. “During our last fencing practice, Sheila informed me that my humor was a bit…stale. I am endeavoring to update my jargon with this journal on modern humor.”
“They still publish that thing?” I asked. “You should read The Onion instead.”
Rei scrunched her nose in disgust. “I am allergic to onions and uninterested in their affairs. I will stick with this M. A. D. Magazine.” Pouncing on her pronunciation was oh-so-tempting, but I decided to let it go.
“To each her own, I guess. Hey, I didn’t know you fenced.”
“Dean Albright insists that I attend club activities. I would have preferred to join the kick-boxing club, but my tryout did not go as planned.”
I cringed at the thought.
“But I have no worries. Fencing is most amusing. I learned sabre techniques as a child, but Sheila convinced me to attempt épée this season. I never imagined I would so enjoy poking things.”
“Yea. Imagine that. Still, it’s good to hear that you managed to carve yourself a niche.”
Rei stifled a giggle and shrugged. “It is not that enjoyable. Most of the opponents are slow and stupid, and dueling Sheila is most…annoying. I participate because Dean Albright insists.” Rei glanced at the clock. “We have talked for too long. The nurse already thinks I will be harmful to your health, and you must rest and recover if you are to not flunk out of this institution.
“Fine,” I grumbled.
“Dieter, I do have one last question before I release you to your slumber.”
I yawned.
“Sure, Rei. Shoot.”
“Well, I am most curious about your choice of transmutation…”
“What about it?”
“Why did you choose the juice of grapes?”
Oh, for the love of…
“Well, somebody already did water to wine,” I said burying my head under my pillow.
“Indeed,” Rei said with a frown.
Chapter 18
SICK DAY
A breeze greeted me when I woke the next day. The sun was trickling in, and I could make out the room better now. It was a step above the hospital in Vegas. Two nice leather seats for visitors. A plasma TV hanging from the ceiling. Even a fan. And it looked like I was still on campus. A large ‘E’ was carved onto the door to my room. Eikhorn had said that Susan Collins was in the school’s infirmary…I was probably in the same place.
How many serious injuries did they have to deal with around here?
I tried to lift myself up on the pillow, but moving around still hurt quite a bit. My body felt like it had rolled off the side of a mountain, and my skin was mottled with bruises. An IV of clear fluid dripped into my arm, and that ‘other’ tube was still reaching into my bladder. Fumbling around, I found the patient call button and pressed it. A few moments later, a nurse came in and asked how I was doing. She even offered to take my lunch order.
My gut felt broken, so I declined, but I did ask her how Sadie Thompson was doing. She said Sadie was doing all right but was bruised up like me. Hearing that, some of the tension left my body. I couldn’t bear the thought of another death on my hands. Sadie would probably never want to talk to me again, but at least she was okay. The nurse told me I would have to stay for another day. They wanted to make sure the bleeding had stopped before releasing me. I thanked her and spent the next few hours fading in and out of sleep. A knock on the door roused me later that afternoon.
“Come in,” I said wearily.
I heard the latch turn, followed by a big thump, and then the door was knocked wide open. I lifted myself up. It was Sadie. She was sitting in a wheelchair. Her face was a mixture of blacks and blues—but she was smiling.
“Holiest of shits, Dieter,” she exclaimed, “that was freakin’ awesome!”
She spun her wheelchair in a circle.
I looked at her uncertainly. “Um…thanks?”
“I thought you were just a newb! What systemic did you use for that transmutation? How did you manage to conduit that much mana without erasing your modulation matrix? And most importanté, why grape juice?”
Not the response I’d expected. It looked like Rei had been pulling my leg…stupid vampire.
“I’m really glad you’re okay,” I said.
Sadie waved her hand about as though she was dismissing a fly. “That’s why we wear robes. Now come on, tell me!”
“Sorry, Sadie,” I said with a shrug. “I don’t know any of the words you’re using, and I really didn’t plan the whole thing out like that. I just did what you said and visualized the manaflow. At first I imagined a little trickle, but that didn’t feel right when I tried it. I realized the leyline was way bigger, like a river or something.”
Sadie nodded eagerly. “Yea, that’s because the leyline here is epic. You can feel it can’t you? The campus is built right on top of the largest manaflow on the entire East Coast. It’s called The Great Eastern Flow.”
“The Great Eastern Flow? Huh. Well, anyway, I just visualized mana coming up into my hand. I guess I should have picked a single strand. I didn’t know that so much of it was going to, um, respond. Is that the correct word?”
“It’s a pretty good way of putting it. What you did was construct an extraction field. Life is like a natural magnet for mana, but the strength of that attraction is usually really weak. One thing that makes a mage a mage is our ability to direct our own internal supply of mana around our core. An energized core attracts nearby mana by resonating with it. When you resonate, we call it ‘forming an extraction field.’ You can focus the field on a single strand mana or scoop a bunch of strands at once.”
“So it’s like electrifying a magnet with current?” I asked. Electrifying a magnet makes it many times stronger. All you have to do is wrap it in copper wire and hook the wire up to a battery. You can even attenuate the magnet’s strength by modifying the flow of the current you pass through it.
“Rights. It’s just like electrifying a magnet with current. The same basic principles apply, but the equation is different. So what did you do next? Explain what you were thinking.”
“Well, I was focused on attracting the mana stream, and—”
The door banged open again. The whole gang stormed in to the sound of sticky shoes. Monique stood huffing and puffing at the fore. Angry eyes danced between Sadie and I. Sadie started to wheel away towards the window. A tangle of tubes and wires, I had no such recourse. I pulled up my covers instead.
Monique raised a finger into the air. “A swimming pool worth of grape juice?” she asked rhetorically.
Dante was hiding just outside the door. He was stifling a laugh.
The bastard.
Fukimura sloshed over to the sink, removed his shoes and socks, and started rinsing them out.
“Well,” Sadie offered, “at least it wasn’t as stinky as the paella.”
Maria glared at her. “Oh, sure. Fine. You always bring that up. ‘At least I’m not as bad as Maria.’”
“That’s not what I—”
“Bitch! I hate you,” Maria screamed as she stormed out of the door.
Roster shrugged. “That paella was some stank-ass shit.”
Sheila joined Fukimura at the sink. She dumped a pint of my juice product out of her left boot. “I hate the start of the year,” she grumbled.
I looked around guiltily. “Sorry guys. My bad,” I said.
“It wasn’t bad, Dieter!” Sadie said from her new secure position behind my bed. “It was a success! A triumph! And on your first try too. It’s a testament to my totally rockin’ talent as a teacher,” she said, beaming.
“No,” Monique said, “it means that instead of pillow time, the entire squad got to spend the morning mopping up the basement. And…and…why the hell are you both in the hospital? I mean, my God, look at you two, you’re like two little smurfs.”
“Yea, well you see, the circle was filling with juice, and we were drowning, and I had to get to the threshold, so I set off a minor explosion and—”
“A minor explosion,” Monique sputtered in horror.
“Nice,” Roster said. He gave me a thumbs up.
“Dieter, you should be careful employing explosives underwater,” Sheila added. “If you refer to the Navy Diving—”
“Enough!” Monique shouted. “Sadie, you’re fired. No more training Dieter.”
“But he’s my star pupil!” she moaned.
“If I leave you two alone, you’re probably gonna unleash the Marshmallow Man on downtown New Haven. No way. No how. Dieter, you’re with Jules from now on. Her parents run an elementary school in Ireland. You two are a perfect fit. And no more casting. We take you through the basics first, bookwork and observation only. You got that, Jules?”
Jules frowned. “You want me ta teach the nutto? Monique, I was gonna TA this year.”
Monique glared at her.
Jules pushed the drooping pair of golden-brown spectacles back onto her nose and sighed.
“Got it,” she muttered. Her hair was even frizzier than yesterday.
Monique turned to me.
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied quickly. “No more casting till you say so.” I thought being a mage was supposed to be fun.
Chapter 19
WOODWORKS
Sadie and I got out of the hospital two days later. Classes had already started, so I was already way behind. Life got real simple. Every morning I was up at eleven and out the door after a quick breakfast. Three hours of Standards started at noon. I picked English Composition, 20th Century American History, and Introduction to Molecular and Cell Biology because I knew I could ace them. The Standards were great. They gave me plenty of time to catch up on my sleep.
After Standards, I got an hour off for what everyone lovingly called linner. Each afternoon you could count on hearing Sadie and the rest of the Linnerets (some sort of school tradition—don’t ask) singing, “It’s not quite lunch / it’s not quite dinner / you won’t get thinner—but there’s fruit punch!”
Personally, I believed afternoons were best-spent unconscious on a hammock, but the good stuff followed linner, so I would pound down a liter of coffee to stave off the impending food coma and rush off to an hour of Magic Theory I with Dr. Greenberg. Magic Theory was a kind of catch-all of the science behind conduits, circles, frames, leylines, and alchemy. Most of the students thought the topics were beneath them, but I sat at the front of the class burning through the notebooks. Basic Defensive Magic was next. It was equal parts the Art of War and spellcasting. I was struck by how many inventive ways the Conscious had developed to pierce, slash, burn, freeze or otherwise transmute their foes. It made me want to go out and buy some pepper spray.
My last class of the day was Introduction to the Political Science of Magic, or Polimag for short. Polimag was a total snore. Professor Simons droned on in a steady monotone. He was like an inner tube leaking air. Words slid out one after another, and the concepts melted together like chocolate in the midday sun. Were we talking about tort or a law? Was it an edict or a verdict? Who knew? Who cared? Serpentine tangents were the norm. Caffeinated beverages outnumbered students two-to-one. I spent half my time in the book’s index looking up arcane terms and hastily scribbling them in my notebook. It was hopeless. One day I went thirty minutes thinking the Department of Mana Affairs had signed a treaty with the US Navy SEALs to not throw out dried bread in the forest only to discover that SEAL was actually spelled SEELIE, and that while Navy SEALs were as tough as nails, forest Seelie could be killed by them. The only thing that made Polimag bearable was Dante. We sat together in the back, and he taught me some basic illusions like shroud-the-pencil and thumb-through-the-ear. I sucked terribly—my illusions only held for a second or two—but it was a great way to pass time.
After classes ended at 7PM, most of my fellow first-years got to go and hang out. Maybe they grabbed a coffee. Maybe they hit a bong. (You know, college stuff.) The first semester coursework was designed to get everyone on the same page. A lot of the material was old hat to them. Their biggest concern was passing biology. The first semester was a time to join a few clubs, summon a few demons, and get plastered. I wasn’t so lucky…
Jules Nelson was a tyrant, and I, her humble serf.
Every single day Jules Nelson would be standing outside of Central. She’d be wearing one of her dreary chalk-stained dresses wrapped up in an Elliot robe, books in one hand, notebooks in the other, blond curls going every which way. Every single day she’d adjust her glasses, say, “Right then, Dieter, off to the library witya,” and drag me to said hellhole.
Every. Single. Day.
Jules liked Structure.
Jules liked Repetition.
Jules liked Consistent Results.
From seven to nine we sat in the library and studied our coursework. This was followed by a trip to the cafeteria for plastic wrapped sandwiches. Our thermoses filled—mine with coffee and hers with a half milk, half Darjeeling concoction Jules called a “cupan tae”—we headed off into the forest behind the dorms. Once we entered the forest, I had to follow Jules closely. We were headed to a place past students had nicknamed the Woodworks. The Woodworks was particular about the type of company it kept. If I didn’t stick to within an inch of Jules’ robe, I would end up straying off into the darkness. The Woodworks found Jules kosher—but me? Me it sent into mud puddles.
That’s hallowed ground for you. They’re like the ATM machines of the magical world: oft sought but rarely found. Such dark places want to be left be, but we mages want to find them. Mana flows differently within their borders, altering which spells can be cast. Each hallowed place makes certain magiks easier and other magiks harder. Each hallowed place has its own groupies. The Woodworks was suited for healing crafts; another site on the opposite side of campus was great for enchantments. Individual hallowed places really only share one thing in common: they absolutely hate visitors.
So how are hallowed places found in the first place? Every once in a while, a lucky someone is granted entrance. Most of the time they don't even realize it. Sure, they sense something’s odd. The colors are a bit unusual, the air a bit too still, but they merely scratch their head and move on. And yet the memory sticks with them. Years later, the experience still seems vaguely important. Jules says that’s because they’ve been offered an invitation. The ground had something to show them, something important, something life altering, but they missed it. Still, even if the poor soul saw whatever they were destined to see, they probably wouldn’t be able to comprehend it’s meaning. Hallowed places have their own logic. Few mortals can
ever hope to grasp it.
The same was true for this small circle of grass before us. It was an opening in the trees just large enough to allow the stars to poke through to say hello. Why had no trees bother to grow here? No one knew. Who first discovered it? No one knew. Had it always been here? No one knew. It was the Woodworks. It was a piece of land that had pinched itself off from the rest of reality. It just was. That was that. I didn’t find that explanation very satisfying, but not knowing was a big part of my life now.
Approaching the space, I took Jules’ hand and we squeezed through the taut air. Clear of the threshold, I walked over to the moss covered picnic bench and put down my pack. As Jules spread out her supplies and shined her long polished reed, I set up the gas lamp and adjusted the flame. When it was to her liking, she would turn to me and nod. Sure as sure, she would say, “Right then, Dieter, let’s get on wit it,” and we would get to work.
Jules had started her training when she was nothing but a toddler. The Dru commit none of their knowledge into writing. Everything has to be passed down from mother-to-daughter or father-to-son. The process started before you even learned to walk. You became one link in an unbroken chain of knowledge that stretched back over a thousand years.
Jules referred to mana as “Awen,” the Dru word for flowing spirit. To Jules, mana wasn’t just a substance to be molded; it was the living embodiment of a god-like entity that danced through our lives. During the first few weeks of school, I learned there wasn’t a single path to becoming a mage, nor was there even one right way to cast a spell. Only one thing was consistent across the many schools of magic: the root of all spellmaking was the formation of a mental image. The clarity of that image, and the amount of focus you could commit to forming it, were the key components to a spell’s effectiveness. Conviction was what mattered most. Beliefs, rituals, drawings, songs, and faith could all help strengthen a mental image by fortifying a caster’s resolve, and so the caster’s culture, upbringing, and belief system strongly influenced their style. Jules’ style was steady and methodical. My training followed suit.
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