by J M Sanford
3: MAGIC LESSONS
Amelia woke with the sun already beaming in through the window, filling the cabin with warmth and light, and the whole room swaying queasily. The snails might need rest, but Meg hadn’t wasted any time in getting them moving again. Amelia opened the windows to stand at a small balcony, holding onto the railing and mesmerised by the road ahead. A wood came into view on the path ahead, and soon the leafy green boughs of trees were moving past her at a steady rate. Amelia shrank back from the window, feeling quite dizzy. Reluctant to go downstairs, she spent twice as long as usual brushing and braiding her hair. If Amelia was not exactly beautiful, she at least had every right to be proud of her hair. The two fat sleek braids the colour of honey sat heavily over her shoulders, smooth and glossy. She wasn’t supposed to read fairy tales any more (her stepmother said she was much too old for them) but her favourite had always been the story of the captive who let down her hair from her high window so that the charming prince could climb up to her. Amelia had never cut her hair. It had grown long enough to sit on, but not much longer than that, to her great disappointment.
Eventually, she climbed down the ladder to the cabin. There she found Meg working at some embroidery, and Percival immersed in a pile of books with worn and peeling leather covers. At least another humiliating game of chess was out of the question for the time being, with the table occupied. Amelia looked anxiously out of the open front hatch, where the two giant snails proceeded through the woods unsupervised. Still, as Meg had said, they seemed to know where they were going.
“Sleep well?” Meg asked, and continued without waiting for an answer, “Sorry to have set off and all while you were still snoring, but we’ve got a busy day ahead of us. We should make Lannersmeet before lunchtime. Feel free to get yourself some breakfast,” she added. “Make yourself at home.”
Amelia turned to the tiny kitchen nook. The kitchen at home had been as familiar to her as her own arms and legs. Here, with the stove and the sink and the cupboards all piled into one crouched conglomeration of cast iron doors and knobs, she didn’t know where to begin.
“What’s that?” Meg stuck her head out of the porthole window.
“What’s what?”
“That rustling, up there…” In a flash Meg was out on the driver’s seat, and as Amelia followed hesitantly, Meg began climbing up a set of handholds on the outer walls of the snailcastletank. Amelia didn’t know what the madwoman was talking about. Passing through the leafy green woods in a carriage pulled by two enormous snails, surely a little rustling was only to be expected!
“Slow ‘em up a bit, Amelia,” Meg called down, for by now she had almost reached the top of the swaying tower. “Go on; just give the reins a good firm pull. Don’t worry about hurting Mimi and Tallulah, they’re tough old girls,” she added, mistaking Amelia’s reluctance for fear of hurting the beasts. Amelia had never so much as ridden a pony before, and wasn’t remotely confident of her ability to stop a ton or two of mollusc.
Fortunately, just as she was in the process of steeling her nerves to take hold of the reins and pull, Percival reached over and did it for her. “Meg? What is it?” he called up.
“Funny noises, up in the trees. Listen, Amelia, and tell me what you can hear.”
Keen to make a better impression than she had with the games table, Amelia listened: to the clank of harness and reins; the rumble of the snailcastletank’s internal workings; the rustle, crunch and snap of undergrowth as they rolled over it; to the slimy, sucking noises of the two giant snails. Around them, the gentle breeze whispered continuously through the trees, all of springtime’s little songbirds chirping and whistling.
“Rustling?” Amelia tried. “B-birdsong?”
“Not so much a rustling, as a clicking… Oh!” Meg ducked, just as a flash of something whizzed over her head, bright as liquid sunshine. Amelia ducked too, although it had been far above her. The whirring noise lingered, droning in the dappled shadows beneath the trees, drawing close, then receding, then close again. Like a wasp. Amelia felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up in alarm. If such things as seven foot high snails really existed, then why not giant wasps, too? And that thing had been as big as a hawk, at least…
Nevertheless, Meg stayed clinging to her precarious perch on the side of the tower, still trying to get a glimpse of the mysterious creature. “Perce, fetch me that cage!” she ordered, just as the thing came swooping back at head height. “Ooh, you little beast!” she cried, as the thing snatched at the curls of her straw-coloured hair. When the swooping, glittering pest came back for another dive, Meg lashed out, smacking the creature smartly into the wall of the snailcastletank. It bounced off and circled drunkenly until it ventured close enough for Meg to hit it again. It narrowly missed Amelia on the way down, and hit the driver’s seat with a clang. Warily looking closer, Amelia saw that the thing was a little dragon, gleaming gold and ever so pretty in the sunlight shining through the trees. Only on close inspection could she see that it didn’t appear to be a living creature at all, but a painstakingly detailed construction of metal, with gemstone eyes. Its gears whirred and it made a pitiful noise as it tried to get up.
Percival came out to the driver’s seat with a ridiculously delicate-looking gilt birdcage, and scooped the dragonette up in his armoured hand.
“Oh, poor little thing,” said Amelia, as Percival deposited it in the gilt cage.
“‘Poor little thing?’” Meg climbed back down, grimacing as she examined her bruised hand. “Did you see the way it went for me?”
Amelia had to admit that she’d be nervous of the delicate little creature still, if it weren’t for the cage. The dragonette’s curved golden talons looked as sharp as a cat’s claws. But it was so dainty, and so pretty…
“What’s it for, do you suppose?” asked Percival. “Do you think it’s a spy?”
“If I had any sense, I’d take it apart and find out exactly what it’s for,” Meg mused, peering at her troublesome captive. Regaining its senses, the clockwork dragonette got up unsteadily, hopping about the cage.
“Oh, no!” Mechanical or not, Amelia couldn’t bear the thought of seeing such a beautiful thing destroyed.
“‘Course, I’ve always been too sentimental for my own good. And I reckon I already know what it is,” Meg added.
“It’s a lovely piece of work,” said Percival, sounding worried that it might be necessary to dismantle the dragonette in spite of sentimentalism.
“Yes, almost too pretty to be just a spying device. But perhaps that’s what they want us to think.” She snorted in amusement. “Listen to me; I’m getting as bad as you, Perce.”
“Who are ‘they’?” asked Amelia, but Meg and Percival were too concerned with their little captive.
“We can’t let it free again if it might be a spy,” said Percival. “Who knows how long it’s been following us, how much it might have heard. Aren’t you worried it might be able to send messages by magical means, even from the cage? What are you going to do with it?”
“I should say it’s safe enough where it is,” said Meg. “Look here, Amelia.” She took Amelia by the arm and directed her attention to a set of marks engraved on a plate on the front of the cage. “Wherever you see this mark on something, that means it’s made of amaranthine. Gold-plated, here, but that’s just to make it look fancy.”
Before Amelia could ask what amaranthine was, or the meaning of the other marks, Percival interrupted. “And are you going to tell her that cage’s intended purpose?” he asked, meaningfully.
Meg glared at him. “Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she snapped at his expressionless visor, “You know I’ve never used it for that. But you can’t say it hasn’t come in handy.”
“What’s it for?” asked Amelia, not sure she wanted to know.
For a moment, Meg looked like she wouldn’t answer. Then, “Fairies. It’s for trapping and keeping fairies. Not that I approve of such nonsense, but it was a gift and besides, amaran
thine isn’t the sort of thing you just throw away. It has some extremely useful magical properties,” she told Amelia, intent on continuing her impromptu lesson despite Percival’s interruptions.
“I’d melt it down, if it were mine,” said Percival, sulkily. “Not that I’d have accepted such a ‘gift’ in the first place…”
Meg rolled her eyes. “Oh, for the love of… I’ve told you before, I don’t much approve of trapping fairies. I’ll even admit they’re reasonable creatures, left well enough alone. And anyway, if you want to get all up in arms over something, try this beastly little device here. A spy for sure, and who knows how long it’s been following us.”
Amelia examined the cage: the slender close-set bars and the way some of the gold had flaked away, revealing a dull purplish-grey metal beneath. She’d never seen a fairy, only read about them in books. She hadn’t even known that they were real.
“All right,” said Meg, swooping in to lift the cage, and making the clockwork dragonette squawk in surprise. “Show’s over. Everybody back indoors.”
The snails continued through the woods, completely unruffled by events.
~
At sight of a tea house at a crossroads up ahead, the snailcastletank drew to a halt – as per Meg’s plans, they’d reached Lannersmeet just about lunchtime. Besides the tea house, Lannersmeet turned out to consist of not much more than a few small cottages, sleepy and quiet in the sun.
Meg studied the multitude of signs bristling from the signpost at the crossroads, where four roads led off into the unknown, and one back to Springhaven. “This looks like a good place to stop for a bite to eat,” she announced. “Put your books away, Perce.”
They tethered the snails in the shade at the side of the road, Meg leaving them with the patted assurance that she would be back in no time at all, and went into the tea house.
The place was already busy with merchants, making deals or chatting amiably over their drinks, but they moved aside quickly enough to let Percival through, and the two women followed in his wake to a reasonably secluded booth.
“So, are you getting used to the idea of Mimi and Tallulah?” Percival asked, while Meg went to fetch food. Amelia detected more than a hint of amusement in his tone, but she couldn’t make up her mind if she imagined the smile behind the visor to be sympathetic or teasing.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to them. Giant snails? Honestly?” She’d never heard of such a thing.
“Oh, yes. They would have been a relatively common sight in this part of the world, thousands of years ago. What tremendous pests they must have been… Nearly extinct now, of course. I wouldn’t be surprised if Meg’s were the only two left.”
“Good,” said Amelia with feeling, then regretted it, mostly because she couldn’t see the knight’s expression.
“I wouldn’t say that sort of thing to Meg, if I were you,” he said, rather stiffly. Then he leaned down to add in a softer tone, “and if you think Mimi and Tallulah are bad, you should see the old Mammoth Battlesnail shells in the Iletian Museum. I remember visiting the museum as a young boy. The biggest of the shells must have been eighteen feet across – so big I could easily have climbed inside it – and its spines would have made Mimi and Tallulah’s look like no more than pins in a pincushion.”
“Oh,” said Amelia, feeling a bit light-headed at the thought. She wondered if that had been the inspiration for him to don his own apparently permanent armour, his own shell, but didn’t like to ask. Having hoped that lunch would finally give her the opportunity to find out if he was handsome or not, he disappointed her by declining to join them in their meal. However, while they waited for their food to arrive, Meg raised an interesting topic again. “So, would you like to learn a little gesture magic?”
As much as it had sounded a casual question, Amelia saw the look in Meg’s eyes and knew the correct answer at once. “Yes please.”
Meg pushed back her sleeves, slipping off one bracelet from each wrist, and half a dozen of her rings. “Firstly, let’s see how these fit you,” and she helped Amelia place the rings on the correct digits. “Not bad, not bad. I dare say my old set from before I married will fit you perfectly. That’ll save the time and expense of having you fitted for your own set new, at least. Don’t do that, dear,” she said, as Amelia turned her hands this way and that in the sunlight shining through the window, admiring the fine workmanship that had gone into the jewellery. “You never know what might happen, if you just start gesticulating wildly like that.”
Chastised and more than a little nervous, Amelia sat very still, with her hands laid out in front of her on the table. She didn’t think she’d been ‘gesticulating wildly’ at all. But then, what did she know?
“Now,” said Meg, “picture a fire. Just a small one, mind. Don’t close your eyes, dear, or you won’t be able to see what you’re doing… And when you’re quite ready, gesture like so –” she flicked her fingers out in one very swift and fluid motion, “– in the direction of that candle over there.”
Still fearful and inclined to close her eyes, Amelia squinted at the candle and flicked out her hand. A bright green spark leapt from the tip of her forefinger with a loud snap that hurt and made her squeak in surprise. Meanwhile, the spark shot across the room and hit the wall several feet from the candle. Amelia sat and stared, absently rubbing her sore finger.
Meg pursed her lips. “Hmm. Don’t do that, dear,” she said absently, stilling Amelia’s hands.
“Not at all bad, for a first attempt,” said Percival gallantly.
Meg ignored him, looking over the top of her spectacles at her anxious student. “Green fire, Amelia?”
Amelia offered a nervous smile. She’d been thinking of her pet fire sprite, Stupid, whose company she had begun to miss. As far as she’d been able to ascertain, emerald green indicated a cheerful, contented fire sprite.
“Again,” said Meg. “Try for a more conventional colour if you can, but more importantly, try to improve your aim. That poor old gentleman at the next table nearly lost his hat last time.”
Amelia scowled, too busy concentrating to answer back. Having been instructed that Stupid was not a suitable mental image of a small fire, she found it impossible to think of anything else.
By her fifth attempt she managed to hit the target, and Meg nodded in approval, for all that the candle cast a distinctly green light.
Amelia wasn’t enjoying her first magic lesson as much as she’d hoped she would. Most of the tea house’s patrons took little notice of the flashes of green fire emanating from the booth, but a group of young men who’d had a bit too much to drink took it as free entertainment, making bets on what she would hit next, cheering each shot and shouting for more. She felt certain that at least a few others patrons were not so amused, and that it was only a matter of time before the whole lot of them – Amelia, Meg, Percival, rowdy young men and all – were forcibly ejected from the tea house. One well-dressed gentleman in particular stared at Amelia. He had very dark eyes, flat black and dull. She looked away, but at the edges of her vision she glimpsed him pointing her out to his companion – a man who wore an identical shirt and vest and black coat, and an identical face, for that matter. “My fingers are getting sore, Miss… Meg,” Amelia whispered across the table. “Might we continue later, please?”
“I think that’s a good idea, Meg,” Percival put in, his voice low. “Perhaps not for the best to be giving the girl magic lessons in such a public place.”
“Can’t a woman teach her daughter magic if she wants to?” said Meg, loudly. “Magic’s a perfectly respectable occupation, done within the confines of the law.”
“However, there are a couple of fellows over there who look like they might disagree with you,” said Percival.
Meg glanced over her shoulder at the two identical well-dressed gentlemen. “Oh. All right, then,” she said, taking the rings and bracelets and slipping them back onto her own hands. “Well, Amelia. It looks like you have some nat
ural talent for it, at least. There are a couple more simple tasks I want you to try out, but I s’pose it can wait ‘til we have less of an audience.”
Without the rings, Amelia’s hands felt as if they suddenly belonged to her again, light and free. Gratefully, she ate the meal that Meg had bought her. In all the fuss over the clockwork dragonette, she’d quite forgotten about breakfast until hours later, and then been too shy to ask about it. Meanwhile, Meg and Percival debated what to teach her next. Percival’s suggestions of dry theory appealed to Amelia in the wake of her first practical lesson, but fell largely on deaf ears. Only one thing kept Meg from running off at once to fetch her old set of conjuring rings: she had her eye on a slice of carrot cake.
Unable to follow the esoteric subject of the conversation, Amelia’s mind wandered off on another tangent. The thought struck her that while she assumed the gleaming suit of armour was occupied by a man, she’d seen neither hide nor hair of him since he and Meg had arrived at the tower. Her imagination ran riot, fuelled by battlesnails and other fantastic beasts. Why, he could be almost anything underneath all that plate metal. He could be a minotaur, or some other animal-headed being. He could be nothing more than a voice, animating the suit of armour by pure magic. He could be a hideous ogre, or an elf too beautiful to risk mortal women laying eyes on him, for fear of being mobbed. Well, perhaps that last idea was a bit silly, but nonetheless an interesting notion…
“Besides, what good is ‘Malthrosia’s Primer on Alchemical Functions’ going to do her when –” Meg stopped and lowered her voice, “when the other side catch up with us?”
“If they catch up with us before long, I doubt practical or theoretical lessons will do a whit of good,” said Percival, gloomily. “Don’t you think we should get moving again?”
“In a minute.”
“We really would be safer on the move,” he pressed.
“A life without desserts,” said Meg, “is scarcely a life worth living.”
