Fathomless

by Anne M. Pillsworth

  Sean imagined his right hand. Then he imagined his right hand holding a lightning rod. Instantly lightning arced to it, and white-hot pain jolted into his imaginary arm. He dropped the imaginary rod and opened his real eyes. Thank you, Jesus, his real arm was still there, unscorched. He’d expected to see his hairs frizzled, at least.

  They weren’t, but they were standing straight up, and there was heat in his hand and forearm. It set his nerves vibrating between pain and pleasure and his muscles thrumming with contained energy. Though it was nothing like the sense of superhuman strength Nyarlathotep’s lightning bolt had conferred, he finally had some magic in him again.

  “You gathered, right?” Daniel said. “You must have, yelling like that.”

  He’d yelled? Sean flexed his right arm. Its feverish vibration grew uncomfortable. “You have the lucky pencil?”

  “Hold on, I should.” And yes, Daniel produced the stub he’d used for his first demonstration. He set it in the middle of the table. “Go for it.”

  “You’re not wearing goggles.”

  “I won’t tell Eddy if you don’t.”

  Besides, it wasn’t like Sean would even get the stub off the table. Intention came next, feeding on the energy he’d collected. He concentrated on spinning the stub in a circle. On letting the thrum in his arm flow out to push the worn eraser, to flick it. Push the eraser end. Flick.

  Flick!

  His release of magical energy didn’t feel any more spectacular than a good hard sneeze, but the stub not only spun—it also whirled off the table like a runaway helicopter rotor and hit the back wall of the wine cellar and popped into flame as it fell among some yellowed wine labels on the floor, which it set on fire.

  Daniel shoved off his rickety chair so hard, it skidded into the spider condos. Sean’s went over with a crash. Then they were both at the mini-conflagration, Daniel stomping it out, Sean kicking debris away from the smoking ashes. The danger averted, Daniel squatted, prodded something, and jerked back his hand. “Ow!”

  “What? What is it?”

  “It’s that metal band that held the eraser on. It’s melted. Still freaking hot, too.”

  “I melted it?”

  “Well, it sure wasn’t me.”

  Sean squatted next to him, and for a few seconds they hung over the silvery wad like two cavemen awestruck by a meteorite. Daniel recovered first and punched Sean’s shoulder. “Impressive, man!”

  Sean returned the celebratory jab. “Shit, I was only trying to make it spin.”

  “It spun, all right. Told you to take it easy.”

  “I thought I was.”

  “Guess you better take it super easy next time.”

  No kidding. He’d held the lightning rod for less than a second. Maybe he needed a smaller one? Something more like a kebab skewer? “It rocked, though, the feeling.”

  “I suppose it did,” a voice said that didn’t come from Daniel. It didn’t come from Eddy either, not this time, not even close, being masculine and deep and full of the Back Bay. It was Marvell’s voice, and Marvell was standing by the one wine-bearing wine rack, not looking amused in the least.

  Sean stood and faced him. Daniel did, too, jaw working so hard, it kept notching a dent into his foam brace.

  Marvell looked away from them long enough to select three bottles from the rack. “It’s Dr. Benetutti’s birthday,” he remarked. “The meeting wanted to offer her a toast, and I volunteered to brave the spiders.”

  No way, was there, that Marvell hadn’t caught them out? That Sean could come up with an excuse for being in the wine cellar? They were chugging wine. No, no open bottles. They were sharing a joint. That would explain the smoky smell, and Daniel looked like a headlight-frozen deer, so he wouldn’t protest.

  Never mind, because tucking the bottles under his arms, Marvell added, “I doubt Helen wants anyone practicing magic down here. Particularly not you, Sean.”

  “Okay, Professor, well—”

  Marvell ascended a step. “I suggest you clean up and put the furniture back where you found it. Our meeting should be over at four. At five I’ll expect to see you, Sean, in my office at MU.”

  Just him, not Daniel?

  “Sean?”

  His throat was dry as the ashes underfoot. “I’ll be there, sir.”

  Bottles clinking, Marvell exited. Speaking of bottles, would it make Sean’s situation any worse if he copped some wine for himself and drank it before his sudden appointment?

  “Dude,” Daniel said, voice low and shaky.

  Sean slumped against the wall. “I’m so screwed.”

  “I hate that.”

  “How I’m screwed?”

  “Yeah, that, too. But I mean the way Marvell acted so cool when he’s got to be really angry. I can’t stand that shit.”

  “Me neither.”

  Daniel scraped at the ashes on the floor. “I’ll get a broom.”

  “I’ll get the chairs.” Sean grabbed Daniel’s. Daniel picked up the one Sean had knocked over back when, fire panic aside, things had been going great.

  In the main basement, Daniel said, “Look. I’ll go and talk to Marvell first. I’m the one who offered to teach you. It’s just as much my fault.”

  “I could have said no.”

  “But—”

  “Get the broom, okay? I’m going alone, like he wants.”

  “But you’ll tell him I started it.”

  Sean threw the chair back into the musty corner where they’d found it. Wood cracked, and he was glad. “I’ll figure it out when I get there,” he said.

  9

  Helen’s office was in the glass-and-steel addition to the university library. Marvell’s was not only in the original building but in one of the four corner turrets to boot, a prime location if you liked stone walls, vaulted ceilings, and Gothic windows so heavily leaded, they excluded more sunlight than they admitted. Even his desk was Goth, walnut aged to a dull black sheen, with hunched gargoyles taking the place of legs. The two guest chairs matched the desk; the desk chair didn’t. In its sleek ergonomic embrace, Marvell looked smugly comfortable, like a medieval interrogator ready to haul a confession out of some poor slob before calling in the guy with the ax.

  An ebony screen cordoned off the anachronism of digital gear. Sean almost knocked the screen over when he sat on a guest chair and started butt-skating off its slick horsehair seat. Marvell watched him resettle himself over the wire rims of reading glasses. Then he took off the glasses and said, “I was surprised this afternoon, Sean.”

  “Sir?”

  “That Daniel Glass would let you talk him into teaching you magic.”

  Nice how Marvell assumed that Sean had initiated the tutoring sessions, but if Daniel hadn’t insisted on getting his full share of the blame, Sean would have let the assumption ride—it sucked to sound like a snitch. “I didn’t ask Daniel to teach me, Professor. He offered to.”

  “Really? You didn’t hint?”

  “No, sir. He offered on his own.”

  “Did you tell him the Order doesn’t want you practicing magic yet?”

  “Yes, but anyway, he’s just showing me what Mr. Geldman teaches him.”

  Marvell didn’t doff the cool mask that had bugged Daniel, but in it his eyes narrowed. “Apparently you and Daniel were too engrossed to notice, but I was on the cellar stairs a couple minutes before you hurled that pencil into the wall. Before it burst on fire. Before it started a bigger fire in the trash. If fire had gotten to the wine racks, tinder dry as they are—”

  “It didn’t! We put it out.”

  “Is that the point?”

  To hang his head would be the smart move. To say, No, Professor, because if I hadn’t been trying to do magic, there wouldn’t have been any fire to begin with. And blah blah, I was wrong, blah blah, I’m sorry, blah-blah blah-blah-blah, it won’t happen again. Rubbing his right forearm, the one that had vibrated with magic, Sean had a weird sensation that, the magic spent, it was missing crucial muscl
es and nerves. Forget about the shamed-dog speech. “Yes,” he said. “It is the point. That we put the fire right out. That I did magic and nothing really bad happened.”

  Mask finally slipping, Marvell glowered. “Something bad did happen. After destroying the pencil, you told Daniel you’d only meant to spin it on the table. Therefore you lost control, entirely.”

  “I didn’t lose it, Professor. I just didn’t know how to use the energy yet. How much I’d need, how much to let go.”

  Marvell rolled his eyes toward the vaulted ceiling. “Amazing that you didn’t know, considering your teacher has studied practical magic a whole week longer than you have. There’s nothing more hazardous than a neophyte leading a neophyte. Especially when one of the neophytes has little capacity for discipline.”

  That slap stung. “But you haven’t given me a chance to show any discipline!”

  “No? What about the agreement you made with me and Helen? There was an excellent opportunity to show restraint, but you couldn’t go a month without breaking it.”

  “Maybe because it wasn’t the right agreement, Professor.”

  Marvell rapped his desk with his folded reading glasses. If he did that often, he had to go through a dozen pairs a year. “The Order decides case by case how students should be trained. Each young magician has different needs and abilities. What will work for Daniel won’t necessarily work for you.”

  “I know, Professor, but you wrote it yourself in Infinity, how once a magic-capable person finally does magic, like me and Daniel both have now, he’s got to keep doing it.”

  “I wrote that such a person would want to keep doing it, which isn’t the same thing as having to. We’re back to control, Sean. Back to patience. Back to trusting the Order—”

  “But the Order doesn’t trust me, or at least you don’t, Professor. You want to know why Daniel offered to teach me? He thought you were being unfair, setting him up with a mentor but not me.”

  “Daniel doesn’t know your background.”

  “But you do. Even Mr. Geldman thinks you’re holding me back because of Orne, and Orne’s not something I can help, and that’s why it’s not fair.”

  At the mention of Geldman’s name, Marvell had frozen, glasses poised between the lift and the smackdown. With exaggerated evenness, he asked, “Are you saying you’ve discussed your status as an Order student with Solomon Geldman?”

  Great, now he’d dragged Geldman into this mess. “No. I mean, me and Eddy were just hanging out at the pharmacy, and Mr. Geldman wanted to talk to me privately. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t mad at Daniel for getting a mentor ahead of me.”

  “And somehow the conversation turned to the Order’s lack of trust in you.”

  Yeah, somehow. What had Daniel said? Whenever you talk to Geldman, the important things come up. “I guess because I was worried about it.”

  Marvell slipped his glasses and some scattered pens into a drawer. While clearing his desktop, he also cleared all irritation from his face, so that his cool mask fit perfectly again. “To be honest, Sean, you should be worried, but not about me or the Order. Though it’s not our reason for holding you back, your lineage is troubling—I challenge you to reread Phillip’s history of the Witch Panic and keep a good opinion of Redemption or Patience Orne.”

  “I never had a good opinion of them!”

  “Knowing you’re related to the Ornes hasn’t softened your judgment, now you’ve had time to think about it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it. Her involvement with the dark arts aside, Patience Bishop Orne was probably a psychopath. And no, I’m not suggesting you’re one. If I thought that, you wouldn’t be here.”

  Thanks for the vote of confidence.

  “As for Redemption. By all accounts, he was intensely curious, enthusiastic, impulsive, strong willed. He tried to curb those tendencies so that they served his Puritan faith, but it was all up once he discovered magic. One bit went out of his mouth and no new bit went in, because restraint was the last thing his mentors worried about, Patience and Enoch Bishop.”

  Bits grossed Sean out, how horses slobbered over them, how they had to pinch, come on. “So you’re worried I’m like Redemption.”

  “Curious, impulsive, stubborn, enthusiastic, yes.”

  “Last summer you were all for curiosity.”

  “When controlled, it’s an excellent quality in a magician. The same holds for enthusiasm and strength of will.”

  Sean had to say it: “Wouldn’t part of a mentor’s job be to teach me control?”

  “Before anyone can teach you to control magic, you need to learn self-control. Think of it as a muscle. Yes, a mentor can refine how you deploy that part of your strength, but only if you’ve already built the muscle up.”

  “I can do that, but—”

  “Then prove it,” Marvell said. He added, “Otherwise…”

  The way Marvell paused after drawling that otherwise, was Sean supposed to crack and blubber, Whatever you say, sir? Screw that. He could stand as much suspense as Marvell wanted to dish out.

  But instead of being awed by Sean’s Spartan silence, Marvell twisted it into a win for his side. “Stubborn again. Then I’ll have to make this conversation unpleasant.”

  It had been pleasant before?

  “If you can’t accept the Order’s rules, it won’t be able to work with you. It will have to withdraw the offer of magical training.”

  “Send me home?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Dad might be only semi-reconciled to Sean studying magic, but for Sean to get kicked out for breaking the rules? Capital offense. As for Eddy, she might not leave enough of his ass unchewed for Dad to get a nibble. “I don’t want to go home,” he conceded.

  “No one in the Order wants that. Helen, in particular. After last year, she feels a strong connection to you.”

  It was a dick move to bring up how badly Sean could disappoint Helen. He had to think about Daniel, too, who already blamed himself for the wine cellar blowup. If Sean got expelled because of it—

  Sean didn’t hang his head, but he did roll out the shamed-dog routine, after all: “I guess I jumped the gun, Professor. I should have told Daniel no thanks on the tutoring. You’re not going to come down on him, are you? He was just trying to be a friend.”

  “I understand that. So no, I won’t give him the hard time you’ve made me give you.”

  “Okay, well. I’m sorry, and no more practical magic until you—”

  “Until the Order, Sean. Honestly, I’m not calling all the shots here.”

  Maybe not, but he sure seemed to like pulling the trigger. “No practical magic until the Order says okay.”

  “And the other things we agreed to?”

  The way his head was thudding, it took Sean a minute to remember them. “Um, don’t talk magical business out of the wards. If I see Orne’s aether-newt again, tell you or Helen. If Orne tries to contact me some other way, same thing.”

  “You’ve stuck with those rules so far?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you’ll keep sticking with them?”

  Did Marvell want Sean to sign an oath in blood? “Yes, sir.”

  “Then let’s shake on it again.”

  He gripped the hand Marvell extended across the ebony gleam of his desktop, then used the momentum of leaning forward to get on his feet. “I better go, Professor. They’ll have dinner ready at the House.”

  Marvell gave him the warm smile that had Helen and Eddy fooled, but it softened just the lower half of his mask, leaving his gaze icicle-pointy. “Let Helen know we’ve worked things out, and tell Daniel I’ll talk to him before class tomorrow.”

  Lucky Daniel, but that was still getting off easy. Sean felt like he’d been in the turret office all day, not the twenty minutes Marvell’s cathedral spire of a clock had ticked off in its niche by the door. He had one foot on the medieval flagstone of the office, the other on the Victorian par
quet of the hallway when Marvell added, “One last thing I need to make clear. Even if the Order finds it can’t further your magical education, it will continue to supervise you.”

  “What’s that mean?” Sean asked cautiously.

  “It means even if you are no longer with us, we’ll keep track to ensure you don’t take up with an unauthorized mentor or try to continue with magic on your own.”

  Split between centuries, Sean sorted out the threat: “You’d try to stop me from getting another teacher?”

  Marvell shook his head. “We wouldn’t try, Sean. We would stop you.”

  “From doing any magic, ever.”

  “That’s what our mandate to protect the public would require. I’m sorry to sound harsh, but you’ve got to realize magic isn’t a toy. In the Order, we take our responsibilities seriously. You need to start doing the same.”

  In other words, screw up again, and Sean could land himself an early appointment with the ax guy. “I’ve got you, Professor,” he said, and then he got both feet in the same century and moved them, fast, breaking into a run long before he hit the library exit.

  10

  That night, Eddy grilled Sean until he’d given up every detail of his meeting with Marvell. Two things kept her from killing him: First, Daniel was a major conspirator in the tutoring scheme. Second, she herself was a minor conspirator. Forced to split the verbal whupping three ways, she ended up giving herself the biggest smacks. “I knew better than to let you guys do this,” she groaned.

  Seeing Eddy upset seemed to bother Daniel more than the idea of facing Marvell. “Yeah, but how could you have stopped us?”

  “I could’ve told Helen. She’d have talked you off the ledge without involving Marvell.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Sean said. “Helen thinks he’s Professor Godly. She’d have told him.”

  “Nobody’s Professor Godly to Helen,” Eddy said, defending her own goddess. “Anyhow, forget them. I should’ve talked you out of it myself.”