Aurelai glanced back to see Vimika taking in her attire. "I must look odd to you. Like something out of a history book."
"You look very nice," Vimika replied, earning a ghost of a smile.
"Thank you. Do you always deflect with flattery?"
"No," Vimika answered honestly.
Color rose to Aurelai's cheeks, but her smile remained. "Shall we carry on?"
What are you doing? Vimika thought. The last thing this woman needs is someone trying to flirt with her on accident.
But that was when she did her best work, unfortunately. If they'd met at a party, Vimika would have already fallen flat on her face by tripping over her own tongue. In these circumstances however, there was nothing Vimika wanted less than another complication in a life that seemed to be made up of nothing but.
"Are you coming?" Aurelai said from several yards away.
"What? Oh, yes. Just had to… let my eyes adjust. It's very bright without the hat." Vimika squished her face into an exaggerated squint before following. The moment Aurelai turned around, Vimika's face curdled in shame.
Idiot. She clearly likes living things, why don't you show a modicum of interest in your host's obvious talents? Maybe show that you're not going to be a complete clod of a houseguest?
Looking straight down, her charm and creativity slid to the front of her mind, smashing together in a spectacular collision that left no survivors. "So, this grass is nice."
Aurelai knelt down, her dress piling about her ankles. With precise, delicate movements, she plucked a single grass blade and beckoned for Vimika to join her.
"It is," she said, and brought it closer to Vimika's face, waving it in little circles. "What do you smell?"
"Grass."
Nodding, Aurelai made faster circles, brushing Vimika's nose. There was little warning for either of them when Vimika's head snapped forward in a sudden sneeze.
"Oh! I'm sorry!" she said to the Aurelai wavering and swimming in her tear-filled eyes. When she managed to blink them away, the black-haired wizard's smile had gotten bigger.
"What do you feel?"
"That tickled!"
"Good," Aurelai said.
Sniffling and rubbing her nose, Vimika looked down at the lawn she was crouched on like it could swallow her up at any moment. "Why?"
The grass blade spun between Aurelai's fingers as she thought. "I didn't know if this is what it was supposed to smell like. And I'm not ticklish. I've never seen a reaction to it before."
"Are you sure? You can't tickle yourself, you know."
Aurelai looked up suddenly, eyes narrowed. "You can't?"
"Nope," Vimika said.
"So perhaps I'm not broken," Aurelai said with a distant expression Vimika was quickly learning to interpret as the one that meant she was talking to herself.
Dropping the grass blade, Aurelai didn't so much stand as unfold, straightening her back before her legs in an astonishing display of balance and no little strength. She hadn't even needed her arms! How was that possible? Her figure belied none of what it would take to move that way. She was just as willowy and waif-like as every other female wizard Vimika knew.
She must be hiding legs like a deer under there to be able to stand like that, Vimika thought.
But why? Maybe it was living in isolation for so long that made her movements so alien. Without anyone to remind her how people actually moved, she'd developed her own tics and habits. More arresting than graceful, everything she did was in a sequence. In addition to being beautiful, she was fascinating to watch, and for the second time, Vimika got caught doing just that.
"You're really going to have to learn to keep up," Aurelai said. She was already at the edge of the house. "Are you all right?" she asked when Vimika joined her.
Swallowing her sheepishness, Vimika answered honestly. "I don't think so. Between the magic shock, the illusions and not having eaten since I woke up, I feel like I've been here for ten years already. Oh. I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"
"It's all right. You do look a bit… drawn. I can't do much about the first two ailments, but perhaps something to eat before we continue?"
~
"This is amazing!" Vimika said through a mouthful of the juiciest, sweetest tomato she had ever tasted. It was barely even a tomato, quite thoroughly settling the question of fruit versus vegetable in favor of the former. "How did you do it?"
"Just as Father taught me. Is it really so good?" Aurelai asked.
"Yes! Tomatoes are always bitter or bland, like they come off the vine boiled already. Do you really not mind if I have another?" Vimika managed to say before her hand reached out of its own accord.
"As many as you want. There's a lot more." Aurelai indicated the back of the house, but kept looking across the dining table at Vimika with a look of curious satisfaction. "I had no idea."
Her mouth full, Vimika nodded vigorously, her hair falling in front of one eye. Unused to it being free, she tried jerking it away with head movements, then shoving it with her wrist, but it was obstinate in trying to sample tomato juice for itself.
She stopped mid-chew like a startled squirrel when Aurelai reached across and brushed the errant strand away, securing it behind Vimika's ear.
"There," Aurelai said, setting her chin in her hand and considering the woman sitting across from her. "I suppose the hat usually keeps it tame."
Vimika nodded. She didn't care one whit that Aurelai's fingers were cold or that she curled them closed one at a time, it only added to the bewitching otherness that was increasingly hard to look away from.
"So if you get me out of here, I'll be expected to wear one, too? And the robes? Pity."
It was, Vimika agreed. That long, beautiful hair trapped under a wizard hat? That was the real crime. She didn't say any of that, of course.
Aurelai pointed to the rack near the front door.
Alone, discolored with char and mud, and hanging from a peg, Vimika's hat looked a lot sadder when seen from a distance. As much as she resented having to wear it, it was still hers, and she felt a little pang at seeing it in so sorry a state.
"May I ask you something about your hat?" Aurelai asked.
"There's not much to tell."
"It looks like someone shot it. Is it supposed to be flopped over like that?"
Vimika turned back to her tomato. "A working wizard's is, yes. They don't keep their shape long, and we can't be bothered to put them back."
Aurelai drummed her fingers on the table as she considered. "Hmm. Wizard… such a strange word. Where are you from, Vimika? That's a traditional Atvalian name. Or, acceptably traditional, I suppose."
"Maris."
"So it's not regional? What happened to mage? Why such a bizarre word?"
"The same reason we have to wear the hat and robes. Since the Purges, you don't say 'mage' anymore unless you want to start a fight."
Unless you had money and nothing to fear, then you could say a lot worse, Vimika thought.
"Ah. That would explain your reaction, then. For what it's worth, I'm sorry," Aurelai said.
"It's all right, you didn't know."
"Not just for the slander. If my father was one of the reasons for all of your… our troubles... I imagine the Malakandronons weren't spared."
"Mm. There was a reason I was so upset with you about Oliver." Vimika sucked the last of the meat off the stem of her tomato. "But, in truth, we came out better than most. The Purges were a long time ago though, they're just as much names in history books as anyone else who died in them."
She couldn't be truly upset about the reminder, as no wizard family was innocent of the practice. It had been too lucrative, too prevalent. Though the Purges that had decimated the wizard race had taken place nearly two centuries before Vimika was born, she had always been thankful that the Malakandronon mechamages were never very good at it. Magically, they had never been a particularly strong bloodline, and that was what had saved them. They had survived by being good enough at mundane m
agic to be useful but crap enough at dangerous magic to not pose a threat. They'd paid the reparations, watched their own lose their heads over the practice, then kept their (still attached) heads down and had lots of children.
However, the very idea of it all happening again made little worms of anxiety wriggle under her skin, burrowing into her brain so they could shit out nightmares when she went to sleep. It was in the back of every wizard's mind, very often making their way to the front, which is why they endured the discrimination without much resistance. Even if they wanted to do something, the Purges had done just what the name implied, wiping out the most powerful of them all at once. That power never cropping up again had kept the peace, and Vimika would rather not give any further thought to the idea that that might no longer be true.
"You think me a monster for loosing Oliver that way," Aurelai said to her fingers.
Vimika hid her moment of consideration with a chew of tomato that was already liquid. "You didn't know. There's nothing wrong with ignorance as long as you try to fill it in with knowledge. It's a tender subject, one that we'd thought behind us. To know for a fact that beings like Oliver are still with us is troubling, to say the least. It feels like unfinished business. If any of this gets out..." Vimika took Aurelai's measure, but she had to know more to truly understand. "I worry about my family."
"That wasn't my intention," Aurelai said in a voice so small she would have needed a magnifying glass to find it again.
Vimika wiped her chin clean of tomato juice. "I know. I believe you."
Aurelai brightened a little. "Thank you. Tell me about them."
"My family?"
"I don't... have one. You said Malakandronons had lots of children?"
Vimika nodded. "I'm the fourth of five. Two older brothers, sandwiched between two sisters. I have... twelve? nieces and nephews last time I counted."
"That must have been wonderful!" Aurelai said with a sudden glitter in her dark eyes.
"It... was. Mostly. It was also crowded, and we fought a lot. My younger sister Langorifa was a biter, while Kalinostra, as the oldest girl, always acted the princess, including sicking her toadies on me at school. But we grew out of it. Mostly I felt invisible."
Aurelai's brow pinched in incomprehension.
"I'm the middle one, easiest to get lost in the shuffle. I've always... made my own way, I suppose."
"You still talk to them, don't you?" Aurelai asked in rising horror.
"I send letters when I remember to. They accept my choice to leave, but still don't really understand it," Vimika said.
Being a Malakandronon, she had never been of any special power or station, with no connections, no access. At least, not any more. She wasn't particularly talented or pretty by wizard standards (her ears were too short, for one). Even among her clan, the fact she would never have children was a mark against her, even if it was never said aloud. No one cared that she fancied women, her aunt had married her wife before Vimika was born, but they were also filthy rich.
Historically, the one thing Malakandronons were good at was making more Malakandronons, which meant she'd had two options when she'd come of age: get busy making babies or, failing that, money.
The latter could have been simple, since everyone of power needed at least one sneaky wizard behind them, if for no other reason than everyone else of their ilk already did. But all those powerful women, the ones with gold in their vaults and silver on their tongues, the silk sheets...
Vimika snapped free from the trap of her memories to find Aurelai looking at her intently, thoughts forming behind her eyes that looked dangerously close to becoming questions.
"I think I've had enough of a rest," Vimika said with a brightness she hoped Aurelai wouldn't pick up on the artifice of. "Could you show me where these wonderful tomatoes came from?"
Clear relief washed over Aurelai and she quickly stood, gathering up Vimika's plate before she had a chance to even ask what to do with it. "I would be happy to."
The moment Vimika came around the back corner of the house however, there wasn't a garden waiting for her.
"It's a bloody farm!" she exclaimed.
Row after row of fruits and vegetables stretched all the way to the tree line, from shiny red gooseberries to fat, bright green cask melons the size of Vimika's head. Potato plants crawled along the ground while stalks of corn soared overhead, taller than any she had ever seen.
She gawked at it, unable to believe that one person could maintain such a thing by themselves, let alone so meticulously. It was lush and verdant, not a sign of insects or rot. Then several thoughts got into a big fight over who could leap out of her mouth first.
"Who eats this winter? Ah! That is… who is this for? You can't possibly eat all of this by yourself."
"I don't. It's mostly to feed the climate spells. And a bit of a hobby, I suppose."
"You throw it out!?" Vimika blurted in horror.
"What? No. I give it to the animals. The forest can be unpleasant, but the mountains worse, and the hunters more so. I try to make this place a refuge, if only so I can be around living things. Makes it easier to Borrow them, as well."
Though Vimika was closing in on finally accepting that this wasn't an illusion, she was still entertaining the idea it might be a dream. She knelt down and found one of the spines on a gooseberry bush. Running her thumb over the point, it caught on the fine ridges of her thumbprint and caused pain when she pressed on it, just the way it should.
When she popped a berry in her mouth, her face contorted the way it should, too, pinching into a singularity of tartness.
"Did I do it wrong?" Aurelai asked.
Her face still scrunched up shut, Vimika turned to where she was most confident Aurelai would be. "No, they're actually pretty good," she managed.
"Then why is your face imploding?"
"They usually make me cry, too."
"I see. So this is a… normal reaction?"
Vimika pried one eye open. "It's not for you?"
"I don't usually eat them." Aurelai picked a handful and whipped them towards the trees. Before they even got halfway, a squadron of meteor birds burst from the boughs and snatched them out of the air before vanishing back into the canopy in a cacophony of rustling branches and pleased squawking.
"How did they know you were going to do that?"
"Because I spoil them. They're how I knew about you. Excellent eyesight, fast, common enough no one really notices them, they make very good psychic telescopes."
Vimika's face asked the question for her.
"I don't know what to call them properly. I don't really inhabit their minds as in a full Borrowing, just… look through their eyes. Suggest they go left rather than right. Others animals have better hearing, or can get into smaller places, depending on what I want that day, but flying is true freedom. They see so much. Go anywhere they wish."
"Like… spies," Vimika said with more suspicion than she'd really intended as several incidents that she'd thought isolated suddenly took on a new, more coherent shape.
Like cats that resist Beckoning to go looking in windows or curl up on the lap of the only wizard in the tavern when there were thirty other people to choose from. Come to think of it, the horses had seemed a bit keen as of late, too.
Aurelai shot her a measuring look that saw none of that. "Yes. I've read enough books to know how that word sounds. But do you have any idea what true loneliness is? That's not even strong enough a word. Isolation? Father hadn't been lying when he said there was nothing but wasteland out there, had he? You said yourself there's nothing within miles. Now imagine it before Durn existed, when there was nothing within Borrowing range of here. I was completely alone, with no one to talk to, no faces to see, no… interaction. When the first buildings were erected, when they started cutting roads… I cried, Vimika. Ugly sobs of overwhelming relief that I was going to be able to see people. Talking, working, going to the shops; just watching people walk from here to there was joyous
. And when I learned that a ma-… wizard I thought could be of help had finally moved in, I cried again. You were more than a pretty face, you were hope…" Aurelai shook her head, hair flowing over her shoulders and into her eyes. "Yes, Vimika, I watched. You. The house wizards. Everyone! The same way someone stranded on an island watches the ships go past. The way someone dying of thirst keeps their eyes locked on an oasis, makes it their goal, helps them power through the last few miles before they can drink. If that offends you, I'm sorry. But I had to know who I thought I could trust before I could risk trying to bring anyone here."
Pain and the need to be believed shook Aurelai's voice, her odd body language now completely familiar in how guarded she'd suddenly become. Closed and awaiting judgment by a stranger. One slow blink. Another.
"I believe you," Vimika decided.
The black curtain parted as it was secured behind a long, pale ear. "You do?"
Vimika looked about the clearing, to the aged house, the fading paint, the moss, the weathering from untold years, and then to Aurelai.
All together, it laid obvious the inner fortitude Vimika had suspected lay at Aurelai's core.
Two centuries, all alone. Even if she'd spent a good part of it in suspension, she must be unfathomably strong to have lived her life. That she could speak at all was a miracle of perseverance, let alone so well. She hadn't had to admit anything, sparing herself this moment easily, but she had shared it anyway. Maybe she'd needed to get it off her chest, or maybe it was just more of the honesty that seemed to be her nature, but it made Vimika want to know more. To understand this woman and what she'd been through, to help her recover.
More than a savior, Aurelai needed a friend.
"I can't imagine what you've experienced, and I don't blame you for any opportunity you may have taken to feel even the least bit normal again. I'm surprised, but… I understand. In your shoes, I can't say that I would have done any differently."
"You're very understanding."
"Good trait in a wizard," Vimika said.
Midnight Magic Page 9
