by Rachel Aaron
“Is that what happened to me?” Because a torn soul sounded bad.
The doctor shook her head. “You managed to go even further. A sprained soul hurts, but if you can’t feel anything, that means you pushed your soul past its limit, causing it to become dislocated.”
The look on my face must have been horrific, because she rushed to reassure me. “Don’t worry, your soul’s not broken. It’s still in your body, just not in the right position. Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do to reattach it.”
“So I’ll be like this forever?” I asked, panic rising.
“Not forever,” she said. “It’ll reconnect on its own eventually, but the bonds you broke will take time to reform. You’ll need to take it easy on the casting until your magic is fully healed. If this happens again, the damage could become permanent.”
“And then my magic really will be broken forever?”
“No,” she said flatly. “If you permanently disconnect your soul from your body, it’ll get sucked into the Sea of Magic, and you’ll die.”
“Oh,” I said, biting my lip. “But it will heal if I don’t use it, right?”
The doctor nodded. “It felt close when I examined it earlier, so you should be getting some feeling back soon. But the injury isn’t actually what I’m most concerned about.”
I stared at her in horror. “What’s worse than dislocating my soul?”
“The fact that you were able to do it at all.”
Dr. Kowalski leaned forward in her chair, studying me with her small, bright eyes as if I was an interesting but very dangerous insect. “Dislocating your soul isn’t a normal sort of injury. The human soul and body are tightly connected, so much so that some consider them to be one and the same. It takes an enormous amount of energy to split that bond. Frankly, I’m amazed you didn’t blow yourself to pieces.”
“I’m pretty tough,” I said with stubborn pride. “Things have been blowing up in my face since I was a kid, so I’m used to it.”
“That’s precisely the problem,” the old woman said crossly. “Backlashing yourself is an inevitable part of learning to control your magic, but you’re not supposed to do it all the time. That much repeated injury over a long period can cause serious damage.” She frowned. “Is casting normally painful for you?”
“Only when I mess it up.” Which, admittedly, was more often than not. “But I don’t normally push this hard. I’ve just had a lot of emergencies lately.”
“You shouldn’t be pushing at all,” Dr. Kowalski snapped. “That’s not a healthy or effective way to do magic, especially for someone with a draw as high as yours. You almost blasted your soul clean out of your body.”
“But I didn’t have a choice! My friend and I were about to die.”
“I’m not talking about what you were forced to do in an emergency,” she said sternly, poking her calloused fingers hard into my palms. “This sort of injury doesn’t happen from one wild spell. What you’re suffering from is the result of a lifetime of terrible casting habits. If you don’t want it to happen again, you have to get better at regulating your draw.”
I stared at her blankly. “What are you talking about? Draw is unconscious. You can’t regulate it.”
Now it was Dr. Kowalski’s turn to stare. “Are you serious?”
I was. I’d always been taught that draw was something you were born with, like hair. Every mage’s was a little different, which was why all Thaumaturgical spells began by drawing a circle. Not only did the circle serve as the spell’s fuel tank, holding all the magic until it was needed for casting, it also acted like a transformer, converting whatever random magic the mage happened to grab into a homogeneous form the spell could use.
Other than spellwork, the shorthand language used to write out exactly what you wanted a spell to do through a series of logical statements much like computer code, magical circles were why every serious mage was a Thaumaturge. In a world where each caster and magical source was different, circles were the great equalizer. Without them, you’d have to adjust every spell individually to take into account all of the different strengths and flavors and concentrations of magic. Put it in a circle, though, and all that weirdness evened out, becoming a nice, level pool of power that flowed through spellwork smooth as silk. Circles also negated problems caused by differences in individual mages’ draws, since, if it was all going into the same pot anyway, it didn’t matter how fast or how hard you poured it in.
Or, at least, that was what I’d been taught.
“No, you’re correct,” Dr. Kowalski said when I explained this. “That is exactly how Thaumaturgy is supposed to work. Remember, though: Thaumaturgy, like all the casting styles, is merely a construct. It’s a system created by people to help our brains manage the incredible act of grabbing the raw power of the universe and bending it into a usable shape. But like everything humans make, Thaumaturgy is not without its limitations. It was created to be a universal magical system. That’s why all the spellwork languages share a common vocabulary of variables, logical operators, and constants. There’s notable differences between the styles, but generally speaking, every Thaumaturge can read, understand, and cast any spell provided it’s written out in spellwork. That’s what Thaumaturgy was created to do. It’s standardized magic.”
“That’s good, though,” I said.
“It’s fantastic,” Dr. Kowalski agreed. “Thaumaturgy’s universality is its great strength, particularly if you’re a corporation that makes its money selling preprinted, preoptimized spells written by committee so that any idiot can cast them. But while Thaumaturgy is fantastic at being magic for the masses, it’s garbage at dealing with exceptions. That’s the trouble with ‘universal’ systems: you can’t actually plan for everything. Even if your spellwork works as expected ninety-nine percent of the time, there’s always that last one percent the precalculated equations just can’t handle. And as someone with a draw number above what’s supposed to be the natural human limit, you are definitely not part of the standard.”
I gave her a skeptical look. “So you’re saying my magic’s too crazy for Thaumaturgy?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” the doctor replied with a confident nod. “You were taught a system that’s balanced for the average mage, but you’re not the average mage. That’s why spells you look up on the internet blow up in your face. It’s not that you’re bad at copying spellwork, you’re just shoving magic into it at a rate it was never designed to handle. Of course it’s going to break.”
Dr. Kowalski said this as if it was obvious, but I felt like she’d just turned my universe upside down and put it in a paint shaker. “So it’s not me?” I whispered, body trembling.
“Oh, it’s definitely you,” she said. “The spells are fine. You’re the one pushing them beyond their limits.”
“But only because my draw is crazy,” I said desperately. “Not because I’m…”
Terrible, my father’s voice whispered in my head. Flawed.
“It’s not a fault in your skills,” Dr. Kowalski assured me. “I mean, I’ve never seen you design a spell, so I have no idea if you’re good at spellwork or not, but the whole point of Thaumaturgy is that you don’t have to be. You don’t need to be a genius to be an effective mage. You just need to be able to read and copy spellwork, which any idiot can do.”
“Any idiot except me.”
“Honestly, it would be easier if you were an idiot,” the doctor said. “Bad spellwork and sloppy casting can be fixed with study and discipline, but your problem is baked into one of the core assumptions underpinning the entire Thaumaturgical system. You could be a spellwork genius and things would still blow up in your face because Thaumaturgical spellwork simply isn’t designed to handle an exception like you.”
I clutched my hands in my lap. You’d think after all the times I’d been told—all the times I’d told myself—that I was a terrible, hopeless, no-good, garbage excuse for a mage, I’d be delighted to hear that it wasn�
��t actually my fault. That I wasn’t a failure, at least not in the way I’d assumed. And I was delighted. Provisionally. Because while I was pretty sure I’d understood everything Dr. Kowalski had just said, I was still having trouble believing it could possibly be true.
“If that’s what’s really going on,” I said hesitantly, “why did no one else see it? My draw number has been off the charts since I was born. I’ve had my magic poked at by hundreds, maybe thousands of experts, and every one of them agreed that it was my fault. They always said I wasn’t listening or that I wasn’t trying hard enough.”
Dr. Kowalski shrugged. “Were you?”
“Of course I was!” I said angrily. “I didn’t want to be a failure! I tried as hard as I could for years! But if the problem was actually my draw this whole time, why am I only learning about it now?”
“I don’t know,” Dr. Kowalski said. “I don’t know why I’m the first to point out something that should have been obvious to anyone who understands how spellwork constants are calculated, but I bet it has something to do with the fact that they were all Thaumaturges.” She smiled. “Experts, especially highly respected ones, fall victim to the same fallacies as everyone else. If a system always works for you, it’s only natural to assume it must be that way for everyone. If a spell doesn’t work, it must be an error on the caster’s part. The spellwork itself is never suspect. How can it be? It always works when you do it.”
She leaned forward with a wink. “That’s the danger of thinking yours is the ‘only’ way to do magic. It leaves you blind to the fact that Thaumaturgical spellwork is as flawed as anything else humans create. I, however, am a Shaman. Unlike your respected experts, I’ve always thought Thaumaturgy was a flawed, overly rigid system destined to topple under the weight of its own hubris, which makes spotting problems like this much, much easier.”
I was shaking by the time she finished. Thinking back to all the pompous variations of “if you’d only apply yourself” or “maybe you just don’t have the mind for Thaumaturgy” I’d sat through as a child, Dr. Kowalski’s explanation made perfect sense to me. Hearing it made me feel both vindicated and furious. How dare they make me think this was all my fault? Didn’t they know how much I’d beaten myself up over this? How hard I’d pushed to use a system that was never going to work for me?! But freeing as it was to know that I wasn’t actually a lazy, worthless failure, there was still a problem.
“So what do I do?” I asked desperately. “It’s great to hear that I’m not actually a terrible mage, but how do I cast magic if spellwork fundamentally doesn’t work for me? And before you say ‘become a Shaman,’ I’ve already been doing my own version of no-spellwork casting where I mash the magic together, and it blows up in my face just as often as the stuff I write out. That’s how I hurt my magic this time, so what do I do? How do I cast without hurting myself?”
Dr. Kowalski gave me a biting look. “First of all, Shamanism is not just ‘mashing magic together.’ Just because our rules are more flexible than Thaumaturgy’s doesn’t mean we don’t have them. In fact, our rules are actually more important because we don’t have circles acting as a safety rail. Thaumaturges are always trying to find new ways to bottle lightning so that anyone can touch it without getting zapped. To be a Shaman, though, you have to learn to ride it. It’s an inherently more dangerous form of casting, but I’d argue it’s the only one that can truly be called magic. There’s nothing magical about feeding sanitized, homogenized power through a logic statement to achieve an expected result. But to take the essence of gods between your hands and weave it, to reach out and bend the power of the universe to your will using only your naked soul…” She took a shuddering breath. “That is power. That is what it means to be a mage. Everything else is just more monkey tool making.”
I didn’t know if I’d go quite that far, but she did make Shamanism sound romantic. And a bit crazy. But I’d just walked out of the city to a legit witch’s garden in the middle of the night through an endlessly shifting wood to find out why my soul was broken, so who was I to judge? Dr. Kowalski had already taught me more about my magic in twenty minutes than all of my dad’s experts combined, and the casting she described sounded way more fun than writing out spellwork. Even when it wasn’t blowing up in my face, I’d always been rubbish at spellwork. Maybe it was time to try something new?
“Could you teach me?”
After selling it so hard, I’d thought for sure Dr. Kowalski would jump all over that, but she just shook her wizened old head. “No.”
“Why not?!”
“Because Shamanic casting requires an enormous level of control over your magic,” she huffed. “You didn’t even know regulating your draw was a thing before this conversation. Forget learning how to free-cast. I’m worried you won’t learn how to tone down your magic fast enough to avoid breaking it again.”
“Then teach me that,” I said determinedly. “It’s great to know I wasn’t actually too stupid for Thaumaturgy all these years, but I’m still a mage who can’t cast, and what good is that?” I clenched my hands into fists. “I’m sick and tired of being a failure. Whatever you’ve got, I can take it. Just tell me what to do.”
Dr. Kowalski looked at me for a long time, her small eyes gleaming through her wrinkles, and then she started rummaging in the bags beneath her desk. “Reducing your draw is a simple process,” she said. “That’s not to say it’s easy. It’s never easy to change a habit so intuitive you’ve never had to be aware of it before, but the method itself is relatively straightforward. I just need to find the right associative device to help you—ah ha!”
She straightened back up and thrust something brown and oblong into my hands. “There. That should work nicely.”
I looked down at the object in trepidation. “This is a russet potato.”
“Exactly,” she said excitedly. “That potato is the perfect size to help you visualize the amount of magic you should be moving. When your soul reconnects and you can cast again without hurting yourself, I want you to practice grabbing only one potato’s worth of magic at a time.”
“This potato?” I said, holding up the spud, which was no bigger than my hand. “But this is nothing! The smallest circle I use is the one that recharges my poncho, and it’s four feet in diameter. Do you know how long that’ll take to fill using only a potato?”
“I do,” said Dr. Kowalski. “Because that potato is a good spatial representation of the size of the average mage’s draw, which also happens to be my draw.”
“But—”
“Millions of mages get through life only being able to draw that much magic or less at a time,” she said sternly. “I’m sure you’ll survive. In fact, it might be the only way you survive. Just because you were born with the ability to grab freakishly huge amounts of magic doesn’t mean the rest of your body can handle it. You already dislocated your soul, and if you keep recklessly snatching as much power as possible, the next time will be worse. You said you were ready to do anything, so it’s time to decide. Are you going to put in the work it takes to actually change yourself? Or are you going to keep asking me for help and then complaining when I tell you what you need to do?”
“Sorry,” I muttered, clutching my potato. “I’ll do it.”
“Good,” she said, glancing out the window behind me, where the sky had turned a lovely pinkish teal. “The sun’s coming up now, so you should get going. Grand plans aside, you can’t actually do anything until your soul reattaches, and that’s never going to happen if you don’t get some sleep.”
I was definitely ready for sleep. My phone wasn’t working at all anymore, so I didn’t know what time it was, but if the sun was rising, I’d been up for at least twenty-four hours straight. “Sleep sounds great,” I said, rising from the sofa with a creak. “How much do I owe you?”
Given her comment about not being cheap before we’d started this, I was braced for the worst, but the elderly doctor shook her head. “No charge today.”
&
nbsp; “You’re joking.”
“Why would I joke about this?” she asked. “You made it clear earlier that you were short on money, so I decided to be charitable. It’s not a big thing. Other than my time, the only thing you’ve cost me this morning is a potato, and I have plenty of those.”
I shook my head hard. “I have to pay.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m up to my neck in debts already, and I don’t want any more,” I said bluntly. “If this works, and you actually fix my magic, I’ll pretty much owe you my life. But the whole reason I’m doing this is to get my life back, so please just let me pay an exorbitant fee so we can call it done.”
The old woman tilted her head at me. “Why is it so hard to believe I’d give you something for free?”
“Because this is the DFZ!” I cried. “Nothing’s free here except trouble.”
She looked offended. “Is that all you think the DFZ is about? Money?”
I stared at her, trying to determine if that was a serious question or not. “Um, yes? We live in a shrine to reckless capitalism, the place where nothing is illegal and everything is for sale. What else could it be about?”
“The thing all that money is trying to buy,” the old woman said, her hooded brown eyes shining with a strange amber glow in the morning sunlight. “Money is just a tool. It’s the means, not the end. The DFZ has always understood that.”
“Could have fooled me,” I grumbled.
“I don’t know why this is so hard for you to grasp,” she said testily. “The DFZ uses money for the same things you do.”
“To pay debts?”
The old woman stared me down. “To buy freedom.”
As she finished, I became aware of a pressure rising in the room. It felt like the wild magic I’d noticed on my way here, but bigger. Heavier, like a press crushing me flat. Within seconds, I was having trouble staying on my feet, but Dr. Kowalski didn’t seem to notice it. She just sat in her chair, watching me with those strangely bright eyes and her weirdly prominent magic. The power rolling off her now was even stronger than it had been back in the garden. Way stronger than a human’s should be. Stronger than anything I’d ever felt outside of the Gnarls when the dark had risen up to catch me…
