Love of Magic, part two

As I picked at the soup and bread Anillyn had set in front of me, she gossipped nonstop about happenings in the village. 

“Young Danimmar found her tapestry shredded this morning! It took her three years to weave it and she was to put the finishing touches on it this week.  She’s heartbroken.  No one admits to doing it.  I’d say it’s one of Simirray’s brood that done it.  They are always causing trouble.”

She told about several other incidents she believed Simirray’s children had caused, but I tuned her out.  I knew those kids.  They were not the bad kids Anillyn believed, they just had a lot of energy. I snorted.  Besides, I had my own problems to sort out, I didn’t need to waste time thinking about mishaps in other people’s lives.  What was I going to do about my magic, or lack of it?

I slurped broth and a carrot off of my spoon and frowned.  I had felt the magic coursing through my body, from my feet to my head. I had even felt it following my breath to the candle.  It had felt like there was something around the wick, protecting it.  There had been some energy sucking at the magic I directed to the wick.  Yet when Gillown had tried, the energy was not there.  What would could have consumed the magic I had sent towards the wick?

An elemental could have.  They could be vindictive creatures when angered.  I couldn’t remember doing anything to upset or offend any elementals though.  I did my best to give them thanks for their help around the tower, keeping our fires warm and our foundations strong.  I knew the fire elementals especially seemed to hover around me, which made the difficulty lighting the candle even harder for me to understand.  Gillown had told me about how my use of magic in my mother’s kitchen had attracted many fire elementals, like moths to a flame.  I hadn’t known how to control the magic, nor how to keep the elementals in check.  So, the fire elementals had danced merrily along the streams of magic I’d produced and as they cavorted, they had sent the kitchen up in flames. 

I looked towards the big hearth-fire, attempting to see the elementals dancing in its flames.  When I did catch glimpses, they seemed to be merrily leaping along the logs and spinning among the flames.  One stopped in its dance long enough to look at me and very deliberately wink its flame red eye before rejoining the dance of the fire.  I could remember the way Gillown had worded his request for the fire elementals’ help in the hearth; he’d very carefully asked them to remain in the hearth and to leave the rest of the kitchen alone.  Only by agreeing to be bound to his request could the elementals play in the hearth fire.

I finished my soup, thanked Anillyn, and went outside to do my afternoon chores.  Girl I might be, but I was still an apprentice; apprentices do all of the dirty work.  I spent the afternoon uneventfully chopping and stacking wood, lugging water from the river to the kitchen, and tidying what I could throughout the tower.  All of the drudgery gave me plenty of time to think about the problem and filter through many implausible explanations. 

My dreams that night were filled with snippets of conversations with Gillown and with the sensations of handling the magic.  Just before I woke in the morning, a feminine voice rich with power interrupted my dreams.   After waking, I could vaguely recall having a conversation with the unseen woman of the powerful voice but I could not remember what we talked about.  I sat there on my pallet, struggling to recall even one full sentence.  All I could remember though were two words:  “Love” and “Magic”.  Shaking off the dream, I rose to face the day.

The Love of Magic

“Again! Do it again, Devorrah!”

 I grunted and focused my eyes once more on the candle in front of me.  I inhaled, pulling the breath through my nose, to my belly and down through my feet to the ground. As I exhaled, I pulled energy from the earth through my heels to my hips to my shoulders and to my head. I formed the picture of a steadily burning flame in my mind.  Finally, as my breath leaked out of my mouth, the energy I had gathered hissed through the air to the wick of the candle.  I saw a spark, a flutter of flame, and then a puff of smoke as the wick remained stubbornly unlit.

 I sighed, rubbing my fingers against the bridge of my nose.  I turned to Gillown and shook my head.  He frowned. 

“You are doing everything right! Grounding properly, asking for the power in exchange for the breath… I do not understand why the magic will not complete your request!  You are visualizing it properly?” I nodded wearily. 

“I could do it a week ago, Gillown.  I’m doing it all the same now as I was then.  It’s just not working any more!”  Gillown grunted and waved me away.

 “Go find yourself some food, youngster, whilst I ponder this problem.”  I watched the old man slouch at his cluttered table.  The folds of his gown seemed to swallow his rail thin body.  He rested his chin on his hands, his elbows on the table, and glared at the candlestick.  I felt the tingle of power on the air.  The wick of the candle burst in to flame.  It burned for a moment longer and then was extinguished, as if an invisible hand had pinched the wick.

I sighed again and turned to the door.  I’d known long ago that I’d be a wizard some day, as unlikely as that aspiration had seemed for a little girl from a tiny village.  The magic had called to me from the time I was a toddler. I remember following after my mother as she did her daily work.  As her efforts had produced bubbles in the laundry soap, I’d called the bubbles to me and made them dance for my amusement.  There were still stories told through the village, of little giggling Devorrah surrounded by thousands of bubbles, all bobbing and swaying to some unheard beat.

In the kitchen, I found the soup pot bubbling over the hearth fire. 

“Ah, child! What are you doing down here now? I thought for sure that Master Gillown would keep you there past dark, as he always does.”  I blinked owlishly at Anillyn, the village woman who helped care for Gillown’s tower. 

“I, uh, have had some problems with a lesson. He sent me down for my evening meal.”

“Well, sit, then! I’ll serve it up for you.”

“You don’t have to do that! I can get it myself.” I strode to the shelves to collect a bowl but found Anillyn blocking the way.  She sternly glared at me and pointed imperiously at the table. Nodding, I turned back to settle on the sturdy wooden bench.  I rested my elbows on the broad table’s surface and sighed.

That was another of the stories told about me in the village: The story of a twelve year old Devorrah wreaking havoc in her mother’s kitchen.  I’d decided to cook a meal for my mother, to take some of the strain off her shoulders.  I used my untrained magic to help, thinking I could control it as I had always done.  Instead, the magic had roared into a life of its own.  I had watched helplessly as my mother’s curtains had burst into flame.  She had taken in extra work from the village to afford the fabric for those, and then spent hours stitching them.  I had watched as the soup pot over the fire had melted from the heat of the rising flames.  I had, in fact, been surrounded by a whirlwind of flames, the kitchen engulfed and destroyed in a matter of seconds while I was left untouched in the middle of it all. 

That incident had precipitated my removal to the magician’s tower for training.  The village elders decided I was too dangerous to stay in my parents’ home and I was packed off to Gillown within a day.  In fact, I’d spent my thirteenth birthday tearfully begging my mother to let me stay with her as we trudged along the path to his tower.  My mother had sternly said that it was for the best.  She’d seemed frozen and angry through the entire trip.  She had, however, given me a warm hug when we reached the tower and wished me prosperity on my new path before she’d nodded to old Gillown and turned back to the village.

Eating the soup Anillyn placed before me, I wondered what had changed recently.  Before, I could call vast amounts of power to me.  The incident in my mother’s kitchen proved that.  Gillown had been teaching me how to control it.  Now, the power sent only a trickle to me when I called.  Not even enough to light a candle.  I frowned into my soup, watching the chunks of vegetables float in the broth.  A mystery was rarely a good thing when magic was involved.

My Muse is Mute.

In months gone past, my Muse was vocal.  She did not whisper so much as speak.  Her words were soft, but easy to hear when I let myself sit quiet.

In days gone past, her voice has stopped. I hear only echoes.  Instead she slides into my soul and directs me in silence.  Her pull has lead me to knit, to bake, and even to sew.  Perhaps I’ll wake up tomorrow and feel her pulling me towards my beads.  She is fickle, is my Muse, and sad does this make me.

Where months ago, I saw the rhythms and patterns form into words, I see them now in strings.

 Forgive my silence.  It echoes here, I know.  My Muse pulls my attention away to other things and I cannot help but to express her voice.  Sometimes it appears in script; at other times it finds its way into the click and slide of a needle or a brush.  Sometimes the pencil moves to form not words but pictures.  Sometimes the paint forms a scene rather than it’s description.

She has a short attention span, and still I soldier on.  I try to find the ways to satisfy her song.  From paint, to sketch, to dance, to beads, to knots and wireworking…she seems to like to make of me a jack of many trades but not destined to be a master.