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.