Chapter III. Domenic #2
“I never said it was corny.”
He touched the metal wall, just barely tingling with magic. The enchantment would fade soon, but that only added to its charm. A stand against the inevitable.
“I’ve never noticed anything like this here before, which is impressive.
Mercester Square is my closest theater, so I’m here a lot.
But I’ve spotted other enchantments throughout the city.
There’s this one I sometimes run into on my commute to the Citadel.
It’s a butterfly, all golden and glittery.
It flutters around inside a particular train car on the Gold Line.
Sometimes it lands on your fingertip if you hold it out.
” Technically, Domenic didn’t know that to be true, as he’d never seen the butterfly interact with anyone but him.
He liked to think it was fond of him. “I’m pretty sure it’s permanent, so I’ve always wondered which Living Wand cast it.
Then I wonder why Order magicians aren’t leaving enchantments like that all over the city.
That’s what I’d do, if I had an enchantment wand. ”
“Pretty sure it’s because of, you know, these little things called ‘laws.’ You can’t just go around enchanting public property.”
“I’d start with the Citadel,” he crusaded on. “Leave my name scrawled in a bathroom stall. D.B.—Even better than advertised. Forever immortalized.”
Caldwell’s laugh escaped with a snort. She covered it with a hasty cough.
“Sorry,” Domenic said, though he wasn’t. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Does that implicate you? Are you my coconspirator now? Damn. All that potential. All those accomplishments. That’s a real shame.”
She chewed on her lower lip—a gesture Domenic tried not to stare at, especially as he worried he’d committed a fatal error in reminding her of just how little they had in common.
But then she declared, “Well, if my fate’s already sealed …
There’s a very boring theory book Professor Clark read from every day last semester.
What if whenever he opened it, it swore? ”
He feigned clutching at pearls. “Caldwell, I am scandalized.”
“Then I’d do something about those run-down buildings in the back of campus. The ones people only visit to drink or hook up in. You’re familiar.”
“Hey now.” He laughed.
“I’d clear away all the weeds and ivy. Strip the beer-stained floors. Replace the creepy tapestries, the grimy windows—”
“You’d destroy them?” Domenic didn’t even need to feign his horror.
“Well, they’re not exactly in their prime anymore, are they? Those tapestries are beyond warped. And there’s always some enchantment on them so that all the magicians and knights and kings are either flipping people off or mooning—”
“The Hook Up Halls are historic.”
“They’re probably full of mold.”
“They have character.”
“They smell like must and despair.”
“Hey now.”
Again, Caldwell smirked. And though it might’ve been his imagination, he swore she inched closer to him.
Their conversation wandered on. Toward every other neglected spot on campus needing a little imagination.
Through places in Gallamere that deserved the same.
To enchantments of every variety, letter boxes that belched as you fed them envelopes, mirrors that reflected you trying on any possible outfit, cobblestones that squirmed if you stepped on them, streetlamps like lighthouse beacons leading the lost home.
As minutes bled into hours, as even Mercester Square’s tumult grew drowsy, Domenic learned a lot about Ellery Caldwell he’d never realized.
The traces of her Northern accent when she swore.
Her encyclopedic knowledge of fashion trends.
(The mirror was her idea.) Her uncanny sense of direction. (The lamps were very much his.)
After so long casting Ellery Caldwell as the perfect hero, Domenic was struck by the revelation that Caldwell was, in fact, simply human.
It did nothing to dull his fantasies of her. If anything, they sharpened, like a far-off sight coming into focus.
“So I know I interrupted you earlier, but I can’t stop wondering,” Caldwell said, now beside him on the grated bench.
Though several others had come and gone from the bus stop, Domenic had stopped noticing them.
He and Caldwell could be sitting amidst a crowd and he’d still feel they were alone.
“How can you, a magician, love a movie with such an unrealistic depiction of magic?”
Domenic warred with himself. Not just because he’d never been good at explaining how he felt. But because if he was honest, she might look at him like all his other classmates—with pity. Or even like his parents—with bewilderment. He’d be devastated to a mortifying degree, if so.
But he never dared fantasize himself in this position, so close to Ellery Caldwell that he could smell her: like crisp air and evergreen. The stakes felt astronomical. Worth risking it all for.
“All right. Honestly?” His leg jittered.
“I don’t think the movie was that unrealistic.
Sure, it made a mess of the details, but it made magic feel like magic always has to me.
Like something more than any textbook could describe or exam could measure.
And I’m not just saying that because I’m no honor student.
I know my magic, and it’s not rules or theories. It feels deeper than that. It’s…”
Domenic stopped himself. He was rambling toward nowhere, as always.
“It’s instinct,” Caldwell finished softly.
“Y-yes.” His voice cracked. He was pretty sure he heard his reputation crack along with it.
Her throat bobbed. “My magic feels that way, too.”
Then her gaze slipped away, wistful, and Domenic followed it toward the bus stop’s corner, where the enchantment had since faded.
Domenic stalked toward the transit map against the far wall and made a show of examining it.
“This is it,” he declared. “This is what we’ll enchant. This is what we’ll start with.”
“What, right now? There are still people around.”
“Oh, no one’s looking. And think about it. Tomorrow, maybe someone will notice it. Some tourist who just got to Gallamere. We can mark all your favorite places. Mine too, even if I haven’t got many of them. A guide to the City of Magic, made by two very different magicians.”
Domenic waited, wilting. He squeezed the flowers in his pocket.
Finally, he said, “Never mind. I shouldn’t have—”
“No. Let’s do it.”
Caldwell joined him, pressing close—to obscure what they were doing, Domenic reminded himself.
They rested the tips of their training wands against the glass.
Together, their enchantments flooded the city.
Domenic contributed few: a light blinking fervently over the Gallamere Gardens, a butterfly fluttering up and down the Gold Line, a beer bottle tipping over the far corner of the Citadel.
Caldwell decorated the map all over: a neon storefront on Chestnut Avenue, arrows pointing out favorite restaurants, a shimmer in the windows of the Gallamere Grand Hotel.
At the end, she lit the entire Citadel until it sparkled like a diamond.
It was impressive magic, intricate and dazzlingly—even brazenly—bright. Caldwell admired it breathlessly, the gap in her teeth bared. Domenic was far more captivated staring at her.
He was no longer infatuated with Ellery Caldwell—he was hopelessly smitten.
Mustering his nerve to ask her out to another cinematographic masterpiece—or more daringly, if it was too late to make tonight a double feature—Domenic exited the bus stop and squinted at the movie posters displayed outside the theater.
His focus glazed over a comedy, a horror, then snagged onto Foretold, the highly anticipated biopic of Valmordion’s previous wielder, Alice Rhodes.
The poster depicted the leading actress clasping Valmordion before an ominous backdrop of smoke.
It was due for release this very Winter.
A coincidence of timing, Domenic was sure.
But Alderland didn’t believe in coincidence.
Drip.
Drip.
A question weeded inside him. It escaped before he could pluck it.
“Are you trying for it?”
“What?” Caldwell asked from across the bus stop, still tracing the enchantments with her finger.
“Valmordion.”
Immediately, her shoulders stiffened. “No.”
“Really? You’re not?”
“I’m really not.” Then, after a pause: “Are you?”
He bit out a mirthless laugh. “I’m not in search of a grand destiny.”
Again, she appraised him. The something dark in her eyes didn’t look like pity.
At least, that was what he told himself.
But his story was every bit as famous as hers—if for opposite reasons.
Just because he didn’t want to see the truth didn’t mean it wasn’t there, that it wouldn’t always be there. That she was extraordinary.
And he was nothing.
Reflexively, Domenic looked away.
Drip.
Drip.
“It’s late. I should get going,” he heard himself say. He spun around, frustrated. Not only had he spoiled an opportunity he’d likely never have again, but his mind now strayed back to the exact thoughts he’d fled here to avoid.
Yet as he strode down the sidewalk, a sudden wind tore across the square, so fierce that Domenic grasped onto a trash bin to keep his balance. A shiver coursed through him, violent and bone-deep.
Overhead, the traffic lights flickered.
Domenic whipped around, scanning every shape and shadow for a monster. But that was only his panic fooling him. Unseasonable or not, it was still Summer.
Again, a wind blustered, and its cold seared through the flimsy cotton of his button-up.
As other pedestrians ducked toward the buildings for cover, Domenic shielded his eyes with his hand and twisted around to where Caldwell still hovered by the stop, her hair whipping across her face.
They locked gazes. Their shock mirrored each other. Their breaths fogged in the air.
Between them, flurries of snow whirled, glittering in the many lights of Mercester Square.
Until, with great groans of failing generators, the bright storefronts blackened. The traffic lights cut out. The headlights of cars sputtered and died.
Domenic staggered toward Caldwell, only a silhouette in the dark.
“Th-this doesn’t make sense,” he gasped through chattering teeth. “It can’t be.”
And yet Caldwell looked away from him and followed the direction of the wind. In the lane ahead of them, the snowflakes coalesced into a vortex. Into a form.
“You know what this is, right?” Caldwell whispered. And while Domenic couldn’t bring himself to answer, she drew her training wand from her purse. Domenic recognized her expression well, so grim and resolute. He’d seen Hanna wear it once before. “This is a winterghast.”