Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
“Did you hear about the earthquake in Ilthalit?” Ezra said a few weeks later at our usual pub.
The temperature had continued to drop, and the students around us layered coats on top of sweaters and knotted scarves around necks.
The heavy rains were worse than previous years, people said.
They caused flooding by the river shore, including at the Lyceum.
Some of the administrative offices had to be hurriedly closed and moved to higher grounds.
Yet I loved the rain, as I loved the wind.
I loved watching the silver rain dash against the river, loved listening to it from the cozy safety of the Keep or my rooms as I worked on endless iterations of the spell to restore the scrolls.
Daziel wasn’t as charmed, grumbling when knockball practices were canceled.
I tried to entertain him with baking projects, and we explored Talum after my aunt’s luncheons—though we stuck to indoor activities, like museums and coffee shops and the pub.
Jelan nodded in response to Ezra’s question. “Killed over a hundred people. They’ve had tremors there in the past, but not so far north—they didn’t have the infrastructure for it.”
“Which would you rather have,” Hiram mused, passing around beers, “our rains and winds or an earthquake, or the heat wave they’re having in the south?”
“That’s a horrible game,” Gilli said, appalled. “I’d rather everything was normal.”
“Okay,” Hiram said, rolling his eyes. “But if you had to choose?”
“Our rains,” Leah said. “At least we can stay inside.”
“I’d rather have the heat,” Ezra said. “I’m sick of the gray. And this means natural magic is weird everywhere.”
Hiram, who was from the Taro Islands, nodded. “My parents wrote that refugees stopped by on their way to Tzorybium from even farther west. From a city now completely uninhabitable.”
The conversation got under my skin, and I was still uneasy when Daziel and I arrived home a few hours later. “It’s strange, isn’t it?” I said. “How things are going wrong not just here but everywhere.”
“Yeah.” Daziel looked distressed by my depression and changed the subject abruptly. “How’s the spell going?”
I groaned. “We’re making progress—yesterday, we inched the magic through three-quarters of the spell. But we’re low on neshem. The professor is trying to get more, but until then, we might not be able to test more iterations.”
“If you need magic, you can have some of mine.”
I jerked my head up. “What? You can…give it to me?”
He looked blasé, as though he hadn’t just offered something unheard of. “In theory.” Light gathered around his fingers. “Hold your hands out.”
I did, and he tried to hand a golden bundle to me. It dissolved into my skin, and I yelped at the shock.
“Sorry.” Daziel looked equally surprised. “Uh…let me try a different way.”
We tried for hours, until we figured out how he could hand his magic to me, though we couldn’t figure out how to contain it.
I practiced directing it into small spells around the apartment.
You could make a killing off this on the black market, I almost said, except that was the thing, wasn’t it: Humans had made a killing, of shedim, off this thousands of years ago.
“Thank you for trusting me with this,” I said.
He looked up, our gazes connecting. There was an urgency in the way he held himself and in his voice, as though he wanted to make sure he conveyed enough gravity. “I trust you.”
“I trust you too,” I said, surprised by his intensity.
~ ~ ~
The next day, on too little sleep but not minding, I made my way through my language classes and Household Magic.
After weeks of rain, the weather today was bizarrely good, the sky as blue as a summer day, the temperature uncomfortably warm.
We passed people in shorts, having unseasonable picnics.
Startlingly large butterflies with jewel-bright wings fluttered about, safe without their biggest predator.
At three, I headed to the Keep. Though we had to re-carve charaktêres and rearrange the fragments each time we tried a new spell, though it was exhausting and tedious, I was still excited by each attempt.
I’d never worked so closely with anyone as I now did with Yael and Gidon and Stefan. Even among my new friends at the Lyceum, I’d never had peers who cared about precisely the same thing as I did. It filled a gap I hadn’t known existed, the ability to speak the same language about a passion.
“Here’s my latest,” Gidon said as I joined the other three.
By now our group had become familiar: Yael’s intensity and leadership; Stefan constantly tossing whatever round thing was at hand in the air; the way Gidon, lanky and still growing, always had small pieces of fruit and nuts for snacking.
“We switch the eighth and ninth paragraphs, where the magic got stuck last time, and add a line describing texture.”
“It’s a good idea,” Yael said, “but we don’t have enough neshem.”
I steeled myself. “Daziel offered to let us use some of his magic.”
Yael blinked. “How?”
“He’ll come here, and we’ve figured out how to transfer it to me, and I’ll direct it into the spell.”
Stefan started laughing from his prone position on the floor. “That is ridiculous. You figured out how to take a demon’s magic out of him? What?”
Yael reacted more calmly, but I caught a hint of a frown. “Is it legal?”
Binding shedim wasn’t legal. Accepting freely given magic? “I don’t see why not.”
“I’m down,” Stefan said. “I’m so tired.”
Gidon shrugged. “Same.”
Yael met my gaze. “Is it safe? Do you trust him?”
I trust you, he’d said, so fiercely. I trusted him too, trusted his support and his steadiness and his openness. “Yes.”
She let out a long breath. “Fine. Let’s do it.”
“I’m going to call him here,” I warned, so as not to startle them, and said his name three times.
He appeared.
Gidon jumped, and Yael’s eyes widened. “Shit,” Stefan said. “Is he always listening?”
“Just when people say my name,” Daziel said. “Or if I’m eavesdropping.”
“Did you add the last part just so we know we’re never safe?” Stefan asked.
Daziel grinned, sharp. “I like to keep people on their toes.”
“Metaphorically, I am very on my toes,” Stefan said without shifting from the floor.
We carved our latest spell into plywood. In the beginning, Professor Altschuler had attended every attempt, but no longer, not when we’d tried so many and they’d all failed.
We began reading. Daziel passed his magic to me, and I directed it into the spell. It was stronger and more volatile than using neshem, a bonfire instead of a match. It made me nervous but not enough to stop.
The magic gathered and built as we read. It moved through the words easily. We hit the first couple of points where it’d been sticky in the last few iterations—not stopped, but if the spell had been a river, this was where the magic started to get clogged with sticks and logs.
The magic kept going, smooth as silk.
We exchanged cautiously hopeful looks. But we’d gotten this far before, if not so easily. Now we approached the bridge, which we’d changed in this rendition with Gidon’s paragraph swap. We hit the point where we’d been blocked last time, bracing ourselves.
The magic kept flowing.
My tentative hope heightened. My breath came faster, the thump of my heart deeper in my ears. The magic never stopped building. It didn’t plateau, didn’t stick. It kept going.
It flowed through the entire spell. The crescendo built, one we’d never reached before, and the four of us exchanged wide-eyed looks. My legs shook with the effort, and my throat squeezed tight.
Yael held out a hand—hold it—as we reached the final stanza.
We dragged the words out, letting the magic build into one final surge.
The fragments trembled, their edges fluttering.
“ ‘Remember, remember,’ ” we said, our excitement palpable, glancing at each other as though to confirm we were all seeing this.
“ ‘Remember when you ran through the grass.’ ”
Slowly, so slowly I thought I might be imagining it out of sheer hope, the fragments began to shuffle.
I wanted to stop breathing, but I needed breath to speak, and I needed to speak the spell.
“ ‘Remember, remember,’ ” I said, my voice blending into three others.
Gidon reached out and grabbed my hand, squeezing hard, and I squeezed back.
“ ‘Now.’ ”
On the final word, the magic swept out of us.
The edges of the fragments glowed and started to tremble.
Then the golden light bled inward, saturating each fragment until they gleamed like polished coins under the afternoon sun.
They lifted off the table, hovering, then began to spin as though whipped up by a tornado.
My mouth gaped, my neck craned back, as the fragments formed a frenzied cyclone, their light brightening until I couldn’t make out individual pieces.
Then, with a burst so sharp and white, I flinched and closed my eyes, they drifted down like feathers, nestling against each other with clear intent.
Each jagged piece aligned with others until they spread out in eight separate scrolls.
For a breath, no one said anything. No one moved.
“Oh my god,” Yael finally said, and I tore my gaze from the parchment—actual parchment, not fragments—to her. Her eyes gleamed with repressed tears. “It worked.”
“It worked,” I repeated, too surprised to say anything original. Something about articulating it made it crack through my stunned surprise. “It—worked. We did it!”
Yael started laughing, and Stefan let out a whoop. Gidon bent in half, hands on his thighs, breathing in and out very quickly.
Then we were all yelling and gasping with relief. I threw my arms around Yael, and after a surprised second, she embraced me in return. The boys piled on until we were all laughing. I caught sight of Daziel hovering on the edges. “Daziel, get in here!”
His eyes widened, true shock in them, but the others weren’t waiting.
They opened their arms and pulled him in.
Yael was kissing cheeks, including Daziel’s, and Stefan knuckled Gidon’s and Daziel’s heads.
Daziel met my gaze across the circle, his own wide and bewildered and filled with an unexpected vulnerability. It hit me in the gut.
The noise must have carried, because a minute later the door scraped open. Professor Altschuler stood there. We fell silent, children before an authoritarian father. Daziel vanished.
Professor Altschuler observed the eight scrolls, joined together, with only the faintest hint of where they’d once been torn. We watched him prowl around the tables, breath bated.
“This was your spell, Miss Bat Yardena?”
“It’s based on my original, but we all worked on the improvements—”
“It originated in the one you showed me?”
I hesitated, looking at the others. “Yes.”
“Very nice. Congratulations. The rest of you—” He shook his head. “I’m disappointed. You’re further along in your studies. You should have been able to come up with this.”
Yael stared at her feet, blinking, while Stefan set his face grimly, and Gidon stared out the window, looking defeated. I felt horribly uncomfortable, even though this was part and parcel of Professor Altschuler’s behavior.
“There will be a chance to make up for it,” the professor continued, as though bestowing a magnanimous gift.
“Whoever makes a step in deciphering the text itself, if you do it by the Lumière Festival next month…you will receive a seat at my table at graduation. Good night, students. Miss Bat Yardena, stay a moment.”
The other three filed out.
“Good job,” Professor Altschuler said. “But this is not the time to rest on your laurels.”
“I know.” I shifted. “Professor Altschuler, I’m sorry, but—this wasn’t just my success. The others worked on this as much as I did. I can’t take more credit than any of them.”
His brows rose slightly. “You won’t win yourself any accolades by giving away what recognition you receive.”
“I’m not trying to. But I mean it. This was a group effort.”
“Groups have leaders.”
“If we have a leader, it’s Yael. She’s the one who organizes us. I’m sorry,” I said, scarcely believing what I was saying. “I need to go.”
“Excuse me?”
“No, excuse me,” I said. “Good night.”
I bolted, running out the door, down the hall. I could see the other three, not together, all walking toward the exit. “Guys!” I called. “Yael! Gidon! Stefan!”
Yael turned first, then Gidon, and lastly Stefan, as though unable to resist the group. I caught up to them, huffing slightly. “What we did there—that was amazing.”
They stared.
“I’m sorry—I mean, I’m not sorry. It’s not my fault that Professor Altschuler is a jerk—but he is. I wish he hadn’t singled me out. This is our success. We all did it.”
“I mean,” Yael said, somewhat grudgingly, “you came up with the theory for the spell.”
“I did. But you all helped.” I paused, nervous they would reject my peace offering. “Do you guys want to grab a drink? Celebrate?”
They looked at me. Looked at each other. A hesitant moment, as we all tried to decide if we could transition from allies to something stronger. To the start of being friends.
“Yes,” Yael said. “And call Daziel back. We couldn’t have done it without his help.”
A smile blossomed on my face. Once more, I said Daziel’s name three times, and together the five of us headed out.