Sources of Power
Alison
Genn smiled brightly at Keir, their teeth white and sharp. “Wonderful!” they said. “You’re such a marvelous dancer, I had to ask.”
Alison drifted back towards Mab. She wasn’t insulted by Genn’s rejection—Keir truly was the superior dancer. The pair of them moved beautifully together, Keir leading the fairy, who mimicked his motions perfectly.
“They’re a shameless flirt,” said Mab as Alison approached. She stood near the bonfire alone, the tap of her foot to the music sending ripples through the twinkling silk of her dress. “Don’t mind my sibling. Keir only has eyes for you.”
“How do you know who we are?” Alison asked. “How did you know we’d come?”
“There are many eyes and ears in the forest and the fields. We’ve known of you for a while—of him for even longer. We kept close watch on the situation with the vine, preparing to move the city if we had to.”
“Are we not in a different place? The light seems different here.” Alison wasn’t sure how the vine could have threatened this world, as different as it seemed from her own.
Mab’s eyes widened. They were the same deep blue as her hair, but they seemed to have a light of their own that flashed as she spoke. “Yes, this place is different, but it is connected to your world in a thousand different ways. You took one path, but there are many others.”
“And you were afraid the vine would take one of those paths,” said Alison.
“Not exactly. The vine’s magic was just a twisted bit of Keir’s mind. Easy enough to dispel, at least for us. What we feared was him. What he could have become, what it could have done to your world and ours. We were very glad when you came, Alison Lennox.”
She gestured to a pair of chairs from the banquet table, and they flew over. Alison took the smaller chair—although this place made the smaller races roughly Fulling height, it had done nothing to address her limited stature.
Even fairies were taller than her here.
“I have the answers you’re seeking,” said Mab. “About your magic and his, about how it came to be and what you must do to control it. Do you want to wait for him? Or would you prefer me to tell you alone?”
Alison knew this was a sensitive area for Keir, that much of his pain and trauma was tied to the old magic and that it caused him a great deal of distress. She certainly wanted him to hear whatever the fairies had to say, but she also didn’t think it would hurt to have her as a buffer, allowing her to share the information in a way he could process while causing him the least harm.
“I want you to tell me,” Alison said. “But what of the cost? We were warned your help would come with a price.”
“It does,” Mab admitted, “but the price is something you’re already planning to pay. We know the king is coming, and we know what they’re planning to do to this land. It’s the greatest threat we’ve ever faced. We know that many of our kind—your neighbor Aras and his fine children, for example—prefer to live among the peoples. They prefer to live without our gifts, and we don’t blame them for wanting all of the innovations that make life bearable without magic. But we hope there’s a way to preserve this land, as much of it as can be spared. That’s all we ask of you. Use the knowledge we give you to protect our home. I believe that’s what you’re already planning?”
“It is,” said Alison.
“Good,” said Mab. “Although I dare say, the entertainment your lover is providing is possibly payment enough.”
Alison looked back to the bonfire, and several fairies and a dwarf were all taking turns dancing with Keir.
“Oh, dear,” said Alison. “I hope he doesn’t need rescuing.”
Mab laughed, and the laughter was bell-like, clear and bright. “I’m sure he’ll manage for a bit longer. Now, let’s begin with that magic of yours. What do you want to know first?”
“Where did it come from?” asked Alison. “Did he cause it, as he suspects?”
“Yes and no,” said the fairy. Alison suspected many of her answers would be like this. If there was one thing she’d learned of magic, it was that it did not like to fit into neat little boxes or within clearly defined lines. “Magic belongs to all peoples of the world, and to some of the creatures too. But it comes to some more naturally than others, whether through birth or experience.
“Imagine that all people are born with a reservoir of magic like water and a well with which to reach it. Some reservoirs are larger than others, and some wells are deeper than others. As the peoples of the world have turned from magic, most have found their wells too shallow to reach the reservoir within. But with time, exposure, and practice, one can dig a deeper well. This is what happened to you. Your experiences with magic have led you to break into your own reservoir, but the magic within was always yours.”
“Then Keir still has magic, too?”
Alison knew the old magic had worked through Keir, but Keir believed it had abandoned him after the incident with the vine.
“Yes, although in his case, he sought to fill in his well. But magic, like water, has its way of working through the cracks.”
“If he can use magic, why didn’t it work for him? Why did the vine happen?”
“Magic, as you may have noticed, has a will of its own. There are many theories as to where that will comes from. Some say the Gods above or the Devils below, others say the elements of the world or nature itself, and still others say from the hearts of the people and creatures who live in it. The fairies of this wood believe it is all of those, and that they, like magic itself, are one and the same, although they may appear quite differently at times. But one thing is certain: the will must not be denied. Keir sought to twist something into being that could not be. He, like many before him, tried to conquer the magic and control it to do his bidding, and it transformed into the vine.”
It was similar to what the spriggan had told Alison when she had first learned Keir was responsible for the vine. “So is Keir right? Am I doing magic without realizing it, and if so, how do I learn to control it? After I spoke with the spriggan, I tried to do magic again, but it didn’t work.”
“May I see your hand?” Mab asked.
Alison gave it to her without hesitation.
Mab examined the lines on Alison’s palm without comment. Then she laced her long fingers with Alison’s, and Alison could feel a bit of a pulse travel between their palms.
“Oh,” said Mab. “That’s interesting. Let me go get Keir.”
Mab left, breaking in on Keir’s dance with the dwarf as Alison contemplated what she had learned. It didn’t seem that far-fetched, although it was difficult to imagine that all people had magic, though perhaps there had never been a time in which all people were willing to use it. There seemed to be so many reasons to turn from magic—the difficulty of knowing how to follow its will, the unpredictability of the results, and the scale of the negative consequences, among others.
Was it really worth it then? Was it worth the cost, if one could even determine what the cost was in advance?
Alison had to admit that there was something alluring about it in spite of everything. The mystery and the power of it, the communion with some kind of eternal force, even if she was unsure what that force was.
Mab returned with Keir, his face flushed red from the exertion and his spirits higher than Alison had seen in a long while.
“Did you see any of that? That dwarf I danced with last had spent time with Lady Sibba’s people on the Rock. If we go there, we’ll need to do some stretching first. I’ve never seen people move that way.”
“I did see that. I told you that you were a great dancer,” said Alison, caught up in her thoughts and not quite matching his excitement.
“I’m sorry that I left you,” said Keir. “Mab tells me she’s teaching you about magic?”
He looked at Mab, who took one of each of their hands and placed them together.
Alison felt a pulse again, but it was far stronger than when Mab held her hand.
“Yes, I thought so,” said Mab. “Alison, did you ever notice any sort of magic going on when Keir wasn’t around? Even in hindsight, once you knew to look for it?”
Alison thought about the things Keir had pointed out and realized he had been present for all of them. “No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”
“It’s the bond between you,” said Mab. “It’s the source you’ve been drawing from. As Keir fills his well, some of the water escapes, and that’s what you’ve been drawing from Alison, at least in part.”
“I’m sorry, a well? What are you saying?” asked Keir.
Alison caught him up, watching his reaction closely as she explained that he still had magic too. He didn’t seem surprised.
“I could feel it sometimes. Not as powerful as when we were within the dream world, but I could feel the echo of it,” said Keir. “I tried to ignore it, but I guess it doesn’t work that way.”
“You could continue to fight it, and after a time, it would stop troubling you,” said Mab gently. “But if you wanted to learn to wield it, you could do so. Together. You draw strength from each other. You can use that to dig your wells deeper, to combine and share the water within. In time, it could be as though there was only a single reservoir. That’s how it is for Genn and me.”
“So the bond doesn’t have to be between lovers?” asked Alison.
Keir’s eyes darted from Mab to Alison. There was that “love” word again, sneaking its way into conversation just as it snuck into Alison’s mind over and over.
“Not at all,” said Mab. “There are as many sources of power as there are people. For many, it could be a lover. But the bond could just as easily exist between family or friends. Sometimes, even passing acquaintances can experience it. And for some, the source is something else entirely—a connection to nature, a pet or familiar, even art or music.”
“Can it change?” asked Keir. “If Alison wanted to pursue but I—” He squeezed Alison’s hand. “If I couldn’t.”
“It can,” said Mab. “It might take some time for you, Alison, to find another way to dig your well, but you could do so if you wanted to.”
Alison looked at Keir. Both of them wielding magic together—it could be something incredible. Maybe it could be enough to save Herot’s Hollow.
But she couldn’t ask it of him, not if he wasn’t ready for it.
“We’ll find another way,” said Alison. “If you don’t want to…”
“No, I didn’t mean that. I just need some time to think,” said Keir.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” said Mab, “but I think our final guests are arriving.”
There was movement in the trees beyond the bonfire. Two figures approached—a tall man Alison mistook for Weyland at first based on his size alone, but as he stepped into the light, she saw his dark hair and tan skin and realized she didn’t know him after all.
Behind him was a woman. An orc with red hair.
It couldn’t be. Could it?
“Rinka?”