A Tangled Magic
Before the young woman came to the Tower, she was a girl growing up in a grand house that smelled of furniture polish, candle wax, and magic.
She and her sister knew they would be mages one day, like their father, and when they learned their letters from their governess, they pretended they were reciting spells, chasing each other around the school room and terrorizing the poor woman, who only wanted to teach them the alphabet.
When the girl had her eighth birthday, her father brought her into his study.
She clutched a baby tooth in her fist that she had lost earlier that day, biting into a green apple.
A bright moment of pain, a little blood, and then the tooth, sticking up like an ivory tombstone from the smooth flesh of the fruit.
She had taken the tooth to her mother first, who had cried over it—but instead of putting it in the little velvet box where she kept all her daughters’ baby teeth, she had folded it into a little handkerchief and told the girl to take it down to her father: to hold it carefully and, above all, not to lose it.
The girl did not know why this tooth was so significant, but she clutched it so tightly in her hand that her fingernails left little red half-moons on her palm.
She padded into the library, where her father worked late into the night, and he pushed back his chair and put her on his lap—a rare privilege.
This close, his beard tickled the top of her head, and she could smell cigars and ink on his fine linen shirt.
“Let me tell you about magic,” he said, and she settled herself against him. His thighs were bony and uncomfortable, but she was aware of the great honor it was to sit with him, here, in his sanctum, and so she did not wriggle or complain.
“Ability exists in many,” he said, “but few have the strength and knowledge to actually practice. The power comes from two things: sacrifice, and study.”
She nodded. He had said this many a time before.
“Sacrifice: the renewable parts of the human body, burned or broken as they are used. Teeth. Fingernails, like your sister. And hair. But this sacrifice is useless without study and scholarship. Spells are complicated things, and unwieldy—long, and full of odd details. Sounds that have to be pronounced precisely. A practitioner with sufficient strength and the ability to draw from their body without exhausting it. A book built to contain and channel such a spell. And you cannot cast spells indefinitely. For example, even though mage’s bodies renew at a much faster rate, there are only so many teeth someone can lose at one time. ”
She felt about her mouth with her tongue, running across the ridges and valleys of her own teeth—imagining nothing there but bloody sockets.
“Teeth are probably the hardest. Nails and hair are more plentiful and grow faster. And they are less painful to lose. You have lost all your baby teeth now, have you not?”
She nodded. She held out her hand, opening it to reveal the handkerchief and the blood-streaked little prize within. He touched it gently.
“You remember when your first ever baby tooth fell out, don’t you? You were frightened. You thought it meant you were breaking apart.”
“It hurt.”
“All real power does, at first. But see”—he turned it in his fingers so that it shone pearly in the light—“this is a gift. A piece of your body. And it still remembers you.”
He set the tooth on the desk. There was a small spill of ink on the smooth wood.
He dipped his finger in the little puddle and drew a circle.
He wiped his finger clean with his handkerchief, then drew a volume from the shelf beside him and, flipping to a well-thumbed page, began to read.
As the girl watched, the tooth shivered, turned in place like a slow spinning top, and then started to roll clumsily about the desk, following the path of ink.
“It’s alive!” she cried.
“No,” said her father. “Just … obedient.” He watched as the tooth trundled around and around the little circle, senseless and dogged. “This is your essence at work, child. But the spell is mine.”
“But,” said the little girl, furrowing her brow, “you said we must use our own bodies for magic. Our own pain.”
Her father smiled, proud and faintly cruel. “That is what the Temple teaches. And it is true—for the weak. But the strongest mages learn to steal. You can take the body of another and use its sacrifice in place of your own. If you are clever. If you are careful.”
He spoke one more word, and the little tooth exploded into sparkling dust, giving off a strong smell of burned hair. The little girl almost yelped in surprise, but kept herself still and silent with a great effort, knowing it would please her father.
“Good, good,” he said. “Now that you have left childish things behind, you are ready.”
He stood, gently removing her from his lap, and strode over to one of the bookshelves.
He ran his hand along the row of spines, selected one volume, and pulled it out partway.
There was a click, a creak, and a section of the shelf swung free.
Inside was the secret room that she had always longed to see.
“Teeth, nails, hair. And then there is bone magic,” he said.
He walked inside, not waiting to see if she would follow, but of course she did.
It was a library in miniature, with its own shelves lining the walls, and its own desk.
He selected one of the books—a thick tome bound in leather, with gold tooling on the cover.
The gold had tarnished, and the paper was singed and crumbling at the edges, stained with ash.
“It is the most powerful magic of all,” he said, tracing the lines with his finger. “For generations, we have searched for every remaining volume on the subject. Most were burned, of course, but some were hidden. And some snatched from the fire.”
He took the girl’s small hand in his large one.
“We repair the books,” he said. “We make them strong again. And we learn from them. Study them.”
She found her voice. “But what is the sacrifice? For bone magic? Do your bones crumble all up?”
He smiled. “That is the beauty of it, my dear, and the power. Just as I showed you with your tooth—for bone magic, the sacrifice does not have to be your own.”
After that day, she studied the spellbooks of bone with him every afternoon.
She was his assistant; his protégée; his little helpmeet.
When her little sister hovered by the library door, he told her to go and play—that it was not yet her time.
Although her sister was her only playmate, the young girl glowed with pride when she heard this.
She was the oldest, the chosen. She would learn all the secrets first and best.
“What about this one?” she said on one particular day, holding out a book. It was a slimmer volume than the others, bound in a leather unpleasantly smooth to the touch. When she put her nose to it, it smelled like the ocean.
“Fish leather,” he said with distaste. “A flimsy binding. And it taints your skin.”
He took it from her and riffled the pages.
“Not the best-crafted of spells,” he remarked. “Look here, and here.” He showed her places where the ink was blotted and where the scribe had appeared to write in haste, forming the letters untidily. “I keep it more as a curiosity than for any serious research.”
“May I read it?” she asked.
He eyed her for a moment, then shrugged. “It could be a valuable exercise,” he said, passing her the volume. “Examine the spell. See what you would do to repair it, if repair is possible. See where you can improve it.”
She pored over it in bed for a week’s worth of nights.
The spell was like lace—intricately woven parts interspersed with gaps and holes where the writer’s knowledge or imagination had failed.
She pored over it, running her finger across the careless ink, finding places where one word could be exchanged for another more precise, or an unnecessary section could be excised.
The ocean smell of the leather seeped into the skin of her hands.
When she played with her kitten later, it bit at them as if her fingers had become wriggling eels.
She knew she was on the right path when she scratched out her own version of the spell.
Even on scrap paper, she felt it thrum through her skeleton when she spoke it aloud.
She took her work to her father, who examined it and pronounced it good.
It was not bone magic yet, he said, but she was on her way.
He showed her how to create a book of her own, with paper and hide and glue and ink, to house the spells she mended—and, later, created.
She learned how to make a book in which the spellwords would thrive, as you build a tempting hive for a swarm of bees.
With every spell, every book, she felt bone magic stir, just a little, from its long sleep.
It was addictive. It was powerful. And she wanted it.
So close were she and her father over the years, so aligned in their ambition, that she expected one day to take over his work.
She was horrified, then, when he announced at dinner that he was fostering the son of a noble but impoverished family, in order to have a male heir.
The girl protested, stamped her foot, even cried, but her father was implacable.
She could be an assistant, a helpmeet, but never his successor. She was sixteen.
He took away her key to his study. She was still allowed in, but only ever in her father’s company now, and she was never again permitted to take a book from his collection to study alone in her room.
When the boy came, she avoided him. It was not difficult.
Her sister played with him occasionally, she knew, but she was thirteen, still young enough to be amused by the boy as she would have been amused by a puppy or kitten.
The girl was surprised, then, to see him hovering in the hall outside her room one day, watching her as she practiced an incantation.
“What are you doing?” she said sharply.
He flinched. He was a slight boy, and sickly, with changing eyes and a crooked smile that made him look sly.
She had heard tales of him stealing food from the kitchen.
Her maid had told her that he took loaves of bread to crumble for the ravens that lived in the grounds, and that she had even seen the boy speaking to them.
The staff wondered if he were weak-minded, perhaps, or odd in some other way.
Seeing him now, the girl thought he was thin, pale, and altogether disappointing—so underfed that he looked younger than the six years old she believed him to be. Hardly the hale and upstanding heir her father had wanted. She felt a twist of spiteful glee.
“Go and play,” she told him when he said nothing.
He hovered in the doorway. “There’s no one to play with.”
“Go and play with Sybil.”
“She doesn’t like me. She pulled out one of my fingernails.” He held up a bloody finger, and his lower lip trembled.
Perhaps the boy could be of use. She crouched down beside him and used her best smile. “You poor thing,” she said. “Let me help you.”
It was a simple enough matter to find one of her books of healing spells and pluck a hair from her head to nourish it as she recited. The boy watched with fascination as his nail grew back, pale and perfect as a seashell. “Thank you,” he said uncertainly, as if the words were unfamiliar.
“You’re welcome.” She made herself ruffle his dark hair. It felt greasy and unwashed against her fingers. “Now, can you do something for me?”
He nodded uncertainly.
“Do you know how to get into Father’s rooms?”
“I’m not allowed to go in there without him.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He hesitated. “Yes,” he said in a low voice.
“Without being seen?”
He looked apprehensive, and she smiled at him again, trying to seem motherly.
“A … clever boy like you,” she said. “I’m sure you know a way.”
After a beat, he blinked, and his outline seemed to tremble and blur.
He was there, and then he wasn’t—or not quite.
There was a sensation of movement, of shape, but even when she squinted she couldn’t make him out.
An affinity! Father would be horrified. It did explain how he was able to sneak so much food from the pantry, however.
“Very good,” she said with feigned approval. “There is a book I need from his study. If I describe it, can you bring it to me?”
“I … I think so,” came a voice from the shadow.
The girl smiled.