4. Seb
SEB
“Which one?” Tori marched into his room holding up two outer layers: one, a poncho in tan, black, and red plaid; the other, a giant red and black buffalo check wrap.
Seb set his copy of Orlando face down on the duvet. “Which one will you be less upset about getting beer on?”
“Good point.” She sank onto the bed, piling the coats next to her. “You okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
Tori narrowed her eyes at him. “Because I know you, Sebastian. You’ve been weird since the start of term.
You haven’t talked about Lapland at all, you’re spending way too much time locked in your room, and you look like this every time I try to get your attention.
” At this last part, she gestured vaguely at his entire being.
Seb sighed and pushed his hand through his hair, for something to do.
Asher appeared in the doorway, summoned, apparently, by the promise of an explanation for Seb’s weirdness.
“Look, I spent the summer meditating; there’s not much to tell.
It was a lot of sitting in a sauna and contemplating the universe. ”
“Those witches must really suck,” Asher said, “if you spent all summer contemplating the universe and smoking moss or whatever it is they do up there, and you’re wound this tight in September.”
“I already told you guys.” He pushed himself upright. “I’m taking that extra seminar, and I really need to focus on work if I’m going to make it into Oxford’s AEtheric Theory program—they only take—”
“Ten people per year, yeah, we know.” Tori sighed. “Why are you even trying to get into that program, Sebastian? You should be going into the professional circuit. You love Cantrèa. You could go pro without batting an eyelash.”
“I can’t play Cantrèa forever.”
Asher laughed. “You don’t need to, that’s what trust funds are for.”
“So, what? I’m supposed to play Cantrèa for a while and then loaf around for the rest of my life?”
“Of course not.” Tori put a calming hand on his sock foot and squeezed gently. “That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. You’re incapable of doing nothing. I just don’t know why you’re insisting on killing yourself already when term is just starting! It’s Cert Year; we should be having fun.”
“I’m not killing myself.”
Asher raised a dark, skeptical eyebrow. “Fooled me.”
“Wow.” Seb scoffed. “Thanks, guys. You can leave now.” He snapped, and the door hurtled open further, slamming against the wall.
Tori and Asher exchanged another glance, then she picked up her coats, her voice edged in ice. “Désolée, Sebastian, for giving a fuck about you. Whenever you decide to stop bullshitting us about whatever you’ve got going on, we’re here for you.”
Seb set his jaw and stared at the wall with blurring eyes.
“Be ready to go by nine,” she said, after it became clear he wasn’t offering up any explanations.
“I don’t want to go to the fucking bonfire,” he said through his teeth.
“That’s another thing.” Tori’s voice lost its edge. “You used to love the bonfire.”
She shut his door quietly.
With great effort, Seb unclenched his jaw enough to swallow the ache that lodged in his throat.
He fell back onto the bed, one hand gripping his mist-blue duvet.
The late afternoon light slanted through the diamond panes of the Tudor windows in long, sharp strips of topaz, vivisecting the framed black and white poster that had come in the album liner of his favorite band’s latest release.
He let his gaze drift to the ancient plaster ceiling, forcing his eyes open until everything was hazy and insubstantial, until the cracks melted back together.
When the iron bands clenching his heart eased enough to think beyond panic, he reached for his Words, like the witches had taught him in Lapland.
Breathe them, feel them, be them.
Seb closed his eyes.
After acknowledging the first thing he saw, instead of trying to banish it, just for it to return again and again, he pictured the sauna. He summoned the pungent tang of cedar, the mineral splatter and hiss of water on white-hot stone, the slip of sweat sliding down his neck.
He pressed his head into the bed, the way he had pressed it into the wooden walls.
He breathed deep, first from his nose, then through his ribs and into his core, remembering that he had an athlete’s muscles, an athlete’s lungs.
He breathed as he would under the pressure of oppressive heat, as he was learning to breathe through crushing panic.
Then he summoned his Words, voice silent, lips moving softly.
The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen amongst us,—visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower.—
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,—
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,—
Like memory of music fled,—
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
By the time he’d finished the first verse of Shelley’s poem*, he could feel the Magic ebbing through him, there for the taking, the way he’d been so used to feeling it before last June.
His heart slowed from a wild palpitation to a steady thump.
Tori was right, he was bullshitting them all, but he wasn’t ready, not yet, to dredge his darkness up for judgment from the light.
It had taken him nearly all summer to find new Words—words that were true, words that weren’t promising something he felt he had lost forever.
It wasn’t uncommon for someone to lose their Words after a trauma—even though he was still reconciling that idea with his vision of himself—because the Words were everything.
Every Magician communicated with, and channeled Magic through, personal Words of Power that embodied their understanding of, and relationship to, Magic.
Magic loved language and intention, and incantations helped hone the resonance of AEther and sharpen purpose.
It was about pitch and frequency more than anything—Chinese, especially Cantonese, was lovely for this, with its many tones.
Incantations could be in any language, and some were even nonsense, just a collection of syllables and sounds that vibrated with the AEther all around them.
Without purpose there was no magic at all.
A Magician’s Words of Power were never spoken aloud—that was reserved for proper spells—but they were a silent personal incantation; a way to draw up Magic from the well of one’s soul.
More than that, what no one said, but everyone knew, was that your Words were how you understood yourself.
Everyone’s Words were different, because everyone had a different relationship to Magic.
Some people didn’t even have actual, written words.
Some people had a snippet of music, and he knew that Daphne Greer had a painting.
Seb didn’t know what painting, of course, and he’d never asked, because a person’s Words were their most closely guarded secret and truth of self.
To know someone’s Words was to know a Magician’s deepest truth, and by extension, to hold potentially unshakeable power over them.
Sharing one’s Words was reserved only for the most intimate of lovers and…
Seb swallowed down the bile and sat up, shaking his head clear.
He crossed to the massive wardrobe and threw it open, trying to channel the ghost of his former self.
Tori was right, he did love the bonfires, historically speaking, anyway.
The witches had taught him to live in the present, to forge anew his relationship with Magic moment to moment, and he had.
Magic was mutable, and so was the soul, and they’d taught him the power in keeping the river undammed—to wade into the rush and pull from there, instead of building a wall and drawing from a pond. A pond is static; a river is boundless.
It had made his spontaneous magic stronger than ever; that’s what the witches were famous for, after all—the ability to cast without ritual, without “pomp and paraphernalia” as Biret liked to say. He could take what he’d learned and forge himself, his memories, anew moment to moment.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror inside the door and stood up a little straighter.
Looking at his clothes, beautiful, and as much a part of what made Sebastian Allsaires what he was as any other thing, filled him with steadiness.
You chose these things, he reminded himself, to tell the world who you are. And who was he?
Sebastian ran through the list in his head as he pulled hangers from the bar, confidence growing with each article of clothing he touched: Cantrèa champion, two-year winner of the Elumnara, straight-A student, prince of Magic, King of Windermere.
And, he thought, catching his own gaze as he shut the armoire, pretty fucking gorgeous.
“I’m sorry for being a dick,” he said, settling on the toilet to watch Tori do her makeup. “I’m just not ready—”
Tori turned to him, liquid liner poised between her long fingers. “You don’t need to be ready, Seb. It’s okay if you’re never ready; I get it, trust me. Just…don’t push us away. I can’t watch you drown yourself.”
Seb stood and embraced her from behind, and she didn’t shy away even though she hated to be jostled while she was doing her makeup.
He hooked his chin over her shoulder, resting his cheek against the shining fall of her dark hair, a few shades deeper and warmer than his, and breathed in the amber and Tonka bean scent of her perfume.
“I love you, Tor,” he murmured, squeezing gently.
“I love you too, Sebby.” She pressed her head briefly against his before squirming free.