24. Sam Wister Amsel
Sam: Wister Amsel
The majority of enchanters who fail to secure a thew fail because they cannot make progress through the realm.
They are disoriented, they are overcome, and they never encounter a spirit, let alone find one that can be taken for a thew.
Moreover, all powers of enchantment are nonexistent in the realm.
Enchanters are mere men when they arrive.
—César Castellanos, Understanding the Realm of Thews
From the road, you would never suspect that Keel House is a settlement house, a refuge for poor and displaced women.
The estate, which originally belonged to the eponymous Captain Keel, is both vast and well-kept.
A low brick wall draped with ivy meanders in an asymmetrical path around the contours of the property.
Oaks and beeches grow near the wall, casting a protective barrier of leafy shade.
A pair of black iron gates leads to a circular drive of crushed white shell, and in the middle distance, a stand of birches leans gracefully out over a large lawn.
Beyond it, the cliffs overlook the ocean.
When Iris Ainsley arrived with Clem and Rosetta, a few women in white aprons were visible in the kitchen garden beside the house, working on hands and knees in the dirt, and one of them straightened up, waving cheerfully with her trowel, as they approached.
The main house, a brick monolith, had white trim and black shutters, all recently painted.
A polished brass knocker shaped like a clamshell shone on the scarlet front door. Iris let the knocker fall three times.
A pleasantly round young woman opened the door. “Good morning, Iris,” she said. “Come right in; she’s expecting you.”
“Thank you, Gertie.”
Gertie glanced at Clem and Rosetta with friendly curiosity before disappearing along the corridor.
I followed her quickly to explore the building.
Only the entrance to the house maintained something of its original aspect, with two well-furnished sitting rooms. Beyond it, the ground-floor rooms had all been repurposed as workspaces: a laundry room, a sewing room, a weaving room, and a fourth equipped for carding and spinning wool.
The kitchen looked onto a sizable back garden, now in September still loaded with sunflowers, pumpkins, and Concord grapes; a large, informal dining room adjoined it.
On the upper floors, the rooms were shared bedrooms—two single beds in each.
I could see women of all ages, some surely as young as fourteen and others with stooped shoulders and gray hair, working in every space: peeling potatoes in the kitchen, stitching hems in the sewing room, and beating rugs on a line outdoors. All told, there must have been thirty.
In one of the front sitting rooms, a solitary woman stood contemplating a bookshelf. She took one book down after another, amassing a pile on the upright piano beside her.
“Miss Amsel,” Iris said quietly.
She whirled around briskly. “Iris!” she exclaimed, a broad smile illuminating her face. She shook the younger woman’s hand warmly. “How are you?”
“Very well, thank you.” She turned to the sisters. “May I introduce you to Clementine and Rosetta Quinn?”
Wister turned to Clementine and Rosetta, studying them with interest. “You must be Clementine,” she said, extending her hand to Clem without hesitation.
Wister’s face, weathered and tanned, held together a prominent nose and bright black eyes.
She had a rugged bearing—stocky and upright, with assured and compact gestures.
Her gray hair was cut short, and she wore a pair of thin, violet-tinted spectacles with gold rims. The hand she extended, also weathered, was strong and confident as it shook Clem’s.
She wore a flax-colored tunic and white woolen pants over leather moccasins that looked hand-stitched.
I had never seen a woman dressed in such a manner.
But having misjudged Clementine twice based on her look of innocence, I now reserved judgment.
Odd as I found these items of clothing, they seemed suited to her.
Perhaps Wister had some need for them that I had not yet learned.
Most strikingly, the black eyes that peered out from the creased face had a shifting balance of stillness and quickness that spoke of a lively intelligence.
It was the face of a fox, sharp and stealthy.
“I am,” Clementine assented. “Thank you for meeting me on such short notice.”
Wister’s eyes twinkled. “Of course. Your time is limited. Iris told me of your first week at Commonwealth,” she said, “but she didn’t mention that you already know more enchantment than most men do at graduation.”
Clementine was visibly surprised. “I think you overstate my knowledge,” she replied.
Wister smiled. “No, I do not.” Without further elaboration, she shook hands briefly with Rosetta before gesturing to the room. “Please, make yourselves comfortable.”
Iris Ainsley, I had already observed, was a serious young person, and I could see how she and Wister Amsel would share a mutual regard.
The resemblance to her brother, Walter, was apparent in her facial features, but there it ended.
Iris had a bright, assured look to her: pensive brown eyes, a strong jaw, and a smile that tended to slyness.
Her clothing was a step or two above sensible, reaching toward refined.
Slate blue skirts and white sleeves were wrapped under a shawl of pewter gray.
“I didn’t tell you so, Miss Amsel,” Iris commented, “because I didn’t know it.
” She sat down on a mustard-colored armchair.
“Tell us,” she demanded, “how you come to know as much?”
“It’s apparent in your aura, Clementine,” Wister explained simply.
She sat back in her chair like a man, legs comfortably spaced apart as if she owned the room—perhaps she did, in fact, I corrected myself.
With a gesture that somehow seemed more didactic than ill-mannered, she pointed at Clementine’s person.
“Your capacities are evident. What I’d like to know is how you’ve acquired them. Self-study?”
“I began studying on my own some years ago.”
“How unconventional,” Wister said, her sarcasm softened by a gentle smile.
Clem smiled in return. “That’s true. But I came to the conclusion after my parents’ deaths that bowing to convention has few advantages.
Father had already shown us the limitations.
His true name, you see, was Roberto Quinones.
He was from Hispaniola, and our mother’s family would have preferred that he not be.
So he became Robert Quinn, and yet the change of name failed to impress Mother’s family and did precious little to improve his chances in society. ”
“But surely your father would have possessed excellent Spanish,” Iris objected, “and that could only be an advantage where enchantment is concerned.”
“He did,” Clem assented.
“Father taught Golden Age Spanish, as well as Latin, Arabic, and Catalan,” Rosetta said with some pride, leaning forward in her chair and enumerating the languages on her delicate fingers.
“All the primary languages of enchantment. He taught us Castilian from when we were small, and when we were older he also taught us Latin.”
Wister smiled wryly. “And yet enchanters prefer their tutors to be Anglos with atrocious pronunciation. Avoiding the supposed taint of Spanish weakness, et cetera. Iris, it’s one of the great contradictions of modern enchantment.
Everything it relies upon emerges from early Iberia, and yet Spain and its offspring are regarded as an abomination.
And so,” she said to Clem, “he made a practical choice.”
“I suppose we’re all practical,” Clem replied.
“We receive some support from our uncle, Tomás Quinones, but for many reasons we don’t wish to rely on my mother’s more affluent family.
After Father died, Rosetta went to extraordinary lengths to support us both with her copy work, and it was my hope to do the same through the practice of enchantment. ”
“By making tokens,” Wister observed.
Clem looked surprised once more.
“I’m not going to report you to the constables,” Wister said drily.
“Yes,” Clem conceded. “I’ve made some small income from them.”
“Not such a small income, I would guess, from the remarkable quality of the tokens your sister wears. The bracelet is especially well done.”
Rosie stared at her, dumbfounded, and Clem laughed ruefully. “Well. I see that nothing escapes you.”
Wister smiled. “Indeed. So please don’t bother to obfuscate. You have done something different. You utilize the wearer’s nature to create the token’s effect, no?”
“I do,” Clem said slowly. “My method is to draw upon a person’s existing qualities.
I am not so much disguising as I am amplifying.
For the tokens I wore to Commonwealth, for example, I enhanced the lower timbre of my voice, the natural cast of my shoulders, and so on.
For this reason, all my tokens are custom-made. ”
Wister eyed her narrowly. “You have other such customers? Whose appearance becomes more…masculine through the use of your tokens? Is it convincing?”
Clem smiled. “I think in most cases, yes. Especially when the ‘appearance,’ as you say, suits the nature of the person. My lawyer is one such. And I need not remind you that the practice of law, like enchantment, only permits men.”
“Very impressive,” Wister commented. “I’m very pleased to see that you haven’t muffled up your talent, smothering it as so many young women do.”
“I’m afraid my supposed talent, such as it is, was my undoing. By magnifying everything about myself that was most like a man, I reminded someone too much of my own father. I was exposed by a spirit thew.”
“Yes,” Wister said thoughtfully. “Iris conveyed as much to me in her letter.” She removed her unusual glasses and took a moment of silence, cleaning the lenses with the edge of her shirt.
“And Judge Richardson has determined that you are to prove the worth of all women by accomplishing in mere days what most men never achieve in a lifetime. The procurement of a spirit thew.”
“That is my task at hand.” Clem looked at Wister with open curiosity to see what she would say next, clearly intrigued by the older woman’s insight and manner.
Wister didn’t seem concerned. “It’s as much as I would expect.
Indeed, look around and you will realize that it is routine, women extravagantly outperforming men in order to be considered their possible equals.
Why, down the hall there is a woman who speaks more languages than your father did, and she puts it to excellent use baking soda bread and currant buns. ”
Iris laughed. Rosetta looked shocked.
“I was also self-taught,” Wister said, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees. She fixed Clem with a hard stare. “And though I was no prodigy, I had talent.” Her black eyes were steady and unblinking. “But I failed to secure a spirit thew,” she said softly.
“May I ask what happened?”
Wister nodded. “You should well ask, if you are to rely on my instruction for the completion of a feat I never achieved.” She turned the question on Clementine. “What have you studied so far pertaining to the spirit realm?”
“I’ve read the classical texts—Castellanos and Olivares, of course. They are not terribly descriptive. More philosophical.”
“Precisely. Very short on details. Have you ever wondered why?”
“It seems to me that they intend to be vague. Perhaps they wish to keep the process secret, just as they keep the portals a secret.”
“Exactly—I believe they wish to shroud the entire process in mystery. They may even intentionally mislead. The fact of the matter is, not a single published work can prepare you for the experience. I don’t wish to lay my failure at someone else’s door, but the remarkable distortion and misdirection of the literature was a significant obstacle.
Everything I expected to be true was not true.
I could not, in the moment, adequately compensate.
” She frowned. “Perhaps if I’d counted on a tutor, a tutor who had been to the realm and could prepare me, I would have succeeded. ”
Clem hesitated. “Forgive me for being blunt, but there is another consideration. What about the location of the portal? I understand that the Providence portal was lost some time ago, which means the only portal nearby is the Greater Boston portal. Do you know where it is?”
Wister waved a hand dismissively. “The portal will not be an obstacle.”
Clem looked at least partially satisfied; I suspected that if Wister had been willing to tell her the location at that moment, she would have given her thanks and then her good-byes with equal alacrity. For Clem, Wister Amsel was merely a means to an end.
But Wister did not know that, and to her this was no exchange of information.
She sat back now, with an air of having come to a decision.
“I can’t promise you will achieve your goal.
But I can promise that I will teach you to avoid the mistakes I made.
” She paused. “It’s all any teacher can offer.
A shoulder to stand on, so that you can reach a higher ledge on the cliff face. I would be honored.”
“Thank you,” said Clem. “I’ll do everything in my power to make your time and efforts well spent.”
Wister acknowledged this with a brief bow of her head.
Then she rose and walked over to the pile of books she had been assembling on the upright piano.
“Time is short,” she said, lifting the small stack, “so I will only give you the essentials. Are any of these familiar?” She lifted the first book in her pile.
“Memoir of Return,” she said, handing it to Clem, “and Espíritu atado by Villasenor, and finally Lead: A Workbook.”
“I’ve heard of the Villasenor, but I haven’t read any of these.”
“Excellent. Read these for tomorrow, and we’ll begin at nine.”
Clem smiled. “I look forward to it.”