Chapter 13
The ceiling was so high. That was what Peter remembered thinking at first, as a kid trying to keep his mind off the desperate hope that he could pass the test every thirteen-year-old boy in the county had showed up to take.
He had never been inside the county’s high school before.
By that point he’d known he wouldn’t be attending it—Nan didn’t have the money; Mrs. Harper wouldn’t let a bastard child have one of her scholarships.
He’d kept staring at the ceiling, overwhelmed by the thought that he would be poor his whole life and Nan would never get the comfortable final years she deserved.
For as long as he could recall, she’d told him things would get better because he was smart.
“College! That’s your ticket out, darling boy,” she’d said when they shivered in the cold apartment in the winter or broiled in it all summer.
“You’ll be a doctor someday, mark my words,” she’d said when they were down to their last tin of meat or had nothing for dinner but the wild greens she gathered from the edge of the forest. “Study hard—you’ll see. ”
But it hadn’t mattered how hard he’d studied.
As he’d stared at the ceiling, afraid if he put his head down that tears might leak out, he’d heard the exam plodding forward: the presiding wizard’s instructions; one group of boys after another marching to the stage to take their turn in reverse alphabetical order; the many repetitions of the awkward spellword.
And most significantly, the sighs and groans that followed each group attempt—no cheers, because each boy had revealed himself to be a typic.
That was always the way. Two percent of men were wizards, supposedly, but the last time a county boy had passed this test was a generation before Peter had been born. Ellicott Mills had never produced a wizard.
At some point, Peter’s seat had started vibrating. He’d turned to find the boy next to him shaking his seat and the ones attached to it with the nervous movements of his legs.
“Hey,” Peter had hissed.
The boy had stopped, glancing at him for perhaps half a second before looking away. “Sorry.”
He couldn’t say now, twenty years later, what had tipped him off.
Maybe it was the eyes. Or he recognized the voice.
Whatever it was, he’d realized with a start that he was sitting next to Mrs. Harper’s daughter, her hair tucked in an oversized cap, her contraband shirt and pants nicer than any he’d ever owned.
He’d glared at her. Never mind that what she wanted to do was flat-out impossible (or so he’d thought).
It was the principle of the thing that outraged him: She had everything, and she wanted this, too?
Did she have no conception that for some of these boys—for him—this dividing line was their last chance?
The county executive, up on the stage, had bellowed the names of the final group: “Collins, Cardozo, Brown, Blackwell, Bell, Applebaum, Abramowicz, Able.” He’d walked up, his legs somehow both stiff and wobbly. He’d looked into the audience, trying but unable to pick out Nan in the sea of faces.
The tall, dashing wizard on the stage strode about, adjusting their spellcasting stances. “Excellent, you don’t need to do a thing,” the man had said to Beatrix Harper, the imposter, before shaking his head and telling Peter to press his shoulders down.
“āhebban,” all the boys—and one girl—had called out several times over, getting a feel for the word. They’d listened to the wizard explaining that if at first you didn’t succeed, say it again, chant it, give the magic a chance to catch.
Peter felt failure settling on him before it had even happened. He started to lower his arm.
Then Beatrix had murmured, “You can do it.”
She hadn’t been talking to him. She’d been muttering to herself, eyes on her own hand. But something about it had buoyed him. She’d known she couldn’t do it, and yet there she was. What did he have to lose?
The wizard handed out leaves. The shifting and coughing and other noises in the auditorium stopped.
“All right, gentlemen,” the wizard said. “Cast!”
Peter had let the air in the room fill his lungs. He’d looked up at the ceiling, so far away, then at the five-pound weight at his feet. “āhebban!” His stomach had tingled. “āhebban!” The sensation had spread up his back. “āhebban! āHEBBAN!”
Down his arm the tingling, prickling, fizzing feeling had rushed, bursting from his fingers in a sparkle of light. Up the weight had shot—all the way to the impossibly high ceiling.
He’d fallen to his knees in shock.
The rest of that day was a muddle with just a few clear memories.
The wizard clapping him on the back, telling him he’d go far.
Nan clambering onto the stage, her cane clattering to the floor as she threw her arms around him—that was when it finally felt real, and shock gave way to elation.
Telling her that he would be able to take care of her now, just as soon as he graduated.
Stepping off the stage to a line of people who were suddenly very interested in him.
And some minutes later: Seeing Beatrix Harper, now wearing a dress, hair slightly mussed, face solemn. He’d put out his hand. She’d taken it, her mother glowering behind her.
“Congratulations, Peter,” Beatrix had said, and then—in a whisper: “What did it feel like?”
“Like I wasn’t really alive, and now I am,” he’d said. A distinct memory. Word for word. “It’s incredible. Magic is just incredible.”
Now—twenty years after that day—he bitterly contemplated a life without it.
His livelihood, gone. What did he know that didn’t require spells to see through? How could he marry Beatrix in good conscience?
For that matter, how could he keep his casting inability a secret so it didn’t affect the Twenty-fifth repeal campaign? He could just imagine Rydell’s take: Now we know why he wants typic rights!
He shifted in Gray’s spare bed, wondering whether he had, in fact, become a typic.
It seemed just as inapt to call him that as it would be to call him a wizard.
He no longer fit anywhere. He’d held the keys to the forces of the universe for twenty years, taking them increasingly for granted but never once tiring of them, and now they were gone.
His terrible invention ripped them away.
Hoist with your own petard, Hades. Beatrix said that to him once, meaning the Vows, but it was even more true today.
He turned onto his side and squeezed his eyes shut.
“All right, then,” Miss Dane said. “We’re agreed.”
Peter, leaning on one of the chairs they’d dragged into the empty bedroom, did not entirely swallow his bitter snort.
Oh yes, they’d agreed. What else was there to do?
He wouldn’t let on that he no longer could spellcast. Beatrix would only cast if they were both together in an apparently empty room with lights they could switch off, and only then if it were truly necessary. That was the extent of their plan.
“What about your R&D?” Beatrix said, bringing to mind a problem he hadn’t thought of as he’d laid in bed the night before, feeling sorry for himself.
Weapons defense. Finding a counter to his misbegotten creation was the reason he’d come home in the first place, hired her against her wishes and set everything in motion. And now …
“That, surely, is necessary,” she added. “We could work on it together here—”
“No.” He said it to his hands in his lap, then made himself look her in the eye—see her startled expression.
“I was out of ideas even before the attack. Utterly out. Either I’ve made something that cannot be contained or I’m just incapable of figuring out the solution, and for the sake of the human race I hope to God it’s the latter. ”
“Peter,” she murmured, and then stopped, cocking her head. “Is that the door?”
The knocking was nearly soft enough to miss. He turned to go answer it.
“I’ll come with you,” she said.
Miss Dane gave a hmmph. “Then I’m coming, too. Can’t have people thinking the two of you are alone in this house.”
They clacked down the stairs, Peter’s roiling emotions clarifying for a moment into black humor as he considered all the months he and Beatrix had been alone in the house without anyone—besides Mrs. Price—thinking much of it.
He peered through the peephole, half-expecting a reporter. But no—it was tiny Mrs. Hattington, the pastor’s wife.
“Oh, Omnimancer,” she said, smiling tremulously when he opened the door, “I so hate to ask because I do understand you’re still recovering, but would you happen to have any more of your migraine remedy? George ran out last week and he’s suffering.”
He winced. “Please come in, and I’ll check.”
As he walked to the brewing room, he heard Miss Dane say, “I’ll be upstairs”—her job was done.
Beatrix told the pastor’s wife, “I think we do still have a bit left.” When he’d put the ransacked house back to rights, he found half the bottles of prepared medicinals broken, but he too recalled that some of the migraine tincture had survived.
It was, in fact, just one vial. He stared at the sad collection of other bottles: three cold curtailers, two cough suppressants and a few other health aids.
Over the past week he’d given Mrs. Clark the last of the vitamin doses for her children, Mr. Levin the last of the anti-arthritic distillate, and Miss Ross the last of the brew that kept her diabetes in check, thinking all the while that soon he would be able to make more.
For all his gloomy thoughts in the previous twelve hours, it simply had not occurred to him until now to consider the consequences of his new disability for everyone else in town.
He walked out with the vial and handed it to Mrs. Hattington.
“You look very tired, Omnimancer,” she said, gazing up at him, her gray hair peeking out of an enormous hat. “You’re not getting enough rest, are you. All this running back and forth you’re doing, and here you are just two weeks removed from your coma.”