23 Project Leash & Collar
Project Leash our library is extensive.
“You’re better at magic than Mother. Better than me too. Do you have more of it?” Zara asks me. I have a natural knack for accessing magic, and it helps that I find tethering as instinctive as breathing.
“You never have magic. You’re simply the conduit to channel it. It takes practice, like anything else,” I answer vaguely, flipping a page of the book I’m studying. In essence, magic is about accessing an energy that already exists in nature.
“Well then, how do I channel as much as you?” Zara asks. “And don’t say ‘practice’; I already practice a lot.”
“Certain spells and rituals developed over millennia can help. You can find them in books, you know.”
I myself rarely need spells. But I’m always looking and learning anyway.
The trick is sorting through the chaff and finding the things that actually work.
Unquantifiable knowledge is lost to time, facts allowed to slip from collective memory.
Additional information lost to translation, like an endless game of telephone.
And repeated discrediting campaigns from nonbelievers further muddle fact and fiction.
Zara has a lot less patience for research than I do.
Right on cue, Zara groans. “I don’t want to look through dusty old books all day just to do a piece of magic that takes five minutes. Can’t I tether more people? You use me all the time. Why doesn’t it work the other way around?”
Magic needs tethers, people who keep the magic user grounded and linked to this reality.
Adele doesn’t believe in using tethers, dislikes them, which has conversely led me to researching them intensely.
She has no idea we cling onto her out of some sense of guilt or a pathetic desire for parental love.
Adele believes in working alone, which frightens me.
The deeper I delve into magic history and experimentation, as I study and learn the consequences and dangers for those who push too far, the more I think she’s overconfident, and the more I fear abandoning her.
I don’t think the fact I use magic with exceptional ease and could probably tether an acquaintance halfway across the globe is a coincidence.
Adele doesn’t know I use Meredith and Zara as tethers, that they use me, and none of us are stupid enough to tell her.
She’s certainly never realized what the three of us do for her, how we save her time and time again with our safety lines.
Adele may be awful, but she’s still my mother, and I can’t seem to cut that tie between us.
“It does work that way,” I say slowly. To an extent. I haven’t told her I suspect that my tethering abilities actually do run deeper than most. “But there are limitations. Drawbacks. If you’re depending entirely on others for your strength, what happens when they aren’t there?”
“You always are.”
I swallow hard. “But what if I’m far away?”
“Why would you ever be far from me?”
She doesn’t remember the moment I tried to leave her behind. I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood. “Of course not,” I say. I clear my throat before I continue. “But magic works in pieces. You should learn about them all.”
Zara stares at me expectantly.
“All right, all right, you win.” I close the book and give her my full attention. “Class is in session.
“Imagine your brain like a house. A house built in a metaphorical realm, surrounded by great swirling streams of raw energy. That’s magic. To use it, you open that door inside your mind, let it flow in and through you. Direct it where and how you want. All it takes is practice and visualization.”
“That’s basic, Reggie. I can do that part already. I want to know how to do it better.”
“I told you already. Spells help you control the flow. You have to put in the work to find them and learn them. Without them, it’s like trying to put out a flame with a bucket of water without knowing if you’re dealing with a raging wildfire or a single ember.
You can get the job done without spells, but it’s messy and unrefined. ”
“Are you calling me messy and unrefined?”
“Yes.” I grin as Zara glares. “It’s doable, but a lot more difficult unless you’re both powerful and practiced. Spells really just serve as training wheels to increase precision and accuracy. You still have work to do before taking them off. Even I still use spells sometimes.”
“It would be easier if I could just tether more. Better. Like you.”
“I’m different, Zara. I don’t think you can learn it.
Remember how I said to think of it like a house?
You need a village of magical neighbors, metaphorically.
Most people need their houses close together to reach across the void and help each other.
My house is a bit more like a camper van—I can travel; I can reach farther. ”
“What if Mother is on to something? Maybe you could go deeper if you don’t use a tether and—”
“No,” I say more sharply than I intended. “Adele is wrong about that. Don’t you dare try it.”
Tethers are more essential than spells; they are what keep those who channel magic from getting swept away in the flow, from getting lost in a flood of magic.
Zara knows this already. It’s one of the very first things any magical tutor worth their salt will teach.
I’m not exactly sure what happens when someone flings open that door, untethered, and leaps in, an event rare enough even magical books say little on the subject.
“Promise me, Zara.”
“Sheesh. Fine. Calm your tits.”
“Where the fuck did you hear that expression? You’re ten; don’t say that.”
“I’m ten, don’t swear at me. Where do you think I heard it? All I do is listen to you.”
Damn, she is right, but I don’t tell her that.
“What about werewolves?” she goes on. “Can’t they use magic?”
This is why it takes me so long to get anything done. I give up trying to get back to my book and instead spend the next hour answering questions about the lycanthropy virus and werewolf magic.