The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic (51 page)

“I don't want you staying out so late. What time is it?”

“I dunno, not that late.”

“It's too late to be walking home alone.”

“Her brother drove me.”

“Her brother? How old is he?”

“He's nineteen. He can drive at night.”

“You need a ride, you call me.”

Leigh chortled, rolled her eyes. “Like you could even drive right now, Dad.”

Her father's slurred voice rose. “I don't like that tone, Leigh, and I don't like you driving around with nineteen-year-old boys I haven't met. You're grounded. Two weeks.”

An exasperated sigh. “That is so unfair. I wasn't doing
any
thing.”

“Then whatever you weren't doing, you can not do it at home.”

“Who cares, you won't even remember this tomorrow.”

“Enough of your crap, Leigh. Go to bed.”

“I was about to, before you hauled me in here.”

“I said, that's enough. Shut up and go to bed.”

Of Nora's two sisters, Leigh seemed more determined to grow up fast, and the last few times Nora had seen her, she'd been toying with an exciting new air of adolescent disgruntlement. But this kind of mutual contempt between Leigh and their father was new. “Was I that bad when I was her age?” Nora asked herself. Worse, maybe, but her father had never told her to shut up. And she'd never seen him so drunk then, except after EJ—she did not finish the thought.

“My father is scolding my sister for being out too late,” she said to Aruendiel.

“That is your sister?” Aruendiel was surprised. He was about to say something else when his attention was captured by the TV again.

Leigh stomped away, losing shape as she moved into the queasy darkness outside the candleglow. Nora heard her footsteps echoing up the stairs. Then Leigh shouted something, a parting shot. Nora caught her own name: “—like Nora.”

“Leigh?” Nora moved after her sister. “What did you say?” This was maddening, to see and hear and not to be seen or heard.

Leigh's door was closed when Nora reached the top of the stairs. The knob resisted her. “Leigh! Leigh! Can you hear me at all? It's Nora.” The only response was the beat of a pop song vibrating through the door; her sister had barricaded herself with sound.

“Nora?” A fluting question, slightly hoarse, from behind. Nora turned. The door to Ramona's room was open. Nora entered cautiously, holding up the candle. Dimly she made out her youngest sister sitting up in bed. “Nora, is that you?”

“Ramona! You can see me?”

Ramona's dark eyes looked at her with the stillness of wet stones. “I can see you. Not very well.”

“Is this better?” Nora moved to Ramona's bedside, her candle spilling its light on the child.

“Yes, that's better,” Ramona said, with a small exhalation. She sat hunched against her pillows, her arms drawn protectively around her knees. “Why were you calling Leigh?”

“I wanted to ask her something,” Nora said. She hesitated. “I don't think she can hear me, though, and I couldn't open the door.”

“She locks it. Mom and Dad don't like it, but it makes her feel safer, and the counselor said to let her.”

“Oh,” Nora said, digesting this information. “Leigh's seeing a counselor? Is she having a tough time at school or something?”

“I guess.” Ramona looked away, then back at Nora. “Nora, what are you doing here? Do you want something?”

“Do I want something?” Nora laughed, a little puzzled. “I wanted to see how everyone's doing.”

“We're doing okay,” Ramona said tightly. She added: “I miss you.”

“I miss you, too, honey,” Nora said, settling herself on the edge of the bed and reaching out for Ramona. She could barely feel her sister's shoulder. Ramona flinched.

“I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that,” Nora said, stricken. “You know, I'm not really here—it's hard to explain.”

“That's okay,” Ramona said stoically. “Your hand just felt weird. And you don't have to explain. I know what happened.”

“You do?” Nora looked hard at her sister and saw the fear in her face. She gasped. “Ramona, I am
not
dead.”

From Ramona's expression, she was plainly unconvinced. “You don't feel real,” Ramona objected. “How do you know you're not dead?”

“I know it.” Nora thought for a second, then held up one of her braids. “Look, see how long my hair has grown. That wouldn't happen if I were dead.”

“This boy at school, Zach, said your hair and fingernails keep growing after you're dead.”

“Not this long. Ramona, I promise, I'm not dead.”

“Then what happened?” Ramona asked, her voice wavering. “It's been
six months
since you disappeared. Mom and Dad won't say anything, but I know they think you're dead. Dad talks to the police—”

Nora remembered the yellow crime scene tape in the mountain graveyard. She wanted to give Ramona a hug, then decided against it. “Listen to me, Ramona, I'm not dead, I just got lost. Really lost. This is hard to believe, I know, but I'm actually in a totally different world. I'm just visiting though, um—through magic.”

Ramona stared at her for a long minute. “Oh,” she said finally.

“So I'm not dead, okay? Do you believe me?”

“I guess,” Ramona said. “What kind of magic?”

There was a gleam of light from the hallway. The second candle advanced into the room, Aruendiel's dark figure behind it. He looked quizzically at Nora.

Ramona sucked in her breath. “Snape!”

“What are you talking about?” Nora asked. “This is Aruendiel—the magician Aruendiel.” She cleared her throat. “He's the one who did the magic that I was telling you about.”

“You mean it, Nora?” Ramona asked, sounding almost angry. “He's a
magician
?”

“Yes—I know it sounds unbelievable,” Nora said, half-apologetic. She looked up at Aruendiel. “This is my little sister Ramona. She can see us, Aruendiel,” she said in Ors.

“Very curious,” Aruendiel said, leaning closer. He and Ramona stared at each other. In the bright, cozy clutter of the child's bedroom, next to the pink-shaded lamp and the poster of the palomino, he looked especially dry, gaunt, imposing. All at once Nora felt oddly protective, and not just of her sister.

“Don't be frightened, he's really very nice,” she said to Ramona quietly.

“What did you say to him? What language were you speaking?” Ramona demanded.

“It's called Ors—it's the language of his world,” Nora said. “I was telling him that you can see us. Leigh and Dad couldn't.”

“Really?” Ramona seemed pleased by the information. She did not resist when Aruendiel took hold of her chin and tilted her head up so that he could look into her nostrils, then turned it to the side so that he could examine her ears.

“How old is she?” he asked.

“Ten—no, wait, eleven,” Nora said. “I've been away for six months, apparently.”

“Now what are you saying?” Ramona said.

“He wants to know how old you are.” In Ors: “Does her age matter?”

“A child, a girl who has not reached the age of womanhood, might be more receptive to sensing something otherworldly,” Aruendiel said reflectively. “She also is feverish. Perhaps she sees us because she is delirious.”

“Feverish!” In English, Nora asked her: “Ramona, are you sick?”

“I have a sore throat,” Ramona allowed.

Nora put her hand to Ramona's forehead, but could not judge the temperature of her sister's skin. “Where's your mom?”

“She has an overnight shift at the hospital.”

“Did you tell Dad you're not feeling well?” Nora asked. Ramona shook her head. “Well, you need to tell him and ask him to give you some children's Tylenol.”

“No, he's—Mom says to leave him alone at night.”

“When he's drunk, you mean?” Nora gave a sigh of frustration. “When did that start? He never used to drink more than one or two beers a night.”

The glance that Ramona shot at her was half-contemptuous, half-pitying. “Well, what do you think, Nora? We thought you were dead.”

“Oh, balls,” said Nora. She clutched her forehead.

“Well, not everyone.
Your
mom thinks you've been kidnapped by pagan cultists. She keeps calling Dad about it.” No wonder he was hitting the bottle, Nora thought. Ramona went on: “She had a vision of you worshipping fire.”

“Fire, really?” Nora forgot her sense of guilty unease. “You know, my mom is a little creepy sometimes. I
have
been doing some fire magic—Aruendiel is teaching me. Not worship.”

“You're learning magic! That is so cool! Can you do some magic now?”

Nora hesitated. In her own world, the idea of inducing fire or water to do her will suddenly struck her as unlikely. “I can do it in the other world, but here, I'm not sure,” she confessed. “I'm still pretty new at this.”

“Could the magician, Aruendiel—” Ramona pronounced the name carefully. “Can he do some magic now?”

Aruendiel had been moving around the room, solemnly inspecting Ramona's menagerie of stuffed animals, her books, the map of Narnia, her soccer trophies. He had paused in front of a shelf that held two large framed photographs. One was of Nora, smiling, squinting a little, in graduation robes. Now he turned.

“Your sister is not satisfied with having visitors from another world?” he said, his brows swooping together. “She would like to see still greater magic? Kings have been grateful for far less.”

“Aruendiel! You understand English?” Nora asked, shocked, pleased.

“It comes back to me,” he said, with a nonchalant tilt of his head. “Not everything, but some of it.”

Ramona looked entreatingly at Aruendiel. “Please?” she said. “Ask him—ask him to make Friday talk.” She pointed to the foot of the bed. For the first time Nora noticed the cat drowsing there.

“Oh, Ramona, I don't know if that's even possible.” To Aruendiel, in Ors: “Did you get that? She wants the cat to talk. Shall I tell her no?”

“Tell her to be patient for a little while.” He bent over the cat, holding the candle so close it seemed that he might set the animal's fur alight. Affronted, the cat uncoiled its head, and gazed haughtily up at Aruendiel. There was something eerily similar in their respective stares.

Aruendiel straightened and nodded at Ramona. She flung herself forward and pulled the cat onto her lap. “Friday! Friday! Can you understand me?” she asked solicitously. “Can you say something?”

The cat squirmed out of her arms and leaped from the bed. “I was
trying
to sleep,” it said as it stalked out of the room. “Stupid bitch.”

“Oh, my gosh!” Ramona's mouth worked like a goldfish's.

“There are a number of good spells for making an animal speak,” Aruendiel said to Nora. “It is far more difficult to make them say anything worth listening to.”

“That was amazing!” Ramona said, although she looked a little shaken. “Nora, are you going to learn to do that? What else can he do?”

“What do you say, Ramona?” Nora asked warningly.

“I was going to say it! Thank you.” She bobbed her head.

Aruendiel replied with a formal bow. “Tell your sister I am pleased to be of service to her.”

Nora translated, then broke off with an exclamation. A drop of hot wax had scorched her finger. Gingerly, she adjusted her grip on the candle. It had burned down to a stub so small it was hard to hold on to.

“What happens when the candle burns out?” she asked Aruendiel.

“What do you think? The spell is over.”

“I was afraid you would say that.” In English, to Ramona: “Honey, we don't have much time left. The spell lasts only as long as the candle.”

“Then get another candle,” Ramona said promptly. “I want to know about the other world. How did you get there? Are there lots of magicians there? Can I come visit you? Are you going to stay there forever?”

“No! I'm going to come home as soon as I can. It might take some time. Aruendiel will help me.”

Ramona dropped her voice slightly. “Are you
married
to him, Nora?”

“No, certainly not.” Nora shook her head, coloring slightly. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“You're wearing a wedding ring,” Ramona said, pointing at Nora's hand.

“That's—well, it was a mistake,” Nora said. The candlewax nipped at her fingers again. Her light was shaky, dwindling.

“Are you married to anyone?”

“Listen, Ramona, please tell everyone I'm okay, will you?” She paused. “You probably shouldn't mention the magic. It might worry them. I'll be home—”

The last thing Nora saw as her candle's flame dissolved into blackness was Ramona's face, interested, alarmed. Then Ramona was gone.

Nora stood quietly for a moment, regaining her bearings. A floorboard creaked under her foot. The room was chilly, dark, scented with candle smoke. This, she could sense intuitively, was a real place, where things had weight and substance, unlike where she had just been. But it was not the real world, not at all.

T
hey won't believe her, of course. They'll think she's fantasizing, that she's crazy.” Nora paused. “You're sure she's the only one there who can understand the cat?” Aruendiel nodded. She groaned and went on: “And the real reason they won't believe Ramona saw us is because they think I'm dead.

“Ramona thought I was a ghost, you know. You saw that picture of me on the shelf?” Aruendiel nodded again. “The other picture was my brother, EJ. At first I thought, how weird that she had his picture up. She never even knew him. But then I realized, it's a shrine to her dead siblings.” Nora shuddered. “Was she upset when I evaporated in front of her?”

“She was agitated for a moment, yes,” Aruendiel said. “But she seems to be a child of some resolve and self-control,” he added, with a note of approval. “She asked me a question in your language. I believe she wanted to know whether you had returned to this world. I said yes. And then I extinguished my own candle.”

Nora spooned up some broth, then let it fall back into her bowl. They were eating dinner, an hour after a journey that, strictly speaking, had never happened at all.

“I must point out,” Aruendiel said, “that although it's true that my spell made the cat intelligible only to those present at the time, it was a remarkable feat of magic. There are
perhaps
two other magicians now practicing who could cast a spell from one world into another with any hope of success.”

“Nifty,” Nora said in English. “Well, then,” she said in Ors, “can't you do a spell that will let my family know that I'm alive and well? Is there a way to send messages between worlds? A letter in my handwriting—would they believe
that
?” She was asking herself as much as Aruendiel.

“A letter?” He frowned, as though still piqued at Nora's failure to appreciate the power and artistry of the magic he'd performed on the cat, but then the notion of sending a letter to her world seduced his attention. He drummed his fingers slowly on the table. “You could do it with a twinning spell, what Morkin calls a correspondence spell. It puts the same object in two different places. A wax tablet, say—so that if you wrote on it, being in this world, the same words would appear on the tablet in the other world.”

“Really? Let's do that!”

“The difficulty,” Aruendiel added, “is that the enchanted tablet would have to be physically introduced into your world.” He looked at her to make sure that she understood. “We would have to send it there the same way that you came here—through a gateway between worlds. So—”

“So in that case I could go back myself,” Nora finished in leaden tones. “All right, so when can I go back?”

“I have told you, I do not know.”

“There's no sign of a gateway?” she demanded. “How often do you check?”

After a beat, Aruendiel said: “Frequently.” He added with a trace of waspishness: “I do not wish to detain you in this world any longer than need be.”

Nora bit back a sarcastic thanks, then tried to explain: “You saw them—they're mourning me. They're grieving. And I can't do anything about it. Do you understand how awful that makes me feel? My father getting drunk, fighting with my sister—that's because of me. He lost one child—”

“What did you think they were doing all this time, your people?”

“I don't know! I thought they were basically fine. I was hoping not too much time had gone by over there. A couple of weeks, maybe.” Nora was aware as she spoke of how ridiculous this sounded.

“To be honest,” she added, “I didn't think they would miss me so much. But—to see them like that, and not to be able to do anything. I feel like crap. I've been—” Nora shook her head, angry at herself, angrier at Aruendiel for providing the sly distraction of learning magic, making her forget what she owed to her family, her own world. “What was I thinking? And meanwhile they think I'm
dead
.”

“And what if they do?” Aruendiel asked. He pushed his empty bowl away. “Do you have some obligation to their grief?”

“Well, of course! They're grieving for me.”

“What does that have to do with you? Their grief belongs to them alone.”

“But I don't want them to grieve!”

“If you
were
dead, as they believe, you would owe them nothing.”

“What are you talking about?”

Aruendiel shrugged, one shoulder mounting higher than the other. “The dead should not have to answer to the claims of the living, even the sharpest grief.”

Nora sat in rebellious silence, considering what he had said. “Do you really believe that?” she asked. She was not sure exactly what he was getting at, but it had a flavor of callousness, or arrogance, that repelled her. “And I'm not dead, in any case. I do owe my family something, some reassurance. You said it could be years before I get back.”

Her tone was accusing. She could not soften it much, even as she made her request—it came out as more of a command—to do the observation spell again that night. She had the conviction that if she could just return to her father's house, in whatever form, she could find some way to communicate with him or her stepmother.

Aruendiel refused. There was no guarantee, he pointed out, that they would reach her father's house on the same night. Days or weeks could have passed already. And if her sister's fever had gone, she might not be able to see them.

Furthermore, he added, Nora was distraught—a poor frame of mind for doing strong magic.

He was regretting, it was clear, that he had ever performed the observation spell in the first place.

“So I should just let my family think I'm dead?” she demanded at last. “Do you think that's right?”

“For now, Nora, you do not have a choice,” he said wearily.

She sat in silence, thinking again of the twin photographs in her sister's room, wondering why Ramona had chosen those two. The Nora in the photograph was grinning a bit too broadly, trying to cover up her disquiet at the prospect of figuring out what to do with the degree she had just earned. In EJ's case, it was his school photo from tenth grade. The camera had caught him with his mouth slightly open, revealing the glint of braces, giving him an undeserved appearance of dullness. It was an awful picture, really. Maybe those two photos were the only ones that Ramona could find to fit the frames.

“So I'm dead to them,” Nora said resentfully. The phrase did not have the same resonance in Ors that it did in English. “I suppose there's no chance that I'm really dead, is there? You said no once—but I did give Ramona a scare.”

“Of course not,” Aruendiel said, his expression softening. “You are very much alive.”

His assurance relieved but did not mollify her. Nora cast about for a new direction in which to loose her roiling guilt and anger. “
You
were dead once,” she said, with a sense that her words would burn. “Really dead. Isn't that right?”

The gray gaze might have slipped sideways for an instant—impossible to say for sure. “Where did you hear that? More tittle-tattle from Semr?”

“Hirizjahkinis told me.”

“Ah, Hirizjahkinis,” he said brusquely. “She should scratch her own fleabites and leave my affairs in peace.”

“She helped bring you back to life.”

“She's proud of that.”

“Why shouldn't she be?” Nora said, pressing for something more, not sure what.

“It was Euren the Wolf's magic, more than hers. And as a piece of magic, it was—well, only adequate. It took years for me to recover from my injuries.” With a grimace, he added: “Even now, I am not healed completely.”

“Well, you're alive,” Nora said, irked on Hirizjahkinis's behalf by his lack of evident gratitude.

“They should have spared themselves their trouble. There was no good reason to resurrect me,” Aruendiel said in the tone of one stating an unvarnished fact. “They would have won the war without me, eventually. I'd lived a long time. I had no close ties. My children were gone by then, even my grandchildren. My wife was dead. I had killed her not long before.”

He added the last piece of information deliberately, as though Nora might have forgotten it.

“Yes, you'd mentioned that,” she said coolly. Then, her voice rising slightly, she added: “That's something I can't figure out, by the way. I just don't understand. That you would kill someone weaker than yourself.” The thought of Aruendiel stabbing his wife had become more terrible over time, not less. “It seems”—she chose her words carefully—“dishonorable.”

Aruendiel's eyes narrowed. “She was the one who'd behaved with dishonor.”

“So it was all right to kill her?”

“I was very angry,” he said flatly.

“Is that an excuse?”

“Of course not. You asked for an explanation. She cried and clung to his body. What did she expect?” Aruendiel's voice was taut. “That I would spare him, the one who stole my wife from me? It was my right to challenge him. I used no magic. It was a fair fight. I won. And then she wept, she screamed. She was holding him, her belly swollen with
his
child. It was as though she did not even see me. I put the blade between her ribs and walked out of that cursed room.”

Nora thought of Aruendiel's swordplay with the rope-and-broomstick puppet in this very hall: snick snick snick thrust. She looked straight at him, taking in every line of the harsh, graven face; unable to think of what to say, she fell back on Shakespeare. “Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men?”

“More men? She betrayed
me
.” He added abruptly: “She loved him.”

“Well, presumably—”

Aruendiel fixed her with a pale glare. “You fail to understand. She loved him. I meant to free her from enchantment—but there was no enchantment. No spells of any kind infecting her heart. She'd gone with him of her own free will. It was the cleverest and cruelest part of Ilissa's revenge.”

“Ilissa?” Nora asked.

“Of course. It was all her doing.”

“
You
stabbed your wife.”

“Ilissa set the trap,” Aruendiel said. “It was her trickery. She hated me. She had been my mistress,” he added, his voice hard.

“You told me that once. So you think,” Nora said, not bothering to keep the disbelief out of her tone, “Ilissa arranged for your wife to fall in love with someone else?”

“Exactly.” He was silent, then spoke with a kind of grim eagerness, as though he had made up his mind to advance through hostile territory no matter what the cost: “From the moment my marriage was announced, I feared Ilissa would strike at my wife. I took precautions. I guarded Lusarniev with the most powerful protection spells I could devise. I watched to ensure that she was under no kind of enchantment.

“When Lusarniev gave birth to a stillborn boy, I thought instantly of Ilissa. But to all signs the child had died of natural causes. It was the same when Lusarniev miscarried again, and then again. The third time, I even called in another magician, my friend Nansis Abora. He waited upon my wife and then told me privately that he could find no enchantment, and he confirmed what the doctors had said, that she should regain her strength before she became pregnant again.

“Lusarniev herself was terribly fearful of bearing another dead child. So I absented myself from the marriage bed until she could grow stronger. It was not strictly necessary. There are magical means to keep babies from coming. But it made Lusarniev calmer in her mind.

“And then one day I came home to find my wife gone. She had left with Melinderic, a knight attached to my household.

“He was not much older than my wife. His grandfather had been one of my comrades in the Pernish wars. I had made Melinderic my principal deputy for the sake of the old connection and because he was intelligent, forthright, reliable. I trusted him completely.

“For all the care that I took to make sure that Ilissa had not enchanted my Lusarniev, I never thought to examine Melinderic.”

“You're saying that Ilissa put a love spell on
him
?” Nora asked.

“Yes, of course,” Aruendiel said impatiently. “You should know something about Faitoren love spells. It was quite powerful.”

“And your wife—” Against her will, Nora found herself believing him. Ignorant of magic, Lady Lusarniev would have known only that the young man was in love with her. And knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain.

“So he seduced her,” Aruendiel said. “And then there was a child on the way.” He laughed starkly. “All my concern for my wife's health went to good account, did it not? She only wished to avoid bearing a child to
me
.” More quietly, he added: “I would have staked my life on her honor. I had never known her to do anything before that was not correct and graceful.”

At these last words, Nora felt sudden dislike for the dead woman. She tried to ignore it in the cause of female solidarity. “But your life
wasn't
at stake, was it?” she said. Aruendiel did not answer. “I feel even sorrier for her now,” Nora said staunchly. “She died because of a love affair that wasn't even real. He only loved her because of magic.”

“Her feeling for him was real enough,” Aruendiel said acidly. “She made me a laughingstock. People said I should have known better, after all the times that I'd cuckolded other men. But—” He shook his head. “That was exactly why I never imagined she'd be unfaithful. The wives I'd seduced were discontented. Their husbands neglected them. Lusarniev—we'd been married only three years. I would have sworn she was completely happy to be my wife. I paid her every attention, and she ranked among the greatest ladies of the kingdom.”

“Why did you marry her?”

“Why?” He seemed surprised by the question. “She was precisely the kind of woman I intended to marry. An excellent lineage. A lovely face. She was only eighteen when I met her, but she had a composure and bearing that I admired, that came from being carefully brought up. She knew how to behave at court, how to run an estate. I understood the sort of people that she came from. She was perfectly suited to be my wife.”