The Last Orellen - Chapter 24

Chapter 24: The World in Motion

The World in Motion

Lander was tired of being roped into Jorn’s various household improvement projects, so as soon as the aurora appeared in the sky two mornings later, he turned up in Kalen’s room to volunteer himself as a pack mule.

“I need just one day off!” he groaned, plopping himself down on top of Kalen’s recently vacated mattress. “Please tell them you need your big, strong cousin to carry things up to your rock.”

“I wouldn’t mind the help,” Kalen admitted, pulling a patched and stained shirt over his head. If he wore his good clothes out into the forest they’d only get ruined. “I could take a lot more supplies if you’re going to come.”

“Yes! I’m a very useful man. You can’t do it without me.” Lander sprawled across Kalen’s bed. He was all long limbs these days. He was definitely going to be as tall as their fathers, though if he didn’t eventually fill out, he would end up looking like a giant grasshopper. “I don’t suppose you’d let me take a nap while you packed, too?”

Kalen laughed. “It’s first thing in the morning, you lazy bones! Go to the larder and get me some food. I think I’ll be gone for around a week this time.”

Lander moaned. “I’m just a servant in this house lately.”

An hour later, bags loaded to the brim with books, magical supplies, and food, they said their goodbyes to the family and set off into the woods. Lander was in high spirits. “Do you think they’d come out to get me if I didn’t go back home? I could always say I had to stay to protect you from wizarn-eating beasts.”

“I think they’d let you stay the week, but then they’d fill our ears with vinegar when we got home.”

“Might be worth it,” Lander said thoughtfully, leaping over a fallen limb with unnecessary zeal. The huge pack on his back bounced wildly, and Kalen tried to remember if anything breakable was tucked in it.

“If I were you, I’m not sure I would choose this week to abandon the family,” he said. “The work I’m doing is important, but it’s going to be deadly boring to watch. Why don’t you choose an aurora when I have something interesting planned?”

Lander’s smile took on a curious twist. “Kalen, I don’t know if you realize this, but almost everything you do as a wizarn is deadly boring to me. You spend hours drawing symbols and practicing strange rhymes and muttering over your books. And it all adds up to breaking needles or lighting fires or that weird thing you did that summoned flies—”

“That was a really difficult cantrip, though! And very unique. I’m not even sure what branch of magic it’s from. For concentrating the miasma of rot—”

“It was disgusting,” said Lander, wrinkling his nose. “Please don’t ever do it in front of a pretty girl.”

The mention of pretty girls set Kalen’s cousin off on one of his new favorite subjects—a sixteen-year-old with bright red hair and freckles named Dolana who’d recently visited the village from Baitown. She’d come to attend a relative’s wedding, and she probably hadn’t said ten words to Lander, but he held the memory of her visit dear anyway.

Kalen listened to his cousin ramble, obligingly agreeing that Dolana was the pinnacle of womanhood. Truthfully, Kalen hadn’t paid much attention to her, since he’d been mentally practicing a cantrip called for the drawing out of impurities during most of the wedding ceremony.

A few hours later, when they finally reached the rock, they dug bacon sandwiches out of the pack and shared lunch. Lander helped Kalen with the tedious business of scraping bird droppings off his various runic diagrams, noting that this was exactly what he’d meant when he said Kalen’s wizarn powers were boring. Then, they said their goodbyes.

Kalen waved as Lander disappeared into the trees. When his cousin was out of sight, he stretched and looked up at the aurora.

“All right,” he said, narrowing his eyes at it. “This time we’re going to make something happen.”

#

On the first day, Kalen focused on the wind cantrip. He’d long-since memorized both pattern and poem, and the only thing left was to do it. Over and over and over…

The fundamental act of working magic felt good to Kalen—the drawing in of it and the pushing out again. It was something between a physical feeling and an emotional one. It was taking in a deep, deep breath full of the sweetest air in the world, and it was also the particular satisfaction that came from letting it out again.

Allowing the magic to race through his pathways, or pushing it to do it faster when that was required, was enjoyable, too.

As always, it was in the shaping of it that things became difficult and frustrating.

At least Kalen had finally mastered this pattern. It still took a couple of minutes to complete, which meant he had to recite the verbal part of the spell with an unnatural slowness to make sure certain syllables matched up with the pace of the pattern formation in the way they were supposed to. But he stood in the middle of his rock, and he did it correctly.

Every tiny rivulet of his mana structure he’d called on to form the pattern was set with precision. Every word was in place. The magic gathered and poured into him willingly. It began flowing faster and faster through the internal pattern he was building then, as he reached the final line of the cantrip, everything ground to a halt.

No. Not again. Not this time.

Kalen struggled against the sudden inertia, but he didn’t even know how to struggle properly. He could hold the pattern in place for a while. He could speak the next syllable. But his magic—usually so mobile and obliging—was locking itself in place.

Why? he thought desperately as the pattern began to fray and the spell lost stability.

He’d had workings he should have been able to do fail before, but it was always because of some mistake he’d made. Or occasionally because he’d attempted to cast when he didn’t have enough magic available to draw on.

This awful freezing-up feeling was different.

The cantrip passed the point where it could possibly be recovered, and Kalen cursed in frustration and let it fall to pieces.

Immediately, his magic started behaving normally again, and he could move it through his pathways with ease.

There had to be something he was missing, but he’d spent months thinking about it and he couldn’t figure out what. And when the aurora was here, he couldn’t afford to sit around and ponder. He’d done all the thinking, and it was time for action.

After a brief break, he tried again. Faster.

Then again. Slower.

He spoke louder.

He skipped random intersections in the pattern in case there was some error in the copy drawn in the book.

He tried everything. Then he tried it all again.

I’ll get it, he told himself. I’ll get it if don’t give up.

But he didn’t.

And as the days passed, Kalen’s frustration turned into something more like desperation.

#

With the exception of the gold coin and Arlade Glimont’s token, the most expensive thing Kalen owned was a bottle of silver magepaint.

It was the real, undiluted, alchemical grade stuff, imported from the continent and sealed in a tall glass bottle etched all over with preservation circles.

The paint had been necessary for the array in Kalen’s bedroom, but he’d hesitated to ask his parents for it. Can I pour liquid silver all over the floor? was a hard request, even if Jorn and Shelba were fairly doting.

Kalen was afraid they’d only agreed because they felt guilty about telling him he couldn’t attend the apprenticeship tournament. He hoped that wasn’t the case, because he considered their opinion on that matter more of a suggestion than a rule.

At any rate, Kalen had used half the paint for the array and a bit more experimenting on his magnetic wood enchantment. He’d had every intention of making the rest of it last for years.

So it was with a feeling very much like physical pain that he found himself standing on top of his rock, three days into the aurora, mixing the powerful silver paint with the cheaper, gooey black and red stuff that could be found in Baitown.

Kalen’s hair was tangled. His feet ached from standing on stone for hours at time. He suspected that he smelled like armpit.

“Stupid cantrips. Stupid Zevnie. Stupid, stupid wind,” he muttered, shaking the bottle furiously. Suddenly in a praying mood, he asked Veila and her mighty sling if they could do anything about getting the paints to mix. And then he shook the bottle even harder.

There was writing on all three paint bottles telling you not to combine them with paints from other sources, as the magical ingredients might conflict. They didn’t bother telling you not to mix them with entirely different classes of magepaint, because what idiot would think that was a good idea?

“A poor one who hasn’t had a bath or a good night’s sleep in days!” Kalen shouted at the bottle so loudly that he startled a blackbird out of a nearby tree. The paints were just swirling around each other sluggishly. “Please, please work.”

His voice was starting to go hoarse from reciting the wind cantrip. His ability to focus when he cast was severely reduced. He’d sucked in magic and thrust it out again so many times that he was starting to feel hollow.

Or maybe he’d just forgotten lunch?

Finally, suffering from the kind of sleep-deprived and magic-fueled state in which a person should never make important decisions, Kalen had come up with a plan.

If Zevnie’s nucleic casting method didn’t work, and Brou’s wind cantrip didn’t work, Kalen would make up his own spell.

There were a lot of problems with this idea that he was aware of but choosing to ignore.

The most significant was the fact that lower level practitioners couldn’t actually make up spells.

They could stumble upon things that worked, especially for really old arts like enchanting where the basic rules were agreed upon and patterns had been in use for millennia. Kalen’s magnetic wood enchantment was made up of a rune pattern copied from the Orellen coin, after all. Probably it had been repurposed a few times over the years, and he’d ended up hitting on just the right combination of elements to dredge up an old enchantment that was little used these days, or used frequently but in a context where its end effect was different.

The thing about magic was that it was a battle against nature. It took great power and understanding to push nature hard enough and in just the right way to create something new.

That was why some peak level sorcerers created cantrips and wrote them down. It wasn’t because cantrips were useful. Generally they did things that an established spell could do better and easier. But creating a new one was a way to prove to your peers that you’d achieved a level of mastery beyond that of normal sorcerers. Verbal spells that relied on minimal patterns were considered particularly impressive, since you were pushing nature around with less help.

Magical workings grew more established in the fabric of reality as time passed and more people used them. As they grew more established, they usually became easier and easier to use. New spells, even ones with weak effects, were harder to use. They required more power.

“That’s what you’re for,” Kalen said to his bottle of paint, which was finally beginning to mix. He was panting from the effort of shaking it.

The aurora was currently at its peak. Kalen had suddenly wondered what would happen if he used a gathering array—a big one—right here on top of his rock?

He didn’t think he’d entirely taken leave of his senses. I’m not making up a new spell from scratch. I’m just combining two or three different techniques into one.

Probably there was a reason none of his books had ever explained how to do that, but they’d also never told him not to.

If he built the pattern for Brou’s wind cantrip around his primary nucleus, and he recited the cantrip at the same time as he used the technique for nucleic casting, and he stood in the center of the gathering array drawing in more power…

Well, something was going to happen.

Kalen didn’t really care what it was at this point as long as he stopped getting a whole lot of nothing for his efforts.

When he finally got the paint mixed, it looked like sparkly mud. But at least it was cohesive sparkly mud. He’d already laid out the pattern for the array with measuring strings. Now he just had to paint it. He hoped he’d have enough.

Kalen grabbed his case full of carefully maintained brushes and set to work.

The project took hours. He had planned on painting the array over the course of a couple of days, but after a while, he realized his paint was slowly coagulating. If he took time to sleep, he’d never get it laid down before it turned into something too thick to spread.

He worked fast and messy, and he was grateful he’d decided to do the measuring in advance. It was depressing to see his runes looking so sloppy, but at least the outline and intersecting points of the star pattern were crisp and accurate.

When it was finished, just after dawn, Kalen shoved most of a loaf of bread into his mouth and collapsed on his bedroll. He resented the necessity, but he was too tired to activate a simple heating circle at the moment. He’d probably pass out if he tried something as complicated and power-intensive as what he had in mind.

Exhausted, aching, and reeking of pungent-smelling paint, he finally gave himself permission to sleep.

He dreamed someone important was angry with him.

The two of them stood in a frightening place, where the sky was black and starless, and the ground was nothing but sand.

“I didn’t mean to,” said Kalen.

He wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for.

“I didn’t mean to,” the person repeated, his voice quietly furious. “But I did it anyway.”

“Who are you?” Kalen asked.

No matter how he looked, he couldn’t see the angry person’s face or body. He blinked and thought he was alone. Then, he blinked again and knew the other person was there.

“You’re going to ruin everything.” The words echoed around him as if they were coming from every direction at once.

The strange dream ended there. Or at least Kalen couldn’t remember any more of it when he woke, hours later, to the unpleasant feeling of a cold raindrop splattering on the tip of his nose.

Annoyed, he stared up at the sky. Dull gray clouds roiled over his head, but it wasn’t pouring. Yet. Well, I can just wait it out. A few more hours won’t—

Sudden realization had him scrambling to his feet. The paint! Had it dried? If it hadn’t, then the rain would destroy all his work.

He rushed to the array. The star pattern was huge, spanning more than half the rock’s surface, which made it look rather magnificent despite the ugly paint color.

Scarcely daring to breathe, Kalen reached out and touched one of the lines gently with his finger. When he pulled it away, paint with an unpleasant, gluey consistency adhered to it. It was more like snot than wet paint, but it definitely wasn’t dry.

Kalen stared at it in horror. “Shit,” he said quietly. “Shit. Pig shit. What do I do?”

He couldn’t cover the array with any of the materials he had here. He couldn’t make it dry any faster, and he definitely couldn’t stop the rain from falling.

Every drop of water that hit the paint was going to slowly degrade the pattern until it didn’t work at all.

Use it. Just use it as best you can so that it doesn’t go to waste.

It was the only choice. Kalen leaped to his feet and ran to the cubby carved at the top of the rock’s staircase. Thanks to Lander’s help, it was absolutely packed with supplies.

After a moment’s worth of agonizing, he picked up the seven books he liked slightly less than the others and one of his recording jars and rushed back over to the array. He placed a book in each of the settings that were meant for reagents, with the jar in the eighth.

Technically, practitioner texts were magical objects, since they were almost always enchanted in some way, whether it was to increase the durability or preserve the ink. None of Kalen’s had very powerful enchantments on them, and whatever they did have protecting them would no doubt be destroyed when he did this, which was why he had never resorted to empowering his bedroom array in this manner before.

He wished he’d brought his enormous supply of enchanted buttons along to use instead, but he hadn’t known he was going to be doing this when he left home.

And there was no time for second guessing now.

Teetering wildly on his tiptoes to avoid the wet paint, Kalen dropped the last book in its place, and then he hopped over the lines and runes to take his place in the center of the array.

There was plenty of atmospheric magic already, but he wanted more than plenty. He thought if the environment was even more saturated he might be able to cast the working back to back. Maybe he could thrust magic through his nucleus and then draw more in again before the cantrip pattern collapsed.

He’d planned to practice, but now there wasn’t time.

Thunder rumbled, and Kalen closed his eyes. He felt nervous, but he shoved his doubts aside. He began to build the internal pattern—not in the way he usually did, but around the tangled mass of the nucleus he’d decided to think of as his main one since it was larger and more complicated.

Kalen might have practiced the pattern a thousand times, but he hadn’t done it in this particular way, in this spot inside where his magic felt denser and more essential than everywhere else. It was difficult, as he’d known it would be. But though he’d assumed working in such a snarled area would be next to impossible, for some reason…

It’s not too hard. It’s at the limit of what I can do, but it’s not beyond it.

Around him, the magic was building. The array was working as it was supposed to, pulling power toward Kalen so that he could gather it as quickly as he had been able to during the peak of the enormous aurora that had brought Arlade and Zevnie to the island.

A couple of minutes later, he finished the pattern. Fixing the route he’d taken to complete it in his mind, he let it collapse. He had his pace down now. He could begin in truth.

“For the stirring of the air,” he said quietly.

The title wasn’t part of the cantrip, but saying it aloud felt like making a promise.

Kalen took a moment to glance at the world around his rock. The sky was darkening, and the wind was picking up.

I might not even notice if it works, he thought, fighting back a bitter wave of disappointment.

Zevnie had said the effect of pushing magic through your nucleus was subtle. And cantrips weren’t exactly flashy themselves. He doubted combining the two together was going to result in something more apparent than an actual storm.

But there’s no help for it. I’ll just have to hope.

He took a deep breath and began the chant with the first, somewhat mortifying, line: “A gentle kiss at break of day…”

The pattern’s first intersection locked in at “kiss,” the second immediately after on “break.”

It was working. He could do this.

“A gentle kiss at break of day,

beat of wing,

and bite of smoke

I..”

I have felt you.

The next line was I have felt you. But Kalen couldn’t say it yet because his magic was slowing down without his permission again. Before he was even halfway through with the pattern! It had never done that before.

This is bad.

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“I have felt—”

Kalen forced the next intersection, pushing his magic through his channels with all his might.

You, he thought, grasping frantically for the next critical point. But there was nothing to work with now. It was like his magic had solidified into mortar.

What do I do?

Kalen held the pattern in place. His shirt was half soaked, and the raindrops that were slowly destroying his chance to complete the spell were loud as a drum.

He could…draw in more power. It was building and building around him, tingling against his nerves, eager to be let in. Whether he could hold the pattern at the same time was a gamble, but maybe?

Kalen let the waiting magic in, and as if the act had broken a stalemate, his pathways were once again under his control.

“—you!”

Kalen shouted it with far too much enthusiasm, but the working held. Maybe this was it. This was the way to break through the uncomfortable stillness.

He started drawing in magic faster, pouring it into the pattern, trying to keep everything flowing and moving as it was supposed to. Simultaneously pulling in power and building the spell instead of doing just one at a time was like trying to juggle a dozen eggs at once.

“I have heard you.

I have smelled you

as you stir the air.

Eternal, endless,

lonely howl.

Howl across sand and sea.

Howl for me.

Howl.”

Kalen gasped. His eyes were clenched shut in concentration.

It was done. He’d finished the pattern. But it was wrong.

The cantrip wouldn’t cast. It was locked inside him, the same as before. It was still and unwilling to be brought into being. He’d poured far more magic into the working than usual, and while his pathways couldn’t exactly ache like they’d suffered a physical injury, this was pretty close to it.

He breathed hard, thinking.

The one thing he could do was draw in still more power and direct it toward the pattern and his nucleus.

It sounded like a bad idea, but it was the only one he had.

So he did it until he was soaking wet and dizzy. But as soon as the magic approached his nucleus, it just stopped. It was building and building at the edges of Kalen, flooding little-used pathways, battering against everything…until even those parts of him stilled and froze over like the winter sea.

I have to push the magic through, he thought desperately. If not through the cantrip, then through the nucleus itself. It will be less specific. Less difficult. More like a powerful shove. But a nucleic casting with the cantrip pattern set in place simultaneously…it should do something. That was what I had planned.

But he couldn’t make anything move.

What would happen if he just kept drawing power into his frozen mana structure? Where would it go when there was no more room?

Stop. You have to stop.

Kalen assumed it was his own doubt talking, but he didn’t want to stop. He wanted this to be over, and it wouldn’t be if he stopped. He would just have to try again a thousand more times, or ten thousand, while his choices weighed down on him and the tournament approached and people hunted Orellens and Fanna grew older.

Fanna.

Kalen suddenly remembered how he’d blown puffs of air onto her cheeks to explain what the wind was and how it worked. There was something there…something he hadn’t thought of…

Don’t do this.

What had he told Fanna about the wind? It was something simple and obvious because she was only a baby.

“It can never stop moving,” he murmured. “Because if it does, it’s not the wind anymore.”

Something was there. Something true that he couldn’t quite grasp.

Kalen opened his eyes, blinking away the drops of water that fell into them. He looked around him. The summer rainstorm wasn’t a violent one, but the trees all around his rock were swaying. Here and there, pine needles and leaves tore themselves free of their branches. Overhead, the clouds rolled across the sky.

He felt enlightened. And at the same time he felt bothered by that enlightenment.

The wind moved. It wasn’t a revelation. He’d always known it. So why did knowing it feel important in this moment?

It suddenly seemed obvious to Kalen that his magic shouldn’t be freezing up during a wind spell. That it couldn’t. When he cast a wind spell, he was supposed to be more alive than ever.

No.

The feeling was so strong, Kalen heard it as clearly as a word spoken aloud. He narrowed his eyes. He searched his mind. That no wasn’t mine.

At least, it wasn’t consciously his.

He didn’t quite understand what was going on, but there was something he wanted to try. He reached inside himself and checked over the intersections of the cantrip pattern. Shockingly, it still held…maybe because his magic was impersonating a rock right now.

Kalen straightened his spine. He stared at the swaying trees. Then, in a gesture that felt strangely familiar even though he’d never done it before, he lifted a hand and drew it through the air in a sweeping motion, making a shape.

Kalen didn’t recognize it. The part of him that had said no did, and as it did, that part crumbled away until only Kalen and his newfound certainty remained. And he understood. This shape was like his own nucleus, but it was minimized somehow, stripped to its very essence.

As he finished drawing the the shape, words came to him. They bubbled up like they’d always been inside him, just waiting to be freed.

“The wind moves,” he said. “And so do I.”

Kalen’s magic roared to life.

Everything that happened next happened so fast he couldn’t keep up.

Like a river bursting free of a dam, power raced through him. All of it had been brought to life in an instant, and any control he might have had was wrested from him before he even realized he needed to bring it to bear.

He’d been pushing all of that power—too much of it—toward the cantrip pattern and his nucleus. It punched through the cantrip as easily as a fist through glass. Kalen screamed in terror as his nucleus caught the entirety of it.

Out! I have to push it out, or it’ll tear me apart!

But before thought could become action, something else went wrong.

A vast, horrible, foreign something grabbed hold of Kalen. Not his body, but him. His magic. His soul. Everything he was.

And then it tried to climb in.

For less than a breath, Kalen felt pain that seemed to consume the whole universe. But his self—everything about him that the monster was grabbing at—rejected the abomination utterly.

Kalen imagined he heard the thing howl in agony as it clung to him for a moment.

Then, the place he thought of as his second potential nucleus flared, and the monster vanished.

Kalen didn’t have time to celebrate. Something had just torn inside of him. Whether it was from his own explosion of magic or the abomination’s assault, he didn’t know. He didn’t even know what the torn thing was. He only felt the rip and knew something very important to his being had just come undone.

He panicked and searched himself, trying to find the damaged place and fix it. But it was useless.

He couldn’t even seem to find his own mana structure at the moment.

Kalen was in darkness.

Am I still me? Am I still alive? Kalen wondered.

He decided that he was.

I should open my eyes, then. He needed to look over his body and see for himself what damage had been done. He was sure it was the stuff of nightmares.

After what seemed like an eternity, he finally managed to look around him. Then, he closed his eyes and opened them again. Several times.

Where’d my rock go?

For that matter, where had the rest of the island gone?

Kalen was standing in a practitioner’s cluttered study. It was beautiful. Thousands of magical books, scrolls, and mysterious baubles lined the dark wood shelves. A thick, richly patterned carpet covered the floor. A desk full of inkwells and sheaves of paper and strange metal devices was situated under a large mullioned window.

And beyond that window was a wet, green world that was definitely not Hemarland.

Kalen walked over to the window to examine the view. The plants growing in the dappled afternoon sunlight were lush and healthy and all wrong. A cloud of insects that glittered like new snow swarmed over a pond full of slimy-looking moss.

There were no fir trees. No mountains. No ocean.

And as Kalen stared, lost and growing worried, a large orange fish jumped out of the pond and flew on scaled wings to snap up a small furry animal that was running across a nearby tree branch.

Kalen staggered back from the glass, bumping into a chair…only instead of bumping into the chair, he stepped through it like it didn’t exist at all.

What? Kalen gaped at the piece of furniture.

Was it some kind of illusion? He’d read about them. He understood that it was possible with advanced light magic, but the chair looked so real.

Kalen walked back and forth through it a few times, trying to analyze the situation instead of panicking. He wasn’t hurt, obviously. His body looked fine. An illusion of a chair was unexpected, but not necessarily threatening.

The flying, carnivorous fish was threatening, but it was outside. And since Kalen had just determined that he’d never set foot near that pond, it couldn’t harm him either.

Kalen walked over to the desk full of all the interesting magical things and discovered it was an illusion too. His hand fell right through it. For a few minutes, he went around the room, jabbing things and kicking them. Nothing was solid!

And when he stomped solidly on the floor, his foot pushed through with no resistance.

Calm down. Take a deep breath. Think it through. You’ve got to get back home.

Kalen tried to take a deep breath to soothe his nerves, and things immediately got much, much worse.

He could make a motion that was like breathing. In fact, he had been doing it automatically ever since he got to this place. But now that he was focusing on it, there was no feeling of air rushing into his chest.

He wasn’t breathing. He was fake breathing. And come to think of it…

Kalen reached out and put his hand through the desk again. Was the desk really an illusion? Or was Kalen just not able to interact with anything?

Even the ground beneath his feet couldn’t be felt properly. It was more like he was standing on it because he assumed he should be.

Kalen heard a door open and close, and as he did, he realized he wasn’t hearing as he usually did. It was more like he’d become aware that the sound existed.

A middle aged man in long white robes entered the room. He had large ears and neatly combed brown hair. Maybe he was the one who’d done this to Kalen, but if that was the case, at least he would have answers.

Kalen bowed hastily. It was his first ever attempt at a bow, but he felt it was necessary, since he needed help badly and this man must be a powerful practitioner if this was his study. “Excuse me, sir. Can you please tell me where I am and what’s going on? I’m not sure how I got here.”

The man plucked a book off the shelf. Then he walked right up to Kalen, and without even glancing away from the book in his hand, he kept walking right through him.

Kalen straightened up from his bow.

“Can you hear me?” he said. “Sir? Please?”

When he got no response, he walked right up to the mysterious robed man and screamed in his ear.

“Hey, Megimon,” said a voice from another room, “what are you doing in there?”

“What?” the man answered, his tone distracted. “I’m reading Lajulian’s Twelfth. Why? Are we out of tea again?”

A moment later, a short creature appeared in the doorway. Kalen thought she was a she, but this assumption was based mostly on the fact that she was wearing a crown of ugly, oozing flowers in her long, dark green hair. Her skin was a paler green. She had thin arms and legs, and she wore a gray shirt with no back. Presumably so that her one large translucent wing could move freely.

All of this was unsettling enough, but the creature’s eyes were the most disconcerting part of her. They were set in her head in the expected place, and they were shaped like a human’s. But they were shiny and iridescent and pupil-less. Like a bug’s eyes.

As soon as she entered the room, those eyes landed on Kalen. Her mouth turned up at the corners in a too-wide grin.

Before Kalen could decide whether to try talking to her or running away from her, she spun across the carpet on her small bare feet like a festival dancer.

“Scratches, you came back!” she cried joyfully, spreading her arms wide. “Give Mother Lutcha a hug!”

Kalen jumped away from her, looking around for anyone who might be named Scratches.

“Are you…are you talking to me?” he asked finally, when the toddler-sized green person didn’t change positions.

Her arms still held out for a hug, Lutcha frowned. “Scratches, have you already learned speech? Wow, that was fast! Has someone else been feeding you? I don’t like that. You’re my kitten. Tell mother who it was so she can deal with them.”

Oh, Scratches is a cat.

Kalen wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disturbed.

“If you’re talking to me, I’m not Scratches. I’m Kalen. I’m here accidentally, and I really, really want to go back home. Please. Ma’am.”

The green woman’s arms dropped to her side. She glanced toward the desk, where the man was rummaging around in a drawer like he hadn’t heard a single word they’d said. Then, she leaned closer to Kalen, and a shimmer of light ran back and forth across her eyes.

“Hmmm…I’m not as good at making out astral entities as I used to be. Better at hearing than seeing. What kind of spirit are you, Kaaliin? Minor demon? Ghost of an ascended? Outcast god? Nondescript chaotic being? I don’t judge! But I’m contractually obligated to protect that idiot over there who can’t even perceive the plane you’re on, so I need to know whether you’re for eating or for using or for friendly banter.”

Well, thought Kalen. At least she’s someone I can communicate with. “You can see me then? And hear me? I’m not any of those things you named. I’m just Kalen. I’m a regular boy. From Hemarland. I…I love friendly banter.”

Friendly banter was much, much better than those other two options.

“Hemarland? Where is…?” She blinked a pair of eyelids that moved sideways,andthen a look of realization crossed her green face. “Do you mean the island? Emerald of the Northern Sea and all that?”

“Yes!” Kalen cried, his fear diminished if not entirely forgotten in his relief. He took a step closer to her. “You know it! Can you help me get back? I was casting a spell, and I made a mistake, and I ended up here.”

Lutcha had a very peculiar expression on her face now. She chewed on her bottom lip with pointed teeth, then spun on her toes like a dancer again and headed over to the bookshelf. She climbed up it, ignoring the white-robed man’s sigh of exasperation, and she peered for a moment at a large golden disc covered in runes.

She hopped back down after only a second and came back to Kalen.

She walked in a circle around him, and he tried to hold still while she examined him closely. He hoped good behavior would get him home faster. The light—was it magic?—shimmered over Lutcha’s eyes again and again.

When she finally stopped, she stood for a while just staring at him, head tilted so that her chin rested on her hand.

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“Hey,” she said, “what kind of spell were you casting to screw yourself up this bad? Because this is really something else.”

“A wind cantrip.”

“Wind?” Her face brightened at once, and she leaped toward him.

He dodged her.

“It’s you!” she trilled happily, running at him once more. “You’ve nearly killed yourself again! And this time you did it in such an exciting way! This is wonderful. Come give Mother Lutcha a hug!”