The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

as Elizabeth declared: “You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it”?)

“More of the same trivialities of courtship, you mean,” Aruendiel said dismissively. “It is a wonder that anyone took the trouble to write down anything so negligible.” Nora’s grammar and orthography still needed polishing, he added, but she would make faster progress if she focused on the exercises in her grammar book.

Faster, faster. Aruendiel had a new preoccupation with how quickly she was advancing. He had started her on water magic while they were still deep in fire magic. It was hard to switch back and forth between the two, since water required an entirely different mind-set, but Aruendiel was unsympathetic. A good magician should be able to draw on multiple sources of power at the same time. Water was not as responsive as fire, it was secretive and mutable and aloof, you had to wait for it to heed you.

She had less time for household chores, for which she was secretly grateful, and yet she felt torn because it meant more work for Mrs. Toristel, for whom she felt a new sense of responsibility. It seemed unfair that Mrs. Toristel would never know how closely she and he were related. With a few words, Nora thought, she could reveal the truth. But Aruendiel would be furious. Or somehow wounded by her betrayal.

The dead kiss pulled on its unseen chain, knocking against her heart. It was as persistent and troublesome as that damned ring of Raclin’s that she still could not remove from her finger, either. The kiss was worse. Coward, it said to her. What were you afraid of?

Perversely, she had started to dream about him. Very ordinary dreams, mostly—once she dreamed they were driving in a car together in Washington, D.C., of all places—but sometimes (too often? not often enough?) the dreams were blatantly erotic. Then she was amazed at how warm and solid his long body felt as she wrapped her arms around him and he kissed her with a mouth that was fervent and sure. One night the kiss went on and on, Aruendiel’s hand cupping her breast—Nora arching herself against him, wanting to devour him, yet knowing that Mrs. Toristel could walk into the room any minute—Aruendiel pulling up her skirt—pressing deliberately into the aching secret heat between her legs—

Nora woke up. She found she was panting slightly. Raclin was sitting on the edge of her bed, smirking. He looked very handsome in the moonlight.

“Are you that desperate, that you’d screw him?” he asked. “I thought my wife was used to better than that.”

“At least he’s not a monster,” Nora said.

Raclin laughed again. Ilissa’s voice, from somewhere Nora couldn’t see, called: “Raclin? What are you doing?”

“It was only a dream, Mother,” Raclin said, glancing over his shoulder.

Ilissa giggled. “Oh, then leave poor Nora alone,” she said.

Nora woke up for real that time, in the freezing dark of her bedroom. She lay for a long time without moving, listening with dread for Ilissa’s and Raclin’s voices to return, also wishing she could take a long, hot shower and scrub away a lingering sense of befoulment. She thought about calling out to Aruendiel, a few rooms away—Raclin had seemed so real—but another kind of anxiety stopped her.

In the daylight, the dream itself looked much more like psychological dramatizing than Faitoren magic. Meeting Aruendiel unexpectedly that morning, she was flustered enough to drop a jug of water. She did a spell to collect the spilled water and flubbed it—twice. She was almost grateful for his caustic critique of her performance, because it meant she didn’t have to say anything.

Otherwise, the winter days blended almost seamlessly together like snow falling on snow. Mrs. Toristel knitted dozens of socks. Mr. Toristel’s arthritis flared up, got better. When the snow was too deep for walking or riding, Aruendiel practiced his swordplay in the great hall against an opponent jerry-rigged into life from old rope, a broomstick, and a powerful animation spell. There was no grace in the way that he moved—the old broken places in his frame were more obvious than ever—but he wielded the sword against the puppet with grim precision. Nora developed an exasperating tic in her spellcraft, a light rain—sometimes sleet—that fell as she worked through particularly challenging spells. At first she was rather pleased with herself—she had not even gotten to weather magic!—but after the second wetting it was only a nuisance. Aruendiel lectured her once again on control and banished her to the great hall to practice spells, safely away from his library.

Then, one afternoon in the second month of the year, Aruendiel received a letter from the magician Nansis Abora. Something white bumped against the glass of Aruendiel’s study window. When he brought it inside, Nora saw that it was parchment that had been folded into an angular birdlike shape, like an origami crane. It quivered in Aruendiel’s hand and then was quiet.

After reading the letter, Aruendiel snorted. “Nansis thinks he’s reconstructed Mernil Blueskin’s observation spell. The right one, this time.”

“What do you mean, this time?”

“Oh, some years ago a magician named Klexin Ornasorn claimed to have rediscovered the Blueskin observation spell hidden in the binding of an old book on weather forecasting. Of course he wouldn’t let any other magician read the spell, let alone try it.” His mouth twitched. “Hirizjahkinis and I went to some trouble to obtain it. It was an obvious fake. Someone’s observation spell, but not Blueskin’s.”

“What is Blueskin’s observation spell?”

“An observation spell,” he said, “lets a magician see what’s happening elsewhere. Mernil Blueskin devised the first true observation spell back in the days of the Thaw. It was lost centuries ago, but it was supposed to be the best of its kind, with almost limitless range. As far as the other side of the world—even other worlds.”

“Other worlds?” Nora repeated. “Really.”

“At least, so the story goes,” Aruendiel said thoughtfully, nodding. “It would be intriguing if—” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. Scanning the shelves, he took down a couple of books and disappeared up the stairs to his workroom, still holding Nansis’s letter.

Nora was in the great hall, attempting a basic transformation—changing the color of a bowl from red to blue, and trying to ignore the delicate drizzle that swirled intermittently around her head—when Aruendiel reappeared, some hours later.

There was new energy in his uneven step. “It’s a good spell,” he said. “Better than I expected. I’ve been looking around, at various things all over the world. Semr. Skililand—the western continent. The range is excellent. It could be Blueskin’s spell.”

Nora set the bowl, which had achieved a rich eggplant tint, carefully aside. “Did you try looking outside this world?” she asked.

“Not yet. Come,” he said, with a lift of his chin. “I require your assistance.”

She followed him into the tower, up the stairs. At the top, his workroom was dark. Aruendiel lit a candle, and Nora saw a circle drawn on the floor in charcoal, about eight feet in diameter.

“Take this,” Aruendiel said, handing her the candle. He lit another for himself. “Now, we are almost ready. We are going to have a look at your world.”

“All right,” said Nora, taking a deep breath. “Any particular part of my world?”

“Anywhere you like,” he said carelessly. “But choose something. The spell works better, I find, the more specific your intentions.”

Nora had a momentary impulse to show Aruendiel her apartment and some of her regular campus haunts, then dismissed the idea as faintly embarrassing. There were all the places she’d always wanted to visit: Angkor Wat, the Lake District, Tokyo. Aruendiel would probably be impressed by Tokyo. But that wasn’t what she really wanted to see.

“Have you chosen a place?” Aruendiel asked impatiently.

“Yes. What do I do now?”

“Think of it as you would any destination, as you set out on a journey—with some purpose, some intention. Keep tight hold of your candle. And then step into the circle.”

That was all? She felt distinctly skeptical as she stepped across the charcoal line. But she felt the internal shudder that signaled strong magic—and the light from her candle hit vague clutter on the ground that she had not noticed before. A stone floor—no, cement. Something caught the light and threw it back to her: chrome, spokes, glittery pink and purple streamers. A little girl’s bike. Next to it, a lawn mower. Over there, a blurry glistening bulk that she knew, even without being able to see it clearly, was a silver Toyota Camry.