I looked at that watery light for a long time before climbing back up to the room where they waited. Murzy nodded to me once more, not failing to notice the stains of slime on my hands, falling into the common folk nursery talk they often used when it suited them.
“Tha’s been adown the deeps? Nasty down there.”
“I’ve been discovering window magics, Murzy. It came to me all at once.”
“Well, if it comes at all, it comes all at once.”
I sat down at Murzy’s feet, suddenly adrift from the possession of knowing, the certainty of action. I knew, yes, but what was it I knew? “Different,” I said to her, feeling my way. “Different windows. Magic, because they have an out and an in, because they are linkages of different kinds. Because they are built. Because they are dreamed through and looked through. But—something more, I guess ...”
“Well, there’s actually going through a window, isn’t there? Or calling someone through a window. Or summoning.”
“Summoning?” I thought about that. Summoning. Through windows. Of course. “If one summoned through a window—if one did—what answered the summons would be different, depending on the window, wouldn’t it?” I wasn’t sure about this, and yet it made a certain kind of sense. I might have summoned something into the dungeon very different from a thing I could summon into this room now.
“Think of calling to a lover,” said Margaret Foxmitten dreamily, her needle flashing in the sun. “Calling from this room. Think of calling something from the dungeon. Think of summoning a presence. Into this room. Into the dungeon.”
“Ah,” I said, getting some misty idea of what they were getting at. “If I ... if I wanted to summon something frightening or horrid, I’d call something out of the dungeon through that high, watery window. And I would lead it in again through the open portcullis.”
“You could do that,” said Bets. “Or you could find the tiny, square window which looks out through an iron grille over the pit where ancient bones were dropped. You might call something in through that window more dreadful still.”
“But,” said Murzy, ‘suppose you wanted to summon Where Old Gods Are?” Where Old Gods Are was the name of a very powerful spell they had taught me.
“I would summon through this window, here,” I said, opening the shutters and looking out on the peaceful pastures and the blowing green of leaves.
“Good,” said Murzy, packing up her work. “Think about that.”
I thought about it for some time, putting bits and pieces of it in place in my head. Not all of it connected to other things I knew, but some of it did. By that time it was dark, so we returned to Schooltown and the Festival.
So, came Festival morning and they decked me out like the Festival Horse, all ribbons. Murzy had given me a new blue tunic with a cape to match, and Bets Battereye spent most of the previous evening braiding my hair wet so it would wave. “We want you to be a credit to us,” she said, yanking bits of hair into place. I thought it unlikely I’d be much credit to them bald, which is what it felt like, but I’d learned that uncomplaining silence was best in dealing with the dams. Come morning, the hair was brushed out into a wavy cloud, then they dressed me up and told me to stay in the room and stay clean until they came for me. So I pulled a chair over to the sill, and opened the casements wide. I could see people going by, and it put me in a fever of anticipation, but nothing would hurry them so I spent the time practicing summons and distraints.
It was a good window for summoning, broad and low, with a wide sill overhanging a fountain-splashed courtyard. Smell of water on the stones—that’s important for some summons. You know the smell? That first smell of water on dry earth or dry stone? That’s the grow smell. Water, earth, and grow smell make one of the major triads of the Primary Extension of the Arcanum. That’s not secret. Everyone knows that. Gardeners use it all the time. Beneath the window was a herb garden with the shatter-grass, bergamot, lady’s bell triad. There were five other triads within sight or smell, too, including two other majors, making seven all together. Not bad for a mere learner, and more than enough to call up something fairly powerful if I’d liked.
Sarah brought me a hot nutpie. “I know you’re starving, but patience a bit longer, chile. We’ve called the Healer for Tess. Poor thing, she’s no younger than she was yesterday, and it tells upon her. Still, give us a bit and we’ll be ready to go festivate with the rest of the town.”
At which I fidgeted, sighed, cut a slice of my pie, and laid out the summoning tools once more. Murzy said there was no such thing as practicing too much.
What would I practice this time? Lovers Come Calling, that’s what. The window was perfect for Lovers Come Calling, so I would have window magic and the summons reinforcing one another. First the Pattern. Two hairs from my head. Mirror. Bell. Coal from the fire. Spidersilk for winding, binding. Spidersilk? Murzy’s sister Kate kept her place entirely too clean.
Finally I found some at the corner of the chimney. Then lay it all out
