Chapter 23: Time

Chapter 23: Time

Time

Kalen wanted to hold Fanna, but it seemed that every woman in the village was conspiring against him.

It had been seven weeks since she was born, and the house was still flooded each day with ladies scrubbing floors, cooking meals, doling out advice of varying quality, and grabbing the baby up the very moment she was set down.

Kalen was glad everyone recognized that his little sister was the loveliest baby in the world, since it was only the truth. But would it kill them to give him a moment alone with her?

Being passed around this much, poor Fanna might not even know who her own mother was, never mind her older brother.

It had been a hard labor, and Shelba was still mostly confined to bed, though she was well enough to take brief walks around her room now. Kalen had been terrified his mother was going to die during the birth. Hed heard her yell before, but never in such pain. Even now that she was recovering he was ill at ease.

For the past weeks, his attention had been fully devoted to his mother and Fanna. One half of him was always listening for Shelbas footsteps so that he could run to his parents room to stare at her until he reassured himself she was alive. The other half was perpetually busy trying to think of ways to pry his sister from the arms of their helpful neighbors.

It seemed that whenever he did manage to pick up Fanna, someone would appear to whisk her away and suggest some chore for Kalen to do instead.

He was surprised they could even come up with chores at this point. All of his usual assignments had been completed by his father, who had responded to the stress of his wifes pregnancy and his daughter's birth by trying to do the work of ten men.

Carrying a bag of quilting scraps to a storage cupboard, Kalen passed by one of the cabins small windows and spotted his father and uncle through the bubbled glass. They were re-barking a section of the pig barns roof with Lander. It wasn't entirely unnecessary, but the task could probably have waited a few years.

Uncle Holv had skipped his usual trip to the continent this summer, and had instead been making shorter trade runs between islands. Kalen would have been disappointed, since he had a stockpile of enchanted buttons and clasps sitting in his room collecting dust, but he knew his uncle had made the decision so that hed never be more than a few weeks away in case the family needed him. He had done the same when all his own children were born.

Kalen tucked away the quilting scraps, fetched eggs for the women in the kitchen who were making pies full of pork and dried fruit, and ran across the village to get a jar of pain-relieving herbs from a neighbors house in case his mother needed more than the ones they already had on hand.

He carried the herbs up to his parents room and found his mother sleeping peacefully. He crept inside, careful not to wake her, and set the herbs on top of the clothes chest. He was about to sneak back out when a small rustling sound caught his attention.

Kalen hurried over to the green-painted crib beside the bed and smiled widely at the sight of his little sister. Fanna was awake. Her small hands were clenched into fists, and she waved them at Kalen.

Hello, he whispered, resting his hand gently on top of her warm head. She was bald except for a fine layer of velvety blond fuzz. Arent you sleepy?

She made a sweet cooing noise, and Kalen's willpower crumbled. He reached into the crib and lifted her carefully, supporting her head the way his mother had shown him right after she was born. She was heavy in his arms, her dark red baby dress was soft, and she smelled good.

Fanna didnt seem to be in a crying mood, but Kalen didnt want her to wake their mother if that changed. Hed heard everyone talking about fresh air and how good it was for a babys health. And the weather was pleasant today.

Do you want to go outside? he murmured.

One of the babys tiny fists batted his tunic. Kalen took that to mean yes.

A few minutes later, to Kalens surprise, theyd actually managed to make their first real escape from the house.

For nearly an hour, Kalen sat in the grass with his little sister cradled in his lap, telling her about himself and the village and what he knew of the world beyond it. The afternoon sun was bright, and the grass was deep green and flecked with the little blue flowers that sprang up every summer. There were occasional banging noises from the roofing project, the distant cry of seabirds, and the sound of the households laundry flapping in the steady breeze.

Kalen pointed it all out and named it for the baby, going into a lot of detail. Who really knew for sure what went on in an infants mind? Kalens words today probably wouldnt change who Fanna grew up to be in the future, but if they could, then he'd better do a good job of explaining everything.

When he got to the flapping laundry, he sighed. The clothes are moving around like that on the drying cords because of the wind.

He blew lightly on Fannas pink cheeks.

The wind is like that, he told her. Its a feelingno, its a movement in the air. Wind is when the air moves around you, whether its fast or slow. Sometimes it makes noises or shakes leaves out of the trees or sends ships across the sea. It can do lots of different things. But it can never hold still. If it does, its not wind anymore.This chapter is updated by nov(e)(l)biin.com

Kalen thought about telling his sister that he and the wind were currently at odds with one another, but on the off chance she could understand him on some level, he didn't want to make her afraid of the weather.

Instead he waxed poetic about a bumblebee hed just spotted, stopping every now and then to make funny faces at Fanna.

Peace settled over Kalen. He wished he could pause the moment and keep the two of them inside it forever.

Then he drew in a deep breath, and he suddenly felt something tingling against his skin.

Really? he said, looking up at the cloudless blue sky in exasperation. Right now? Months of nothing and you choose this particular minute to appear?

The aurora wasn't here yet. But it was coming.

Kalen was surprised to find he felt annoyed by its arrival rather than excited. It had been almost a year since Arlade Glimont and Zevnie had left Hemarland, and until these past few weeks, hed been doing everything he could to improve his magic.

He was far from where he needed to be. And, to his shame, he was even farther from the place where hed imagined himself being when he watched the sorcerers boat depart.

But he'd been working tirelessly all that time, studying his books and taking full advantage of the four upsettingly weak auroras that had appeared. And now that he didnt have time to spare, here came another opportunity he ought to take if he was serious about his magic.

Can you feel that? he whispered to the baby in his arms.

Fannas lips parted, and she blew a spit bubble at him.

Exactly, said Kalen. The rift has stupid timing.

His mother wasnt yet well. His father was working on everything and anything in sight with frightening intensity. And Fanna might decide she liked one of the cousins better than Kalen if he disappeared for days right now.

It wouldnt be the end of the world, would it? he wondered. If just this once, I skipped going to the rock?

Kalen debated the matter as he carried his sister back to the house.

At the door, a middle aged woman in a dark brown skirt tried to pluck the baby from his arms and send him off to chop wood, but this time, Kalen resisted. Have you seen how much wood Da has piled up out there? he asked incredulously. Weve got so much that nobody in the village will need to chop any this winter! Anyway, I can carry my sister to her crib as well as anyone else here.

He was definitely being too rude, especially to a person whod spent most of her day cleaning his family's house out of the goodness of her heart. But reallydid Kalen look like someone who regularly dropped babies on their heads? For that matter, did he look like someone who knew how to split firewood?

Well, he did. But the last time hed volunteered to do it, his cousin Caris had come outside and taken the job from him because hed been so slow at it. And shed done better work in a dress while shouting about how Kalen would freeze to death if he were ever lost in the forest and his stupid wizarn powers malfunctioned.

Kalen told Fanna about the wood-chopping while he carried her back to their mother. She wriggled in his arms, less than invested in the tale. But it would be a funny story when she was old enough to understand it.

Caris is the second oldest in the house after Lander. And then theres me. Then Veern and Terth, who are year twins. Salla is next. Then Iless. And youre the youngest, which means we all get to look after you. Me especially.

In spite of himself, Kalen suddenly found himself doing the same math hed been doing ever since Fanna was born.

She would only be three years old when the next apprenticeship tournament happened. Shed be eight if Kalen waited until he was nineteen to attend.

Three was still a baby. Eight didnt feel much better.

When had time turned into such a precious resource? And what was Kalen supposed to do with his?

#

That evening, after dinner, Kalen sat on the bed beside his mother and sister and read a story aloud from The Book of Veila.

Veila was an obscure god, but strangely, there was still a temple built in her honor in Baitown. One of the priests had retired to Kalens village years ago, and with books being in short supply, Kalen hadnt said no when he was offered this one.

Instead of being recognized for anything particularly wondrous, Veila was best known for her keen hearing and her skill with a sling. She spent a lot of time napping, and whenever she heard one of her worshippers call for help, she would wake up to fling rocks at their enemies.

Many a robber had met their end when one of Veilas stones had dropped out of the sky on top of his head.

In the story Kalen read that night, Veila heard the hungry cries of a righteous man, and she woke from her nap to smash up a melon vendors stall he was walking past so that he could have something to eat.

His library might have expanded, but to Kalens distress, it was still a hodgepodge of information. It was nothing like the curriculum he dreamed of, and even less like the one Zevnie had assured him he would need if he wanted to move forward properly.

It wasnt Landers fault. Hed sold the enchanted buttons for good coin, and hed taken the money along with the letter and shopping list Kalen had given him to a renowned magical bookshop in the city of Lerits Tare.

But when the shop assistant had read the list, the price hed quoted for the books had been insurmountably high.

Id only have been able to bring you back one or two of them even if I added my own money to yours, and I didnt think that was what youd want, Lander had explained.

Kalen's cousin suspected the prices the shopkeep had quoted him were inflated and that the man simply thought he was too stupid to know better because he couldnt read. So hed gone to a less renowned store and done most of his own shopping by matching some of the words on Kalen's list to the titles on the books and the tags on the scrolls. When he was done, hed asked the owner what he could afford with the change, and that was how hed ended up with the recording jars.

The end result was an even odder library than Kalen had been in possession of previously. And he still wasnt sure if Lander had gotten him the healing magic book with the unnecessarily detailed nude drawings as a joke or if he thought it was something Kalen could actually use.

At this point, he was too embarrassed to ask.

On the positive side of things, Kalens cousin had managed to find another book of cantripsthough it was thinner and the patterns were more difficult to use than Brous. And because it was a good value for its size Lander had purchased an enormous tome called Theoretical Advancements of the Fourth Age, which was the thesis work of a junior magical historian from two decades past.

The authors writing style was tedious and meandering, but although it was painful to read, Kalen had been able to glean a lot of the basic information about magic that he was lacking from it. After several torturous trips through the book over the past winter, he had cobbled together a little booklet of his own that he had whimsically entitled Basic Magical Practices of Kalen from Hemarland.

From this exercise, Kalen had learned that terrible, hopeless fates awaited practitioners who didnt complete the novice stage of their training before the age of twelve. He didnt quite believe everything in Theoretical Advancements to be true, since there were at least a few things about magic that the author seemed unaware of. (Hed only given a few footnotes to the Archipelago, and there was no mention at all of the peculiarities that existed in magical islander families.)

Still, the dire descriptions of magicians whod been stunted by their poor early educations had made him anxious. Over the past year, hed worked harder than ever before, eager to set himself on something like the right path.

And here I am, lying in the floor. An eleven-year-old novice with no direction.

Thanks to Zevnie and his books, Kalen now understood what the difference was between the early ranks of practitioners.

In some cases, the distinction was firm and practical. Magicians became mages when they experienced redendrification of their pathways, meaning the small flexible paths used for internal pattern formation had grown substantial enough to branch into even more channels. For most types of practitioner, this process made an entirely new class of working possible.

In other cases, moving up a rank was more of an academic matter. The line between low magician and full magician could be extremely well defined in some families or for certain affinities, but for others it was less relevant and largely left up to the magicians personal determination.

But the boundary between novice and low magician was generally agreed upon by just about everyone. And Kalen was thoroughly stuck at it.

Three basic requirements that had to be met.

First, a magician had to fully map their pathways, which was defined as having memorized them.

That was fine and all if your magic was normal. But even though Kalen thought he had a better-than-average memory, it had taken him months. Inspired by Zevnies use of yarn as a metaphor for magical pathways, hed covered one of his bedroom walls with nails hammered in at varying depths, then hed used large quantities of string and thread to recreate the more complicated bits of his internal map to test himself.

He still had to review his pathways in their entirety a couple of times a week, just so that he didnt forget any of the fiddly little parts.

The second requirement for being recognized as a magician was easy at least. You had to be able to move your magic through every one of your pathways at will.

After a bit of practice, Kalen could even perform Zevnies gyring technique on his entire mana structure simultaneously, never mind a single branch. He wondered if doing that was hard for some people.

He hoped so. He wanted to have at least one place he excelled.

Kalen had managed the mapping. He had mastered moving his magic through himself. It was the final step that was proving troublesome.

It was a step that would have been easy if he was born into a magical family.

Well, if I was born into one that didnt randomly create children and then drop them into the ocean, he corrected himself.

He just needed to establish his affinity and then perform some beginner workings that were tuned to that affinity. That was it.

Castings that aligned strongly with your affinity would naturally strengthen your magic, sort out various quirks, and help you to quickly gain understanding. Especially the first few times you performed them.

A novices first properly aligned spells were like first milk for babies. They created the foundation for everything that came next, and if you didnt get that foundation soon enough, you apparently had no hope of making it to the mage level and beyond.

On Kalens bookshelf, tucked away between the pages of Cantripy of the Sorcerer Brou, was a note in Zevnies curly handwriting. He had read it so many times the paper had begun to tear at the creases, and he could recite it from memory.

Staring up at the map again, he ran through it in his mind.

Kalen,

Remember that learning your affinity is the first thing you must do during the next aurora. Everything else will stem from there. I do not know where my travels with Master Arlade will take me, so send a letter to my sister Vardnie on Makeeran when you have an answer. I will explain the situation to her in a letter of my own, and she will be able to get word to me more easily than you can.

We will help you find the materials you need to study your affinity at the low magician level.

Completing your book of cantrips should give you an answer. If (and only if!) it does not, what I have copied below is a method for casting through your nucleus. Please remember that it is not a spell intended for self-use. The effects will be subtle. You must pay close attention. If your affinity isnt made obvious to you, write the results you observe down in detail and include them in your letter to Vardnie.

As a last resort, if you give her permission, she can ask my grandmother for help.

The method is simple

The method might have been simple. But after all these months of trying, Kalen still didnt have his answers.

Driven by stubbornness and lots of very strong tea, hed made it through forty-six of the forty-seven cantrips in Brous book. As Kalen had thought, each cantrip represented a different sphere of magical influence, and Zevnie had agreed with him that going through them all was a good way to find his affinity.

There was no firm consensus on how many types of magic there were, but Brou had covered almost all of the common ones and a few esoteric ones besides. If one of them matched his affinity, it should have triggered something inside of Kalen. Zevnie had assured him that the feeling of casting a spell that aligned with your nature was unmistakable, and he wouldnt be confused when he found it.

Unfortunately there was no spatial magic cantrip. People didnt play around with spatial magic unless they had the knack for it, even at the high sorcerer level. And now that Kalen knew about the Orellens, he would never ask Lander to try to find a book on the subject. He had no desire to paint a target on his own back.

Besides that, to Kalens immense frustration, the one cantrip he still couldnt cast was the wind magic one hed thought might have some potential. It was infuriating.

Hed nearly wept at times, lying in his bed for endless nights, utterly drained of magic despite his array, picking away at his pathways until he could finally, finally form the proper pattern for the cantrip. It was the most difficult thing hed ever done. Hed finished it four months after Zevnie left.

And when the aurora had come and hed gone to the rock to try it out, it didnt work.

He did everything right, and it wouldnt work at all. Every other cantrip in the book worked, but not the one Kalen wanted. If Brou had appeared before him in that moment, Kalen would have kicked him in the nethers.

Which wouldnt have been fair, since Zevnies simple method for nucleic casting also didnt work.

A practitioners nucleus was an intersection point for all of their pathways. According to Theoretical Advancements, it was formed at the moment of your birth and shaped in your early childhood by the atmospheric magics youd been exposed to. Your nucleus either created your affinity or took on a certain shape because of it; there was some scholarly debate on the matter.

It was a bit of a guess, but Kalen had two places he thought might be his nucleus. All he had to do, according to Zevnies letter, was concentrate every bit of magic he could gather into those spots and then push it through.

Something would happen when he did, she said. It wouldnt be a real spell but a sort of undirected magical wobble you could interpret to figure out your affinity. It was a smaller scale version of what practitioner families did to test their children.

After casting through his nucleus, Kalen was supposed to be on the lookout for tiny changes in the world around hima blade of grass growing too long or a butterfly lighting on his forehead or a spark of static electricity making his fingers tingle.

Only nothing happened. He couldnt write down a single observation because there was nothing to observe. In one of his potential nucleuses, the cast felt like it was working at first. He gathered the magic in and pushed it through, and thenit was like it just disappeared into nothingness.

In the other nucleusthe one that reminded him of the pattern for the wind cantripKalen couldnt finish the cast. The harder he pushed, the more the magic inside him locked up and refused to budge.

Maybe theres no need for me to worry about what Ill do in a couple years time, he thought, staring at the illustrated mists covering the Archipelago. I doubt theres much point in traveling around the world if I cant even make it to low magician.

Only it couldnt stay that way. Whether he tried to hide from the world of practitioners or he deliberately sought it out, he couldnt afford to be weak if it ever found him.

He had to go to the rock. He had to make the wind cantrip or the nucleic casting or something work.

And until he did that, there was no point agonizing over the future.