Gift of the Unmage (25 page)

“Thea…,” Zoë began, as soon as they were alone.

“You can’t tell anyone, Aunt Zoë. Not
anyone
.”

“Tell them what? Thea,
what
are you up to? You scared the living daylights out of me on the phone. You were babbling about the Faele and something about doing what you were ‘made’ to do….”

“It’s Matay’ta,” Thea said, offering a luminous smile to her aunt.

“It’s
what
?”

“The moon, it’s Matay’ta—it’s the moon of finding yourself, understanding yourself. And I think I have, Aunt Zoë. I think I finally have. Magic is where you find it.”

1.

“Y
OUR AUNT IS YANKING
you home early because of a family emergency?” Magpie said later that night from the shadows of her pillow. “What’s the emergency?”

“I am,” Thea said. The moon in the sky had changed: It was Raqu’ta, the Long Nights Moon, the moon of gaining wisdom, of coming of age. Thea knew there were many things she had yet to understand, but she also knew that she had crossed some invisible line, had emerged from what had been a chrysalis. She was not yet sure what form she had taken, but she could feel the change stirring her blood.

“Oh,” Magpie said. “Figures.” There was a small, painful pause, and then her voice dropped into an even lower whisper. “Are you
coming back here?”

“Of course I am. I already told Aunt Zoë she couldn’t tell anybody about what happened. And since nobody knows, I am still a magical ‘blank slate.’ I belong here.”

“But did you tell
her
what happened?”

“Yes, but she still doesn’t quite believe it.”

“I still don’t know what you did, exactly,” Magpie said.

“What
we
did. You were with me, that first time, all of you. And the second time, you followed me on your own. And without you, Magpie, it would all have been a waste. When
I
called, the Nothing came, but it took you to call the Whale. And it took all of us to Hunt it.”

“But what,” Magpie whispered, “did we
do
, exactly…?”

Thea was about to reply when she heard the door to their room snick open quietly, and a thin ribbon of light briefly snaked into the dark room before the door was shut again just as quietly.

“Are you guys awake?” hissed a familiar voice.

“Tess?” Thea said, sitting up in bed.

“Guilty,” Tess said, padding over and perching on the end of Thea’s bed. “Are you really leaving tomorrow?”

Thea sighed. “Yes, I am. My aunt is taking me home.”

“I’m not surprised. After what you did, they’ll want to do all sorts of tests—”

“Tess,” Thea said urgently, “nobody must know about this. Not now. Not yet, anyway. Terry understands. When I said that the transcript of the Whale Hunt had to be erased from the hard drive of the computer—we don’t want anyone finding any trace of it.”

“He’s already done that,” Tess said. “But I’m confused. What happened? What happens next?”

“Tess, what
was
the Nothing?”

“It was a…It was…It…How should
I
know?” Tess whispered. “The best mages in the world were trying to figure it out, and nobody seemed to understand it. You should ask your folks!”

“Where did it come from? What exactly did it want? Why was it aimed at magic…at our people?” Thea continued, undeterred.

Tess was staring at Thea, her eyes only a glitter in the soft light coming into the room through the uncurtained window. “You sound like you know,” she said. “What are you saying?”

“Somehow, we dealt with this huge and
dreadful danger that was threatening the entire magical community,” Thea said. “But we did it.
We
did it. A bunch of kids from a school for magical discards. And we did it in a way that is considered to be impossible. And it was the only way that it could have been done. The only way to challenge that thing and win was to take it into a place where it did not expect to be challenged, did not expect to lose. When others tried, they used magic, and they
died
for it. Right?”

“I guess,” Tess said slowly.

“But I heard you,” Magpie said slowly. “I
heard
you, Thea. You spoke to the Whale. You spoke of ‘the newest magic.’ What did you mean? The computers?”

“Yes, the computers,” Thea said. “The only thing that was considered to be totally outside the magical realm—they’re inert, they aren’t supposed to respond to magic at all. And yet we used one to create something that nobody can deny was a pure enchantment. We opened the road into another world—”

“No,
you
did that,” Tess said.

“Thea, I really do hate computers,” Magpie said. “I have never understood them, I never wanted to understand them—”

“And Terry and I are supposed to be allergic,” Tess murmured. “To
real
magic, anyway.”

“But this was real magic,” Magpie said. “Just not something that anybody’s seen before. They’ll have a heap of questions for us before they’re done—I saw the look on the principal’s face. He doesn’t know what we were up to, but he knows we were up to
something,
and he didn’t like it.”

“What? We were just doing the assignments we were told to do,” Tess said, her voice full of aggrieved innocence. “They cannot prove a thing. Wait a minute. Now I’m doing a Thea. Just why, exactly, is this supposed to be such a huge secret? You’ve just made an enormous breakthrough—computers can be magical, after all—what are you trying to hide?”

“Me,” Thea said, her voice very thin. “I think all of this might have been…Well, they told me I had chosen not to do magic in this world, my world, the one into which I was born….”

“Who told you that?” Tess said.

“Long story,” Magpie said.

“You can tell her tomorrow, Magpie,” Thea said. “The point is, the Alphiri knew the magic was there. They came for me before, you know. They knew they were looking for something, but
they didn’t know what. They never do anything for nothing, so they might simply have decided to play their hand, and see what would happen.”

“The
Alphiri
?” Tess said, astonished. “But what did the Alphiri have to do with…Wait a minute…. You mean to tell me that you think that the Alphiri brought the Nothing here?”

“All I know is that the Alphiri are waiting for me to suddenly turn into…into that Double Seventh that I was supposed to be from the cradle and never was,” Thea said. “It was magic they were after in our world, and they always went for the strongest bargain that could be made—and if I could be triggered into being everything that they had been led to believe I could be, they wanted that. I have no way of knowing what they want to do with me. But whatever it is, I don’t trust it. I don’t trust
them
.”

“But the Nothing was drawn to magic, and then destroyed the strongest magic that was turned against it,” Tess said. “What kind of bargain was that? What could possibly be gained by destroying the very thing you say they wanted? And besides…this wasn’t aimed at
you,
Thea. It ate up whatever…
whoever
…was in its path.”

“They came to my parents when I was this
tall,” Thea said, measuring an improbable toddler-height from the floor with her hand, palm down. “They wanted things, then. But…I didn’t do what they wanted, what they expected, what they bargained for. And in the meantime…there was other magic to be gathered.”

“So if you had done what the Alphiri wanted and revealed that you had the magic after all, wouldn’t the Nothing have destroyed
you
? Besides, if you did have such magic, what did they think you were doing here in this school?”

“That’s always part of the bargain,” Thea said mournfully. “That vow of, ‘I’ll have it, or nobody else will.’ And if there’s a bargain, you can bet on it that there’s an Alphiri somewhere nearby. And anyway…we have no idea what the Nothing did with the people it took. Did you see, when we were leaving? On the shore?”

“The ghosts,” Magpie whispered.

“Are they still alive? Can they come back?” Tess asked. “Do you think…?”

“I don’t know if that Portal leads in both directions,” said Thea. “I have no idea what really happened, or where they were taken, but I do think they were prisoners, and now they are free. Who knows? One day they might all find
their way back here? But the point is, Tess,
I
did exactly what they wanted me to do. I don’t know if it’s what they expected, or if they can put a use to it, but they woke it, somehow, or I chose to let it wake up. And they wanted me all along. They offered to buy me from my parents, years ago, when I was still a baby. They were apparently rather taken aback when my dad told them that our people don’t sell their children. But Tess…my family doesn’t know about it yet, about what happened here, to me, to all of us, and I don’t want them to. I don’t want anyone to know about any of what happened here yesterday. Not until I am more sure of what happens next. Promise me you won’t tell. Please.”

“Of course,” Magpie said sturdily.

Tess hesitated. “But my family will ask…,” she began.

“You and Terry at least have an excellent excuse,” Thea said. “You guys simply can’t talk about it. It is magic, after all.”

“This is true,” Tess said. “Terry won’t be able to open his yap without choking on it.”

“And you won’t tell?”

“My lips are sealed,” Tess said theatrically, kissing her fingers.

“What about Ben?” Magpie whispered.

“He can’t stop sneezing long enough to get a word in edgewise,” Thea said, her teeth a white gleam in the dark.

“Yeah,” Magpie said slowly, as if something had just become clear in her mind. “He
did
say he could smell something, way back, and he couldn’t tell what it was. Maybe it was a hint of Alphiri magic, Thea, the little bit that hung around you.”

“But that’s just it,” Thea said. “The Alphiri aren’t magic. They don’t
have
magic. That’s what this whole thing is…”

“Ben won’t talk,” Tess said. “I’ll have a word with him in the morning. And besides, he feels awfully guilty about that Whale.”

“I feel bad about that, too,” Thea said. “But you can let him off that particular hook. The Whale, at least, was a life freely offered.”

“He knows that,” Magpie said gently.

“You’d better get back to your room,” Thea said.

“I guess,” said Tess. “Will you pop in and say good-bye before you leave?”

“Sure,” Thea said. Tess murmured an almost inaudible good night and sneaked out of the
room as carefully and quietly as she had come in.

“So you heard him, too?” Thea said to the darkness after a moment. “The Whale?”

“Yes,” Magpie whispered. “Him…and that other. Whatever it was that you did, Thea, that dreadful thing was a good enemy to take a stand against. I don’t know that you could have done anything different.”

“It was you,” Thea said. “You and that ancestral magic you held in for so long.”

“Thank you for that,” Magpie said. “If it never happens again…thank you. Maybe in this world I’m just as much of a magidim as always—but now at least I know, I
know
that I can….”

“You’ve been given the choice, same as me—you can stand in both worlds, that of the Whale Hunt and this one, too, and you can bring the magic back here from the other place. If you want to.”

“If I ever get back,” Magpie said. “If you’re right and it’s a computer thing, then maybe I’ll never return. But just that once…”

“Maybe it is a computer thing,” Thea said. “I just haven’t figured it all out yet. But I’m pretty sure about one thing—the five of us, we’re in.
Whatever it is that we’ve stumbled into, we did it together, and I know that without you there in the Hunt, I would have failed. I think we will always have the ability to step across that line. It’s like…You know how you sometimes just smell a smell and the entire memory it evokes is with you?”

“Yeah,” Magpie said.

“Well, I think it’s like that. That first time…every one of us brought something in, something special to ourselves. Terry the words, the
sound
—although he never did say it out loud, but his were the words that started it. Me with the pictures that the words brought up in my head. You with the textures that belonged in there. Ben with the smells, Tess with the taste. You see what I’m getting at? It needed all five senses for the first experience, but all any one of us has to do is remember one aspect of it—
our
aspect, the sense we brought in—and the rest will come. We’re all in this.”

“But I hate computers,” Magpie said again.

“But from here on,” Thea said, “all you have to do is type in a set of directions.”

“I’ll miss you,” Magpie said unexpectedly.

“I’ll be back,” Thea said. “Besides, you’ll have
my bed to use to shelter a pregnant cat, or something. Just promise me, no skunks.”

The sound of shared laughter floated them into sleep.

2.

T
here was a short and pointed but inconclusive interrogation by the principal the next morning, before Zoë was allowed to take Thea away. Afterward, Zoë accompanied Thea back to the residence to get her luggage. Thea glanced up to the window of her room as she stepped away from the front door of the residence and saw Magpie’s solemn face pressed to the window. Thea smiled, waved, and then quickly turned away, slipping into the passenger seat just as Zoë slid into the driver’s side and began buckling on her seat belt in silence. Still in silence, Zoë turned the key, put the car into gear, pulled away from the redbrick residence hall and out toward the main gate of the campus.

Clad in a pair of jeans and a sheepskin vest over a wine-colored red turtleneck, her hair pulled back into a simple ponytail, Zoë looked more like a fellow Academy student than anybody’s maiden aunt. But her hands were curled
tightly around the steering wheel as she drove, and her expression was not that of a careless teenager. Instead, rarely for Zoë, she had turned into a somewhat grim-faced adult.

“Thanks, Aunt Zoë,” Thea said in a small voice, grateful for the tacit support that Zoë had given her so far but suddenly unsure of her welcome.

“I don’t much like the taste of lies,” Zoë said abruptly. “Are you going to tell me what really happened?”

“It’s a long story,” Thea said.

“We have a few long boring hours in the car ahead of us,” Zoë said. “You can start whenever you’re ready.”

Zoë had always been Thea’s ally, her friend, her confidante and co-conspirator. But Thea had told Zoë nothing of her experiences with Cheveyo, and now it was hard to know where to begin. Put into words, it sounded improbable. She made a couple of stumbling false starts, but once she hit her stride the whole story came tumbling out—Cheveyo, Grandmother Spider, choices made in several different worlds, the Alphiri and the Faele, the crossing over into a strange new virtual world—all of it.