“As you please, Mistress,” Kilisha said, bowing slightly, and wondering whether Yara would be glad to see her come back to visit when she was a wizard in her own right, rather than an apprentice.
That assumed, of course, that she ever did become a wizard- and if she didn’t learn Javan’s Restorative and use it on Ithanalin, that might well never happen.
“I should practice the spell,” she said.
“Of course,” Yara said. “I’ll sec to the children, and bring you something to eat in a bit.”
“Thank you.”
With that Yara withdrew into the kitchen and closed the door.
Kilisha hesitated, glancing at the parlor door. Ordinarily that, too, would be closed while serious magic was being practiced, but she did not want to miss any callers-especially not with the enchanted latch apparently eager to let in anyone who knocked.
And she wanted to keep an eye on the spriggan and the furniture, as well.
The door stayed open, and she turned her attention to the ingredients she would need for the spell. Peacock plumes, incense, water...
First she went through the motions slowly and carefully without drawing her athame or invoking any actual magic, just to get the feel of them. She recited the words until she was comfortable with their rhythms. She handled the ingredients, sensing their magical natures. She lit a candle and set her pan of warm water on a tripod above a charcoal burner, then opened a vent into the chimney so that the charcoal fumes would not poison her. She lit the charcoal and waited until the water began to steam gently.
And when it did she found a stick and snapped it in two, then placed the two pieces on the workbench.
Then, finally, she drew her athame, recited the initial incantation, and lit the block of incense.
She could feel the magic begin to gather almost immediately.
She proceeded slowly and carefully, crushing the jewelweed leaves in her hand and flinging some in the water, others onto the incense, where they flared up briefly before being reduced to flying ash. Smoke and steam and ash rose and thickened, gathering in an increasingly unnatural fashion.
After some forty minutes of this the entire room was thick with smog, and a great opaque cloud of it hung swirling over the workbench. She made the transitional gestures, completed the first chant and began the second, and with her athame clutched in both hands began to cut the cloud into the shape she wanted.
How she knew what shape to make she could not have explained; by this time the magic was as thick as the smoke. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that she could not possibly be breathing the air in the workshop without coughing, probably could not breathe it at all, had the magic not been flowing through her, protecting her and giving her power and guiding her hands.
She trimmed and shaped and shaved the thick gray mist, transforming it from an amorphous blob into something roughly resembling a corkscrew, and the magic was strong and easy...
And the spriggan shrieked happily from somewhere near her right foot, “Oooooh, cloud!”
The athame hesitated, slipped, and suddenly it was just a knife and the vapors were just smoke and steam and she began coughing desperately, waving a hand in front of her face to try to clear the air. She staggered from the workshop into the parlor, gasping. She flung open the front door and sucked in the cleaner air of Wizard Street.
“Awww, cloud gone!” the spriggan said somewhere behind her.
Kilisha, able to breathe once again, bit her lip to keep from screaming.
The spell was ruined and would have to be started over from the beginning-and it could easily have gone wildly wrong, interrupted like that!
It might have gone wrong as it was. it felt as if it had simply dissipated harmlessly, but she couldn’t be absolutely sure.
She looked down at herself, and saw two hands, two feet, her apprentice robe-everything seemed to be normal.
She wasn’t the only one in the house, though. She turned.
The parlor furniture was cowering in the corners; clearly all of it remembered, on some level, what could happen when a spell went wrong.
It all seemed to be there, and undamaged, though. She closed the door, told the latch, “Stay closed,” then made her way back to the workshop.
A look under the sheet reassured her that Ithanalin hadn’t changed; then she proceeded to the kitchen, where she found Yara and the children finishing their lunch.
“What happened?” Telleth asked. “What’s all the smoke?”
“A spell went bad,” Kilisha explained. “That spriggan interrupted me, and I lost control.”
“Did it hurt anything?” Lirrin asked, eyes wide.
“I don’t think so,” Kilisha replied. “I came back here to be sure it hadn’t done anything to any of you.”
“We’re fine,” Yara snapped.
Kilisha, startled by her tone, didn’t reply immediately, but after a moment of gathering her wits she said, “I’ll try again, then.”
“Do you need to fast?” Yara asked.
“No,” Kilisha said.
“Then eat first, and let the place air out. Then try again.”
“Yes, Mistress,” Kilisha said meekly. At Yara’s direction she found bread and cheese and salt pork, and sat at the table. She ate quickly, but even so, by the time she had finished the air in the workshop had cleared, the smoke vanished, leaving no lingering trace.
No natural smoke would have faded away so completely so quickly. Kilisha had not expected even magical smoke to disappear so easily; perhaps having the spell interrupted had something to do with it.
At least no one was waving any tentacles around; she wouldn’t have wanted to have to try to turn a squid back to a human.
She took a deep breath of clean air, then began the spell anew.
Distracted by Yara and lunch, she had forgotten to tell the spriggan not to interrupt. The creature made a few remarks and asked a few questions, but Kilisha simply ignored them, keeping her attention focused on the spell.
At least this way she knew the spriggan wasn’t slipping out of the house and wandering away.
Yara glanced in the door at one point and caught the spriggan climbing on a stool, apparently about to grab for something; she hurried in and snatched the little nuisance up, then carried it into the parlor. Kilisha saw it all from the corner of her eye and was grateful, but refused to let it distract her.
The cloud of smoke and steam formed, ash drifting in the currents and magic thick in the air, and Kilisha shaped it as she knew it had to be shaped, twisting and carving it into a crooked helix that she guided down over the broken stick. Her eyes stung with smoke, and her hair was soaked with sweat and steam, but she could feel the magic all through her, warm and strong, strongest in her hands as she completed the ritual.
The smoke covered the broken stick, hiding it from mortal sight, but Kilisha could sense it, could see it simultaneously broken and intact as if two images were glowing on the bench before her. And then the spell was over, the smoke dissipated with impossible suddenness, and the stick lay unbroken upon the bench. Kilisha pushed hair from her eyes with a smoke-stained, unsteady hand, and smiled down at the stick.
She had done it! She had performed Javan’s Restorative. For the first time, she had learned a new spell without another wizard there to guide her.
She sat down abruptly on the stool, grinning broadly. She loved being a wizard!
As she rested, letting the outside world return to her awareness, Kilisha heard a voice from the parlor-Yara’s voice, talking quietly. Yara must have gone around the outside of the house-or perhaps slipped through the workshop when Kilisha was distracted by the spell. Her attention had been so focused on her magic that that was possible.