Dervish could have been a wizard.
Not now, perhaps. We don't allow the magic that is used by all to be actually manipulated by all, and Dervish is long past his prime, too late for the Circle's training.
How many are out there, O Circle?
Do they know our crimes?
Have we known all along?
Miranda put down the volume. The passage must have been written a century ago, at least. She shuddered despite herself. Are you here, Stephen? Can you tell me about this?
It was all so familiar. The Far Corners unwizards had tried to feed her their legends: There was a time when magic was free, not controlled by a chosen few. It will be so again. It must be.
"But that way lies danger," she said aloud, repeating Jemuel.
Does it? spoke the spirit. What kind of danger, Miranda?
"You talk a good game, you who would set the magic free," she said. "But consider it. Breaking the locks on spells the Circle has set, opening up the magic language, and what would you get? Marauded villages, sunken navies...."
Cured sick, fed people....
"All of which the wizards can do."
But should they? You sound like Jemuel. I know you better than that. I brought you here for a reason.
"You brought..." Miranda stared at the wall of books. She felt silly, like a child, talking to one of her fellow castaway imaginary friends. "No. I refuse to believe that."
Believe what you like, Miranda. What you've always wanted. Open it. Break the chains on the magic, the chains on the spells.
"Why don't you?"
I no longer have that ability. Not like this. But you can help me, Miranda. I have made preparations. Let me show you the way.
"It can't be done. Open the magic? Even if I wanted to, even if you wanted to, that's a hell of a spell."
I have made preparations.
"Go find someone else, Stephen."
The wind erupted in the library, papers exploding on the desk. Something invisible hit the bookshelf and dislodged a pile of books. The spirit screamed, Find someone else! Years! Years I spent deriving the spells to be cast! Fellow wizards died to provide me with the parts I needed! In life I tied myself to the fabric that runs through the spells of the Circle. But I was not able to finish my work. There is no one else! You have the training! You have the want! You... have... the... need!
Miranda looked down at the table. "It's too much, Stephen."
One spell you must cast! One only! One out of two, your choice!
"I will hear no more!" Miranda cried, and with that, she stormed out of the library and out of the house. I didn't ask for this.
Miranda sat by the duck pond and watched the creatures there.
Dervish could have been a wizard. Ridiculous.
What if we're controlling the magic when we should let the magic control itself?
That way lies danger.
But at Far Corners, you felt wrong, didn't you? They'd moved in on the Circle's territory and you shut them down! That could have been you.
You would have been an unwizard, then.
When she returned to the house, she said, "All right. Tell me more."
They talked as days turned to weeks, Miranda reading Stephen's work and then asking the spirit about them at night when he came to her. His writing was gentle, open, and the thought that at the end of each period of study she would be visited by and could converse with the author made her excited to learn more.
Sometimes the spirit, it seemed, had to be guided to his particular words, so long had it been since he had written them, but he opened the theory to her in a way Miranda had never imagined conversing with the Far Corners amateurs. Yes, there was danger in the opening, but the danger was offset by such opportunity. Yes, it would mean the end of the Circle, but what were they, anyway, but hoarders of power who kept their subjects in ignorance? And all the while she felt the living Stephen of the books moving in her, addled perhaps, but lucid.
And Stephen had a spell for her to cast. Two spells, in fact, differing by one word. One was a spell of banishment, to let the poor spirit rest forever. But the one Stephen pushed her towards, in his voice and in his writing, was the other—the opening of the magic—and with it, the gift of flesh for the attendant spirit.
Open it, and we will be together. Or else set me free. For I am tired, Miranda. But I think you know the choice you want to make.
It was true, though, that Miranda felt a duty in any event. Poor, trapped spirit! To grant it rest, or to grant its wishes, and bring Stephen back—and there was something else, wasn't there?
We can see the new world together.
Her choice. And the day of casting loomed: Lammas Night, the night when Peter's chains were broken, the night when the new harvest is celebrated by the baking and offering of the season's first loaves of bread.
Tired, Miranda pressed her hands against the bookshelf and lay her forehead against the leather volumes. She was sick of reading yet still eager to learn, and she half wished that the knowledge would burst from the leather spines of the books and into her head.
"Are you still there?" she whispered.
Another whisper, not her own, and now a breeze touched her open robe and it fell a bit, the cloth sliding past her knees. Miranda closed her eyes and felt something touch her hands, fingers interlacing with her own, and she kept her eyes closed so that they stayed real.
Ghostly fingertips on the backs of her hands, brushing at her wrists. It was Stephen; he was behind her. Don't look. Don't break it. The hands that were and were not there caressed her arms, and then she felt them at her face, soothing, and Miranda opened her mouth as the hands brushed against her lips. The hands came to her neck, gliding along its length, and she gripped the shelf firmly and swayed with them. Yes....
Then she felt his fingers playing at the base of her spine and she heard a rustle as the robe lifted by some unknown power all its own, up and over her head and against the bookshelf. Miranda's breath echoed in the cloth that surrounded her head, and she did not open her eyes, but pressed her head against the spines as he explored her, pressing, relaxing. Warm. She tightened her grip on the shelf.
On Lammas we give the bread, the bread is the flesh, the flesh is the life....
Miranda felt him pressed against her, felt herself opening to him, arching her back, and the hands glided back to her breasts as he entered her.