“So Merovence is no longer the only good kingdom?” Mama asked.
“We’ve won back Ibile and Allustria,” Matt told her. “Latruria is trying hard to be neutral, but at least King Boncorro has kicked out the sorcerer who was running things. We’re worried about him, though.”
“Yes… in medieval theology, walking the line between good and evil was impossible,” Professor Papa said, frowning. “Equivocating, Shakespeare called it, and his Drunken Porter made it clear that you can’t equivocate between God and the Devil… you fall into the Devil’s hands eventually… “
“Just as MacBeth did.” Matt nodded. “Saul’s still trying, though. Every time he does something good, he commits a technical sin to balance it.”
“A ‘technical’ sin?” Mama frowned.
“Yeah, something like eating meat on Friday… the Church hasn’t lifted the ban on that, here. Trouble is, his heart isn’t in it, and he usually winds up doing more good anyway.”
Mama smiled. “You have told us much about this friend of yours.”
“The kind of student every professor wishes to have!” Papa said fervently. “So he tries to work out laws of magic, like our laws of physics?”
Matt nodded. “He’s made a lot of progress, actually. Trouble is, he can’t find a poem that’s value-neutral; every work of literature seems to have some sort of a theme, moral or immoral… even if it’s pulp fiction, or straight from a greeting card.”
“So that is why I felt this strangeness when I quoted Villon,” Papa said, frowning.
Matt went still inside. “You did? Try it again.”
“Ou sont les neiges d’antan!” Papa recited, then frowned. “Yes, I definitely feel some sort of tension growing around me.”
“Like a force of some kind?”
Papa gazed off into space. “I suppose you could say that. It feels the way I’ve always imagined a dynamo would feel as it builds up electricity… if it could feel.”
That said a lot about his father… that he was the kind of person who would try to imagine how it felt to be an electrical generator.
“Let me try,” Mama said, and gazed off into space. Her eyes lost focus; her face seemed to empty, then to fill with glory as she recited. It was archaic Spanish, so Matt couldn’t follow every word… but he recognized “rose” and “red,” and something about water…
Air glimmered on the taboret between Mama’s chair and Matt’s. It thickened to mist, coalesced into solidity… and a rose lay there, fresh and velvety, its petals still beaded with morning dew.
Papa and Matt goggled.
Mama gasped. “Oh, my! Did I do that?”
“You did indeed, querida,” Papa said, his face solemn. He turned to Matt. “So. This is no mere fable you have told us.”
“Did you really doubt me?”
“My heart wanted to believe you.” Papa was skilled at sidestepping questions, too.
Matt frowned. “You don’t seem surprised that Mama has the talent.”
“Why should I be? I have known and felt her magic for every day of my life these thirty years.” Papa turned and caught his wife’s hand, smiling into her eyes. “I have lived under her enchantment since I met her, and it has been my support and my mainstay all my days.”
Mama blushed and lowered her gaze.
Still holding her hand, Papa turned back to Matt. “Do you think that I, too, can work this magic?”
“I should think so,” said Matt slowly. “It would make sense, after all… if I have the talent for magic, there’s a good chance I inherited it from both of you.” He didn’t mention that double inheritance should have made him more powerful than either of them. “Besides, if you can feel the forces gathering, you must have the gift. Try a poem, Papa… but keep it small, okay?”
Papa frowned, thinking, then recited,
The air shimmered, clouded, cleared, and a closed and steaming tureen stood on the taboret next to the rose.
All three of them stared.
Then Mama said, “It will mar the tabletop. Mateo, some sort of mat, quickly! Ramon, lift!”
Papa took the handles and lifted. Matt looked about the room, then took a glove from a chest against the wall and brought it back. Mama slipped it under the tureen and said, as Papa set it down, “So. You said you had no appetite for supper tonight, Ramon.”
“I did not.” Papa grinned. “But our new quarters have improved my appetite most amazingly.” He lifted the lid, took out the ladle, sniffed cautiously, tasted even more cautiously, and nodded. “It’s mock-turtle soup, all right! Apparently this magic even knows where the verse came from.”
“You probably had it in the back of your mind when you recited,” Matt said. “Mama, I thought you told me you still did the cooking.”
“Well, Tuesdays and Thursdays this year, I had late classes.” Mama sighed. “I do not suppose I will finish my doctorate, now.”
“You won’t need it here,” Matt assured her. “I’d better arrange some lessons in wizardry for you, though.”
“Oh, you will teach your parents now, eh?” Mama said it with a smile, but there was an edge to her voice.
Matt shook his head. “I do it, but I don’t make sense out of it very well. I mean, sure, I figured out the basic rules, but anything beyond that, I leave to Saul and Friar Ignatius.”
“Friar Ignatius?” Papa asked.
“He’s a scholar of magic,” Matt explained. “Saul met him while trying to find me, and incidentally overthrowing the sorcerer who ruled Allustria. The good friar doesn’t do magic himself much… that was our first big hint that spellcasting requires talent. I’ll ask him to come give you a crash course.”
From outside the window came a crack like a cannon shot, and the whole room shuddered. Mama made a frantic grab and barely saved the soup tureen from shattering on the floor. As it was, green liquid leaked around its edges. “What was that?” she gasped.
“It must have been the beginning of our crash course,” said Papa, smiling. “Would you like to explain that, son?”
Chapter Nine
They climbed the winding stair inside the West Tower with the stones of the castle shuddering around them.
“Is this safe?” Papa asked with an anxious glance at Mama, between the two men.
“Yes, if the enemy hasn’t come up with something new,” Matt replied. “In fact, if we don’t hurry, Saul may have sent them packing before we get there.”
“What enemy is this?” Mama asked.
“Genies,” Matt answered.
Mama and Papa exchanged a glance of surprise and picked up the pace. Matt felt a surge of affection… here was danger, and they were rushing toward it, afraid they might miss it.
“How do you know they are djinn?” Mama asked.
“I recognized them from your bedtime stories,” Matt called back.
Mama and Papa exchanged another glance of a very different sort of surprise.
They came out onto the battlements, and the roaring smote their ears, the thundering laughter of four djinn punctuated by the blasting of huge boulders striking the castle wall. Mama and Papa froze, staring at the gigantic spirits who hurled huge stones as a baseball pitcher might throw a ball, laughing with delight as they did.
“They are djinn!” Mama exclaimed.
Papa just stared, then drew a long, ragged breath. “I didn’t doubt you, Matthew… but I didn’t quite believe all this, soup or no soup.”