A Practical Guide to Sorcery

Chapter 259: Transposition

Siobhan

Month 4, Day 11, Friday 10:00 a.m.

“What is it?” Rory asked, staring up at the treehouse covered in strange growths and tattered, gauzy cloth. His brows were lifted high with a combination of awe and fascination, but his mouth had twisted in disgust.

Siobhan stepped closer, peering at some of the patterned, fluttery growths spreading down the trunk of the tree. She touched it, and it didn’t react. Rather than spongy or warm, like she had been half expecting, it was as hard as stone. She sniffed, but the smell of incense was already fading.

Rory stepped up beside her and, as if afraid it might burn him, poked one of the growths and jerked back immediately.

“Do not touch it. It might not be safe,” Grandfather warned belatedly.

Siobhan threw a critical look at him over her shoulder. Why hadn’t he said something earlier?

Aimee bustled forward and pulled both Siobhan and Rory away from the tree. “I told you there was a curse, Master Kalvidasan.”

This was perhaps the worst moment for her to loudly announce this, as a trio of villagers rounded the house just then, looking concerned. They must have heard the screaming while passing along the road and come to help. All three of them let out loud gasps as they stared at the treehouse. “A curse?” the oldest man said. Siobhan thought he was the father, and the other, younger man his son, but she had never spoken to any of them.

Grandfather scowled at Aimee. “There is no curse, Aimee. This is obviously an invasive species of magical fungus. Nevertheless, it is possible that people could end up spreading it around if any spores get on them, so I would recommend no one gets too close.”The newly arrived villagers took several steps back.

Grandfather nodded at them, his gaze flicking quickly over the mud-stains that had somehow gotten up to their hips. “To reiterate, there is no malicious intent behind this unusual occurrence, any more than the mold growing on old bread is attempting to harm you. There is no need to worry. I will eradicate the infestation very thoroughly. Even though I take no tithes from you, let no one say I do not keep the village safe,” he added, somehow seeming condescending, even though he was wearing a small smile and had his hands clasped behind his back. “Mr. Tierney, would you retrieve some large-scale casting supplies from my workshop?”

Claudio nodded, but his gaze caught Siobhan’s for a moment before he turned.

She thought maybe she should have picked up some meaning from his expression, but it had been too subtle for her to parse.

When Grandfather turned back to the treehouse and began to take casting supplies out of his pockets, the villagers shared obviously vexed looks behind his back. Grandfather often mentioned how no one around here had the proper respect for thaumaturges, and they should all feel lucky that he did not demand it.

Aimee tugged Siobhan and Rory further back.

“Urgh!” Rory muttered to Siobhan. “Have you ever seen anything like that in your life?”

Siobhan remembered the sand on her bedroom floor. Or what she had thought was sand. Was it possible it had actually been fungus spores, and she was the one who had tracked it into the treehouse and spread the infestation? But if that were the case— Siobhan stopped in her tracks. “Just a minute. I have to go check something.”

She raced into the house and clambered up the stairs to her room, then threw herself to the floor and looked under her bed. There were no strange growths. She swept her hand around, picking up a few cobwebs, a bit of dirt, and… no sand. She pushed herself closer, until her entire arm was stretched out into the darkness under her bed, flailed around a bit, and pressed her palm to the floor. No sand.

Siobhan retreated, sat on her heels, and looked in the other direction while she shook off the dust, small particles of food, and random strands of long dark hair that had gotten stuck to her hand and sleeve.

She stood and moved to the window, but as if he had eyes in the back of his head, Grandfather turned, pointed to her, and made a sharp closing motion with his hands.

Siobhan closed the shutters, but after a few moments of staring at her hands against the wood while her eyes adjusted to the dark, she made a decision. She spun on her heel, grabbed the spyglass from her bookshelf, and raced back out and down the stairs.

Aimee had gone somewhere, but Rory was still outside, morosely kicking a rock. When Siobhan ran past, he brightened and fell into a sniffling scamper beside her. She considered telling him to go away, but decided against it. He could make himself useful for once. When they got to the scrap pile on the beach, he came in handy to help her haul back the rusted old boat horn she’d remembered was there. Why no one had taken it to re-cast it into something more useful, she didn’t know, but perhaps they had thought the amount of useable metal was too little in comparison to the mass of rust.

They were both panting by the time they got to the small hill next to the southern tree-line on her property. The hill had a perfect scoop out of the far side, sized just right for the both of them to huddle down in and peek over the edge.

While Rory struggled to position the horn, Siobhan peered through the spyglass at Grandfather and Claudio.

Both of them were scowling, and she recognized the worried set of Grandfather’s jaw. At this angle, she couldn’t see the details of the spell array they were carving into the ground surrounding the tree.

Impatiently, she set the spyglass down and helped Rory hold the horn. “Go grab some leafy branches to disguise the silhouette,” she ordered. Luckily, the metal was so rusted that, even peeking over the edge of the hill, it was unlikely to catch enough light to draw the eye.

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When Rory returned with the branches, they set them up over and around the horn, and she used a stick to clear packed dirt and coarse dark sand out of the small opening opposite the large end, which would catch the sound and—hopefully—direct it so they could hear. They both crouched down and pressed their ears near to the small end. Siobhan awkwardly maneuvered until she could look through the spyglass with one eye while remaining close enough to listen. The sound of the wind almost drowned out the voices, but enough came through to make out the gist of the adults’ conversation. They were both wearing some kind of protective clothing that included a face mask and goggles, though Claudio had taken off the goggles. This reassured Siobhan that they were merely being overly cautious, and she shouldn’t worry about being infected herself.

“High stability,” Grandfather said, holding some lensed device up to his eye and peering at a patch of the gauzy material he had ripped off of the treehouse doorway. “Higher than I have gotten in any of my attempts.”

Claudio tapped a small hammer against a chisel, boring a narrow hole into the tree trunk. “High determination, too. It’s assimilated and replaced large parts of not only the structure, but the tree itself. I wonder if it could do that to a human?”

Grandfather’s head snapped around to glare at Claudio.

Rory shifted, and his shoulder knocked Siobhan and the spyglass slightly off balance. She threw him a glare, ignored his muttered, “Sorry,” and returned to trying to look and listen at the same time, despite the growing crick in her neck. She had missed Grandfather’s response.

Some time passed, and then Claudio said, “Location twenty-four llama sierra, or close by.”

Grandfather made that jaw flex that meant he was holding himself back from an unmannerly, uncharitable grunt, or—even worse—an insult. “I agree. Specimen alpha thirty-three along with a variation on Oscar twelve.”

“What are they talking about?” Rory whispered.

“I don’t know,” Siobhan replied, but one recurring thought was rattling around inside her head. Grandfather had lied. She would bet her shoes on it.

She didn’t understand exactly how, or about what, but nothing added up. It wasn’t just the disappearing sand in her room, or the aged fabric that looked like no plant or fungus she’d ever seen, or even the unexplainable smell of familiar incense. It wasn’t even the way they were acting so familiar with the strangeness and talking like spies out of one of those newspaper periodical thrillers. It was all of it, added up.

Was Aimee right? Was this a curse? Siobhan remembered Mom’s funeral. She hadn’t even gotten to see Mom’s body—her corpse, Siobhan amended with a suppressed flinch.

For the ceremony, Grandfather had carved a little statue of Mom, as was tradition. It was lovely, exquisite and so lifelike that it had seemed like the wooden lines of Mom’s hair would start blowing in the wind. The statue had taken the place of her gauze-wrapped and casket-enclosed body for the rites. This was only right and proper—for the public.

But even though Siobhan was Mom’s only remaining blood family, Grandfather hadn’t allowed her to follow the traditions of the People and help to bathe and dress her mother’s body. Siobhan had found Mom’s favorite dress still in the closet afterward, which meant that Grandfather hadn’t perfectly prepared and decorated her for the pyre. If it had been Siobhan, she would have known what dress to pick—the one that would make Mom happiest.

Of course, he didn’t believe in any of the ancient superstitions, anyway. His excuse for excluding Siobhan was that Mom had some wounds he didn’t want Siobhan to see. “Miakoda wouldn’t have wanted it, either,” he had told her distantly, red-eyed from tears he’d forgotten to erase the signs of.

Siobhan hadn’t had the heart to argue very hard. And to be honest, she’d been frightened to see Mom, potentially mutilated. She’d regretted that afterward, when the nightmares had started. She couldn’t even settle her overactive imagination with memories of the truth.

They had placed some of Mom’s belongings in the fire to be carried away on the ash with her soul. This was meant to comfort the wandering soul with familiar pieces of home until they reached their new place in the sky, among the stars.

“Your mother is not up there. That is a comforting lie, and you are too old for those,” he had told Siobhan as they stared up at the star-sprinkled darkness over the burning embers of the pyre.

Siobhan had swayed on her feet from exhaustion, and he placed a hand on her shoulder to keep her upright.

“Still, it is only right to honor Miakoda’s memory,” he conceded. “We will stay until the last ember dies.” His hand stayed on her shoulder as the hours passed, and when she began to shiver, he used some magic to warm them both. When the dawn came, he had sent her back inside. But she had looked back and seen him kneel over the ashes, touch his fingers to his lips, and press a kiss to the dead ash. “Your daughter will carry your legacy, and I will protect her,” he had murmured. And then he had cast a spell to create wind. Not harsh and uncontrolled, but a huge gentle sweep that caught all of the ash and lifted it into the sky, where it was picked up by the natural breeze off the ocean and scattered over the forest toward the dawn.

The next day, he had told Siobhan that she was the last of her bloodline and must live up to that responsibility. He had clenched his fist so hard she thought she could hear his old, swollen knuckles creak from the strain. “All that Miakoda could have been and become, gone, because she was so foolish as to cast through her own flesh.”

The fingers of his other hand had dug painfully into her shoulder, and Siobhan assured him before he could warn her, “I will never do that.” It was a promise to them both, and she meant it.

Siobhan realized the spyglass had slipped away from her fingers while she was lost in thought, and Rory had taken advantage of the opportunity to use it. She didn’t reprimand him, because she was sure her expression looked horrible, and she didn’t want him to notice.

She felt strangely weightless, and though she was staring closely at the mud and grass under her face, she also felt like some part of her was watching from up above. The world that had no Mom didn’t seem real. Grandfather’s words echoed in her mind. “Everything that she could have been and become, gone.”

No matter how powerful Siobhan became as a sorcerer, there was no Will in the world that could bring back the dead. Siobhan hadn’t even been thirteen yet when Mom died. No matter how much she hated to accept it, there was nothing magical she could have done. Grandfather might have been able to, but he failed.

A dark, tarry wrath bubbled in her stomach before she forced it to disperse. It wasn’t Grandfather’s fault. Mom was the most important person in the world to him, and that was why they always fought so much about her choice to marry Father and spend so much time traveling with him rather than joining Grandfather in his research.

Siobhan tore a piece of tender grass into tiny pieces, its juices faintly staining her fingertips. Was it possible that there was something real to the People’s ancient rituals? If the funeral rites were done improperly…

Siobhan sniffed and ducked her head just in case Rory noticed. It was also possible the problem didn’t lie in the funeral rites at all. What if Mom had brought back some curse from her travels? Siobhan’s heart seized in her chest at the idea.

A curse might have contributed to or even caused Mom’s death outright. It would have grown more powerful from its success. As far as Siobhan could remember, all the stories were consistent on that. And if so, that made it really similar to casting new magic; the more times someone succeeded, the easier and smoother it became.

The curse, now strengthened, might have spread upon her death, carried on the wind just like her ashes. If Grandfather knew that, it might explain what he was doing in the tower. It might explain why he was so worried, if he’d failed to stop it. And it would maybe explain why he didn’t want to tell Siobhan. He wasn’t one to offer comforting lies, but he also wasn’t unnecessarily cruel; he didn’t even badmouth Father where he realized Siobhan could hear him.

But one thought twisted Siobhan’s insides and simultaneously filled her with a sour brightness that wasn’t hope, or happiness, but still had something good about it. If it was a curse that killed Mom, or that weakened her so much she couldn’t hold on against the magic addiction…

Maybe it meant that Mom didn’t really choose the bliss of casting through her own flesh over sticking around to keep being Siobhan’s mom.