Wattys shortlist 2021. One morning the sun rises a few hours early, striking levitating skyscrapers in Soliara ahead of schedule. People in the streets stop to look up at the sky and then down at their watches. Most of them, puzzled but disbelieving...
Magic discovery involved a lot of sitting around meditating and feeling your feelings. It quickly became Malyssa and Dianthea's favorite class. Prospero taught them how magic was discovered through re-enactment — and the study of how to discover magic began with a reenactment of the discovery of all known spells. It was like learning mathematics by solving proofs that everyone already knew the answer to. In order to learn to levitate, for example, they needed to reconstruct the levitation spell from scratch, exactly the way the first magician to levitate did.
Getting extra sessions with Prospero after class helped because they were too new to practice with the more advanced students. They enjoyed one on one time with him. And storytime.
"It can be hard to explain magic discovery to someone who hasn't practiced it much. Can it be taught? As much as riding a bike or swimming can be taught. Or writing a fictional story. Now that I think about it, it may be better for you to learn through story," said Prospero, and he nodded to himself. "That's what I'll do. I'll tell you a story."
⭐️
I told them a story. It all came back to me as I talked, the memory cascading, branching from tangent to tangent like the twists and forks in a stream. Using a spell, I passed glimmers of images and scenes into the girls' minds so that they experienced the memories like watching a movie — or immersing into a VR helmet. Not just tactile sensations and smells, but emotional content, too. Almost as if they were becoming me.
And who was I? My birth name couldn't be kept from them. Memories can't lie. I'm Samuel Ory. I am from Earth originally — a one in a million shot that I'm back here now.
Born on February 1st, 1901 — the same year as Louis Armstrong. I died in my hometown of New Orleans thirty years later. Cancer. Though I was not wealthy, my mother and father came up with the cash to have a surgeon attempt to remove the tumor. The doctor had partial success and removed the malignant tissue without even causing infection — but the cancer had metastasized. It spread to my bones.
Six months after the surgery that had bankrupt my family, I died in my bed, flooded by love and tears. The pain wasn't the only reason I was ready to let go. It wasn't either the support of those around me, wiping my brow of sweat and spittle from my mouth, one parent holding each hand to press the final sensations of life through my nerves to the brain's receptors. I was one in a million — maybe in a billion — the rare person to have a fairly clear idea of where I would be off to next.
But before all of that, I learned a whole lot. Not just about passing from world to world, but about being a magician.
One idyllic morning in New Orleans, at the breakfast table, my mother sat across from me and passed over a simple metal ring. It might have been iron or copper alloy. I don't have it anymore, so I can't say. A little hefty, it was not precious. The scent of morning biscuits, though an everyday occurrence, drew my attention more than the gift she was presenting to me.
The fresh churned butter that would melt into the flakes held my imagination captive.
Perhaps if she had waited until after I had eaten, I would have given the occasion more import. Looking me stern in the eyes, at first all she said was, "Better if you start to learn before you're grown. Don't blow up the kitchen." Now, those words caught my attention.
Blow up the kitchen?
A fearful, cautious child, I almost threw the ring across the room — but if it was explosive, who knew what would detonate it? I held my palm dead still. I held my breath, too, and only slowly, cautiously, did I exhale all the breath out and slowly allow myself to breathe in controlled, silent streams of warm kitchen air. Taking in my rigor mortis, and my eyes wide as dinner plates, my mother began to explain in a whisper.
"In our family, magic is innate. All you need to channel it is a plain old ring. Any ring will do; there is nothing special about this one. Throw it out and get another if you like. It works only because you need a perfect focus. Circles are intrinsically perfect, at least in theory — the theory of ideal forms. It's perfect in the ideal, even if this one, in reality, may have flaws."
Her whispers made her voice a little gruff, but she continued to make the effort. She spoke in the Cajun patois, a language which only magic could make understandable to the twins I was telling the story to. "Better you learn now, while your father and I are around, than discover it someday by accident after taking a liking to shiny jewelry. You must learn to cast spells quietly, invisibly, only when needed, and only in a way that cannot be traced or discovered."
A silent moment passed between us as if to make the moment solemn and memorable.
"Now," she nodded at me, "put it on. Go on."
Still breathing mindfully, the way Maman always told me, I slowly picked the ring up with my little seven-year-old right hand and slipped it onto my tiny left pointer finger. I felt nothing but cold metal, nothing special.
The next part was both easy and hard. Maman said I would have no biscuits and no butter until I called them to me magically, plus a knife to spread with. Nor would I be allowed to get up from the table until I had done it.
No school today, but it was a workday, so we had the boarding house to ourselves, and as Maman left me to go about her housework, she would make sure no one came in unannounced. One last thing before she left — showing me her own ring, she cast a spell that flashed blue light around the lower portion of my body and seat in a wide ring that tightened until it dissipated. I tried to jump up, but my legs wouldn't move. It was as if my feet and my bottom were stuck to the floor and the seat, respectively.
"You shall be able to move, but not leave," said Maman, and indeed, when I tried to wiggle my toes, I could. On her way to the door, she went on, "And that flash of light byproduct I made — that is to show you what not to do. Make your magic quiet, invisible. now, conjure up some food, or you will go hungry. You want the biscuits while they're hot, don't you?"
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Thank you for reading Prospero's first story. It continues now! Keep reading, and have a lovely day✨
