The Mountains Sang Their Silent Melody

IV

"What's your name?" Frances asked. The holy woman was leading Frances further up the mountain to her encampment. Frances struggled to keep up with the wiry woman on their pudgy legs and bare feet.

"You may call me Opus, young one," the woman answered. "It is good that you left your shoes behind. This is sacred ground."

"I don't know what happened to my shoes," Frances mumbled. They looked at the woman's retreating figure. "You're wearing boots," Frances pointed out.

"My boots are made from the skins of animals sacrificed in these mountains," Opus called back. "They are sanctified. Your shoes were unclean."

She paused for a moment to let Frances catch up. "Before I forget," she said to Frances, who was panting. "I need to do something."

Opus crouched down and poured out her waterskin onto the dust beneath their feet. She took a twig and swirled around the mud until it was an even consistency.

"I need to see your wrists," she said. Frances held them out to her. Opus dipped her finger into the mud. Taking each wrist in turn, she painted a sigil on Frances's flesh.

"I need to do your collar too," Opus said.

"Like the Corpus," Frances said, unable to let the similarity slide.

Opus subtlety shook her head. "Sort of similar. But you will notice the sigil is different from theirs. It has different properties."

Frances pulled at the collar of their overtunic. They were glad it wasn't winter. If the whether had been cooler, France would have worn pants and a long-sleeved, high-neck shirt underneath the tunic. Today they were only wearing the tunic's matching shorts underneath.

Opus copied the sigil overtop Frances's collarbone.

"What will that do?" Frances asked.

"Give us time, young one," Opus said. She turned and continued up the mountainside.

Opus kept camp in a cavern. The ground inside was flat, and the space was relatively well lit because of gaps in the cavern's walls and ceiling. Even so, Opus struck some flintstone together and started a fire. She already had the kindling and the wood set up in a firepit.

Opus sat on a blanket near the fire. Frances stood in the entrance to the cave, feeling self-conscious. It was like entering the home of a stranger. Frances was caught between the abnormality of the situation and the deep, coursing curiosity surrounding it.

"I can see you have a question for me," Opus said. She motioned for Frances to come sit next to her.

Frances edged closer to Opus. "I have a lot of questions," they said.

Opus's dark eyes searched deep into Frances. "But you have one specific concern on your mind."

"Well," Frances began, "I was always told that sorcerers were evil. Sorcerers get their powers from the natural world. The Corpus says we must reject the natural world in favour of the spiritual world." Frances felt like they were reciting school lessons to Opus. They knelt next to her on the blanket.

Opus shook her head. "You've been misguided," she said. "Natural magic users, whom the Corpus call sorcerers, were given their powers for a purpose. They were granted their powers by the natural world in order to repair a specific piece of the world that has been damaged. By their very nature, they can only do good with their powers, not harm. You have been selected by the natural world for this."

As Opus spoke, Frances's mind spun. In a few short sentences, Opus had turned Frances's understanding of good and evil upside down. They felt like they were drifting off into the aether.

"That's why you are so much more powerful than the Corpus," Opus continued. "They can only do subtle magic because they are trying to learn a skill that they were never born to do. But you, you've been born, even created, to do this. It is a part of your physiological makeup. It is your inheritance. It is your destiny." Opus frowned at Frances. "Are you okay?" she asked, putting her hand on Frances's shoulder.

"So . . . the Corpus is evil?" Frances asked. They squirmed where they were kneeling and decided to sit cross-legged instead.

Opus ran her hand through her hair. "I forgot that the Corpus makes all your school curriculums. They're so obsessed with binaries. No," she said, "the Corpus is not evil. Try to see it as a spectrum. They learn magic through study, and learning is not inherently good or evil. Learning is what you make of it." Opus considered Frances. "The Corpus is very rigid about their bureaucratic and administrative processes. It might make them seem evil, but nothing about their use of magic makes them that way."

Frances rubbed their nose and tried to ignore the hunger pangs beginning in their stomach. "Nobody's evil, then," Frances summarised.

"You're probably hungry," Opus said with an acute awareness. Frances's stomach growled in response. Opus stood and rummaged around in a sack a few meters away. She pulled out some bread and some cheese and began to grill it over the fire.

"How do you know so much about magic?" Frances asked. "Are you a sorcerer too?"

Opus had turned away to focus on the food she was preparing, but Frances saw smile lines appear at the corner of her eye. "I'm not a sorcerer. I have a friend who is."

"And they told you all this? About the magic and the sigils?" Frances said.

Opus nodded and handed Frances their lunch.

While they ate, Frances explained Opus the situation involving Ophelia, her abusive father, her missing mother, and the uncaring Corpus. Just after they'd taken their last bite and brushed the crumbs off of their tunic, Frances turned to Opus with the most serious expression a child their age could muster.

"I need someone to help me help Ophelia," Frances finished. "Can you do this?"

"I can," Opus said, "but it will come at a cost."

"What cost?" asked Frances.

Opus took Frances's hands in her own. "You will have to give up what you love most in the world."

You may already be aware of this, but you must know before this story continues that people are generally terrible at identifying the person or object that they love most. Generally, the answer that a person gives will be very circumstantial. For example, a person who has been a parent for just over an hour will probably say their newborn is what they love most. A parent who has been a parent for just over a few weeks will be significantly less likely to describe the screaming helpless thing that wakes them up at four in the morning as "the thing they love most in the world". In fact, they might be more inclined to give "a nap" as an answer. Similar to this notion, newlyweds will probably describe their spouse as the thing they love most in the world, or Ophelia's father's answer might be alcohol.

Of course, this principle is much less recommended when it comes to nine-year-olds. Frances, for their part, went with the first thing that came to their mind. Which was ice cream.

Frances felt giving up ice cream was a small price to pay for helping Ophelia. And therein lies the issue. The object or person that one loves most in the world will never seem like a small price to pay. Frances did not realise this, so they agreed easily to Opus's request.

"Then your training has begun," Opus announced to the empty cavern.

"Has begun ... has begun ... has begun," the cavern sang before reverberating back to its natural silence.