“Joanna”—Joanna was principal of the high school and a friend of my mother’s, which was kind of a pain—“nearly broke a leg leaping over her desk to shake your hand when you said you could tutor science and math,” said my mother, and I recognized this voice: this was the one she used when your best friend told you she didn’t want to be your friend any more. (Jill and I had had our ups and downs when we were younger.) “You have more referrals now than you have time for.”
It worked on Val too. I looked up to see him sit back and smile at my mother. Then he looked at me. We stared at each other till my eyes were drawn to the bookshelf behind his head. One of the legs or tails or tongues began to waggle harder when I looked at it. Maybe it was the thing that had been on the back of the sofa. I remembered that I’d occasionally thought one of the shadows was following me around. I stared at the waggling thing. It had moved to a relatively empty bit of shelf and was now bouncing up and down like it knew I was staring at it. If that was all of it bouncing, then it was not the size of a giant elephant-swallowing anaconda. I wasn’t going to admit it, but it reminded me of a puppy hoping for action. In another minute it would bring me a ball to throw. “One of your shadows is waving at me,” I said in a strangely calm voice.
There was a silence. “It might be Hix,” Val said at last. “She would have come with me if any—could. Did. And she has always been friendly, and interested in—humans.”
“She?” said my mother, taking the word out of my fallen-open mouth. “Friendly? All right, I’m glad she’s friendly, but . . .”
Her voice trailed away, but it was a long minute before Val said anything. “I do not know where to begin or what to tell you,” he said. “It was in the conditions of my visa that I tell no one anything . . . about my previous life. Indeed I thought they had laid a geas on me, so that I could not. But then I believed—I knew—that I had left everything behind. I had certainly left my—my—what Maggie calls my shadows behind me in Oldworld. They were very much a part of my old life. . . .”
I knew I didn’t want to know, I thought.
“I admit I have wondered. I have wondered particularly—I know that it is not uncommon for a child to dislike a parent’s new spouse but—I have told myself that it was my vanity that insisted that Maggie was reacting to something more than myself—”
The shirts, I didn’t say aloud. The shoes.
After another pause Val went on. “Cohesion breaks—what you call cobeys—are much commoner in Oldworld than they are here—as you know. I will not repeat the tired old arguments about whether Oldworld would do better to embrace science as Newworld has; Oldworld has been plagued by cobeys for hundreds of years, long before Newworld turned away from magic. It is enough to say that at present Oldworld depends more on its magicians than its scientists. In Orzaskan a town this size would contain a dozen people trained to deal with cobeys. They would all be magicians.
“I was one of those trained. The training begins young; you learn your letters by puzzling out your first incantations.”
He paused. I was thinking you learn your letters by puzzling out your first incantations. You didn’t use the word “incantation” here unless you really wanted to get in someone’s face. What kind of a dreeping canty is that was rude enough to get you sent to detention if a teacher heard you.
Val sighed. “My country is very old; its history runs deep into the earth; our word for cobeys means ‘hole in the earth.’ ‘Gvazakimu.’ ‘Earth hole.’ ‘Earth . . . bottomless.’ ‘Earth profound.’ It is hard work, weaving the earth together again, across such a chasm.”
He fell silent again. I had been listening to him and not watching the shadows. I glanced at them now and discovered that a lot of them had slid down off the walls and were pooling around his feet, and over the back and arms of his chair. Oh, yuck.
“I have wondered,” he said. “I have wondered from the first. Since I stepped off the plane and joined the immigration queue. There were—shadows—in the airport arrival hall. There were shadows on the hands of the young woman who stamped my new visa. There were many shadows in the small room where I was scanned and scanned again, and questioned, and questioned again. There were shadows on the face of the doctor who clearly did not like me, did not like my kind, and would have refused me entry if he could. This was so plain I knew that there was nothing there, that the shadows were only shadows, that what I was seeing was only the result of having had no sleep in thirty hours.”
“And of leaving your home forever,” said Mom, “and coming to a strange country. A strange world.”
Val nodded. “Yes. I was very tired. . . . I had grown so tired that I had let them take my magic away. I was so tired I let them take everything away.” He shrugged, his odd, dramatic, Oldworld shrug, and it was as though I saw him shrugging off a mountain or half a planet. “I thought it would be worth the loss, after . . . They took it all away, and sent me here.”
“Not everything,” I said. I tried to use my calm voice again, but the memory was making it hard. “They didn’t take everything. That time I came out to the shed and—and—what was that?”
“That was such bad livnyaa,” he said. “You knocking just then. Livnyaa, luck—a kind of magical luck—which is to say not luck, because there is no luck in magic. The—the skha, the web, or mesh of power, is very close—much too close for luck, for accidents. I wondered that that happened—that it happened with you, Maggie. I had brought a few old things with me to this new world—things that had been with me for a long time, but which had been denatured, when they took everything else, to be only what they appeared to be: a stone, a cup, a wooden wand beautiful only for the grain of the wood. I had been increasingly troubled—for a week or a fortnight before that day, Maggie—with a sense that some one or more of those things were . . . stirring. Were coming to life once more. They should not, and they should not have been able to. But I had to admit to myself that I kept them as if they were still tools of magic. Do you remember that you thought me mad that I will not have my ’top or pocket phone in the shed? You do not mix things of scientific power with things of magical power. I told myself it was habit, superstition. . . .
“That day, Maggie, I had been turning those old tools over, searching for any sign of returning power—wondering if I were capable of seeing such a sign, even if it were there. I had picked up the small wooden rod that had once been a very powerful tool when you knocked, Maggie, and it—I do not know how to describe it—blazed. That is what you saw. That is what you interrupted.”
“Why on earth did you say ‘come’ to me?” I said angrily.
“I didn’t,” said Val. “I said ‘nah! Nah!’—no. It sounds much like ‘come,’ heard through a door.”
I goggled at him. But I couldn’t not believe him. I couldn’t. Involuntarily I thought about him tapping out Mom’s fender after I’d dented it. I thought about all the times he hadn’t ratted to Mom when I’d been horrible to him at the grocery store. He had even told me that he had never been to a supermarket till he came to Newworld. In the town he lived in it was all little shops: you bought meat from the butcher who wrapped it up in paper for you, and vegetables—sometimes with the farmyard dirt still on them—from the vegetable stall, and bread from the baker. If you lived in the village you could smell the fresh bread baking every day. I could feel something hard and cold in my chest cracking. It hurt.
“What did you tell Mom?” I said. “After I came screaming indoors? I was expecting to be grounded for a week at least for—for—” I looked at their drawn, anxious faces and didn’t say what I’d been going to say. “For rudeness?”
“I told her as near to the truth as I could without admitting to my history,” said Val. “I told Elaine I had an old charm. I admitted it was illegal. It was one of the few things I had from my old life. I believed it had been destroyed as a charm. That is true: my luggage was examined even more intensively than I w
as. I did not believe any live thing would have been passed by Newworld’s border scans, which are notoriously thorough. Despite this it had held some grain of power within it somewhere—and this had regenerated. I told her it would not happen again. I was myself very shaken.”
I remembered his face that day. Yes, he had been very shaken, even if I had misinterpreted why. “Has it?” I said, more sharply than I meant. “Has it happened again?”
There was a pause. “Yes,” said Val. “I’m afraid so.”
“Oh, Val,” Mom murmured.
“Yes,” repeated Val. “But if this had not happened, we would not be having this conversation. For what that is, perhaps, worth.”
“Why not?” I said. “Why wouldn’t we?”
“Maggie—” said my mother.
“It is reasonable that she asks these questions,” said Val. “Why is that these things that have happened leave me open to what you are telling me today. I have not seen my shadows—my gruuaa—since I woke up in the hotel room the day after being successfully passed into this country. In hindsight now I think that I have spelled myself not to see them, with some fragment of that skill I should no longer have. But—Margaret—I would not have said that you were crazy, if you had told me this thing I could not believe. I would have thought there was something awakening in you—something I had been emphatically told did not exist in Newworld any more—but that might, perhaps, be roused by my history. I do not know how I would have answered you, however, because the compact was that they took all of my magic. But if I had no magic left, my wand should not have begun to accrue skha strength again. If it did . . . then perhaps the shadows, the gruuaa, were also as you saw them, and not only a reflection of what was happening to you.”
“Anyone who reads fairy tales should know never to let a magician keep his wand,” I said, firmly not thinking about what might be happening to me. I might almost choose being crazy. “Even if you’ve beaten him and taken his magic away.”
“I have wondered about that too,” said Val. “Wondered about that since before the beginning—since before they finished with me, and told me to come here. I am less surprised that your Watchguard and Overguard do not read fairy tales, but my countryfolk certainly do. It is also curious to me that two of my ex-colleagues from the Commonwealth are teaching the physics of the worlds at Runyon University.”
“Runyon?” I said, or squeaked.
“There’s no reason Maggie shouldn’t go to Runyon next year, is there?” Mom said. That wasn’t what I was thinking about, but I didn’t say anything.
He shook his head. “But it is odd. I do not like odd in these circumstances.”
I didn’t mean to say it. “I met someone tonight who—who is here to study with someone at Runyon. It’s why he’s here.”
“What does he wish to study?” said Val.
“Physwiz,” I said reluctantly, wishing I’d had the sense to keep my big mouth shut. “The physics of the worlds. Not magic. You can’t study practical magic at any university here. Just history and stuff.”
“I do not yet understand how it is here,” said Val. “In Orzaskan you would not study what you call the physics of the worlds unless you were to be taught magic. The one balances the other, to the extent that balance is possible. Some of my students here have the most extraordinary lacunae in their education.”
“You can get a degree in physwiz here,” I said. “But only a loophead would, and everyone who does is swallowed up by the government. But there aren’t that many of them—graduates with degrees. Most people stress out by their second year and switch majors.” Or go crazy, I thought. “There are a bunch of required—short—seminars in your senior year of high school about it. But it’s all history and safety and how Genecor was right.” Mom, whose grandmother had taken her children to the Genecor guys, shifted in her chair. I’d noticed years ago that she did this little automatic pro-Genecor sales pitch any time they were mentioned. She didn’t this time. I went on: “And there are still a lot of kids who bring notes from their doctors that they don’t have to take the physwiz one. I won’t have to because silverbugs make me sick, but lots of people who could step on silverbugs forever and never notice anything still manage to get out of physwiz. Worst-attended class ever, year after year. That’s how scared most people are of the whole subject.”
Mongo stirred, and I let go of him. I’d probably been hanging onto him too hard. But he didn’t get off the sofa to do his usual burglar patrol, checking all the windows he could reach, and all the doors (including cupboard doors. Okay, mouse patrol. Also cupboard-door-not-quite-shut-that-clever-dog-could-open-that-might-have-FOOD-in-it patrol). He just lay down and hung his head over the edge of the sofa. I looked down and went “eeeee.”
One of Val’s shadows had detached itself from the wriggly pool around his feet and slithered, or whatevered, over to the sofa. Mongo was—ewwww—doing something like touching noses—noses?—with it. If you can touch noses (or any other body parts) with a shadow. If it was a shadow thing, with a head—then it had too many legs. One of my big problems with Val’s shadows all along: they all had too many things like legs. Eeeee. But Mongo’s ears were half-back in the meeting-friend position, and his tail gave a flop, and then another flop.
“Maggie,” said my mother, and I realized she’d said it a couple of times already. I must have said “eeeee” out loud.
I felt like if I moved or said anything (okay, any words) it would notice me . . . maybe it had only noticed Mongo? I stared at it. If this end was its head, the head was kind of spade-shaped—like a snake’s head. Except it was all blurry and spiky around the edges. Your eyes couldn’t actually handle what they were seeing. You kept checking that the shadow was there at all by the fact that you couldn’t see through it. At the same time that it was scaring you into a pile of rusty bolts.
My pulse was hammering in my ears and I felt like I might throw up. Mongo put his front paws on the floor and began to sniff along the thing’s side—like he might do another dog—in spite of all the legs. In spite of it being a shadow thing. Against Mongo’s black and white side I lost track of where all of the shadow was. I could still see too much tail (and too many legs) but the front end had kind of vanished. Maybe it was sniffing him back.
“Hix,” said Val softly, and the part of the shadow I could see twitched—very much like a dog hearing the recall and deciding to ignore it.
I didn’t mean to say its name—if I meant to say anything I meant to say “go away” or “help” (or possibly even “Mommy”). But what I said was, “Hix.” And then its head reappeared from where it had been invisible against Mongo, and turned toward me. The head wavered a little, and then rose up higher—higher—two little spots of shadow like feet appeared on the sofa cushions barely an inch from my knees, where I was sitting with my legs bent under me. The head floated toward me . . . I was going to throw up. . . .
I think it was the smell. I want to say it was a sweet smell, or something dreeping like that, and maybe “sweet” is almost what it was. Nice. Friendly. Almost soothing. Definitely anti-throwing-up.
The smell reminded me, suddenly and hard, the way smells can, of the first time we went to visit Aunt Gwenda. The old family house where she and Mom and Rhonwyn and Blanchefleur grew up (Darnel was with his dad most of the time) had sat empty for several years after Grandmom died while the sisters argued about what to do with it. Gwenda lost. She moved her law practice to Highmoor and herself into the old house and started doing renovations. (I really didn’t want to go there because Mom had said there was a mangle in the cellar. It was a long time before I found out it was about laundry.) Mom was obviously tense about the trip, which made me tense (I told you I was that kind of kid. Plus the mangle). It was going to be awful. We were staying for a couple of weeks and I didn’t know anybody in Highmoor; my friends were all in Station.
We were in the car all day, going there.
We finally got to the mountains about sunset. I’d never been in mountains before either; Station is flat. When we drove through Highmoor it was totally the sort of place where there’d be mangles in the cellars. It was after midnight when we arrived and Ran, who was still a baby, had been asleep for hours. Dad carried him indoors and Mom tried to rouse me enough to walk. All I wanted was to be at home in my own bed.
But as Mom levered me out of the car the smell woke me up. It was a nice smell. I wouldn’t find out till the next day that it was pine trees. But it completely changed my attitude toward everything in one breath, standing there wobbling and clinging to Mom. (The house was still scary though, even when I found out what the mangle was.)
I hadn’t noticed that Val’s shadows had a smell, but then I don’t think I’d ever been this close to one before. (Thinking about the one—this one?—who had maybe been following me around was still too creepo, so I didn’t think about it.) This close she no longer really looked like a shadow, although I couldn’t say that she looked like anything else either. Flat black only has two dimensions, you know? You can’t see around flat black. You can’t see if it has an around. And I still couldn’t see her. And her edges were still blurry. I didn’t want to throw up any more but whatever was happening was still pretty disturbing. If I didn’t have a name (and a gender) for her I’d be wondering if she was some relative of a cobey. But Mongo liked her. That should mean something. Would he like something that could open a door that our world could fall through and shatter into infinite chaos?
Mongo? Yeah. Probably.
For a moment—just a moment—I thought I saw the flash and sparkle of what I guessed were eyes in the gentle weaving shadow in front of me. They looked a little like silverbugs. And there were three of them.
Val said, “Hix.”
This time she listened. She dipped her head, patted several feet—there were at least four of them on the edge of the sofa by then, although there were also a lot of legs and tail left on the floor. But she was snaky—or at least long-bodied and short-legged. How was she getting those extra feet on the sofa? Maybe black cobey-like things handle all their dimensions differently and she could have put even more feet on the sofa and still been snaky to Newworld eyes.