Chương 63: Chapter 17: Beginning Magic Training

We closed it down early. It wasn't like we had much of a choice. The ice cream lasted all of an hour. It seemed most folks didn't want to leave their houses in the middle of the day, even for a sweet, cold treat. And after dinner service, the ice luge was a huge success while it lasted. Yet although patrons coveted the dwindling ice melting in their cups as best they could, the Breakwater Inn soon became prohibitively sweltering.

Even with the windows open and a draining flourish of Wynnie's frost wave to cool the place, it started to feel like we were all doing Bikram yoga. There are few things more uncomfortable in life than Bikram yoga. Don't ask me how I know—or about why I stopped dating yoga girls. Just know that the bar started to feel like a heated locker room where the HVAC system was powered by athlete's foot and uncle breath. Keeping the fish and shellfish on ice in the kitchen was our top priority.

When Wynnie couldn't spare any additional mana to keep the comfort levels up, guests filtered out. Finally, mercifully, only the three of us were left. We huddled around one of the larger tables near the bar, sharing a staff meal and a few uncomfortably warm cocktails.

"So, I'm supposed to draw some kind of letter, then?" Shivai asked.

"Not just some kind of letter, but an exact kind of letter. It has to be perfect."

"And what does this letter look like, then, exactly?"

"Um, I'm not sure, actually. I know the general shape, at least. Kinda," Wynnie offered. I joined Shivai for a bitter laugh. How was she supposed to draw a perfect version of a thing she'd never seen before? A thick parchment lay flat on the table between all of us. Next to the demonkin, a small assortment of painting supplies stood beside a half-finished tray of oysters, bread, and a couple of empty drinks. One thin brush dangled lazily in her purple hand, its tip still untouched by any oils.

Candle lanterns flickered softly, setting a somber, quiet mood. At least the place was finally cooling down enough to think straight. I took a sip of my warm drink.

"Wynnie, do you think you could draw a rune that Shivai could copy?" I asked.

"Maybe. I could try, at least." She pouted briefly, screwing up her mouth cutely.

"I was never much good as an artist. My cousin always used to tease me because I could barely draw a stick figure right."

"Yikes," muttered Shivai. Wynnie ignored her.

"But here's the thing about magic. It's something you have to dig deep to feel. It's inside you. You just need to listen hard until you hear it."

"Um, what?" I was a little confused. That was vague at best.

"What do you mean?"

"What I mean is that everybody's magic manifests differently. They feel it differently. As a succubus, Shivai can probably feel hers, right?" The succubus nodded.

"It's like a slippery, velvety thing swirling somewhere undefined deep in my veins," she confirmed. She flexed her hand as she spoke, balling up her fist and then splaying her fingers out afterward.

"When I use mana to do something, it feels like weaving a pattern that I know by heart." Well, that sounded fucking cool.

"So, when I draw the shape of the rune, all you need to do is focus on creating it in the way the pattern feels," explained Wynnie.

"You'll know how it's supposed to come out as you go. I think." That still sounded so fucking cool, even if the last bit was more uncertain. My only analogue to that was when I tried to learn how to play guitar. Even though I'd never stuck with it long enough to master more than a few simple songs, my fingers mapped out the chords and moved almost with a mind of their own. Looking at the strings barely helped. Thinking about the progression or feading tabs didn't do much more.

Only when I started playing did things come to life, moved by an intrinsic feel for what came next. Not wholly intuitive, but close enough. Maybe magic was like that. Wynnie tipped back an oyster shell that barely kept afloat in a slurry of ice and melt. She followed it with a shot of her watered-down cocktail.

"Okay. I'll give it a shot." Wynnie grabbed a smaller piece of paper and a charcoal pencil. With a determined breath, she touched the point down and started to draw. Her hand shook slightly, and a squiggly, unconfident shape slowly emerged on the page in front of her. As her hand moved, she kept muttering small curses and restarting her lines.

"Drat." Restart.

"Phooey." Restart.

"Fiddlesticks!" Restart. It looked like the block letter C with a few lines in it. It reminded me a little of the symbol for the euro. And somehow, though I had no point of reference for it, I could tell that Wynnie was indeed a terrible artist.

"Is that it?" Shivai asked.

"Close enough," grumbled an embarrassed Wynnie. She adjusted her weight and put an elbow on the table, partially shielding her final creation from view.

"Okay. I think I've got it." Shivai dipped her brush into some oil and dabbed it onto the wooden palette she'd set aside. A few more dabs later, and a mysterious rainbow of blues, purples, and whites smudged across the wooden surface. As she began mixing, I finished my drink and looked deep within myself. If I was being honest, I felt a little left out. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! And a little hopeful, too.

"Should I try?" I asked that before I could stop myself. Not that I would've stopped myself, actually. I just would've felt self-conscious before I asked, instead of after.

"Do you feel mana coursing through you?" Wynnie asked. I did the same thing Shivai had, clenching my fist and then splaying my fingers out. They felt warm and a little tingly, and maybe slightly numb. I could sense my pulse pumping through them. Probably, that was because I'd had a few drinks already, and I'd been making them with some of Gus-Gus's high-powered moonshine.

"I feel something," I said, not exactly lying.

"Might as well give it a shot." Wynnie passed her paper over to me and flipped it to the other side. She handed me her charcoal pencil afterward.

"Here. You probably can't do much worse than me." That wasn't saying much. A slow toddler couldn't do much worse, either. The pencil felt warm but lifeless in my hands. My fingers grabbed it like a child holding a crayon for the first time. I wasn't exactly a visual artist by any stretch of the imagination. The blank page in front of me looked equally intimidating. When Wynnie's chicken scratch covered her parchment, it was easy for me to judge her attempt as formless abandon.

Suddenly in the artist's seat, all my judgment turned to ineptitude. Pure, empty space filled my view, ready for my own creative interpretation. Nothing came but the growing feeling of intimidation. It was taunting me.

"Not so easy, is it?" Wynnie asked. I glanced at Wynnie and caught her eye with a question.

"So, I just draw this the way it comes to me?" As with most things, this would surely be a situation where it was much easier to judge someone else than to create anything I'd be happy with myself. The job of a critic is much easier than that of a creator.

"Take your time," she said.

"I'm just trying to feel out how to start." I was stalling.

"Follow your heart."

"Right." My heart was telling me to draw a simple, block-letter Euro symbol. It wasn't the exact shape that Wynnie had drawn, but it was close, and it was something recognizable. But did it have any meaning to me? No, not really. No deep emotions stirred to life when I thought about it. The symbol was little more than a recognizable relic of a past I could no longer grasp in this new world. My eyes fled over to where Shivai was putting her artistic spin on the same sigil.

Practiced hands glided smoothly over the thick paper, spreading a passionate film of pigmented oil in a sensuous, highly ornamental, and filigreed shape. I wanted to copy her, but there was no way my clumsy fingers could imitate such mastery. She was good. It was obvious she'd done things like this before. On the other hand, I could barely read my own handwriting.

"Just feel within yourself," Wynnie continued.

"Whatever's there, tap into that. It might be mana, or it might just be the sensation of being alive. The touch of something on your fingertips. A thought that sends a shiver down your spine. Think of something that makes you feel real and special, and then channel that through your hand while you draw." Well, that made it sound simple. A little woo-woo, but simple. I conjured an image of my first kiss with Wynnie. It was drunk and sloppy—and a bit hasty, too—but it was real. I knew that much now.

And maybe it didn't send a tingle down my spine, but it warmed my heart enough that I could feel my tipsy pulse in the pads of my fingertips. I touched pencil to paper and drew. A shape began to take form. It was just as unconfident as Wynnie's, though mine was a bit straighter and blockier. Yet I let my hands and heart guide me until slowly, something vaguely recognizable coalesced in front of me.

Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I could sense the warmth spreading through me more, as if drawing the shape while thinking of Wynnie stoked the flames a little bit. Maybe it was a placebo, but it was something. What took form appeared nothing like the masterpiece Shivai was putting together, but… But that brought up thoughts of Shivai.

She sashayed into my imagination as though tiptoeing into a room in her silent way, padding dextrously on the balls of her feet, draped in breezy, gauzy linens that barely hid the woman underneath. Jeez. My imagination really took off, there. My brain immediately yelled at me, angry to let distracting, intrusive thoughts in. My heart, however, didn't yell at all. It just beat harder and faster, warming me up even more.

As it did, the shape in front of me changed, smoothing out a few sharp angles and adding a hint of flair to my rendition of the sign. Letting my heart take control and let Shivai in changed the texture of the arcane symbol with every clumsy pencil stroke. I lost track of time while I drew. I even tried to shade it, though it turned out terribly. Finally, I sat back and put the pencil down, feeling that whatever I'd attempted to do, it was complete. Surreptitiously, I looked over at Shivai's to compare.

She was still working, adding new layers of fresh paint. It was gorgeous. I didn't know what it meant, but I could feel its meaning. Mine was cringeworthy in comparison. It looked like shit.

"Sorry." I grimaced in embarrassment at Wynnie.

"I feel like I just wasted perfectly good art supplies." Her sympathetic look nearly killed me. How could she communicate so much with a simple, soft expression of acceptance? The muted glow of candlelight flickered in her deep brown eyes. The hard tabletop beneath my hands grounded me in the moment. Its unyielding surface, grainy and worn, no longer felt supportive. Instead, it was a hard reminder of the limits I couldn't push past. I shoved the paper away an inch, then reached for an oyster and a drink.

At least my artistry extended to flavors. Wynnie shook her head.

"Oh, Drew. Don't say that. You didn't waste anything. Did you like doing it?"

"I did," I admitted.

"And did you feel something while you did it?"

"I did."

"Then it was worth it, regardless of whether there's any magic in it. Even if it can't hold mana, it holds a piece of your heart and our history."

"Think we should hang it in our room?" I joked.

"I'd love that!" It took me a second to realize she was being completely serious. Suddenly, my heart swelled with pride, and I realized that I'd love that, too. Maybe it was cheesy, but it was genuine. I could already picture it, too. Wynnie had kept the walls in her room bare, never having had enough money to decorate them. All the other art in the Breakwater Inn had come with the place when she inherited. It smelled of beached kelp and had the aesthetics to match.

Yet now that we'd reimagined the rest of the inn, why not fill her room—our room—with our own art, inexpert though it may be? A small smile played at the corners of my lips as I imagined filling up the walls. Perhaps there was magic in the art after all. Might as well check.

"Now what?" I asked.

"Now, I try to infuse it with mana. Let's see what we're working with." She took a deep breath, drawing air into her chest in a way that I assumed was like drawing mana from the air around her. A stillness settled over her. The moment was somber and hushed. Then, in a tiny voice, she said, "Welp. Here goes." She pushed her hands out from her center like a Reiki master performing mumbo-jumbo. A twinkling, glacier-blue glow wreathed her fingers. I'd seen something like it before when she cast spells.

Yet this time, instead of sending any of the magic outward, it remained wrapped around her hands like the tentacles of an ethereal octopus. Slowly, she lowered her palms and splayed her fingertips toward the surface of the paper I'd drawn on. The icy blue snaked out from around her and felt along the edges of the rune like an insect's antennae, trying to make sense of a strange object. A second later, the edges of my glyph glowed light blue. Wynnie took her hands off.

Almost as soon as she did, it sparked and sputtered, making the sound of a wet fart. The dim light died as quick as an incandescent bulb when the switch turned off. Wynnie looked at me, an inscrutable expression on her face. Shivai offered one of those frowns that aren't actually frowns—just thoughtful facial expressions. A small, extant curl of wispy blue dissipated from the page. I blinked.

"Well, what does that mean?"