First Witch's Tale

Chapter Three

“So,” Master Rupertson said, the following morning. “A little girl thinks she can learn magic?”

I did my best to contain my anger. Master Rupertson’s tone dripped condescension. I had not slept well, despite finally being in a place I could learn magic, and breakfast had been awkward. The students had stared at me with varying levels of interest, while the tutors had largely ignored me. I wasn’t sure if they had doubted my right to be there or if they had simply decided not to show any interest until they knew for sure I was staying. I feared the latter. It was never easy for women to force their way into a purely male sphere.

“Well?” Master Rupertson studied me thoughtfully. “Do you think you can learn magic?”

I stared back at him, as evenly as I could. Master Rupertson was old enough to be my father, with short dark hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He reminded me far too much of a wealthy farmer I knew, wealthy at least by the standards of my community, who insisted young girls could not be expected to work on the farm, an absurd concept in places where every hand needed to work to keep the farm going. He refused to hire women for manual labour, let alone anything else. Master Rupertson had the excuse, at least, of never meeting any female magicians. I have no idea why the other guy thought what he did. But then, he was wealthy enough to survive a bad harvest or worse winter.

“Yes, Master,” I said. “I can learn.”

“A common delusion,” Master Rupertson said. I couldn’t tell if he meant it was a delusion peculiar to women or one shared by both men and women alike. “Magic requires more than just power. It requires understanding and insight and the ability to focus one’s mind on what one is doing. And persistence. Do you have those traits?”

“Yes, Master,” I said. “I grew up on a farm. I am no stranger to hard work.”

Master Rupertson leaned forward. “Show me your magic.”

His tone irritated me. It wasn’t until much later that I realised that might have been intentional. Thankfully, I had a great deal practice in controlling my anger and irritation and squashing at it before it became a serious problem. Being a young woman meant dealing with a great deal of men who thought you couldn’t count past ten, or couldn’t be relied upon to understand what was really going on, or that it was your parents or husband who made the real decisions. There were some advantages to being a girl in such a community, but being constantly talked down to was not one of them.

I cupped my palm, as I had done for Bernard, and channelled my magic into the air. The room grew warm rapidly, the air shimmering over my bare skin as it heated, the first flickers of flame starting to glimmer into existence. Master Rupertson showed no visible reaction as the fire grew and grew, my will shaping it into a towering fountain of flame. I was weirdly disappointed. I had spent most of my journey practising what little magic I knew and … surely it deserved some response. But he said nothing as the flames started to die.

“You have power,” Master Rupertson said. “But you have very poor control.”

I blinked in surprise. I had summoned fire! I had started a blaze and controlled it. Maybe it wasn’t as grand a feat as those attributed to Lord Whitehall, but still …

“Watch.” Master Rupertson drew a long wooden stick from his belt and held it up in front of me. “Watch and learn.”

I felt the magic sparkling around his stick – his wand - as he cast a spell. It was very different from the magic I had summoned and directed, a perfect piece of directed magic that drew on enough energy to cast a spell … and no more. I sucked in my breath, eyeing Master Rupertson with new respect. I hadn’t thought myself the greatest magician in the world, and I had known I had a great deal to learn, but it was clear I had far more to learn than I had thought. The spell produced a perfect fireball, then snapped out of existence so completely I couldn’t sense any residue tainting the air. My magic, by contrast, could still be felt. I had never felt so clumsy in my entire life.

“Your spell has two problems,” Master Rupertson told me. “The first is that you are shaping the raw power directly, rather than channelling it with your spells. Rather like using your bare hands to dig rather than finding a shovel. You are expending far too much energy to keep the spell in being, which drains you at incredible speed. The second is that your magic is slopping out of your spell, poisoning the air and - more dangerously - yourself. You have a great deal of work to do. Are you willing to work hard, now you know more about how far you have to go?”

I nodded, curtly. Hilde had never taught me anything of the sort. I don’t think she ever knew. Magic might be nothing more than power, but using it effectively required concentration and understanding. It was a fast-flowing river that could be tapped and harnessed, if you knew what you were doing. I had heard stories of communities that had tried to tap rivers without knowing quite what they were doing, stories that had ended in disaster. The old folk often cited them to keep us youngsters from pushing the limits. In hindsight, I wondered if they had had a point.

“Good.” Master Rupertson reached into a drawer and produced a handful of shorter wands. “Let us see which one suits you.”

He passed me the first wand. “Try to channel your magic into the wand.”

I waved the wand carefully. I had never tried to channel my magic into anything. I could sense faint flickers of magic within the wand, a tiny fragment of magic that somehow managed to be more focused than anything I had ever cast on my own. The wood vibrated in my hand, but otherwise nothing happened. Master Rupertson didn’t seem downcast. He simply passed me another wand. This time, my magic flowed into the fragment and triggered the spell. The tip of the wand lit up so brightly I nearly dropped it in shock.

“Interesting,” Master Rupertson observed. “You have an affinity for rowan. I suppose I should not be too surprised.”

I eyed him warily. “How so?”

“The tree is closely afflicted to various goddesses and nature spirits of a feminine bent,” Master Rupertson said. “They are often found close to places of natural power, welcoming female visitors and deterring men. Many feminine cults rowan as part of their rites and rituals. It is known for being closely linked to womanhood.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of it. There were no female-only rites and rituals in my village. The closest thing we had to it was a private gathering for women before the harvest festival began, a gathering that was really little more than a formal blessing on women who had become mothers in the last year and a prayer that rest of us would shortly be blessed with children ourselves. There was certainly no mention of goddesses or the rowan tree. I wondered, idly, if Hilde had ever used rowan in her spells. It had never occurred to me to ask.

“It will not matter as you grow more capable,” Master Rupertson told me. “You will discover that you will be able to use any wand, although some will be more resistant than others. It is apparently unwise to become completely dependent on a single wand, and many magicians swap wands regularly, but we advise students to keep their wand to themselves until they graduate. The risk of magical contamination is too great.”

I frowned, staring at the wand in my hand. “You put a spell in the wand for me?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Master Rupertson said. “The spell in question is designed to shape and channel magic, any magic. You will learn, as you proceed, how to prepare the wand yourself, how to stack up spells and channel magic into them one by one. It will not be easy to put together the spells, at least at first, but with dedication and practice you will likely become a decent spellcaster. You will also learn other arts in the next two years.”

He met my eyes. “Can you read?”

I shook my head, feeling a twinge of embarrassment even though I had never had the opportunity to learn to read. I didn’t know anyone in the village who could, save perhaps Hilde. The peddlers often left messages with us in the certain knowledge we couldn’t read them. It had never occurred to me - I kicked myself for the oversight - that I might need to learn to read to become a magician. If I had known, I might have tried to convince a passing peddler to teach me. The price might have been high, but it would be worth it if I had mastered an art as complex as reading and writing.

“We’ll teach you,” Master Rupertson said. It struck me that I could not be the only student who arrived not knowing how to read. “There are also a number of other skills you will need to master over the next few years.”

He sounded a little more reconciled to having me as a student, even as he bombarded me with questions about just what skills I had mastered on the farm. It was disconcerting to realise - again and again - just how ignorant I was, even though I was far from stupid. It might have been easier if I had studied under a blacksmith, or a carpenter, but it had never dawned on me that such skills might be useful. Even if they had, the village craftsmen would hardly take me as an apprentice. I knew how to work the farm, and how to cook and clean and sew, but little else. The sewing might come in handy, Master Rupertson told me. I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or just trying to comfort me.

“There is one other thing you need to understand,” Master Rupertson told me bluntly. “You will not receive any special treatment. You will be treated the same as any other student, and held to the same standards. You will perform chores to help the community, you will be expected to provide assistance to your masters at all hours, and you will be whipped if you misbehave or break the rules. There will be no consideration given to your sex, no suggestion that you are somehow exempt from student duties and obligations. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Master,” I said. I had worked in the fields alongside the boys. I had done my fair share of mischief before my body had started to blossom and the boys had started to look at me with interest. I hadn’t understood, at the time, why I and my sisters had to sleep apart from the boys, sleeping in a cage rather than a room. It had only been a couple of years ago that I had come to understand why. “I don’t expect any special treatment.”

Master Rupertson looked unimpressed, then launched into a long lecture punctuated by demonstrations of magic spells. It managed, somehow, to be both simple and complex. The spells he showed me, as I understood it, were the building blocks of other spells, together piece by piece to cast a much more complex piece of magic. I couldn’t help thinking of it as detailed instructions, the sort of thing a farmer might give a young man who didn’t have much between his ears. I knew a couple of boys who weren’t stupid, not precisely, but were slow and prone to misunderstanding instructions if they weren’t very clear. The magic, Master Rupertson explained, was very prone to going in directions the caster didn’t expect. It was vitally important to ensure the power was channelled in the right direction.

“Like a river,” I said. “We don’t want it to break its banks.”

“Crude, but effectively accurate,” Master Rupertson told me. A river bursting its banks can be extremely dangerous for the surrounding landscape. Your magic bursting free can be extremely dangerous for everyone around you.

He gave me no rest as he drilled me in channelling my magic, teaching me exercises to direct the power in the right direction. It wasn’t just direction that was important, I discovered; it was controlling precisely how much power I summoned and directed, using no more than the bare minimum required to work the spell. It was not remotely easy. I could calculate how much magic I needed for a single spell, or a single building block, but working out how much was required for a spell built out of building blocks was much harder. My stomach growled angrily as my latest spell fell apart, the magic shattering into fragments of raw power that vanished into the ether. I hadn’t felt so bad during harvest, when everyone - from the youngest to the oldest - worked from dawn till dusk.

“You will have plenty of time to practice,” Master Rupertson told me. He made a gesture with one hand. I sensed the spell, but it was gone before I had a chance to work out what it did. “You’ll be included in the basic classes for spellcasting, reading and writing, and a number of other arts. You are not expected to know everything from the start, but your teachers will not be impressed if you do not make progress. If you don’t understand what you’re being told, ask.”

Someone knocked on the door, hard, and then opened it. I looked up to see a young man into the room. He looked … odd. He had short blond hair, blue eyes and an unusually pale face struck me as unnatural. It took me a moment to realise there were no pockmarks, no traces of a life spent in the fields or learning a trade. His outfit was nothing more than a shirt and trousers, but they were decidedly new. My clothes were ancient, patched up and passed down so often it was hard to determine if there was anything of the original outfit still there. I couldn’t help thinking he looked a little unhealthy. His appearance certainly didn’t suggest a man used to manual labour.

“Cemburu,” Master Rupertson said. “This is Janis, our new student. Take her to the dining hall and make sure she eats, then show her back to her room.”

Cemburu stared at me. I had had young men look at me with interest, and older folk eyeing me and then muttering about just what my mother might have been doing nine months before I was born, but it was the first time anyone had looked at me as if I were something they had scraped off their shoe. His eyes swept over my face and dropped to my chest, then rose again. I felt a twinge of discomfort. There was nothing unnatural in men being interested in women - like all farmers, I had known the facts of life from a very early age - but this felt different. It felt wrong.

“This way,” Cemburu said. He had a snooty voice that grated on me. The headman’s wife had put on a similar tone, years ago, only to discard it when everyone laughed at her. I couldn’t help thinking Cemburu took it seriously. “Come with me.”

I stood, nodded politely to my tutor, and followed Cemburu through the door. He said nothing as he walked through another maze of corridors, walking so quickly it felt he was desperate to get rid of me as quickly as possible, as if there was something about me that repelled him. I made a mental note to explore the school as quickly as possible, just so I wouldn’t have to rely on anyone to show me around, then studied his back. He wasn’t unhealthy, as far as I could tell, but he wasn’t anything like as muscular as my brothers or father. He would not last long on the farm.

He stopped outside a door and turned to face me. “Why do you get a room? A private room?”

I tried to hide my surprise. His tone might be snooty, but I had seen the look on his face before. It was the look of a man who had been denied something he wanted, then found himself forced to watch as someone else got the thing he wanted, without even asking for it. A private room? I had grown up on a farm. I might have slept in a cage, but I had still shared a chamber with my brothers. I wouldn’t have been that afraid of sleeping in a dorm with male students.

“I didn’t ask for it,” I said. I should probably have been more diplomatic, but I didn’t feel diplomatic. “They just gave it to me.”

“They just gave it to you,” Cemburu repeated. He couldn’t have been more incredulous if I have claimed to be the direct descendant of a god and goddess. “How much special treatment do you think they’re going to give you because of those?”

He jabbed a finger at my breasts. I felt a hot flash of embarrassment, rapidly followed by anger. I have had more reason than most to resent my appearance, but still … I had grown up on a farm. I wasn’t ashamed of my body. Or my sex, even though it brought restrictions as well as advantages. No one back home would challenge me to a bare-knuckle fist fight.

“Get this,” Cemburu said. “I will not be giving you any special treatment at all!”

“That’s good,” I snapped back. “I never asked for it!”