Ears ringing, vision filled with flashes, head so raw with pain, Oliver didn’t know where he was.
A voice murmured, angry and scared. He wanted to believe it sounded like Ms. Scaggs, but she had thrown him out, hadn’t she?
Then came a deeper male voice. His stepfather?… no. The ringing, if only it would stop, he might be able to make out what they were saying.
A prick in his arm, and something cool flowed through his body. It was almost like feeling a scent, almost like his insides were tasting sweet cream.
As the pain deadened, his vision went gray. He tried to blink it away, but couldn’t feel his eyes. He tried to scream it away, but his voice fell silent. He tried to reach up, to touch anything, but his arm didn’t move.
And just when he was certain he was dead, that the gray would be endless, something touched his hand, something almost imperceivable. Something warm, something not gray, held it.
And he heard a woman sobbing.
? ? ?
It was the pain that finally woke him: a high-pitched squeal that came and went; a dull ache that pounded at the base of his teeth. His limbs met soft resistance as he tried to move, and slowly, he realized he was sunk deep in a mattress.
His vision cleared to the image of Ms. Scaggs sitting in a chair, watching over him. Her eyes, red and puffy, she looked so old.
“Was it your stepfather?” she whispered.
He nodded.
“Can you eat?” she asked.
Nauseous and starved all at once, when he didn’t respond, she took a clean towel, dipped it in a bowl of water, and held it below his lips. He sucked on it.
They did this until she had to go refill the bowl, and he let himself drift to sleep.
The next time he woke, the windows were dark, the room lit by candlelight. She held his head up and brought a spoon to his lips. Warm broth trickled down his throat.
When the Sun returned, the pain in his torso had subsided, and the ringing in his ears had stopped, though, his teeth still ached a little. He wiggled, testing his fingers and toes.
They all seemed to work and, as he pushed his hand out from under the covers, Scaggs raised her eyes and waited for him to finish sitting up.
She looked at him sternly. “You need to make a choice. Your stepfather or me. I’m sorry, but there’s no other way. If you choose him, I’ll still make sure you get better.”
Oliver blinked. What was she offering?
She said, “Because I would very much like to choose you, but I can’t, not if you’re going to throw your life away for such a… small man.”
“My stepfather,” he whispered through a raw throat, “threw me off a ship… too drunk to look for rocks.”
“I will never hurt you. I promise.”
“The coins…”
“I don’t care. Tell me anything. Tell me he made you. I’ll forgive you.”
“No, I took them… I don’t deserve you.” Oliver looked down as he spoke the truth.
Her head shook with tired eyes. “We all make mistakes, me worst of all. Let me ask you this. Would you have taken anything if it weren’t for him? Did you keep any of it for yourself?”
“Well, no…”
“So, make your choice.”
Amazed she was even asking, amazed he wasn’t dead, amazed at life for not being as awful as possible—
“Oliver?”
“I choose you.” He shuddered.
“Then you’ve got me.” She let out a long sigh of relief.
“Um… where am I?”
“Oh, your room.” She smiled. “Now, Oliver.” Her voice hardened. “Where is your stepfather now?”
“At sea. He didn’t say when…” He had to rest a moment. “He was coming back… Runs cargo along the channel. Takes a week or two.”
“Then I’ll keep an eye out for him.”
“Think he’ll come looking for me?” Oliver asked.
“Once, he’ll come looking for you, once.”
“You’re not going to…”
“No, I’ll just scare him a little.”
“You could scare him a lot.” Oliver tried to smile, but winced at the sharp pain above his eye. “Ms. Scaggs… my face?”
“Oh, you’ll be all right. Scars are dashing.”
Just for boys, he thought.
“Here, have a look.” She held up a mirror.
There was a tear across his right eyebrow and dark stitches, crusted in blood, holding the swollen skin together. It was grotesque.
“See, nothing to worry about. It’s not really even on your face.” She pulled the mirror away, seeming satisfied with the result, then saw his horror. “Wait for the swelling to go down, all right? The doctor said it was nothing to worry about. It will fade eventually.”
After a long while, she left to let him rest, but he had trouble getting back to sleep. The aching in his sides was almost gone, so he thought he could get out of bed soon, but didn’t want to push it.
? ? ?
Over the next few days, it felt strange to be lazy. He couldn’t remember ever lying in bed simply for the pleasure of it. He’d always been forced into activity, either by the Sun or by his stepfather, and it was a new feeling not to have to look out for himself.
One morning, Ms. Scaggs came by to check on him.
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“What time is it?” he asked.
“Eleven twenty. Hmm, you can’t tell, can you?”
“Not without a clock.”
“Then this might be the perfect time to learn your first spell.” She smiled slyly.
“But I thought… What about the candle?”
“Well, that’s magic to be sure, but it’s just a technique, the same as cleaning. What separates simple magic from a proper spell is structure. Sure, any hothead can blow up half a city block.” She glanced away innocently. “But it takes a better mind to cast charms and wards, or for example, to tell time without a clock.”
“So, how do I do that?” he asked.
“That’s what I’d like you to tell me. This should help...” She handed him a book titled ‘On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres,’ left an unlit candle by his bedside, and turned to leave. “I’ll bring dinner in a few hours. Oh, and… if you hear explosions coming from downstairs, don’t worry. I just need to get some work done.”
? ? ?
Later that evening when Ms. Scaggs reappeared at his door, covered in soot, Oliver’s mind was spinning.
“I hope I wasn’t too loud,” she said.
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Is the reading going well?”
“I knew the Sun revolved around the Earth. I just didn’t know the mechanics behind it. They’re so, so…”
“Complicated?” she asked.
“I was going to say elegant, but I don’t understand any of it. This I mean.” He pointed to a strange arrangement of letters and numbers he’d seen on nearly every page.
“Those are mathematical notations,” she said. “You’ve not been taught any of that?”
He shook his head, feeling shame at his ignorance.
“Well, then this is the first lesson. Anything big you want to do with magic, as in life, starts with figuring out all the small steps involved, and ends with assembling them together.”
“It’s an awful lot of work, just to replace a clock,” said Oliver.
“And how do you think clocks are made? One tiny piece of magic at a time. Look, it’s going to be daunting at first, but then it gets easier and easier.” She glanced at the candle beside his bed. He felt her spark snuff it out, and the room dimmed. “Understand?”
“Yes,” Oliver groaned, then concentrated for a second, reigniting the candle. “It’s just, I’ve got so much to learn.”
“Is that a problem?”
“I’m just so… far behind.” He shook his head.
Ms. Scaggs left and, a minute later, returned with an armload of books. “I’ll leave these here, for your collection,” she said, placing the books on the dresser, between two brass bookends.
And at the very end sat a familiar copy of the ‘Wordsworth’s Dictionary.’
“Sorry, I looked in your shed.” She turned to leave.
“Wait…” he called after her. She stopped and turned around.
“I’m sorry I took those coins,” he said, “and the candlestick.”
She winced a little.
“And your silverware.”
Her face contorted at that one.
“And your comb... And your gold pens.”
Scaggs went pale. “Those were given to me by—by—you know what? It doesn’t matter.” She tried to smile, but he could see from the way her eyebrows were trying to escape her face, she was not pleased.
“And, I’m sorry I messed with your stopwatch… that first day.”
“Oh, I knew it—” She raised a finger, looking upset for an instant before swallowing it. “Is that all?”
“Yes.” That was everything he’d taken, but suddenly he thought of his other ‘problem,’ and averted his eyes.
“Do you swear?”
He stayed quiet.
“What is it?” she said sternly.
“That’s—all I took from you,” he said, cautiously meeting her gaze.
Her face softened as she crouched beside his bed. She opened her mouth like she was going to say something, but then closed it again, touched her lips to his forehead, and left the room.
? ? ?
Oliver stretched, wondering if today wasn’t the day he could finally get out of bed. He still felt weak, but his head didn’t ache anymore, so he decided to make his way down to the kitchen.
Ms. Scaggs flinched when she saw him, sending a spoon rattling across the floor. “You just about gave me a heart attack. I’m not used to having people appear on me like that.”
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s not your fault.” She shook her head. “And that came for you.” She motioned to a brown-wrapped package on the counter. “It seems I can’t drag an unconscious boy halfway across the city while shooting up walls of fire without attracting attention anymore.”
There was a note on top, ‘You forgot your book —Marco.’ He ripped off the wrapper, stunned. It was the Sylvan book.
“I suppose he can be all right, from time to time,” said Scaggs, adding, “Oliver?” when he didn’t respond.
He blinked, and shook his head, and blinked again, but no matter how hard he tried to return to reality, the book was still there. “I-I don’t know how I’m going to thank him.”
“No need. I sent the courier back with double the price he paid for it. I’d much rather you owe me—than him.” She shrugged. “But now, I am curious…”
“About what?”
“About how you’re going to repay me.” She gave him a stone-dead stare. If she was teasing, she was hiding it well but didn’t belabor the point, and even lent him a Sylvan dictionary. Oliver spent the next few hours in the library trying to make heads or tails of the spell book, periodically interrupted when the rafters shook from the rumble of explosions below.
Ms. Scaggs was covered in soot at lunch, and Oliver couldn’t help but chuckle when a large chunk of it fell from her hair and landed in her soup.
“How goes the reading?” she asked.
“The math is going slowly. The Sylvan book, not at all.”
“Oh, yes well, honestly it’s going to be a long while before you can do anything with it, years really.”
“Years?” his voice weakened.
“Even if you put all your effort into it—Look, work on the time spell instead, consider it the first step.”
“Years…” It hit Oliver that he might not get that far.
They ate in silence before she spoke up, “I suppose I could take a crack at it, the Sylvan book, at least figure out if it’s real. That book ‘Pyrokinetics’ helped with my project, made a particularly tricky bit easy. Would you like me to?”
Even if she did get the spells working, Oliver dreaded having the ‘I want to be a girl’ conversation with her. How would he even do that? What would she say? What if she wasn’t okay with it? What if—if—
“Oliver?” Scaggs snapped her fingers. “You drifted off there for a minute, boy.”
“Sorry, I was just thinking.”
“Oh, all right.” A puzzled expression sat on her face.
“I mean if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.” Unable to hide his excitement, trembling, he pushed the book over to her, and she looked excited too.
They spent the evening reading together in the library, which besides an awkward moment when Oliver asked for pen and paper to work out an algebra problem, and Ms. Scaggs had to explain that she ‘seemed to have misplaced’ her two gold pens, went rather well.
? ? ?
A few days later, after Oliver had spent several afternoons scrubbing soot and evenings reading in the library, Scaggs slammed the book shut. “Okay, it’s either real, or it’s the best forgery I’ve ever seen.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means.” She chuckled. “You did say you’d like to try being an eagle for a day?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“Enough to be my guinea pig? I mean not literally a guinea pig… although, I guess if it works, that might be possible. I would try it on an animal first, but the book seems to be written for people. That, and most of the animals in the book are large, about the same size as a person, and dangerous. So, if I tried it on a rat, it might… eat my face.”
“Is it safe?” he asked.
“Yes, I suppose at this point, I can say it’s either real, or it won’t work at all. And Sylvan magic, enigmatic as it is, tends to be benign. There aren’t any Sylvan combat spells or anything like that, and no one’s ever been the victim of a Sylvan curse. But it’s not exactly a straight path either. I can’t just turn you into an eagle for a day of flying. That’s one of the more complicated spells, so I’ll have to work up to it. Start from the beginning of the book, and I’ll need to try two or three other things first, and then maybe I can do an eagle.”
He wondered if one of those other things might possibly be a girl. And then maybe he could just get her to stop, or he could ‘lose’ the book… or even run away if he had to.
“Oliver?” She snapped her fingers.
“Maybe we could try something simple, like could you turn me into another person?” he asked, not making eye contact.
She raised an eyebrow for a moment, before saying, “Those spells don’t come until later. I know it seems backwards… Look, I need to start with the spells at the beginning. Casting each one is like memorizing ten pages of text, and then reciting them while playing a violin solo. They build on one another. I could probably do one of the simpler ones tonight though?”
“Really? How long would it last? Can you undo it?”
“I have no idea about the duration. There’s no indication it would ever wear off. But about undoing it, yes, I’m sure I can, although that’s a different sort of process, and I’d need to spend a few days going over the counter spell. It would help if I had a transformed subject to study…” She eyed him suspiciously.
He hadn’t thought this would happen so quickly, but that was good, right? And he really wanted to know if it was going to work. Still, it was weird.
“If you don’t want to. We don’t have to.” She added, “I won’t push you into anything.”
“Okay.” He nodded. “It’s not a bad time, just surprising.”
“So, you’re game then? I mean it might not do anything.” She shrugged.
“I guess so. But yes.”
“All right. So now, would you rather be a pig or a monkey?”
He felt his eyebrows scrunch together.
“Those are the two easiest spells, and I think we’d both prefer not to do pig. So, that really only leaves the one option, not that I’m pressuring you.”
“Okay, monkey I guess.”
Ms. Scaggs spent the rest of the evening drawing flowing curves, like vines, at his feet while humming, her spark flowing through him. Sometimes it felt like standing in a cool river, other times like a warm breeze.
He felt very tired, but still very human when she saw him to bed.
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If you had to be transformed into something for a time, which would you choose?
