4.63: Associations

Staffbreaker brings to hidden lair –

I’m with Max and Kylie. Max is leading us up a mountain. Grinning, he shows us the new mobile phones he’s hidden to talk to home.

--

I’m crawling through a bush. Chelsea is showing me a new hiding spot. She steps on a long wooden stick and it snaps under her weight.

Both scout and vessel, unprepared –

I’m in the woods, and our campsite isn’t in view.

“You’re the scout!” Melissa calls, irritated, lowering her binoculars.

“I have no idea where we are,” I admit.

Unaware of tribute thrice –

I’m rubbing the feeling back into my exhausted arms.

“Three more sets,” Magistus says, handing me a dumbbell.

“You’re just being a dick now,” I tell him.

“You just know you can’t keep up with me,” he retorts. His hand lingers on my arm a lot longer than it needs to while he makes sure I have the grip right.

He will be called to sacrifice –

I’m in a large, unfamiliar cavern. I shoulder a heavy bag, grumbling.

“Are you seriously going to keep carrying that?” Kylie asks.

“It’s my climbing gear,” I said. “I lost it in the lake once and now I’m bringing it back.”

“You have new climbing gear!”

“That’s not the point.”

“I really doubt,” Max cuts in, not looking up from the runes on a long metal pillar he’s inspecting, “that you’re going to need climbing gear down here. I know we’re pretty far down under the school, but I don’t think that climbing out is going to be an option.”

“Fine,” I grumble, putting the bag down. “The sacrifices I make for you guys.”

--

I’m looking down a long pipe, at the small tracker at the bottom. I very carefully reach in for it, and immediately catch the sleeve of my favourite jacket on a sharp bit of metal, tearing it open. “God fucking dammit,” I mutter.

They travel, lost, around the Heart –

I’m in a doctor’s office. “There’s no way to get it out?” I ask.

Doctor Marley, my GP, sighs and rubs his temples. “No, Kayden. As I’ve explained multiple times, the best thing we can do is try to avoid exciting it. So – ”

“The best thing. Not the only thing. You could get it out, right? What about if you took my heart out?”

“I’m not recommending an unnecessary heart transplant for a ten year old who – ”

“It’s not ‘unnecessary’, I need it to get rid of – ”

Walk deep in shadows of old scars –

I’m in the shower, tracing a finger over my chest, trying to follow the ‘scars’ that Malas detected that I can’t see or feel. I have no way of knowing where the actual lines are, but I’m trying to find them. I’m trying to figure out how to best ask my parents about them. Whether there’s any point in asking about them.

But when the soulless shades they find –

I’m hiding under by bedcovers at midnight. I just saw a face in the window, and it might be a ghost. It might be a burglar. It might be a mage, here to kill me before I can use my evil dirty curse to hurt anyone. I should call for Mum and Dad, but what if the mage hurts them?

I stay still, and wait to see if anything will come to get me.

They’ll pay a part of their own minds –

I’m in the living room. “Are you out of your mind?!” Mum yells.

“It was just a game! I didn’t mean – ”

“You could’ve fallen through the ceiling! That place is condemned for a reason!”

“I’m not hurt!”

“You could’ve panicked, and cursed someone!”

“That’s not fair! You never let me do anything!”

“Calm down and go to your room! You’re grounded!”

I point at her and go to yell something, but as I raise my finger, she flinches back, fear flashing across her face. I grit my teeth and storm up to my room.

Staffbreaker’s soul will be laid claim –

I’m in the library, studying with Max. Max is rubbing at the mage mark on his arm. He does that a lot. I don’t think he notices that he’s doing it. I consider making a joke about how scratching mosquito bites makes them worse, but it’d probably be in poor taste.

--

I’m in a large, unfamiliar cavern. The room is vaguely semicircular, although large enough that the shape isn’t the first thing to notice about it. I’m stepping off the bottom step of a spiral staircase built into the middle of the flat wall, but Max is already halfway across the room. There are several large metal pillars, covered in runes, and he’s shining his tablet light on one of them, inspecting it. The pillars don’t reach the ceiling of the cavern, high overhead; they’re about three metres tall and curved inward toward the staircase, arranged in their own semicircle.

“What are they?” I ask, but Max is too absorbed to notice the question.

“I didn’t expect the secret heart of our mysterious magical school to be so damp and musty,” Kylie remarks behind me.

By ghosts of spells that wax and wane –

I’m sitting on a beach, under the stars, with Kylie and Alania Miratova.

“Some prophecies depend on the phases of the moon,” Miratova explains, pointing to the full moon above us. “We don’t know specifically what spell Kylie has, but if her casting sensitivity is affected by the moon, we can begin to narrow it down.”

Surrender brings with shocking ease –

“I give up,” I snap, tossing my pencil down. “I simply do not care enough about this dumb book to discuss its themes.”

“Told you you should’ve gone with a Pern book for the report,” Melissa says, continuing to scribble furiously.

“Neither you nor Miss Flannagan will ever convince me to read Pern,” I declare.

Truths no real person ever sees –

“What happened?” Dad asks, looking at the mess of white powder and crushed boxes.

“I put the cereal back and it just collapsed.”

“The shelf collapsed.”

“Yeah.”

“Under the prodigious weight of a box of corn flakes.”

“Must have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

“… Kayden, is there something you want to tell me?”

“What? No! Look, it’s a cheap shelf; sometimes they – ” I stop talking, noticing where he’s looking – at my chest, where the curse lives. There’s a worry, a panic, in his eyes, that he’s trying to hide. I cross my arms. “Seriously, it was nothing weird!”

“Kayden, this is serious. If odd things are happening – ”

“Fine! I tried to climb the shelf to hide Chelsea’s tracker and I’m heavier than I used to be! Happy?”

Dad relaxes. “Let’s clean this up before your mother comes home and has a heart attack.”

The shades will watch and act as one –

I’m on the beach, under the sun. Talbot and Kylie are building a sandcastle together, while Hua stretches out on a towel.

“Wow, the sun sure is bright today,” Hua declares in a theatrically loud and clear voice.

We ignore her. I fetch another bucket of water for Kylie and Talbot.

“Really bright. Such a pity that a poor dear witch left her sunglasses at home. It’d be so terrible for her to get eyestrain and be unable to help anyone with their homework.”

Talbot gives a deep, long-suffering sigh and hands his sunglasses over.

“Oh, how generous! Thank you!”

“You know I’m not a walking coat rack, right?”

“Well stop having nicer and more expensive sunglasses than me, then.”

And he will see what must be done –

I’m in my favourite workshop.

“It’s too risky,” Saina gasps.

“Life is about risks!” I insist. “We can do it! We just need to precipitate out the last of the calcium –”

“It’s fine! It’s usable! We can pass the assignment with this!”

“Pass? Pass?! I didn’t come here to make an invigorating draught worthy of a pass. A truly excellent draught is clear as water, and for that, we need to get rid of the last of the calcium. Hand me the eyedropper.”

“You fly too close to the sun, my love,” Saina warns, handing over the dropper with shaking fingers.

“Take no risks, gain no rewards.” I get to work. “Just a little – fuck!”

Saina sighs. “I’ll get the stuff to start again.”

The body of the New God’s home –

I am balanced precariously on a windowsill, handing a wooden board up to someone on the roof.

“Yeah!” Mae calls triumphantly. “I am a god of roof repair! Look at that!”

I haul myself up to look. “That’s crooked.”

“It’s fine! It’s weatherproof, isn’t it?”

“How crooked is it?” Terry calls up from the ground. “Should I get more wood?”

I give it a closer look. “Eh, it’s… probably good enough for the date. She’s an angel of roof repair. Maaaybe a demigod.”

“Yeah! Demigod of roof repair!”

When broken, also breaks his own –

I’m in my favourite workshop, dropping a vial on the floor. “God fucking dammit!” I snap as it shatters, drenching the bottom of my robes bright pink. Saina giggles, then swears when she notices drops of pink on her own robes.

The Heartbound has now made his choice –

I’m contemplating three identical shot glasses.

“Three cups left, and the chilli sauce remains unclaimed,” Hua announces. “Kayden, your choice.”

“We’re sure Talbot didn’t pick the chilli and purify his again?” I ask.

“In my defence, nobody said I couldn’t do that before it happened,” Talbot protests. “But now that the rule has been made, no. I don’t cheat.”

“Just find loopholes?” Kylie asked.

“Loopholes aren’t cheating,” Talbot says.

“I gotta agree with him there,” I say. “Loopholes aren’t cheating.”

“Just pick a glass!” Hua says.

And Destiny lives in his voice –

I’m watching Peter pull a name out of a hat. “This week’s cleaner is… Hammond!” he announces in a loud, clear voice.

“Oh, come on! I did it last session.”

“Don’t blame me, I just draw the names.”

“Let me see that hat!”

Restless and still settling –

I’m handing a bottle of water to Magista in the gym. Magistus hands her a towel. “Good set.”

She shakes her head. “I’m eight seconds slower than last time.”

“Pretty sure that’s normal variation.”

“Maybe. But I might be slowing down. I can’t afford to slow down if I want to succeed with the Amazons.”

“You ever considered relaxing a bit?”

“I’ll relax when I’m dead.”

He lacks the strength with which to sing –

“You should sing for him,” Terry suggests.

“Absolutely not,” I say. “Magical glowing flowers for a date, I will accept. But I don’t sing.”

“Aww, it’s not that hard.”

“I don’t like my voice. And it’d be super embarrassing if he’s better at it.”

He arrives early, circles brief –

I’m waiting for Saina in a valley filled with flowers. I thought arriving early would make me less nervous, but it has the opposite effect. I pace back and forth, trying to calm down. It’d be just my luck if I was a nervous wreck for our first real date.

Within the ring of metal teeth –

I’m in an unfamiliar cavern, watching Max inspect a curved metal pillar.

“They’re like whale’s teeth,” Kylie says.

“What?” I ask.

“You know. For eating krill? For filtering them out of the water?”

“I think she means baleen,” Max says, not looking up from the pillar. “And no, they’re nothing like baleen. Baleen are more like a, a forest of much thinner spines. Like a brush.”

“What are they?” I ask. “Besides just big and creepy.”

“Well, if I’m reading this right, I… think they might be prisons. Or traps, I suppose.”

“Just like whale’s teeth!” Kylie grins.

“No; see, I think each pillar actually holds – ”

Marked, followed, by the speaker’s Kiss –

I’m in a room of ancient books and scrolls, wrapping a bandage around my arm.

“Are you alright?” Max asks.

“Don’t worry, I won’t bleed on the books,” I say.

“Not what I was worried about! That thing bit you in a pretty vilnerable spot.”

“I can move my hand just fine, so I don’t think it hit anything important.”

“It might get infected.”

“Yeah, but there’s nothing we can do about that right now except finish up here and find a way out.”

“What even was that thing?” Kylie asks. “What if it comes back? Do we have some way to ward it off, or kill it? Also, what the hell does ‘sound travels best in air’ mean? It seemed pretty insistent on that point.”

“You guys remember when I told you about my Initiation, and the thing I met in the cabin?” I begin.

To call him back to what he’ll miss –

“Did you seriously miss that?” di Fiore asks. “I mean, I thought it was pretty obvious.”

“Oh my god,” I say. “I’m usually a pacifist, but something about you just makes me want to hit you all the time.”

“Yeah, because you have a great track record with that.”

“Hey, I have a fantastic track record hitting you.”

“Do you? Are you referring to the time the Guardian Ring basically paralysed your arm, or the time you nearly broke your fingers, or the time you dropped both of us into a giant underground lake and I had to save you from a lake monster and stop you from drowning?”

“Guys,” Kylie cuts in. “If there’s gonna be a fistfight, can it wait until after I’ve had my breakfast?”

To imitate the ancient home –

I’m in the cabin on Agreabla Insulo, trying not to think about how much it looks like the cabin from my Initiation. Trying not to hear the rain hammering on the roof. Trying not to panic.

With hallways etched down to the bone –

I’m in the underwater cavern where I became Kylie’s familiar, glaring at Max. “You can’t keep a rune-etched skeleton as a souvenir,” I insist. “It’s disrespectful, and super haunted.”

He bears the power locked in pearl –

“And that’s how Tarada saves the Mermaid Village!” Saina grins. “And they gift him the pearl and tell him where to find the wizard.”

“I’m glad that’s a lost episode,” I say. “The world is better for me not being able to watch it.”

And carries it above the world –

I’m climbing the rock climbing cliff in the gym. I look down, to the clouds below, and feel like the sky just goes on forever. I push away, and let myself fall.

The Airess carries in her blood –

I’m bringing Magista the icing for di Fiore’s birthday cake. On a ladder above me, Kylie swears.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I just cut myself a little.”

“You cut yourself hanging paper flowers?”

“These thumbtacks are sharp!”

“Just don’t bleed on the decorations. Di Fiore would probably take it as some kind of diplomatic insult and declare a blood feud upon your line.”

A power without room enough –

I’m eating tinned spaghetti under candlelight.

“I swear, if they don’t fix that power line within the next hour,” Mum grumbles.

“I know, honey,” Dad says. “I don’t want to miss The Bachelorette either.”

“It’s not – honestly, I’m just worried about my phone charge.”

“This is a safe place.” Dad winks. “You can admit that you couldn’t stand to miss the rose ceremony.”

And once the vessel is refined –

I’m layering gluey newspaper onto a balloon. “How come yours is so smooth and even?” I ask Melissa.

“The secret is cross hatching,” she says. “You do a layer of strips in one direction, and then one at right angles. That’s how you make the strongest papier mache bowls.”

“I just dunk it all in the glue and dump it on,” Chelsea says, inspecting her complete mess.

“Yeah,” Melissa sighs. “I noticed.”

It’s grown too much for just one mind –

“Ido has to be the hardest language in the world to learn!” I exclaim, throwing myself back onto my bed.

“It’s literally the easiest language in the world to learn,” Kylie points out. “That’s the whole point.”

To stay alive so far from home –

I’m looking at a world map, one finger on Duniyasar in Pakistan, the other on my home in Australia. I calculate the distance.

She must borrow another’s throne –

“I’m queen of the world!” Chelsea declares, sitting on an enormous stack of stackable chairs in the school gymnasium.

“Hey!” I protest. “That’s my stack!”

A place she can open her mind –

I’m watching Lydia explain the prophecy-enhancing abilities of Duniyasar to Kylie. Kylie looks attentive, but I lose track of the conversation after just a few minutes.

To truths hidden deep in time –

I’m in Melissa’s room. “Did you know that Cleopatra lived closer in time to the first moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramids?” she asks.

“That can’t possibly be right,” Chelsea says.

--

I’m in my room at Skolala Refujeyo. “Did you know that Cleopatra lived closer in time to the first moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramids?” Max asks.

“Yeah, I think I’ve heard that somewhere,” I say.

--

I’m at the beach with Saina. We’re dangling our toes in the water.

“Did you know that Cleopatra lived closer in time to the first moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramids?” I ask her.

“Wait, really? That doesn’t sound right.”

I nod. “Egypt has been around a really long time. What we think of as ‘ancient Egypt’ is actually a really huge span of time, and not all that far back in the past, comparatively speaking.”

But foresight alone does not bring –

“Yeah, I saw that coming,” Hammond sighs as Peter drops Saina and both of them land in the water.

“Then why didn’t you say anything?” I ask.

He shrugs. “How will they learn without precious experience?”

The pair climb out of the lake, looking like half-drowned rats, and Hammond and I burst into laughter.

Knowledge they need to climb and sing –

I’m in an unfamiliar cavern filled with ancient books and scrolls, going through a book and taking photos of every page on my tablet. The process is slowed somewhat by making sure that the freshly bandaged bite wound on my arm doesn’t bleed on anything.

“So, do we have a way out?” I ask. “Besides backtracking, I mean.”

“I’m not sure how successful backtracking would be,” Max replies. “And swimming back up through the lake is obviously impossible. But yes, I think this map might – ”

Assistance must the Airess find –

“Ugh,” Kylie groans. “I can’t believe I put this assignment off for so long. I hate oral presentations.”

“What’s the presentation on?” I ask.

“Magical practice in eighteenth-century Italy.”

“You have the most boring classes ever,” I say.

“I’ll start looking into Italy’s magical history,” Max says.

“I’ll start writing your speech,” I say. “We can’t do the details until Max gets back, but – ”

“Isn’t this cheating?” Kylie asks.

“And what, violating the academic integrity of the giant spell shop we all live in?”

“Good point.”

To break a tooth and open an eye –

I’m on the school roof, staring down at Matt’s twisted form on the ground. I know he’s alive because, over the horrified muttering of dozens of witnesses, I hear him screaming in pain.

It’s happened. My curse has awakened. My life is over, and that’s a selfish thing to think, isn’t it? I’ve inflicted a curse on someone and all I can think is that my life is over. I guess I must be sinful enough to deserve my curse after all, if I can think like that.

The curse stirs, restless, inside me. A wave of dizziness overtakes me. I fall.

--

I groaned, sat up, and opened my eyes. My brain felt like it was being forced through a sieve. Across the table the spellthing, or at least my dream version of the spellthing, watched me placidly, sipping its tea.

“You are such an arsehole,” I told it.