Magic for Beginners
by Wasuremono
I. Necromancy: Gathering a Ghost's Strings
Gray Eyes Shield and Shell
It's crazy, he knows, but Ness could swear that Paula's eyes are changing color, day by day. They're still grey, but they used to be closer to silver, the color of sunrises in old movies. Now they're granite some days, stormclouds on others, and when Ness looks into them, it's getting harder and harder to find his reflection.
He tries to tell himself it's delusion: just a trick of the changing light as they go through their days together. After all, things are still effortless: the routines as worn and comfortable as old clothes, the sweet silence on the days he doesn't feel like talking. Paula's the only thing about his life that's certain for him anymore, and she's the only thing he truly believes he understands. When there's so much comfort in that certainty, how can he worry about her eyes?
Still, every time he convinces himself that nothing has changed, some detail flickers by at the edges of his vision and makes the suspicions squirm in their cages. Paula holds herself differently these days, with her shoulders squared, and her smile is growing ever thinner.
Brick-by-Brick Solitude
Whenever Paula finds a moment away from Ness, she asks herself how best to separate her mind from his. Years ago, during their journey, she'd grown closer and closer to him for comfort and safety, and she'd imagined reaching a point of perfect communion, where their every thought would be in concordance. Yet the journey ended without it, and now it's hard for her to see the champion she traveled with in Ness anymore. The boy she sees now is a Ness who, with three weeks before his junior year of college begins, has yet to declare a major and only shrugs helplessly when asked about his future: the Ness who has been paralyzed by the sheer weight of his gifts. His destiny has swallowed him, and when his mind touches hers, she can feel it clawing at her own identity, trying to grab scraps of affection to repair itself. The communion she longed for once is gaining on her, its form twisted and hideous.
It isn't that she doesn't love him anymore, she tells herself. It's that this can't go on. Still, it's a cold comfort as she slowly begins to build her mental barriers back and shut herself away from him. The cruelty aches anew with every wall she builds inside her mind, but there is no other choice. Caught between a rock and a hard place, she has chosen the stone.
Golden Shadows Cast in Frieze
The last good day is in early September, during the finest Indian summer in Ness's memory. The sunset at Beak Point is glorious, turning the autumn leaves and wildflowers into a sea of crimson and gold all around them. The air is still heavy this time of year, but Ness can fool himself into believing that it's just some lingering summer humidity.
Paula laughs as she spreads out the picnic blanket, and they eat in a silence that manages to feel nearly comfortable. When they do speak, it's all out loud, never telepathic, and Ness does his best to bear with it. His voice warms up slowly, and by the end of the picnic, he's found the voice he used to use when he spoke to her -- that soft voice from so long ago, before they grew beyond sound. That they've slid all the way back to sound, he's found a way to forgive.
After the meal, they kiss; it's dry, soft, and just faintly sweet. There's a flicker of mental contact -- a faint warm feeling from Paula, which Ness answers in a flood of you're there? I love you I love you I love you speak to me, please, like it used to be. There's no reply, and his mind is silent. He's run out of thoughts.
Paula's hair is golden, but her eyes are hard, even as she smiles. The void in his mind is finally filled with a snippet of poetry: "you now have seen Love's corpse-light shine."
Without Pity, Without Scorn
By the time Paula decides it's time to stop pretending, the ghost between them is almost palpable, a miasma of unasked questions and emotions too strange to name. They both shy away from it, with the unspoken hope that it might simply disappear, but Paula can't bear to keep the game up. Every night, just before she falls asleep, the cold fingers of inevitability run along her spine.
Ness hasn't looked her in the eye for weeks.
She chooses a quiet evening in a neutral place: a park bench they've never sat at before, in a park with no memories. Getting mired down in history is the last thing she can afford to do. "Ness, I --" Her throat is hoarse; her voice, faint. "This is my fault. You mean a great deal to me, but... we can't go on like this. I don't think we should see each other anymore."
His shoulders slump with the weight of their ghost. "I know. I know."
Jawbone Echoes
"Hello? Ness, are you there?"
The voice on the other end of the line isn't Paula's, and it takes Ness a moment to recognize it: Jeff. "Oh, hi," he replies, trying to sound casual, trying to sound normal. "How are you, man?"
"I'm good. Uh, I'm just calling because I wanted to ask you -- I'm going to be visiting Twoson soon, and, uh, would it be okay if I asked Paula out?"
Ness bites his tongue. "Well," he says, slowly and deliberately, "it's not like I own her, Jeff. We broke up months ago, remember?" The words feel like ash falling from his mouth, but he emphasizes it again: be casual. Be normal. He hasn't even told his mother about the lingering pain of their parting, as if Paula was a phantom limb he can still feel months after the amputation. She doesn't need to hear it, and neither does Jeff. Nobody does.
"You're sure? I just, uh, I needed to... hear it from you. I know she's her own woman, but..."
Ness forces his jaws to keep moving, his tongue tracing the pattern of words from another life. "Go ahead and ask her," he says. "Have some fun."
II. Sorcery: The Puzzle Box of Love
The Battle's End
"Go ahead and ask her," Ness says, his voice sounding hollow and distant over the cellular connection. "Have some fun."
"Thanks," Jeff replies, laughing nervously into his handset. "I know this must sound stupid, but it really means something to know you're not going to get bent out of shape about this."
"Oh. Okay. Look, I... I have to go, I... studying, you know? Midterm coming up."
"Gotcha. Good luck on your midterm; I'll talk to you later, okay?"
"Yeah. Later."
After Ness hangs up, Jeff stares at the phone in his hand for a moment. There was something in Ness's voice that gave him pause, but it was still better than he'd dared to hope. He exhales, letting all the worst-case scenarios dissipate from his mind. There will be no fire, no panic, no explosive end to his friendships. There's no guarantee this will end well, but even he, a master of social dread, finds himself able to eke out some confidence.
He starts dialing.
Wheel of the Turning Heavens
Jeff and Paula's after-dinner walk takes them east, and before Paula has entirely realized it, they're at the edge of the Peaceful Rest Valley. It's taken years for her to associate this place with anything but that first abduction, but nights like this make her glad she's taken the effort to forget the sound of the cultists' laughter. Without the city lights, the stars above are brilliant in the vast, dark sky.
"It's a beautiful night, isn't it?" Jeff steps closer to her -- closer than Paula had expected. "Looking up at the stars always gets me thinking."
"Oh, that old chestnut about how small we are?"
"No, not that. More like how lucky we are to live in this cosmos and to be able to appreciate it for all it is. Some day, we're going to reach those stars, and we're finally going to manage peaceful first contacts... and even now, here we are, able to watch them. Doesn't it take your breath away?"
Paula steps closer still and glances into Jeff's face, watching his distant eyes snap into focus again as she takes his hand. The last time they'd met, she notes to herself, he would have twitched at the space violation; now, he just smiles.
"Life certainly can keep me wondering," she answers.
The Crumbling Walls
The lab radio is playing some generic light-rock love song, and Jeff finds himself humming along to it, not realizing what he's doing until the final chorus fades out. He has to wonder: when did the radio become something other than a background annoyance? When did his brain start prioritizing lyrics about moonlight walks and tempting lips?
It's only been a few months with Paula -- three dates, fourteen long phone calls, a handful of promises -- and yet he can feel something inside him changing. It's easier to make conversation at lab lunches, and when things go wrong, he finds himself apologizing for his existence less. It's as if the barriers of defensiveness and self-doubt inside Jeff are beginning to fall apart under the weight of some great truth: the most incredible woman in the world has seen some worth in him.
Even Dr. Andonuts has seemed to notice; he's left a message on Jeff's voice mail suggesting they meet "just to catch up," with a half-laugh in his voice. A casual social invitation from his father? Truly, Jeff thinks, it's the beginning of a new era.
Blood of Boiling Oil
By the time Jeff and Paula reach a stopping point for unpacking boxes in her new apartment, it's two hours after the last commuter train left, and the drizzle outside is building to a howling storm. "It's silly to catch a taxi this late," Paula says to Jeff as he double-checks the window locks. "Why don't you just stay over?"
"You have a point. I should be able to clear the boxes off the couch --"
Paula shakes her head, and Jeff stops in mid-sentence. "Don't worry about the couch," she says. "The bed's big enough for two, you know."
"But... Paula, are you sure? I thought..."
"All I'm proposing is sleep. If you're worried, I'll put one of these poster tubes between us." Paula picks up one of the tubes, more than long enough to cut the bed in two, and waves it at Jeff mock-menacingly. He flinches.
It's moments like this that Paula wishes she'd resolved not to use telepathy this time around. In its wake, she heads towards Jeff and turns him gently around to face her. He's practically radiating heat, and when Paula plants a light kiss on his neck, she can feel his hammering pulse. His hands hover around her waist, just barely brushing against the hem of her blouse, before her hands move down to guide his arms around her. His palms on her back are burning.
"Jeff," she whispers, "just trust yourself." Paula lets her head rest against his chests to hear his heart beat, hummingbird-fast. He makes a small, noncommital noise, and then he pulls her closer.
Threefold Binding of the Heart
Jeff arranges to meet Paula in the little garden between his building and the university hospital. It's simple but beautiful, a little patch of green in the campus concrete sea, and he's never found anywhere like it to help him concentrate and stay calm. Despite his best efforts, the engine of self-analysis keeps thrumming; he satiates it with the memories of the past two years, a collage of unexpected joy.
When Paula finally arrives, the late-afternoon light makes her glow, and Jeff's breath catches in his throat. He rises to meet her, to echo her smile. "Paula! I --"
"Yes? What was it that you wanted to show me?" God, her smile. If there was any doubt that she'd ensnared him for good, it was gone now.
Jeff drops to one knee, trying to use raw nerve to force him through. He fumbles in his pocket, and the fear flickers through that he's forgotten it, but finally his fingers close on the box and bring it out. "Paula, will you marry me?"
There's a few heartbeats of absolute silence; Jeff tries to chase back the feeling of vertigo rising in his chest. Finally, after what seems like centuries, Paula answers. "Yes," she says. "Of course." Her eyes are shining. Relief bursts through him, the endorphins tingling cool on his arms like summer rain, and he rises to embrace her.
Two years ago, Jeff reminds himself, he was terrified even to call her. He's been neatly transmuted, his lead melted into gold, and that self-analysis engine inside him will never entirely understand how. Somehow, though, he doesn't mind. He's got better things to worry about.