Chapter 13: Great Balls of Fire

Once started on my magical journey the rest came pretty quickly, or at least the basics of it did. It was like anything else, you learn how to do it, then you have to work hard to learn how to do it well. Nobody’s an expert from Day One.

I alternated between believing in magic and believing in psi powers. Okay, so I was kinda-sorta sometimes clairvoyant. Clairvoyance falls under the heading of pseudoscience, even though I’d just honest to goodness done it. Believing in one was pretty much the same as believing in the other, I guess. There’s not much of a difference between pseudoscience and magic.

So then it was lunch time and I had another try at starting the fire. That worked effortlessly, kind of like everybody else could do it, almost. When Nannakussi or Chulëntët started a fire, they could wave a hand and the target would just start burning. Poof, you’re on fire. Mine was a little more spectacular: A cool blue spark would seemingly grow out of nothing in the palm of my hand, and I could then toss it where I wanted it to go. By the time it got there it was red verging into white. Depending on the distance it traveled, it could be anywhere from an inch to a foot across, and hotter than blazes. Or maybe just as hot as blazes, since that’s what it was. Nevy’s was kind of like mine, but not quite as spectacular.

So that made three paranormal, pseudoscientific skills that had come to me with a little coaching and some practice. Now all I had left to learn was casting spells, transformation, curses, charms, potions, poisons, and maybe necromancy and calling up elementals – imps, devils, or ... well ... demons.

I think the last two bothered me the most, even though I was theoretically unable to do one of them. Imps, devils, and demons required a virgin in trade, so I was too late for that one. Necromancy also required a trade, though the victim need not be a virgin, nor even human. It had to be substantial (no chickens or mice), of value, freely given, and freshly dead.

At least that cut my curriculum down to a slightly more manageable size.

“Now thou musst slæpe, my lord,” Nevianne told me after we had eaten our prandium, which had consisted of greasy duck meat sandwiches.

“I could probably do with a siesta,” I agreed. We were in the habit of grabbing a half hour in the afternoon.

“Ye erchebischop (archbishop) desireth to cast œn galdorléoð (spell) ‘pon thee.”

“What kind of spell?” I asked, hesitating. Since magic actually worked, I was now leery of having it used on me.

“Ist to hilf med thine ... thine... acoent? Nicht ic becnāwe... (I don’t know.)“

“‘Accent?’” I suggested. My sweet was getting flustered, which meant she was stumbling in trying to make herself understood. Usually she was a little more clear. She’d been stumbling since she started the conversation.

“Aye, aye! That word we hæbben...”

Anything that would help us all communicate better was fine with me. I wasn’t sure how a spell might help my accent, but I was willing to give it a try, especially if all it took was taking a nap.

“Are you going to join me?” I asked, stretching out invitingly on my blanket.

“Nay, sir. We alle beoð...” She lost her place looking for the word she wanted. I probably wouldn’t have understood it anyway.

“Okay,” I said gently. “You’ll all be working on this spell. If I manage to get to sleep, have at it!”

At that point I nodded right off, helped along by a wave of Madame Archbishop’s hand and a mouthful of mumbo jumbo.

I slept well and for considerably longer than I had expected. It was dark outside, with the moon high in the sky, by the time I woke up again. I had slept clear through cena (dinner, the main meal of the day) and was barely in time for vesperna (a late evening snack). Nevy was kneeling astride me, shaking me gently and poking me to get me to wake up.

I did. The position she was in, I was staring right down her cleavage, all the way to her knees. I had seen my pretty that very morning, wearing an eye-catching birthday suit. The view down her dress revealed much, though not as much as the morning’s vision. I’m not sure why I felt like such a perv for looking. It was familiar territory, only with an original presentation.

“Are you all right, lover?” she asked. The words were all Later Saxon, but her meaning, complete with nuances and the bit of worry, was clear as a bell.

“I’ve never been better,” I replied in the same language.

“I’m so happy!” she said, taking my hands and helping me to my feet.

“It worked then?” the archbishop asked in Later Latin. I also understood him.

“It seems to,” I replied in the same language. “How did you do it?”

“It’s a very, very complicated spell,” he told me, while Nevianne, who didn’t speak very much Latin, stood by looking impatient. “It was actually four spells, since we had to put three in and take one out.”

“One out?” I asked.

“Speak to your intended in your own language,” he suggested. He was smiling proudly, all his teeth showing. It was pretty ghastly.

“You can understand me, Nevy?” I asked her in American English. She was a smart girl. She had been coming along well in the very basics of the language, given the very short time we’d actually been together.

“Now I can,” she assured me. “I think my tongue might get tired talking like this!” She had an accent, the one I had heard in my vision, but she had vocabulary and grammar down.

“And now you can tell the difference between one tree and another, lord?” Nannakussi asked in Lenape.

“First I have to recognize them,” I told him in the same language. “Then I’ll know what they are.”

“I promise I’ll point them out, lord.”

“And then we’ll go to them, by them, and around them,” I laughed, hoping my own lips and tongue, and probably my tonsils, and my brain would recover from the phonetic strains of Algonquian.

“Eat, lord,” my prospective mother-in-law suggested in Saxon. “You’ve been working hard all day. Now you need to get your strength back.”

Life had suddenly become a lot easier. Simple conversations that had taken up to an hour before now took minutes, or even seconds. Body language and facial expression became less important, hearing more natural. I was pretty happy. It was like magic.

I also ate like a horse. Luckily cena had been a lot more like an early vesperna, and vesperna more like a feast. There weren’t any hummingbirds’ tongues or sows’ uteruses (uteri?), like Lucullus had feasted on, but what we did have was mighty tasty. There was fried fish, pheasant, mutton, cabbage boiled in a thin tomato sauce, pasta et renibus faba (pasta fazool), and honeydew melon with honey drizzled on it for dessert.

“Are you ready to go for a walk, my love?” Nevy asked, using English as I forced a last bite in.

“More of a waddle, I think, after all that,” I replied, suppressing a burp. We went down to the first floor and out onto the street, locking the door behind us.

“The archbishop knew you’d be ravenous,” she told me, sounding serious. “Actually, all of us involved were starving. The spell uses an awful lot of energy. You saw me eating all that would fit in my mouth that didn’t bite me first!”

“It was a pretty impressive display of gluttony, my love,” I admired. “I’m still trying to figure how he worked it.”

“The spell, you mean?”

“The spell,” I agreed, trying not to breathe too deeply since the sewer we were strolling by was both open and full.

“It’s way more complicated than the one I used to call you up, and that was the most complicated spell I’ve ever worked!” she assured me.

“How did it work?” I asked. “The archbishop’s spell, I mean.”

“I have only a hazy idea of the outside mechanics. Lots of gunpowder in precise quantities and sequences, incantations in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Egyptian, and Tamazig...”

“Tamazig? That’s a new one on me.”

“The native language of North Africa,” she told me, “west of Egypt anyway.”

“Hmm ... In my realm I think it was displaced by Arabic.”

“Here Arabia’s just a poor backwater of the Empire,” she shrugged.

“No Mohammad?” I mused.

“I guess not,” she said. “I’ve never heard of him. I could look him up, I guess.”

“And the spell took a precise area of knowledge out of your head and put it into mine?” I guessed.

“It’s a teaching spell, so it can be very dangerous. You know: Teaching you all the wrong things. Archbishop Simon says it’s derived from a love enchantment.”

“That does sound dangerous,” I agreed.

I had a quick suspicion. I had never fallen head over heels for a woman like I had for Nevy. If I’d fallen any harder I’d have broken bones, and if I’d fallen any quicker I’d have been there before I left. Even as I had the suspicion, I got a poke in the ribs. “I did not use it on you. I don’t even know the one he was talking about.”

“You know others?” I asked.

She stopped and pulled me to her. “Tell me honestly,” she demanded, her face enchanting in the moonlight. “For the past ten years have you had any serious interest in any woman?”

“Serious interest?” I mused.

“Aye, my lord. Serious.”

“There was Heather...”

“For a month, you told me. And it was serious?”

“Sometimes,” I defended.

“Out of bed?”

“No, dear heart.” Heather had been mighty serious in bed. With our clothes on I’d had a hard time talking to her, though the way she wore the clothes did maintain a bit of interest. Next to Nevy she wasn’t much at all, not even naked and with a fire in he eye. Conversation with her was like talking to someone whose attention was elsewhere. When she spoke to me my attention tended to wander.

“You see? We were arranged by the gods. You don’t think I’d have let any other man bundle with me the first time I ever saw him? The very idea!”

“I didn’t know. I didn’t know your customs. I still don’t know lots of them.”

“Ask, my love. Ask and I will answer.”

“I don’t know where to start, there are so many! Do you know where to start asking about my reality stream?”

“It’s easier for me. We aren’t there yet. I can pick and choose. When we’re there, I doubt if I’ll shut up!”