After the longest morning of her life, Eris walked under a wide-open blue sky towards Master Garren’s house. And for a moment she wished that she didn’t have magic at all. On top of her normal school work, she also had lessons with Master Garren three times a week. This left little time for her to gossip with other girls her age in the marketplace or go swimming in the big pond behind Old Turner’s barn. Instead, she often raced from school to Master Garren’s then home to finish her chores. If she slacked off with her chores, her father gave her more reading assignments. And if she didn’t spend enough time practicing spells, then Master Garren would make her weed his garden without magic until her hands cramped.
She spent a lot of time weeding in his garden.
Most people in Erila had magic, but almost none of them had her kind of magic. Both her father and Master Garren lectured her often about the responsibility she had to learn how to control and use her magic appropriately. She often wished that Darren or Soraya had been the ones gifted with Light magic instead of her. Not that magic was all bad. But the price of it seemed too heavy for a seventeen-year-old to pay.
The afternoon had turned hot, and Eris decided to stop under a large maple tree to rest for a moment. The sun shone brightly through the leaves, and she found herself wondering what kinds of things Soraya and Darren were talking about as they walked to Jara City. Darren was laconic at best and Soraya was easily annoyed, so it could be a very long trip for both of them. Eris smiled at the thought of poor Darren having to pacify Soraya’s temper. She was willing to bet that those two would never like one another the way her parents were hoping.
Eris pulled a charm belonging to Soraya from her pocket and fisted her hand around it. She closed her eyes and summoned her magic. It answered readily, bubbling up from her center, and she willed it to surround the charm. She willed it to float up into the air in front of her. Eris opened her eyes and hand at the same time. The charm was surrounded by a white light, which flickered a few times before going out and dropping the charm back into her palm. She sighed and stuffed the charm back in her pocket. If she couldn’t get a tiny charm to float, how was she going to hold onto a bucket full of water?
Master Garren was rocking in a chair on his porch when she finally made it up the path to his house. He lived in a white two-story home with a large, colorful garden that started on the left side of his house and wrapped all the way around to the back. A garden bed full of flowers flowed across the front of his house, and where the flowers ended, a large, green yard spread out from there. Earth magic was like that. A person gifted with Earth magic could create a paradise out of the barest of dirt patches, and Master Garren was no exception.
“Took your time getting here today, I see,” Master Garren said.
Eris sighed, hoping he wouldn’t make her weed for being a couple of minutes late. “Sorry, Master Garren. It’s so hot today that I needed a moment in the shade.” Though in reality, it was her somber mood that had made her walk so slowly rather than at her normal brisk pace.
Master Garren nodded. “Sounds like this is the perfect opportunity to work on your water magic.” He smiled.
Eris sighed. It was going to be a long lesson.
“Are you sure that you are trying?” Master Garren asked.
Eris was standing beside the large pond in his yard, wrestling a waterball as big as his head. “I can’t concentrate if you keep talking to me.”
“Are you listening to the water closely?”
Eris nodded. She was listening, but the waterball was made of so many tiny particles. Each drop had a voice of its own, and none of them were saying the same thing. They all talked at the same time, making it impossible for her to hear any of them.
“Water is your element, after all. It shouldn’t be this difficult.”
Eris opened her mouth to say something, but dropped the ball of water in the process. Frustrated, she used the back of hand to swipe the sweat off her forehead.
“Again,” he said.
Eris returned home well after dark, grateful to have a few moments to herself. Her mother was busy humming in the kitchen, and her father was in his study with the door open, though he was too engrossed in a book to notice her walking by. When she made it to her room, she flopped across the bed face down, exhausted.
The lesson hadn’t gone well with her mind elsewhere. After trying and failing two dozen times, an exasperated Master Garren had dismissed her and begged that she come ready to focus to their next lesson. It was easy for him to say, she thought. He could look at a pile of dirt and a full-grown rose bush would appear. She couldn’t even hold a head-sized water sphere together for longer than two seconds before it sloshed onto the ground, leaving her with a headache. Magic took its toll on the user, and the less expert they were, the more energy they needed to control the magic. It felt as if the entire country of Erila wanted her to remember how inexperienced she was in magic.
“Supper,” her mother called from the main floor. Eris rolled off the bed and walked downstairs to the dining room.
Dinner was Eris’ favorite, chicken stew. Her mother had cubed the potatoes and carrots in big chunks rather than the usual small bite-sized ones. Good food is a magic all its own, and after a trying afternoon lesson, this was just the thing she needed.
“What did you study with Master Garren today?” Papa asked.
“More water magic,” Eris said with a mouth full of potatoes.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” her mother said.
“And?” Papa prodded.
“And I’m still terrible at controlling water. There are too many voices to focus on. I can’t figure out which one to listen to.” Because she had Light magic, theoretically she should be able to control all the elements to some degree, whereas other magic-borns were gifted with either Earth or Dark magic and could only control their single element. Though Light magic users were supposed to have a special relationship with water, Eris had never found that to be true. If anything, water seemed to taunt her the most.
“You must learn to control your mind first, Eris. Water should be your strongest element, but your control hasn’t progressed past that of a beginner. Perhaps I should give you another book of philosophy to steady your mind.”
Wanting to change the subject rather than be lectured again about her unruly mind, she opened her mouth to talk, but closed it quickly again and swallowed the bite of potatoes in her mouth before saying, “I wonder how Soraya is doing.” She took another large bite. Again, she found herself being slightly jealous that her sister was off having an adventure while she was stuck there getting lectured again about magic.
“Eris,” Mama said as she took another bite of stew.
“Yes, Mama?” Mentally she kicked herself, sure that she would be scolded again for talking with her mouth full.
“Who is Soraya?”
“Ha. Very funny. She hasn’t been gone that long.” It wasn’t like her mother to make such a joke, but it had been a heavy morning watching Soraya leave home for the first time, so maybe Mama was simply trying to lighten the mood around the table. They had all been unusually quiet that evening.
“Dear, I know every girl in town, but I know no one named Soraya. Did she just move in?”