I glanced at Kipa, who said, “I cannot decide for you, love. This has to be your choice.”
Phasmoria agreed. “He’s right. This is your path to decide.”
A thousand thoughts whirled through my head, but my gut said, Jump on it, while you can. You may never have another opportunity like this. “All right, I’ll do it. When will we start?”
“After the beginning of the year. But now, I will teach you this spell. You can’t learn it the regular way, not in the time we have here. So I’ll need to implant it into your mind. You’ll be able to keep the spell after it’s cast—you won’t lose it. So use it wisely.”
I caught my breath and sighed. At least this was going right—so much better than what I had imagined. “All right. How do we do this?”
“You’ll need to be asleep so that I can enter your mind without resistance. And by sleep, I mean I need to put you into an extremely deep sleep state.” He motioned to the door leading into the bedroom. “Why don’t you go in there and prepare. You’ll want to use the facilities, take off any constricting clothing because this process will take several hours, and get under the covers. Don’t worry about trying to fall asleep—I’ll make that happen. And if you want someone to watch over the process, I have no problem with that.”
It was at that moment that I realized we’d been speaking English all along. “Say, will I be able to learn the translate spell? You must be using one.” I wanted to be like Raj and understand everybody.
“During your internship with me, yes.” His eyes crinkled and I could tell he was amused. “Now hurry. The sooner we get this done, the sooner you can leave and I can get back to the problem I was working on.”
And with that cryptic statement, he shooed me into the bedroom. My mother followed me in, leaving Kipa to talk to the bard.
I settled under the covers, both nervous and excited. I loved learning new magic.
“I wonder what he’s going to do,” I said.
“Are you nervous?” my mother asked.
I thought about it for a moment, then said, “No, honestly, I’m not. At least I’m not afraid. I trust him—he’s crafty and cunning, yes, but there’s an innate goodness in his heart that I can feel. And do you realize what this means for my future? I’ve never had an opportunity like this, to actually train with someone. My magic has been self-taught. All of it except that which was given to me by the gods.”
I was jumping out of my skin with anticipation. Magic ran through my veins, like ink through a writer’s veins. It made me who I was. I was a born witch and any chance to increase my abilities was an opportunity I couldn’t resist. It also occurred to me that, with Väinämöinen training me, Pandora might think twice about ever trying a second attempt on me.
My mother leaned over me, stroking my hair out of my face. “I’ll be here, watching over you. I won’t let anything bad happen to you, to my very best of abilities.”
I knew why she qualified that. She hadn’t been able to save me from Pandora—no one had. Trinity did, at the end, but by then, the damage had been done. I preferred it when people didn’t overpromise. It seemed more genuine when someone promised the moon instead of the stars—because that meant they weren’t just overreaching.
“Thank you,” I whispered. Then I looked into her eyes and said the words we seldom said to each other, but we knew were true. “I love you, Mother.”
“I love you, too, Raven. You know that whatever I can do for you, I will.” Phasmoria patted me on the cheek and then stood back as the door opened and Väinämöinen entered the room.
He motioned for her to sit in a chair on the other side of the bed. As he approached, my nerves rose again, but I tried to calm myself.
“How will you put me to—” I started to say, but he waved his hand over my face and…
…I was standing naked in a field under the night sky.
The ground was covered with snow, but I didn’t feel the cold, and the stars overhead wheeled in a massive arc around us. I could see both Arianrhod’s silver wheel, as well as the trail of Northern Lights. The aurora shimmered, scintillating as it flowed across the sky, waves of neon green and blue.
The next moment, I was standing on the bridge of lights, staring down at the world as it circled beneath my feet. The aurora sparkled and crackled around me like synapses of the brain, like lightning arcing across a forest, jumping from crown to crown.
I wanted to bathe in the energy—it flowed like a wild river around me, and as I stretched out my arms, it licked the tips of my fingers, jolting me with its touch as it beckoned me to join its dance. I wanted to run off, to play in it, but a whisper floating at the edge of my ears warned me against getting lost in the energy. Instead, I looked around and saw Väinämöinen standing on another part of the bridge. I cautiously tested my step but the lights were firm beneath my feet and so I made my way across the length to where he waited for me.
“Are you ready?” he asked and he seemed to not notice I was naked—or if he did notice, he ignored the fact.
Feeling at ease with him, and like a greedy child who was absorbing as much of the energy as I could, I said, “I’m ready. I could stay out here forever.”
“Get lost and you might do that. It’s easy to let the aurora carry you out into the depths of space,” Väinämöinen said. “It’s seductive, and hard to resist. You’re doing remarkably well.”
“What do I do now?”
He raised his hands and began to weave a glyph between his fingers, a gold thread of light forming the symbol. After a moment, he lowered his hands and the glyph remained in the air. He motioned to me.
“Reach up and touch the glyph on both sides, using both your hands. This will transfer the ability to use the spell to you. Usually, I would set about teaching you how to use it, but that would take a lot more time than we have at this moment, and your friend would be dead before then. This will give you the power to use the spell on a permanent basis. I warn you, the transfer might jolt your system. So be aware that during the next few days that you may experience a number of side effects, but they shouldn’t be too disruptive.”
I focused on my astral body—moving on the astral was different from walking around a room. If you weren’t careful, you could shoot off to where you were thinking about, so it required a strong focus. Although I suspected we weren’t even on the astral, but out farther than either the astral and etheric realms reached. This felt far removed from the energy I was used to.
My gaze intent on the glyph, I reached up and placed my hands on either side. The energy of the symbol almost blew me backward, but I forced myself to continue. The golden threads began to unravel and burrow into the center of my palms. It both tickled and hurt—as though it were drilling its way into my aura. Kind of like the dentist drilling into a tooth, and patching it with a filling.
Bringing my mind back to my main focus, I jumped as the glyph vanished into my hands. The next thing I knew, a massive bolt of energy slammed into me and I was falling—dropping off the bridge of lights and plummeting into a void below. I screamed, but then Väinämöinen was there, catching me by the wrist. He was hurtling headfirst down toward the abyss as well, but as soon as he caught me, he did a U-turn and we were traveling back up, and then past the aurora into a mist that hovered off to one side. I began to get sleepy and, as we entered the mist, I dozed off, drifting in the swirling white fog, until I felt myself settle into my body.