Page 33 of The Water Witch (Fairwick Chronicles 2)

“I’m part fey, on my father’s side, and to tell you the truth, I’m not sure I have been handling it very well. I’ve had strange dreams since I brought it into the house and when I tried to do some spells from Wheelock…” I tapped the book lying on the coffee table. “They went kind of…awry.”

“Show me,” he said or, rather, commanded. His tone was so urgent I dismissed the little bit of pique I felt at being ordered.

“Flagrante ligfyr!”I said, matching his tone.

The candles on the mantel flared so high they singed the ceiling, but a moment later they sputtered out.

“Fascinating!” Duncan Laird exclaimed, lit up as if the candles still burned. “Try another one.”

I did the wind spell, grateful that there wasn’t any more dust to stir up. Instead a miniature tornado seized Duncan Laird’s satchel, upended it, and scattered a dozen loose sheets of paper across the room.

“I’m so sorry!” I said, leaping to my feet and chasing after the pages.

“No problem,” he replied, clapping his hands and uttering the single word, “Retrievo.” All the papers flew into his open hand and shuffled themselves into a neat stack.

“Cool. I could use that for collecting homework assignments.”

“If you tried it right now, you’d probably break half your students’ necks.” He tapped the face of his “pocket watch.” “See this arrow?” He pointed to an arrow that was spinning clockwise within a circle inscribed with a five pointed star. “It measures terrestrial magic. That’s the magic human witches practice using spells, incantations, wards, and hexes. Whenyou used your spell, it spun out of control, indicating your ability for natural magic is through the roof. Usually, we only get readings like that for wizards of the Ninth Order.”

“Like yourself.”

“Yes,” he said, the corners of his mouth twitching. He was flattered but trying not to show it, which was kind of cute. He cleared his throat and went on with his lecture. “But then look at this dial.” He pointed to one that was spinning counterclockwise. It was inside a circle crowned by a pair of outspread wings.

“So the wings stand for fairies?” I asked.

“Yes. A rather crude symbology considering most of the fey don’t have wings, but then this Thaumascope is rather old. This dial measures fey magic, or what’s sometimes referred to as otherworldly magic. It’s what the fey practiced before they encountered human beings. No one knows how it works—or at least no human knows and none of the otherworlders I’ve spoken to are able to explain it, probably because words don’t lend themselves to describing something that exists without words…” A look of annoyance flashed across his face and he pushed away a lock of hair that had fallen in front of his eyes—as ifthat, and not the fey’s inability to describe their own magic, was bothering him.

“Dory Browne once tried to explain it to me,” I said. “She said that when the fey first started teaching magic to humans they justthoughta thing and it happened. They had no words for spells. But to communicate with humans they needed to put things into words, and then they found that the words added an unexpected power to their magic. She said that the fey loved the little extrazingthat language gave magic and that they taught humans magic in exchange for…language.” I blushed, recalling that Dory had admitted that the fey had also traded their magic for sexual favors from humans. Fortunately,Duncan was busy looking at the dials on his Thaumascope.

“We may not fully understand what it is, but we can measure it. This dial indicates that your ability to perform fey magic is also off the charts. I’ve never seen both dials spinning at the same time.”

“But then why don’t my spells work?” I asked.

“Because of this.” He pointed to the third dial, the one whose arrow had stuttered to a trembling stop in one position. I looked at the circle it was in and saw that inside was a drawing of a naked woman, arms and legs extended to touch the rim of the circle, like a female version of Leonardo da Vinci’sVitruvian Man. “This dial measures an individual’s innate ability to process magic. It’s indicating that you don’t haveany, which is strange coupled with your ability shown by the other two dials. It’s why your spells misfire. Two types of magic are meeting inside you, like two clashing weather systems creating turbulence.”

“You make me sound like a bad day on the Weather Channel. My grandmother always believed that my magical abilities had been canceled out by my fey blood.”

“That’s an old superstition among witches,” Duncan said with a rueful expression. “I think it’s likely that the superstition arose to discourage sexual relations with the fey. Around the time of the witch hunts, a sect of witches believed that if they could separate themselves from the influence of the fey—or demons, as the Church called them—they could escape persecution.”

“The Great Division,” I said, recalling the expression from the reading I’d done in LaFleur earlier.

“Followed by the War of Fluges,” Duncan said darkly.

“I read about Fluges in LaFleur. Witches and fey lived in harmony in the French village until the anti-fey witches closedits door to Faerie and…” I closed my eyes, trying to recall the exact wording from LaFleur. It appeared in my head in glowing type. “They erased the town entirely.” I opened my eyes. An afterimage of the glowing text hung in the air between me and Duncan. “But LaFleur doesn’t say exactly what ‘erasing it entirely’ means.”

“No one knows. But think about it: had you ever heard of Fluges before reading about it in LaFleur?”

“No.”

“Neither has any other non-witch human. Not only was it wiped off the map, it was erased from human memory.That’show violently the anti-fey witches felt about the fey. Is it any wonder that they started a rumor that contact with the fey would destroy a witch’s power?”

“Do you think my magical abilities have been canceled out by my fey ancestry?” I asked.

“Quite the opposite. You have tons of magical ability, but there’s a blockage.”

“A blockage of what kind?”

Duncan shook his head. I felt a sinking sensation. If Duncan Laird with his Oxford DMA, Ninth Order of Wizardry, and clever gadgets couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me, who could?

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