Page 36 of Soulmates

Maddox opened his mouth, probably to tell Cricket he knew that, but Cricket held up a hand. “Maggie told me you would say that you know that. She told me about all of you and you especially, Maddox. I know about your research. You’ll even find it in your bag—it’s hidden well, but it’s in there.”

“Maggie had me grab the research when I packed your stuff,” Santiago said. “She took off with the bag, and I thought she kept it to hide it, but she must have sent it along.”

“Right,” Cricket said dismissively. “So, for all mages, our magic is the same. Of course, as you’ve seen, different mages have different strengths, which is why you’ve been split into classes or factions or however you want to put it. Jake and Santiago are warriors, obviously. But within that, there is nuance. Maddox, as an elementalist, you’re in tune with nature in a way Jake and Santiago are not. You know all of this. But what you’ve been told is that scratch witches have lesser magic, right?”

“Right, but…” Maddox began.

Cricket’s voice sharpened. “Yours is superior, which is the reason your families and the families of all those around you have more money, more power, more everything.”

Santiago started to stand in immediate protect, but managed to sit back down. “We already know that’s bullshit and there’s no difference, so what’s the point here?”

Cricket took a breath as if trying to gather his patience. “All of our magic comes from the same source. We can argue about what that source is and never agree on an answer. There are as many answers to that as there are religions. What matters is that all of that magic is the same—the difference is in execution. They taught you precision above all else. Your magic is clean, effective, sharp. It does exactly what you tell it to every time.” Cricket looked at each of them in turn. “Our differences have never been a matter of superior magic but of education. It’s the simplest trick in the book. You teach one child how to do something perfectly repeatedly until they can do it the same way each time, and you give another child the basic tools and leave them to figure out how to do it. Eventually, each child may do what you want them to, but they’ll do it in vastly different ways. Your magic is more accurate. Scratch magic is fluid, wild, and imperfect.”

“We know that!” Santiago snapped. “We don’t think we’re superior. Maddox’s research alone proves it. We want to fight against it. We always have.”

“How nice for you,” Cricket said. “But to understand the level of discrimination and divergence within our community, you need the whole story. That’s what you’ll never get at Reinhold. We were together once. Our civilizations, ones currently known as the classically educated and scratch and others, diverged many years ago when modernization both grew and shrunk our worlds. We had to find new ways to blend in and, at the same time, distinguish ourselves from nonmagic users. Your history books are not my history books. And while neither of our magic is superior to the other, my history books are more comprehensive than yours. You are only taught what they want you to know.”

“But how does this help Maddox and Jake?” Santiago asked.

Cricket snapped out, “Your magic is so damned structured, it’s inflexible. The magic that creates the kind of bond Jake and Maddox have is wild and loose. No one ever showed any of you how to feel that kind of magic.” Cricket stood and started pacing. “There’s no flow. Your magic sits there waiting for you to use it, not interact with it.”

Jake opened his mouth to ask Cricket to make that tidbit make any sense at all, but before he could say anything, Cricket asked again, softer, “Maddox, how are you feeling?”

Jake looked at Maddox. “Um, actually, I feel good. I’m fuzzy and still tired, which seems impossible, but much clearer than before. What did you give me?”

“Let’s leave that for now. I promise we can circle back to it, but I want to get as much information out as I can before we lose you to sleep. If you need to sleep, it’s fine. I won’t let you get lost.”

“Okay,” Maddox said. Though Jake wanted more information about the getting lost part of the conversation, he knew they needed to hear whatever it was Cricket had to say.

“My family has kept to the old ways, and we’ve kept up with our history. Most of the information we have on the Soul Exchange is ancient—some as old as two thousand years. But we have accounts that are more recent. Even those are close to two hundred years old, with a one or two from the last century. We’ve kept exhaustive records of all kinds of magic, and my family has sought histories from all over the world. We keep them safe both to protect them and use them.”

“How could the school not know of all this? Their libraries are extensive,” Santiago said.

“Doesn’t Dean Forrester have a library like that full of research and old histories?” Maddox mused, not really directing the question to anyone in particular.

“Yes.” Cricket’s tone was laced with bitterness as he reached for his glass. He seemed to shake himself before he continued. “There are multiple accounts of the Soul Exchange and what we believe to be the Soul Exchange across cultures and religions. I’ve been reading everything I have on what mages thought it was. Understand that many of the older accounts regarded this as a purely spiritual ceremony that anyone, even nonmagic users, could perform. Others believed it to be magic, and a practitioner performed it on a willing couple. I believe it’s both. It has to be spiritual in some sense, in whatever sense we understand spirituality. If nothing else, you proved that, Jake. You transferred your light soul to Maddox without magic—or at least without the uttering of ceremonial words and an advanced practitioner overseeing you.” Cricket looked them over. “What happened right after? Do you remember?”

“We blasted apart, and it knocked Maddox unconscious. I don’t think I was, and if I was, it was for much shorter than Maddox. I was gone at least twenty minutes, and he was just waking up when I came back,” Jake said.

“See, so there’s magic there too. It’s both spiritual and magical,” Cricket said. “One belief held for many years in several cultures was that we each contain three souls. They were life, heart, and light. They were supposed to be the essence of who we were. They were the metaphysical parts of ourselves. The heart soul is what kept you alive, literally. It’s like our beating heart. Without it, you’d be dead, and your body would not function. The light soul was for emotions. It was believed to carry all your emotions from the negative to the positive. Anger and joy were all contained within.” Cricket gestured to Jake. “We can give some credence to this one, considering what happened back at the school.”

Jake nodded, and Maddox squeezed his hand tighter.

Cricket continued after glancing at their clasped hands with a regretful expression. “Um, the life soul held your knowledge, your magic strengths, and your personality. If the heart soul is connected to your heart, keeping you alive—your life soul is similar to what we now know the brain does—it holds your memories, powers, thoughts, everything that makes you, you. Notice that this belief held that emotions are separate from memories, knowledge, and magic.”

Cricket reached for the pile of books on the coffee table. Many were open and stacked on top of each other. He shifted them around until he found the one he wanted. It looked ancient, like it would crumble at any moment, but Cricket handled it as if it was indestructible, yanking it out from under three other books, one of which fell to the floor with a thud.

He placed the book in front of them on the table, and they all leaned in. Cricket pointed to the illustration on the sepia-faded page. It was an outline of a human form whose chest contained a triangle, split into three equal sections, all stemming from the point at the bottom, toward the feet, and extending up toward the head. Even with the fading, the sections were clearly red, gold, and blue.

“This book is from what is now modern-day Cambodia. My family rescued it from one of the many book burnings organized several centuries ago. We can find similar descriptions and accounts in books from other places around the globe. Emotions or light, life, and heart were believed to be separate in part because of the existence of the Soul Exchange.”

Cricket grabbed another book, which looked newer, or at least less like it might crumble in his hands. The illustration on the open page showed two people facing each other. Both wore long white robes and had crowns made of leaves on their heads. To the side stood another figure in blue robes, holding a goblet. Gold light passed in two streams between the white-robed figures.

“If this part of the soul, your emotional base, could leave your body and go into another, it couldn’t be essential to your knowledge or your life—it might be essential to you or it might be essential to someone else. It’s both metaphorical and literal. This is where accounts begin to refer to it as the light soul. You have witnessed why it’s called a light soul?”

“The light bends,” Maddox said. “It bends toward Jake when we aren’t touching. It’s impossible to miss. And even now, when we’re touching, it’s noticeable if you look for it.” Maddox pointed to the lamp next to them, to the slightly unnatural angle of the light coming from it. It wasn’t pointed at them, but it bent toward them enough to notice.

“All light will do this,” Cricket said. “Maggie said the lightning bugs followed you.”

---