“Okay. Here we are.”

It had been almost a week since the awkward encounter at the gym. Instruktanto Miratova had bundled Kylie and I into a rickety-looking car, drove in silence for about ten minutes, and stopped in the middle of a broad field of grass. Aside from the road we’d drove in on, nothing was visible but… well, grass. A huge flat plain of grass, and off in the distance, mountains.

The wind tore at our hair and clothes as we got out.

“Where are we?” Kylie asked.

“A friend’s farm,” Instruktanto Miratova said. “We won’t run into anybody. This seemed like a good place for Kayden to practice at-will casting.”

“It did?” I asked. “Um, why?”

“Well, firstly because it’s isolated. I suspect that a large part of your problem is a deeply ingrained sense that you must prevent yourself from casting, for fear of hurting people. This is very common among cursed people, and honestly it’s what makes teaching your kind so frustrating. If we could start this process before well-meaning commonfolk go around making their children terrified of their own… anyway. The point is, the absolute worse you can do here with a force evocation is push Kylie or me over onto the grass, so I’m hoping the clear lack of danger will help you cast. And second, I’ve been thinking about your spell and I’m not certain that you in fact have a force evocation.”

“What? Isn’t that pretty clear, from how it operates?”

“Not necessarily. I mean, yes, it’s easily the most likely scenario, but a force evocation should be easier to cast than this. Evocations, as a rule, don’t tend to need a lot of external conditions for casting, so once you figure out how to cast it, you should be able to do it almost anywhere. Your situation suggests that there might be outside conditions we haven’t accounted for. Can you recall the first time you cast it? Where you were, and what you used it for?”

“Well, yeah. I was on a roof, and the curse pushed someone off. It’s kind of hard to forget.”

“Was it windy that day?”

“Uh, probably? I kind of had other things to worry about.”

“And the second time you cast?”

“The lab explosion. I forced the door open, shielded myself from the fire and pulled you out.”

“An interesting side note here is that door was not, in fact, locked. Also, I’ve checked the records, and in your earlier descriptions of the rooftop incident, you described pushing your classmate with ‘a gust of wind, or something’. You were not, I’m given to understand, sure what it was until the second casting.”

“I guess. Is that important?”

“Possibly. The circumstances do fit what you might expect from somebody suppressing a force evocation their entire life. But they also fit another, rarer possibility. A spell that was once used to direct wind to push somebody off a roof, and later to direct flames away from its host – a spell, that is, that doesn’t evoke anything, but merely controls elements that are present.” She flung her arms wide. “This field has no windbreaks for miles. You should have a much easier time casting out here than in still, cramped tunnels.”

“So if I can cast out here but not normally, that means I don’t have a force evocation?”

“Not necessarily. But at this stage, you being able to cast at will anywhere is a big step forward. We can figure out the details later. I’d like to do everything we can to get both of you casting at will by the end of the month.”

“My spell can’t be cast that way,” Kylie pointed out. “It prophesies death when there’s a chance it can cause death. I can’t make it prophesy.”

“Are you sure? Have you ever tried? We know one trigger for your spell – imminent death, under certain conditions. But there might be others that you haven’t encountered. Of course, finding them will be tricky, but prophecies can usually be enticed out with the right ingredients, and I know several prophets who would be willing to lend us the proper tools. Kayden – ready when you are.”

I strode out into the field, closed my eyes, and focused.

I felt the wind rolling through the field, tumbling over uneven grass, tripping on my legs and arms as it encountered me, an unexpected obstacle in its joyous journey. It whistled around me and continued on its way, replaced by another gust. I felt the power curled in my heart, waiting.

Maybe I didn’t conjure force, she’d said. Maybe I took elements already there and controlled them.

I put down my internal walls, drew the power out, and introduced it to the wind. Wind – spell. You’ll be great friends. I imagined linking them together and, with a mental tug, pulled the gust of wind in a neat circle around me.

Nothing happened.

“Oh, come on!” I yanked harder, putting all my focus into dragging the wind around me. The wind, for its part, continued on its way.

What the hell? Everyone seemed to do this so easily. Even people like Clara, who didn’t have magic, made it sound like it should be easy. I kicked at a stray rock and stomped back towards the car.

“Try not to be too frustrated,” Instruktanto Miratova said. “It takes years to train somebody to master a spell, and curses are notorious for being especially difficult.”

“I’m not trying to master it, I’m just trying to get it to do anything at all,” I said. “Nobody else has any trouble using theirs. Even Kylie can use hers.”

“Mine uses me,” Kylie corrected.

“You’ve been training to suppress yours your whole life,” Instruktanto Miratova reminded me. “And you were very good at it. No mistakes for fourteen years. Learning to trust your spell, and yourself, is going to take time.”

“What if I never get it?” I asked.

“You will. We’ll keep working, and – ”

“I mean hypothetically. I’ve been thinking about this. It’s starting to look like… well, no matter how the trial goes, I don’t know if it’s a good idea to go home. I think being a mage might be my only option. But the way to graduate this school is by gaining control of your spell, right? What if I can’t? If it’s always like this, would I just be at school forever?”

Miratova pursed her lips. “Okay. One thing at a time. First: this really isn’t the sort of place you should commit to because your home is unpleasant. There are a lot of opportunities open to you in the common world that can be explored as an alternative to your normal circumstances. The only reason to decide to become a mage is because you want to be a mage. So sort that out before you decide whether or not to undergo the Initiation. Second: it’s far too early to panic about spell control. As I said, this level of difficulty, for someone in your circumstances, is perfectly expected. I’ve taught people like you before and it’s never been a problem. But, if it will ease your worries, let me move into my third point: you don’t have to be able to cast at will to graduate Skolala Refujeyo. Plenty of spells can’t be cast at will. In fact, the majority of contract spells require protracted rituals to cast and control. We know yours can be cast at will, because you’ve done it twice, but even if you never manage that level of control, I’m confident that you’re creative enough to find other ways to meet the graduation requirements. What we will have to do, should you decide to stay, is make sure you don’t cast by accident and cause potential issues like the one that brought you here, but we have many ways of dealing with that sort of thing. Now, let’s try again, but this time I’m going to give you a specific focus. Can you use your spell to push this ball out of my hand? Remember, you won’t hurt me.”

Over th next hour, we tried everything. I tried calling up the wind and settling down the wind, I tried casting at something and just generally trying to get a reaction. I tried casting from on top of the car, since I’d been off the ground the first time. Instruktanto Miratova even sent her spell out to whip up more wind and, at one point, tried taking my hands and casting her spell to feed energy directly into my palms, but all that did was leave me with very sore hands.

“Okay,” Instruktanto Miratova said eventually, rubbing her temples, “let’s call it a day. I’m sure you need to rest up and regain your strength, Kayden.”

“Rest up from what?” I asked. “I didn’t do anything. I can’t make it do anything. Are you sure this is normal?”

“It’s… not abnormal,” she said. “I’ve seen faster and I’ve seen slower.”

“Okay, so where exactly am I on that scale of better to worse?”

“Not better and worse. Faster and slower. And it’s far too early to tell. Once we figure out how to get some kind of activity, we can plan for more specific education. Are you two free this time next week? I’d like to try some common divination techniques with you, Kylie.”

It shouldn’t be this difficult, I thought to myself as we headed back to the school. The problem – well, there were a lot of problems, but the big problem – was that I didn’t know what it was supposed to feel like. I could picture the power inside me and the wind around me, but how much of that was just in my head? How much of the power I felt was real, just being held back by habit, and how much was me imagining what I thought it was supposed to feel like?

I’d probably be able to cast by now if I’d just focused on this from the beginning, instead of distracting myself with high school clique politics and freaking out about curse side effects and wondering about blond boys kissing me. It was time to ignore all that and pay attention to what I’d come to the school to do. Let Magistus and all them play their own stupid games while they waited for their spells; I had mine already, and I had work to do.

“What does casting feel like?” I asked Miratova.

“What do you mean, what does it feel like?”

“You know. Your spell. Can you feel it?”

“Not as a sensation, if that’s what you mean. I have a sense of where it is in the same way that you have a sense of how your arms and legs are positioned.” She reached up absently to touch the spell on her shoulder. “Of course, it’s usually touching me when I’m not casting, so it would be difficult to lose track of in any case.”

“But can you feel it in your body?”

“No. It’s not in my body; it’s right here.” Miratova glanced at me with concern. “Is yours causing you pain or discomfort? That’s very dangerous. You should see the kuracar.”

“No, no. I just… want to be sure I know what I’m doing. Like, when you cast…. how do you know you’ve done it correctly?”

“Well, in my case, something usually catches fire or freezes over or makes some similar dramatic change, and if it’s the effect I intended, I know I cast properly. Spellcasting is a bit like… it’s a bit like playing tennis, I suppose. There’s a bit of exertion as you hit the ball and then you observe and adjust your technique as necessary to get the desired result. Part of it is exertion, feeling the feedback of the ball hitting the racket in this metaphor, but a lot is watching what happens. And a lot of it is practice. And sometimes it feels like the ball is misbehaving, refusing to go where you want it to, because your own technique is off.”

“Right. Thanks.” That metaphor was even more useless than Clara’s muscle thing, but I didn’t think asking for clarification was going to make things any better. Instead, I turned to Kylie. “What about your spell?”

She shrugged. “It’s just there. When it casts I feel… well, you’ve seen it. It feels kind of like how I imagine a seizure would feel? I feel a bit off – sometimes this gives me enough time to record the prophecy, if I’m lucky – and then I’m tired and time has passed and people are staring at me.”

I nodded. Also not useful to me. But then, I hadn’t expected Kylie’s experience to be. It was all so easy for her, wasn’t it?

No, no; that wasn’t fair. I knew that wasn’t fair. It felt weird being jealous of someone for having a curse in her face that uncontrollably proclaimed doom at surprisingly frequent intervals, but at least she knew how her curse worked. And it was reliably useful, except for the whole killing three people thing.

I got so caught up being frustrated about my spell that it wasn’t until we wre back in the caverns of the school that I realised we’d gone on a road trip and I hadn’t even tried to find out where in the world we’d been. Dammit!

I was in the cafeteria, halfway through deciding what kind of food would sufficiently cheer me up for the mountain of homework I was going to actually have to start tackling, when my path was blocked by an amalgamation of blond hair, white robes and unearned confidence. “Hey,” Magistus said.

“Hey.” The door was behind me; he wasn’t blocking it. How rude would it be for me to just turn around and leave?

“Have you been avoiding me?”

“You’re making that kind of hard to do, aren’t you?”

He blushed. “Can we talk?”

“We’re talking right now.”

“Okay, fine.” He raised his hands. “If you don’t want me around, fine. I just wanted to apologise. I misread the situation. I thought you felt… well, anyway, it won’t happen again. I promise. I just… can we still be friends?”

“Who said we were friends?” I snapped, then immediately regretted it when I saw the look in his eyes. “No, no; I meant… ugh. Look. I have a lot going on right now, okay? And the last thing I need is some jerk who thinks he’d Adonis swooping in and trying to stir up trouble in my dorm. You’re not James Bond and you can’t just go around kissing people and expecting them to fall over backwards to support you in your stupid fucking high school politics. Who the fuck do you think you are?”

“What? Kayden, I’d never do that to you.”

“It’s all you do! Do you think you’re subtle, badmouthing Max whenever we’re together? Did you think I’d really believe Mr Perfect Image, heir to a powerful mage family, would be properly interested in me? That the naive little cursed boy would just follow you around like a puppy and do whatever you wanted if you could trick him into – ”

Magistus stepped forward and took my forearms in his hands. It wasn’t a tight hold; I could easily have stepped out of it. I didn’t.

“Do you really believe I’ve ever been anything but honest with you?” he asked.

People were staring at us. The room wasn’t exactly crowded, but it was far from empty. Magistus didn’t seem to notice.

“I think,” I said, “that you’re so used to the world going your way, you just see what you want to see. You had no idea how I’d react out there on the cliff. You didn’t even hang around afterward to see how I’d react. You can’t just grab people like that because you think they feel like you do.”

“Do you feel like I do?”

“That’s not the point. I’m not being evasive; that is seriously not the point. If you’re trying to manipulate me, well, I have way too much going on for spy movie bullshit right now. If you’re not, I have way too much going on for romance movie bullshit right now. Either way, it all shakes out the same.”

“Fine.” Magistus let go. “No games. I get it. I’ll ask you straight out, then; do you want to go on a date with me?”

“I just said I don’t have time for – ”

“I’m not being posturing and romantic. I’m being practical. You, me, a predetermined time and place to deal with all this. Then we don’t have to avoid each other or talk circles around each other or get in each others’ way; we just decide yes or no, here and now, and sort everything out then. Okay?”

“No politics.”

Magistus looked unsure about that, but nodded.

“I mean it. No politics. No veiled remarks, no snide underhanded warnings. I don’t talk about your roommates, you don’t talk about mine. None of this is going to work otherwise.”

“Alright. No politics.”

“Okay then. One date. But not right now.”

“Of course not. I’ll check my schedule, you check yours. Until then… enjoy your dinner.”

And then he walked away.

The people who’d been pretending not to listen in went back to genuinely not listening in. People who’d been staring went back to their food. I turned back to the buffet before me.

Just one more decision I had to make.