Two hours later, I sat down on a stool in the laboratory with a huff of frustration. I rested one elbow on the tall workbench beside me and glared at Ken.

Ken gave me a reassuring smile that didn’t quite make me want to tear his face off. “Relax for a minute, Mistress, and take a deep breath. Every spellcaster’s first practical lesson is difficult. Let’s start at the top.”

I nodded a little and took a deep breath as advised, letting it out slowly. I’d always been quick at learning new things, thanks in part to my photographic memory. But for some reason, casting my first spell was eluding me, and it was very very frustrating.

“You,” Ken said, “are a highly intelligent and imaginative person with an analytical mind, so it stands to reason that you can construct spells in both of the common ways: by visualization, or by calculation.

“Your mother,” he continued, smiling at some memory, “found visualization easier. Your father preferred calculation. As a generality, visualization is the preferred method for beginners because it tends to be faster and easier, if less precise in the long run. So that’s where we’re starting.

“First,” Ken went on, “you visualize the effect you wish the spell to create. In this case, you’re trying to create a small breeze, just enough to spin that pinwheel.” He pointed to the brightly colored children’s toy, its stick held in a vise on the edge of the table.

I turned my baleful glare to the pinwheel for a moment. It almost seemed to be intentionally resisting my attempts to do this. “Okay.” Perhaps if I glared at it long enough, it would just burst into flame and release me from this torture. More likely Ken would have another in reserve, and I’d be required to rein in my emotions and try again. I took another deep breath and let it out.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ken smile. He probably suspected what spiteful thoughts I was sending at the pinwheel. “Once you have the visualization in mind, the spell has – essentially – been constructed, and you have to package it. The package is what most wizards call a verbal focus...that is, the word or words spoken to contain, focus, and trigger the release of the spell. Latin is the traditional lingual medium for spellcasting – at least in this part of the world – so that’s what you’re going to work with, at least for now. Fortunately, you don’t need to understand Latin, or even use correct grammar. It’s about intent and shaping rather than precision linguistics.”

“Maybe that’s where I’m getting stuck,” I sighed. “That just doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Well,” Ken said, “that particular part of spellcasting does tend to defy specific definition. If packaging a spell was just a matter of mathematics and was easily quantified, it’s possible that anybody would be able to cast spells in this manner. But it requires a specific talent that not everybody has. It’s likely a genetic trait, but as far as I know, nobody’s ever identified it.

“Be that as it may,” he went on, “let me see if I can clarify.” He paused and considered his words for a moment, idly pacing back and forth as he thought. After a moment, he said, “All right, I’m going to use a firearm analogy, because it happens to work fairly well.”

I smiled a little. “Whatever works, right?”

Ken waggled his hand. “As a generality. So, think of the verbal focus – in your case, the Latin word or words – as a sort of shotgun shell. The effect you’ve visualized is the buckshot, and your magic – the energy you draw from whatever source you’re using – is the propellant. When you put it all together, you have a spell...or, in the framework of my analogy, a live shotgun shell. The act of gathering it up and casting it is firing the shotgun.”

He hesitated a moment, then smiled ruefully. “I think that rather fell apart at the end, but it was good enough.”

I nodded. “Actually, that made sense.”

Ken beamed. “Good! Ready to give it another try?”

“Yes,” I said firmly, rising and pushing the stool to one side.

“Excellent! Now...visualize the effect you want.”

I stared at the pinwheel, imagining it spinning in a gentle breeze. I imagined how the air would feel moving over my skin as it went past, and how it would sound if I could hear it.

“You may want to aim using your hand at first,” Ken said. “Think of your hands as a focus that will always be available to you for aiming.”

My lips quirked into a little smile as I raised my right hand, made a fist, then extended my index finger and thumb to make a gun shape, and aimed it at the pinwheel.

Ken chuckled. “Fair enough. Now, think about what it felt like when you were sensing the magic in the lab’s door, and turn your attention inward. You should be able to feel something similar within yourself...that’s your magic, your energy. Gather that feeling of energy into your hand. Not too much, not too little, just enough for the effect you want to create.”

I pursed my lips. This was where I kept having trouble. How did one gather energy without being able to see it or feel it ahead of time. “Where does the magic come from?”

“For our purposes today, you’re drawing on your own innate magic. Sometimes it’s called Will, Ki, Anima, Mana, or any number of other things. But it’s all just energy, pure and simple.” He paused for a moment, then added, “If it helps, visualize gathering the energy the same way you visualized the effect. Blend them together. Have you ever seen any Sci-Fi anime?”

I blinked and looked over at him, thrown by the non sequitur. “Yes…”

“Think about what happens when big energy weapons in anime prepare to fire...how they appear to gather energy into them. Remember that visual?” Ken asked.

I nodded.

“It’s just like that,” he said.

Weirdly, that actually helped. I turned my attention back to the pinwheel and visualized a ball of air swirling at the tip of my extended index finger. Then I closed my eyes and imagined that little streamers and motes of light were gathering from the air around my hand and mixing into the ball of air.

After a moment, I realized that I could feel the same sort of tingling tension in my chest and around my hand that I’d felt radiating from the door. When I opened my eyes, I could actually see the streamers and motes of blue-white energy that I’d imagined gathering into a swirling sphere in front of my extended finger.

“Fantastic!” Ken exclaimed. “I think you’re gathering too much energy, but for your first attempt that’s okay! Now...package it in the verbal focus and release the energy. Remember that the intensity with which you use the verbal focus will influence the intensity of the spell, as will how much energy you push into it.”

I nodded a little. Part of me was carefully listening to Ken’s instructions. Part of me was concentrating on holding the visualization and power together. The rest of me narrowed my eyes at the pinwheel. This time, I was going to make it spin.

I sighted down my hand and whispered, “Ventus.”

Finally, I got it right, and several things happened all at once:

I felt a strange, ephemeral pulling sensation in my hand and forearm. At the same time, there was a soft flash of light at the tip of my fingertip and a *woosh* sound as the tension gathered at my fingertip and seemed to rush out from it. I felt a breeze swirl around me, pick up a bit of speed, then move down my arm, over my hand, and across the workbench.

A glass bottle about a foot to the left of the pinwheel rattled and rocked back and forth. Several papers on a neighboring table rustled gently in a breeze that – however badly aimed it was – I had created.

The pinwheel, sadly, didn’t so much as twitch. Sparkle cheered anyway, throwing her hands in the air and bouncing on her toes.

At that moment, the pinwheel honestly didn’t matter. Elation flooded through me as I turned to Ken and said with absolute glee, “I did it! My aim sucks, but I did it!” Then I had to grab the edge of the table as my knees went rubbery on me and the world tipped to one side a little for a moment. “Woah...”

“You did very well, Mistress,” Ken said reassuringly. “For a first effort, that was excellent. Now, sit down for a minute...that probably took a lot out of you.”

I did as I was told, hooking the stool with my foot and almost collapsing onto it. The world had already righted itself...or rather, my equilibrium had...but my legs still felt wobbly. “Is that why I feel weird?”

Ken nodded. “In a manner of speaking, you just flexed a muscle that’s never been used before. It’ll take time to build up your stamina. But that was a fantastic start. It took your mother three days to do what you just did in one.”

I returned his smile as what I’d done really started to sink in, and a second wave of disbelieving elation washed over me. “I did it,” I said incredulously. “I actually cast a real spell.”

Sparkle cheered again.

Ken laughed with delight. “Yes, Mistress, you really did. Congratulations.”

I smiled, feeling unexpected exhaustion creeping into the rest of my limbs. “Good grief. I feel like I’ve been awake for two days and ran a 10k marathon.”

Ken gave me a reassuring smile. “That’s normal. It’ll get easier the more you practice, and pretty quickly too.”

“Thank goodness,” I said with feeling. “Do I have to do it again right now?”

“No, Mistress,” Ken said. “You might pass out if you did. First, you need some food and some rest. We’ll try it again tomorrow.”

“That sounds like a great idea,” I replied, feeling like my eyelids were going to slide shut on their own.

At Ken’s insistence, I managed to stay awake and upright long enough to have a sandwich and a bowl of soup, then retired to my bedroom and collapsed on the bed without so much as removing my sneakers. I was asleep almost the instant my head hit the pillows.

A moment later I opened my eyes to find myself standing in an empty, gray, featureless room. There were no doors or windows, and I was starting to wonder what sort of dream this was when Ken appeared in front of me, and it clicked into place for me. This was the dream construct he’d told me about, like the schoolroom he’d created the night before, but which I could barely remember.

Ken himself appeared to be solid and alive. Here, in my mind, I supposed that it was perfectly natural for him to look that way. His skin was pale but healthy-looking, and he had very dark brown hair and eyes the color of green jade. He was wearing jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

He smiled at me. “Since you’re so exhausted, you slid almost directly into REM sleep. I threw this construct together quickly and without any detail, because we’re going to use it for a lesson that I want you to remember clearly in the morning.”

I blinked a few times and looked down at myself. I was dressed as I had been all day and felt none of the bone-deep exhaustion I’d experienced in the wake of casting my first spell. “I don’t feel tired...and why will I be able to remember this lesson more clearly than last night’s?”

“Your body is exhausted,” Ken explained. “Your mind isn’t. At least, not yet. You’ll remember this lesson clearly, unlike last night’s...because we’re doing it a bit differently.” He hesitated a moment, then smiled lopsidedly. “You might be a bit more tired tomorrow morning than usual, but I think it’ll be worth it.”

“All right,” I said, returning his smile. “I trust you. What is tonight’s lesson?”

“Tonight,” he said, “I want to see how good your spell visualization is, so I’m going to start teaching you about using magic to craft illusions.” He gestured around us at the blank room. “You are going to build a permanent construct for us to use during your lessons while you’re sleeping.”

I looked around at the drab, featureless walls, and nodded. “All right.” I mentally braced myself for whatever effort was to come...metaphorically rolling up my sleeves...and discovered that my dream-self was rolling up the sleeves of my blouse.

That gave me a clue as to how things might work in this dreamscape…thought became reality. Which led me to an insight about spellcasting: that was precisely what I was doing in the real world, imposing my will by making my thoughts into reality. Clearly, this was something I’d need to give more thought, and with caution. Just how far could magic bend reality? It was something to look into it.

In the meantime, I decided to just consider everything I encountered here ‘real’ for the duration of the lesson. Otherwise, I was going to go mad just trying to find the proper tenses and ways of referring to myself.

“So,” I said, “how do I begin?”

Ken nodded. “Illusions are a branch of elemental Air magic that is frequently lumped in – wrongly, in my opinion – with Evocation, Neuromancy – what most modern wizards call Mind Magic – and Enchantment. It touches on all three but is very much a school of magic in its own right.

“Be that as it may,” he went on, “Illusions are temporary magical constructs that are rather like the holographic projections in many Sci-Fi movies. Ideally, they give the appearance of being solid and tangible, though there may be instances where you don’t want them to be. In the real world they’ll only last for as long as you continue pumping energy into them, unless you anchor them to something, but that’s another lesson altogether.”

“Can they be made solid enough to touch?” I asked curiously.

“No,” Ken replied slowly, “and yes. They can be made to seem solid to people through the addition of a Neuromantic component...but that can tread pretty hard on mind control territory, which is a pretty firm no-no, at least as far as the ICOA is concerned. Also, the more people who witness an illusion that complex first-hand, the more likely it is to become obvious or exhaust the spellcaster. Just ask David Copperfield.”

“Pardon?”

Ken smiled. “Never mind. In your mental landscape, the process can be made permanent with a simple effort of will. It will effectively be storing the illusory construct in your brain for later use.” He paused for a moment, then shrugged a little. “Mind you, this isn’t something everyone can do. It requires a certain type of mind and memory.”

“Like mine,” I said.

“Like yours,” he agreed. “However, it’s something many spellcasters learn to do with varying degrees of success and effort.

“Now, casting an illusion is both simple and complex,” he continued. “It’s simple in that it requires little more preparation than envisioning the illusion you wish to create, gathering the energy for it, and sending it out into the world. It’s complex because the more sophisticated and believable you want the illusion to be, the harder you need to work at supplying the necessary detail and energy. Just saying ‘an illusion of a bicycle’ isn’t sufficient. You need to envision the wheels, and the treads on the wheels, the rims on the wheels, the spokes and brakes, and so on.”

“That sounds really complex,” I said.

Ken nodded. “Not many people can cast complex illusions effectively.”

“What happens if I don’t concentrate on that level of detail?” I asked.

“You end up with a caricature of a bicycle,” Ken said with a smile. “Something that looks kind of like a bicycle – the general shape would be correct – but which has none of the detail you’d expect from a real one. It might be useful for illustrating a point you’re trying to make, such as during a presentation, but it wouldn’t fool anybody.”

I nodded. “That makes sense. I think I understand.”

“Very good,” he gestured. “Let’s have a wall, then.”

A wall, I thought. All right. Envision a wall. “What kind of wall?”

“Whatever strikes your fancy, Mistress,” Ken chuckled.

I envisioned a hardwood wall. A nice, stained oak. I pictured the grain in my mind, the individual boards, the height and width of it. It started to remind me of the walls in my father’s study, so I pictured those to help clarify the image, calling to mind how they looked with the bookshelves, the painting of my mother, the big old desk.

As the wall took shape in my mind, I envisioned gathering the energy, remembering what it had felt like when I’d finally succeeded in casting my first spell. I gathered that feeling into my hands, cupping them around the energy like I was shaping it into a ball, then spread my arms and cast the energy out into the world, maintaining the image I’d built in my imagination.

“Okay,” Ken said in a startled tone, “you can stop concentrating now...”

I opened my eyes...and found that we were standing in my father’s study. I blinked a few times in surprise. “That’s...not what I was trying to do.”

“Perhaps,” Ken said with a smile, “perhaps not. Walk me through the steps you took.”

I explained to him carefully, step by step, what I had done, making sure to include every detail. When I finished, he chuckled. “You were using your father’s study as a template, and your mind has a distinct talent for holding detail, so that’s what you created. Job well done. You’re going to be superb at casting illusions.”

“Well…that’s good, isn’t it?” I wasn’t sure.

Ken smiled and nodded. “It’s very good. Of course, since illusions are considered elemental Air magic, I’m not at all surprised that you’re going to be good at it. It’s also an excellent sign that your magical aptitude test was correct. To that end...” He gestured to the desk. “Have a seat, and we’ll begin tonight’s studies.”

“What will we be studying tonight, Professor?” I asked teasingly as I sat down.

“We’re going to continue studying the use of Air magic in Evocation, specifically the creation of lightning. I think studying the casting of lightning will help you learn to regulate the amount of energy you send out into the world with a spell.”

I felt a frisson of unease at the idea of learning how to throw lightning bolts around but smothered it. In here, in my dreams – I had to remind myself forcefully that this wasn’t reality – it was perfectly safe.

Ken, meanwhile, had created an old-fashioned free-standing chalkboard out of thin air. “Let’s start with the basics. As you’ll recall, magic tends to bend and twist the laws of physics into a pretzel. But at the end of the day, they’re still grounded in the usual laws of mortal reality...at least, as they’re currently understood. So, what do you know about what happens when lightning occurs naturally?”