Harvest 19, 855
Idah’s braid reminded Buu of a cat’s tail, swishing back and forth as he followed her across university grounds. Buu usually spent his one day off each week trying to study in Aru’s office or wandering the grounds to avoid people. Since arriving at the university, he had even spent one entire day in bed, just staring at the ceiling.
On this morning, however, Idah had found him at breakfast and ordered him to follow her, ignoring Tuag entirely as the grimm fell in step behind them. She refused to give him any hints about their destination, shushing him when he asked and looking around to see if anyone had heard him. Just as the hairs on the back of his neck started to rise in anticipation of a trap or an ambush of other students, Idah stopped walking.
They stood deep in the labyrinthine warren of classrooms that made up the university’s largest building. Idah leaned casually against the wall, glancing up and down the passage until a few stray students rounded the corner and disappeared from sight. Nodding with satisfaction, Idah sprung to life, turning to face the section of wall she had just leaned against.
“What are you—” Buu ventured, more confused than ever.
“Shh!” Idah waved him into pouting silence again.
Idah closed her eyes, one hand moving gracefully through the air in front of her. Buu blinked, and a door appeared. It matched every other door in the building — solid wooden slats with an iron handle at one side — but it had a rune scribbled in chalk at Buu’s eye level. Buu did not recognize the rune from class, but it didn’t shudder like letters often did. It just sat there on the wood, perfectly behaved.
Without missing a beat, Idah hauled the door open and gestured Buu through, an ear-to-ear smile blooming across her face. A cold breeze wafted through the open door, greenery visible down a short hallway. Buu closed his gaping mouth and stepped through.
“You made that door appear.” He couldn’t help himself. To Buu’s surprise, Idah didn’t shush him again as the door clunked closed behind them.
“It’s always been there; I just took the illusion off. Illusions are what I do best,” Idah answered, ducking under a pine bough as they stepped into a tiny courtyard.
Four tall walls hemmed in the space, open sky visible through the branches of a pine tree growing up through cracked and discarded cobblestones. No windows looked into the courtyard, the only way in or out the single door they had entered through.
It should have felt claustrophobic, but as Buu looked at the bushes and vines reclaiming the area and crawling up the walls, he felt the same awe he got in the woods back home. Despite only being ten strides to a side, this place was a forest.
“There was a mistake in the plans when they put this building up,” Idah explained, waving an arm to encompass the pine tree. “No one used it, so when I found it, I hid the door. It’s my very own private practice space.”
Buu spun in a slow circle, looking up through the pine branches to the small patch of grey sky above. “Practice for what?”
“Magic. Obviously.”
Buu’s heart fluttered in his chest. Despite Three Lakes University’s reputation as the premier place in the known world to learn magic, he had seen very little of it since arriving. Outside of the professor’s experiments or some minor cantrips done to demonstrate a concept, everything at Three Lakes seemed terribly mundane.
“Didn’t the professors say that it’s dangerous to practice without knowing the theory?” Buu asked, for once, eager to be wrong. “You might be a prodigy, but I haven’t passed a single test since I got here.”
Idah shook her head, raising a hand towards the pine tree and creasing her brow slightly in concentration. After a moment, she relaxed as a large red squirrel poked its head from her sleeve, climbing onto her hand with tentative steps. It watched Buu with a questioning head tilt.
“My father says it’s ‘the age of theory’ and that they’re finally going to understand all about magic to make it more accessible to everyone.” Idah explained as the squirrel leapt from her hand to the pine tree, investigating it with enthusiasm. “Magic can be dangerous—” Idah balled her open hand into a fist, and the squirrel grew to the size of a small dog, long fangs protruding from its mouth and eyes shading eerie red. The little animal hopped down from the tree and growled at Buu, prompting a low rumble from Tuag in return. “—But making up rules and theories about how it works isn’t going to make it safer. In fact, if people can’t practice, and they can’t learn to think of their magic in their own way, I think it might make it much more difficult to learn in the first place.
“They are right that magic is us making our will physical, but they haven’t put two and two together. The more of them that believe magic is a difficult thing, confined by rules and books and mastery, the harder it will be for anyone to actually practice it.” Idah relaxed her hand and the squirrel returned to its previous adorable state.
“I’ve been playing with magic since before I could talk. It should be that natural. So today, you’re going to get out of your own head and practice your magic in your own way. No thaumic resonances, no hocus calibration — just doing it.” Idah waved her hand and the squirrel dissipated into spiderweb-fine fibers, disappearing like smoke.
Buu shifted his weight from foot to foot. Eagerness mingled with anxiety, tightening his throat and chest. The sooner he could control his powers, the sooner he might be able to get the grimm to leave him alone, and the sooner he could go home to his uncle. If he could use his powers safely, he could finally feel better and stop being a burden. If he could control his powers, no soldiers would ever be able to come and take his home from him again.
“How do we start?” he asked, rubbing his hands together for warmth.
Idah smiled at his excitement and walked to the base of the tree, lifting a small sack from inside a hollow in its trunk. She returned holding it at arm’s length, face screwed up and tongue poking out in disgust. As she drew near, the smell of rotting flesh grew unmistakable.
“I read Aunt Aru’s field journal. I figured this might be useful.” Idah dumped out the sack at Buu’s feet. A rat carcass landed with a puff of snowflakes, its neck twisted at an odd angle. “From the kitchen’s cat,” Idah explained in answer to Buu’s unasked question. “Will it do?”
Buu took a deep breath, extending his senses beyond their usual range and feeling the empty presence of the rat in his mind. “Yes, I think I can use that.”
“Great!” Idah crumpled the empty sack and marched back and forth in front of Buu. She clasped her arms behind her back, and Buu resisted the urge to stand at attention. “So, what you’re going to do is start like you normally would — like you did with that beetle for Aunt Aru — but take your time and really feel what you’re doing. Kind of explore around a bit and see what you find.
“You’re probably going to be tempted to try and do things — test your limits maybe. Don’t. Think of this like a scouting mission. You want to see what’s out there before you run headlong into it.” Idah stopped before Buu and put a hand on each of his shoulders, staring into his eyes with a serious expression. “Are you ready?”
Buu took a deep breath, locking eyes with Idah before nodding. “Let’s do it.”
Idah stepped back, pulling her robes snugly around herself and watching Buu expectantly. Beside him, Tuag stood with muscles tensed, anticipating something, though Buu doubted he understood the full meaning of the conversation.
Eager to take the first steps to returning home, Buu focused on the dead rat at his feet. The absence of it solidified in his mind, a blank space he could slip his will into and give purpose or direction. Instead of taking control immediately, however, he concentrated on the sixth sense that brought it to his awareness.
Closing his eyes to minimize distraction, Buu widened the scope of his perception. He grew aware of Idah’s pulse, a vibrant solidity that stood in stark contrast to the rat’s emptiness. Moving his attention like a spy glass, Buu tried to bring the grimm into focus.
The sheer presence of the grimm staggered him, shocking Buu that he’d never noticed it before. Dread and awe flowed into him as he felt the otherworldly, oversaturated, not-quite-there-ness of a myth made flesh. The experience filled him with the same nervous excitement as standing too close to a cliffside or watching his uncle’s hands dance right beside the spinning saws of the mill: death standing a breath away.
He could sense Tuag returning the scrutiny, observing him with keen interest. The grimm’s attention felt sharp and acrid somehow, burning lightly against Buu’s being. Curious about what the beast saw, Buu tried to focus downward, to where his body would be, but glanced away quickly. What he saw frightened him, and he decided to forget it as quickly as he could.
Searching around for a distraction, Buu noticed a man standing with them. Buu knew he wouldn’t see the figure if he opened his eyes but felt the same longing and sorrow that he’d seen on the face of the grey-robed student outside of the library. Beyond the man, others pressed in on Buu’s awareness.
A sea of people, of ghosts, pushed against one another, edging and elbowing for room. They avoided an open ring of space around Tuag, their fear of the grimm leaving a sour taste in Buu’s mouth. The crowd’s focus narrowed to a fine point, jabbing at Buu with their intensity, but no one approached him.
Buu took a step towards the nearest man. His encounter with the grey girl in the workshop loomed in his mind — the memory of her angry, silent assault making his hands shake. These people could hurt him, but there was something achingly familiar about them. He took another step, wondering if he could speak in this place, and between one thought and the next the grimm appeared before him.
Tuag didn’t seem angry — at least no more than usual — but his presence pushed Buu back, away from the ghosts that were shying like scared horses. One step, and another, before his foot caught on an upturned paving stone and Buu toppled back, landing hard on his tailbone.
“Ow,” he muttered, opening his eyes to see the courtyard much as he had left it. Idah sat with her back against the lonely pine tree, a book open on her lap as she looked up at him.
“Oh good, you’re back.” Closing the book, she rose, stretching stiffly. “How did it go?”
Buu looked from the closed book, to Idah, and up to the small square of sky above them, significantly dimmer than it had been. He hauled himself to his feet, rubbing at his sore rump and noting that Tuag hadn’t moved an inch since he had closed his eyes.
“How… how long was I…?” Buu gestured vaguely, unwilling to think of what he had just witnessed as ‘away.’
Idah slipped her book into her bag, shouldering it before coming to join him. “Hours. I was worried we were going to miss dinner. Making it back the first time is the hardest part. My father says that when I was little, I went into a trance for days. They thought I’d hit my head or something, but I think I probably just got a little lost.
“I have a dream from as early as I can remember of… sort of floating through the forest. I like to think that was where I went. How about you? What happened?” Idah stared at him, expectant.
“I… It was… I saw…” Buu paused, taking a deep breath and exhaling noisily, trying to piece his perceptions together. “I think I saw dead people. Lots and lots of dead people.”