Worldbuilding (cont)

 Magic in Practice

 

You will note that in all my writings here I have not written a word about the how of magic, only the who and the what. This is because for all my knowledge I am no more a magician than a poet. I have always suspected there is very little of magic in me and several of my companions have remarked (unflatteringly) that my only remotely supernatural feature is my exceedingly large nose, which has a propensity for getting into things which are none of its concern. My volume would be incomplete without some mention of actual magical workings, however, so I have included the following extract from the work of an acquaintance of mine, Christian Lewis (more commonly known as the changeling child or Christian Hawkschild). His writing is habitually enigmatic and needlessly embellished, but in this case he insists that the subject simply cannot be described more clearly and in this one case I am rather inclined to believe the man. He is no magician, but he knows magic better than many who are. It is, I have always thought, in his blood.

 

Magic lies between the cracks of what is real. It is the mortar holding the bricks of perception together, yet mortar is thick and magic is far, far thinner than air. Magic keeps the universe from disappearing when everyone happens to blink all at once. But by the same note, magic can make the universe disappear, and bring it back a moment later slightly different from before. It lies in the far reaches of eternity, in the fuzzy places between what is and what isn't.

To do magic you must enter that fuzzy place. You must create nurture an uncertainty inside yourself and impose that uncertainty upon the nominal world. Naive teachers say that to fly by magic you must believe you can fly, but that is the smallest part of the task, for any fool can believe he can fly. You must believe you can fly, and be aware that the ground and sky and air all disagree, and you must speak to these powers and convince them that you are right and they are wrong. But the ground is very stubborn and the sky very clever and the air very shy, so very few men ever fly.

Of course that is the task of an experienced and powerful magician, who is well acquainted with the powers that surround him and on speaking terms with at least a few. First you must teach the ground to speak to you (for each magician invents a language all his own) and the same for the sky and the air (which is very shy). And you must sing to each of these, and flatter them and court them with the sounds and smells and colours that please them until they deign to speak to you, and then you must argue so sweetly that neither the stubborn ground nor the clever sky nor the shy and flighty air realizes that you are arguing, else they will become offended and lose their trust of you.

This sounds impossible, and it very nearly is, but that is because flying itself is very nearly impossible, and is ruled over by three of the great powers. The other night the crow lady came to visit me, and she came on the wings of a shadow cast by moonlight. To do this she goes out into the deep shadows in utter night, and speaks to her own shadow, which is close to her as her very soul and wraps itself around her so the trees and sky and earth lose sight of her. Thus wrapped in shadow, the moon is her only witness, and the moon loves her and calls her sister. She greets it gladly and they converse about the stars and midnight and the wildness behind the sky, and then with a wink she asks it to bear witness and tell the earth and sky and trees where she is, and as a favor the moon lies and says she is elsewhere. Then when her cloak of shadow falls it happens that the moon has not lied and she is not in the woods behind her house but beneath the branches of the tree where I am sitting.

This is not how magic truly works; the true workings cannot be committed to paper except in a magician's tongue, and only the magician who writes it can read such writing. But perhaps this is a lie like the moon's lie, and when you have read it you will be closer to understanding.

 

- excerpt from Green Hymns, by Hawkschild (Christian Lewis)

 

As he admits at the end, this is not a true description of magical workings but rather a useful analogy. Most magicians who have seen it, however, agree that it comes close, and the Autumnborn, when asked, said "it is not right, but it is true." Melody, who he calls the crow lady, says this description is utter nonsense and will no doubt assume I published it purely to spite her. Sadly I cannot really recommend Green Hymns because the book is about two thirds composed of transcriptions of long conversations with various trees which, even if they actually occurred in some form, are unenlightening and exceptionally dull.