Light sparked to life in the darkening sky above the flower-strewn meadow. He stood in the center, hands at his sides, eyes turned up. He waited, patiently, watching for a star far more red than any other, almost directly to the West, to click on. When it did, he held his breath.
Tucked away so far from civilization, the alpine meadow had been a favorite of the students. This was in the days of cooperation and shared learning when a school stood just a mile south. It had been perched on a rocky outcropping, and its views had been almost otherworldly. It was where he’d first truly considered the wonder of stars. And where he’d met her.
He let out his breath. So much had happened since that night. How long ago was it? Five years? Six? Whole lifetimes? Daydreaming was dangerous now. Since the factions formed, since the schools burned and the earth became the battleground of sectarian magicians, daydreaming was a serious tactical error. But here, in this place, he couldn’t stop the flood of memories.
A yellow blanket stretched out across the flowers and grass. On it, two pairs of shoes, a picnic basket with bread and cheese and fruit from the school’s kitchen. An empty bottle of wine leaned against the wicker. An expertly conjured replica set on the rack in the Magical Reproduction Professor’s study. And last, sitting on the edge with their legs sprawled out onto the grass, a young couple.
“It’s hard to say. There’s still so much more to learn,” she said answering his earlier question.
“Sure, but you must have some idea,” the boy prodded.
“Of how I’m going to practice magic the rest of my life?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re 19! I have enough trouble planning for dinner every night.” She laughed and shook her head. “For now, I just want to learn more. Learn everything.”
He nodded, and for a moment it appeared he would let it go. They sat in comfortable silence, hips touching, bare feet tickled by the swaying grass. Neither one had known magicians were real two years before, and now here they were barefoot in the Alps, learning secret powers, living on their own and falling in love.
“I don’t believe you,” he finally said. His face got this sort of half-grin when he called her bluff and she wanted to hate that face so much. And she would if she didn’t find it so overwhelmingly endearing.
“Fine,” she said. “Obviously I’ve not made up my mind.”
“I’m not suggesting you have. Or need to. But I want to know. Our futures aren’t what they used to be.” The boy said the last part softly, and she nearly burst into tears. Two years ago, she was a runaway in a dingy city. In those days, she’d literally had no future at all. His life had been, somehow, even worse.
It was dangerous to give up a part of oneself. Magicians used information as the ingredients of spells. The students were instructed to only share personal details with their closest friends. And even then, prudence was emphasized above all else.
“Explorations. Discovery. Every day here I learn something I never dreamed was possible. Which means there must be more, even now, that exists beyond the boundaries of my current imagination. I want to find all of it.” She said this all quickly, as if her confession might clamp down in her throat if it realized she was releasing it.
“I like that,” he answered. “That’s very romantic.” He twirled his fingers through a few white flowers, knocking their petals loose. With a few deft moves of his digits, he coaxed the petals to form into a crude spaceship. He encouraged it to circle around her head.
She laughed. “You are unbelievable. You’re the only person I know who can say something nice, that you truly mean, and still have it sound condescending.”
“I wasn’t being condescending!” He sent the spaceship into a launch, but the petals lost their shape almost immediately and tumbled silently back to earth.
“I know,” she nudged him with her hip. “But yours is a practical mind. You can’t just close your eyes and dream. At least not without figuring out what it means.”
He began to protest but stopped himself. She was right, of course. Even in his former life, he’d taken practical, organized steps to leave the living hell of his stepdad’s house, to con his way into an apprenticeship, to steal the money that he’d… she was right. He couldn’t stop organizing. In his head, he’d never left time for dreaming.
“Well maybe I’d like to start,” he said quietly.
“Then maybe I’d like to help,” she replied. She lifted her hand to his face and tilted his chin to plant a soft, tender kiss on his red-tinged lips. She could still taste a hint of the sweet wine on them.
“Ok. So how do we start?”
For a moment, she let her mind wander. What was the best way to get an earthbound mind to soar? Above them, the night sky flickered with countless dots of white light. After a few seconds, she had it, though she felt embarrassed it had taken even that long.
“Easy,” she said. She pointed above them, to a red-tinted star just above a pointy mountain. “Make a wish on a star.”
He nodded and suppressed the initial response to call that foolish. He wasn’t doing this to further himself. He wasn’t plotting and scheming, doing anything possible to put distance between himself and his brutish stepdad. He was a magician now, safe at school, and the world laid out before him like a blank map on a cartographer’s table.
He considered the star, and a few ideas went through his mind. But he never gave any real thought but one.
Beside him, she sat up and intertwined her fingers with his. “On three,” she said. “One… two… three.”
Something in the air changed. Out here, it was crisp and clear and fresh. It had a taste, something that he always referred to as sweet but only because words were an insufficient tool to describe just how the clean mountain air felt in his mouth.
He turned away from the red star and plastered an emotionless mask on his face. She had seen, of course, but he hadn’t really been trying to hide it. He wondered if she would ask.
For a long moment they stared at each other without speaking. Her hair wafted gently in a breeze. His fingers twitched.
“I guess it was always going to be the two of us.” She spoke calmly, and her tone gave away nothing.
He shrugged. “There are others left.”
“Yes, I suppose there are. Our war is not nearly over.”
“The war is not,” he said, knowing the sadness he felt could not be heard through his perfectly controlled tone. “But ours just about is.”
She shook her head, lifted her arm and they began their last fight.
Lightning coursed across the meadow, but he easily deflected it. A patch of flowers went up in a brief and final flash.
A torrent of water splashed up from behind him, an awesome wave that rushed at his back. With startling calm, he turned to the side, and the gush split to run around him. She sighed as he redirected the water, her own sounds matching the loud hiss as she burned it all away in a cloud of steam.
Fire next, but he temporarily moved its oxygen fuel.
Locusts emerged from the ground in a swarm, but a huge gust blew them out of the meadow.
For every move she made, he had a counter ready and waiting. They had avoided this fight for three years, ever since they had found themselves in opposing factions. This fight was always going to be more her fight than his. Two former lovers, torn apart by war and faced with the horrible task of battling each other… it was exactly the sort of romantic notion she adored. But through all these years, he had remained practical.
When she summoned enormous roots from the ground, roots that couldn’t possibly exist here as the meadow was entirely devoid of trees, he made his move. The roots curled around themselves, up and back and over in a confusing swirl. And before she knew it, they were turned around and on her.
They encircled her legs. She tried to counter, but he was ready for all of that. She had shared so much with him after all, given him so many ingredients for spells against her. Spells neither had ever thought he would have reason to use. No, that wasn’t quite true.
He thought he would never have cause to use them.
She thought he would never have the heart.
The roots wrapped around her waist and torso now, and they began pulling her underground. She gave a few more efforts though she knew even as she cast that it was already over.
“I’m glad I lost this way,” she said, hearing the familiar tone of confession in her voice. She knew now she didn’t have to feel guilty about that, not like she had for so many years. “If I’d lost because I wasn’t a good enough magician, that would be… devastating.”
“Your magic was a wonder to behold,” he said, his tone even and controlled.
“I know it was.”
“And you know why you lost.”
“’To give up a piece of yourself is to give up control of yourself,’” she recited, an old lesson taught all recently arrivals at the school. “I lost because I loved you as much as I could bear.”
“So did I.”
“I know you did,” she said, and her voice broke. All the while, the roots slowly pulled her under the green and white meadow. “But those two things were never quite equal, were they?”
He didn’t answer.
“I’m going to die because I wanted to share something of myself with the person I loved,” she continued when she realized he wasn’t going to speak again. “What is magic… what is life, if we can’t do that?”
Her face was almost under now, and she took one final breath of that sweet, alpine air. She looked over his shoulder at the star-studded sky and saw a glimmer of red.
“What did you wish for?” she asked, knowing her time was almost up.
He walked toward the roots as they dragged her beneath the ground. His mask began to break up. For the first time in years, he did not fight back the welling of tears. She vanished beneath the ground, and he did not know, would never know, if she had seen them.
Soft green grass and delicate white flowers in this patch of meadow were once more unremarkable. Nothing of the roots or their doomed prisoner remained. Her doomed opponent dropped to his knees. One powerful sob lurched his body forward, and he pressed a hand to the ground.
“I wished for you,” he whispered.
The Tall Tale Year 