Chapter 6: Three Steps Back

"Okay," Elsie said the next morning after she'd arrived. She had a sackful of McDonald's biscuits, for sharing, so I was feeling fairly forgiving and let her into the house to sit at the breakfast table.

"So, I've got good news and bad news for you," she began. "You have skipped a lot of the traditional orders of operation. Like, a lot of them. That's because many of the things witches traditionally do are just learning to work around their vis immune system, and you don't have one yet.

"I'm telling you this because, well, I wrote down a list of all the things you've done so far. I want you to look at it and see how well you've done. And then, I have to tell you that when we bond you with the pig, you're going to lose progress on, like, half of them. Here, look."

The paper had a list of terms but no context.

Internal Conversion (Channelling)

Vis Manipulation (Auramancy)

Laying on Hands (Thaumaturgy)

Figment (Conjuration)

Aura Vision (Animancy)

Astral Projection (Divination)*

The Second Sight (Animancy)*

Thaumic Tethering (Thaumaturgy)*

"Unfortunately," she said, "you'll lose all the ones with stars on them. But we'll work back up!"

"You're giving me a lot of terms here," I said sourly. "You haven't even told me what 'vis' is."

"Vis is the magic within your body that your body accepts," she explained. "Mana is the earth's magic, spell residues, etc. It's a hodgepodge out there, and you don't want that in your soul, so your body screens it out."

She paused. "Well. YOURS won't. Thus the pig."

"And after?"

"Well, he's a pig. Pigs are not very magical. He has probably had some of the clover on my land when he was younger. Certainly, he hasn't been eating berries, or this would have happened to him—and I'm afraid I wouldn't have noticed, and he would have had a very bad time. But after a first exposure to magic, your body matures, your soul matures. It figures out, 'Okay, this is what I'm supposed to be, baseline,' and you stabilize. You just open up a little bit, and then you can stop there. So, he ate some clover on blessed ground, and... well, he's a little smarter than the average pig, I think. Maybe he's got that much more magic flooding around, firing his neurons. I don't know, I'm not a vet. But what I can tell you is that his aura... well, look at it."

His aura was a solid gray with little tiny flecks of floating gold.

"He's rock solid," Elsie said. "He'll be good for you."

"So... what? I'll get back to normal-ish?"

"Oh, no. Animal souls don't have the juice that human souls have. Once the two of you are bonded, your soul will be doing about eighty percent of the lifting, which means his soul is going to be providing... I don't know... twenty percent cover, at best."

"Oh."

"You'll learn faster than a normal apprentice," she offered. "Look on the bright side."

"But the dark side is...?"

"Well, if you don't learn quickly, you'll probably die first."

Motivation.

"Elsie!" complained Mrs. Scarlett Humphrey. She’d claimed the corner seat and had not partaken. "This is exactly why I asked to come along. That is not appropriate."

“I’d rather not die, though,” I offered.

They both looked at me like I’d said something blindingly obvious. Heh.

"Okay," I said. "We've talked around the thing… the pig thing. Let’s talk about it. How does it work? What do I have to do to become safe?"

They clearly weren't entirely comfortable with this conversation.

Elsie started, "Obviously, any sort of lifetime bond is a significant commitment, and we really don't want to push you into something that you could regret. But at the same time, we're worried that if you don't do it—"

"Yes, yes, I'll die. I understand," I interrupted. "Let's just say I'm going to do it. Stop beating around the bush."

"Well," Elsie said, a strange, impish gleam in her eye, "Ms Huxley tells us you're already quite adept with some of the traditional tools of our profession."

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I didn't understand. What did the librarian think I knew about witchcraft?

"She means peyote," Mrs. Scarlett Humphrey clarified with evident distaste.

.

"Oh," I said. "So, a vision quest?"

Elsie looked at me with something approaching actual contempt in her eyes. "Does this look like amateur hour?"

Well, when she put it like that, I guessed not.

"The trouble with a vision quest," Mrs. Scarlett Humphrey said in a much friendlier way, "is that you're the driver, and you don't know where you're going."

I could see where that would be a problem.

"Us old-timers used to send people out with only a vague idea of the goal and hope that they came back with the right tools," Elsie continued. "And if they didn't, then it wasn't destined—not meant to happen. But I'll tell you what happens if I give you a lighter and a jug of lighter fluid and ask you for a campfire, and it's your first time. I'm going to get back a charbroiled camper."

"You're mixing your metaphors, Mrs. Elsie," I pointed out.

"I am teaching responsibility," Elsie said fiercely, "and telling you the standard that you should hold me to. I will not send you into the weeds without a map. That would be barbaric."

I had never considered the question before, but having done so on my own, I was just as happy that Elsie had decided to be my mentor.

"So, no vision quest?"

"It will be a guided vision quest, obviously."

"Oh. Okay. And how does that work?"

"I prepare the space. I invite you into my dream. We link up with your pig, I guide you into his space, and then you hopefully choose one another."

"We—” I began, startled.

“Oh, come on. He may be a pig, but he gets a say in who he wants his soul bonded to, doesn’t he?” said Elsie, as if it were obvious.

"I hope he likes me."

"He does," Mrs. Scarlett Humphrey said. "There's probably nothing to worry about on that score. Now, Maxine, why don't you show me around the kitchen?"

This was not particularly stealthy, but I decided to go with her. "Is she reaching for the first tool in the kit: hallucinogens?" I asked.

"Maxine. Obviously, yes," Mrs. Scarlett Humphrey replied. "Remember how I didn't want to put you in any compromising situations? Giving you drugs counts."

"Okay, what's the alternative?"

"That is the problem, and that's why I'm talking to you instead of just shutting this down. There aren't any great alternatives. The traditional method is not, as you may have guessed, a vision quest. Elsie likes them because she looked them up and because she got some tutelage from an expert. Most of us don't have her background."

"Really?"

"You have no idea how exceptional your teacher is," she said simply. "But I can give you an idea. Look at my aura."

I did. It was about twice her width, still human-shaped, not yet expanded into the globe shape of my mentor.

"Oh," I said. "So auras are, like, a big deal."

She nodded vigorously. "And you can tell just by looking how much she's done to work on her own."

"I didn't know that."

"So I'm telling you: she grows these dangerous plants so she can eat them and add their power to hers. However, as you've discovered, this is very dangerous. I don't do it because I like my soul just the shape it is, attached to my body. I'm not saying to disregard her. I'm not even saying she's giving you bad advice. I'm saying, if you go to a gym and the strongest guy there tells you how to powerlift, he’s probably telling you how to powerlift correctly. But powerlifting isn't necessarily ideal for a novice. Do you see?"

"And yet, she thinks I'm going to learn fast," I said. "So why would she say to do this if it's a bad idea?"

"It's a time constraint. The traditional way takes months. You live with your animal, you trust it, it trusts you. If it's a dog, you wait until it thinks you're its pack. You reach that level of intimacy with your bond before you enter it, so its soul doesn’t recognize you as foreign and kill you."

"Oh. So how likely am I to live that long without getting a familiar?"

"Do you want to bet on it? You'll notice an entire witch coven has gathered just for you, just because of this problem. We're not the biggest coven, and we're not the strongest witches—not even Elsie, though she's strong. But together... have a little faith. If a fix were easy, we would have just done it instead of remaining convened. You know how often teachers drop their classwork and spend the whole day out of the house during the weekend?" she asked. "I have homework to grade."

"I know," I said softly. "Thank you for—"

"Oh, shut up." The reply shocked me; she was normally more circumspect. "I'm here so you don't die, because I'm certain that you will. I am here warning you about the stakes because you deserve to know. I'm not necessarily arguing with the proposed action. I’m certainly not trying to wring an apology out of you.”

She seemed genuinely offended. I wondered if I’d seemed too… cowed.

"She does trust me," said a voice from the doorway. Elsie.

"So what? Does that matter?" I asked.

"Your own soul doesn't love being pulled out," Mrs. Scarlett Humphrey explained. "Her pulling you into her dream, if you didn't trust her, is every bit as dangerous to her as it will be for you going into your pig."

"I am just finding this…hard to believe," I admitted. "Do you know how many people die on peyote?"

I’d done my research on all the interesting chemicals I might one day encounter, just in case..

"You don't die of the peyote," Elsie said impatiently. "Usually, it's a stroke or a seizure. And you don't die if you're in good hands."

She looked my teacher in the eye. “I swear I'm not planning to kill her."

Mrs. Scarlett Humphrey and I shared a loaded look. As sentences went, I had to admit it wasn't the most inspiring I'd ever heard.

"Does my vote count?" I asked.

Mrs. Scarlett Humphrey pursed her lips, but nodded.

"Then we do it," I said. "The worst thing I can imagine is being a passenger in my own body. That’s a risk for me now, so let’s get it over with."

The women simply nodded. There was nothing more to be said.