I set down my half-eaten bowl of stewed wheat berries—organic and grown right here in the garden, which would have made them delicious if Dr. Kowalski had believed in sugar, salt, or dairy products—and stood up, wrapping my arms around the massive pumpkin she’d set in front of me like I was giving it a hug. When I had a good grip on the slippery squash, which had to weigh thirty pounds at least, I lifted it off the table with a grunt and followed Dr. Kowalski through the back door into the sunny autumn garden that had become my temporary home away from home.
“Okay,” Dr. Kowalski said when we reached the aforementioned trellis. “We’ll start by pulling up the posts. I’ll hold it steady. You do the digging. Remember: feather the line. Grab as much magic as you can handle and not a drop more. Keep control. Keep it even.”
I nodded, setting my pumpkin down on the flagstone path. When I was sure it wasn’t going to roll away, I put my hands down on top of it and started pulling in magic very, very slowly. Probably too slowly, but as I’d said earlier, I had a thing about pumpkins and magic. Even the smell was enough to make my stomach clench, but as Dr. Kowalski had said, I’d been doing really well. I hadn’t cooked a vegetable, or myself, in weeks. I could handle a pumpkin. This one wasn’t even a kabocha variety. I could do it. I could—
Magic flooded through me, making me jump. Even after two months, the wild power that lived out here in the DFZ’s private urban wilderness preserve still caught me by surprise every time. Reaching for it felt like shoving my hand under a raging waterfall, but at least these days I didn’t get washed away. I went with the flow instead, catching the rushing magic and redirecting it in a controlled, even stream straight into the pumpkin at my feet.
Technically, I didn’t actually need to put the magic inside it. Like the potato Dr. Kowalski had given me when we’d first met, the pumpkin was only a guide, a visual aid to help me grab some magic instead of all. But I’d gotten used to putting my magic into things before I used it, and I had a score to settle with this pumpkin. I filled it as gently as a summer shower, letting the magic drip through my fingers until I had exactly the amount I needed to grab the six-foot-tall wooden post my teacher was holding steady and yank it out of the ground.
“Good!” Dr. Kowalski said excitedly as the sharpened two-by-four popped out of the soil. “Little slow, but excellent form. Now do it fifteen more times.”
I groaned externally this time. Using magic for physical stuff like this was exhausting. I might have been garbage at Thaumaturgy, but at least there the spellwork did all the heavy lifting. The freewheeling flexibility of Shamanism meant you had to do everything yourself, which got really tiring when you were using magic for things magic wasn’t actually good at, like pulling up stakes. I’d only done one so far, and I was already soaked in sweat. But hey, at least I hadn’t exploded the pumpkin.
That victory got me through the rest of the trellis. I only used the pumpkin a few more times. Once it was clear that I was grabbing the correct amount of magic, Dr. Kowalski had me shift to holding the power inside me instead, drawing it in with one hand while I cast out with the other. The balancing act was time-consuming and fiddly and made the work ten times harder, but I understood why she was making me do it. Vessels like the pumpkin were good for teaching me how to control my off-the-charts magical draw—my number one problem and the reason I used to backlash myself every time I attempted serious magic—but it was ultimately a crutch. Real Shamanism was active.
Unlike Thaumaturgy’s spellwork equations and endless circles, Shamanism had no setup. There was nothing to draw, nothing to write out in advance. It was all about understanding and working with the power that was in the world around you in the moment. For me right now, that was the magic of the forest: a feral, stubborn power that smelled of loam and damp and slid through my fingers like wet pine needles. As with all wild things, it required a firm hand. If I let up for even a second, the magic would wiggle away from me like an angry badger. I had to be calm, steady, and in control. Not generally things I was good at, but that was what practice was for.
By the time I yanked the last wooden stake out of the ground and flopped exhausted into the dirt, I felt like I’d run three marathons back to back. I’d been concentrating too hard to notice the passage of time, but the sun, which had been barely over the treetops when I’d started, was now riding high in the clear blue autumn sky. I was staring up at it and gasping in air when Dr. Kowalski’s shadow fell over me.
“Excellent work,” she said, reaching down to help me up. “Take a five-minute break, and then it’s time to move all this wood over to the other side of the garden and put it back up.”
I nodded and grabbed her offered hand, panting too hard to speak. The thought of having to put all those stupid pieces of wood back into the ground I’d just yanked them out of was making me twitchy, but I didn’t dare complain. I was the one who’d signed up for this, and as painful as it was, the thrill of actually being good at magic for once in my life outweighed the suck. Before Dr. Kowalski, I couldn’t remember the last time a teacher had watched me cast without wincing. I also couldn’t remember the last time using magic had felt natural. I wasn’t sure if it had ever happened, to be honest. But while yanking up posts with nothing but raw magic was exhausting, it was a good, physical sort of tired. It didn’t hurt or feel scary and out of control like my casting used to, and the effect that change had on me was hard to put into words. I’d happily pull up posts for the rest of my life if it meant I never had to go back to fearing something that was such an intrinsic part of myself.
“Sounds as if you’ve had a breakthrough,” Sibyl said glumly in my earpiece. “Hooraaaaaay.”
I frowned at the flatness in my AI’s normally overly cheerful voice. “Are you okay?”
“No, I’m not okay!” Sibyl cried. “I’ve been cut off from the internet since you came here! Don’t get me wrong, I’m super happy you’re finally dealing with your casting issues, but I haven’t had a security update in eight weeks and it’s making me crazy.” Her voice grew pleading. “Can you ask her to let me back onto the wireless for one minute? I swear I won’t broadcast any location data. I just want to ping my update server, that’s all.”
There was only one “her” in the garden with me, but I knew Sibyl wasn’t talking about Dr. Kowalski. She was talking about my real boss, the god for whom I was currently a provisional priestess: the Spirit of the DFZ.
“Sorry,” I told my AI as I brushed the dirt off my butt. “But you already know that’s a no-can-do. We’re on a strict no-internet policy.”
“But—”
“I’m the one who asked her to cut us off,” I reminded Sibyl harshly. “Do you know how many people are looking for me?”
“No,” she snapped. “And neither do you since we’ve had no contact with the outside world for two months!”
“Yeah, that’s what ‘hiding’ means,” I reminded her, walking over to the water pump and shoving my face under it until my mouth no longer felt like the Sahara. “Dad still hasn’t woken up. Until he does, we’re easy prey for any dragon who wants to finish him off.”