Four Hours Ago
The day Reina Mori was born there had been a fire blazing nearby. For an urban environment, particularly one so unaccustomed to flame, there was a heightened sense of mortality that day. Fire was so primitive, so archaic a problem; for Tokyo, an epicenter of advancements in both magical and mortal technologies, to suffer something as backwards as the unsophistication of boundless flame was troublingly biblical. Sometimes, when Reina slept, the smell of it crept into her nose and she woke up coughing, retching a little over the side of her bed until the memory of smoke had cleared from her lungs.
The doctors knew she possessed power of the highest medeian caliber right away, exceeding even the trinkets of normal magic, which were rare enough on their own. There wasn’t a lot of natural life to speak of in the high-rise of the hospital, but what did exist—the occasional decorative plants sitting idly in the corners, handfuls of cut-flowers in vases meant for sympathy—had crept towards her infant form like nervous little children, anxious and yearning and fearful of dying.
Reina’s grandmother called her birth a miracle, saying that when Reina took her first breath, the rest of the world sighed back in relief, clinging to the bounty of life she gave them. Reina, on the other hand, considered her first breath to be the beginning of a lifetime’s set of chores.
The truth was that being labeled a naturalist shouldn’t have been such a drain on her as it was. There were other medeian naturalists, many who were born in rural areas of the country, who typically opted to enlist with large agricultural companies; there, they could be paid handsomely for their services in increasing rice production or purifying water. That Reina was considered to be one of them, or that she would be called a naturalist at all, was something of a misnomer. Other medeians asked things of nature, and if they beckoned sweetly or worthily or powerfully enough, nature gave. In Reina’s case, nature was like an irritating sibling, or possibly an incurable addict who happened to be a relative, always popping up to make unreasonable demands.
There was no reason to go to school in Osaka, really, except to get out of Tokyo. Tokyo’s magical university was plenty good, if not perhaps a bit better, but Reina had never been overly thrilled by the prospect of living in the same place into perpetuity. She had searched and searched for experiences like hers—something that was less look what a savior you are and more look what a burden it is to care for so many things—and had found it in mythology, mostly. There, witches, or gods who were perceived to be witches, bore experiences Reina found intensely relatable and, in some cases, desirable: Exile to islands. Six months in the Underworld. The compulsive turning of one’s enemies to something which couldn’t speak. Her teachers encouraged her to practice her naturalism, to take botany and herbology and focus her studies on the minutiae of plants, but Reina wanted the classics. She wanted literature, and more importantly, the freedom it brought to think of something which did not gaze at her with the blank neediness of chlorophyll. When Tokyo pressed a scholarship into her hands, imploring her to study with their leading naturalists, she took up Osaka’s freer curriculum instead.
A small escape, but it was one, still.
She graduated from the Osaka Institute of Magic and got a job as a waitress in a cafe and tearoom near the magical epicenter of the city. The best part about being a waitress where magic did most of the legwork? Plenty of time to read. And write. Reina, who’d had countless agricultural firms ready to pounce the moment she’d graduated (several of them for rival companies from China and the United States as well as Japan), had done everything she could to steer clear of working amid the vastness of planting fields, where both the earth and its inhabitants would drain her for their purposes. The cafe contained no plants, certainly no animals, and while from time to time the wooden furniture would warp under her hands, going so far as to longingly spelling her name in the exposed rings, it was easy enough to ignore.
Which wasn’t to say people had ceased to come looking for her. Today, it was a tall, dark-skinned man in a Burberry trench coat.
To his credit, he didn’t look like the usual capitalist villain. He looked a bit like Sherlock Holmes, in fact. He came in, sat at a table, and placed three small seedlings on its surface, waiting until Reina had risen to her feet with a sigh.
There was nobody else in the cafe; she assumed he’d taken care of that.
“Make them grow,” he suggested, apropos of nothing.
He said it in a restrained Tokyo dialect rather than a typical Osaka one, which made two things very clear: One, he knew precisely who she was, or at least where she was from. Two, this was obviously not his first language.
Reina gave the man a dull look. “I don’t make them grow,” she said in English. “They just do it.”
He looked unfazed in a smug sort of way, as if he’d guessed she might say that, answering in an accented English that was intensely, poshly British. “You think that has nothing to do with you?”
She knew what he expected her to say. Today, like all days, he would not get it.
“You want something from me,” Reina observed, adding tonelessly, “Everyone does.”
“I do,” the man agreed. “I’d like a coffee, please.”
“Great.” She waved a hand over her shoulder. “It’ll be out in two minutes. Anything else?”
“Yes,” he said. “Does it work better when you’re angry? When you’re sad?”
So, not coffee then. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“There are other naturalists.” He fixed her with a long, searching glance. “Why should I choose you?”
“You shouldn’t,” she said. “I’m a waitress, not a naturalist.”
One of the seedlings split open and dug into the wood of the table.
“There are gifts and there are talents,” the man said. “What would you say this is?”
“Neither.” The second seedling cracked. “A curse, maybe.”
“Hm.” The man glanced down at the seeds, then up at Reina. “What are you reading?”
She’d forgotten she still had the book tucked under her arm. “A translation of a manuscript by Circe, the Greek witch.”
His mouth twitched. “That manuscript is long lost, isn’t it?”
“People read it,” Reina said. “They wrote down what it contained.”
“About as reliable as the New Testament, then,” the man said.
Reina shrugged. “It’s what I have.”
“What if I said you could have the real thing?”
The third seedling shot up, colliding with the ceiling, and when it fell, it dug into the grains of the floor.
For a few seconds, neither of them moved.
“It doesn’t exist,” Reina said, clearing her throat. “You just said so.”
“No, I specifically said it was long-lost,” the man said. “Not everyone gets to see it.”
Reina felt her mouth tighten. It was a strange bribe, but she’d been offered things before. Everything came with a price. “So what would I have to do, then?” she asked, irritated. “Promise you eight years of harvest in exchange? Make up a percentage of your annual profits? No, thank you.”
She turned and something cracked beneath her feet. Little green roots sprouted from the floor and crept out like tendrils, like tentacles, reaching for her ankles and tapping at the base of her shoes.
“How about,” the man posed neutrally, “in exchange for three answers?”
Reina turned sharply, and the man didn’t hesitate. Clearly he’d had some practice leveraging people before. “What makes it happen?” he asked. His first question, and certainly not the one Reina would have gone with if she’d been the one given the choice.
“I don’t know.” He arched a brow, waiting, and she sighed. “Fine, it… uses me. Uses my energy, my thoughts, my emotions. If there’s more energy to give, then it takes more of it. Most of the time I’m restraining it, but if I let my mind go—”
“What happens to you in those moments? No, wait, let me clarify,” he amended, apparently sticking to his promise of three answers. “Does it drain you?”
She set her jaw. “It gives a little back, sometimes. But normally, yes.”
“I see. Last question,” he said. “What happens if you try to use it?”
“I told you,” she said, “I don’t use it.”
He sat back, gesturing to the two seedlings still remaining on the table, one half-heartedly growing roots while the other lay split open and bare.
The implication there was clear: Try it and see.
She weighed the outcomes, running the calculations.
“Who are you?” Reina asked, tearing her attention from the seedling.
“Atlas Blakely, Caretaker,” replied the man.
“And what is it you care for?”
“I’d be happy to tell you,” he said, “but the truth is it’s a bit exclusive. I can’t technically invite you yet, as you’re still tied for sixth on our list.”
She frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means only six can be invited,” Atlas said plainly. “Your professors at the Osaka Institute seem to think you will refuse my offer, which means your spot is somewhat…” He trailed off. “Well, I’ll be frank. It’s not unanimous, Miss Mori. I have exactly twenty minutes to convince the rest of the council that you should be our sixth choice.”
“Who says I want to be chosen?”
He shrugged. “Maybe you don’t,” he permitted. “If that’s the case, I will alert the other candidate the slot is theirs. A traveler,” he clarified. “A young man, very intelligent, well-trained. Perhaps better trained than you.” A pause to let that sink in. “It’s a very rare gift he possesses,” Atlas conceded, “but he has, in my view, a considerably less useful ability than yours.”
She said nothing. The plant, which had curled around her ankle, gave a malcontented sigh, wilting slightly at her apprehension.
“Very well,” Atlas said, rising to his feet, and Reina flinched.
“Wait.” She swallowed. “Show me the manuscript.”
Atlas arched a brow.
“You said three answers were all I had to give,” Reina reminded him, and the corners of his mouth quirked up, approving.
“So I did, didn’t I?”
He waved a hand, producing a handwoven book, and levitated it in the air between them. The cover slid open carefully, revealing contents of tiny, scrawled handwriting that appeared to be a mix of ancient Greek and pseudo-hieroglyphic runes.
“What spell were you reading?” he asked as she reached for it, hand already half-extended. “Apologies,” Atlas said, waving the book back from her a few inches, “I can’t let you touch it. It already shouldn’t be out of the archives, but again, I’m hoping you will prove my efforts worthwhile. What spell were you reading?”
“I, um. The cloaking spell.” Reina stared at the pages, only understanding about half of it. Osaka’s program for rune-reading had been somewhat elementary; Tokyo’s would have been better, but again, it had come with strings. “The one she used to mask the appearance of the island.”
Atlas nodded, the pages turning of their own accord, and there, on the page, was a crude drawing of Aiaia, part of the writing stripped away from age. It was a crude, unfinished illusion spell, which was something Reina had not been able to study at all beyond basic medeian theory. Illusion courses at the Osaka Institute were for illusionists, which she was not.
“Oh,” she said.
Atlas smiled.
“Fifteen minutes,” he reminded her, and then he vanished the book.
So this, too, came with strings. That was obvious. Reina had never liked this sort of persuasion, but there was a logical piece of her that understood people would never stop asking. She was a well of power, a vault with a heavy door, and people would either find ways to break in or she would have to simply open them on occasion. Only for a worthy purchaser.
She closed her eyes.
Can we? asked the seeds in their little seed language, which felt mostly like tiny pricks against her skin. Like children’s voices, pleasepleaseplease Mother may we?
She sighed.
Grow, she told them in their language. She had never known what it felt like to them, but it seemed they understood her well enough. Have what you need from me, she added grumpily, just do it.
The relief was a slither from inside her bones: Yessssssssssssssssss.
When she opened her eyes, the seedling on the ground had blossomed into a thin series of branches, stretching from her feet up to the ceiling and then sprawling over it, spreading across it like a rash. The one embedded in the table had cracked the wood in half, sprouting upwards from it like moss over a barren tree trunk. The last, the broken one, quivered and burst in a ripe stretch of color, taking the form of vines which then proceeded to bear fruit, each one ripening at an astronomical rate while they watched.
When the apples were round and heavy and temptingly ready to be plucked, Reina exhaled, releasing the ache in her shoulders, and glanced expectantly at her visitor.
“Ah,” Atlas said, shifting in his seat. The plants had left little room for him to sit comfortably, and he no longer had space for his legs. “So it’s both a gift and a talent, then.”
Reina knew her own worth well enough not to comment. “What other books do you have?”
“I haven’t extended an offer yet, Miss Mori,” Atlas replied.
“You’ll want me,” she said, lifting her chin. “Nobody can do what I can do.”
“True, but you don’t know the other candidates on the list,” he pointed out. “We have two of the finest physicists the world has seen for generations, a uniquely gifted illusionist, a telepath the likes of which are incomparable, an empath capable of luring a crowd of thousands—”
“It doesn’t matter who else you have.” Reina set her jaw. “You’ll still want me.”
Atlas considered her a moment.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, that’s quite true, isn’t it?”
Ha ha ha, laughed the plants. Ha ha, Mother wins, we win.
“Stop it,” Reina whispered to the branches that had swept down to brush the top of her head with approval, and Atlas rose to his feet with a chuckle, extending a hand which contained a single slip of cardstock.
“Take this,” he said, “and in about four hours, you’ll be transported for orientation.”
“For what?” Reina asked, and he shrugged.
“Better I not have to repeat myself,” he replied. “Best of luck to you, Reina Mori. This will not be your final test.”
Then he was gone, and Reina scowled.
The last thing she needed was a cafe full of plants, and now his coffee sat forgotten on the counter, already going cold.
