How hard can it be to keep your head down when everyone is staring at you?

An Episode of The Twelvelms Conspiracy

Content Warnings

• Disturbing imagery
• Implications of child abuse and neglect

Transcript

[THE DOOR IS OPEN. WIND IS HOWLING. CYAN’S VOICE IS QUIET, DISTANT, ALMOST DROWNED OUT BY THE BABY’S FUSSING] 

Hello? 

Is there someone out there? 

Felix? Is that you?

Look, I— I just— I want to talk. If it’s you I promise I— I’ll hear you out, I swear I will. I don’t know what happened. I just want to understand. 

Felix? 

[NOTHING, EXCEPT THE WIND, AND THE BABY CRYING] 

[CYAN SIGHS] 

Sorry, I’m sorry. Come here.

[INTRO]

When I signed my name in the book of mages as Cyan Goodman, it was the first piece of paper work that acknowledged my existence. I know this for a fact because I have checked extensively. I’m not sure why; I knew there would be nothing to find, except the fake-paper trail created to verify Abagnale’s story that I was a Happener. 

My father had been a mage. He had not grown up on the island where he had raised me and held me and my mother prisoner, but in the Purlieu of Coven Aval, Pennfentek. 

He was not a particularly gifted mage. Like others in Coven Aval, he had a keen interest in plants, and that was actually the reason he’d gone to the island. He was hoping to study the magical properties of a kind of seaweed that grew there. 

He’d heard legends about selkies; everyone had. But nobody had seen one, not for centuries. Mages thought they were all gone, killed by unmages in fishing nets or out of suspicion. 

I didn’t know any of this when my father was alive and he certainly never told me about it. I learned it much later when I visited Coven Aval and spoke to a woman, Serena, who was my aunt. 

She didn’t know it, of course. Any connection I had to my real father has been erased. 

It wasn’t difficult to do. My birth was never registered. By the time Abagnale brought me to Twelvelms. My father’s family had not heard from him in almost two decades b

The boy I was supposed to be had died the day after Abagnale had found me, in a car crash, with both his parents. In the story Abagnale told the board at Twelvelms, it was not the crash which killed them, but an accident caused by an out of control burst of my magic. 

It was all quite a lot to take in. My new name, new life. Abagnale told me not to worry about it. . All I just needed to keep my head down and get on with things. I’d just lost my parents in a tragic accident; it would only be natural that I’d be reluctant to speak about them

This was a good thing too, because keeping my head down was about the only thing I was good at. Before I’d killed him, my father was the only person I’d had a conversation with. And then. Suddenly I was this stranger in a world of people who all knew one another. 

On top of that, I hardly knew the first thing about how magedom worked. Abagnale had explained the system of covens to me, that mages lived in closed groups, shut off from the unmage world. They called their communities ‘purlieus’; an old-fashioned word for ‘outskirts’, and they were all magically protected in such a way that it was impossible for unmages to find them. I knew there were seven of them, each of with a seat at the table of the Alliance of the Seven-Once-Twelve, which of course suggested to me that there used to be more. 

Beyond this, I had a vague idea that each coven approached their isolation differently, and not much else. 

Twelvelms was a neutral ground, a purlieu all of its own. There was the university and a small town of mages who dedicated their lives either to the study of magic, or to the organisation of magedom, which happened at a big building they called the Raeg, where Abagnale had first brought me when he took me to Twelevelms. 

In the middle of the night, Abagnale led me to a large house. Inside the house, down little corridor, there were stairs cut into the earth, leading into it. At the bottom of the stairs was a door which seemed far older than the building above us. Abagnale opened the door, and we were inside a cave. 

The cave was lined with still more doors. Some of them were nailed shut. The others were labelled with the names of each of the covens. And then, there was one which said ’Twelvelms’. This is the one he took me through. It led us straight to the courtyard of the Raeg. 

Now there were other students at Twelvelms, I had expected them to be curious about life outside the purlieus. But they weren’t. Beyond how exciting it must have been to go from an unmagical world into a magical one, they didn’t seem very interested at all.

Reilly Rowse did at least seem a little curious. On our first morning of classes, she was talking about how it exciting it must have been to use the Liminus, which was the name for the cave filled with doors. 

‘I can’t imagine what it must have been like if you didn’t know what it was. It must have been frightening,’ she said  

‘Not really,’ I said. 

We had just sat down in the lecture theatre for our second lecture of the day. It was Bionomy; Abagnale’s subject. The room was in one of the towers of the main building. The ceiling was domed, painted with frescos of flowers. There was hardly enough room for all the students; I kept accidentally elbowing Reilly in the ribs as I rifled through my bag for my notebook. 

Quinn sat on Reilly’s other side, flanked by the other ward of coven Derwen she’d grown up with, Felix Scarlett. He kept staring at me, but every time I caught his eye, he pretended he wasn’t looking. 

‘I heard you went into the Raeg and everything,’ said Reilly.

I was about to tell her that I’d only been to the courtyard, when Abagnale walked out into the room. 

At his side, as always, his familiar. Everyone fell quiet as Taceo sat down on the small, round platform at the centre of the lecture theatre. There, atop a stone table was an an object covered with a cloth. 

Abagnale walked slowly around the raised platform, hands behind his back. He was dressed in a white shirt and suspenders, his hair messed up, his jacket bunched up under his arm. 

‘Many of the professors you will meet in the next few days will tell you their subject is the most important. And in ways, they are all correct.’

Abagnale broke off with a grin. There was a murmur of laughter through the theatre. 

‘Your professors will impress upon you that their subject is the most important because they believe it with their very souls. That is why they are excellent teachers of these subjects; its why they are trusted to guide you, the future of magedom itself, in your steps towards greatness in whatever field we determine you will flourish in.

‘But I do not speak from my soul. Bionomy is the beating heart of all it is we do. Not just here at Twelvelms, but beyond it. Bionomy is the study of magic itself. Not just the theory. Not just how it’s done. Not just how to identify it in the world around you or how to imbue into objects. It is the study of magic’s source. Within us, as mages. Within everything.’ 

When Abagnale smiled again, this time there was no laughter. Not a whisper broke the awed quiet. Abagnale’s smile widened. He hopped onto the platform and pulled the sheet aside. The object it revealed was an odd structure made of bronze and glass. A frame held up two panels, between which was sandwiched a single rose, underneath which was a small, glass vial. There was a wheel at the side with a handle.

‘Now, which of you can tell me what this is?’ 

Beside me, Reilly Rowse’s hand shot into the air. I could feel her almost vibrating with excitement. 

‘Miss Rowse, Coven Derwen?’ Said Abagnale. 

Reilly cleared her throat. ‘It’s an exhaurine, sir,’ she said.

‘And what, Miss Rowse, is an exhaurine?’ 

‘It’s a device for extracting elixir.’ 

‘That’s right,’ said Abagnale. His gaze swept across his captive audience. ‘And can anyone tell me what elixir is?’ 

Reilly put up her hand again. Abagnale winked at her, but swept his gaze elsewhere. ‘Ah, Atticus Albright! Coven Aval. What about you?’ 

‘Uh,’ said Atticus, shifting in his seat. ‘Well. It’s like blood. But it— it’s magic.’ 

A small ripple of laughter. Abagnale grinned. 

‘No, no, he’s not wrong per se!’ said Abagnale. ‘Elixir is, in some ways, very much like blood. But it’s not the blood of the body. It’s the blood of the soul. All living things contain elixir. 

‘A mage I once knew described it to me as the blood of stars. 

‘But! Unlike blood, or sap, or the ichor of the gods, elixir cannot be extracted through a simple cut in the flesh. So, if blood is the blood of the flesh, and elixir is the blood of the soul, how might elixir be extracted, Mr Albright?!’ 

‘Um. A cut. On the soul?’ 

Another round of chuckles. 

Abagnale turned his face downwards. The chuckles petered out. 

Abagnale stepped back onto the platform. He ran his hand along the edge of the exhaurine’s frame. He turned the wheel on its side. The rose, pressed between its sheets of glass, began to spin. 

At first you could see it turning, but the speed grew faster and faster until the glass was a blur and the rose was a blur too, but no longer seemed pressed. It was like it was a whole, solid rose, hung suspended in a small field of mist, its edges indistinct, its core undeniable. 

Abagnale released the wheel. The rose continued to spin. He looked up at the audience, his piercing gaze firm and constant, expression stern. 

‘A cut on the soul,’ Abagnale barked. ‘The exhaurine exposes the most secret part of whatever is placed between its crystal plates. Each one is shaped, cut and polished under moonlight. The bronze of the frame is covered, every inch, in runes whose meanings we have long since lost, reproduced in meticulous perfect detail by hammering the silver with obsidian, as instructed in the oldest book of Bionomy we have; O Waed a Dwr. 

‘Our scholars from Coven Derwen will have had the honour of growing up in proximity to this book’s oldest copy, which is kept in Deva Purlieu, where it has been for the last several hundred years. 

‘Even the book does not know the meaning of the symbols on the exhaurine. The precise method of its construction is utterly lost to time. But we can produce them now, as they have been produced by mages in this small corner of magedom we call home for what we suspect is several millennia. From bronze and sheets of crystal.’ 

Beyond Abagnale, the exhaurine had stopped spinning. He glanced back at it, smiling softly. ‘It only works under the light of a full moon, of course.’ 

Another ripple of laughter, though far more fraught than the others had been. 

’Now I’ve woken you all up, let’s get stuck into the basics,’ he said, eyes shimmering. 

At the end of the lecture, Reilly Rowse gushed. ‘Wasn’t he amazing?’ Her eyes had practically turned into hearts as she nudged into Quinn’s shoulder. 

‘Bit full of himself if you ask me,’ Felix Scarlett sighed. 

‘You miserable git,’ said Reilly, rolling her eyes. ‘Don’t mind him, Cyan. He’s got a grudge against Abagnale on account of—‘ 

Quinn cut her off with a glare. 

Reilly bit her lip. ‘Well, I thought it was brilliant anyway. I know we don’t get to pick what subject we specialise in, it’s all based on the exams at the end of this year, but I so hope I get picked for Bionomy. Do you know what branch you’d prefer?’ 

‘Uh,’ I said. 

‘Course he doesn’t, he’s a Happener, he barely even knows where he is,’ said Felix. 

‘Oh, Fe. A little less open hostility would be just delightful,’ Quinn groaned.

Felix shrugged. He stretched his arm so his cuff pulled back, then glanced at his watch. ‘Bastard over ran his slot, too. We’ve only got half an hour to eat before Practical Casting.’

‘There’s me thinking you’d be wanting to skip out,’ said Reilly. 

‘Not Practical Casting,’ said Quinn. ‘It’s the only thing he’s better at than both of us.’ 

Felix shrugged. ‘I know where my talents lie. What’s the harm in that?’ 

‘It’s not very academic,’ said Reilly. 

Felix laughed. ‘Well spotted, Brainy. Your powers of observation continue to astonish.’ 

Practical Casting was taught by a Professor Sorrel. She had a familiar, like Abagnale did. Hers was a huge fruit bat. He hung from a wooden stand next to her desk, the only piece of proper furniture in the whole room. 

The class was half the size of our morning lectures, but the room was easily five times as large. The floor was stone, and it appeared to be scorched in places. Instead of chairs or benches, there were small, square cushions set out on the floor, evenly spaced. In front of every one of them, a glass of water. 

After a brief speech about why Practical Casting was the most important branch of study at Twelvelms, Professor Sorrel turned her back to us, addressing our reflections in the huge, mirrored wall behind her desk.

Professor Sorrel smiled. She raised her hand, and with a flick of her wrist, a faint, emerald light glowed about her palm. It rushed towards the mirror, and in an instant, our reflections were gone, obscured by a sheet of frost. 

A few of the students clapped. 

Professor Sorrel turned back to us, smiling. She waved her hand again, another green glow, and then the frost was gone, as though it had never been there at all. 

‘Thank you, thank you, there really is no need for all of that. By the end of the year all of you in this room will understand the mechanics of such a display as this, and most of you will be able to perform it yourselves.’ 

Next to me, Quinn and Reilly exchanged an excited glance. Felix dropped his head, smirking. 

‘However. We will not be doing any Practical Casting in this classroom until I am assured you all understand the precautions we must take to keep ourselves safe when pushing our own limits.’ 

There were audible groans across the room. Felix rolled his eyes, folded his arms. 

We spent the rest of the lesson understanding the core principles of Professor Sorrel’s classroom, which she summarised with the acronym CARE. Caution; Awareness; Responsiveness; and Earnestness. 

‘What does she even mean, ‘earnestness’, Felix complained.

‘She did explain, if you bothered to pay any attention,’ Reilly scolded. ‘You’re supposed to be determined and serious about what you’re doing. You know. Like the definition of the word ‘earnestness’ would imply.’ 

‘Shouldn’t the acronym be CARDS then, Brainy?’ Felix asked, his mouth full of bread. 

Reilly kicked him under the table and he sprayed crumbs over his salad. ‘Oi!’ 

‘Oh stop it,’ Quinn sighed. ‘I’m honestly relieved we didn’t have to cast anything today. I’m not ready at all. It would have been a total embarrassment.’ 

‘I know,’ said Reilly, eyes wide with dread. ‘Knowing the principle is one thing. Executing it is something else.’ 

‘I miss my Grandma’s lessons. It was all just about the feeling, you know? We didn’t have to worry about technique,’ said Quinn. 

‘That’s because we were kids,’ said Reilly. 

‘I worried about technique,’ said Felix, who was now examining his black-painted fingernails. ‘What about you, Happener? I bet you’re eager to show us what you can do. Rumour has it whatever you did to get your place here was pretty impressive.’ 

Reilly turned to me eagerly, but said, ‘I’m sure he doesn’t want to talk about it, do you Cyan?’ 

Quinn cleared her throat, pulling apart her bread roll. ‘Leave him alone,’ she said. ‘Right. Introduction to Botany this evening. We should head to the greenhouses now. It’s quite a hike.’ 

Botany was indeed quite the hike away. Just as Abagnale had promised our Botany teacher provided her own treatise on why Botany was Twelvelms’ most essential subject. We heard other versions of this for Theory of Hermetics, where we discussed the principles behind magic itself; Magical Objects, in which we were shown several items which had been imbued with magic power; and Sortilege, which concerned manners by which magic could supposedly be used to determine the future, but ‘only within bounds of reason.’ 

Reilly took issue with that. ‘There simply are no bounds of reason where you could possibly predict the future,’ she scoffed. 

‘So what, then, Brainy? You don’t believe in Weather Auguring?’ asked Felix with a grin. 

‘Even unmage can predict the weather!’ Reilly hissed. 

‘Can they really?’ asked Quinn. 

‘Seems to me that there are perfectly reasonable ways of predicting the future, then,’ said Felix, with a shrug. 

Our first weeks at Twelvelms presented us all with monumental stacks of work. For me, who had no prior knowledge in any of the subjects we were studying or really any idea of what was supposed to be common knowledge for a mage of my age, it was even more overwhelming. I spent most of my time trailing around after Reilly, Felix and Quinn, quietly installing myself at the table next to theirs at the library and trying desperately to work out what half the words in the books meant. 

As the weeks stretched on, I began to dread our upcoming initial assessment in Practical Casting. I had so far in my life performed one, maybe two acts of magic. The first was to pull all the blood out of my father’s veins. The second – maybe – was pulling the stone out of the altar during my kin giving. I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do. 

Professor Sorrel had gone over what would be expected of us several times in advance of it’s happening, but when the day finally came, she ran us through those guidelines again. 

‘Today is a simple assessment of your aptitude. The point is not to show off. The aim of this class is to encourage each of you to be the most proficient in practical casting as you can be. This will look different for each and every one of you. Bravado will not be praised, nor will timidity. Both are of equal risk in this space. You must know the power you wield, and how to control it.

‘Your task today will be to freeze the glass of water in front of you. Your goal is to freeze it solid without damaging the glass which holds it. Then, if you can, you will unfreeze it on my command.

‘You will note that each glass has a line etched on the inner rim at the exact level of the water inside it. When you are done, the volume of the water in your glass should be exactly filled to that line, as it is now. I will not instruct you or direct you in any way as to how you may go about this task.’ 

‘You will have half an hour to practice, and then I will catch your attention like this.’ 

Professor Sorrel raised her hand. Green light burst upwards from her palm. There were a couple of awed ‘oos’ across the room. I felt the blood drain from my face. 

‘When I do this, you will freeze your water. I will walk around the room, assess the thoroughness of your freezing, and then I will ask you verbally to defrost what you have frozen. I will check your work again, after which, you will be free to go.’ 

A murmur of conversation broke out. I was worried I was going to be sick. 

‘Silence please!’ Said Professor Sorrel. ‘In most instances collaboration will be encouraged in this space. We help each other here, we do not hinder. But today you work alone. And you work in silence. This work should be yours alone, am I understood?’ 

Everyone was quiet. My stomach was gurgling, but thankfully quietly enough that nobody else would hear it. 

‘Young mages, I asked if I was understood!’ Professor Sorrel’s voice raised just a little, and was utterly inarguable. All of us barked ‘understood.’ 

Professor Sorrel smiled. ‘You may begin.’ 

Around me there were rustles of movement. On my left, Reilly was pulling a book from her bag and was furiously rifling through the pages. Next to her, Quinn had lifted up her glass of water and was studying it intently. On Quinn’s other side, Felix was simply sitting on his cushion cross-legged, looking rather bored. 

I stared at my own glass. There was a film of condensation on the outside of it. I smeared it with my finger. I glanced around the room. Several other students had pulled out their signet stones from their pockets, or were holding them if they wore them as necklaces. Little spurts of light were glowing here and there, shades of blue, pink and purple. 

I pulled out my signet stone. It sat in my palm, resolutely refusing to glow. 

I felt a sinking hole widening in my stomach. 

Next to me, Reilly was whispering words as she read through her book, furiously turning pages back and forth. Quinn had set her glass back on the ground and was scowling at it. Felix was inspecting his fingernails. 

I felt sick. I tried to think about what it had felt like right before I had done what I did in my father’s cottage, but whenever I reached for the memory, it was like it scalded me. 

The glass sat in front of me, the water perfectly liquid. The stone in my had did not glow. It didn’t so much as glitter. 

Too soon, green light filled the room. The whispers, turning pages, fidgeting, it all stopped. 

Then, at once, the room lit up again. This time the colour was bright, varied. 

In some corners, glass shattered, in others, students barked words out loud, some of them in English, others in languages I didn’t understand. 

Professor Sorrel smiled. ‘Very good,’ she said. 

She began to walk down the lines of students. We were three from the back. I stared at my unfrozen water. 

’You’ve managed to freeze the surface, but not the rest, very nice,’ said Professor Sorrel. ‘Flakes of ice, decent effort. Oh, how lovely! Snow! Not what we wanted but very pretty. Oh, fascinating. You see the core is still liquid? Yes, very interesting indeed. Ah, I see your glass has frozen to the floor! We wanted the ice IN the glass, but nice work.’ 

Professor Sorrel reached Felix first. ‘Our first unequivocal success,’ she said. Felix ducked his head, hiding a smile I still managed to catch. 

Professor Sorrel looked at Quinn’s glass next. ‘Mm, not quite, but a decent effort.’ She looked at Reilly’s next. ‘Oh, it’s very segmented, how interesting, and not quite frozen though. Nice try though.’ 

She stopped over me. ‘Mr Goodman, is it?’ 

I nodded. I stared at my unfrozen water.

‘Our Happened. Well. Not to worry. Of course you’d not know how to approach the task, though one wonders about your inclusion at this high a level of study if you cannot even attempt this.’ 

It was the only entirely critical response she’d given, but I couldn’t complain. I had achieved nothing. 

‘I’ll come back to you,’ she said. 

Professor Sorrel continued her walk of the class, commenting as she went. I could no longer hear the words though. There was a ringing in my ears. I could feel other students eyes drawn to me. My skin suddenly felt unbearably itchy. I scratched the scabs on the backs of my hands. 

‘Mr Goodman,’ said Professor Sorrel. She was squatting in front of me. ‘We have adequately assessed your aptitude already, I feel. So before we continue with the rest of the exercise, I would like to give you some guidance. How do you feel about that?’ 

I gulped. ‘Okay.’ 

Professor Sorrel smiled. ‘You have your signet stone in hand. That’s good. It’s good to feel connected to it. It will help you channel and direct your magic. It’s not its source, it’s just a tool. As a magnifying glass can catch the rays of the sun and ignite a sheet of paper, your signet stone will focus the power in you onto whatever task you wish. Do you understand?’ 

‘Yes.’ 

‘Now, close your eyes. Reach out, touch the glass in front of you. Don’t grab it, just very lightly let your fingers touch the surface of the water. Feel it against your finger tips. And in your other hand, feel the smoothness of your signet stone. Now, feel how your skin sends that feeling from your fingers into your mind, into your core. A complicated system of messages relayed fast, seamless, invisible. 

‘You are a creature made of those signals. Your body knows them. Feels them all the time. You can squeeze the stone in your hand, lift your fingers from the water. You are in control. 

‘Now, I want you to think about ice. The cold. The firm slipperiness of it under your fingertips. How it crunches between your teeth. Reach deep into yourself, holding that feeling, of ice. Focus, very hard – yes, yes, very good!  Now, push! Push that feeling out and let it—’ 

There was an extraordinary bang. The glass shattered. My eyes snapped open as the water inside it burst outwards, and for a moment seemed suspended. Shards of ice fell, ringing like bells against the pieces of glass. 

Professor Sorrel’s expression was written with shock. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Very good.’ 

As everyone else went about unfreezing their ice I started getting to my feet, breathing hard. I hurried out of the classroom. Nobody tried to stop me. The hallway was dark, the curtains half-drawn over the stained glass. A strange, warm blue glow followed me. I looked at my closed fist. My signet stone was shining bright as a blue lightbulb. I could see my bones. 

As I stared, the light started to fade. 

[CYAN SIGHS] 

You’ve been asleep a while. 

I should probably sleep, too. 

Sleep when the baby sleeps, that’s what people say, isn’t it? 

Well. Alright. 

[CYAN BLOWS OUT A CANDLE]

[END]