Page 8 of The Alchemists

Breathe them, feel them, be them.

Seb closed his eyes.

After acknowledging the first thing he saw, instead of trying to banish it, just for it to return again and again, he pictured the sauna. He summoned the pungent tang of cedar, the mineral splatter and hiss of water on white-hot stone, the slip of sweat sliding down his neck.

He pressed his head into the bed, the way he had pressed it into the wooden walls. He breathed deep, first from his nose, then through his ribs and into his core, remembering that he had an athlete’s muscles, an athlete’s lungs. He breathed as he would under the pressure of oppressive heat, as he was learning to breathe through crushing panic.

Then he summoned his Words, voice silent, lips moving softly.

The awful shadow of some unseen Power

Floats though unseen amongst us,—visiting

This various world with as inconstant wing

As summer winds that creep from flower to flower.—

Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,

It visits with inconstant glance

Each human heart and countenance;

Like hues and harmonies of evening,—

Like clouds in starlight widely spread,—

Like memory of music fled,—

Like aught that for its grace may be

Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

By the time he’d finished the first verse of Shelley’s poem⁠*, he could feel the Magic ebbing through him, there for the taking, the way he’d been so used to feeling it before last June. His heart slowed from a wild palpitation to a steady thump. Tori was right, he was bullshitting them all, but he wasn’t ready, not yet, to dredge his darkness up for judgment from the light.

It had taken him nearly all summer to find new Words—words that were true, words that weren’t promising something he felt he had lost forever. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to lose their Words after a trauma—even though he was still reconciling that idea with his vision of himself—because the Words were everything.

Every Magician communicated with, and channeled Magic through, personal Words of Power that embodied their understanding of, and relationship to, Magic. Magic loved language and intention, and incantations helped hone the resonance of Æther and sharpen purpose. It was about pitch and frequency more than anything—Chinese, especially Cantonese, was lovely for this, with its many tones. Incantations could be in any language, and some were even nonsense, just a collection of syllables and sounds that vibrated with the Æther all around them. Without purpose there was no magic at all.

A Magician’s Words of Power were never spoken aloud—that was reserved for proper spells—but they were a silent personal incantation; a way to draw up Magic from the well of one’s soul. More than that, what no one said, but everyone knew, was that your Words were how you understood yourself. Everyone’s Words were different, because everyone had a different relationship to Magic.

Some people didn’t even have actual, written words. Some people had a snippet of music, and he knew that Daphne Greer had a painting. Seb didn’t know what painting, of course, and he’d never asked, because a person’s Words were their most closely guarded secret and truth of self. To know someone’s Words was to know a Magician’s deepest truth, and by extension, to hold potentially unshakeable power over them. Sharing one’s Words was reserved only for the most intimate of lovers and…

Seb swallowed down the bile and sat up, shaking his head clear. He crossed to the massive wardrobe and threw it open, trying to channel the ghost of his former self. Tori was right, he did love the bonfires, historically speaking, anyway. The witches had taught him to live in the present, to forge anew his relationship with Magic moment to moment, and he had.

Magic was mutable, and so was the soul, and they’d taught him the power in keeping the river undammed—to wade into the rush and pull from there, instead of building a wall and drawing from a pond. A pond is static; a river is boundless.

It had made his spontaneous magic stronger than ever; that’s what the witches were famous for, after all—the ability to cast without ritual, without “pomp and paraphernalia” as Biret liked to say. He could take what he’d learned and forge himself, his memories, anew moment to moment.

He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror inside the door and stood up a little straighter. Looking at his clothes, beautiful, and as much a part of what made Sebastian Allsaires what he was as any other thing, filled him with steadiness. You chose these things, he reminded himself, to tell the world who you are. And who was he?

Sebastian ran through the list in his head as he pulled hangers from the bar, confidence growing with each article of clothing he touched: Cantrèa champion, two-year winner of the Elumnara, straight-A student, prince of Magic, King of Windermere. And, he thought, catching his own gaze as he shut the armoire, pretty fucking gorgeous.

“I’m sorry for being a dick,” he said, settling on the toilet to watch Tori do her makeup. “I’m just not ready⁠—”

Tori turned to him, liquid liner poised between her long fingers. “You don’t need to be ready, Seb. It’s okay if you’re never ready; I get it, trust me. Just…don’t push us away. I can’t watch you drown yourself.”

Seb stood and embraced her from behind, and she didn’t shy away even though she hated to be jostled while she was doing her makeup. He hooked his chin over her shoulder, resting his cheek against the shining fall of her dark hair, a few shades deeper and warmer than his, and breathed in the amber and Tonka bean scent of her perfume.