Marci nodded, writing all this down as fast as her pen would go.
“Animals and land are the obvious ones, though,” the dragon went on. “Stuff gets really crazy when you get into death spirits. Strictly speaking, death spirits aren’t even really a formal category. It’s more of a catch-all term for the phenomenon that occurs when so many individuals die all at once, the combined release of their magic creates a temporary glut big enough to become a spirit. This is why death spirits come in so many different forms, and why they almost never stick around for very long. Because they’re formed by a temporary magical surge instead of filling a vessel, there’s nothing permanent holding them together. Once the natural ebb and flow of magic disperses the glut that created them, death spirits fade right back into oblivion, never to be seen again.”
Marci jotted that down, looking up again when Amelia didn’t continue to find the dragon sitting back in her chair, drinking her rum in long, thoughtful sips.
“Um, that’s only three,” she said nervously. “You said there were four classifications of spirit.”
Amelia nodded. “I did.”
“So what’s the last one?”
The dragon’s smile turned cryptic. “You tell me,” she said with a tip of her bottle. “It goes against my nature to give away too much for free, and Julius spokesohighly of you.”
Marci began to sweat. “You want me to guess?”
“It’s not hard,” Amelia said with a shrug. “Spirits occur anywhere the naturally welling magic flows into a definite shape: a lake, a wolf population, a slaughtered city. But there’s another force at work that moves and shapes magic all the time which we haven’t mentioned yet. What is it?”
Marci bit her lip. Being put on the spot always made her nervous, but she didn’t think Amelia was the sort who’d ask her a question she couldn’t answer. She just had to look at what she already knew and follow the clues. What force hadn’t they mentioned yet? What power could push and hold enough magic together to reach the critical mass necessary to gain sentience and—
“Humans,” she blurted out. “We move magic. That’s the final kind of spirit.”
Amelia’s face split into a wide grin. “I knew you were a clever monkey,” she said. “You’re right. The final classification of spirits are what used to be called Mortal Spirits, the magic that gathers in the dips and scars left in magical landscape by mankind.”
“Is that what Ghost is?” Marci asked, too excited to even write this down. “But how? He doesn’t look human.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Amelia said. “Haven’t you ever wondered why there’s a spirit of wolves, but not a spirit of humans?”
Marci nodded. “People have been looking for our Animal Spirit pretty much since we knew they were a thing, but we’ve never found one. The articles I read on the subject theorized that humanity was simply too divided to have a single spirit that represented us as a whole.”
“That’s actually not too far off,” Amelia said, looking impressed despite herself. “The factor you’re missing, though, is that the human animal is unique. There are thousands of magical species that burst back into the ecosystem in the years after the meteor hit, but of all those plants and animals and insects and fish and whatnot, humans are the only ones who have the ability to actuallymanipulatemagic. All of you, even non-mages, are capable of leaving eddies in the magical landscape, and when you get enough of those eddies all working together, you create ruts for magic to fill.”
Marci added that to her notes. “What kind of ruts?”
Amelia shrugged. “Whatever you believe in. The more importance humans collectively give to something, the deeper a mark it leaves in your collective magical landscape. Take death, for instance. All mortals fear dying to the point where they will do nearly anything to avoid its inevitable grasp. That sort of universal preoccupation hasweight, it leaves a very deep chasm indeed.”
“Hold up,” Marci said, eyes going wide. “You’re saying Mortal Spirits areconcepts?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Amelia said. “There are over nine billion humans on the planet right now. Every one of those nine billion, mage or not, has the ability to alter the magical landscape around them. Individually, of course, those changes are minute, but the more humans as a whole care about something—a belief, a fear, an ideology, whatever you want to call it—the bigger a space they carve out for it in their lives. Each one of these hollows creates a place for magic to pool, and where magic pools, spirits are born.” The dragon smiled. “As you might imagine, the combined weight of humanity’s concerns made for some very large spirits indeed. Many Mortal Spirits were worshiped as gods before the magic vanished, just to give you an idea of the scale we’re talking about.”
“And you think Ghost is one of these?” Marci said, looking down at her cat, who was still sound asleep at the bottom of her bag. “I’m sorry, but I’m having trouble buying this. If Mortal Spirits are as big as you say, why haven’t we seen any? Why isn’t the Grim Reaper riding through war zones taking heads right now?”
“Because there hasn’t been enough time, yet,” Amelia said. “Magic’s only been pouring back into the world for six decades. That’s enough to fill the shallow vessels—the lakes and mountains and animals—but Mortal Spirits are as large as human ideas. The impressions you gouge into the Earth’s magical landscape have gone from the weight of millions to the weight of billions since the last time magic was here to fill them. Add in the advent of world-wide media and mass communication, and the ruts of humanity’s shared beliefs and values have become so deep and so vast, modern magic simply hasn’t had time yet to fill them. The water is running, but the bucket is just too big. Make sense?”
It did, but Marci still didn’t understand what this had to do with Ghost. “But,” she said, feeling slightly foolish. “If that’s true, how is Ghost here?”
“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?” Amelia said, sitting up with a grin. “Mortal Spirits have always been a particular fascination of mine. I wasn’t actually planning on returning to this plane for at least another fifty years since that was the earliest my calculations suggested a Mortal Spirit could appear. Imagine my surprise, then, when I come back to do a favor for my brother and find not just a Mortal Spirit, but one that’s already stably bound to a mage.Do you even know how amazing that is?”
“I’m starting to get an idea,” Marci said, clutching her bag where Ghost was sleeping even tighter. “So, is he premature or something? Is that why he’s so small?”
“That’s a good theory,” Amelia said. “Honestly, though, I have no idea. He’s a mystery!” She beamed with excitement. “Now do you see why I wanted to talk to you so badly?”
Marci did, but the more she thought about all of this, the more what Ghost had said in the alley bothered her. “You said Mortal Spirits are created by collective human ideas, like death. That means they’re not all good?”
“Good is relative,” Amelia said dismissively. “But being doomed to die makes humans a fairly pessimistic species, so I suppose most Mortal Spirits could be classified as unpleasant, yes.”
Considering her cat seemed to feed off death and was cold as the grave, Marci wasn’t feeling optimistic about her chances. “Is there a way to identify them, then?” she asked. “I asked Ghost what he was straight-out yesterday, but he claimed he didn’t know his name. He said he couldn’t remember unless I fed him power.”
“He probably can’t,” the dragon said, squinting at Marci’s bag. “Poor little thing’s barely more than a flicker. If he wasn’t anchored to you, I doubt he could even hold himself together. It’s no wonder he doesn’t know his name.”
