“So did yours, and you’re restoring theirs and they won’t even comenearyou—”
“I mean as far as they know I could be making it worse, right? Most people can’t sense magic like you can.” I clench my jaw so hard I fear my teeth will crack, and Tasa continues, “And I am also benefitting from the destruction of their lives, so I can forgive them for being a little salty about it, you know? They have to depend on the resident fuck-up that they know they can’t trust just to survive.”
I carefully take a breath and unclench my jaw.
It still takes me a moment before I can finally say, “I think you may not understand precisely how angry every word you just said makes me.”
She blinks again, like my perspective is completely inexplicable to her, which does nothing to tamp down my fury. “Yeah, I’m... getting that impression? So um.” Tasa runs her hands through her hair. “Do you want to see the ward, or—”
“No.”
“No? I thought you wanted to help.”
I listened.
I watched.
Now I need to make a decision.
Now Ineed to go to work.
What Tasa needs—what these people need—is not, I think, a shield, like I had been planning.
What Tasa wants is a place where she can feel safe.
What she needs is the freedom to grow.
One big work will not change the villagers’ attitudes toward Tasa; it might even worsen them, because then they won’t feel that she’s useful at all. Their opinions of her did not originate with the Quieting, and they won’t vanish if it’s removed.
In the same way that making Tasa believe in me will take many acts, it will take time to make them see her.
Idon’t think they deserve to, but: it will make Tasa happier.
So.
“Can you find something in this collection that needed magic to function?”
Tasa huffs. “Collection, like it’s curated. Don’t pretend I’m some kind of savior, Kovan.”
“I said what I meant. You literally collected all these pieces here.”
“Sure, but not with like, grand intent—”
“Do you not discover what you can do with them once you have them in one place? If this is how your art works, to flourish from a mass of chaos you can build something new from, then that is your process. I don’t care what it looks like, and neither should anyone else, and if they do I will punch them.”
Tasa startles. “You will not.”
“I’m considering it,” I growl. My magic might not be effective, after all, and I wouldn’t want to miss.
“Kovan. Look,it’s not art—”
“I disagree, and since I have lived in a cottage that you built, you will not convince me otherwise. But to my question, Tasa—can you find a piece with failed magic?”
“Oh, sure, whatdoesn’thave failed magic,” she mutters.
But she stops arguing with me, so I will take it, even aware that she also did not agree.
She’s staring a little lost at the junk heap, though, and I quickly realize my error. I haven’t known Tasa long, but I have worked with other people who benefitted from the kind of focus magic that no one can provide her with. I’ve left her with too open-ended a request, given that I have a specific purpose in mind; she’ll likely feel more confident if I narrow the scope to a specific task.
