“Is that wise?” I whisper, though she doesn’t seem worried.
“If I’m correct in my identification, it won’t hurt me,” she says, her voice a little muffled. She returns a moment later and holds out her hand to me. The room is dark enough that I can make out a speck of glowing blue perched on the tip of her finger.
“What is it?” I murmur.
“I’m pretty sure it’s a bluecap,” she says, her voice almost reverential.
“A bluecap…like a redcap?” I say. A nasty breed of will-o’-the-wisp, famous for leading children into forests but not out again. “Surely that’s not a good thing to have in your house?”
“Redcaps are naughty little things, sure,” she says. “But bluecaps—I’ve never even heard of one being seen before. They’re good. They help people find their way. And you have a wholenestin here.”
She moves her hand gently, and the little speck of light lifts off her finger to hover between us.
“Can you show me…show me where the toilet is?” she asks. I stifle a smile. Only practical Honeyrose would think to ask an incredibly rare magical creature where the toilet might be.
The creature floats gently away, toward the door, and waits for us to follow.
“The opposite of a redcap,” I suggest. “They take you where you want to go.”
“Extraordinary,” Honey whispers.
Sure enough, the creature leads us to a little door, which itself opens up onto a tiny water closet. “And there you are,” Honey says.
“Honey, do you think…” I begin, then decide I might as well just ask the creature itself. “Could you lead me to any book?” I ask it.
“They don’t speak,” Honey says. “I think you have to ask for something specific.”
“Can you please lead me to a book about bluecaps?” I say.
The creature floats away, up the stairs and back toward the bookshop proper. I grin at Honey. “Excuse me a moment, please,” I say. “I need to go learn about a vanishingly rare creature from that selfsame vanishingly rare creature.”
Chapter 8
Honey spends the night in the shop. She refuses to share the box bed with me, though it’s large enough for two, and instead has a mattress and pillows brought from the inn and bunks down on the floor beside the bed. Once we’re settled in for the evening, she spends a few hours running through some basic magic for homeowners—the kind of magic I’ve never been taught, having never needed to run a home. She also double-checks my toadstone to ensure its magic is still good, and reminds me never to take it off.
Finally, she has me kneel before the dark little fireplace inside the little apartment.
“You’re going to teach me to light a fire?” I suggest, and I can hear the hope in my voice.
“The first magic,” she says. “I am.”
“When two people lit a fire together,” I reply. This is it: thegreatest act of magic; theoriginalact of magic; the magic from which everything in our world has evolved. Scholars have devoted their entire lives to trying to understand the first magic, and why it changed the course of history. The Wizard of Light and the Wizard of Darkness, the two most powerful wizards in the Widdenmar—in the entire Shining Realm—are the two people who understand the first magic the best. It’s said by some they guard the embers of that first magic themselves, deep within their castles…Of course, it’s also said they’re twenty feet tall and a thousand years old and speak only in riddles. I’ve met the Wizard of Light twice; he wasn’t much older than I and sounded like anybody else when he spoke, so who knows how much of the rest of it is true.
“The first magic was an act of love,” Honey says, her voice soft. I know this; every child knows this.The act of magic was an act of love, when two people who could not start a fire alone spoke the words together, and brought magic into the world.
There are spells for lighting candles and even lamps, but to start a fire in a hearth, one must know how to invoke the spirit of the first magic. Children are not taught the first magic until their parents or caretakers believe they need it and judge them old enough to practice it responsibly. I know it’s often a rite of passage for young people moving into their own first home to have their friends or parents or partners speak the words together for the first time, kneeling before an empty hearth, much as Honey and I are at this moment.
Because I’ve never needed it, I’ve never been taught it. I’m not sure my parents even know it. We hardly know any magic at all; there’s always someone around to do it for us. A funny feeling curls in the pit of my stomach at the realization that no one everexpectedme to kneel before my own hearth and speak the words to bring a fire to life.
“Do you have your flint, steel, and tinder?” Honey asks.
I nod and bring them out. “Is it part of the spell?”
She smiles, a little wanly. “There’s no spell, not really. You have to ask the first magic to honor you by making a home for your fire, and assure it that you will honor it by keeping the fire fed. Then light your kindling.”
“That’s…all?” Surely that’s notall.
“It’s harder than it sounds.”
