Alicia Pierce
July 17, 2020 8:57 PM
Quod frigus laeserat, reparant calores. by Alicia Pierce
Biting her lip around an indulgent smile, Alicia fractionally lifted the tip of the wand concealed at her side and gave it a discreet, silent flick. The moment Nicholas stopped babbling nonsense at a decorative Father Christmas, pretending this constituted reading one of the several books mixed in with the toys he and his brother had just received for Christmas, the statue began to applaud, making the boy shriek with apparent delight.Her trick worked, Alicia pointed her wand back at the tray which had begun to hover in place when she had ducked behind the Christmas tree, and the tray floated behind her as she stepped back out of cover and continued on her progress toward the sofa, where she settled again beside her husband and began overseeing the distribution of hot cocoa and cookies (“I had nothing to do with producing them”) to the rest of the family.
She was just about to take her own mug when she remembered Father Christmas. The figurine, no longer being paid any attention to, seemed to be waving a porcelain finger at the childrens’ backs, silently scolding them for ignoring him, she supposed. She flicked her wand again and he returned to his original, inert condition.
“Not exactly what I had in mind when I learned nonverbal animation spells,” she remarked quietly to Thad, “but it has its charms.”
Absurd to put it that way, of course, since the spell was a Transfiguration, but so went the vernacular. Could she twist it to a pun if called on it? Possibly, but it didn’t really seem terribly worth the effort to distract herself with thinking it through right now. Maybe she’d think well on her feet if prompted, or maybe she’d just allow a laugh to be had at her expense.
Not something, she thought as she sipped her cocoa, she would have ever expected to be prepared to take in stride, not so very many years ago now. Quite a lot of things were not exactly as she had expected, really. Even fewer were as she had really intended.
For years – for as long as she could remember, really, and certainly since she had gone to school – there had been times when it felt as though if she just put out her hand, just a little…something would be there. Or, depending on what theory of magic one subscribed to, that she had the potential to grasp at the air and pull herself forward, to become the something – something far greater than an entertainer of children, or charmer of dresses, or even charmer of the weaker-minded….
She had expected the Munich protocol to help her move in that direction, and indeed, she could see how to do it now. The problem was, though, that it had not helped her see a way around the conclusion she had reached from all the more mundane routes to insights she had taken – that there was only so far she could go before power itself, or the exercise of it, or some combination of both, would…change her, fundamentally. Instead, afterward, it had become all the clearer that her fears in that area were entirely accurate. The only way to know how far one could go was to risk going too far – and going too far had consequences.
Change, of course, was not inherently bad. Stillness was only truly enjoyed by those so dead their bones had become dust, and she had no interest in dying. All the high arts – light and dark alike – fundamentally aimed for transformation of the self, for processes that allowed the user to become something more than a mere human, even more than a human with the rare, precious gift of magical ability. However one went about it, the attempt to penetrate the deeper mysteries of magic was inevitably the attempt to attain a kind of perfection. Unfortunately, it seemed quite impossible to attain a simple perfection….
She could almost certainly, with moderate effort, utterly destroy her enemies. She could probably, with a great effort, become the closest thing there could be to a god. Everything, however, came with a price, and the price that the evidence suggested she’d most likely pay for such things was…this. Everything here. Even if she could put herself beyond the reach of any threat, and even if she could bring her husband and children with her…there was a chance, a good chance, even, that by the time she had the power to do that for them, she’d no longer remember why she’d ever wanted to do so. That she’d see her own sons as enemies and threats. That the three people she loved best would be at best terrified of her, or at worst would hate her.
Everything had a price. There was no real meaning to prices. They simply were what they were. It was no fault of a price’s if she was unwilling to pay it – which she was. There was also a price to inaction, though – if she didn’t act, she might end up having to react, and possibly react to things she could not change. And there was a price to broken promises – and she’d be breaking the one she’d made Thad the day they’d gotten engaged, if she simply…gave up.
It was a pleasant enough fantasy, she had to admit, just giving up. Just saying ‘screw it’ and refusing to play Druscella’s game – or Marcus’ – or anyone’s. She derived less and less satisfaction every year from considering how to maneuver around them, from wasting her best smiles on their whims, from dancing for their entertainment…There was nothing wrong with entertaining – that was the beginning of relationships – but she’d rather entertain on her own terms. If she could not win their game, and she was unwilling to pay the price involved in simply smashing the board, then why not walk away and choose another venue? Stay here so long as they left her alone – and then, the moment they stopped leaving her alone, leave. Put a few lingering curses on their brats that they wouldn’t notice for a few years, just for the principle of the thing, and then go somewhere else with the audience she actually enjoyed trying to please. It was a big world; there had to be a place where even she could find no more pressures to labor under than were involved in choosing what dances she wanted an ornamental Father Christmas to do to amuse five-year-olds.
A pleasant fantasy – but no more than that. Perhaps she had finally been forced to conclude there was a limit to exactly how far she was willing to go to get Thad and his father back the things they’d lost because of her, but that was no excuse for stopping before she reached that hard limit. So it was on to looking for a third way – tomorrow. Right now, though, that wasn’t on the schedule. She had always been quite disciplined about her schedules, and right now, the schedule involved cocoa.
“It’s good, isn’t it?” she said, taking a sip, even though the beverage wasn’t really what she meant. She smiled – easily, without trying – between her husband and children and added, “I think I might love cocoa almost as much as I love you three.”
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Alicia Pierce
Quod frigus laeserat, reparant calores.
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