Breaking Magic

I have five out of six classes with Adam Wolfe.
Out of seven classes, if you count my zero period speech and debate class, which I have with Eleanor Fuentes, who is nearly as bad as Wolfe.
But the point is, he's every where I turn this year. I hear Ms. Perry say his name in Astrology, and it's an effort not to turn in my seat to look at him. Glare at him. Something like that. He's a damn distraction in any class where we need to use magic, but thankfully Astrology is mostly spell-free.
So is Contemporary Magical History which I have with him next, but after that is Incantations.
By the time I get to the third floor class room and see him fidgeting in a seat at the very back of the class, looking as if he wished he were anywhere else in the world, I'm beginning to wonder if I've made some sort of moral infraction and this is my karmic retribution. You can ignore Wolfe in nearly any other class, but being in Incantations with him is an actual safety liability. Last year when we were practicing levitation spells, Claire Devon and Will Mallory ended up going home early after being hit with the desks that Wolfe sent hurtling across the room, instead of the paper airplanes we were supposed to be working with.
He appeared to feel pretty shitty about it happening afterwards, but being sorry didn't heal Claire Devon's broken collarbone any faster. I made a mental note to always try to stand next to the door, so I can duck out the moment Wolfe starts to lose control, which he inevitably will.
I take a seat at the front of the class, next to my friends Martin and Terry. Martin is on my left but Terry's directly behind me, so as I sit sideways in my chair to talk to him I can see Wolfe over his shoulder.
“So I crashed my dad's car right like a week ago,” Terry is saying, scowling at Martin who sniggers at the news.
“Christ, and he only even let you start driving it this year, didn't he? The fuck did you do?” Martin asks.
“It wasn't even my fault. I was driving around with Jason—fucking Jason Ballard, the asshole—and he saw some girls and thought it would be a good idea to putting a damn attention charm on us and the car.”
“Well, he needs all the help he can get,” snorts Martin.
The class is nearly full and due to start in just a few minutes, but all the seats around Wolfe are empty. They'll be the last the fill up, I know. It's not that Wolfe is unpopular or anything.
Well, it's not like he's hated, at least.
Well, it's not like he's hated by everyone. About half of the school, me included, think he's a danger to the entire magical world, and has no business putting the rest of us at risk by attending St. Bosco's. But plenty of people seem to like him well enough, or at least tolerate him. He's rarely completely without friends or acquaintances in classes, even if it's just out of pity. But that's only when there's no risk to life and limb involved, and in Incantations, only Eleanor Fuentes is brave enough to willingly sit within cursing range.
His hair, not quite black, is getting long to the point of being shaggy. It keeps falling into his eyes, and I'm struck by the irritating urge to tell him to get a damn haircut.
He does this thing where he gnaws on his bottom lip when he's nervous or uncomfortable, and right now it looks like he's in risk of biting it clean off. I've actually seen him make himself bleed before, the idiot.
He's thin too, even more so than he is most of the school year. He's always skinny to the point of looking nearly skeletal at the beginning of the school year. Fuentes practically force feeds him whenever she's around him, and while he's always a long way off from being fattened up, he usually finally reaches a point where he looks almost healthy by early November.
I hate how much I fucking know about Adam Wolfe.
When he first came to St. Bosco's in our sophmore year of high school, the entire magical world was freaking out about what it meant, what he meant, for Magicians and what we believed about the nature of magic.
Magic is incredible. It's life, it's power, it's the breath of the universe and only a handful of people alive have access to it, can sense it and channel it and shape it to our wills. But it can also be wild, and dangerous if not properly controlled.
European magicians have a long history of using wands or other tools to focus their magic through. They rely on spoken incantations to guide the flow of magic, to direct it towards a specific purpose. But magic doesn't come from our wands, or our words. It comes from life, from emotion and intention. Most of Incantations class is spent just drilling specific conceptualizations of meaning and intent into the words we use in spells, so those words can be so saturated in meaning for us, that just speaking them summons all the necessary emotional and intellectual response needed to force our magic to take the shape we need it to. It's not enough to just say “fire” to light a match by magic. You need to feel the fire, you need to have the concept of “fireness” at the forefront of your mind and everything that fire represents both literally and symbolically.
Obviously, that can take a long time when done alone, so we dedicated years when we're young to associating spell words with those layers and layers of meanings and emotions. Then, every time we speak that word, all of that meaning is immediately triggered, the same way a smell can suddenly trigger memories and emotions from the distant past. That gives shape to our magic, tells it what to do and what form to take. Then we use our wands to get it out of us, filtering it through the tool in a way that allows us to control the strength and direct it with precision.
But you don't need wands or magic words to cast spells, to use your magic. And without them, your magic can take on a life of its own. Little children sometimes cast spells without meaning to, before they get wands or get good at using them. But everyone, everyone, learns how to control their magic eventually. I don't even know of any magicians still alive who can cast a spell without a wand or incantation. There have been a few in history, Merlin of King Arthur fame being the most obviously famous, but it's certainly not he kind of thing taught at St. Bosco's. It's dangerous, and Adam Wolfe is the perfect example why.
I don't really know where he came from, or much about his past before the headmistress, Ms. Cross, found him. No one does, except that he was living in foster care among the mortals with no idea that there was a world of Magicians living in secret alongside the mundane world. He had to learn to live with his magic without wand or words, and it went feral. Once I saw him get frustrated with trying to get the right chemical reaction to happen in a pretty simple chemistry lab. A dozen test tubes exploded and sent him to the nurse's office with second degree burns and glass embedded in his arms.
His magic just responds to his emotions half the time, without him meaning to use it at all. And he's got access to more magic than any other magician.
It's like we all have an ocean of magic raging inside us somewhere. Our wands are like a hose that's tapped into that source, through which we can siphon off some power, but only a limited amount at once. But Adam learned to access and release his magic without a wand, so he can just open up and let waves, tsunamis of magic pour out of his whole body.
No, it's not that he can open up; it's not a choice for him. That's the only way he knows how to release it. He can't seem to control how much magic he uses at once at all, so his every spell is cast with all the force of a wrecking ball. And as if that's not enough, it's just constantly leaking out of him. He has so little control that he can't even keep it inside his body. That means that if he thinks something too hard or gets worked up in any way, it can just burst out of him in a wave of power that can vary from turning your hair a different color, to incinerating a gazebo. If I think to myself that I wish someone annoying would just shut up already, nothing happens. If Wolfe thinks it while he's too full of magic, their voice can suddenly cut out like someone snipped their vocal chords. I don't know how he makes it through the day without devolving into a nervous wreck knowing that an errant thought might curse his best friends, or blow up the school or whatever.
He gets special tutoring from one of the teachers, but they still make him take senior level classes with the rest of us, even though everything we learn is way beyond what he's capable of doing with his wand. It's a recipe for disaster, and he knows it as much as anybody.
He's still gnawing away at his bottom lip, and I want to tell him to knock it off before he bites right through it.
“Isn't that right, Felix?”
“What?” I say, blinking and looking away from Wolfe.
“He's not even listening to us,” Terry complains.
“I am,” I protest.
“Then what did I just say?” challenges Martin.
I'm saved from trying to answer by Mr. Donovan raising his hand to hush the chattering class.
“Alright guys, you should know the drill by now. What was the last thing we learned before summer break last year? Anyone?”
“Invisibility!” someone calls out.
“Right! I'm sure you all kept up your meditation practice and drilled the invisibility incantation into your minds, hearts, and very souls during your break, instead of slacking off.” He looks around the class doubtfully, fully aware that less than half probably spent anytime at all practicing internalizing the spell. We had all been excited to learn it at the end of last year, but it turned out to be one of the most difficult spells we'd ever tried. It's not enough to just think about being invisible, you have to maintain invisible thoughts while the spell is working, otherwise you pop right back into sight. Nobody managed it before school let out. Of course, I was one of the half of the class who actually does practice my spellwork at home, and I'd figured it out by the end of June.
“So we're going to see how much of what I tried to teach you stuck before we move onto anything new. Everybody stand up and find a partner!”
With a collective groan, everyone pushed themselves up out of their seats and started pairing off. Mr. Donovan flicked his wand with a muttered spell and all the chairs zoomed away from the middle of the room, leaving a wide open area for us all to stand. Everyone had a partner, except for Wolfe. It was always a relief when there ended up being an odd number of people in Incantations, because then Mr. Donovan automatically worked as Wolfe's partner, saving the rest of us from being sacrificed.
“Take turns making yourselves invisible. Completely invisible, I don't want you guys flickering in and out like a bad Wifi signal, or just halfway transparent like a ghost who can't commit. Once you and your partner have managed it a couple of times each, take turns trying to trip your partner up. Do whatever you have to; shout at them, insult them, blow in their faces—if you can find their faces—anything that might distract them, as long as nobody is throwing punches.”
Terry raised his hand.
“Yes, Mr. Wrede, you can use whatever kind of language you want,” said Mr. Donovan, rolling his eyes. “For the purposes of this exercise, I've gone temporarily deaf.”
The incantation for invisibility is, appropriately, invisibilium. Magicians in the Western world have been using Greek and Latin words for our spells for as long as the scientific world has been for their own brand of magic. Most magicians, Adam Wolfe aside, rarely cast spells without meaning to, but it can sometimes happen if you get too worked up or overly emotional, or if you haven't used any magic for a long period of time and it's been bottled up inside you under increasing pressure. So it's a little safer to make the spell words in dead languages, so you don't accidentally cast a spell during, say, a passionate fight with your girlfriend about whose turn it is to clean the fireplace, and the word “fire”, having been loaded with magical intent, sets your house ablaze.
I go first, because I know I can do it and that it will take Terry, who I've partnered up with, half the class to manage it himself. He starts trying to break my concentration immediately, probably fully aware that he might not have the chance if we wait for him to get the spell right on his turn.
He starts off with a slew of foul language, inventing some truly remarkable insults using dirty words, an entire menagerie of animals, and various household implements. He threatens to pants me, then threatens to pants himself, and finally to pants Mr. Donovan. The entire time, I'm focusing on being invisible. I think about the wind, a force strong enough to create storms that destroy ocean liners, but can't be seen or caught. I think about whispers so quiet that the words slip away into the ether before any ears have the chance to hear them. I think about shadows in the dark, and being alone in the woods where there is no one and nothing to see you, where the only life is the trees and they will never tell anyone that you were there. I lose myself, my emotions, my thoughts, my personality, my sense of self. The only thing I allow myself to focus on is maintaining the flow of magic through my body, the feeling of it humming gently beneath my skin as it continues to fuel the spell.
Magic like this is enormously draining to perform. Magic is a form of energy, and casting spells is a lot like performing physical labor. A one off spell, like Mr. Donovan moving the chairs, requires only a short burst of the same amount of energy it would have taken to physically move them. But maintaining a spell, like a shield spell or invisibility, is like trying to run for as long as you can without stopping, And the more difficult the spell, or the stronger you want to make it, the faster it feels like you're running. Everyone tires out sooner or later, no matter how powerful you are. So without trying to think too much about it, I focus on using as little energy as possible to maintain the spell, drawing it out for as long as I can manage. Terry's attempts to break my concentration hardly even register. My eyes are half shut, my mind is still water, blank paper, dark and quiet places.
I can see, but am not quite focusing on, Mr. Donovan and Adam Wolfe about twenty feet from where Terry and I are working. Adam is trying to go invisible, and he definitely has the magic for it, but he can't keep up a consistent enough flow to maintain it for more than a few moments at a time. He keeps flickering in and out of vision, and it's getting more erratic as he gets more and more frustrated.
Mr. Donovan is telling him to concentrate, to relax and take a deep breath before starting again. Wolfe throws his hands into the air in frustration, transparent from the waist down but utterly solid above.
Focus on your magic, you idiot, I think to myself, my mouth twisting into a grimace. He's going about it all wrong, he always does. The stupid wand obviously doesn't work for him, he needs to throw it away and try a different method. You can't shove an elephant down a hallway no matter how hard you push.
Wolfe's cheeks are flushing, in exasperation or embarrassment I don't know, and he runs both hands through his hair, pushing it back out of his face. He licks his lips in a nervous motion and glances around the room, checking to see how everyone else is doing while he tries to regain his composure. His gaze meets mine for a fraction of a moment, and I look away, back at Terry, who I suddenly realize has been calling my name for the past minute or so.
“Felix! Christ, man, wake up. You're visible again, it's my turn.”
I glance down in surprise, and see that at some point I must have lost focus and the spell petered out.
“Right. Okay, go ahead,” I say to Terry, shaking my head quickly to clear it a little.
Terry's face turns red, then purple, and then slightly blue as the amount of time he's gone without taking a breath stretches on, but he stays stubbornly visible until class ends forty minutes later.
“Not too bad for your first day back,” Mr. Donovan calls over the bustle of students gathering their backpacks and books. “Keep practicing at home, Invisibility Spells will be part of the midterm! Next week we'll start human transformations, so starting tonight I want you all to pick a color and meditate every night this week on everything that color symbolizes to you. If you don't practice enough, it might be the color of your hair for the rest of your life, so make sure you pick something you like!”
I sling my backpack over my right shoulder and follow Martin and Terry out of class. They're already talking about their theories about what's going to be for lunch today. We pass Wolfe, who is doing his best to avoid making eye contact with anyone, looking down as he gathers his things. His face is still red, and he's obviously upset. I don't know why they make him take these classes with the rest of us, we're all so far out of his league that it only leaves him so stressed that he couldn't charm the squeak out of a mouse, let alone do any serious magic.
He glances up, backpack in hand, and our eyes meet for just a moment.
“Maybe next time, eh Wolfe?” I say as I pass him. I don't really know how I meant it, it just slipped out, but even I can hear the note of mocking sarcasm that came with it.
Wolfe flinches, but recovers almost immediately. “Maybe if you spent less time staring at me while I screw up, you'd be able to keep up an invisibility spell for more than five minutes.”
Fuck. Did he see me watching him after I'd lost control the spell? Well, obviously he did. My own face flushes, but I just keep walking so he doesn't see it.