Gods & Thieves

23. Listen and Hear

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The next couple of weeks pass in an inspired daze of learning. Diligently. Zealously. Ceaselessly. I can't think of anything else. Never in my life have I believed I could do magic with my bare hand, and somehow, it feels like a dream coming true.

I read every shaman textbook I see, write down every spell rune I find, and memorize every way how aura behaves with different natural elements. Still, the more I figure out, the more it seems to be left to figure out, which is both intriguing and disappointing for magic, to me, always seemed to be something that requires nothing but...magic?

And soon, comes a new problem I face. My inspiration slowly dims as I meet no quick result. I now know what a locking rune looks like, but apparently, if you draw one line of it--and it has about two dozen--wrong, it won't lock anything and maybe even break something. I already broke the bathroom door at the apartments, so that's the reason why we now practice outside and without the runes. Also, I've discovered that before aura performs a trick at your will without a shaman charm, it first converts itself into the energy of your body--makes you that very charm, the vessel--but if you channel more aura than your human body can hold, it can be lethal. All that's even half of the problem, because every time I try, I fail to channel aura myself, and without aura, all the knowledge I have now is meaningless theory.

"You're not concentrating," Loretto says, a hint of reproach in faer voice.

Picking at my mentee bracelet I'm wearing again, I glare at my mentor, then at the cocoa tree leaf swirling in the cool morning air between us, carried on the shady winds of Loretto's aura surrounding it. The park at the edge of Tik'al where we've been practicing is deserted and peaceful, except for rare shamans wandering here and there sometimes, but even peace is annoying after two hours of sitting still under a tree.

Besides, Loretto was right about another thing--Maricela was definitely suspecting something. Nobody outright confronts me with questions of whether I'm a liar or not, but those rare people who unobtrusively wander the park look our way for a little too long. Since the day Loretto returned from the meeting with the empress, these obnoxious spies cast me glances every time I go to eat, walk the Great Temple's halls and Tik'al's streets, or just sit still in public, like now. They're everywhere. One of them even stalked me at the library's toilet, listening as I peed. Royal pervert.

"Maybe you're a shitty tutor." I look down at another leaf, in my hand. Loretto said the air was the easier element to master, but unlike Loretto's leaf, all mine does is jerk like it is having epileptic convulsions--and I'm not sure how I do even that. There's no aura visible around it.

"Or maybe you want me to be a shitty tutor so you don't have to try harder," Loretto replies, not offended. Making another flip through the air, the swirling leaf lands in Loretto's palm so smoothly as though for faer, it's as simple as breathing. "You asked me to teach you, why second thoughts now, Eli?"

"Because it doesn't work!" I throw my leaf to the ground near my crossed legs. The bleak rising sun filters in through the trees, illuminating the pattern of veins over the green leaf skin. "Because all I'm doing for the last two hours is feeling more and more worthless as I watch you do things I can't." And growing nervous, awaiting another spy in the bushes. What are they even looking for?

Seated in the grass opposite me, Loretto looks at the leaf I discarded, then up at me. Genuine confusion gathers between faer brows. "Well, I can give you another book. About how to--"

"No, I'm tired of your papers. I've read a pile last week. I've never read that much that fast. It's not working."

"It didn't work for me from the first attempt, either, Eli."