Fic:: Loose Ends [DWJ]
Despite the fact this story crystallised during a discussion of 
kink_bingo, it still has hardly any sex in it. I am predictable.
gamesiplay betaed; thank you, sweet. Also, I am halfway through The Merlin Conspiracy, and possibly I should finish it before posting, but, you know, this is one of the ones you want out of your head. (I have been writing it for a fortnight, and also reading up on animal husbandry, tarot cards and various types of kink. The public library find me amusing.)
Fic:: Loose Ends
by Raven
4000w, Diana Wynne Jones' Magids series, Rupert/Maree & Nick. Not (quite) happily ever after, but almost.
Magic isn't something you do. There's no wand-waving involved. When you sew up an animal's wounds, or when you set bones, what you're really doing is rearranging things so it can get to healing by itself. It's the same with magic - when you do a working, you don't create magic, you rearrange what's already there. Simon said it was a good analogy, and maybe it stuck with him; that might explain why he thought part of my training ought to involve sewing up a dragon's wing, filament by filament, web by web, over a long night while he did the heavy work of keeping the creature asleep all the way through the process. I was exhausted by the time we finished, and sat on the edge of the wall of the pen, taking deep breaths while Simon spoke quietly to the dragon, using the occasional word from a language I didn't know.
At length, he came over to me, and I dropped down, grabbed my vet's bag and coat and started walking. "Have we finished yet?"
"Yeah." He smiled at me. "You did well, Maree. Take these with you" - he handed me a sheaf of papers - "and give them a read before we meet again, would you?"
"Homework?" I said, groaning. He'd got more in the habit of it recently, setting me memorisation work on the meanings of sigils and minor arcana and the use of common herbs in magic and, for some reason, all the capitals of Europe.
"Yes," he said, with a grin, "but it's not from me, it's from Zinka. She insisted. And don't ask me, I have no idea what it's about. See you next week."
I nodded, stuffed the papers in my bag, managed a weary wave at Simon, and made my way through the lattices of the worlds as though I were sleepwalking.
When I got home to Weavers End, the house was empty. I jumped in the shower to wash off the smell of scorched dragon, taking my time over it, using up all the hot water. When I got out, I was half-surprised to find Rupert asleep face-down on the bed. He'd been out doing something for the Koryfonic Empire - he stands in for Simon when Simon's training me, and it all works out somehow - and apparently it had been as tiring a night for him as it had been for me. His clothes were thrown on the back of a chair, and I found his glasses on the floor in the middle of the room.
I sat down on the edge of the bed and kept on drying my hair, thinking. "Rupert."
"Mmph."
"Are you all right?"
"Mmm." He shifted slightly. The day was promising warmth even though it was a foggy dawn, and there was just a sheet over him. I couldn't resist touching his hair, and then running a slow hand lightly down the nape of his neck, along his shoulder and side, coming to a stop cupping the curve of his right hip. He shuddered, and I grinned to myself.
"Oh, God," he said, into the pillow, indistinctly but intelligibly. "Maree. Don't make me choose between sleep and sex. They both sound" - a deep breath - "viscerally" - a huff of a sigh - "lasciviously" - another sigh - "attractive to me right now."
I grinned a little more, rolled him over and kissed him - his eyes opened; he looked surprised but happy - and then put him back where he was. He fell asleep almost instantly. I picked up the towel and padded quietly downstairs. I felt it when he woke again, a couple of hours later, but the sun went behind the clouds and he was dreaming of something dark.
*
Nick came up to visit the day after; he took the train into Cambridge and I went in to fetch him. "Where's Rupert?" he asked, as I let us both in the house, whistling for the quacks, who immediately flew up and fluttered their feathers coquettishly.
"Something with one of the computers," I said, a little confusedly; Rupert himself had been confused when he headed out in the morning. "He sends his love, and he might be back before you have to go, anyway."
"Right." Nick didn't quite seem to be listening; he was picking up pieces of paper on the kitchen table and putting them down, distractedly.
"Want some coffee?" I asked, and he nodded. While I was making it he stopped pretending he wasn't interested and started investigating the things on the table seriously.
"What's this?" he asked, waving a large coloured chart around.
"That's the internal structure of a cow's stomachs," I said, and the kettle started to whistle.
"Oh," he said, looking through rather than at me. He picked up another sheet. "What's this?"
"A table of dosages of antibiotics by weight," I said, turning away from him to pour. "Nick, what aren't you talking about?"
He looked embarrassed. I sat down, set his mug in front of him and waited expectantly.
He got there. "You and Rupert... live here," he said, thoughtfully. "Right? Something happened when we went to Babylon, and you, and Rupert, you're started… something. I thought... well, you were off for ages after that bloke... Rob something?"
"Robbie," I said, sharply. "That was a long time ago."
"Yeah. And now you and Rupert... well." He stopped. "Do you really..."
Saving the fourteen-year-old boy from having to express himself about relationships suddenly seemed high on my agenda. "Yes, Nick. What's your point?"
"Nothing," he said, quickly. "Nothing, nothing." He sipped his coffee and looked up. "What do you do all day, anyway?"
"Mostly I read textbooks," I confessed. "I spent so much time mooning last term, I got really behind. I'm lucky I've got the summer vac to catch up." I motioned at the stacks of books on the table. "There's a lot to do."
"Oh," he said, sounding disappointed. "And your... other job?"
"Simon - you remember Simon? - takes me around the multiverse teaching me about things. It's fun." It's also hard work, I didn't say, thinking about the dragon, and sometimes it also hurts.
"Oh," Nick said, and flipped a diagram over. It was covered in Rupert's narrow scrawl, completely unintelligible to anyone save him. "What's this?"
"Either a magical working or something you'd use to make a computer sneeze," I said. "Nick, how are you? You haven't said a word about how things are going."
"It's okay," he said, and seemed to mean it. I stared at him and he relaxed, the tension visibly disappearing from his neck and shoulders. He whistled, and the quacks came to him, fluttering and cooing gently. I sighed - they love Rupert, to the extent that they only roost somewhere in the vicinity of his feet, and apparently they love Nick too and I don't get a look-in - and spent a moment observing Nick, using my Magid sight to do it, looking for cracks and sadnesses beneath the surface. He was right: he was okay. Not brilliant, maybe, but people so rarely are.
"Good," I said. "Now, what do you want to do?"
He shrugged, suddenly all teenager. "Dunno."
We ended up playing cards all afternoon, first gin rummy and blackjack but then new games he'd made up, using more than one deck, and then adding in a pack of tarot cards I found lying around in the kitchen. When we'd constructed an elaborately baroque game involving all the major arcana, suits and numbers, we got bored and started constructing houses of cards, which wasn't very successful because of the quacks flapping their wings at inopportune moments.
"Thanks for having me, Maree," Nick said, departing for the station at the end of the day.
"Don't say things like that," I said. "They're not needed."
"Thanks." He gave me a quick, embarrassed hug, and left. I watched him go from the front window, casting a long shadow along the street. When he was quite out of sight I hunted down a cardigan and some shoes, and set out.
*
"I have no idea what I'm getting into," I said, sitting down at Will's kitchen table feeling suddenly like a stranger. It was still early afternoon here, sunlight scattering through the dust of the farmhouse. The various V. Venableses - Venetia, Viola, Vanessa, oh, I forget the rest - had given me their customary greeting, and then been taken by Carina off to pick apples in one of the orchards. Will was pottering about, making tea.
"The first year's the worst," he said thoughtfully. "It certainly was for me, and Rupert, too, you should ask him."
"Not being a Magid," I said. "Rupert."
He looked momentarily confused. "You have no idea what you're getting into with - ah."
"Yeah." I was thinking all at once that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to tell this to Will, of all people; he hadn't turned around from the teapot, but I could hear he'd stopped pouring.
Still looking in the direction of the window, he said, "That's the trouble with this becoming a family business. Maree, if you're thinking of leaving Rupert, I'll still be your friend and Simon will still be your mentor."
"Oh," I said, quietly, because I'd wondered that. "But - no. No, I don't want to leave him."
I saw him smile in the reflection in the glass. "Speaking as a brother and not a Magid, I'm glad to hear it. You're good for him."
"I don't want to leave him," I said again, just to make that absolutely clear and not just to Will. "But... I don't know him."
"You don't know him?"
"Well, I do." How could I not; glancing at Will, I realised he was thinking the same thing. How could I not know Rupert, when I walked to Babylon through the candles he had held burning; when I came home to him. "I know him, but it's from the inside out. I don't know his favourite colour, or his favourite subject at school, or where he even went to school, or, you know, that sort of thing."
"Ah." Will sat down on the chair opposite me and handed across my tea. I took a morose sip. "Well, perhaps you should ask him all those things."
"Maybe," I said doubtfully. "But…. if Rupert's the love of my life, he'll be in my life forever. If he's not the love of my life, he'll be in my life forever. Do you understand?"
Will nodded. "I do. But you need to find out which."
"Yeah," I said, a little doubtfully.
Will grinned. "If it helps: Rupert went to school in Cambridge, and he was probably the cleverest of us, but no one noticed because he was the youngest. His favourite colour is probably green, but I couldn't be sure. He's a good mathematician - that's what his degree is in, anyway."
"I don't feel like I know him any better," I said, still doubtfully.
"Let me see." Will carried on looking thoughtfully into his cup. "He's terrible at most sports, but he's a decent shot. He reads a lot, at least, he did before he became a Magid, I don't know how much time he gets for it now. He's an arrogant prig, but you knew that."
I smiled, and Will went on, "He thinks Simon and I don't know that he and Zinka were, you know. For a while. And…" He paused. "Well, perhaps I shouldn't tell you that."
"What?" I snapped. "That's not fair! Now you've said that, you've got to tell me."
"I don't know," Will said, thoughtfully. "All right. Rupert is a programmer. He's a Magid. And you know, even when he was a kid he had that attention for detail, he always knew when I'd swiped his Lego." He grinned, remembering. "But…" A pause. "You know his jacket? He's been wearing it for years and it looks like it. Suede, brown, ragged?"
I nodded. "Yeah. It got very banged up a while ago, but I think he managed to fix it."
"Yes, well, he's very fond of it, and it's two sizes too big for him." Will smiled at me.
"Oh," I said, thinking about that. "Oh. He didn't tell me that."
"He didn't tell me that." Will was still smiling. "And I may be drawing a conclusion where one oughtn't to be drawn, but somehow I don't think so. And you know Rupert. He doesn't tell people anything easily."
"Oh," I said, and again: "He didn't tell me that."
*
But Rupert did tell me that. He came down that night while I was starting dinner, still dressed but barefoot, the jacket thrown over one arm, and while I was moving around looking for knives and a chopping board he told me.
"Oh," I said.
"I had to tell you," he said, sighing. "You would have found out, because of..." He made an infinity-symbol gesture with both hands. "Well, because."
"And if I didn't..." I stopped. "You wouldn't have told me otherwise?"
"I would have." He didn't sound like he believed it, and I didn't either. He sat down in his chair. "I would have told you."
"That you're..."
"That I've been in relationships with men. Yes."
"And why, exactly, am I suppose to care?"
"Because it's important?"
"No, it isn't! What's important is that you're you, and that I'm me, and, nothing else."
Rupert sat down in one of the kitchen chairs and looked at me a long moment before answering. "You know that's not true. You and I are... more than who we are."
"I don't like it," I said. "And I think maybe we should talk about that, sometime, maybe? About how you and I are..."
"Attached. Yes."
"Even Nick seems to have noticed it," I said. "Something, anyway. Something... off about you and me."
Rupert leaned back in his chair and picked up the tarot deck I'd left out. With characteristic economy of movement, he laid a spread, and then before I'd even seen it he drew it back into the deck, shuffled and cut. "Major arcana," he said, lifting it to show me the hanged man. "Do you know what "arcanum" means?"
"You're not supposed to be teaching me," I said, but he was looking at me intently.
"It means 'deep secret'. This is another. Two people who are bound together in this particular, deep way.'"
"This is a secret, like Babylon?"
He nodded. "Maree, what do you think of me, really?"
"What?" I shook my head, confused. "Er... you're awful. You're stuffy and ridiculous and sometimes I think you have no sense of humour, and you steal the covers. " And I love you, how I love you. "You know what I just didn't say, don't you?"
"Yes" - and he reached out and took my hand. Our fingers clasped. "I know. I'm sorry."
"What for?"
"For being in your head."
I nodded, and squeezed his hand tighter. "Me too."
"Well." He sighed. "You really don't mind, about the other thing?"
"What do you take me for?"
He smiled, and kissed me briefly. "Well, then."
"I think we've just decided something and I don't know what," I said.
He leaned back again. "Did you ever read those papers you got from Zinka?"
*
The part of magic that is most like doing magic is the work of making.
"Two Magids living together isn't the best idea," Simon was saying, "when there are only thirty or forty of them in all the multiverse, and the work they do is needed."
I was opening my mouth to yell at him for his utter hypocrisy when Zinka grinned and put her hand on my shoulder. "Come on, love," she said, "we're going for a chat."
"It's not like," I complained, as we began walking through the gardens on my way home, leaving Simon behind, "it's not like people throw petrol bombs through our windows! Most likely I'll get eaten by a dragon one of these days and Rupert will be nowhere near."
"That's cheerful," Zinka said, still grinning. "That’s not what he meant, though."
"But something draws us together," I said, suddenly. "I mean... there's you and Simon."
"Well, of course something draws us together," she said, as though it were obvious. "Can you imagine, having the sort of power a Magid has... over a single other person? Can you imagine living with it?"
I thought about that. "I get it."
"And," Zinka said, smiling at me conspiratorially, "well, we have one up on the rest of the world."
"What?" I said, entirely confused.
"Think about it. And I know for a fact that Rupert," she said, still with that pleasantly gossipy, confidential undertone, "has never understood what it is to be ordinary when it comes to sex. He never was very good with ordinary women. Or men, for that matter."
"Sex," I said stupidly. I'm not sure if I ought to feel jealous, or what, of exactly how well Zinka knows Rupert; I don't, though, because it's clear as day that she loves him, and not in that horrible soapy jealous way. She loves him and wants to see him happy.
"Magid abilities bleed into everything you do," Zinka said, cheerfully. "Everything."
"Oh," I said, suddenly understanding. "Oh."
"But Simon's still right, and some changes should be made," she went on, as though I weren't blushing. "It's my area of expertise, not Simon's. I drew you some diagrams."
"About those," I said. "You knew what was going to happen, didn’t you?"
She shook her head. "Nothing in life is certain. You know what to do?"
"Yes," I said.
*
We did the working in chalk, on the wooden dining-room floor with the furniture pushed back. Rupert has the patience for it, methodically chalking and erasing and shaping, using those economical strokes, while I get it wrong and have to swear and start again more than I'd like, but we work better together. "Tell me again," he said, on his knees for the fine detail.
"It's for safety, Zinka says," I said, through a mouthful of my hair. "So we can't be used against each other."
"Ah," he said, and kept on drawing, line after line, while I flipped through Zinka's notes. Rupert rose, went to the kitchen and brought out seven heavy beeswax candles.
"For the last part, you need something in the working that's alive," I said, letting the diagrams drop to the table. Rupert paused, the flint lighter still in his hand.
"Alive," he repeated, and there was something unspoken in the air between us.
I read over my notes, and then leaned against the side of the table, letting it dig into my hips, watching Rupert's barefoot progress around the room, light after light. The last of the daylight was gone from the eave windows. I was still watching him; he moved as though he knew.
Zinka was right: Rupert has no notion of what it is to be ordinary. I walked across to him and kissed him, put my hands through his hair, slipped them under his shirt so it slipped back across the lines of his skin, felt his warmth and weight sink in my arms.
When I stepped back and we both took a deep breath, he was standing stock-still, looking at me. "This is that kind of working, then."
"It doesn't have to be," I said, looking at him as the candles burned down in the circle around us. He looked back at me, at the small flames, at the lines of white chalk, at me again.
"I think it does." There was another pause. "I think that at this time, in this place, it does."
He stepped forwards, and gave me a soft, entirely wicked smile. "As I am no longer junior Magid for Earth" - he was picking up the leather case on the floor, pulling out the fine-tipped brush, the ink - "I think you should do the hard work."
I took them from him and sat down on the floor. The electric lights were out. He sat beside me and then lay down. I took off his glasses and put them one side, put a finger on his lips and then in his mouth, the warmth a sudden intimacy. He lay still while I undressed him, feeling the cold of my own hands on his skin, and he didn't move, but looked at me with eyes wide and dark and reflecting the candles. He smiled for a second when I faltered and went to check the notes.
From them and from memory, I drew the markings on Rupert's body, sigils below his shoulders and the whorls and curves of making in lines along his spine; roman characters and representations of the major arcana along his sides and in the hollows below his neck, delicate fine lettering along his hands. He flinched at the travelling chill of the brush, then held still for the long, slow work. The hanged man, death, and the lovers, stylised until unrecognisable but etched with power, then the final flick of ink across his lips.
The candles were half-down by the time I wrote my own name in the last space, and pressed his fingers to it.
Rupert said, softly, "Oh."
The power moved through him, rippling under skin and shining momentary rose-red under his fingernails, under the layers of muscle across his bones, extensors stronger than flexors so his body arched and toes pointed, and finally came to rest, smudged and boneless and warm. Ten of twelve candles were snuffed out. I kissed him and the ink smeared between us, messy, comforting.
We lay there for a moment, and then I kissed him again, and his arms wrapped around my neck, and then it seemed natural for me to pull off my now-very-stained top, and pull him close. The first time we fell into bed together was the night after the night I returned from Babylon; this was like that, wordless and messy and a little giggly. I said stupid, rubbish, loving things; he laughed , with the power in him crackling and fizzling out when he came. After that we were still for a long time.
Rupert sat up, suddenly. "Maree, how many miles to Babylon?"
"Three score and ten," I answered, automatically, and then breathed in sharply when I didn't hear the echo. "Oh."
"Yes," he said, and lay back down. "This wasn't so much a making as a breaking."
"We're broken apart?" I said, a little nervously. My voice seemed to drift through the semi-darkness towards the ceiling.
"In a way. You will always have been to Babylon; I will always have waited." He was sounding drowsy. "We're bound in the ordinary way now."
"The ordinary way?"
"You know," he said, "by love and affection and understanding and sex and, and. Things like that."
I kissed the ink on the tip of his nose, and we lay still again, waiting for the last candles to burn down. When we finally went up to bed, it was hand-in-hand, not minding the mess, turning the sheets black from the spent working.
*
"It went all right, then?"
Zinka was - there was no other word for it - beaming at me. I took a deep breath, stared down at the diagram of the feline alimentary canal and composed myself. "It went fine, thank you."
Carina snorted from her side of the table. She was leafing through a magazine, feet up on a chair. From outside, I heard someone shouting, "What is wrong with you?" It was probably Will.
"Who is that?" I asked, taking the chance to change the subject. From what I could see of whoever it was Will was shouting at, he was wearing a helmet with horns and had a face that was mostly beard.
"He's the King of the Skorklund. One of them."
"Who are..."
"Don't even ask," Carina said. "They spend all their time having small wars over tiny bits of uninhabited tundra. Some bright spark in their ruling council decided they need a Magid present at their wars to make sure no one was cheating."
"Sounds fun," I said.
"Oh, bundles." Zinka was working on a sketch; it looked like a soft-focus vision of a pretty girl looking blissfully post-coital with something tentacled. I'd seen similar pictures in some of my textbooks. "What are you staring at, Maree?"
"Oh, nothing."
From outside, I heard Rupert saying, "I'm not the one you want! These are not the droids you are looking for!"
Zinka grinned. "You got him to watch Star Wars?"
I shrugged. "He designs computer games for a living! How could he not have seen Star Wars?"
"You are Magid Venables?" shouted the King of the Skorklund, and I gave up on pretending I wasn't interested and went to have a look.
"Yes, but..."
"Then you will come with me!" - and he grabbed Rupert by the hair. I was trying very hard not to laugh, and I must have been obvious standing at the open window, but apparently the man with the helmet came from somewhere where they don't notice women overly much.
"I am not the one you are looking for!" Rupert yelled again. "There are three different people called that! "
"Three of you?" He glared suspiciously and let go. "Are you a bigamist?"
"No!" Rupert howled, and I started giggling. I couldn't help it. Rupert glared at me, and said, "I am the youngest of three brothers. Will, could you be, possibly, maybe, any more useless than you are currently being?"
Will stepped forwards and started saying something conciliatory; I turned back from the window and went back to sit at the table. "Something smells delicious."
"Pie," Carina said. "When Simon gets here, we'll eat."
I nodded. Zinka gave me a stare and said, "So it went all right, then?" And before I could pretend not to have heard, she added, "I can see that something's changed. You're separate."
"Yes," I said, a little breathlessly. "We're different people." I was working myself into a temper without really realising it. "He's a Magid and I'm a Magid but we're different. I'm a vet. I'm a sister. I'm me."
"Yes," Zinka said, and Rupert came in.
"Maree, our friend here" - he pointed over his shoulder in the direction of the King of the Skorklund - "has a problem with his horse." He looked confused. "Something about forelocks or fetlocks or some such. And in the interests of making him go away..."
I picked up my bag from under the table. "Wait for me."
"We will," Rupert said, and stood in the doorway watching me go.
end.
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comment(s). Comment there or here.
kink_bingo, it still has hardly any sex in it. I am predictable.
gamesiplay betaed; thank you, sweet. Also, I am halfway through The Merlin Conspiracy, and possibly I should finish it before posting, but, you know, this is one of the ones you want out of your head. (I have been writing it for a fortnight, and also reading up on animal husbandry, tarot cards and various types of kink. The public library find me amusing.)
Fic:: Loose Ends
by Raven
4000w, Diana Wynne Jones' Magids series, Rupert/Maree & Nick. Not (quite) happily ever after, but almost.
Magic isn't something you do. There's no wand-waving involved. When you sew up an animal's wounds, or when you set bones, what you're really doing is rearranging things so it can get to healing by itself. It's the same with magic - when you do a working, you don't create magic, you rearrange what's already there. Simon said it was a good analogy, and maybe it stuck with him; that might explain why he thought part of my training ought to involve sewing up a dragon's wing, filament by filament, web by web, over a long night while he did the heavy work of keeping the creature asleep all the way through the process. I was exhausted by the time we finished, and sat on the edge of the wall of the pen, taking deep breaths while Simon spoke quietly to the dragon, using the occasional word from a language I didn't know.
At length, he came over to me, and I dropped down, grabbed my vet's bag and coat and started walking. "Have we finished yet?"
"Yeah." He smiled at me. "You did well, Maree. Take these with you" - he handed me a sheaf of papers - "and give them a read before we meet again, would you?"
"Homework?" I said, groaning. He'd got more in the habit of it recently, setting me memorisation work on the meanings of sigils and minor arcana and the use of common herbs in magic and, for some reason, all the capitals of Europe.
"Yes," he said, with a grin, "but it's not from me, it's from Zinka. She insisted. And don't ask me, I have no idea what it's about. See you next week."
I nodded, stuffed the papers in my bag, managed a weary wave at Simon, and made my way through the lattices of the worlds as though I were sleepwalking.
When I got home to Weavers End, the house was empty. I jumped in the shower to wash off the smell of scorched dragon, taking my time over it, using up all the hot water. When I got out, I was half-surprised to find Rupert asleep face-down on the bed. He'd been out doing something for the Koryfonic Empire - he stands in for Simon when Simon's training me, and it all works out somehow - and apparently it had been as tiring a night for him as it had been for me. His clothes were thrown on the back of a chair, and I found his glasses on the floor in the middle of the room.
I sat down on the edge of the bed and kept on drying my hair, thinking. "Rupert."
"Mmph."
"Are you all right?"
"Mmm." He shifted slightly. The day was promising warmth even though it was a foggy dawn, and there was just a sheet over him. I couldn't resist touching his hair, and then running a slow hand lightly down the nape of his neck, along his shoulder and side, coming to a stop cupping the curve of his right hip. He shuddered, and I grinned to myself.
"Oh, God," he said, into the pillow, indistinctly but intelligibly. "Maree. Don't make me choose between sleep and sex. They both sound" - a deep breath - "viscerally" - a huff of a sigh - "lasciviously" - another sigh - "attractive to me right now."
I grinned a little more, rolled him over and kissed him - his eyes opened; he looked surprised but happy - and then put him back where he was. He fell asleep almost instantly. I picked up the towel and padded quietly downstairs. I felt it when he woke again, a couple of hours later, but the sun went behind the clouds and he was dreaming of something dark.
*
Nick came up to visit the day after; he took the train into Cambridge and I went in to fetch him. "Where's Rupert?" he asked, as I let us both in the house, whistling for the quacks, who immediately flew up and fluttered their feathers coquettishly.
"Something with one of the computers," I said, a little confusedly; Rupert himself had been confused when he headed out in the morning. "He sends his love, and he might be back before you have to go, anyway."
"Right." Nick didn't quite seem to be listening; he was picking up pieces of paper on the kitchen table and putting them down, distractedly.
"Want some coffee?" I asked, and he nodded. While I was making it he stopped pretending he wasn't interested and started investigating the things on the table seriously.
"What's this?" he asked, waving a large coloured chart around.
"That's the internal structure of a cow's stomachs," I said, and the kettle started to whistle.
"Oh," he said, looking through rather than at me. He picked up another sheet. "What's this?"
"A table of dosages of antibiotics by weight," I said, turning away from him to pour. "Nick, what aren't you talking about?"
He looked embarrassed. I sat down, set his mug in front of him and waited expectantly.
He got there. "You and Rupert... live here," he said, thoughtfully. "Right? Something happened when we went to Babylon, and you, and Rupert, you're started… something. I thought... well, you were off for ages after that bloke... Rob something?"
"Robbie," I said, sharply. "That was a long time ago."
"Yeah. And now you and Rupert... well." He stopped. "Do you really..."
Saving the fourteen-year-old boy from having to express himself about relationships suddenly seemed high on my agenda. "Yes, Nick. What's your point?"
"Nothing," he said, quickly. "Nothing, nothing." He sipped his coffee and looked up. "What do you do all day, anyway?"
"Mostly I read textbooks," I confessed. "I spent so much time mooning last term, I got really behind. I'm lucky I've got the summer vac to catch up." I motioned at the stacks of books on the table. "There's a lot to do."
"Oh," he said, sounding disappointed. "And your... other job?"
"Simon - you remember Simon? - takes me around the multiverse teaching me about things. It's fun." It's also hard work, I didn't say, thinking about the dragon, and sometimes it also hurts.
"Oh," Nick said, and flipped a diagram over. It was covered in Rupert's narrow scrawl, completely unintelligible to anyone save him. "What's this?"
"Either a magical working or something you'd use to make a computer sneeze," I said. "Nick, how are you? You haven't said a word about how things are going."
"It's okay," he said, and seemed to mean it. I stared at him and he relaxed, the tension visibly disappearing from his neck and shoulders. He whistled, and the quacks came to him, fluttering and cooing gently. I sighed - they love Rupert, to the extent that they only roost somewhere in the vicinity of his feet, and apparently they love Nick too and I don't get a look-in - and spent a moment observing Nick, using my Magid sight to do it, looking for cracks and sadnesses beneath the surface. He was right: he was okay. Not brilliant, maybe, but people so rarely are.
"Good," I said. "Now, what do you want to do?"
He shrugged, suddenly all teenager. "Dunno."
We ended up playing cards all afternoon, first gin rummy and blackjack but then new games he'd made up, using more than one deck, and then adding in a pack of tarot cards I found lying around in the kitchen. When we'd constructed an elaborately baroque game involving all the major arcana, suits and numbers, we got bored and started constructing houses of cards, which wasn't very successful because of the quacks flapping their wings at inopportune moments.
"Thanks for having me, Maree," Nick said, departing for the station at the end of the day.
"Don't say things like that," I said. "They're not needed."
"Thanks." He gave me a quick, embarrassed hug, and left. I watched him go from the front window, casting a long shadow along the street. When he was quite out of sight I hunted down a cardigan and some shoes, and set out.
*
"I have no idea what I'm getting into," I said, sitting down at Will's kitchen table feeling suddenly like a stranger. It was still early afternoon here, sunlight scattering through the dust of the farmhouse. The various V. Venableses - Venetia, Viola, Vanessa, oh, I forget the rest - had given me their customary greeting, and then been taken by Carina off to pick apples in one of the orchards. Will was pottering about, making tea.
"The first year's the worst," he said thoughtfully. "It certainly was for me, and Rupert, too, you should ask him."
"Not being a Magid," I said. "Rupert."
He looked momentarily confused. "You have no idea what you're getting into with - ah."
"Yeah." I was thinking all at once that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to tell this to Will, of all people; he hadn't turned around from the teapot, but I could hear he'd stopped pouring.
Still looking in the direction of the window, he said, "That's the trouble with this becoming a family business. Maree, if you're thinking of leaving Rupert, I'll still be your friend and Simon will still be your mentor."
"Oh," I said, quietly, because I'd wondered that. "But - no. No, I don't want to leave him."
I saw him smile in the reflection in the glass. "Speaking as a brother and not a Magid, I'm glad to hear it. You're good for him."
"I don't want to leave him," I said again, just to make that absolutely clear and not just to Will. "But... I don't know him."
"You don't know him?"
"Well, I do." How could I not; glancing at Will, I realised he was thinking the same thing. How could I not know Rupert, when I walked to Babylon through the candles he had held burning; when I came home to him. "I know him, but it's from the inside out. I don't know his favourite colour, or his favourite subject at school, or where he even went to school, or, you know, that sort of thing."
"Ah." Will sat down on the chair opposite me and handed across my tea. I took a morose sip. "Well, perhaps you should ask him all those things."
"Maybe," I said doubtfully. "But…. if Rupert's the love of my life, he'll be in my life forever. If he's not the love of my life, he'll be in my life forever. Do you understand?"
Will nodded. "I do. But you need to find out which."
"Yeah," I said, a little doubtfully.
Will grinned. "If it helps: Rupert went to school in Cambridge, and he was probably the cleverest of us, but no one noticed because he was the youngest. His favourite colour is probably green, but I couldn't be sure. He's a good mathematician - that's what his degree is in, anyway."
"I don't feel like I know him any better," I said, still doubtfully.
"Let me see." Will carried on looking thoughtfully into his cup. "He's terrible at most sports, but he's a decent shot. He reads a lot, at least, he did before he became a Magid, I don't know how much time he gets for it now. He's an arrogant prig, but you knew that."
I smiled, and Will went on, "He thinks Simon and I don't know that he and Zinka were, you know. For a while. And…" He paused. "Well, perhaps I shouldn't tell you that."
"What?" I snapped. "That's not fair! Now you've said that, you've got to tell me."
"I don't know," Will said, thoughtfully. "All right. Rupert is a programmer. He's a Magid. And you know, even when he was a kid he had that attention for detail, he always knew when I'd swiped his Lego." He grinned, remembering. "But…" A pause. "You know his jacket? He's been wearing it for years and it looks like it. Suede, brown, ragged?"
I nodded. "Yeah. It got very banged up a while ago, but I think he managed to fix it."
"Yes, well, he's very fond of it, and it's two sizes too big for him." Will smiled at me.
"Oh," I said, thinking about that. "Oh. He didn't tell me that."
"He didn't tell me that." Will was still smiling. "And I may be drawing a conclusion where one oughtn't to be drawn, but somehow I don't think so. And you know Rupert. He doesn't tell people anything easily."
"Oh," I said, and again: "He didn't tell me that."
*
But Rupert did tell me that. He came down that night while I was starting dinner, still dressed but barefoot, the jacket thrown over one arm, and while I was moving around looking for knives and a chopping board he told me.
"Oh," I said.
"I had to tell you," he said, sighing. "You would have found out, because of..." He made an infinity-symbol gesture with both hands. "Well, because."
"And if I didn't..." I stopped. "You wouldn't have told me otherwise?"
"I would have." He didn't sound like he believed it, and I didn't either. He sat down in his chair. "I would have told you."
"That you're..."
"That I've been in relationships with men. Yes."
"And why, exactly, am I suppose to care?"
"Because it's important?"
"No, it isn't! What's important is that you're you, and that I'm me, and, nothing else."
Rupert sat down in one of the kitchen chairs and looked at me a long moment before answering. "You know that's not true. You and I are... more than who we are."
"I don't like it," I said. "And I think maybe we should talk about that, sometime, maybe? About how you and I are..."
"Attached. Yes."
"Even Nick seems to have noticed it," I said. "Something, anyway. Something... off about you and me."
Rupert leaned back in his chair and picked up the tarot deck I'd left out. With characteristic economy of movement, he laid a spread, and then before I'd even seen it he drew it back into the deck, shuffled and cut. "Major arcana," he said, lifting it to show me the hanged man. "Do you know what "arcanum" means?"
"You're not supposed to be teaching me," I said, but he was looking at me intently.
"It means 'deep secret'. This is another. Two people who are bound together in this particular, deep way.'"
"This is a secret, like Babylon?"
He nodded. "Maree, what do you think of me, really?"
"What?" I shook my head, confused. "Er... you're awful. You're stuffy and ridiculous and sometimes I think you have no sense of humour, and you steal the covers. " And I love you, how I love you. "You know what I just didn't say, don't you?"
"Yes" - and he reached out and took my hand. Our fingers clasped. "I know. I'm sorry."
"What for?"
"For being in your head."
I nodded, and squeezed his hand tighter. "Me too."
"Well." He sighed. "You really don't mind, about the other thing?"
"What do you take me for?"
He smiled, and kissed me briefly. "Well, then."
"I think we've just decided something and I don't know what," I said.
He leaned back again. "Did you ever read those papers you got from Zinka?"
*
The part of magic that is most like doing magic is the work of making.
"Two Magids living together isn't the best idea," Simon was saying, "when there are only thirty or forty of them in all the multiverse, and the work they do is needed."
I was opening my mouth to yell at him for his utter hypocrisy when Zinka grinned and put her hand on my shoulder. "Come on, love," she said, "we're going for a chat."
"It's not like," I complained, as we began walking through the gardens on my way home, leaving Simon behind, "it's not like people throw petrol bombs through our windows! Most likely I'll get eaten by a dragon one of these days and Rupert will be nowhere near."
"That's cheerful," Zinka said, still grinning. "That’s not what he meant, though."
"But something draws us together," I said, suddenly. "I mean... there's you and Simon."
"Well, of course something draws us together," she said, as though it were obvious. "Can you imagine, having the sort of power a Magid has... over a single other person? Can you imagine living with it?"
I thought about that. "I get it."
"And," Zinka said, smiling at me conspiratorially, "well, we have one up on the rest of the world."
"What?" I said, entirely confused.
"Think about it. And I know for a fact that Rupert," she said, still with that pleasantly gossipy, confidential undertone, "has never understood what it is to be ordinary when it comes to sex. He never was very good with ordinary women. Or men, for that matter."
"Sex," I said stupidly. I'm not sure if I ought to feel jealous, or what, of exactly how well Zinka knows Rupert; I don't, though, because it's clear as day that she loves him, and not in that horrible soapy jealous way. She loves him and wants to see him happy.
"Magid abilities bleed into everything you do," Zinka said, cheerfully. "Everything."
"Oh," I said, suddenly understanding. "Oh."
"But Simon's still right, and some changes should be made," she went on, as though I weren't blushing. "It's my area of expertise, not Simon's. I drew you some diagrams."
"About those," I said. "You knew what was going to happen, didn’t you?"
She shook her head. "Nothing in life is certain. You know what to do?"
"Yes," I said.
*
We did the working in chalk, on the wooden dining-room floor with the furniture pushed back. Rupert has the patience for it, methodically chalking and erasing and shaping, using those economical strokes, while I get it wrong and have to swear and start again more than I'd like, but we work better together. "Tell me again," he said, on his knees for the fine detail.
"It's for safety, Zinka says," I said, through a mouthful of my hair. "So we can't be used against each other."
"Ah," he said, and kept on drawing, line after line, while I flipped through Zinka's notes. Rupert rose, went to the kitchen and brought out seven heavy beeswax candles.
"For the last part, you need something in the working that's alive," I said, letting the diagrams drop to the table. Rupert paused, the flint lighter still in his hand.
"Alive," he repeated, and there was something unspoken in the air between us.
I read over my notes, and then leaned against the side of the table, letting it dig into my hips, watching Rupert's barefoot progress around the room, light after light. The last of the daylight was gone from the eave windows. I was still watching him; he moved as though he knew.
Zinka was right: Rupert has no notion of what it is to be ordinary. I walked across to him and kissed him, put my hands through his hair, slipped them under his shirt so it slipped back across the lines of his skin, felt his warmth and weight sink in my arms.
When I stepped back and we both took a deep breath, he was standing stock-still, looking at me. "This is that kind of working, then."
"It doesn't have to be," I said, looking at him as the candles burned down in the circle around us. He looked back at me, at the small flames, at the lines of white chalk, at me again.
"I think it does." There was another pause. "I think that at this time, in this place, it does."
He stepped forwards, and gave me a soft, entirely wicked smile. "As I am no longer junior Magid for Earth" - he was picking up the leather case on the floor, pulling out the fine-tipped brush, the ink - "I think you should do the hard work."
I took them from him and sat down on the floor. The electric lights were out. He sat beside me and then lay down. I took off his glasses and put them one side, put a finger on his lips and then in his mouth, the warmth a sudden intimacy. He lay still while I undressed him, feeling the cold of my own hands on his skin, and he didn't move, but looked at me with eyes wide and dark and reflecting the candles. He smiled for a second when I faltered and went to check the notes.
From them and from memory, I drew the markings on Rupert's body, sigils below his shoulders and the whorls and curves of making in lines along his spine; roman characters and representations of the major arcana along his sides and in the hollows below his neck, delicate fine lettering along his hands. He flinched at the travelling chill of the brush, then held still for the long, slow work. The hanged man, death, and the lovers, stylised until unrecognisable but etched with power, then the final flick of ink across his lips.
The candles were half-down by the time I wrote my own name in the last space, and pressed his fingers to it.
Rupert said, softly, "Oh."
The power moved through him, rippling under skin and shining momentary rose-red under his fingernails, under the layers of muscle across his bones, extensors stronger than flexors so his body arched and toes pointed, and finally came to rest, smudged and boneless and warm. Ten of twelve candles were snuffed out. I kissed him and the ink smeared between us, messy, comforting.
We lay there for a moment, and then I kissed him again, and his arms wrapped around my neck, and then it seemed natural for me to pull off my now-very-stained top, and pull him close. The first time we fell into bed together was the night after the night I returned from Babylon; this was like that, wordless and messy and a little giggly. I said stupid, rubbish, loving things; he laughed , with the power in him crackling and fizzling out when he came. After that we were still for a long time.
Rupert sat up, suddenly. "Maree, how many miles to Babylon?"
"Three score and ten," I answered, automatically, and then breathed in sharply when I didn't hear the echo. "Oh."
"Yes," he said, and lay back down. "This wasn't so much a making as a breaking."
"We're broken apart?" I said, a little nervously. My voice seemed to drift through the semi-darkness towards the ceiling.
"In a way. You will always have been to Babylon; I will always have waited." He was sounding drowsy. "We're bound in the ordinary way now."
"The ordinary way?"
"You know," he said, "by love and affection and understanding and sex and, and. Things like that."
I kissed the ink on the tip of his nose, and we lay still again, waiting for the last candles to burn down. When we finally went up to bed, it was hand-in-hand, not minding the mess, turning the sheets black from the spent working.
*
"It went all right, then?"
Zinka was - there was no other word for it - beaming at me. I took a deep breath, stared down at the diagram of the feline alimentary canal and composed myself. "It went fine, thank you."
Carina snorted from her side of the table. She was leafing through a magazine, feet up on a chair. From outside, I heard someone shouting, "What is wrong with you?" It was probably Will.
"Who is that?" I asked, taking the chance to change the subject. From what I could see of whoever it was Will was shouting at, he was wearing a helmet with horns and had a face that was mostly beard.
"He's the King of the Skorklund. One of them."
"Who are..."
"Don't even ask," Carina said. "They spend all their time having small wars over tiny bits of uninhabited tundra. Some bright spark in their ruling council decided they need a Magid present at their wars to make sure no one was cheating."
"Sounds fun," I said.
"Oh, bundles." Zinka was working on a sketch; it looked like a soft-focus vision of a pretty girl looking blissfully post-coital with something tentacled. I'd seen similar pictures in some of my textbooks. "What are you staring at, Maree?"
"Oh, nothing."
From outside, I heard Rupert saying, "I'm not the one you want! These are not the droids you are looking for!"
Zinka grinned. "You got him to watch Star Wars?"
I shrugged. "He designs computer games for a living! How could he not have seen Star Wars?"
"You are Magid Venables?" shouted the King of the Skorklund, and I gave up on pretending I wasn't interested and went to have a look.
"Yes, but..."
"Then you will come with me!" - and he grabbed Rupert by the hair. I was trying very hard not to laugh, and I must have been obvious standing at the open window, but apparently the man with the helmet came from somewhere where they don't notice women overly much.
"I am not the one you are looking for!" Rupert yelled again. "There are three different people called that! "
"Three of you?" He glared suspiciously and let go. "Are you a bigamist?"
"No!" Rupert howled, and I started giggling. I couldn't help it. Rupert glared at me, and said, "I am the youngest of three brothers. Will, could you be, possibly, maybe, any more useless than you are currently being?"
Will stepped forwards and started saying something conciliatory; I turned back from the window and went back to sit at the table. "Something smells delicious."
"Pie," Carina said. "When Simon gets here, we'll eat."
I nodded. Zinka gave me a stare and said, "So it went all right, then?" And before I could pretend not to have heard, she added, "I can see that something's changed. You're separate."
"Yes," I said, a little breathlessly. "We're different people." I was working myself into a temper without really realising it. "He's a Magid and I'm a Magid but we're different. I'm a vet. I'm a sister. I'm me."
"Yes," Zinka said, and Rupert came in.
"Maree, our friend here" - he pointed over his shoulder in the direction of the King of the Skorklund - "has a problem with his horse." He looked confused. "Something about forelocks or fetlocks or some such. And in the interests of making him go away..."
I picked up my bag from under the table. "Wait for me."
"We will," Rupert said, and stood in the doorway watching me go.
end.
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