Cameron felt his brain grind to a halt. Swallowing, he demanded, “Wait, that’s not how it works?”
“No, no. Perish the thought. Books and movies often make it sound as if you have a well of magical energy in you, and with the right talent and intent, magic will leap to obey you. But really, most mages have very little magical power to call their own. We have the talent, certainly, but our magical core is more like a conduit.”
“Like the grounding wire to a battery?” he asked slowly, wrapping his head around this new information. Alric had mentioned something about this too. He hadn’t elaborated on it much, though.
“Something like that. Although, we channel power.” She crossed her legs, hands resting on a slim book in her lap as if they had all the time in the world to discuss this. “Mages actually require quite a bit in order to do any working. I’m sure you’ve wondered why mages were always willing to partner with a dragon?”
“It did cross my mind. Alric said something about it, but he didn’t really elaborate.”
“I imagine he, as a dragon, doesn’t really understand it well enough to explain. But you see, when a mage forms a bond with a dragon, we gain access to all of their magical power. It’s readily at our use, and it boosts our own abilities by at least fifty percent.”
Cameron did and didn’t follow this. “So…you have to have something magically powerful to work with?”
“Forgive me, I’m not explaining this right. It’s been so long since I’ve taught a young mage, I think I’ve forgotten how.” Lisette took a moment, breathing in and rephrasing things. “Mages require magical elements in order to do any working. We build our spells, enchantments, and potions much like you would build a machine. It all has its own design, its own elements, and it has to be a cohesive force in order for it to work. Our magic is used to tie it all together and put it in motion.”
Cameron ate the last bite of potato pancake, chewing on both her words and the food. “So, say that I want to build a vehicle. I’d design it, gather the materials for it, and then I would use magic to assemble it?”
“Precisely. And drive it, presumably, but you take my point. We use many, many elements in order to build spells. Some elements don’t work with others. Some do. Build too lopsided of a spell, it will collapse and backfire. Or just fail to function.”
Cameron had always felt that because magic had never come to him before, because he’d never felt anything else but human, it wasn’t his. He’d often tried yelling made up magical incantations or mixing random things together as a kid, waiting for something magical to happen. Even in his make-believe, he’d kept hoping. Until hope couldn’t stand in the face of no results. It was why he’d gone the more practical route of engineering.
But from what Lisette said, it only made sense he’d been unable to do anything. Or feel anything. Of course he hadn’t, he hadn’t been in the right environment for it. Hadn’t possessed the necessary tools.
But it also harkened back to a time when he was very, very young. The memory was hazy, a little golden and fuzzy around the edges, worn by time and a youthful mind that didn’t comprehend what he was seeing. But it was there, half-recalled.
“When I was about six, I was at my great-grandmother’s house. It was the last summer before she died. I remember sitting in the kitchen with her, and she was mixing something at the table. In a bowl, the bowl she used for kimchi, though it didn’t smell like it. I asked what she was doing. She winked and said she was making something for her old bones. And she kept putting in strange things—drops from stoppered glass bottles lined up on the table. One of them glowed, softly, like the light from a firefly. There were pristine snowflakes in the other, despite the fact it was high June. The last was so bright I couldn’t look at it directly and it felt warm, like I was standing in a sunny spot. She drank it after she mixed it.”
Lisette’s expression lit up. “That was a working. She was potion-making, and it sounds like something for arthritis.”
“Oh. Yeah, her knees were bad by that point. Her hands, too.”
“So magic was practiced in your house?” Lisette asked intently, leaning forward.
“No, not at all,” Cameron denied with a shake of the head. “It was rare to see anything like that from my great-grandmother. She was nervous about doing that kind of thing in front of people, rarely let even anyone in the family see it. She was a touch out of it at the end of her life. Eomma…er...my mother said she had Alzheimer’s. I think she wasn’t as cautious that day. But my grandmother was never taught anything by her mother. My parents don’t really believe we have magic at all.”