Lynn squinted at the terminal, wanting to curse Amazon Books’ Occult & Arcane Marketplace, or the library’s server, whichever caused the screen flicker. Her oncoming headache made the scribbled list of books for the University’s new Centre for Baconian Thaumaturgy even harder to read. Maybe she should curse the Centre and its lack of typing skill.

But since Magic’s Return a dozen years before, there’d been the niggling fear a curse might work, and then what?

Well, she answered, if her curses worked reliably, she’d either be famous and feared, or dragged off by some government agency to be tested to destruction. And the Centre for Baconian Thaumaturgy, the Agrippan Foundation for Preternatural Studies and the Shamanic Institute would stop bickering over fund allocations just long enough to unite in discrediting her claim to invoke Magic. None of their faculty had succeeded yet, and she didn’t even have a Master’s degree. An obvious fraud.

Coffee break was still sixty-seven minutes away when Leo, the division head, came striding up like a cheerful bespectacled stork.

“Lynn, this is our new practicum student, Ken Hautala, just graduated from the UBC Library Sciences program. Ken, this is Lynn Shorter, our invaluable rare book searcher.”

Lynn pasted on a smile for Leo, because he was a sweet guy and had just praised her in front of witnesses. The newbie was probably more fuel for her headache. Sixty-five minutes till coffee.

The shiny-new graduate was a tall skinny guy with glossy black hair flopped over his brow. Lynn figured he tossed it back carelessly when he talked to girls. A closet Goth, maybe dark-mage wannabe. Ever since Real Magic had flooded back into the mundane world and washed up into libraries and forests, LibSci students tended that way.  

Lynn wondered sometimes about Forestry & Agronomy, the other faculty that touched on Magic. The idea of glowering dark-mages and sparkly sorceresses decked out in orange hardhats and plaid doeskin jackets, traipsing through a demonstration forest, cracked her up so much she didn’t care whether it was accurate. At least LibSci grads had the sense to choose a field that let them in out of the rain.

She reached carefully over the old volumes on her book-truck, and shook Ken’s hand. “Hi, Ken. My degree’s in modern and ancient languages—more useful than I expected.”

“Ms. Shorter.” His eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened; not impressed. Lynn knew she looked like the stereotypical librarian, wire-frame glasses and all, except for graying hair in a braid, not a bun. She’d never said “Shh!” in her life, but that didn’t show.

“Ken’s particularly interested in acquisition and conservation of rare and occult volumes,” Leo continued.

Lynn bumped dark-mage wannabe to the top of the list.

“Conservation was my second-year elective,” Ken said.

Maybe he’d be useful after all. After Admin refused to approve purchase of a hermetically warded table for immobilizing damaged books, the last trained conservator had taken stress leave and early retirement.

“Do you have time to give him a quick tour of the repair room?” Leo asked.

Fifty-nine minutes. “Sure. Let me get the gear out.”

Leo nodded and jogged off.

Lynn rolled up the desk-blotter stenciled with Solomon’s Seal, pulled the big flashlight and the feather duster from the bottom drawer, and stuffed leather gloves in her pocket. “Ken, do you have any protective gear? If you don’t, stay behind me. What did they teach you about Magic and codices?”

“The historical background was only a half-term course. The second half was on magical residue and flow.”

“Any practical applications, or just theory?” She unlocked the door to the stairs. The light had burnt out again, and she flicked on the flashlight, reminding herself to note how much time she spent in the repair room, working at a higher pay-grade classification.

“There wasn’t time. We had a tour of Special Collections. They wouldn’t let us handle the books.”

“Did you get any hands-on conservation and repair?”

“One full-day lab session. We used perfect-bound trade paperbacks though, not the old books with power.”

“That’s an insurance issue. Art and cinema students stopped razoring illustrations out of books after a couple of blindings and one death during the Wild Time. Those incidents didn’t get much press, compared to what happened in the old-growth forests.” Lynn shrugged. “But on campus it’s remembered. The best thing about Magic’s Return is that vandalism of books fell to next to nothing.”

She stopped at the bottom of the stairs, and leaned against the door, feeling air vibrate on the other side. “If you don’t mind my asking, Ken, what attracted you to Library Science?” She let the flashlight hang, so only their feet were illuminated. Easier for a kid to talk when no one was staring at his face.

“Magic.” Nothing in his voice but the flat word.

Honest, at least. “You’d have been, what, eight or so when Magic came back? Do you remember much of the months before it was contained?” The newspapers had called it the Wild Time, and the scholarly studies called it Magic’s Return. There were less polite names.

“Some. The subdivision—changed. Animals talked. In Greek and Latin. The stones along our front walk melted.” There was an echo of wonder in his voice, and she liked him better, remembering how desperately she’d wanted Real Magic at that age. Not to own or wield, just to know it existed.

“What’s the current favorite theory on why Magic settled?” A thump and flutter in the repair room. Lynn tucked the flashlight under her arm and pulled on gloves.

“Himmelberger’s what everyone goes by now.” He folded his arms as if he stood at a podium. “Four distinct types of returned Magic, though Gerstein argues for six. Each type was drawn to the symbolic form that best embodied it. Books are knowledge reservoirs. Labyrinths and barrow mounds are leyline reservoirs, standing stones beacon reservoirs, but Aksenov claims that all three should be grouped together, as landscape architecture, and trees and bodies of water—” He paused, as if he were about to cite a page number. “You’re probably familiar with Gorgopolous’s theory based on Greek mythology, but that doesn’t take books into account at all.”

Lynn sighed. So, no closer to being able to wake Magic up, other than to protect itself, and no idea how to call it out of the “reservoirs” at will. Academic infighting was fun to watch, but she’d take empirical knowledge over theory any day. “Ken, did you have many books as a kid?”

“Some.” He sounded uneasy. Maybe he heard the noises behind the door.

“Ever dog-ear the pages, cut pictures out, bend the covers back, crack the spines?”

“Why?” The word held resentment.

“Just that there’s two essential qualities to surviving in library work. You have to love books. Not just reading them, not just the story or the information. You have to love the smell of book-dust and ink, the feel of rag paper between your fingers, the sheen of gilt lettering. All that and more.” Lynn turned the key in the doorknob. The lock clicked, and silence fell.

“What’s the second quality?” Ken followed, closing the door.

Lynn laid the blotter out on the table, with the flashlight beside it. The beam of light spread, fading to the far side of the room, making ghosts of the metal shelving, the tall stands of acid-free paper and cardboard, the wall cupboards. The repair-or-replace sorting shelves were empty. Their idea of a joke, she thought.

She whistled, and spread her arms wide. In the dark above, bursts of fluttering, thumps and slaps. The damaged books, trailing unhinged covers and loose spines, signatures dangling from threads, descended like grubby city pigeons onto her arms and head, pushing up against each other, jostling. “Hush, babies,” she whispered. “Did you miss me?”

Ken stood stock-still.

“The second quality,” she said, as the poor hurt books teetered and turned, leaning towards the stranger, making tentative hops into the air. “Is that books have to love you. Think of this as a pop quiz.”

The oldest book in the room, a huge folio atlas of the ancient world, lifted itself from the table. One corner trimmed off half the light-beam as it spun towards Ken. He shrieked a phrase and wrapped his arms around his head. The books leapt off Lynn’s shoulders, startled.

“No loud noises, no sudden moves,” she said. A flock of the old Everyman editions—limp calf bindings and onionskin paper—peeled from the top of the cupboard where they’d huddled and streamed down after the atlas. Ken took his arms away from his head to flail at them, but the little ones were agile.

Lynn stepped in to snag the big atlas. It was in decent shape; mostly needed some torn pages taped and the front hinge repaired. She didn’t want it hurt worse. “Ken. No loud noises, no sudden moves. Drop your arms, or hold them out to the sides the way I did. You,” she said to the uniform editions, “calm down.” She made the chirruping noises that worked on them about as well as on cats—they’d pay attention if they felt like it—and they spiraled away from Ken and over to her.

The atlas was still thrashing, a heavy book, enough to knock her down. She heaved it over to the table and thumped it down onto Solomon’s Seal. It bounced back up, and she chanted the opening lines of the Iliad at it, original Greek. It shuddered. Lynn thought she’d won, but it surged under her hands. Crap. “Ken! What did you yell at the books?”

“What do you mean?” His voice shook, and he might have choked down a sob, but she’d never been good at sympathy.

“When the atlas approached you, you shouted something. What language was it?”

“It’s, um, a spell. Ancient Aramaic.” Under the shakiness was a firm ground of pride. Or arrogance.

Lynn put her weight on the atlas. “What does it mean? Can you translate it?” Aramaic. Damn. Saw my Greek and raised me. Would Hebrew beat Aramaic? Too bad she didn’t know Hebrew.

“It’s a spell. It wards off evil.”

“So you can’t translate it.”

“You mean like word for word? No.” Impatience sharpened his voice.

He didn’t think he needed to know the meaning of a spell, just babble the words. Lynn considered letting the atlas go for him. “Okay. Get over here and control this book.”

“What?”

“Think of it as your practicum. How can you repair a book if you can’t calm it?”

His feet dragged, but he came. His hands hovered and he swallowed, then laid them on the gilt outline of the Parthenon decorating the atlas cover. Lynn lifted her hands a half-inch so he could feel the book strain upwards. He sucked in a harsh breath. She guessed it was the first time he’d touched a book alive with Magic.

“Books respect learning,” Lynn said. “Knowledge. Why do you think spells are called spells? Because spelling means understanding, whole and part, word for word, letter for letter. You yelled out words you don’t understand. For all you know that was a recipe for lamb stew.”

“Then it wouldn’t have done anything.”

“Oh, yes, it would have. Did I just say that books only respect certain kinds of learning? No, I did not. They’re not sentient, for God’s sake, not even as bright as pigeons. All they react to is that you know—or don’t know—what you’re talking about. And unlike people, books can recognize when you’re faking. So. You stirred this up with words you didn’t understand, in a difficult and obscure language. Now you have to calm it down. You need something at least as obscure as Aramaic, that you understand. A poem, a song, a speech from a play, anything you have memorized.”

“That’s not in Himmelberger. Or even Vanier.”

“It’s the Shorter version.” The book heaved up, and she leaned on it. “Like dogs. Show them you’re master, with knowledge. They’re creatures of words, so use words.” I sound like a preschool teacher. Use your words, Johnny.

“Do—do poems work better?” He flinched as the Everyman volumes fluttered overhead, but they were aimed back at the top of the cupboards.

“They work. Don’t know about better.” She guessed where he was going. “What kind of name is Hautala? Danish?”

“Finnish.” This time the pride didn’t irk her.

“Great! Did they make you learn the Kalevala?”

“My grandmother—” His words were cut off as the atlas shifted to one side, almost slipping free, while two of the little limp-calf editions flapped into his face. This time he didn’t lift a hand to brush them away. Instead he straightened his shoulders and lifted his head. The syllables marched out, shaped with authority: “Mieleni minun tekevi, avoini ajattelevi...”

He knew what he was saying. The atlas subsided, the energy whining through it settling to a contented hum. The Everyman volumes stopped nudging each other like a row of bored kids atop the cupboards. “...kalevalan kanhahilta.” The damaged books dropped lightly onto the sorting shelves. Not in order, Lynn saw. She’d have to sort them again.

Ken reached the end of a section and looked at her. The reflected light caught the wet gleam of his eyes and the dark threads of bloody paper-cuts. Lynn lifted her hands to show the book was secure. After a moment, he raised his. Ungloved, they were as badly scratched as his face.

“Congratulations,” she said. “You just worked Magic.”

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