The secret backstory of magic in All the Birds in the Sky

Hey, I posted this video before, but I don’t think anybody
noticed, and it was before All the Birds
in the Sky was even published. This is a talk I gave back in 2013 where I
basically explain all about magic in All
the Birds in the Sky. This video includes HUGE spoilers for the book, but
also explains a TON of stuff that is never explained in the book at all.

Spoilers below…

This includes one of the coolest things I never really got
to spend a lot of time delving into: the backstory of Hortense Walker, who
changed magic forever. She was born a slave in Barbados in the 1820s, and
escaped using magic. She ran away and went to the Maze and studied Trickster
magic, and became one of the most powerful magicians of all time—maybe THE most
powerful.

Then a war happened between two factions of magic, and they
nearly tore the whole world apart. Except that Hortense Walker put a stop to
it, and convinced them that Healer magic and Trickster magic worked better if
you combined them. She helped the witches come up with the rule against
Aggrandizement, which prevents magicians from using their powers to reshape the
world too much.

I picture the Healers trying to appeal to Hortense’s desire
to right wrongs—the Healers were trying to stop the Industrial Revolution in
its tracks, and Hortense, more than anybody, ought to understand why great dehumanizing
institutions need to be brought down. But Hortense probably responded that the
idyllic, nature-oriented farm life that the Healers wanted to protect was the
same hell that she herself had escaped from. And maybe to fight against change
was to side with the old, old oppressors.

But did that mean that Hortense Walker was powerless to help
other people who had been born into slavery, or help to hasten the end of that
unthinkable, intrenched institution? Definitely not. I kind of imagine her outsmarting
absolutely everybody, including slave-owners and her fellow witches, for the
greater good. It’s a story that there was no room for in All the Birds in the Sky, but I hope I get to tell more of it one
day.

(I should add that this backstory, like a lot of stuff that
didn’t make it into the final book, was stuff that I didn’t work out the kinks
of all the way. I’m very aware that the history of slavery is a complex and
highly charged subject, and if I ever chose to write the Hortense Walker story
in an actual published book, I would do my homework and also talk to lots of
people.)