Sorcery and Small Magics (The Wildersongs Trilogy)

by Maiga Doocy

Perhaps they were upset by the amount of their coin I’d managed to walk away with, or perhaps the celebratory winner’s song I’d played whilst perched on top of the bar had rubbed them the wrong way. Who’s to say?

Then he turned and stormed out of the room. Or at least, he did his best to storm. In reality he had to jerkily navigate around all the items scattered across the floor, which rather ruined the effect.

There is a particular thrill to exploring someone else’s home for the first time. It’s like peeling a curtain back from all your notions about who that person is, and instead seeing them as both who they are and who they want to be.

“Follow me,” Jayne said. “Watch where you step. Don’t touch anything without asking me first. And stay quiet.” Grimm looked at me. “We’re doomed.”

“I’m not in love with Grimm. I’d—I’d have noticed!” Sybilla’s eyebrows shot upward. “Oh, you really didn’t know. I thought you were being coy about the whole thing. Goodness, how delightful.”

Magic, like music, does not always need to be explained. It is enough that it exists.

“We didn’t argue, not really. Sybilla just has no sense of when to leave well enough alone.” Grimm shot me a sideways glance and said, in a flat sort of voice, “That must be very trying for you.”

“You could never be mysterious,” Grimm said. “Why not?” I said, offended by his decisiveness. “I’m rich, already considered strange by many, blindingly handsome, and I’m a sorcerer. All those things are perfectly mysterious.” “Mysterious people don’t list off the traits that make them mysterious.” I spluttered a little but had no response that didn’t further prove his point.

The feelings are just there.” They took up so much space inside of me that it was sometimes hard to find room for anything else. If I could have, I would have drawn them from my body, the same way Grimm had drawn silver rot from that field, and poured them into a stone or a piece of glass. Something I could pick up and hold when I had the strength, worrying away at the edges until they were worn down to something smooth and manageable.

“I hope someday to meet a version of Leovander Loveage who doesn’t believe everyone else’s well-being is dependent on what he denies himself.

To truly explain the spell we cast would be to explain both music and magic, and neither of those things can ever be fully understood. All I know is that there are some moments when the two are allowed to overlap, and that’s what happened for Grimm and me on that hill. I laid a tune before him and he followed. I scrived and he cast, but it happened all at once. Perfect harmony with only a monster there to witness it. Our captive audience.

“At least Mathias is dead too,” Grimm said, so unexpectedly that I couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re such a bastard. I’ve been trying to tell everyone that for years and they didn’t believe me, but you are. It’s actually delightful. Come on, now, let’s move just a little bit. No, don’t make that face at me. If we’re going to die, we might as well paint a fitting tableau, rather than sitting in this puddle. That’s it, slowly.”

Here is my bargain, I offered, speaking to the magic as though it might whisper something back into the unquiet of my own mind. I shall scrive a spell like no other, and you will use it to knit his flesh back together. To make whole what has been torn asunder. And in return, you can take what you like. I accept the cost, only give me this.