Unnatural Magic

by C.M. Waggoner

It was a confoundedly uncomfortable thing to be in love.

have a friend who always says that a truly accomplished cook can make a fine meal out of anything that can be digested and can’t fire a gun in self-defense.

She shrugged. “They’ll be glad you’re here. Think you’re my clan-vahn.” “What does that mean, exactly?” She was a little embarrassed to say it. Wasn’t like they’d talked about this before. “Bit like my wife.” “Husband,” he said, and blushed. “No, wife,” she said. “Reigs take care of vahns they’ve taken to clan. That’s the point. Closer to . . . householded, I guess. And the reig’s the householder.”

“Could you tell me what it means?” She shrugged, relieved. “I owe you protection. Keep you clothed and fed. Won’t let anyone hurt you. Anyone touches you or bothers you, it’s my job to make it right.” “Would you kill them?” She took a second to think about that. She wasn’t a murderer, but . . . “If they needed it, and you wanted me to.” Tsira could swear he smiled a little. “And what do you get in return?” She just stared at him and grinned. He swallowed. “Ah.”

She laughed. “Cheesemaking, gardening, sewing, teaching children after they’re weaned. Vahn and reig are just—jobs, really.” It was hard to explain. Men and women hadn’t made any damn sense to her when she’d first heard it explained, either. Illogical. Messy. Vahn and reig were about what people did, not about what they looked like before they even knew their own grandmothers.

“You’re a vahn if you do a vahn’s work, a reig if you do a reig’s. Or you can just refuse declaring, if you want: some people do that. If you’re my vahn, you work in my name.”

a reig is not a woman or man, but a reig. A vahn is not a man or woman, but simply a vahn. To say that a reig is the troll version of a human woman is as absurd a folly as to claim that a hedgehog is the rapid version of a pincushion.

She was in the habit of apologizing for making faces that men thought weren’t very pretty. It occurred to her, very briefly, that she resented being made to think about her face when she was trying to focus on the contents of her mind.

Loga shrugged expansively. “If believing in the rights of ladies to publicly engage in serious scholarship and of gentlemen to publicly wear a delicious magenta taffeta in the summer makes me a radical, then I can only embrace the label.”

“I never made the claim, darling, though you are quite as pretty as any other fresh-faced seventeen-year-old girl. I said that you were attractive, which is something different entirely. Pretty is what one calls a pair of silk slippers or a potted orange tree. It loses its interest. No one is pretty after one has stared at them for fifteen years over the breakfast table. Attractiveness is a function of personality. Prettiness is lent to you by youth; attractiveness is purchased with experience.”

She smiled. “Those awful old owls at Weltsir would have to give me a prize for research.” “The Ismael Prize, I should think,” Loga said. “And one for me as well, as your coauthor. How perfectly charming. I haven’t won a major award in years. One does like to have something to do when one is convalescing, don’t you think?” “My auntie used to knit hats for babies,” Onna said. “I’m sure that performing original scientific research is almost as soothing for invalids. Should we start after lunch?”