Gunn rests his hands on the slab of stone as we form a semicircle around him. “This experiment of mine might be far different than some of you were expecting,” he says. “Truth is, I’m looking for a team, a team only as strong as its weakest member. Of course I’m looking for sorcerers who have mastered their special talents, along with the art of transference, of making shine.” He pauses, his eyes scanning the crowd. “But I also want sorcerers who are going to submit fully to my vision. What I’ve come to believe is the basest of truth about magic: that it is a living thing.” His words bring me right back to the cabin, to Mama’s words of warning, to the basest truth that I too know about magic, despite everything that I don’t.
“Magic only gets stronger as it makes connections,” Gunn continues. “It wants to form ties, to build and improve upon itself. But that’s not something that this country understands or that many even remember, considering America’s longtime distrust of sorcery. In fact, you all are living proof that some of this country’s most powerful families have insisted on sorcering in their own silos in secret and don’t accept this basic truth.” Gunn gazes out at the crowd, like a preacher at his pulpit. “As always, I think actions speak louder than words. If you’ll entertain a demonstration.” He pauses. “Will the two strongest sorcerers please step forward?”
No one moves. Eyes begin to turn on one another.
Gunn clears his throat. “Come now, the two strongest in the lot,” he says, louder. “Whose magic is so astounding that I have to witness it today? Here’s your chance to stand out from the crowd.”
I share a look with Grace. I’m more likely to go running and screaming for the nearest bus than I am to raise my hand right now, but if I was crazy enough to try it, Grace’s small, solemn head shake tells me NO. I look around, sure as hell that that jerk-off Stock is going to step forward, but two other men beat him to it.
“Mark Saunders, from Blue Ridge,” a large, middle-aged man says as he steps forward. “I believe I can out-trick and outperform any sorcerer in this lot, Mr. Gunn.”
“Beg to differ,” says someone else behind him. “Peter Curtin, from Charlotte. No one can rival my magic manipulations, Mr. Gunn. And my shine is like something you can’t believe.”
“Thank you, Mark, Peter.” Gunn extends his hand, gesturing to the wide, flat stretch of clearing in front of the trees, on the left side of our crowd. “Why don’t we begin?”
Mark and Peter glance at each other, once, before they follow Gunn to their makeshift performance stage.
“What do you think they’re going to do?” I whisper to Grace, as Gunn guides Mark and Peter to either side of the long stretch of grass, so now they’re standing face-to-face, about fifteen feet apart, like they’re about to begin a magic duel.
Grace whispers back slowly, “Show Gunn what he wants to see.”
Mark begins. He stretches his arms out wide, stage-whispers the words of power, “Grow. Bloom,” and almost immediately, the grass underneath him begins to rumble. Out of the shifting green blanket, a tangle of roots emerges, like a monster’s hands pushing out from the ground. As the crowd gasps, the thick roots fold open, grow longer, and wider, and then the center root erupts skyward, twists into a trunk, thick and textured and now twenty feet high. It throws a long shadow over our crowd, before it splits into limbs that race to fill out the tree. The limbs divide, splinter into branches, which bloom into a tapestry of leaves.
Uncle Jed stopped sorcering manipulations around the time he lost himself to shine, but I remember this same awed feeling creeping over me and settling in, as I watched him conjure a lemon tree or shady oak in our yard. Creating something real from nothing, or protecting something with magic, or linking and binding things that have no business being linked: pure magic might only last a day, but its hold on you lasts far longer.
But before I can fully appreciate the tree, a blinding, white-hot blast of lightning bursts right down its trunk, splitting it open with a monstrous gash.
I whip around to find Peter—the lightning manipulation must have been his. I keep watching as he waves his hands forward like a conductor, and the lightning bursts into flames, red-hot orange waves that lap at the base of the tree, then climb onto its trunk, jump to its branches—
Mark returns. He throws his arms up to the heavens, commands, “Fall and freeze,” and a strong burst of wind comes shrieking around the charred tree branches, blowing the orange and red flames into a thick wall of gray smoke. Snow begins to fall, not a natural flurry, but an all-out, otherworldly blizzard, buckets of white clumpy snowballs caking the tree, burying it, snuffing the fire right out—
“Rise and heat,” Peter commands, and the sky erupts into a near-blinding brilliance over the clearing, as a gold, electrifying, magic-made sun takes shape. It sears the snow, and the large clumps of frozen ice that bury the remains of the tree and the clearing around it melt in an instant, trickle and run fast into the clearing grass.
“Fall and freeze,” Mark utters, and the snow begins hammering down again—
“Rise and heat,” Peter orders, and their stage begins to simmer once more under his magic, searing sunshine—
“Fall and freeze!”