Making Magic

I remember it like it was yesterday even though of course, it happened a long time ago.

I was just a boy, scared and stressed by the worries of my people, the raging river and the oncoming winter.

Our village is set at the foot of a great forest, teeming with all the dark and sharp edges of magic. It looms over us, the tall trees always still, and always powerful. The only connection that our village has to the other towns of the area, is a narrow bridge over the deep and wide river.

We call the river our python.

Despite its size, it can sneak up on you and ensnare you in with its terrifying strength, constricting the air out of your lungs and carrying your body away with its strong tide.

Up until it happened, I remember the python being quite still and gentle.

Careless children would fall in, and it would let them walk out easily. Their parents would turn white with fear, rigid and terrified of the sleeping beast; when they were young, careless children died instantly in its iron jaws.

But for almost all of my childhood, the python slept.

I can’t recall ever seeing its terrible nature when I was a child, not even after storms.

But despite the treacherous setting of our village, we had one thing that nowhere else had; not even in the great cities.

We had a magic girl.

I remember gazing at her when I was a boy, her smooth and fair skin, glowing with the magic of the forest and river. Her hair was the brightest red, and her eyes the brightest green. She had the cleverest mind of anyone I had ever seen, and she had the kindest heart.

She was brave too. Brave beyond measure.

She made our village special like nowhere else was or ever will be again, if you ask me. A magic girl is born once every few hundred years, and they always live to accomplish amazing things. The last girl lived over two hundred years ago, and healed wounds with her tears, and cured diseases with aromatic potions.

It’s said that magic girls are the only gifts given to us by the great deities; sent to us like shooting stars, burning through the darkness. That’s what our girl was like: a bright star in a sky surrounded by nothingness.

“Where're yuh off to then lad?”, Ivar the blacksmith yells at me from his shop.

“Jus down to the python Ivar! I’ll be along shortly, I promise”

I’ve been training under Ivar for three years now, since I was 16. He’s a good master, if a bit short tempered at times.

“No amount ta flowers gonna wake ‘er up ya know”, he grumbles at me as I walk by.

I grasp the snow drops clasped in my right hand.

No harm in trying, right?

The python’s long and silent form reveals itself to me as I make my way down the village path.

Did I mention that its frozen?

Well, it is. That’s what she did for us eight years ago, when the python’s suspicious benevolence suddenly changed.

There was a great rumble beneath the earth, deeper than a dragon’s growl. Trees toppled, huts collapsed, and the python awoke with a vengeance.

Its foaming jaws snapped at our feet when we crossed the bridge, until even that was far too dangerous. We were marooned here; no way of trading with other villages, no way of earning coin, and no way of feeding all of us.

The python violently broke its banks, taking huts, livestock, and friends with it.

Its fury was unlike anything I ever saw. To this day, in the depths of the night, the sound of its roaring still echoes round my head.

I carefully edge out onto the ice, feeling its deathly cold even through my boots.

I know all the right places to step by now, but I know better than to be careless. My feet slide a little on a particularly slippery spot, but I don’t fall, so I keep on shifting forward.

In the middle of the python there’s a strange looking little pond. It’s like a circle of rock raised up above the rest of the water, the space inside shielded from the rivers strong currents.

I never knew, but I found out on that day that it’s the magic centre of the river; the snake’s heart. It’s not too much further ahead, now completely enclosed in white and blue ice.

My mother told me that when she was young, boys used to dare each other to jump off the bridge and into the snake’s heart.

Old Ivar claims that he did it, but I don’t believe him.

The snake’s heart lies just ahead of me, covered in the thickest, coldest ice. It is always here that my heart jumps to my throat, hoping beyond hope. But when I get close enough to see inside the frozen pool, my heart sinks again, shrouding itself in ice.

There she is, lying underneath the thick frozen surface. Her eyes are closed, and her brilliant red hair is splayed out around her face like a halo.

This is the bravery that she gave us eight years ago. I remember watching her wading into the fierce tide, steady and careful. She must have used some sort of magic to stay above the python’s water, and I was in awe. Watching this girl battle the tides and win, watching her push her way through to the centre of its cold heart.

I loved her of course.

Still do.

But the catch of sending your magic girl into the depths of a monster’s heart?

You don’t get her back.

When she reached the heart, she submerged herself in it, and the python was subdued and froze over almost instantly. It was so fast; it must have happened in less than a second. That’s magic for you though- blink and you’ve missed it. I crouch around the heart, putting my hand on the ice.

She must be so cold in there.

I lay the bunch of snow drops down on the ice, condensation dripping down onto the slick frosted surface. I take one last look at her peaceful face and her limbs gracefully splayed in the frozen water.

‘Till tomorrow then’ I murmur, sniffing a little in the frigid cold.

I pushed myself up carefully and turned to walk away, thoughts going towards the blacksmith shop and my most likely incensed master. I let out a heavy sigh and tried to quicken my shuffling pace.

It was then, that I heard the most awful, terrible noise behind me. It’s the one noise you never want to hear when you’re walking on ice; a deep and echoing crack. My heart jumped to my throat and I froze instantly, trying to distribute my weight evenly on my feet. My mind was whirring with anxious thoughts; I get down and crawl, right? Or should I just run for it?

I turned around carefully to try and get a look at the break in the ice, because maybe it’s not too bad, right?

I glanced back uneasily to the snake’s heart to see something that I knew in an instant, would remain burned into my mind forever.

Our magic girl, Evelyn, rising out of the heart in a cloud of steam that curled upwards, mingling in the frigid air.

I stared with my mouth open, completely speechless, and she looked at me with those clear and beautiful eyes and smiled.

I shuffled over to her, almost expecting her dripping form to disappear before my eyes.

But she didn’t disappear.

“I know you”, she said with a quiet disbelief.

“You’ve grown” she added as an afterthought, her breath fogging in the air.

She smiles widely at me, and holds out the bunch of snowdrops that I left.

“I think you might have saved me” she says, her eyes the same kind and glowing green that I remember.

I take the snowdrops back from her with shaking hands.

It’s like seeing her for the first time all over again, and I can’t help the crooked smile that creeps across my face as I drown in her gaze.

“I spose so’, I say, completely dumbstruck.

I learnt then, that magic isn’t always as heavy handed as a spell. Sometimes it’s there lingering in the way someone looks at you. And sometimes, even someone as un-magical and normal as me, can make something amazing happen.

I did it today: I made magic.