The Memory Magician of Kestrel Keep

“I slip inside the grieving mother's mind,” I chant, circling a walnut-sized chunk of Amazonite over the weeping woman's forehead. “I quest within her depths until I find her demons of despair, and then unwind their greedy grip. Within this stone, I bind her source of pain. Her chakras are aligned.”

The woman's pupils shrink as if a sunbeam had suddenly hit her face. Her damp eyes each release one last tear. She gazes into distant nowhere as I work my magic.

As far as I know, there are no literal demons—or at least, none that interact with mortals on our plane of existence. I think chakras are real, because I’ve met other magicians who work with them. My incantations are an important component of my spells, the same way cocktails are an important component of card games. No one really needs them, but some people “need” them.

My current subject and her family need to hear my “magic” words. They need to smell diffused citrus oils and see my flowing black gown. They need to watch with baited breath as I perform an arcane ritual. The moment I stop satisfying the expectations of non-magicians is the moment they start looking for torches and pitchforks.

I draw the woman’s unwanted memories into the milky-teal stone. Tension immediately releases from her shoulders and around her eyes. Now, I must speak the most powerful magic word of all: her own name.

Her name. Her name is…

I’m drawing a blank.

I’m simply awful with names. I remember every stray eyebrow hair and every clogged pore on every face I encounter, but names?

My subject looks perfectly peaceful and content. The family who brought her to me stare intently. I keep my face as serene as I can while I meet each one’s gaze in turn. As far as they know, this is part of the spell.

My subject’s father stands with a straight back and weather-beaten gray hair. His wife, of an age with my subject, cries silently as she watches me. A child clings to her hand: my subject’s oldest, a girl about six years old. The sunburnt man with the clenched jaw is my subject’s husband.

I quietly tell them, “One by one, you must each say her name.” I nod to the husband to begin.

He swallows hard and says, “Bernice.”

Bernice! I knew it was Bernice. When they brought her in and introduced themselves, I thought it was cute that the old man, Bernard, had named his daughter Bernice.

“Bernice,” the little girl says.

“Bernice,” my subject’s young stepmother says.

“Bernice,” Bernard says.

I return my gaze to the woman’s face. “Bernice,” I say.

She blinks. Slowly, dreamily, her eyes meet mine.

I ask, “How do you feel?”

“Fine,” she says.

“Do you know where you are?”

“Kestrel Keep.”

She’s right. My tower is needlessly large and fortified, for the same reason I write silly incantations in iambic pentameter.

“Do you know what day it is?” I ask.

“Tues…” she blinks. “Wednesday.” As expected, her words remain airy and slow. “The second of February.”

Right again. I can cast spells on any day, but the spectacle packs a bigger punch for my subjects and audience on solstices, equinoxes, and the old Pagan holidays that mark the midpoints between the one and the other.

I gently turn my subject to face her family. I tell them, “It’s done. I transferred Bernice’s grief into my crystal, which I will keep safe in my vault. Will you have her pay with her own labor, or will one of you serve in her place?”

“I’ll stay,” Bernard volunteers. “My sailing days are over, anyway.”

“Very well,” I say. “You can say goodbye while I secure Bernice’s stone. Again, I’m so sorry for the loss of your other little one.” I nod respectfully.

My circular ritual room takes up the entire first basement level of my tower. The polished granite walls and white tile floor reflect the wall-mounted candelabras’ light. I keep the room empty so my customers can fill it up with their thoughts and feelings. Those who project hostility on me are usually intimidated in here. Others claim my ritual room is “surprisingly cozy” or “charged with mystical energy.” If I smile just right, they interpret it as a confirmation of their assumptions.

I walk towards the door to the next level down. As I insert the mundane key, I mutter, “Great oaken portal to my arcane stock, your mistress now commands you to unlock.” I wave a hand in a dramatic gesture and open the perfectly ordinary door.

Basement Level Two is my real library. The braziers are shielded in glass so I can have comfortable light with less risk of fire. I have a desk for research and composition. Usually, I prefer to sprawl out on the sofa or curl up in a cozy chair. Half the books down here describe real magical secrets that must be kept away from the general public. The other half are novels.

The showcase library on my third floor has novels, too. When a new-to-town midwife comes to me for a book about local herbs, or a traveling bard wants to brush up on this region's history, they can find the right information up there. They can also find any number of faerie court murder mysteries, werewolf/merfolk romances, or adventures where plucky maidens topple dystopian regimes. The novels in Basement Level Two only wound up locked away because I finished reading them on my favorite chair and didn’t bother bringing them back up.

Basement Level Three holds my vault. I grab a blank card and write the date, Bernice’s full name—which I remember now—and a brief description of her toddler’s drowning. Then I place the card and stone together on my latest Amazonite case.

Back in my secret library, I find the little girl walking boldly down the stairs. She glares at me. She has clearly outgrown the age of flailing tantrums. Is she old enough for a reasonable conversation? Am I going to have to dodge thrown books, or even tiny fists? At the very least, I know not to tell her how adorable her rage looks.

“Where’s my mom?” the girl demands.

Inwardly, I start swearing. I had warned Bernice and her husband that side effects can include confusion. Aloud, I tell the girl, “She didn’t come down here. If she wandered away from your family, she must have gone upstairs.”

“No,” the girl says firmly. She points up at the door to the ritual room. “That woman looks like my mom but she isn’t my mom.”

My heart breaks. I let the little girl see my eyebrows crease, my lip quiver. As gently as I can, I say, “Your mom did change. You’re very perceptive, to be able to tell that. Losing your little brother hurt her so much that she asked me to take her sadness away. I locked it up in a special stone for her.”

The girl presses her lips tightly together. Her glare loses a little intensity as she mulls over what I’ve told her. “You took something out of my mom’s head and put it in that greenish stone?”

“Yes.”

“What happens if someone picks up the stone and puts it in fire? Or they throw it really, really hard and it hits a metal thing and it…” She clasps her hands in front of her. She says, “Crack! Ch-sh-sh!” She separates her hands and wiggles her fingers.

“A normal fire wouldn’t hurt that kind of stone,” I tell her, “But if it broke, then the grief would escape. It would look for a person to go into. If your mom was nearby, it would probably want to crawl right back inside her.”

“The spell would be undone?” the girl asks.

“And your mom would go back to feeling all that hurt.”

The voices upstairs raise a frantic call. “Lily? Lily!”

“Coming!” the girl calls back in a sing-song. Her feet remain planted. She gives me a critical look.

The doorknob rattles. Someone knocks.

“How did you get through that door?” I ask the girl.

Her eyes flash wide with fright. “I hear my dad calling me.” She dashes up the stairs.

I follow. Back in my ritual room, I find Lily in Bernard’s arms. They talk with Lily’s father, who has an arm around the quiet, dreamy Bernice. Bernard's wife stands a bit to one side, looking on with a smile. I suppose she is enough a part of this family to feel its sorrows and joys, but not enough for them to remember to include her.

Mia. Her name is Mia.

I stand beside her. “I hope it isn’t too inconvenient for you to live separately from your husband for six months.”

“It’s a small price to pay for Bernice’s safety,” Mia says. “I won’t be too lonely. I’ll have Bernice, John, and Lily.”

“Lily likes you?” I ask.

“She’s wonderful,” Mia beams. “Even when she’s running circles around us and getting into mischief. Just wonderful.”

“Mischief?” I ask.

“Oh, nothing very naughty,” Mia asserts. “She never breaks anything. She’s just very clever. If there’s something Lily wants, there is no hiding spot or lock that can keep her from it. Last Lúnasa, she got into the pantry and ate four honeycakes before Bernice found her. And neither Bernice nor I had misplaced our keys!”

That sounds exactly like the kind of mischief a wise magician would keep far, far away from a locked vault and a secret library.

I step back to my door. The lock bears no scratches and fits as tightly as ever. If the girl had picked it with a hairpin or something, she had done so with practiced dexterity. I drop to one knee and press my palms to the wood on either side of the lock.

Depending on the power of the magician and the complexity of the magic, a spell can linger. If I used magic outside of my specialty—for example, to unlock my door—the spell would dissipate into the air like the smoke of a snuffed candle. An expert in portal magic could do it with as little trace as a single drop of tea in a bathtub of water.

Now, I focus on my lock. I can sense the remains of an amateur spell, like the scent of yeast clinging to fingers after rolling out dough for bread.

“I have an idea,” I say, loud enough to interrupt John and Bernard’s conversation. I stand.

They turn to me. Bernice rotates gently, overshooting my direction and staring somewhere to my left. Lily, still in her grandfather's arms, scowls at me.

I say, “If you agree, and if she wants: you can delay my repayment until Lily’s twelfth Summer Solstice. Then you can decide between one of the adults serving in my home for six months, as agreed; or.” I pause for dramatic effect. “Lily can be my apprentice.”

Only four summers pass, and one more Autumnal Equinox.

The clamor of the bell in my secret library tumbles down the stairs to my vault. I put the tigers eye I’d been checking back in its place and rush upwards. I toss my ledger in the direction of my desk and sprint upwards again. A jolt of magic opens the door to my ritual room before I can leap through.

One glance at my butler transforms my urgency into annoyance.

“What’s the emergency?” I snap.

“Pardon the interruption, Madam, but Bernice Bosun and her daughter are here to see you. “

I stare at Welkson. “It’s the fourth week of October.”

“Yes, Madam.”

“I’m in the middle of my annual inventory.”

“Yes, Madam.”

“Every year before the Samhain rush, I review every single spell in the vault. I cleanse the crystals whose subjects have passed beyond the veil. I dust and mop!”

Welkson has spent the last twenty years as one of my three permanent members of staff. They’re one of the few people in the world who knows what my vault looks like, and what I do inside it. They also know that I need to vent some frustration before I can face an interruption. They stand with perfect posture, their black suit and white gloves impeccable, their blue hair in its usual waist-long braid down their back. Welkson is the very vision of patience and professionalism.

I’m in loose linen trousers and a comfortable tunic. This is the one week a year I don’t have to impress customers with my Memory Magician of Kestrel Keep persona. I will always be available to help my community navigate a crisis. Otherwise, I am supposed to have seven days of privacy.

I say, more than ask, “Lily opened the gate.”

“And the front door, Madam. And the tin of biscuits I didn’t previously know you kept in the sidetable of your sitting room.”

“Watch out, Welkson. She’ll ferret out your secrets, too.”

“I wouldn’t dream of keeping secrets, Madam,” Welkson replies dryly. “Shall I let your callers know you need a moment?”

That’s my butler’s way of telling me that I look terrible. My clothes are wrinkled. I can feel dust clinging to my sweat-moistened face and arms. I can only imagine how much frizz escaped my hairpins.

I shake my head. “The baby magician is going to have to learn it all at some point, anyway.”

I walk up, and up again. Life in a looming stone tower certainly trains the heart, lungs, and thighs for frequent staircases.

The ground floor serves as a foyer. It connects directly to Kestrel Keep’s practical estate, where Hawkins rules over my kitchen and Smythe oversees the stables and landscaping. Tower Level One houses my sitting room. I chose the lacy curtains and watercolor landscapes carefully. I want the space to welcome all visitors while still garnering the respect of classist clients.

I find Bernice and Lily on the sofa. The former sits with a complacent, blank stare. The latter hums to herself while munching biscuits. Crumbs cover Lily’s frock, the cushion she sits on, and the carpet at her feet. The little trickster wears a large bow in her hair.

Instead of a proper hello, I say, “Oh, good. You’ve figured out how to weaponize cuteness.”

Lily puts down the biscuit tin and jumps to her feet. Bernice slowly rises to greet me. The mother curtseys. The daughter pouts and looks at me with wide, limpid eyes.

“I’m sorry I had a biscuit without permission,” Lily says. She curtseys. “I was so hungry, and I didn’t know when you’d be available to see us.”

“Never steal what you can get with manners,” I chide. I turn my attention to the mother. “Good afternoon, Bernice. I’m pleased to see you. Please, have a seat.”

Bernice gracefully slides back onto the sofa. Lily dusts off her dress and the cushion before sitting, leaving a larger pile of crumbs on the carpet. I take a chair facing them.

I ask, “What can I do for you?”

I wait a moment. Lily gently touches her mother’s shoulder and says, “Go on, Mom. Just tell her how you feel.”

Bernice’s gaze wanders a little, then finds me. She speaks slowly, with very little inflection. “I feel like fog,” she says. “I’m drifting. I know what happens around me, but…” She places a palm over her heart. “I don’t… feel?” Her brow furrows, ever so slightly. “I do feel. I…”

I offer, “It’s like observing your own emotions through a spyglass. They’re right there, and also very far away.”

“Yes,” Bernice says.

Lily pulls a parchment from her mother’s pocket and unfolds it. I recognize my standard consent form. The girl says, “According to your paperwork, emotional detachment is a common side effect of your memory magic.”

Bernice shakes her head. “Not memory. I didn't forget anything that happened.”

“You forgot your grief,” I say. “You said it was eating you alive. You said that if it didn’t disappear, then your family would lose you, too.”

“Yes.” Bernice nods. “They lost me. I lost me.” She loses her focus.

Lily’s sharp eyes take in my disarray. “You’re dirty.”

“Magic is hard work.”

She scoffs.

“We don’t get anything for nothing,” I tell her. “If a spell feels easy now, then the difficulty comes when you try to stave off the worst of its consequences.”

She instinctively looks at her mother. “Like with her?”

“Go on,” I say.

“It looked so easy to pluck out Mom’s sadness. But she doesn’t sing anymore. She doesn’t play with me or my baby auntie. She just works and sleeps and nothing else.”

Bernice tunes back in to the conversation. She tells me, “Break it.”

“No,” I say. “Not he—”

Lily leaps to her feet again and gives me her best gorgon-glare. “Yes! If you don’t break Mom’s crystal, I will. You can’t keep me out of your vault. No door can stop me.” She marches towards the downward stairs.

I snatch away Lily’s memory of how to walk down stairs. Instead of reaching for a stone to store it in, I simply hold it between thumb and forefinger—one tiny wisp, delicate as spider silk, bright and silver as the moon.

Lily gasps and stops moving, just one step away from the staircase. She drops to her hands and knees and slides her hand over the hardwood floor. Her fingers tremble as they pass over the first downward drop.

She sits back on her feet and looks at me. I see anger and awe on her cherubic face.

“I used to struggle with impatience, too,” I tell her. “All magical children do. When you can instantly gratify childish desires like sweets and toys, it’s hard to learn how to wait for anything. But it’s necessary.”

She looks at Bernice, who still sits in calm silence.

Lily asks, “What do I have to wait for?”

I say, “At the moment, you have to wait for me to finish my sentence.”

She pouts. She crosses her arms. She looks away. She forces herself to wait.

I say, “I was saying: I won’t break Bernice’s stone here. She deserves better than that. You will take the stone with you. Bring your mom home. Wash her bedding and her favorite nightclothes. Prepare her favorite stew. Tidy her chamber. Have her bathe.

“When Bernice is surrounded by cleanliness and comfort, you may break the stone.

“Be prepared for weeping. Be prepared to feel helpless and impatient while all you can do is sit beside her pain. Be prepared to face your own grief again, while she processes hers. Be prepared for months, or even years, of her recovery.”

Lily is hanging on my every word. “Will Mom ever be the same again?”

“No, and yes,” I say. “There is no way to undo something that has been done. But she will heal. She will sing again, even if some of the songs are different. She will engage with you and your baby auntie. She will figure out how to do more than work and sleep.”

“Break it,” Bernice repeats, nodding to herself.

I return Lily’s memory about stairs. She stands. We have Bernice wait in the foyer. I allow the girl to follow me down.

In the ritual room, she says, “I thought this space was bigger.”

“Well, you were smaller then,” I remind her.

“Oh, right.”

I don’t bother with the couplet or dramatic gesture. I simply unlock the door to my secret library and let Lily follow me down.

She pauses to take in the books on my desk. She reads their titles aloud: “The Weatherwax Method of Managing Expectations… Emotional Resonance of Common Crystalline Structures… Nesta and her Illyrian Mate…”

“One more flight,” I tell her. “You’re the fifth person still living to see inside my vault.”

Lily’s gait changes when I say this. The heedless tromp of a child fades into the gentle step of someone visiting a cathedral. “It’s like another library, with stones instead of books,” she says, gazing reverently at my shelves.

“That’s exactly what it is,” I tell her. “Instead of ink on paper, I store memories in crystals. Except, any literate person can copy a book. These are all unique.” I gesture at a section of shelves where each stone has marbled stripes of white and hunter green. “Seraphinite for spiritual doubts and compulsions that clients perceive as sinful.” Pearly white stones with clear streaks: “Petalite for recurring nightmares.” Pink stones: “Rose quartz for heartbreak.” I sweep my hand, encompassing the rest of the vault. “And so on.”

Lily approaches the only shelf I have of shiny black stones. She reaches for one, but pauses before she touches it. She gives me a wary look, asking for permission with her eyes. I nod. She brushes a stone with the tips of her fingers. “It’s so smooth.”

“Black obsidian for addiction,” I say.

She suddenly jerks back. “These aren’t just… thoughts,” she says. “They’re pain.” Now her facial expression accuses and fears me. “These are all the things that hurt people the most, and you collect them.”

“If enough people phrase it like that, a frightened mob might try to burn me at a stake,” I say.

“And when you take this stuff from people, you leave them partially dead in the brain. Like my mom.”

I say, “It’s more like, trauma kills a part of a person. What remains is no less them. It’s just them, less that part.”

Lily shakes her head. I don’t think she understands.

“Everyone has bad experiences sometimes,” I go on. “We make space within ourselves for the newly understood horrors of existence. Sometimes, one trauma is so terrible, or a lot of terrible events and feelings pile up so much, that a person can’t cope with it. Something shatters in them. Maybe it’s a core belief they held. Maybe it’s their concept of their future, or even their sense of self.”

Lily’s scowling. She is a precocious child, but I don’t know if I can really explain my work to her in a way she’ll appreciate.

I try, “Every single stone in my vault represents a person who asked for my help, and who went away with less pain than they brought in.”

I’ve given Lily a lot to think about. She should have some time to consider.

I walk over to the shelves of pale blueish-green stones: Amazonite for unexpected death. I’d already finished my inventory of these twelve cases. In the past year, only two of the subjects had passed away: a man whose first bride had died in childbirth five decades ago, and a woman who lost seven young grandchildren to a single season’s influenza the same year I’d met Bernice.

On one hand, these shelves represent a thousand people living with less grief because I’ve helped them. On the other, my Amazonite stones each represent at least one victim of sudden fatality.

I bring Bernice’s stone to Lily. The girl sits on the lowest step, studying my vault. She accepts the crystal, but doesn’t move. “Is this what you’re going to make me do, when I’m your apprentice?”

“No,” I say. I sit on the floor, close enough for her to notice that her head is currently higher than mine. I remember enjoying that kind of inversion when I was a child. “Firstly, I don’t expect your interests and inherent talents to be the same as mine. My mentor, Trenthony, is the transformation magician of Piersanth Chasm. His current student, Lendave, can control the weather. Secondly, you don’t have to be my apprentice.”

Lily startles at this statement.

“I mean,” I say, “I strongly recommend you have a mentor. Untrained magicians tend to have very short lifespans. But I’m not your only choice. If you go somewhere else, Bernard will peel potatoes for my cook for a few months, and that will be that.”

“I’ll be your apprentice,” she says. “Do I have to wait until I’m twelve years old?”

Technically, the answer is no. Twelve is the average age for young magicians’ powers to quicken. That means that most apprenticeships start between the ages of ten and fourteen, but there is no required minimum or maximum.

However, Bernice is about to experience a magically delayed hell. Healthy interpersonal relationships are the best balm for trauma, so her daughter’s presence will be a boon to her. Witnessing and taking part in that process will provide Lily an important lesson that my words could never achieve.

I say, “Let’s give it at least one more year.”

Lily’s fingers close around the Amazonite stone. She nods solemnly. The bow in her hair flops comically.

I see Lily and Bernice off. I ask Hawkins to make a batch of his sweet muffins to send to the Bosun house. Then I finally resume my inventory.