First Witch's Tale

“There is one other thing you need to understand,” Master Rupertson told me bluntly. “You will not receive any special treatment. You will be treated the same as any other student, and held to the same standards. You will perform chores to help the community, you will be expected to provide assistance to your masters at all hours, and you will be whipped if you misbehave or break the rules. There will be no consideration given to your sex, no suggestion that you are somehow exempt from student duties and obligations. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Master,” I said. I had worked in the fields alongside the boys. I had done my fair share of mischief before my body had started to blossom and the boys had started to look at me with interest. I hadn’t understood, at the time, why I and my sisters had to sleep apart from the boys, sleeping in a cage rather than a room. It had only been a couple of years ago that I had come to understand why. “I don’t expect any special treatment.”

Master Rupertson looked unimpressed, then launched into a long lecture punctuated by demonstrations of magic spells. It managed, somehow, to be both simple and complex. The spells he showed me, as I understood it, were the building blocks of other spells, together piece by piece to cast a much more complex piece of magic. I couldn’t help thinking of it as detailed instructions, the sort of thing a farmer might give a young man who didn’t have much between his ears. I knew a couple of boys who weren’t stupid, not precisely, but were slow and prone to misunderstanding instructions if they weren’t very clear. The magic, Master Rupertson explained, was very prone to going in directions the caster didn’t expect. It was vitally important to ensure the power was channelled in the right direction.

“Like a river,” I said. “We don’t want it to break its banks.”

“Crude, but effectively accurate,” Master Rupertson told me. A river bursting its banks can be extremely dangerous for the surrounding landscape. Your magic bursting free can be extremely dangerous for everyone around you.

He gave me no rest as he drilled me in channelling my magic, teaching me exercises to direct the power in the right direction. It wasn’t just direction that was important, I discovered; it was controlling precisely how much power I summoned and directed, using no more than the bare minimum required to work the spell. It was not remotely easy. I could calculate how much magic I needed for a single spell, or a single building block, but working out how much was required for a spell built out of building blocks was much harder. My stomach growled angrily as my latest spell fell apart, the magic shattering into fragments of raw power that vanished into the ether. I hadn’t felt so bad during harvest, when everyone - from the youngest to the oldest - worked from dawn till dusk.

“You will have plenty of time to practice,” Master Rupertson told me. He made a gesture with one hand. I sensed the spell, but it was gone before I had a chance to work out what it did. “You’ll be included in the basic classes for spellcasting, reading and writing, and a number of other arts. You are not expected to know everything from the start, but your teachers will not be impressed if you do not make progress. If you don’t understand what you’re being told, ask.”

Someone knocked on the door, hard, and then opened it. I looked up to see a young man into the room. He looked … odd. He had short blond hair, blue eyes and an unusually pale face struck me as unnatural. It took me a moment to realise there were no pockmarks, no traces of a life spent in the fields or learning a trade. His outfit was nothing more than a shirt and trousers, but they were decidedly new. My clothes were ancient, patched up and passed down so often it was hard to determine if there was anything of the original outfit still there. I couldn’t help thinking he looked a little unhealthy. His appearance certainly didn’t suggest a man used to manual labour.

“Cemburu,” Master Rupertson said. “This is Janis, our new student. Take her to the dining hall and make sure she eats, then show her back to her room.”

Cemburu stared at me. I had had young men look at me with interest, and older folk eyeing me and then muttering about just what my mother might have been doing nine months before I was born, but it was the first time anyone had looked at me as if I were something they had scraped off their shoe. His eyes swept over my face and dropped to my chest, then rose again. I felt a twinge of discomfort. There was nothing unnatural in men being interested in women - like all farmers, I had known the facts of life from a very early age - but this felt different. It felt wrong.

“This way,” Cemburu said. He had a snooty voice that grated on me. The headman’s wife had put on a similar tone, years ago, only to discard it when everyone laughed at her. I couldn’t help thinking Cemburu took it seriously. “Come with me.”