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‘You’ll love the Spirit’s Eve maze, Fern,’ Abby said, ‘It’s so freaky.’
‘Yeah. Every year they go even more crazy with it,’ Sam agreed, ‘Last time, me and Seb got lost in there for like, two hours. Remember that, dude? You were convinced we were gonna starve to death in there.’
‘I wasn’t convinced we were going to starve to death,’ Sebastian replied, sighing, ‘I was pissed because I was out of cigarettes.’
‘Oh, that sounds more like it,’ Fern said.
‘I’m excited,’ Briar said, gripping Sebastian’s arm between his hands, ‘I didn’t realise Rasmodious was in charge of the festival decorations. I’m so looking forward to seeing some of his work up close.’
Sebastian glanced at him, half-smiling.
He and Briar had been dating for like. A week and a half at this point, and Sebastian still had absolutely no idea what to do with it. It wasn’t like anything had palpably changed – the amount of times they’d kissed remained in the single figures, and they hadn’t gone further than that. Still, doing a town festival as a couple, that felt...very official, somehow. He’d never done that before.
‘I thought you knew the Wizard,’ Abby asked, raising an eyebrow, ‘Can’t you see his work any time?’
Fern sighed, twisting a lock of curly pink hair around her finger.
‘He’s secretive, ol’ Raz. Especially around me,’ she said, ‘Not comfortable with girls with brightly coloured hair.’
‘…How come?’ Abby asked.
‘Oh, oh! Look! Skeletons!’ Briar said very loudly and suddenly, dragging Sebastian along for a closer look at the cage. There were about four inside, big creepy things marching in restless circles, making scraping and rattling noises as they did. Sebastian felt himself grip Briar’s arm a bit more tightly.
‘Lemme know if this is too creepy for you, okay?’ Sebastian said quietly, ‘I know this isn’t your thing.’
‘Aw, thanks,’ Briar said, in a weird tone, but then pecked him on the lips before Sebastian could even think about it for a second too long. He forgot about it instantly.
‘Hey, Seb, heads up,’ Fern interrupted, ‘Robin is literally just there, so uh – unless you want your parents knowing about this whole thing – ‘ (she gestured to the pair of them) ‘- keep the PDA for inside the maze.’
‘Oh, thanks Fern,’ Sebastian said, sighing, ‘I’m so not ready to deal with them.’
‘They love me,’ Briar preened.
‘That’s the problem. They’ll be so happy they’ll be insufferable,’ he replied glumly. Briar laughed, squeezing his arm again.
The plates of food were tempting, but the group decided they’d way rather work up an appetite being scared first. Sebastian was always amazed by how large the hedges were, and how dark the maze was. It was hard to believe that old wizard set this all up while everyone was in bed. Maybe he was the real deal – as little as Sebastian understood why a real, powerful wizard would set up shop in the valley.
‘Are you guys ready for this?’ Abigail said, ‘Plan if we get separated is same as normal – meet around Sam.’
‘Hey,’ Sam said, with little heat.
‘Sorry, bud. You’re the only tall one, so you’re easiest to spot,’ Fern said, patting his arm, ‘Are we sure I don’t need my sword?’
‘I’m extremely sure, Fern,’ Briar said, glancing again at the sword strapped to her back. She pulled a face.
‘Mmmm…Imma keep hold of it anyway,’ she said, ignoring Briar’s cry of ‘Well why did you ask!’.
‘Let’s just get moving, please?’ Sebastian said, sighing. Ever since last year’s fiasco, he wasn’t a huge fan of the maze. If Briar wasn’t so into seeing his wizard friend’s work, he’d probably just sit trying to sketch the skeletons outside.
‘Okay, on my count!’ Abby said, ‘One, two –‘
On a far-too-loud ‘THREE’, the five of them took their first step into the maze (Sebastian practically dragged along).
An arm smashed up through the earth, groping and flailing at them. Abby shrieked, and Sam let out a noise like a startled Great Dane. Fern had her sword in her hands within seconds, and Sebastian put an arm out, almost knocking Briar backwards.
‘Oh, fantastic!´ Briar said, clapping his hands together and staring at the groping arm as though it were the most delightful thing he’d ever seen in his life.
The arm was rotting – blue skin, like something submerged in water and swollen, with filthy nails they were bloody at the edges and jagged at the tip. Sebastian was certain that it was trying to grab him or Briar, in particular.
‘H-holy crap,’ Fern said, laughing shakily, ‘You guys weren’t kidding.’
Briar crouched down. Sebastian grabbed his shoulder.
‘Uh…maybe we shouldn’t touch it,’ he said, feeling a little faint.
‘Hm? Why not? It’s totally harmless,’ he replied.
‘It’s a human arm!’ Abby squeaked, her previous bravado evaporating entirely. Briar smiled up at them, adjusting his glasses.
‘No, it isn’t,’ he said, and stood, ‘It’s an illusion. Look at it carefully.’
‘I don’t wanna…’ Sam mumbled. Sebastian had to admit, he didn’t really want to look at it very closely. Just being near it made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
‘No like – have you ever done one of this magic eye paintings?’ Briar continued, hand movements becoming more animated as he got more excited, ‘It’s sort of like that. You need to, like, cross your eyes almost and try to see it in a different way.’
‘Is this a magic thing?’ Sebastian asked cautiously. Briar smiled, clearly getting the gist.
‘Yeah, but you don’t need to have magical heritage to do this,’ he said with a wave of his hand, ‘Just, uh, look at it.’
Sebastian gave it a go, squinting and crossing and unfocusing his eyes. For a long time, he was convinced that he didn’t have whatever trick Briar was talking about, but then he caught a glance of it –
‘Oh, oh, I see it!’ Abby blurted out, and then looked down, ‘Aw…it’s back to being creepy again. But I saw it – it looked like one of those cheesy Spirits Eve decoration. Like, the kind you put in your yard.’
Sebastian could see what she meant. If he focused on individual parts at a time, he could see it. Watch the groping, seemingly mindful and malicious, and he could see a pattern, the kind a mechanical toy might repeat. The skin wasn’t bloated, with popping blood vessels – it was plain, smooth blue plastic. Even where it was coming out of the group, Sebastian could look carefully and see the stake keeping it held into the ground.
Briar clapped again, laughing.
‘Yes, exactly! It’s really great work!’
‘So the wizard bought a tonne of crappy Spirits Eve decorations and then transformed them into actual creepy stuff?’ Sam said, scratching his head.
‘No, no. It’s not…um…’ Briar said, ‘Listen, you guys know how magic works, right?’
‘Sure. Say magic words or make a potion and weird crap happens,’ Abby replied. Fern laughed.
‘No, no, it’s – um!’ he said, and grinned, ‘Okay, so you know how the whole world can be broken down into numbers? Magic is actually about manipulation of those numbers and –‘
‘Oh, no, no, no, not a Briar maths hour,’ Fern groaned.
‘It’s not complicated, I promise!’ Briar said, holding his hands up.
‘Yeah, I wanna hear,’
‘Right. So. Well, magic is about manipulating numbers, right? So if you wanted to change a red flower into a blue flower, say, you’d have to know what number represents blue and what represents red in this particular area, and then how to access those numbers and change them,’ Briar continued.
‘Like programming,’ Sebastian noted, absentmindedly. Briar bounced on his heels.
‘Yes, yes, exactly!’
‘Well, that sounds kind of easy,’ he replied, sort of disappointed. He always figured was magic was a bit more…exciting, than his job. Briar shook his head furiously.
‘No, it’s not. See, all of the variables in any given area are really intricately connected to each other. Even just changing the colour of something can cause massive consequences,’ he said, ‘Let’s say you change the number that means red into the number that means blue. Suddenly every single calculation around that flower is wrong. You’d have to change a lot of other things to make sure it’s table. Like, as in to make sure it keeps producing pollen, its roots keep working, photosynthesis keeps working. But then you have to change these things, so they have impact on other things – suddenly, your root system is choking out other things in the area, or the pollen is causing allergic reactions in people, or people who try to walk through the red flowers end up frozen in place. Unless you’re very careful, very precise, and really, really understand the maths of the area, transforming anything with magic is going to cause problems.’
Sebastian nodded slowly, mostly getting it. Briar talked really fast when he got started on something like this. It was way cuter than Sebastian wanted to admit.
‘This is giving me a headache,’ Abby complained, ‘So everything is maths and we can change the maths to change things but this usually causes a lot of problems so we probably shouldn’t?’
‘I mean, basically!’
‘So, what’s the Wizard done instead?’ Sam asked. Briar grinned.
‘Well…okay, are any of you familiar with Bayesian brain theory?’
‘Okay! That’s enough!’ Fern said, seizing Abby by the arm, ‘C’mon, Abby, let’s solve this maze already.’
‘Aw, c’mon, guys –‘
‘Hey, look, there’s Penny!’ Sam said, suddenly turning, ‘See you later!’
Briar huffed, folding his arms.
‘Oh, sure, everyone thinks magic is cool until it gets to the actual interesting bits.’
‘I’m following it. Mostly,’ Sebastian said, shrugging, ‘Keep going.’
Briar’s face brightened.
‘Well…basically it’s the idea that perception operates similarly to Bayesian statistics,’ he said, ‘So, we don’t really see things directly, most of the time. We get a little input, but mostly we just build ideas of what things look or sound like in our head based on what we already know. So we make a bunch of predictions about the world based on our internal priors, then we just sort of use actual external input to check it. I mean. That’s it really simplistically, I’m not sure I’m explaining this brilliantly…’
‘No, I think I get it,’ he said, and it was only half an exaggeration, ‘What’s this got to do with magic, though?’
‘Well…basically, we don’t change the mathematics of the flower itself, we change the mathematics it triggers in other people,’ he said, ‘Our minds are way more flexible than most things - we automatically adjust our maths to deal with incoming numbers, so sudden changes don’t tend to cause this ripple effect. So it’s way safer and easier to just change the numbers you trigger in others and make it look like the flower is red, than actually change the colour of the petals.’
‘Hm…’ Sebastian said, ‘Hold on though. Since colour’s completely based on perception, isn’t changing our perception of the flower’s colour the same as actually changing it?’
‘Ha! An excellent question, Seb…’
**
‘Woo! I can’t believe I finally solved this stupid maze!’ Abigail said, pumping a fist into the air.
‘And I only had to carry you past the spider section,’ Fern commented wryly, the golden pumpkin tucked under her arm, ‘I just can’t believe my stupid brother almost had me ditching my sword. I knew the Wizard would put a boss monster at the end.’
‘…I don’t think it was a boss. I think it was just there and you asked it if it wanted to fight,’ she corrected. Fern shrugged, a bit of slime still smeared across her cheek.
‘Same thing,’ she said, and then glanced at her phone, ‘Sounds like Sam and Penny are off bobbing for apples. Wanna go join them?’
‘Yeah, I love watching Sam bob for apples, he’s like a ravenous dog trying to catch a fish in a river,’ she replied, ‘Should we find Seb and Briar first though?’
Fern snorted.
‘Please, they probably found a dark corner to make out in by now,’ she said with a wave of her hand, ‘They’ll find us when they’re done.’
‘No, no, see, you can’t permanently change someone’s cognition, because it’s so flexible any temporary changes you might make will get fixed back to normally quickly.’
That was Briar.
‘Huh, are you sure? I mean…you just said the brain was a pattern-learner, so if you change it over and over again…’
Sebastian.
‘Oh, hm, ah. I. Hm. You may have a point…’
The two men were still crouched over the exact same arm they’d all passed at the start.
‘I’m…not sure why I’m surprised,’ Abby said.