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Marianne had learned to tell the difference between the really-bad days and the somewhat-bad days. On the really-bad days, getting out of bed was a struggle. She still dragged herself to class because she didn’t want the Professor or her classmates to worry, but as soon as class ended, she was kneeling in the cathedral or locked in her room, begging for salvation from her cursed fate.
But the somewhat-bad days, she could at least stand. Most of her days now were somewhat-bad days, days when she could have thoughts other than the one that constantly nagged at her, firmly wedged in the back of her mind. Even if her existence had no value, a few things comforted her. Looking after Dorte and the other horses. Standing on the pier and watching the fish surface. Listening to the birds singing outside her window. And going for a walk, alone, in the woods outside the monastery.
Yesterday, it had been too muddy to go for a walk, but now it was dry enough, and the air was cool, making it a very comfortable day. Now that the snow had melted, she could make few excuses for not going outside. If it wasn’t a really-bad day and the weather was nice, she tried. Now and then, of course. She wasn’t the type to keep a regular schedule for anything. She had a hard enough time just trying to find things in her own room.
The birds chirped loudly; the trees were beginning to bud, the grass turning green again. She was staring at the grass flattening with her steps, listening to the birdsong and trying to think about anything but eternal rest, when she heard the distinct sparkle of magic, followed by a crack and a snap. Fabric tearing, and a grunt of pain.
“Damn!”
Marianne raised her head, picking up her steps and rushing toward the origin of the voice. “Ow, ow, ow, ow,” the person repeated under their breath. Hopefully the wound wasn’t too grievous. She couldn’t stand to think of what would happen if she couldn’t heal an injury like that.
She saw the broken branch first, then Claude standing in front of the tree, clutching his shoulder and grimacing.
“Are—are you okay?” Without thinking, she ran up to inspect his shoulder.
“Marianne?” There was a note of surprise in his voice. “I would say you came just in time, but actually,” he lowered his head to look down at his shoulder, “I think it’ll be just fine.” He removed his hand from his shoulder. The branch should have made a sizable cut. But it looked like his uniform had taken the brunt of the damage. “See? Not a scratch.”
“But it sounded like you were in pain. Aren’t you hurt?”
“Nah, I’m all right.” He dropped his hand to his side, rolling the hurt shoulder. “You probably didn’t see it, but there was a flash of light just a moment ago. My Crest saved my hide.”
“Your Crest saved you?”
He nodded. “My Crest heals me. Sometimes I’m able to make it out of close scrapes totally unharmed. You’ve never seen me get a cold or have to visit the infirmary, and that’s why.”
He frowned. “But it doesn’t mean I’m completely safe from injury. The thing only works when it wants to. Had it not surfaced, that could have been a bad wound. So I’m glad you showed up.”
She looked at her feet. “It was only a coincidence. I didn’t mean to bother you or anything.”
“No, I really mean it. Imagine if it had been someone without any magical prowess, like me. I don’t know how to heal myself. That’s what my Crest is for.”
Marianne noticed a book in the grass behind Claude. She looked over at the fallen tree branch. She didn’t want to assume anything, but she couldn’t just ask. Claude might get embarrassed or blame her for what happened.
But he somehow knew what she was thinking.
“I see the question on your face: ‘How did the branch fall in the first place?’” He bent to pick up the thick book. “Well, I was trying my hand at a little magic. But my spell misfired, and I had a bit of an accident.”
She turned her eyes to the book. “Um, what kind of magic were you trying to learn?”
“It’s more my style to show rather than tell, but I don’t want to sacrifice another branch. It was a wind spell.”
“I’ve never tried casting a wind spell before.”
“What have you tried?”
Marianne clutched her elbows with both hands, holding her arms tightly to her body. “Magic isn’t that interesting. I know it wouldn’t hold your attention like bows and swords would.”
“Magic may not be my forte, but I certainly don’t think it’s boring. Tell me, what’s the most difficult spell you’ve ever tried to learn?”
“Um… Fire was challenging. I singed the Professor’s hair trying to cast it.”
Claude snorted.
Marianne flinched, looking up slightly.
Claude was grinning. “So that explains the black streaks in Teach’s hair last month.”
“The Professor might still be mad at me…”
“Why would Teach be mad? No one got hurt, and you came out knowing your Fire spell needed a little more practice. Accidents happen, look what just happened to me.”
Marianne loosened her self-hug a little. “I guess that makes sense.”
“Or you can look at it this way—even Lysithea’s burnt people’s hair sometimes.”
Marianne looked up and met Claude’s eyes. She felt her lips twitch slightly, in a way she wasn’t used to. “I’m sure she’s made mistakes before. Though it’s hard to imagine.”
Claude’s eyes widened. “Would you look at that. I got you to smile. If only for a second.”
Marianne lowered her head again. She wasn’t really sure how to respond to that. “I’m sorry, I’ll leave you to your training. I didn’t mean to distract you.”
“Luckily for you, a distraction is just what I needed. I’ve been standing in the same place for about an hour and a half, and my knees are starting to hurt.” He stretched his arms over his head with a fake yawn. “So? How ‘bout it, Marianne? The grass looks awfully inviting. Perfect for a little light reading.”
He sat down on the ground, crossing his legs and setting the tome in his lap. He leafed through the tome until he reached the correct page, then started mouthing the spell silently. She stood there, watching him read the spell. The Professor had suggested this method as an easier and safer way to memorize spells. If you didn’t recite the spell aloud, you wouldn’t be able to cast it, so there was no risk of anyone getting hurt.
Marianne bent her knees, setting a hand on the ground and folding her legs on top of each other, sitting to the left of Claude. He was covering up the printed incantation and trying to recite the spell from memory, referencing it when he forgot the final part. Even if he didn’t have much experience with magic, Claude was a talented and dedicated student. He was always in the library reading and researching, and could really focus on something, like how he was concentrating on memorizing the spell. The little furrow of his brow, his lips stumbling over the words—it was kind of hypnotizing.
Then he set the book aside, furrowing his brow deeper. The words tumbled forth from his mouth, and with a flick of his arm, an arcane circle twinkled, rotating once, and from it, a pale green swirl materialized. Marianne gasped, watching the green swirl shimmer, suspended in the air by Claude’s still-extended hand. On impulse, she recited her own spell and shot a shock of white light from her hands. Bright and silky, it joined the emerald wind, dancing in the air until both spells dissolved.
“What a sight,” Claude said. “You had a good idea, casting Nosferatu.”
“I like how pretty magic can be,” Marianne admitted. “I never cared very much for weapons. But magic can heal people. Magic doesn’t hurt unless you want it to. And it comes from within you. It’s beautiful in the same way that nature is. It can exist on its own.”
“Wow, Marianne… that’s so poetic.”
Claude sounded breathless. Marianne raised her head to look at him. He was staring at her, open-mouthed.
“That just slipped out. I’m sorry, I started rambling—”
“No, no, go on. Ramble to your heart’s content. Talk about magic all you want.”
“Oh,” was all Marianne could manage. Her heart was beating in her throat. Claude’s surprised stare made her feel like she could say more. Looking at him now, she saw that his eyes resembled the wind spell he’d cast. And they shone in the same way. With enthusiasm? Awe? She wasn’t very good at reading positive emotions. But Claude clearly wasn’t angry or disappointed with her, and she kind of liked how it made her heart hiccup. Not that she had any right to enjoy that fluttery feeling.
“I don’t know if I have much more to say, but if you could cast your spell again, I think I would like that very much.”
“Oh? You want to see it again? I won’t say no to more practice.”
He closed his eyes, reciting the incantation silently before he spoke it aloud. The green wind gleamed and spiraled all around them. Marianne sucked in a breath and quietly summoned her own spell. A circle levitated briefly before her, then ice crystals burst forth, shooting up in the grass before them. As the ice broke through the wind, sparkling remnants of green began to drift onto the tips of the crystals. Just barely aware of Claude’s astonished “wow,” Marianne kept her hands raised for a moment, willing the ice to remain solid until the wind had left small emerald snowcaps on the peaks of the ice. Then she lowered her hands and breathed out as the ice dissolved into tiny glittering shards.
“This is art,” Claude said after the last of the magic had vanished. “We should get Ignatz to paint it.”
“Are you cold? I should have told you it was going to be an ice spell—”
“No, I’m not cold. It was a pleasant surprise.” There was a soft thump, and when she looked over, the tome and Claude were lying on the ground. “Ignatz has a point that the best art is already all around us. But it’s nice that we can make magic so that we have wind, ice, fire, lightning, stars, and even the moon right in front of our eyes, any time we want.”
She’d never thought of it that way. “But if we didn’t go outside, then we wouldn’t be able to see the real nature. And I think spells look nicer outside. In nature.”
“True. I’d rather have the real moon, the real stars.”
He sighed, a long, deep sigh. She’d never heard him sigh heavily like that.
“I like looking at the sky,” he said, his eyes still trained on the vast blue above them. “I can feel the ground underneath my feet. I know it’s there. But sometimes, I just want to make sure that the moon and stars still have their eyes on me, you know?”
Marianne remained silent.
“Don’t worry about coming up with an answer. It was a rhetorical question.” He didn’t sound affronted, but it was impossible to tell what he was feeling. “I don’t know where that came from anyway. I guess I just felt inspired to be poetic after what you said about magic.”
She always held her head low, acted humble, and hoped that she would be taken away. He could hold his head to the sky and meet people’s eyes with a smile, because he had his Crest and his talents. What did she have? Did she have any reason to smile? Even if there were things that made her happy, she couldn’t allow herself any of that happiness.
“Hey, look at those clouds passing by,” Claude said, pointing up at the sky.
Marianne looked up. The sky was blue, but cloudless. “What clouds?”
“Okay, so there aren’t any clouds, but—” He stuttered, trying to gather himself. It wasn’t often he lost his composure. “Just look at the sky for a moment. You came outside for all of this, didn’t you? You should enjoy it. Clear your mind and just enjoy it.”
She stared at the vast blue and tried clearing her mind. But that little nagging thought remained in her head no matter what. Sometimes she wanted to close her eyes and scream in the hopes that it might drive that nagging thought away. It had far overstayed its welcome.
Maybe she couldn’t get rid of it right now. But she could try to ignore it.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something glittering, and thought it was remaining from their earlier spells, until she turned her head and saw white light lingering in the air, Claude’s hand still half-suspended upward. She had been so focused on the sky that she hadn’t heard him whisper the spell under his breath. The light broke apart and fell in pieces, settling on his uniform coat, seeping into the fabric. Tiny gleaming fragments alighted on his face, tears of light at the corners of his eyes, a sparkling constellation of freckles on his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, a crown of glowing snowflakes dotting his hairline.
He turned his head, and as he did, the light dissolved, sinking into his skin. The only shining thing left behind was his radiant half-smile. “Well? What do you think? Are you surprised?”
Marianne’s mind was still trying to catch up with her racing heart. She didn’t know how to capture what she’d seen, or the effect it had had on her, in words. A mirror would be far more useful than anything she could say.
She settled for, “It was very beautiful.”
“Aw, Marianne, you flatterer. You gave me the idea. But thanks.”
“You’re welcome. I didn’t know you had learned Nosferatu.”
“I like keeping as many tricks up my sleeve as I can. I’ll always prefer a bow, but it’s nice to have a back-up plan if my Crest falls through.”
It always had to come back to Crests, didn’t it? More than anything, she wished her Crest was useful like his. But she had been cursed to carry this horrible Crest.
“If you didn’t have a Crest, what would you do?”
“Things would be very different, but that’s a story for another day. Besides, I don’t have to worry about that, since I’ve got one.” He yawned, an actual yawn this time. “How about we head on back? I’ve spent long enough out here. We can show Teach and the rest. Blow them away with the beauty of magic.”
Looking at the ground, she thought of the shards of light, like fallen stars, landing on his face. She thought, rather selfishly, that that sight was hers and hers alone.
“Or if you don’t want to go yet, we can stay here a little longer and see what else we can come up with,” he said.
Marianne unfolded her legs and lowered herself to the ground so that she lay next to Claude. She turned her head toward him just as he turned his. They were close enough that she could hear and feel his breath, that his pinky might brush hers if she moved her hands even a bit closer. There was a twinkle in the corner of his eye, and she wasn’t sure if it was magic or just Claude.
“I want to stay,” she said, digging her fingers into the dirt. She had never known how blue the sky was before today.