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Three days after the sirenas and the humans of Avalor signed their peace treaty…
“So… how much time exactly do I have to do this?” Isabel asked, looking from the table full of vials before her to the one her new magic teacher sat at, having raised his eyes from the book he was poring over upon hearing her talk to him.
“Like I said, take as long as you need,” Mateo replied in a patient tone that seemed far above his age. “Just tell me when you actually begin. I’ll start keeping the time, and you start those tasks on that paper. If you have any doubt, tell me and I’ll help you. When you’re done, tell me also. Then I’ll stop the timekeeping spell and gauge the best way to teach you based on your results.”
Isabel nodded. She supposed that made sense… but she hadn’t expected Mateo to go for such a practical approach from the beginning. She had expecting a lot more theory behind the intricacies of each task written on the page laid out on the table before attempting to even begin one of them.
Granted, Mateo had warned her when she took him up on his teaching offer that he’d start by gauging her skills. He had even warned her to bring her tamborita in case they started trying actual magic.
But still, to learn so little theory before going to the practical part…
He must have taken her silence for unease or reproach, because he spoke up.
“I’m sorry about this, but I really need every bit I can to take care of this matter.” He gestured to the thick book open before him. “But the moment you’re done, or whenever you have any doubt, I’ll give you my full attention, I promise.”
Isabel spared him a quick smile that she hoped was reassuring before looking back at the vials in front of her. She wasn’t angry at him. Though she couldn’t see it from this position, she had seen when she got in that he was poring over a book he had found in the palace’s library. From what she had glimpsed, he was trying to learn how to repair the Scepter of Light after what Shuriki had done to it. That was important too, and she knew he wasn’t trying to ignore her. She knew what being ignored was like, and this wasn’t it.
But she would still like answers to her questions.
“If you feel you can’t do any of this, that’s alright.” Mateo added. “We all have to start somewhere.”
Isabel spared him another look.
“No, it’s not. I can do this.”
And she could. She had done more difficult things than anything on this page during her dabbling with alchemy and magic, and she still remembered how to do them all.
She just would like to know a bit more about why they worked certain ways before trying them out.
But Mateo was already being kind enough to teach her when he had more important tasks at hand. And he was being especially kind to help her after the chaos she had almost caused the last time she dabbled in magic. Not only had she almost gotten killed, but she had almost gotten Avalor taken over by a madwoman on Shuriki’s level.
It had been unintentional on her part, but still, many would certainly have said that she just couldn’t be trusted with anything magical and grounded her for a month. But everyone around her had been nothing but reassuring and understanding, even those who had almost gotten killed alongside her. And the whole reason she was here was because Mateo had told her that if she ever wanted to continue learning magic, all she would need to do was come to him and ask. He had even made it a point to reassure her that simply wanting to learn magic did not make her evil, so she shouldn’t have a problem with it.
She knew he was right. If people became evil just because they studied a certain field, science wouldn’t be safe to study either.
And she did want to learn more about this. Everything she had read up on the subject had been fascinating. Scientifically impossible, but fascinating. She understood next to nothing about it, but that only made her more motivated. She might never become a master wizard like Alacazar had been, or like Mateo seemed set to become, but at least she’d like to be competent at it.
You’re thinking too much. She told herself. At this rate, it will be dinner time before you begin.
Willing her resolve to manifest, Isabel took a deep breath and called, “I’ve begun!”
She heard a tap a few moments after she spoke, and knew that Mateo had just started a timekeeping spell.
After another deep breath, Isabel picked up the page once more, and looked at the first of the twenty tasks on it.
“I’m done!”
A few moments later, she heard Mateo tap his tamborita again to stop the timekeeping spell. She turned her head toward the image, but it didn’t clear anything up. The writing that floated beside Mateo was Maruvian, and she had barely started studying the Maruvian alphabet during her earlier experiences with magic.
But as she saw Mateo’s face, she thought she could see quite some amazement in his features, judging from his wide eyes and slightly parted lips.
Before she could be sure, he tapped his tamborita again, and the characters vanished. However, the impressed look on his face as he turned to her only grew stronger.
“Are you sure you’ve only studied magic for four months?”
Isabel couldn’t help a frown. She knew it was a rhetorical question, but it sounded really weird, like if he was genuinely amazed about something. But what could he have to be genuinely amazed about?
“I am,” she replied.
“Then you really are a very quick learner. I struggled with a lot of tasks on that page even after I had been studying magic for a year. You not only did them faster than I would have at that point, but you did them all correctly without asking me for help a single time.”
Isabel tried to keep her face impassible, but she failed to stop a slight widening of her eyes. How could that be? Even taking her ‘unfortunate stint’ at the Science Academy into account, there was no way she could already be doing so well. Not in an area she understood so little about. Granted, she had been fooled into studying it rather intensively in a short time, but still…
“Really?” she whispered.
Mateo smiled reassuringly. “Really.”
Isabel didn’t respond to that, torn between joy at knowing she was doing so well and puzzlement at how most of the things she had done could work.
Thinking this was the right time to voice her doubts, she said, “I don’t think so. I can do the things, but I still don’t know how any of them happens.”
At Mateo’s frown of confusion, she explained her point.
“How can the liquid turn into solid and remain at the exact same temperature? How can the solid be turned into liquid without being heated? How can both solids or liquids change their molecular structure just because you add a certain powder into them?”
Mateo put a hand to his chin while folding his other arm against his chest, apparently either not understanding her question or not sure of how to answer it.
Eventually, he said, “Please don’t be offended, but you can’t go for a scientific approach with this.”
Isabel frowned. “How come?”
Mateo unfolded his arms and rubbed his hand along his tamborita’s surface as he again pondered on the best answer.
Then, he replied, “Let me put it this way: you learned that alchemy started as a form of science, didn’t you?”
“I did. It’s the whole reason the Science Academy still has an optional alchemy class even though it’s been reclassified as a branch of magic.”
“Well, that happened because alchemy has a few small things in common with science, in the sense of specific formulas meeting certain results. But since the early days, it’s been discovered that for the most part, alchemy can’t be looked at in the same way that you look at science. And if you go into actual magic, then you can barely begin to compare them.”
This time, Isabel couldn’t make an effort to hide her puzzlement, to the point she even leaned her head back an edge.
Mateo lowered his tamborita and started gesturing with his free hand as he went on. “Do you remember how you explained to me that solar eclipses can be predicted by doing calculations that, in very simple terms, figure out how the moon’s shadow is cast on a plane that crosses the Earth’s center? And how maths is an exact science with rules that must be followed?”
Isabel tried to give a calm nod, but she could feel her features changing ever so slightly in amazement. She knew Mateo had been paying attention when she told him about the eclipse - another unfortunate incident she’d rather not dwell on too much - but she hadn’t expected him to still remember that so well.
“Well, alchemy and magic have their own sets of rules, and there is more than one rule which simply can’t be broken. But if you try to actually compare the rules of magic to any of the physical and chemical principles you told me about, it’s as productive as hitting a broken piñata without any candy.”
I guess that’s why it called magic. Isabel couldn’t help but to think. After all, from the moment she was young, she had learned magic was not meant to follow the laws of nature. She didn’t know why she had expected that to change now that she started learning more about the subject.
But that didn’t change her eagerness to learn about it.
For one, it still seemed interesting, as puzzling as it was, in a sense that the answer to a lot of her questions would amount to ‘It’s magic.’. As much as she believed Mateo when he said she had to give up on that line of thought, she wanted to learn magic for its own sake.
For another, and more importantly, she just didn’t know when she might need to have some direct knowledge of magic. As much as her more childish self wanted to think it was all over and settle comfortably into the idea of living in a new world where the sun would always shine, she knew better. Shuriki and that other madwoman might be dead, and Fiero might a statue once more, but Victor and Carla Delgado were still on the loose, and those malandros who almost had taken over Coronado had been enough proof that Shuriki was not the source of all evil and her death wouldn’t bring an end to it. If she had ever needed it in the first place.
If them or any other threat came around, she didn’t want to be the target who would be dragged away by a moth fairy or almost burned alive without even knowing she was in danger. She wanted to be able to defend herself and to help. And if she knew both science and magic, she’d be able to do it much better.
“Is everything alright?”
Isabel flinched upon the voice as if suddenly awakened, and realized she had again gotten lost in thought, and that her thoughts must have shown on her face from the concerned look Mateo was giving her.
“I was just thinking,” she replied.
The concern on Mateo’s face didn’t fade.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
The honest answer would be ‘yes’. The answer she wanted to give would be ‘no’. Just about everyone she had comfortable enough to talk to this about either had bigger concerns in mind, would be beside themselves with worry over her fears, or both. Isabel wanted to spare them that.
But she had learned her lesson from last time. Pretending that nothing was wrong with her had been one of the things that had almost lead to her endangering Avalor. She wouldn’t lie again.
Though at the same time, she still wanted to spare Mateo the concern as much as possible. He was already worried enough about Elena, he didn’t need to worry about her as well.
“Maybe later,” she said. “Now I’d rather focus on our lesson.”
“Are you sure?”
Though she knew Mateo meant well, she couldn’t help a flicker of irritation. She might still be young, but she wasn’t the kind to throw fits. When she said something, she generally meant it.
Something about that must have shown in her face, because Mateo only raised his free hand in appeasement and said, “If you change your mind, just say so.”
Isabel nodded, the flicker of irritation gone. After all, she did know Mateo meant well. And all things considered, she didn’t think she’d like to just have her concerns brushed aside.
“What now, then?” she asked.
Mateo raised his tamborita.
“Now you’d better pick up your tamborita. I think we also need to see how skilled you are with actual magic before I’m ready to know how to teach you.”
Isabel reached down into her go-cap and pulled out her tamborita. Then hesitation flashed through her as she remembered that Mateo had never seen it. Not that there were problems with most of it - its sky-blue coloration and the white and golden rings around its handle were perfectly normal - but she knew the golden cogswheel with a white outline could look a bit of an odd choice for a wizard tool.
“I couldn’t think of anything else to put in it when I made it,” she said, her whole posture retracting.
But there was no reproach in Mateo’s face or voice as he beheld her magic tool.
“It suits you,” he said, and Isabel couldn’t help but deflate at the warm tone he said that in, like if he was her actual big brother. “Now you’d better step away from the table so I can ready it for your next test.”
She did as he had asked, unable to hold back her excitement. Like the alchemy tests, these would probably be things she had already done, but she looked forward to doing them with a teacher who actually had her best interests at heart.
Maybe his style wouldn’t turn out to be her favored one, and she would certainly still ask him for the actual theory in the future.
But she would also enjoy having fun with the practical part.