Chapter 5: Wandlight
961 Words
It took three weeks to find a teacher.
I tried showing off in the square—summoning sparks, casting little illusions, anything I could manage. All I got for it was heckling. One man told me to “go back to lighting torches.” Another said I was “just another brat who thinks dreams make you a mage.”
I took odd jobs—hauling lumber, sweeping out stables—just enough silver to keep a bed at the Fallen Hedge and bread in my mouth. No magic. No guidance.
Just the ache of waiting, the chill of wet mornings, and the silence of doors that wouldn’t open.
In the end, it wasn’t skill or effort that found me a mentor.
It was chance.
I’d saved a little extra coin from a week of backbreaking work and decided I wanted a real meal—something hot and rich, not stale bread and watery stew. So I went to one of the upscale taverns in Bramblehold: The Drunken Wizard. Gilded sign, velvet drapes, people who didn’t smell like sheep.
While I was there, I spotted something strange.
A wand. Left lying on an empty table.
Odd, but not unheard of. People misplace things. Still, I couldn’t help myself.
I picked it up.
The moment my fingers closed around the wood, the tip flared—bright orange sparks crackling in the air. I dropped it instantly, heart hammering in my chest, bracing for the worst.
But nothing happened.
The wand lay still on the table. Smoking faintly. Inert.
Then came the voice.
“What’s your name?”
I turned, startled. A woman stood behind me. Older. Sharp-eyed. Her thick braids were streaked with gray, and her cloak was patched with faded sigils I couldn’t read.
Clearly a hedge mage.
Clearly someone who knew.
“…Maren,” I said, trying not to sound as young as I felt.
She nodded once, picking up the wand and turning it in her fingers. “That wand hasn’t responded to anyone’s touch in twenty-three years.”
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “Did I do something wrong?”
“I don’t think so. Least, not yet.”
She pocketed the wand and started to circle me, eyes narrowing. “You’re not guild-trained. Your projection’s too raw. Where did you study?”
“I didn’t,” I admitted. “I get words in my dreams. I wake up, and I remember them. That’s how I learned.”
She stopped circling. “Dream-listener.”
The term hit me like a bell. I’d never heard it before—but it sounded right.
“That’s ancient magic,” she said, folding her arms. “Some of the first. Powerful stuff, if you treat it with respect.”
“Don’t I know it,” I muttered. “My village was afraid of me.”
She gave me a look. Something between sympathy and calculation.
“Well then,” she said, turning on her heel. “Follow me.”
“Where are we going?”
“To see if you’re worth the trouble.”
She held the tavern door open.
“Name’s Eowlen Var.”
—
Eowlen led me through Bramblehold, her presence parting crowds like a knife through wool. She greeted some mages with curt nods or a clipped word. Others, she ignored entirely. It seemed random.
But I suspected it wasn’t.
Eventually, we stopped before a crumbling shrine half-swallowed by a garden wall. Boarded up. Forgotten. Ivy curled around its frame like fingers clinging to memory, and the air smelled of damp stone and old incense—like the past had been left to rot in peace.
Without a word, Eowlen flicked her fingers. The boards tore loose as if they’d simply given up resisting. She stepped inside.
I followed.
At the center of the shrine stood a stone basin, wide and weather-worn, filled with what I assumed was rainwater. Maybe not.
“Sit,” she said. “And listen. Close your eyes if it helps—but not for my voice. And not for yours. Listen for theirs.”
I hesitated. Then knelt. The stone was cold beneath my knees. I leaned over the basin, watching my reflection ripple in the dim light.
Was this a trick? A rite? Back home, old fishermen used to test greenhorns with something called the fish heart trial. Drop a stone. Wait for it to swim back. No one ever explained how it worked.
Maybe this was like that.
Maybe it was nonsense.
But it might be my only chance.
I closed my eyes.
At first, too many sounds jostled for space—boots on cobblestone, laughter spilling from an open window, the flick of squirrel claws above us in the rafters. I peeled them away, one by one, until only one sound remained:
My own heartbeat.
Steady. Sad.
Like it was tired of pretending to beat so loudly for someone who never quite belonged.
I sank into it. Let it fill my chest.
I don’t know how long I knelt there like that. But eventually, something else rose—faint, fragile, like silk pulled through a ring.
Not a sound. A presence.
A whisper.
A word.
Aesh’linara.
I didn’t know what it meant. But it echoed through me like breath after drowning. Something woke. Something remembered.
I whispered it.
“Aesh’linara.”
The water in the basin shivered.
A shape bloomed across its surface—me, younger, standing before the burning barn. My face lit not by fire, but by something older. Something within.
When I opened my eyes, Eowlen was still watching.
She didn’t speak.
She just nodded once. Sharp. Decisive.
Then turned on her heel.
“Come on, then,” she said. “Lesson one starts now.”
- Writer
