Page 29 of Hunted
Her magic was nothing like Arcadian magic.
Arcadian magic felt… quick. Instinctual. It was something that justhappenedwhenever we needed it, or wanted it, to happen. There was something raw, and primal about it. Calling on Arcadian magic was like drawing a burning ember out of a wildfire with your bare hands and using that ember to enact your desires.
Humans didn’t do that. Human magic was studied, simple, and delicate. It wasn’t like reaching into a wildfire at all, but more like building a fire out of sticks. You could feed more fuel to the fire if you needed to, or you could work with what you had in front of you. In either case, the human was in complete control of every single aspect of the spell.
It had something to do with those sigils Pepper was using, the same ones Evie had spoken about.
Curiosity and impatience got the better of me. As soon as I thought I had figured out the basics, I headed back up to the kitchen, grabbed a teacup, and placed it in front of me at the dining room table. I stared at it for a long moment, bringing my eyes level with it.
I was trying to wrap my mind around the teacup to make it move. If the power was inside of me, all I had to do was call it up, right? Easy. I could do this. I could figure this out just as I had figured everything else out in my life. Quickly, and with little to no discipline.
“Why is your face all scrunched up?” asked Tallin, who had quietly joined me at the dining room table.
I glanced at him, then looked back at the teacup. “I’m trying to make this move,” I said.
Tallin squinted at the cup. “It doesn’t look like it’s working.”
“Obviously.” I shook my head. “It’s also taking too long.”
“You have been doing this for all of thirty seconds. Perhaps exercise some patience?”
“I don’t have time for patience, Tallin. That thing is back, and if I’m not ready for it the next time it shows up… I don’t know what’ll happen.”
“You also don’t really know what you expect will happen to this teacup.”
“I expect it will move.”
“Because you are telling it to move with your mind?”
“It’s how my grandmothers do it. Seems easy enough for them.”
Tallin sighed. “I hate to be the one to tell you, but it seems to me they have been studying their arcane arts for many decades. I imagine it only looks effortless to them because they have taken the time to practice.”
“There’s that word again. Time. We don’t have time, Tallin.”
“Amara… I know you are frightened, but we need to be conserving our strength, not expending our energy on frivolities.”
“This isn’t a frivolity. If I can figure out how this magic thing works, I may just be able todosomething when that thing shows up again. I can’t stand the feeling of being helpless. I hate that someone has to jump in and save me all the time. For once, I just want to save myself.”
“You’re going to have to do more than just stare at the cup, then,” came Pepper’s voice.
I sat upright and looked over at her. I was going to pretend like I hadn’t just been staring intently at the teacup on the table, but she had caught me. In fact, she hadsomehowsnuck up on me. Nobody had ever been able to do that before, but this woman with her kindly smile and those half-moon glasses had been as quiet as a breeze.
“You startled me,” I said.
“I didn’t mean to,” said Pepper. She walked over to me and sat down next to me. “You need to flick your wrist.”
“What?”
“Like this,” she said, and she flicked her right wrist with a little flourish. “Tell the cup to move, and then flick your wrist. You may not get it at first, but it’ll be a start.”
“Pardon my asking,” Tallin said, “But is this a good idea?”
“If she can make the cup move,” Pepper said, “Great. It means there’s something there to work with. If not, we’ve only wasted a few minutes of trying.”
“Won’t grandmother Helen get annoyed at you?” I asked.
“Helen is acting on old instincts. You have to understand, my dear, when she looks at you… she sees your mother. She sees the child your mother was, the child she raised, and looked after, and kept safe all those years.”