Fallen Magic

It sounds absurd to say I’m Falling. There’s a thousand bad things happening in the world: famine in Sirgal, the worst summer storms in half a century, and everywhere people suffering because of lack of money or cruel parents or employers. People survive all those things. They go on.

Then there’s me: a smart girl from a prosperous suburb, attending one of the best schools in the country, with parents who love me and want nothing more than for me to be successful. And yet I’m Falling. I can’t deny it any more. Not now it’s happened three times.

The first time was during a night in the middle of end-of-year exams. There’d been a horrible question on my least favourite topic on the maths exam, for which I produced a page of scribbling and nothing remotely resembling an answer, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. So I was lying awake staring at the ceiling when it clicked into place.

And all I could think was why didn’t I work that out sooner? And then why am I not asleep? I have two more exams tomorrow and I need sleep. That was when I felt it. My heart beating unnaturally fast, a sudden rush of energy and the urge to run, to get out. The usual silly things the mind does in the middle of the night – except for the urgency of it, the realisation that I couldn’t go on this way.

I lay there until the feeling passed, then rolled over and tried again to sleep, and when I woke up thought nothing more of it.

Until a month later, the first day of my internship with Greenwood and Sons. They weren’t particularly welcoming, and then when I was asked to write up a case summary, I realised I’d forgotten my quill. It’s nothing particularly special, though the self-inking enchantment cost my dad a week’s earnings, but it’s mine. I felt a little more lost and out of place without it, and furious with myself for forgetting.

It was far stronger that time, like I was hearing my heartbeat from behind a wall of glass, like I was watching someone else standing up from her tiny desk in the corner, tall and straight, knowing that she had to do something –

“Excuse me?” asked the stick-thin secretary assigned to look after me, adjusting the position of her glasses. “Is there something you want?”

And then I was myself again, blinking a few times, muttering something about how I was just stretching and could I borrow a quill, and sitting back down. I have no idea how I convinced that secretary that I wasn’t a complete waste of space, because I couldn’t pay attention to anything I did for the rest of that day. The word just kept echoing in my head: Falling. Falling. Falling.

I know as much about Falling as any other fifteen-year-old: the contents of the government-mandated assembly and a handful of copper-tales which aren’t remotely reliable sources. It’s the Awakening of Malaina, one of the Five Schools of Magic – and is “triggered by severe or prolonged trauma, physical or mental”.

So I couldn’t be Falling. I’d be lying if I said I loved my life, but it’s hardly traumatic. My symptoms from that day were disconcertingly similar to what was outlined in the assembly, but that was just a coincidence. It was a freak incident, never to be repeated.

It wasn’t for the entire summer. I’d nearly forgotten about it by the time term started yesterday and I realised I’d left the Rasina essay I’d spent hours working on at home. With most teachers that wouldn’t be a problem since I’m a good student, but my Rasina teacher hates me. I haven’t worked out if it’s racism or a hatred of scholarship girls, but he decided that despite my near-perfect record I was lying, I hadn’t done the essay and I was going to stay in and write it during lunch.

One moment I was trying to control the surge of pure anger enough to plead my case, and the next I was stalking towards his desk, moving under some power not my own, and I knew that when I got there everything was going to change and he would never call me a liar again –

I didn’t quite make it that far. It faded away, but not before earning me a second lunchtime detention in a couple of hours.

That didn’t bother me as much as it usually would. Because I knew I was Falling, then, however absurd it might sound. And I had to tell someone.

It sounds straightforward. It isn’t, for me. Mother saw the detention slip in my hand as soon as I got home yesterday, and I couldn’t work out whether she was more angry with the Rasina teacher or with me for forgetting. She made me promise to take in the essay and force him to grade that rather than whatever you scribbled in an hour. She’s right: the rewritten essay was not exactly my best work.

But after a conversation like that, I couldn’t just say “Mum, I can’t do this any more. I’m Falling.”

Dad would be easier to talk to, if he were actually in the house. But he’s defending a man accused of murder, and that’s taking up all of his time. I’m not sure he even came home last night.

So that leaves one of the teachers. They’re all nice enough, though, but I don’t know any of them that well – and, more importantly, most of them don’t know me that well. I do my work on time and don’t cause any trouble, so I’m half-convinced they forget I exist sometimes.

Miss Jenkins will listen, though, I hope. She teaches history, which has always been my favourite subject, and we like each other. That’s the best chance I’ve got, but her breaks and mine aren’t at the same time today; she was still teaching when I looked in a few minutes ago.

Which leaves me leaning against the oak tree outside the science building, considering whether I have time to go to the library before my next class. I’ve already been halfway across the campus so there’s only fifteen minutes left of break, which would barely leave me long enough to pick out books.

My next history lesson is straight after lunch. I cling to that hope desperately. Get through one more lesson, one detention, and then I have an hour of the First Civil War to lose myself in. I’ll talk to Miss Jenkins straight after the lesson.

“Tallulah! There you are!”

The voice, young and offensively cheerful, jolts me from my thoughts. I glance up to see Ruby, the younger sister of my lab partner.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

What does she – oh. Right. Chloe made me promise I’d help her sister out with Sirgalese irregular verbs, didn’t she? And I was promptly distracted by Falling and forgot all about that promise.

I can barely remember the conjugation of irin, to be, right now, but I force myself to smile. “Hi, Ruby. I only have fifteen minutes until my next class, but what do you need?”

“Great, thanks!” Ruby sits down beside me and opens her workbook. “I don’t understand these exercises…”

I stare at the workbook for a second. “This is just basic conjugation,” I say. “What don’t you understand?” Harsher than I intended, but if being snappish with her is the worst thing I do in the next few hours then that’s pretty good.

“I don’t get it, though. How does it work?”

“I…” I stare at her blankly. If she’d paid any attention when the work was assigned, or in any recent Sirgalese lesson, she’d know how it worked. I can’t deal with this right now. “It’s just – “

I really can’t deal with this right now. Something snaps. It’s subtler than before, so I almost think that it’s me picking up that workbook and methodically tearing out the page on which she’s copied down the assignment.

“Tallulah, what are you doing? I need that, it’s – “

Oh, yes, I think, but it’s abstract, without urgency: finding the answer to a tricky problem. It’s not really me doing this, it’s because I’m Falling, and this is it. If I don’t stop it now, there’ll be no going back.

It’s like I’m standing in front of a cliff, a thousand-foot drop in front of me, and my instinct to get away from that before you Fall isn’t working properly. I’m perfectly calm as I scrunch the parchment up into a ball and roll it between my hands. I stood up at some point, though I don’t remember doing that.

“Tallulah?” asks Ruby again. There’s a note of fear in her voice now. Good, says a voice within me that isn’t mine. She should be afraid of me.

No – that’s not right –

I have to stop –

I can’t –

I throw the ball of parchment to the ground between us and give it a disdainful glare.

It catches fire.

Ruby screams.

The parchment was no good; it’s burnt to a shrivelled-out husk in seconds. That won’t do at all. The rest of Ruby’s workbook sits beside it, though, and with a simple wave of my hand it’s burning too.

“No – stop – “ Ruby has the presence of mind to tear off her uniform jacket and start beating at the fire, trying to smother it of life, but this isn’t an ordinary fire. Her attempts have no effect, except that after a little while the jacket itself catches light.

She’s holding it by the sleeves, the flame isn’t too near her body, but she drops it as quickly as if she were holding her fingers to the fire and then flees toward the building.

I shrug and turn my attention to the tree. It should burn well enough to make a proper blaze.