‘So will you teach me magic, then? Real magic? Next Tuesday?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I promised your father, and I do keep my promises. And besides that, there are some very influential people who frown on magic being taught to children – well, unless they do it themselves, that is. But I can teach you a language or two if you like. Some translation. You’re probably old enough for that now. And perhaps it’s time I showed you the library as well.’
Griffin Truelove’s library was a square, high-ceilinged room with lots of polished dark wood. There was a small table with a green glass lamp that held a candle rather than a lightbulb. (Lots of people used candles to read by now that lightbulbs were so dim, and so expensive.) The room smelled faintly of leather, incense and candle-wax. The books were heavy, thick hardbacks bound in leather, velvet or a smooth cloth that came in different shades of red, purple and blue. Their pages were a creamy sort of colour, and when you opened them their printed letters were deep black and old-fashioned looking. The stories they told were of great adventures into unknown lands.
‘There is only one rule, Euphemia, and I want you to promise me you will always follow it.’
Effie nodded.
‘You must only read one book at a time, and you must always leave the book on the desk. It is very important that I know which book you are reading. Do you understand? And you must never remove any books from this library.’
‘I promise,’ said Effie. ‘Are the books . . . Are they magic?’
Her grandfather had frowned.
‘Child, all books are magic. Just think,’ he said, ‘about what books make people do. People go to war on the basis of what they read in books. They believe in “facts” just because they are written down. They decide to adopt political systems, to travel to one place rather than another, to give up their job and go on a great adventure, to love or to hate. All books have tremendous power. And power is magic.’
‘But are these books really magic . . .?’
‘They are all last editions,’ said Griffin. ‘Lots of people collect first editions of books, because they are very rare. Last editions are even rarer. When you are older you will find out why.’ And then he refused to say any more.
The next few months went by a lot more quickly than the previous five years. Effie’s grandfather started going out again, on what he called his ‘adventures’. Sometimes she would arrive at his rooms after school to find him taking off his sturdy brown boots and putting away his battered leather bag and cloth money pouch. Once she saw him putting a strange-looking brown stick into a secret drawer of his big wooden desk, but when she asked him about it he told her to shoo and get on with her translation.
She’d quickly mastered most of Rosian and was now working on a different language called Old Bastard English. She dreamed of adventures – like the ones she now read about in the books in her grandfather’s library – where she might have to ask someone in Rosian how much it would cost to stable her horse for the weekend, or, in Old Bastard English, what dangerous creatures were in the woods tonight. (‘What wylde bestes haunten the forest this nyght?’)
She also kept dreaming of magic, but she had yet to see any. The next time she saw her grandfather put something in his secret drawer – this time a clear crystal – she asked him again.
‘Are the things in that drawer magic, Grandfather?’
‘Magic,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Hmm. Yes, you do keep asking about magic, don’t you? Well, magic is overrated, in my opinion. You must understand that you can’t always – or even often – rely on magic, especially not in this world. Magic costs, and it’s difficult. Remember this, Effie, it’s important. If you want a plant to grow in this world, you put a seed in the earth and you water it and give it warmth and let the shoot see sunlight. You do not use magic, because to use magic to accomplish such a complicated task – the creation of life, no less – is not just wasteful, but unnecessary. Later in life I imagine you’ll see some strange and wondrous things, things you probably can’t even imagine now. But always remember that many things that happen in our everyday world – when a seed turns into a plant, for example – are stranger, and more complex, than the most difficult magic. You will use magic very rarely, which is why you need other skills first.’
‘What other skills?’
‘Your languages. And . . .’ He thought for a few moments and dipped his beard in the glass of water, even though it was not on fire. He then wrung it out slowly. ‘Perhaps it is time to start you on Magical Thinking. You need Magical Thinking before you can do magic. How old did you say you were now?’
‘Eleven.’
‘Good. We’ll begin tomorrow.’
Effie’s first Magical Thinking task had been impossible. Griffin had taken her to the entrance hall of his apartment and shown her three electric light switches.
‘Each of these,’ he said, ‘operates a different light in the apartment. One operates the main light in the library, one operates the lamp by my armchair and one is the light in my wine cupboard. These are the lights I use most often, and the ones I always forget when I go out. Electricity is so expensive now, and of course there are hefty fines if there happens to be a greyout, so I had these switches put in, right by the door. You’ll notice that you can’t see from here which light is operated by what switch. Your task is to work out which switch operates each light. But here’s the difficult bit. You can do what you like with the light switches out here, but you are only allowed to go and look at the lights once, and you are only allowed to have one switch on when you do. And you can only do this when you’re sure you have the answer. You won’t get a second chance.’
‘So I can’t try a switch, go and see what light it operates, then come back and try another one and memorise them?’
‘No. That would be easy. When you give your answer you need to say how you came about it. It’s the “how” bit that’s most interesting anyway.’
‘So it isn’t just luck either.’
‘No. You have to use Magical Thinking.’
‘But how could I . . .?’
‘If you get it right, there’s a prize,’ said Griffin.
‘What’s the prize?’
‘Now, that would be telling.’
From then on, every time Effie went to the Old Rectory she stood by the light switches and tried to work out the puzzle. The answer failed her. Effie hated giving up on anything. She would ask her grandfather for hints, but he would never give her any. Instead, in between her translations, he got her to practise on other Magical Thinking problems. Some of them were a bit like jokes or riddles. ‘For example,’ said Griffin, a couple of weeks before Effie started at the Tusitala School, ‘imagine a man throws a ball a short distance, and then the ball reverses direction and travels back to the man. The ball does not bounce off any wall or other object, nor is it attached to any string or material. Without magic, how does this occur?’
It took Effie the whole day, and in the end she had to give up.
‘What’s the answer, Grandfather?’ she begged, just before she went home for the night.
‘He threw it in the air, child.’
Effie laughed at this. Of course he did! How funny.
But her grandfather did not laugh. ‘You must grasp this process before you can even attempt the very basics of magic,’ he said. ‘You