House of Windows

The Solidarity’s students were fast asleep in the Chimera Dorms. All except for Natalie. She could not stop tossing and turning. Worming, writhing, and squirming.

Her mind was aflame. Literally she would have added. Practice today saw a few accidents.

She had to be sent to the nurse when she set her hair on fire from a rogue fireball. Her hair still smelt like a fireplace. They sent her to her dorm room early today. Not that she minded.

She practiced her ‘other’ magic. That sated her thirst for magic that day. But she hungered for more. Looking at a glass of water she stretched out her hand. With some movements of her fingers she began to slowly manipulate the water.

Power surged. It always did when she or anyone began to channel magic’s currents. It could be intoxicating. Natalie focused her mind, drowned out the whispers in her mind.

That was the risk with magic. Draw on too much and magic would control you.

Natalie brushed aside those thoughts. She was the puppeteer, the water goaded by her strings. The water danced, swirled, and coiled.

Her ear flinched. Natalie crept back under her covers. There was the sound of heavy boots in the other room.

She suspected it was Fran, the Chimera Dorm Patrol Officer. Fran would chew her out for practicing magic after curfew. Practicing magic without supervision and in a controlled environment? And practicing "Pagan" magic no less.

“Oh the Inquisitors would have a few words to say about that I tell you what,” she would say.

Natalie waited until the plodding footfalls and her bright light was snuffed. The steps slowly grew silent. Then, finally, the glow of the light disappeared down the hall. Natalie let out a sigh of relief.

She resumed her practice. Once again the water was lifted from the cup. Natalie sat up straight for better control. At this point it wasn’t like she was going back to bed any time soon.

Natalie beckoned the water to come to her. It swirled through the air, wrapping itself like a serpent around her arm.

She raised her arm to watch the water dance along her arm. Its cool touch brushed against her skin.

Then it began to coil up and up. Natalie focused her mind on the water. In a split second she imagined herself swimming in that water. To be one with it. At first directing it, then gliding through it, being one with it, its current racing like the blood in her veins and the pulsing of her heart, racing, ever racing like the thoughts, the thoughts and-

Natalie’s hand clenched the side of her bed. It tensed as the thoughts and voices neared a crescendo then as a reflex threw herself out of bed covers and all. When she popped back up she was breathless.

Her mind slowly eased, draining the excess power. Some of that power sang to her, “I crave it…”

“Shush,” she said. The voices subsided.

The water did not. Natalie hid behind her bed as she watched it zip through the air.

Her training would tell her reassert control, to establish dominance over it.

Instead she watched. Her eyes were wide and transfixed. Her hands tightened on her bed sheet. It was beautiful, mesmerizing in its own way. It went up and up. Each swirling movement seemed to speak to her.

It beckoned her just as she had. It wanted her to come to the window.

Natalie took several deep breaths. The voices began again alternating in a call and response.

“I crave it…”

“I seek it…”

Natalie put on her glasses then opened her dresser drawer. She grabbed her wand and held it tightly in both hands.

This was a bad idea. No witch should obey the whims of her spells. Especially if her mind remained untempered. Fresh. Malleable. Weak of will.

“Magic flows through me. I am its master. I am the master of my own mind. My mind is my own.”

Her recitation of The Solidarity’s axiom had brought her to the window. She recited it again for luck.

The water was above her now. It whirled around her from head to toe. Then it circled in front of her before speeding into the window. Like a raindrop to a pool it rippled out then went still.

Natalie peered through the window. It was just The Solidarity’s campus. She was on the third floor.

She reached her hand out. It was like disturbing the surface of a lake. Natalie pulled it back, the window reverting back to normal. She breathed in.

“This is not a good idea.”

Natalie put her hand to the window. It felt cold and wet to the touch. At the very least she would fall out of her dorm room and hit the pavement. At the very worst…

She did not want to think about it. Instead she trusted herself.

Eyes closed she put her hands to the window and pushed. Water engulfed her. It splashed against her face until her whole body was immersed in the water. She did not see where she was going; only felt that she was going up.

Then at the end she broke the surface and burst out gasping. Natalie pulled herself up and lay on the cold hard ground. She stopped to catch her breath.

Then she stopped to recognize where she was. She was lying on solid, concrete flooring. The ceiling was far above her and seemed to disappear in a stormy sky. Lightning pulsed in the grey clouds. Monstrous things sailed through that mural sky.

It was a massive place. There were aisles and aisles stretching out in every direction and disappearing into the horizon.

What else would be on those aisles except windows?

Natalie got up and walked. Each of the windows showed her something. One window showed her a gentle slope of a hill, with a cherry tree topping it. Another showed her the downtown of Saalberung and The Solidarity School for Magic there. The magic powered cars speeding through the streets. Lights shining brightly against a clear nighttime sky.

She saw a window that gazed into where she was. The Solidarity’s House of Windows. Hours 10:00 AM to 5:30 PM Monday to Friday.

“So that’s where I am. So I am still in my dimension,” Natalie said out loud. That was reassuring.

Some of the other girls had scared her about students wandering into strange portals they summoned by accident. How some of those portals led to strange realities and worlds. And how some of those same students never returned.

Natalie kept walking. The longer she stayed the more she felt herself attuned to the power that coursed here. She felt it between her fingers. In her arms. It was even stronger in her mind. It sang from the amount of power that was being drawn into herself.

“What wonder is there here, how exquisite the power, how delectable the taste. There is no end, there is no beginning. There is always magic. Forever and on into infinity and into the darkest depths of the void itself.”

Natalie covered her mouth. That was not in her mind. She kept on walking. Perhaps a window here would take her back to her dorm room. It was after hours. She was not supposed to be here.

Then a pattern began to emerge. First it was something eerily familiar. A swing set in a backyard. The backyard was filled with blooming plants, of vibrant reds, whites and blues. A grand tree standing proud over all.

Then she saw a clock tower… wasn’t that-?

“Isn’t that Clocktown?”

It was. It was the clock tower at the center of her home town. It was morning back home. Was it morning back at her dorm? Natalie ran forward herself reflected in the windows to her right and left.

She skimmed each window for a way back. It was a sideways glance that forced her to stop. Natalie could not turn away from it. She approached it.

The window showed her her mother. She was alone. It was dark and she was alone. Sitting down in the kitchen with two mugs of hot chocolate. One for her and the other for a daughter who was long gone.

Natalie put a hand to the window. As she did her mother stirred. Did she feel her touch? And could Natalie-?

She stepped back as the window cracked. Her mother looked up and asked, “Natalie? Is that you?”

It was so clear. But the window was cracking. And as it did each broken piece showed her things.

One moment she saw her mentor Ruggit sitting at home and cooking some tea. Another was when she first arrived in the Hekalta Campus and she was introduced to her professor Talorcson. And then there was Fran back at the dorm still patrolling the halls for students who were not obeying curfew. She saw Inquisitor Raklov at his desk pouring through documents.

He looked up.

“Who is there,” he asked.

More of the window shattered and Natalie found herself overwhelmed by the sensations. She knew now that she was seeing past, present, and future. And her overstressed mind drank it all in. Greedily it devoured the magic that was being revealed to her. And it wanted more.

Natalie fell back. The world began to twist and spin. Now every window reacted to her as more magic was unintentionally drawn into her. They all began to show her visions of what was and what could be.

“What could be?”

“What?”

Natalie stood up. As she did a new window presented itself. A figure with her back turned to her.

“This could be you one day,” the figure said. In a window down Natalie saw herself. She saw multiples of herself.

One of them was an Inquisitor, rounding up rogue witches and wizards. Using Inquisitorial Magic to bind, trap, and force the truth from those who had run afoul of The Solidarity. The criminals were chained and imprisoned, their magic drained to power its cities.

A third image was her out of control. Fire streaked across her body. Coursed through her veins. She had torched the Hekalta Campus, turned it to cinders, and she delighted in it. She gloried in the ecstasy of power.

She saw herself with Ruggit, learning Pagan Magic. It was a Natalie at peace with herself and with the magic she wielded. Ruggit was pleased. Then he turned to look back out at her.

“Your fear is eating you alive. You must fight it. You are not…” Ruggit awaited her reply.

Natalie staggered to the window. She tried to ignore all the other distractions. Her mind pulsed from the voices and thoughts inviting her to consume more of what she saw. To indulge in the visions. To be nostalgic, to feel power, to feel unstoppable.

“I am not,” Natalie began. She grabbed the window. She dug her hands into the glass.

“You are not,” Ruggit said. “A slave…”

“A slave…”

From all around her the windows crowded her. Her mother ran around their house calling out to her. Fran stopped for a moment to chat with other patrol officers. There were screams of pain as a future Natalie burned innocent people alive. Raklov was alert in his office asking, “Whoever you are, get out of there now. The House of Windows is off limits at night for a reason.”

Ruggit said, “Focus Natalie. Center yourself as I taught you.”

Natalie nodded. She sat down with the window. Her hands began to bleed from the pressure.

“You are not a slave to magic.”

“I am not… a slave… to magic,” Natalie said slowly.

The windows closed in around her. They began to wash upon her, drowning her in more magic. This was no longer refined or controlled. It was the very things the Inquisitors worked to cleanse the world of. Unreasoning, illogical, chaos.

Natalie was trapped in this sea. She was up to her chest.

“You are at peace.”

“I am at peace.”

Ruggit glanced down in alarm. The window was shattering.

Staring into Natalie’s eyes he said, “I am at peace. I accept my place. And my place is nature.”

Natalie said, “My place is nature.”

She took a deep breath. The water was up to her chin.

“It is in nature that I am at peace.”

Waves washed over Natalie.

“It is in nature that I am at peace.”

The window was beginning to dissolve into the sea. Ruggit's voice grew distant and distorted. “I can do no more from this end. It is up to you Natalie. You must-”

The window disappeared into the sea. Waves crashed against Natalie as the House of Windows became a rampaging ocean of possibilities and impossibilities. The sky crackled. The clouds parted revealing horrific entities crawling and roiling across one another. They were an ocean themselves; the very worst magic could create and spawn.

Soon Natalie was down in the depths and sinking. For one moment she opened one eye. A shimmer down at the bottom. It was shrinking but bright in this mire.

She struggled to swim against the currents dragging her to the surface. They tried to keep her here. She struggled but came no closer.

Water, she thought.

She raised her hands and focused her mind. As suffused as it was with magic the water obeyed.

She repeatedly thought, “It is in nature I am at peace. The sea is nature. And so here I am at peace.”

The water obeyed to form a shield around her. It sheltered her from the maelstrom around her. Then she pushed down, the water bubble spitting her out like a bullet.

The shard was a sliver. But it was brighter than ever. Natalie reached out a hand. And a hand reached out to grab hers.

Raklov’s window exploded as Natalie shot out of his window flooding his office. Both of them coughed out and spat out water.

Raklov took out his wand and with some deft movements of his hand expelled the water from his office and person. His wand glowed then went dormant as it inserted itself back into its holster.

“What a mess,” he said shaking his head. His paper work had been ruined.

He looked at Natalie. She was breathing heavily but not responsive. Raklov knelt beside her. Checked her pulse then her forehead.

He scooped her up in his arms and set her down in a chair. Conjuring a blanket from his wand he wrapped Natalie in it. Before long her heavy labored breathing was replaced with gentle exhalations.

Raklov dried his papers, finished his reports, and then organized them. He got up, took out his pipe and looked out his window. The sun was rising.

There was a yawn behind him.

“Awake at last young lady?”

Natalie had a headache. She rubbed her eye.

“Mr. Raklov… what happened last night?”

Raklov loomed over her. He reached out to her a paper. A large Inquisitorial seal marked the very bottom.

“It doesn’t matter what is written on it. Take it and show it to the patrol officers. Do not speak of what you saw in the House of Windows.”

Natalie nodded. Wrapping the blanket around herself she showed herself out.