A short story
October hung heavy over the town of Petrarsk. If one didn’t look hard enough, the grey, brutalist buildings could disappear into the overcast sky. Nina Alekseyeva raised the collar of her coat, to shield herself from the stinging rain that hadn’t ceased since Tuesday.
Too distracted by her memories, she’d forgotten her umbrella.
“Councilor,” the latest doorman at the National Bureau of Magical Affairs greeted her as he opened the door. She merely nodded in reply. The last two had disappeared; she no longer bothered learning their names.
As soon as her heels touched the polished tile of the lobby floor, junior undersecretaries swarmed her.
“Councilor, three letters have come in for you from Havsgorod.”
“There are seven transfers needing your signature, Councilor Alekseyeva.”
“Ludmila Ogorodnikova has filed another complaint.”
Nina sighed at this last one—Ludmila Ogorodnikova had been filing complaints about her son’s imprisonment for almost a year now. Her ongoing filings were as reliable as the autumn rain.
Nina crossed the entryway to where Ivan stood waiting for her.
“Councilor,” he nodded, then they both made their way to the door just past the elevators, the swarm close on their heels. “The defendant will be arriving shortly. You’ve read the file?”
“Of course,” Nina answered. She’d read the file as soon as they’d handed it to her, searching for any signs, any gaps that could be filled with her unrelenting memories. “Have we gotten his real name yet?”
“No,” said Ivan.
Nina frowned.
The assembled secretaries rose to their feet as Nina entered. She took her place at the front of the room. It was an uninspiring space—the most remarkable thing about it was that all the lights were currently in working order. They once held inquiries in City Hall, but found the grand architecture made for far too compelling photographs. Pictures would get circulated in dissident media, the convicted wizards resembling gods against the historic backdrop.
The inquiry room at the back of the first floor of the National Bureau of Magical Affairs made everyone appear equally unglamorous.
Ivan announced that the defendant, the long evasive sorcerer known only as Merlin Z, was ready to be brought before Nina.
She told him to bring him in. She told herself she was ready.
The door opened.
Nina glanced briefly at the file before her, readjusting it on the wooden surface of the table. Her fingers itched with the secrets that lingered just beneath her skin. With the knowledge that with a single command, a single motion of her hand, she could put two very different futures into motion.
It would all depend on who walked through that door.
***
She first learned of him from a friend.
“He can help you with your little problem,” this friend had said, and handed her a card with the letters “M.Z.”
Her little problem had manifested two weeks earlier. When returning to her dormitory after spending half the night in the university library, a stranger had approached her from behind. He’d only meant to tell her she’d forgotten her textbook, but in her fright and exhaustion, she’d hurled him twenty feet with only a gasp.
Now she couldn’t contain it. She had no choice but to seek help.
***
They met in a park. Midday. The sky matched his eyes—a startling cerulean—and the trees rustled their greenery in the breeze. He was young, perhaps a few years older than her, wearing a dark uniform. It seemed impossible that he could be the master her friend had implied.
“Tell me about your magic,” he said. Her eyes widened, and he added, “No one can hear us. I’m good at what I do.”
Two NBMA officers, enjoying their coffee in the warmth, walked by without even noticing they were there. She turned back to her companion and told him all she could.
“Can you help me?” she asked afterwards.
“I can teach you to control it, yes,” he nodded.
“Your fee?”
He shook his head. “I don’t do this for money.”
“Then why?”
“Because the world is more beautiful when people like us exist.”
***
“Councilor?” Ivan asked. “Are you going to read the charges?”
***
The note appeared under her pillow the next morning: 17 Tintagel Lane. 10pm. Don’t be seen.
***
She nearly set his apartment on fire during their first lesson, despite only trying to light a single candle. But he was right; he was good at what he did and the fire didn’t spread.
She blushed. Apologized profusely.
He merely laughed.
He had dimples.
***
Although he had other students—she’d passed Mischa Salzmann and Ilya Ogorodnikov several times in the last few months—he never seemed rushed for her to leave.
At first she pretended his interest in her had only to do with her magic. But she caught him glancing when he thought she wasn’t looking. She heard him hold his breath when he readjusted her hand for a spell. Felt the stirring in her core when they parted in his doorway, standing at the threshold between “Goodbye” and “Stay.”
***
Nina cleared her throat, readjusted her file once more. She could not bring herself to look at the charged.
***
“You’re amazing, Nina,” he said, the gleam in his eyes lighting up the longest night. The winter solstice and the new moon had aligned, and the candles were flickering low in his borrowed quarters, now on Oginski Street.
“I’m improving, certainly,” she looked away, breaking the gaze that could so easily draw her in. “I feel it closer to the surface now, just beneath my skin. Waiting.”
“And you’re controlling it,” he said as he took her hand in his, tracing the lines of her upturned palm. Sparks flew in his wake. “Ilya’s still learning the basics, and I’ve been teaching him almost a year. For someone only five months in, you’re well ahead of everyone else.”
“Stop it,” she flushed, and pulled her hand away. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
She knew he wasn’t. He didn’t lie. He said only what he meant, meant everything he said.
***
It was January—the snow was softly falling—when she finally stayed.
***
“What do you do all day, anyway?” Nina asked one morning as she watched him dress.
“Don’t laugh,” he told her.
“I won’t.”
“You will.” Then, “I’m a doorman.”
“A doorman who moonlights as a wizard?”
“A wizard who daylights as a doorman.”
She laughed.
***
She graduated with Highest Honors. He was in the crowd when she walked, though nobody else saw him. Her thesis was titled Merlin and Nimue: What the State Can Learn From the Wizard Problem.
***
The charges held a minimum sentence: Ten years at the Brechel Penal Colony.
***
“And you’re taking it?” he asked with a furrowed brow.
“I have to. People would ask questions if I didn’t.”
She’d been offered the position of junior undersecretary at the National Bureau of Magical Affairs, an enviable post for any recent graduate of the Petrarsk University School of Governance. Four hundred kopki a month, ten days of paid leave, and private quarters in the Public Employees Residential Block.
“Besides,” she said, “I can make a difference from the inside.”
He frowned, the crease between his eyes deepening. “You’ll be monitored.”
“I’m already being monitored,” she pointed out. “Doesn’t that speak to how good at this I’ve become?”
“They’re looking for me.”
“And I won’t let them find you.”
“What will you tell your colleagues when they ask how you spend your evenings?”
She hooked her fingers in the beltloops of his pants, pulling him closer. Standing on her tiptoes, she whispered in his ear, “I’ll say I bring naughty wizards to their knees.”
***
She saw the order for Mischa Salzmann’s arrest on a Wednesday, made it disappear.
“You have to be more careful,” she reminded him when they next passed each other on the street. “I can’t protect you if you don’t protect yourself.”
But three days later he got drunk and showed off to the wrong woman in a bar at midnight.
Nina couldn’t stop what was already in motion.
***
“Nina,” he breathed, as his fingers worked a very different form of magic than they’d been practicing minutes earlier.
“More,” she panted, “please.”
He obeyed, eliciting another moan from Nina’s parted lips.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes, always.”
And, as always, it was an ascent to the precipice of their union, bringing her to the edge, pushing her over, until she was falling through the abyss so fast she felt she could fly.
She could fly into eternity with him.
***
Just yesterday she’d signed the papers transferring Mischa Salzmann to the Brechel Penal Colony.
She had no other choice; a dozen secretaries were watching.
***
“Fire,” she said, and lit his cigarette with the flame produced at the tip of her finger. She watched the figures in smoke dance their way up to the ceiling on his exhale.
A flick of her wrist and the window opened. The hazy dancers disappeared on the cool night air.
A quirk of his lips and she fell into his depths once more.
It all came so easy now.
***
She could have flown into eternity with him.
***
She got promoted to Junior Councilor in late summer. Five hundred kopki. A week each year at the state sanitorium. She accepted; people would ask questions if she didn’t.
The look in his eyes when she told him would haunt her, she knew. And as her days got longer, her nights grew shorter. Their stolen moments together fewer and further in between.
“Yes, always,” became “I’ve got an early start tomorrow.”
And when tomorrow arrived, “goodbye” slipped too easily off his tongue.
***
It was she who’d signed the warrant for Merlin Z’s arrest. She’d had no other choice, two Junior Secretaries were watching.
Undermining the State through the dissemination of magical instruction—so had read the first of the charges against him.
She went to him that night, told him to run.
“It’s you, isn’t it? Merlin Z?” Those were his initials, after all: M.Z.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he’d said.
She opened her mouth to reply; he silenced her with a kiss.
***
When Nina received the next promotion, she took a taxi to his most recent quarters at Paimpont Boulevard. The door was open. The apartment was empty.
***
It was Ilya Ogorodnikov who told her he’d gone into hiding. He’d met her in the subway station, passed her a crumpled piece of paper, ripped from yesterday’s copy of The Petrarsk Daily.
—the stain of wizarding blood cannot be washed from our Republic by means of political censure alone. Such transgressions of nature must be systematically purged from the collective—
The text rearranged itself into a familiar scrawl.
***
She looked up.
***
N—
The walls were closing in on me here. I couldn’t stay. There are others like us and I must find them, help them. You understand.
I had so hoped our lives would remain intertwined as they were. I have cherished our time together more than you could possibly know. But this is where our paths must diverge.
—M.Z.
***
A sharp inhale.
***
When she got home that evening, she put his note into a box and sealed it with a spell. As she lay down in her single bed, there were tears in her eyes.
***
With a single command, a single motion of her hand, she set the future in motion.
E. R. Presma 