The First Lesson in Magic
Hazel watched, amused, as Harry looked around at his new home with a wonder-struck expression. She knew what he was feeling; she remembered it herself, the first time she’d seen real magic, before she realized how very lost she was. But Harry wasn’t lost; he was right where he was supposed to be, freshly kidnapped by something fey, though not Fae. Perhaps she should go back and leave them something in his place, really do the thing right. It was how things ought to be done, and the more balanced things were, the less Fate would push back at her. She would do it first thing in the morning, she decided; she would leave them a poppet, which was as much a changeling as she was Fae.
"Welcome home, Harry," she said when he remained silent."Your bedroom is through the kitchen and down the hall, the last door on the right. Mine is just across the hall from yours. The bathroom is the first door on your right - there's only one, so we'll have to share."
He looked at her like she was an alien for a second, just long enough for her to remember that he had probably never even dreamed of having his own bedroom, let alone bathroom. Then he took off running past her, through the small kitchen, which shared the bulk of the space in the cottage with the living room in an open floorplan that she rather liked, and down the short hallway that held the remainder of the rooms.
The place was cozy enough, though it didn't quite feel like home yet since she had only been sleeping there for about a week. It had taken her a long time - an entire year - to get enough in order for her to be able to give the boy a decent life. Part of that had been getting comfortable in her human skin again, getting used to living in the human world where the rules were different and the threats didn’t hide behind glamours and pretty faces.
Mostly.
“This is all mine?”
She followed Harry’s voice and found him standing at the threshold to his bedroom. It was a small room, by her standards, but to him it must have looked as big as a palace. There was a twin bed with dark blue sheets and a blue and brown quilt in one corner, and against the back wall, set in front of the room’s only window to look out into the back yard — which was a mess of overgrown plants and trees at the moment — was a small desk with a cushioned wooden chair. There was no closet, but a low dresser provided space to store clothing, and though the bookshelf next to it was currently empty, it would hold as many books as Harry might want. The floor was wooden, but softened by a sun-faded blue rug in the center of it.
It had been a guest room, before. She had cleaned the clutter and knickknacks and old books out of it, so it was slightly barren, though still cozy.
“Yes,” she said. “For as long as we live here, and if we have to move, you’ll get a different room there.”
She knew how important it was to have a place you belonged, a place that was all yours, a sanctuary, inviolable. A place you were safe. Harry deserved that, and he didn’t need to know that everything they had right now was built on toothpicks instead of a solid foundation. That was hers to worry about, not his.
“We can go shopping tomorrow,” she added when he didn’t say anything. “It’s too late tonight. You can get whatever you want, as long as we can carry it back ourselves. Toys, books…” She trailed off, looking around at the room. She didn’t actually know what five year olds liked, not very well anyway. Stuffed animals? Video games? Did those even exist yet? Computers did, she knew, but they were different from what she was used to. Before her time. “We’ll visit a few different stores. You’ll need clothes, at least.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Harry?”
He rubbed his eyes as if he couldn’t believe them, then turned to look up at her. The look in his eyes made her uncomfortable. He looked at her like she would have looked at someone who showed her the way out of Faerie.
“Is this real?” he whispered.
“Yes,” she said firmly. She knew all about not trusting her own eyes. “I promise it is, and I don’t lie, Harry. Not about anything that matters.”
He gave her the brightest grin she had ever seen and raced toward his bed, leaping on top of it with a giggle. Smiling, she turned and left him to his play. She needed to start dinner; she was pretty sure she had spotted some frozen chicken in Rose’s freezer.
Harry came out to watch her in the kitchen about twenty minutes later. He sat at the table, his eyes tracking her as she stirred the chicken, broccoli, and potatoes in the skillet. Rose’s freezer was a lifesaver; the fridge less so. She had forgotten to clean it out, and much of what had been in it had gone bad. The potatoes were beginning to sprout, but some quick work with a knife rendered most of them edible, and the butter was fine. Some of the containers of herbs she’d found in the cupboard had been expired for a long time, but they didn’t really go bad, they just lost flavor, so she used them anyway.
“Are you my fairy godmother?”
She nearly dropped her spoon. He flinched back a little as she turned to face him. “Well… yes,” she said slowly. “I suppose I am, in a way.”
It fit well enough, and it seemed an easy enough concept for him to understand, because he seemed to relax a little after that. She hummed to herself as she turned back to the food. Her fairytale had come straight from the Brothers Grimm, but she would try her hardest to give Harry something a little more Disney.
He didn’t ask his next question until they were partway through the meal. It tasted bland to Hazel, but everything did now, after eating the food of Faerie, and Harry seemed to like it well enough. He ate his first serving considerably faster than her, and she seemed to boggle his mind when she told him to go back for seconds. He ate his second serving much more slowly, looking as contemplative as a young child could.
“Why can’t you see the house from the outside?”
Glamours were a perfectly good place to begin one’s magical education, as far as she was concerned, so she pushed her unfinished food to the side and focused. How to explain something that took her years to wrap her head around to a five-year old?
“Well, I can, but I don’t think that’s what you’re asking. I made it so people see it just a little differently than it actually is.”
“Is it magic?”
“Everything’s magic, to some extent or another.” She remembered the dark hole of Azkaban and suppressed a shudder. “For the most part, anyway. Glamours take little magic, but a significant amount of intent and allusion.”
“Illusion?” He struggled with the word.
“Allusion, with an A. It means… referencing something obliquely.” His face screwed up, and she wondered if this was too complex for him. Perhaps she was just bad at explaining it. “Hold on a second.”
She rose to her feet and rifled around the kitchen until she found Rose’s notepad and a pen. She tore a piece of paper off, then further tore it into a rectangle. On it, she drew a one in each corner and a smiley face in the center, then showed Harry.
“What does this look like to you?”
He squinted at it. “Erm… a pound note? Kinda?”
Right, they used pounds here, not dollars. He recognized it as money, at least.
“Close enough. Close your eyes.”
He did so, even going so far as to cover them with his hands. She focused on the scrap of paper with the drawing on it and felt for the ambient energy in the air. With a sort of pinching motion, the glamour she had been holding in her mind settled over the piece of paper. It looked, felt, and smelled like a dollar bill, though if she tried to read the serial numbers, they got sort of blurry. Good enough.
“Look.”
She offered him the dollar bill. He opened his eyes and took it, gaping at her at first until his eyes narrowed. “You switched it. What is it? It’s not a pound note.”
“It’s a US dollar,” she said. “From America. And no, I didn’t switch it. Remember the drawing I showed you? I want you to imagine that drawing really hard while you’re looking at that dollar. Pretend you can see that drawing instead of the dollar.”
His face scrunched up again, and he stared at the bill so hard she was beginning to worry that he wasn’t gong to get it before he popped a blood vessel in one of his eyes, but finally, he gasped.
“It’s the drawing! Wait, no it’s the money again.”
It was a weak glamour, something even one of the lesser fey would see through in an instant, but humans didn’t have such innate skills. Still, she was impressed he had been able to see through it for a moment. It had taken her much longer, but then, she hadn’t had someone to teach her.
“Good job,” she said. “We’ll practice, but in time you’ll be able to see through such glamours easily, as well as make your own.”
Neither he nor she would ever be able to make a glamour that would trick one of the Faerie Lords for more than a matter of moments, nor could they ever hope to see through a powerful glamour created by such a lord. Sometimes she still woke up during the night, gasping, so certain all of this was a cruel illusion of freedom created by some jealous Fae…
“Can I learn now?”
She shook herself and refocused on her young charge. “You can begin, but first you’ll need to learn a few things…” With a wave of her hand, she dissipated the glamour on the dollar bill. He grinned, thrilled, as it reverted to a torn scrap of paper with a badly done drawing on it. “You see how the numbers in the corners and the smiley face in the center match up with the numbers and the face on the dollar bill? That is, sort of, an allusion…”
It wasn’t quite accurate, but for a five-year old, it was close enough, and sometimes close enough was all you needed, especially when magic was involved.