The first time you say you’re not magic, you say it to your mother.

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She smiles gently and says of course you are, darling, and you’ll see how powerful you are, one day and we’re proud of you. She’s never said that last bit before, so you let her take your little hand and lead you to the living room. The client — a family friend — coos over how young you are, how talented; he takes your reluctance for shyness, your denial for humility.

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He says that he needs a bit of luck, just a little. That it doesn’t matter if it’s just superstition, it’s the thought that counts. the blessing of someone so young, so pure.

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Your mother assures him that it is not just superstition. That all your life, inexplicable, unexplainable things have happened around you. That you’re magic, truly, really.

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When his investment does take off and he becomes the richest man in town overnight, he comes by your house again to shower you with dresses and dolls and sweet cakes — his overwhelming gratitude infinitely more substantial than the magic they all think you have.

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The second time you say it, your fingers are interlocked in your best friend’s at the entrance of the woods. You’d both snuck out during afternoon naptime, when the teachers were distracted. We’re not supposed to be here, you say, it’s dangerous.

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She says that it’s okay, because you’re here too, and your magic is strong enough to ward off any bad guys. You want to tell her that the only talent you’ve ever had is staying unnoticeable and getting overlooked. But you don’t, because she’s staring at you with those bright eyes.

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The reasons why you should run back home like a good little girl: the direwolf sightings, bloodthirsty bandits, wild animals, the sun setting on the horizon and you only have one torch, spies and soldiers from the kingdom you were at war with, the thought of stumbling onto a battleground filled with spears and arrows and broken, shriveled bodies.

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The reason why you don’t: your best friend’s palm is warm in yours, her lovely dark hair stained violet by the dusk sunset, her voice aching with wanderlust and the hunger for adventure. Under the fading sun, her eyes look like honey.

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The wolves take one, when their claws shred through her cheek.

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You had been frozen with fear. She’d pushed you out of the way. It should have been you. Your screams are louder than hers as you wave your torch around, spraying embers and smoke that light the forest floor ablaze. When the wolves balk at the inferno, you grab her hand and run.

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There’s nothing else in the universe but the ringing in your ears as you stumble over roots and grass, her shaking hand tight in yours. You don’t look back to see if the wolves follow (they don’t), or at the gore dripping from your best friend’s face (she’s breathing). You wouldn’t be able to take a step into the woods again for a long time, without seeing that endless red on your eyelids. When the grownups finally find you at the mouth of the forest, you’re kneeling over your best friend’s limp body.

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She’s lucky, they say, afterwards. That the wolves had only gone for her face and taken her left eye, instead of going for her throat and taking her life. That she had made it back in time for the healer to stem the blood loss. That the beasts didn’t follow us. That you were with her, with your magic and talent and arcane luck. She’s lucky you were with her.

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The first thing she says when her voice comes back to her lips is thank you. You look into her remaining eye, the one that’s not buried under papyrus bandages. You don’t tell her that you don’t deserve it, don’t deserve anything, don’t deserve her; but it’s true.

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The third time you say it, you’ve grown into the tunic your brother left behind when the war took him, and your best friend has grown into her chain-mail armor and the regal spear she wields better than anyone else in the kingdom. Her Commander cloak is gorgeous — bright purple weaved into gold, the crest of our kingdom — but it won’t stop a mace from thrusting shards of bone into her lungs.

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What, am I not worth showing some of your magic to? She teases, playfully punching your arm. Not even a blessing? You trace the writhing scars running down her left cheek, brush against her embroidered eyepatch. It has the crest on it, too. You want to tell her that if magic did run in your veins, she would be worth every last forsaken drop of it.

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I have no blessing to give, you say, tenderly touching her beautiful dark hair. But you whisper what she wants to hear into those long, shining locks of hair anyway, because you can’t look into her eye — you haven’t been able to since the woods.

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After that, she shears her hair off — all of it — with the knife you gave her last year, to celebrate her promotion in the army. She gives her hair away in ragged chunks to every soldier in her squadron, promising them that it would keep them safe. Because you had cast your magic into it, after all. Her soldiers march into battle with her hair tucked carefully in their pockets, every gleaming black strand consecrated with empty blessings and hollow promises.

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In a fortnight, her soldiers march back home — every single one of them alive. Word of your talent travels far and wide. Everyone in the kingdom hears about the magic that brews in your small frame, the kind of arcane enchantments that can keep dozens of soldiers alive in war.

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They come to your house to thank you, their families too — each and every one of them on their knees. You try to tell them that not a single ounce of their resounding victory was because of you; it was the years your best friend spent studying war strategies and battle tactics, it was her courage and leadership, it was her who kept them all alive.

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The soldiers tell you that they all believe in magic now, that they’ll always believe.

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Don’t, you whisper, your voice lost in their thanks. Your lungs are so empty. Don’t.

 

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The fourth time you say it is when the Captain of the Queensguard herself rides into the village on her gallant black stallion. The Captain asks for you, and the way your name rolls off her tongue makes you forget that you’re a fraud, the biggest liar in the entire kingdom. You tell her that you have no magic, that you’re nobody, nobody at all, but she scoffs.

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She towers over you, fiery red hair pulled back under her steel helmet, and you lose your tongue for a few minutes when she stares at you with those piercing green eyes. By the time you find it again, she’s hoisting you onto her horse. To the palace. So your talents can be properly utilized, she says by way of explanation. Hold on tight. You do.

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You tremble when the woods swallow you whole, but when the Captain hums an ancient battle tune that melds with the rhythmic clop-clop of hooves, you feel your eyes closing. You’re woken on your journey by angry shouts, and you find yourself surrounded by flags of green and silver — enemy soldiers. The Captain holds her own, but three on one is barely a fair fight, and she finds herself pinned to an oak tree. The men sneer, laughing about the things they would do to her once they got through the steel plates.

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You don’t have a torch this time, but your fingers find the hilt of a sword in the sack strapped to the horse. You run one of the men through and through, feeling the scrape of blade against bone. The man’s choking gurgles follow you for the rest of your life. By the time you finish retching on the ground, the Captain is wiping the other two men off her blade. The one you killed is all over your hands and arms and tunic, and you don’t know if you’ll ever wash all that scarlet off.

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She looks at you with a new light in her eyes. Nobody, huh? She says, raising a brow. You didn’t look like nobody to me.

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You want to tell her that every time you blink, you see the way he twitched when he died; you took his life, you took his life and his lifeblood is literally all over your hands right now oh gods, oh gods — but you keep your mouth shut and nod. Nobody, you repeat. No magic.

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I think you’re too hard on yourself, the Captain says, thoughtfully.  

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She shows you too hard a few days after your arrival at the palace; when she looks at you as you untangle your bodies from each other in your chambers, you find yourself wondering if magic exists after all. She looks at you like you’re magic. She looks at you like she loves you.

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When you try to tell her that you don’t deserve this, she puts her lips to yours and you forget.

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The fifth time you say it, it’s a whisper at the grave of your best friend. While you were off playing pretend in the palace with the Captain and Queen, your best friend had led her squadron into battle again. This time, they died like dogs.

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Your best friend had rot away on the battlefield for ages before the war shifted and search parties could form. Her hair had grown out, and they say they found her clutching it in shriveled fists. The townsfolk reassure you — you! They tell you that no magic is strong enough to last years, and you had done everything you could have done for her. That it was her fault, even, for not going to you first.

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It’s not her fault that she died horrifically, alone and scared. She died believing in magic.

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She died believing in you.

 

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The sixth time, it’s a scream over the broken body of the Captain of the Queensguard.

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The war had found your hometown, and by the time the Captain and you arrived, the earth had been blotched scarlet with the bodies of people you knew. People you grew up with. People who died with their mouths open and hands together — people who died praying to you, died with your name bubbling red in their stained throats.

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You couldn’t have known they would come, the Captain had told you. It’s not your fault.

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She dies protecting your family, trying to stop the enemy soldiers from getting into your house.

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They do, anyway.

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Your howl of anguish is drowned promptly in the clang of steel on steel and thump of flesh on flesh and the wet, sickening slap of steel on flesh and the ghastly screams that followed and— and you would not be drowned out again, not even once. You need to be heard.

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The next time you part your lips, you stop the war.

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The shriek that wrenches itself from your parched, dry throat rings through the town, through the fields of shattered blades and bodies. It carves through the clouds, the stars, the heavens. The skies part, a soft golden light spilling onto the war. The steel that it touches melts, bubbling gently into the soil. The arrows and bows and spears and cannons — all swallowed tenderly into the ravenous earth.

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Maybe you are magic, after all.

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When the light fades, the living are unharmed. The fallen stay dead. The soldiers fall to their knees, some babbling, some dazed. Some cry. Some put their hands together and pray.

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You let go of the Captain’s hand, brush her sunshine hair from her cheeks one last time. Then you turn, and you run.

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The wolves don’t touch you, their eyes gleaming in between the trees; and you run until it’s all, all behind you. You run until your lungs ache and your legs buckle, on outskirts of the kingdom you saved. When you stop to breathe, you hear the whispers from the ghosts you failed; the ghosts of those who believed in magic, who believed in you. The ghosts who would never believe in you again.

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So you pick yourself up again, and you run.

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There’s a house in the woods. It’s got a gleaming red roof and four windows and there’s a man in front of it, playing with three wolves; and you wonder for a moment if your mind had finally, truly, broken. When he walks towards you, you decide that you have nothing left to lose. You tell him that you have nowhere to go, and that you would do anything for some water, and then you promptly collapse.

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The subsequent days run together like a thread. He talks to you, by your bed, offering information about himself: his name, his interests, his likes and dislikes, his favorite color (it’s red). He tells you that it’s nice to finally have another human to talk to. He tells you that he deserted the kingdom, rather than fight a silly war he didn’t believe in. You nod, and he takes your regret for understanding.

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When you find your voice again, you offer a little about yourself in turn: your name. He waits for more, but when you don’t deliver, he doesn’t push.

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You learn that he’s been living here for years. “It’s not too bad when the wolves like you,” he shrugs. “I helped that one deliver a litter once. They won’t bother you.” And so they don’t, lounging around the house lazily, eyeing you at first with unease, then eventually, with playfulness. You can’t find it in yourself to reciprocate.

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After you’ve recovered enough to stand, you help around the house — and eventually, after a few moons, with the wolves. When he helps one of them deliver another litter, he teaches you how to hold the pups, to feed them and take care of them.

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You almost say it again, one day, while you’re both washing out the pups’ room after a particularly messy day. When he leans back and wipes the sweat from his brow and says, “hey, can you just do all this with uh, magic?”, the blood runs cold in your veins.

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He mistakes the terror in your wide eyes for surprise, and adds, “I mean, word travels, even out here. Posters, too. You’re the almighty witch who saved all those people, or something, right? Aren’t you magic?”

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You’re so, so tired when you shake your head. You start to open your mouth to explain, to tell him — like you told all your ghosts — that you’re not magic, you’re not, you’re not—

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“Oh, okay,” he shrugs, before you can say anything, and goes back to work.

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The seventh — the last — time you say it, it’s a plea and a declaration and a revelation.

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You tell him everything, and he pulls you close — your trembling body pressed so tightly to his that it’s almost as though he’s trying to wrest out everything that’s broken about you, all that loss and anguish, and take it into himself. For a moment, it feels like he does.

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“I’m not magic,” you say, finally, at the end of your story. “I’m not.”

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“So you’re just like the rest of us, that’s not too bad, is it?” he says, like he doesn’t know the weight of his words, like you haven’t waited your whole life to hear them. He tells you that for what it’s worth, he thinks that there was magic in the things you tried to do for your family and friends. That there was magic in the hope that you gave them, when they needed something to believe in; in a hopeless battle, in a hopeless world.

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He says he thinks that there’s magic in your laugh, when he manages to coax it out of you.

 

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The first time you feel magical is when you watch the sun sink behind the treetops with him, a smear of gold and indigo over the endless sea of green.

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It’s chilly, but the wolves curl up next to you and warm you with their thick, downy coats. You fall asleep with his arm around you and your heart, for the first time, at peace.

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You learn to find magic everywhere, in the crimson leaves crackling under the soles of your feet, in the earthworms writhing on fresh soil; in the ripe red apples swelling under branches, the way their crisp skin yields under your teeth. In the soft down of snow that sheathes the world in white, the endless blue of the cloudless sky. In the soft gasp of a pup’s first breath. In the survivors rebuilding after the war, in the bones of a new kingdom that you watch, rising over the horizon.

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Sometimes, when you close your eyes, you still see your ghosts; the ones you left behind.

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But it’s okay. You’ve learned to find magic in the memory of them, too.