Asherti Onlarion lowers her conducting baton and exhales through pursed lips.  “I am pleased to confirm that you have maintained your vocal control.”

She had insisted on listening to my singing for the last few years like an owl listens for rodents.  Since my voice first cracked, Asherti Onlarion punished each wrong note with a single-octave scale.  Some sessions, my singing was so fraught we would stop altogether and learn on  the piano or mandolin instead; not for nothing, she dubbed me a “mandolin mistress” the summer after my fourteenth birthday.

Asherti Onlarion seemed to enjoy the shift, but mundane music lessons didn’t prevent her from sneaking in some insights regarding the “cosmic design,” or the “arcane interplane,” or whatnot.  I can only imagine the yearly relief of stepping away from teaching an adolescent human girl in order to engage in opera or contemporary music among her people.

Each time we returned to singing, she would stress the fundamentals as if I were learning them for the first time.  Still, she didn’t want to push me too hard or too far.  She would always wait until I exercised the appropriate amount of vocal control before moving on to the next movement, song, or style.

I’m overjoyed to hear that our years of effort have finally paid off.  More truly, though, I chafe at the purposefully slow rate at which I have been gaining magical competence.  Asherti Onlarion has shown me diagrams of common mystical patterns; she’s explained and demonstrated conventional scores that weave through and around the cosmic design; she’d even lend me her own training exercises during her tours.  Not once have I handled the fabric of magic.  Dimitri, on the other hand, was already studying and casting minor spells by his teens.  

Perhaps Asherti Onlarion is proficient in teaching the elven traditions of magic, but I won’t live as long as she will, or even as long as she has.  I’ve been responsible with her notes so far, but I may attempt to songcast on my own if we don’t start serious lessons soon.

I bow.  “Thank you very much, Asherti Onlarion.”  I push my glasses back into place as I rise.

Asherti Onlarion closes the music folder on my music stand.  She paces in front of me.

“As impositionists, our power does not come from what surrounds us; nor should we rely on libraries of arcane symbols or shamanic rituals.  Our magic is rooted in our will.  We need only to know ourselves, to control ourselves, in order to glimpse the cosmic design around us and alter it.”

Asherti Onlarion stops and looks into my eyes.  A thin smile creases her lips.  “Would you like to glimpse the design, now, Miss Klóe?”

My jaw drops open.  I look to Judah at the rehearsal room doors.

He looks up from his notebook, to my teacher, then back to me.

“Yes!” I squawk before Asherti Onlarion can retract her offer.  “Yes, absolutely!”

Asherti Onlarion broadens lifts her chin and comes to my side.  “Do you remember the attunement pitch we discovered for this room last week?”

I nod.

“Begin at your leisure.  I will be right here to guide your weaving, as well as to bolster your song, should the need arise.” Asherti Onlarion sweeps an open hand in front of herself, as if inviting me into her home.

I bob my head again.  I turn from Asherti Onlarion and suck in a ragged breath.  I shake the nerves out of my hands.  I can’t afford them right now.  I need clarity.  I need purpose.  I need control.

I clench my fists and relax my throat.  I open my heart and sing out a warm, lower-middle tone toward my music stand.

A wave collides into me at a thousand-million points, from my crown to my soles to my soul.  The rehearsal room and its contents are covered by semi-separate, veiled, almost crosshatched versions of themselves.  Even the space between objects is filled with lines that flow into and out of barely distinct forms.

I buckle.  Although none of it hurts more than an itch, the flash of insight nearly yanks the air from my lungs.  My note falters, and the room begins to collapse into unity.  

A matching, sturdier note joins the one I manage to hold.  The veil reasserts itself, and the doubled sight is clearer than before.  I glance to my side.

Asherti Onlarion stands there with her head tilted to one side, her mouth half open, and her hands folded one over the other in front of her.  Her practiced, relaxed, demeanor is assuring; the veil covering her is another matter.

A white-blue column of light glows with steady pulses from her head to her waist.  Thread-like tendrils reach out from that center line in all directions, but most of them reach into the gauzy air toward my music stand.  Is that what her spirit looks like all the time?  Is that what mine looks like?  How would I even tell?

Asherti Onlarion glances at me through the corner of her eye.  From within her song, she intones a single word.

“Focus.”

I release my note and nod for a couple of steadying breaths.  I sing out once more, clarifying the veiled world.  The gauzy overlay loses some of its fine detail when Asherti Onlarion falls silent, but I can hold the song on my own for now.  Too nervous to move, I focus on the faintly shuddering stand in front of me and listen to my teacher.

“As you sing, notice how the air around you moves.  It will vibrate or waver, shimmer or curl.  You will not need to pitch this note to affect the cosmic design in the future; I want you to see it now in order to see how you affect it.  Sharpen your pitch.”

I do as she says.  The crosshatch patterns fade away from the music stand, leaving only the stand and its outline.  I continue to pitch my voice higher, and the shaded filler dissipates from  the floor and walls, from the bookcase.  When I reach half an octave higher from where I started, only the gauzy veil in the air around me remains.

Asherti Onlarion matches my note again.  I relax for two beats before resuming it, and she continues her guidance.

“Our imposition allows us not only to sense, but to affect the space around ourselves.  We could also affect others’ perceptions of this space, but those are lessons for another, later time.  

“Now, subdivide your note.  Feel the movement in the air around you.  It may be too subtle for you now, but it will become more obvious as your skill, perception, and confidence grow.”

The hairs on my bare arms twitch upward each time my tongue taps against my teeth.  They buzz with the thrum in the air I can just barely see in the design over the material world.

“These movements,” Asherti Onlarion continues, “are the basis of what you will use to cast magic through the world.  Pitch, rhythm, tempo; these are your tools in shaping your pocket of the cosmic design.  Where would you like to start?”

I don’t glance at Asherti Onlarion.  I’m not even sure I can handle what a living form reveals in this refined sight of mine.  Instead, I focus on the space above and behind my music stand.

I sneak in a new breath and slowly increase my tempo.  The veil pulsates, and my skin vibrates in time.  Half-notes become quarters, which become eighths; hatched lines fill the spot I focus on and bend downward.  I walk up the vocal scale, and the bending space curves outward and upward in fits and starts.  I sing up and down, playing with my tempo and tone until I feel a bare puff across my skin.  I hold my final note for a full bar, release it, and close my eyes.

I take a deep, calming breath.  I open my eyes, and the rehearsal room is a single, cohesive vision once more.  Just behind my music stand, though, shimmers and twists a sphere of translucent air the size of one of Judah’s fists.  

To keep from hopping in place, I turn to my security chief and point at my achievement.

“Do you see that?”

He focuses on the ethereal charm and tilts his head.  “I see it.”  Judah’s voice is more cautious than curious.  

“I did that!”  

I turn back to my spinning charm and sigh.  I clasp my hands under my chin and take a single step forward.  I stop and turn to Asherti Onlarion with raised eyebrows.

To my relief, she nods once with a glowing smile.  She isn’t literally glowing as I saw in my mystic sight, but her pride is evident enough.  

I approach the music stand.  My charm hisses softly, pitched perhaps a tone-and-a-half above where I left the interplane.  I reach toward the swirling mass, but it disperses like steam.  

I frown in confusion.  Behind me, Asherti Onlarion stifles some laughter.

“You find new ways to impress me, Klóe DiRossi.  I hadn’t expected you to begin anchoring any effects for two or three more sessions, let alone anchoring one for ten seconds.”

 “I did it correctly, then?  The bubble was supposed to disappear that way?”

“To have set such a long-lasting and uniform airsphere is quite the feat for a first-time songcaster.”

“Well, I have a first-rate music teacher to thank for guiding me.”  I approach her with open arms, but stop beyond her reach.  “Thank you, Asherti Onlarion, for training me.  I could not have come this far otherwise, and I look forward to going further with you.”

After some hesitation and wary appraisal, Asherti Onlarion embraces me.  It’s brief, but surprisingly strong coming from such a reserved elfom.  Once we separate, she tugs at her plum vest to straighten it and clears her throat.

“Now that you know how to perceive the cosmic design on your own, I encourage you to practice doing so throughout your home.  Give particular effort in the areas with the most familiarity to you.  

“Do not tax yourself.  Knowing your surroundings will benefit the learning process, but pushing yourself beyond your knowledge or ability without proper guidance may disrupt your efforts, or harm you and your home.  Trust your companion,” she says with a glance at Judah, “and if it senses a strain in the interplane around you, or any danger from your practice at all, heed its warning.”

The casual referral to Judah and his classmates as mere objects continues to irk me.  I suppose I should feel less offended, since they refer to each other as such all the time.  But I don’t.

“Yes, ma’am.”