Arcane Secrets

Corina Dunn

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          Soon enough, it begins to rain. Not a hard rain, but rain, nonetheless. Bits of water the size of grains of rice fall on my nose with damp clicks. The air smells of wet leaves and overturned brown things. My hair begins to curl in an ugly way.

 

          I turn my face to the sky to feel the sticky rain, like bits of lukewarm tea. I sprout feathers and become a bird. My eyes are golden, my talons shiny and black. I am the leader of all birds. I am wild and free, and I soar through the sky, queenly. My alarm goes off. It is labeled “Return home, or else,” and is set with a ringtone of “I love potatoes.” PEEL THEM, SLICE THEM, CHOP TH-. I turn off my alarm with a sigh, and head home.

 

          As I walk barefoot down the sidewalk, I am grateful for the rain. The pads of my feet are scorched and scraped, although they are also mostly too calloused for me to care. They hiss against the wet concrete. Steam curls up from the ground. I am made out of fire, and everything I do is a force of nature. The hem of my skirt and the shoulders of my tee-shirt are soaked. I shiver: for a creature with supposed waterproof skin, I feel very permeable.

 

          By the time I’m home, everything about me feels soggy. I don’t show it though, because I am a wayfarer returning home after a long journey. I have stories to tell, gifts to give. My hair has grown longer while I was gone – perhaps no one will recognize me. My mother, who is apparently very perceptive, unfortunately does. “What were you doing without a coat? Or shoes for that matter?” she asks (rhetorically, I assume). “How many times must I tell you this?” I mumble sorry. I know I cannot tell her that I traded my shoes for three magic beans, which are right now in my pocket. I hope that I can find time tomorrow to visit the giants at the top of the bean stock I know will grow. I hope they will be friendly and know they will.

 

          When I am wearing dry clothing, I open my travelogue to the newest page. “Grow where you are planted,” it says. It has quotes on every page. I only have chemistry homework today, for which I am grateful. Knowing I have secret knowledge of Chemistry’s arcane secrets, I take out two sheets of loose leaf, and flip open my musty textbook (written in an ancient language, lost to the ravages of time) to the necessary page.

 

          Hours later, I am sitting in bed, reading a YA I know I’ve outgrown. Already I can feel magic slipping away from me, escaping from my clenched hands. The characters are shallow and unrealistic. The story is contrived. Where did it go, I wonder? I can remember a time not long ago that magic came to me so easily. Fairies lived in the big oak tree down the street, and I knew for certain that sometimes at night I could become a raccoon. Slowly, magic grew more practical. It was a luxury of the select few. Someday, I knew I would get a letter from a magical boarding school, and my parents would allow me to go, accepting on faith that it was real. But junior high is gone, and I still go to my same ordinary school. Someday, I know I must accept that I am ordinary, that these things will never happen to me. But not now; not today. I turn off the light and dream I can speak to trees. When I wake up, I have forgotten all their secrets.

 

          June-bugs hit the window by my desk and even though it’s only May, the lazy heat of summer hangs over everything. One of the beetles quickly turns, and I can see it glimmers with an unearthly light. I am working on chemistry again, but I must answer the summons of June-bug queen. I slip out the back door. There, hovering in the air before me, is a lonely bug. It shines golden, veiled in afternoon sun. It zips away, and I follow. Stepping with the grace of an experienced sorceress, I slip through the hole in the driveway gate and run through my neighbor’s yard. He will not notice because he is playing opera at 60 dB, and because I am invisible. The June-bug turns in a lazy ark near the street corner and crashes into a tree. It falls, and I know this is where I will meet the June-bug queen. I examine the tree. Tall and pale, with willowy branches and feathery leaves. A Chinese Elm – they might be my favorite trees if they weren’t invasive and I wasn’t allergic to them. I stand there, at that street corner, for a long time. I watch the sunlight fracture on the tree’s thin limbs and dip a few degrees towards the horizon before I return home.

 

          Perhaps chemistry is magic. Divination. I predict things using ancient and arcane equations. And yet it feels so banal. So unremarkable and plain. But perhaps that is the nature of magic. Something delicate and ephemeral, so small you might crush it by accident. Once you’ve caught it, it stops being magical.

 

          School ends, and I am released to walk on rooves and learn old spells from ancient sages in the woods. I close the car door behind me, careful not squish my trailing shadow. The last drops of Spring rain patter on the windshield, and I know that someday, I will know where rain comes from. But I am glad that, for now, I don’t. I will return here next year, to renew my study of occult mysteries. As the car passes through a shadow, I idly wonder whether I will ever meet the cloud who cast it. I won’t. Nevertheless, the joy is in the searching.