This story is about how I taught myself magic. Sort of.

First off, I am stranded, not in the way that I am on a desolate island, but I surely am not where I intended to be and have no way to get there. I wanted to be at home in Sussex in time for dinner, but I did end up... somewhere else.

I had just taken a quick step of the dirt path through the small forested area on my way from school, to get around a fallen tree. But after what felt like an hour on the path, I realized I wasn’t in some small forested area surrounded by a heavy traffic motorway.

I eventually came out the other side and knew I wasn’t anywhere near Sussex anymore, not even earth.

The sky was even and blue, as usual, but no sun was in sight, instead a nebulous bright spot was there. Along it was something that looked like a massive tree. Seriously huge! It was black and had thousands of branches and twigs and all that, but no leaves. It reached far above the blue of the sky, thousands of miles up maybe.

I of course ran back into the forest to find my way home, believing this some kind of dream, but in dreams I never had the presence of mind to realize it was one. At first, I used my phone like a dousing rod, hoping to get reception when I was close to whatever enchanted fairyportal would take me back home, but the battery soon died on me.

It was getting dark and despite having encountered only birds and a thing that looked like a squirrel, I did not want to meet the rest of the tenants.

I found back out the forest, somehow, and saw the lights of a town not far off. The towering tree in the sky had a subtle rippling-pattern on its surface that was glowing or sparkling, giving off some light. As a spectacle, it was even more impressive. Not far off was a cobblestone road leading to the town. I managed to get through the town walls under the eyes of guards wielding spears. They didn’t like my getup, I could tell. Everyone was wearing tunics or robes, the weather was much warmer and dryer than any English summer, not that that’s a high bar to reach. I saw no modern technology around, no asphalt or concrete, no cars or bikes, all just carts and loam-and-wood houses, a few fancy brickwork houses, a few draft-animals that looked like a mix between an ox and a donkey. I stood out like a sore thumb with my jeans and hoodie and backpack. Still, the guard let me in and I found a nook between two houses to sleep. I tried looking for food, but I wasn’t going to go dumpster diving just yet.

Awakening under the large tree thing the next day was just as jarring as seeing it for the first time. I had hoped it had been just a dream, bit my stiff neck and shoulders and the stink from sleeping in an alleyway were too strong to not convince me.

I went back to the forest in the hope to find back and I searched all day, even though I was starving and thirsty as I ever had been, but I did not find back. I started screaming into the forest, hoping for someone to hear and find me. Eventually, I just broke down and raged against this bloody sham. I cried for quite a while. At some point, I just accepted it and went back to the town. There, I started begging for food. Some old geezer said I could sleep in his workshop and have some bread if I promised to sweep it out the next day. It was the best I ever got so I accepted it.

The guy was a shoemaker and his name was Lark. I was glad for the food he gave me and slept on a thin bag of straw. I would have never guessed I would be so happy to get such crappy food and lodging.

I did some more chores for him and then he found out I could read and write. He was overjoyed at that. He offered me food and lodging for a month if I could copy his notes and bills into a book, something he never got around to.

I guess I should talk about how these people spoke and wrote.

It wasn't unfamiliar but still bloody strange. For example, they didn’t say “eggs” but “eyren”, which still sounded familiar. Their writing was chickenscratchings at first but I got the hang of it, it seemed they used the same letters, roughly. They did that “thee” and “thou” thing instead of “you” and they used that old English letter Þ for the “th” sounds. Other than that, I was perfectly fine.

I did the old man’s writing for him while he made shoes and in return, I could sleep and eat. Then he found out I can calculate. That’s when he made me his accountant. I was actually thinking about going back to the forest and asked him about it. Up to that point, I had never mentioned where I really came from, just said that I was stuck here against my will and he seemed to accept that. When I told him about the forest, he just accepted that, too. Said something about a “waymarker” I had to find and that I could go back to the forest on my own time, but shouldn’t expect him to await me with dinner ready if I ever went off like that.

But I stayed. I stayed with Mister Lark and he even got me proper clothes. My own tunic and sandals, so I wouldn’t look like a weirdo walking around town doing errands for him. Being his accountant meant doing all the calculations for price, stock and materials for him. I looked at what he had done before and he was basically counting by his fingers and almost everything had at least some error in it. He focussed on his shoes and I focussed on getting his records in order. Luckily, I am a huge nerd, so I had no problem with working with numbers and words.

This story however is not about how I became an accountant for a shoemaker, but how I taught myself magic. The day it all really took a turn was when I was out for another errand for the old man: getting nails from the blacksmith.

I liked going to the blacksmith. Seeing something out of metal take shape by hammering on it has a certain allure. Also, the smith’s apprentice Cenric was a cool guy. He was roughly my age and did the menial and repetitive jobs, like making cobbler’s nails for Mister Lark. He actually gave me a hint to where I am. When I told him, somewhat proudly, that I had been hired as an accountant, he let out an expletive. It went something like this:

“By Titatnia’s Tits! The old guy can afford an accountant?” He was genuinely surprised at this. “His shoes aren’t that expensive. Or good.”

“Well, I get mostly just free lodging and food, you know?”

“Oh, so that explains it, he found himself a servant. Still, where did you learn all that?”

“I told you man, in my home realm we all have to.”

“You could do much better than free food and lodging at a shoemaker’s, maybe you should offer your services elsewhere around town.” He shrugged his shoulders and went back to his current workpiece.

It took me a moment before Ir ealized what he had just said. “Wait, Titania? What do you know about her?” I had just then remembered that Titania was some mythical figure Shakespeare had written about, Queen of the Fairies, I think.

“Well, you know, the queen of the greatrealm? She lived like, what, a thousand years ago? I think it was the last time that anyone had united all of the branches west of Garrland.”

So, the way this world supposedly works is that every “realm” is a branch of that huge tree they called Drassel. That name reminded me of the Yggdrasil of the vikings. Apparently, that tree is the world and one could only walk on the branches, not between them, with no great distances to be crossed by sea or so. Therefore, the further down the tree a realm was, the more it could control travel between the further up realms. But it was also colder further down, so those realms demanded heavy taxes to keep their hearths burning and food on the table.

Thanks to Cenric and that name Drassel, I figured out that when I walked into the forest away from the paths, I literally walked into the realm of Titania’s fairies, except they were all just regular people. And the reason Mister Lark had been so relaxed about my story of coming from another realm was that it sounded normal to him, since these branching and forking points were sort of tricky. Apparently, you had to walk between specific pillars or stones and if you didn’t, you would just loop around forever. I had no idea how that was supposed to work, but whenever I asked, people told me the great magicians knew.

The magicians were a weird lot. There was one I saw walk around town from time to time. He wore a long green robe down to the ground with huge sleeves and he had a head of bushy grey hair. I saw him work his “magic” once. It was just sleight of hand. He pulled a small stick out of the sleeve of his rope and turned it, making a golden hook appear on it. Then he Made a motion in empty air and a cobblestone lifted out of the ground. He then put something underneath and the cobblestone returned. I thought that the hook was maybe some wireless device? Maybe the magicians were highly advanced technologically and just kept the peasants in the dark about all of this.

I came across the plaza and there was something made by the magicians that I genuinely found intriguing: a water clock. The mechanism itself was simple: two wooden cylinders, the one further up being a reservoir with an overflow-outlet to keep water pressure stable, the second cylinder tipped over whenever it was full and when that happened, it spilled its water into an outlet and caused a ball to roll down a ramp. The balls all gathered in a cage, where one could see how many times the cylinder had tipped over since sunrise. It was set so that between sunrise and sunset, twelche balls would be put on the ramp.

What was interesting is how the topmost cylinder, the reservoir, was filled: There was a channel running across the plaza that ended in a pipe made of an odd metal that looked sometimes like silvery-gold, sometimes like polished copper and I never could decide what it was. The people of the town called it “Orichalcos” and I had heard that somewhere before, but don’t asks me where. This pipe inlet was just closed off at the other end, but the water still disappeared in it. Then, twelve feet above it, a pipe outlet hanged seemingly in mid-air and out of it flowed the water into the reservoir with apparently no connection between them.

Either way, I knew it wasn’t “magic” though. They just hid the pipe somehow. I had seen fountains like this back in our world. They looked like giant faucets hanging in the air, eternally spewing out water, there still was a pipe holding it all inside the water stream out of the faucet. It wasn’t magic, just clever tricks, I just had to see it properly up close, but just looking more closely at the weird metal drew ire gazes from the townsfolk.

There was another “magic” contraption at the Blacksmith’s. It was a giant hammer’s head floating in the air above the anvil. It couldn’t be moved when one touched it directly, but stepping on a pedal next to the anvil caused it to slam downward with amazing force. It was like a mechanical hammer back in our world, just without any connecting or supporting structure holding it.

It too wasn’t magic, yet more clever tricks. The people here had just never looked closely enough because they thought it in bad taste.

I arrived at Cenric that day, had a chat with him and brought the nails back to Mister Lark’s. On my way back, I crossed the town square and saw another magician. This one looked different than the one I had seen before. This one wore a robe in deep dark red, his hair was black and properly groomed and his face was grim and angry at nothing. He held a staff, itself covered in bands of this orichalcos metal from top to bottom. He seemed to be deep in contemplation, looking down at his feel as he was counting something by his fingers, making weird gestures and symbols as if calculating. He didn’t see the peasant carrying a huge bag of grain in front of him, and neither did the peasant see him.

I kind of saw the two were on a collision course, but before I could decide to say something, the two collided. The peasant fell backwards, the magician let out a loud yelp. The bag of grain spilled all over the town square, tools and scrolls of the magician along with it. Other people on the town square looked on as if a traffic collision had just happened. Before the magician could get up, the peasant was already running to him with apologies on his face.

“I am deeply sorry, Master Magician, please allow me to help you.” He held out a hand to the magician, but he only slapped it aside and stood up with an even grimmer face than before.

“HOW DARE YOU?!” He held his staff aloft and the crowd inhaled sharply. Terror was on the peasant’s face, he looked ready to crap his pants. I could see the magician was feeling and touching the bands of orichalcos very carefully with his thin fingers. After a moment he then pointed his staff at the man, which prompted him to take steps backwards and begin stammering.

“P-please, have mercy, Master Magician, I will pay for all the damages, I swear!”

With a sudden jolt, the magician pulled his staff backwards and just as he did, a sharp splattering noise was heard. A blade of that golden metal protruded out from the peasant’s chest, covered in blood and gore. He looked surprised for a moment, then sank to the ground, hitting the cobblestone pavement with a wet slump while his blood was already pouring from his chest and running into the channel that fed the water clock. People in the crowd screamed, some cursed, but all quickly averted their gaze when the magician shot them a glance. Then he picked up a few things from the floor and was back on his way towards the town gate, seemingly not in a hurry or otherwise distraught by what he had just done.

People deserted the area quickly, seemingly as if it was someone else’s problem. I was still standing there, looking at the lifeless body lying face down in his own blood. I dared to take a step closer and stepped on something. Beneath small pile of grain, I saw a ring made of orichalcos. I picked it up, then looked to the peasant. I had no idea how the magician had just achieved that. It seemed like one hell of a sleight of hand to hide a blade in someone else’s chest. Or maybe it was planned and the peasant was just a puppet for this display of power? No, he had definitely been alive just moments prior.

I turned around and saw Centric standing not far off, he came over to me.

“Who was that magician? I have never seen him here before.”

I shook my head. “Me neither. Do the robes colours have anything significant to say? I’ve ever only seen the one in green.”

“I think he is from another realm. I don’t know much about him. Master Glandel is the one that lives here he is beholden to the Lord of this realm. Either way, he is not beholden to the code of Marzhin. Or he does not fear the repercussions.”

“What is that?”

“The code of Marzhin? I don’t know exactly everything it says, but I do know it forbids magicians the wearing and wielding of blades. You should never offer a magician something they need to cut, like a steak.”

The guard arrived to start cleaning up and an ungood feeling came over me. “Thanks, I’ll remember that, but now, I better get back before Mister Lark wakes up from his afternoon nap.”

Cenric nodded and bid me goodbye, then I went back to Mister Lark’s as fast as I could without actually running.

He was not in his workshop so he was likely still napping and his snoring confirmed as much. I put the nails on the table then retreated to a shadowy corner to inspect that ring closer.

It was too big even for my thumb and had serrations on both sides. I turned the ring in my fingers, held it close to light and shadowed it with my hand to finally figure out what this material actually looked like. The odd effect of having two different colours persisted no matter the light but it was not like the pearlescence or opalescence effects I was familiar with. After having turned it a few times I finally found the right words to express it.

It was as if I was sitting in a room with two glowing walls opposing each other, both glowing evenly with light, one bright yellow, the other orange-red. Depending on how I turned the ring or how I looked at it, it reflected either the one light or the other.

After I had satiated my desire for seeing that metal up close, I began to wonder what that ring even was. It obviously wasn’t for fingers, or if it were, for very fat fingers. The Magician hadn’t looked very fat under his robes, his fingers and neck were rather spindly, actually, from what I had seen.

I took a closer look at the serrations. I noticed that the serrations on the two sides of the ring were perfectly parallel, meaning that each tooth on the upper side lined up with the other side’s notch and between them ran lines across the band in perfectly regular intervals. All the lines were carved deep and painted black, so they were certainly meant to be clearly seen even from an arm’s length and not to be ornamental. Two of the lines were different: one was especially deep and painted white, the other was actually two very deep ones side by side, exactly opposing the white one on the ring.

From all these things I deduced one thing: The object was not a ring worn on a finger; it was part of some mechanism. I suddenly remembered the bands of orichalcos on the Magician’s staff and how he put his fingers carefully on them. Could that be part of the puzzle? I remembered the broom in the corner to sweep the workshop. I slid the ring over the handle and... it fit perfectly. A bit snug, but not too much to be stuck. Maybe the ring was able to somehow manipulate things from afar. I pointed the broom at the workbench and turned the band with my thumb, just to see what happens.

Before my eyes, the bristles of the broom disappeared, leaving merely the broom handle. I had just made a broom disappear. Well, at least the bristles. I carefully turned the band back and only for the blink of an eye, the bristles reappeared, as if rotating through the world, the inner bristles reappearing sooner and disappearing later than the outer bristles. Very, very carefully, I turned the ring again and managed to hit the spot where they were fully returned to the present. There was an ever so slight resistance on the ring when they were, but it was barely there.

I made the bristles disappear again and then moved my hand to where they should be. I could not feel nor grasp the bristles, but I did feel an odd sensation of closeness, like putting my hand in a very tight but very light glove. Next, I tried pulling off the band, but it remained fixed to the broom. Only with the bristles returned, I could pull the ring off.

I began to understand a few things. The magicians really were tricksters! They really did hide all their stuff somewhere else, it seemed! I did not know whether it was inside these orichalcos objects or somewhere else in a pocket dimension, but they were just smoke and mirrors after all.

I decided to get something else to affix to the broom and found an awl. I first wanted to tie it to the side of the broom handle where the bristles used to be, then my eyes fell upon the orichalcos band once more. The notches and teeth as well as the markings had a purpose, they were an index. I slowly turned the band back to where the bristles were, then I got a hammer and two of the nails I had just gotten from Cenric. I put one nail exactly into the notch above the white line. Then I put a nail into the notch below the double black line. There were 12 teeth and notches and since every notch was offset with a tooth on the other side of the band, that gave me 24 possible positions, depending on if the band engaged with the nail above or below.

Just to test things, I worked the indexing system and it worked. I could precisely and reliably return the bristles to the real world. I also confirmed that they really did only return to the real world when the band was turned to the exact position it had been when I had slid it on. It also didn’t matter whether I turned the band clockwise or counter-clockwise, only the position was important.

I felt like I had stumbled upon a secret of the trade. Now was the time to keep trying.

I moved the indexing band to one full notch away from the bristles and affixed the awl to the side of the broom where the bristles currently were not, so that its point stuck out to the side. Then I returned the index to the primary position of the white line. I had a broom in my hand. I turned a notch back. I had an awl on a stick in my hand. I pushed the band down and engaged the half-notch between the two and I had a stick in my hand, no awl or bristles, but ready to be either at my command. Like a staff. A magician’s staff.

I had just made my own magician’s staff.

“Boy, did you pick up the nails like I told you?”

Mister Lark was standing on the stairs down from his living quarters, his hair still standing upright on his head’s left side. I nodded at his question and pointed to the bag of nails on his workbench. While he was walking down, I quickly engaged the bristles' notch and had the broom back.

I went about my errands for the day, but never could resist the urge to look to the broom I had leaned in the furthest corner of the workshop, hoping that Mister Lark would not notice the band of that oh so valuable material on his regular old broom. He never did.

Mister Lark usually went to bed early, just after sundown, and that meant he would rouse me early the next morning. I slept in his workshop, after all, and he had no qualms hammering leather onto blanks while I was still under the workbench. But this night I just didn’t want to sleep. As soon as Mister Lark was up the stairs, I grabbed the broom and ran my fingers over the orichalcos index, just to make sure it still worked. I was relieved to find it did. But still, I couldn’t shake a feeling of guilt in the back of my head, that someone might come for me because I just took something that wasn’t mine, like after downloading a song or movie from the internet I hadn’t paid for. The town guard could come knocking at the door any moment now. But then again, the magician in red had just taken off like it was nothing and probably was halfway to his destination by now.

A thought came to me. After just a few months of living in this old-fashioned world, I already knew that leaving town at noon was a bad idea. No one would make it anywhere comfortable before nightfall. Yet the magician did. Was he afraid of being followed? Was he on the run? Did he know he was not as untouchable as he acted?

I distracted myself a little more with my toy. I moved the index to an empty position, where neither awl nor broom was present, then I held it up to the wall and turned the index to the awl’s position. I felt the index resisting, the awl pushing against the wall from that unseen dimension. I wondered how strong the resistance could be and gave it a little stronger jerk of my hand.

The world around me disappeared.

I fell into a sudden brightness and had to close my eyes from the intense light. It was hot, dry and loud. Nothing around me existed anymore, except for me and that staff. I tried to breathe, but my lungs protested. There was nothing to inhale. I wanted to scream, but there was nothing to scream into, just void.

In panic, my fingers fumbled on the index to undo whatever horrible thing I had just done, until finally, I managed to turn it back to the awl’s position. The world around me returned. I gasped for air, unprepared as I had been.

I was back in the workshop, the steady snoring of Mister Lark confirming me that all was alright. I grabbed a chair to sit and when my head had cooled down, I thought about what had just happened. I had tried to force the awl into existence where it could not exist and in return, true to the law of action and equal but opposite counter-action, I was instead pushed where the awl was.

I had literally pushed myself out of existence. Or at least the material dimension. And then I realized where the magicians hid all their little tricks and gadgets.

I had to confirm my theory and so I would go back to that dimension again, but this time, I would be a little more prepared. The brightness was an easy problem to solve; I just had to squint. I would also have to take a deep breath and the sensation of falling had told me that possibly, there was no gravity there. Last but not least, returning from the dimension. What I had done before was panicked fumbling with probably a good portion of luck. If the awl tries to return to the material dimension but something material is already occupying its destined space, it pushes on me.

I practised the movement so I would be able to do it under distress. After clicking the awl in and out of existence and using it to push just slight against something from that other dimension, I felt ready.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and positioned the staff against the wall again. Then, I rotated the index clockwise.

The sudden brightness piercing even through my eyelids, the loss of gravity and the paradoxical soundless loudness of the void told me I had succeeded. I open my eyes just a tiny squint and looked around.

The world was indeed bright and void, but there were dark lines and areas of slightly less light and I recognized their shapes. It was as if the material world was covered in a thin cloth or just behind a curtain between this and the material dimension. I could make out the walls of the workshop, some furniture, the ground and the town beyond the walls. And, I could see a tall structure gleaming brightly golden far off. I tried leaning forward, but found myself just pushing against the void. With my staff, I tried striking the impression of the ground but it went straight through. Then I had an idea. I rotated the index to make the awl disappear counter-clockwise and tried again. This time, I pushed myself from the ground.

Indeed, I could push myself along, using the awl in the material dimension as a paddle. Like a venetian gondolier without a gondola, I floated through the room. My lungs told me it was time to return to a world with air. I brought the awl to me in the immaterial dimension, positioned the staff along the thin shadows of a wall and the awl inside of it, then turned the index counter-clockwise.

Since I was previously floating through space unhindered, I fell one or two feet to the ground upon my return and right onto my face and shoulder. I managed to hold in my curses and waited for the pain to subside and to make sure I could still hear Mister Lark’s regular and undisturbed snoring, then I dared to move.

I had again learned something. When I was a half-notch clockwise into that other dimension, and rotated the index a half-notch counter-clockwise, the awl was in material dimension. Since it was attached to the staff, I could act upon material reality while being not there or vice versa. It was all so logical, no weird magic here, just logic and mechanics.

After all that learning how that works, I decided to make another trip.

This time, after giving myself the necessary impulse to get beyond the wall, I turned the index further clockwise to make sure neither awl nor bristles were in the way. When I was beyond the wall to the side alley, I snapped the awl back to the material dimension, stopped my movement and brought myself back as well.

I stood in the alley, outside the workshop just as I had planned. I had effectively teleported, or at least moved through solid wall.

I looked around to make sure nobody had seen me appear out of thin air. The streets of the town were usually empty shortly after sundown, even the guard didn’t patrol within the walls. I felt pretty great, as if I had just found cheat codes for reality. I went to confirm a suspicion of mine and went to the water clock. It wasn’t running at night, the pipe was closed off, but it was still there. In the dim light of the glistening tree, I could still very well see the orichalcos shimmering in the light of two realities.

I stood before the pipe, put the awl against the ground and turned the index.

I was in the bright reality and before me stood tall the pipe segment connecting the inlet and outlet, entirely out of orichalcos, almost burning with the light of the immaterial world. I looked around with squinted eyes and apart from the thin shadowy lines of the town’s streets and buildings, I saw other mechanisms. Boxes without lids, something that looked like a series of free-floating cabinets and where the forge of Cenric’s master was, I saw a long wooden beam with a counterweight and a spring on one end.

I knew it. These tricksters are all just hiding their tricks so others can’t figure them out and copy them.

I also saw something like the outline of a person, a very faint line almost invisible, moving behind a wall. I suddenly realized that the magicians had access to every room, every locked box, every girl’s sleeping quarters. Those bloody bastards were seriously messed in the head!

I felt my breath running out, so I decided to throw one last look around. I couldn’t see any shades of people close by and hoped the darkness would conceal what anyone could see from a distance. Then I noticed something hovering above. I looked up.

What I saw was a figure not entirely humanoid and several feet taller than me and had skin of waxy white. Its arms were moving as if the figure was inspecting them or something it was holding, yet I couldn’t see anything there. The figure’s lower body meanwhile was like the bud of a flower not yet ready to bloom. It had no head but a large ring surrounding where its head should be. The ring held within itself a surface of a perfectly black liquid, rippling and leading into an abyss of perfect blackness. I had never seen anything as black as this and yet, light stirred within. The creature turned its abyss-head towards me and I knew it saw me, yet it kept on gliding along its path. All my blood turned to ice in an instant, my heart skipped a few beats out of sheer terror and my butt was about to crap my linens. I rammed the staff to the ground and turned the index, hoping it would bring me back to reality.

The cold night tore all heat from my skin and I felt the goosebumps. I had no idea what that thing had been but I knew I wanted to never spend another heartbeat in the same reality as this thing.

I took my staff and my luckily clean pants back to the workshop. I tried to get some sleep, but my head was entirely focussed on all I had seen and done that day. It was impossible not to.

I knew I had to leave this town and do something other than being an accountant for a shoemaker or I would never make it home. I knew I had the key to finding back home with me, I just had to learn how to properly use it. With the magicians being so secretive, I would have to do it all by myself. The possibilities of orichalcos and of the immaterial dimension seemed endless and I even started to think that the floating abyss-head wasn’t that horrifying if I knew more about it.

I decided to become a self-taught magician.