The Book of Masks (Abridged)

The Ones Who Would Be Magicians

YOU ARE SITTING NOW at Professor Blackwell's dining room table—which to your relief occupies one of the house's relatively sane rooms—with your hand in your chin and mulling the rest of what he'd said that morning. Yes, he talked for quite a bit longer, and then suggested a break for lunch, which he would prepare. "I think you should come to a decision before we eat," he said with a wink. "I don't want you to think you're being influenced by adulterated food."

"What is the most natural thing for a human being to do?" he asked when you asked him to explain what "magic" is. "Why, to pump blood, metabolize food, exchange oxygen. For the longest time we didn't know how we did it, but we knew we did it, even if we didn't use those words and phrases. What are the next most natural things? To eat, to sleep, to evacuate our bowels, to relieve our sexual tensions. We know how to do those, too, and no one taught us those either. Ask a fine athlete how he throws a ball or dodges another player. He doesn't know, but he had to train, and in training he learned to do it without ever knowing some kind of 'how.'

"That is magic, Will, and I'm not being metaphorical. Magic is the art of binding a cause to an effect, to produce a 'what' happening. How do we do it? We don't need to know! The best magic simply happens. The next best happens with training. Only the rubbishy sorts who putter and dabble and read things in books—" He caught himself, and his expression grew very black. He had to take several deep breaths before he regained control of himself. "Only such as those need to ask 'how' questions," he finally said.

"But what do you mean, you connect cause and effect?"

"Cause and effect," he repeated, as though to a slow child. He held out his hands one at a time. "Cause. And effect. Action. And response." He twined his fingers. "Brought together."

"But how—?" He held up a warning finger. "How—?" Two warning fingers. You sighed. "But how—?" He clenched his fist, and you felt your throat briefly close then open again.

"Not 'how', Will. Never ask 'how'. That is the scientist. The magician asks three questions: What do I start with? What do I end with? And what changes one into the other? Example." He held up the same damn coin. "What do I start with? Heads. What do I end with? Tails. And what changes one into the other?" His fingers flickered. "The action of my hand. It's so simple that only a child understands that it is magic."

That's stupid, and your expression alone would have told him that's what you thought if you hadn't added, "No! You start with heads. You end with tails. How do you change them? You flip the coin." You gave an exasperated snort.

He waved at you dismissively. "You just said what I said. Just a semantic difference. The real 'how' question, the scientist's 'how' question, is 'How does your hand flip them?' So go on: How does your hand flip them?"

You started to answer but then stopped. You looked at your hand. You turned it over. Flesh, blood, tendons, bones, muscles; nerves running to your brain. Brain and nerves and hand. Flipping your hand is ... flipping your hand. But the how ... does that happen in your brain or in your hand? Both? At once, and everywhere in between?

You glanced up to see Blackwell snickering. "You see? 'How', you can't answer. 'What', you can."

"So why isn't all magic that simple?"

"Perhaps once it was," he shrugged. "No one really knows. People just say 'What do I want' and then get lost in 'How am I going to get it?' Even I do, which is why I travel by car instead of on a flying rug. And for getting the magic to work you have to ask the right 'what' question. If you don't ask the right 'what' question, then nothing will happen. Well, if you're lucky, nothing will happen. If you're unlucky, something very bad will happen."

You started. "Like 'The Monkey's Paw'!" you exclaimed. "You want something, but you ask for it the wrong way!"

"Exactly!" he beamed. "The poor woman wanted her dead son to come back. But she didn't ask 'What am I starting with?' And so she got a corpse walking up her garden path."

You pondered this. "But there has to be a 'how' in there someplace, doesn't there? I mean, don't you need spells and wands and magic words—" Probably it was good you trailed off before the name "Harry Potter" came spilling off your lips.

"You don't step across the room in one leap, Will," Blackwell said. "You take a lot of small steps. It's the same with magic. To get the big 'what' to work you have to craft lots of little 'what' steps in between. That's the difference between my coin example and what you would call 'spells'. The 'what' that transforms the first stage to the final stage is a bridge of many small stones, many turns of the hand." He set the coin into the middle of one of your finished designs. "I want to melt that coin. What do I start with? A solid object. What do I end with? A liquid object. What takes me from one to the other? This sigil." He pointed to a filigree on one of its edges. "Start with a symbol for solidity. What makes it a symbol for solidity? Its shape. What makes that shape the symbol for solidity? Its isomorphism to an astral projection."

He shrugged. "Well, that's what theory says, anyway, and here's a spot where the magicians are no better off than the theoretical physicists. But there is also a symbol for liquidity." He pointed to another spot on the sigil. "And they are bound, in sequence, by many more symbols denoting heat, because you don't want the thing to set the paper on fire; and light, because maybe you don't want to call attention to yourself; and material, because perhaps you don't want the hand holding the object to melt, and so on.

"If you are very clear in your mind, and you see the connections and traps, you can map your way through the maze of possibilities that lies between what you start with and what you end with. And the map of that maze is this." He points to the sigil.

"It's all inside that?" you asked.

"Oh no," he said. "You often need materials, though there the choice is often up to the magician."

"How can that be? I mean—" You hastened to cover up the '"how." "I mean, What makes it the magician's choice?"

"Force," he thundered, and for a moment he was like an academic and more like a bearded prophet come down from a mountaintop, and he had brought most of the mountaintop with him; a stormy smoke seemed to rise up behind him.

"Force!" he repeated. "Force of intellect, force of character, force of the will to power! The magician by his raw strength grasps things that are not connected and connects them!"

"But aren't there laws of magic?" you squeaked. "Like laws of physics?"

The sense of thunderheads arranged behind him like a curtain faded, and Blackwell was once more just a professor dressed in a shabby sweater and slippers. He made a face.

"Perhaps in some fundamental sense," he said. "No one knows what makes the very small changes work, we just know that they do, and that is enough. But to make a new change you don't 'discover' how to make it work. You craft a way to make it work, using other devices whose potency is unquestioned. Once such a technique is crafted, of course, another can use it. Because those who come later know it works, and that is enough. That is why—" He took a breath. "That is why the dabblers, those who have to read books, can still perform magic. They cannot make new magic, but they can perform the old. Even those who are not magicians can accidentally perform it, if they have accidentally picked up the right ingredients and instruments."

"So what is the difference between a dabbler and ..."?

"And a magician? Don't be so shy of the word. The magician, for whatever reason, is strong enough to craft a new bond."

"So if I'm a magician—"

He held up a finger. "Not yet. Though you have promise."

"So if I want to help Caleb, how— I mean, what can I do?"

He looked grave. "You have to put Caleb out of your mind for the moment. Crafting such a thing between two other people is very tricky. I was able to do it for you with the gypsy's curse, but it's an advanced technique. You must start with yourself. Not 'what do I want for my friend?' but 'What do I want for myself?'

"Well," he then asked with a wry cock of the eyebrow. "What does a seventeen-year-old lad like yourself want for himself?"

That's when he had stopped to suggest lunch.

* * * * *

Money? Power? Influence? Popularity? Eternal youth? Sex? A girlfriend?

Justice? World peace? An end to hunger and pestilence?

Congressmen worth voting for?

To help Caleb?

Blackwell brings out lunch: a rich and savory stew, and you realize you are very hungry. Before you can pick up the spoon, though, he admonishes you. "You have to answer my question. What do you want for yourself?"