In The Name of Love

Fifi paces back and forth beside the pond where Kai performed a tiny miracle, clutching her sketchbook to her chest. For once, she finds no inspiration to sketch in the colors of the sunset or the myriad blossoms and other vegetation around her. She hasn’t been able to focus on much of anything for more than a few minutes at a time since the last time she was here, when Kai said a strange word and a bud became a flower. Earlier, when she was sitting for her portrait again, both her mother and the artist commented on how still she was—most unusual, for Fifi, and she couldn’t tell them that she was thinking about that moment, making mental lists of questions, that her thoughts were racing faster than her hands or feet have ever moved.

Will he come tonight? Will I really be able to learn to do what he did? What if it was some sort of trick or trap? What if I fail? Fifi worries. Her pens clatter against one another in her pockets as her skirts swirl around her pacing legs. What if we’re caught? What if Father finds out? Is Kai as nervous as I am?

He’d certainly seemed nervous, right after he’d made magic in front of her. She can’t say she blames him, knowing how Aethyrozia has treated magic users in the past. And yet she’s a little hurt, that he would fear she’d report him or something. I’ve made it pretty clear to him that I don’t much care for following rules, she huffs. But old habits must die hard, and he indicated secrecy is expected of him from his mentor—Sigurd, was it? I hope I get to meet him someday.

Fifi doubts there will be any chance of meeting Kai’s mentor if she doesn’t learn to do any magic. And with each step of her pacing, doubt starts to creep in—doubt that Kai was serious about teaching her, doubt that he’ll show up at all. Maybe he fled from Court, went back to Lyrnola so that I couldn’t—

“You made it,” Kai interrupts Fifi’s thought spiral. She whirls to see him on the path behind her, smiling as though he might actually be happy to see her.

“Yes, I…I’ve thought of almost nothing else, since last night,” she admits, heat coming into her cheeks. Somehow it’s more embarrassing to tell him this truth than it has been for him to see her with leaves tangled in her hair and muddy skirts.

“Excited? Or afraid?” His voice is low and just a little raspy. Something inside Fifi shivers.

“Both. Where do we start? I’m sure, once it’s dark, they’ll be calling for me….”

“The bench where we sat yesterday will do for now.” They sit at opposite ends of it, maintaining a decorous distance, although if they are caught doing magic the amount of space between them will be the least of anyone’s concerns.

“All right. Next?” Fifi prompts.

“I’m trying to think…how Sigurd started me….”

“How did you meet him? Does he work for your father? Or—”

“No, he doesn’t. He might have, once, or for my grandfather. But he’s been living in the woods for many years now. I found him by accident.” He glances at Fifi and the corner of his mouth turns up as he sees her looking at him intently, elbows on her knees and chin in her hands, waiting for him to continue. “I was running away from home. Another fight with my father, probably about my stepmother—I don’t remember anymore. I do remember finding this old man with a long silvery beard, chanting strange words and waving leaves over a rabbit with a poultice on its leg. He told me later that it had been caught in a trap. I didn’t see the trap, but I did see the rabbit sitting still for him, completely calm, and I watched its flesh knit back together and strength come back into its body.”

“Wow….” Fifi tries to picture the scene, wondering how old Kai was at the time. The miracle he describes Sigurd doing is so much more than making a flower bloom. What more can this Cybarein accomplish? Are there limits to it? Is Kai a healer, too?

“That was my reaction, too,” Kai continues. “I must have gasped or something. Sigurd didn’t notice me until I made a noise of some kind. He was too engrossed in the ritual. But he was afraid I’d report him to my father, or someone equally awful. I told him I never would, I was running away from home, and then I asked if he could teach me to be like him.”

“And he agreed.”

Kai chuckles. “It took a lot of begging and pleading and promises that I’d hang around and annoy him until the day he died if he refused. But he agreed.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Years. I don’t think I’d seen ten winters yet, when I first met Sigurd.”

“And how many have you seen now?”

“Eighteen. But that has nothing to do with your training. We’ll start with meditation. Set your sketchbook down, here.” He pats the bench between them. Fifi does as he’s told her without protest. “Now, touch a leaf or a blossom or something—the rhododendron beside you will be fine—and close your eyes.”

Fifi lets her fingertips rest on a waxy rhododendron leaf. Her eyes close. “And now?”

“Focus on your breathing, and try to feel the energy in the rhododendron, pulsing and shimmering inside it. Some of us sense colors or textures with that energy, and for some it’s more of a vague knowing…. But breathe and be patient, and it will show itself to you.”

Fifi’s brow furrows in confusion, but she gets the impression that Kai has never tried to teach this before and might not have a better explanation for the idea he’s trying to convey. And so she breathes long, slow, deep breaths, trying to match her own energy to what she imagines a rhododendron’s might be. It’s okay. You can trust me, she finds herself telling the plant without speaking. I just want to understand you better, the same as when I’ve drawn you and your kindred.

Beneath her fingertips, the leaf seems to come alive to Fifi in a way it hasn’t before. Little sparks of energy tickle her fingers through the leaf’s veins. Beyond them, she feels a thrumming of the plant’s life force. She imagines it as a sort of fuchsia aura, subtle but the same color as its blossoms.

“I feel it,” she whispers, elated. Despite her fascination with nature, she never imagined something like this might be possible. “But…what do I do with it? I don’t want to hurt it….”

“Of course not. If I thought you did, I wouldn’t have agreed to teach you,” Kai mutters, then continues more kindly. “That’s good, though, to feel it. Cybarein depends on the energy of all things in nature. We use nature and natural items to help us…do magic, as you put it. To make a flower bud bloom, you would draw the plant’s life force into the bud, calling it to yourself and telling it what you want it to do. Other skills are more complicated. They might require certain leaves, or feathers, or water from a sacred spring…other materials. But we’ll stick to simple things now.”

Fifi opens her eyes and turns to Kai. Her hand drops from the rhododendron leaf to the stone of the bench. “Telling it what you want it to do? That word you used yesterday, when the flower…. I’d never heard it before.”

“We use Barivyce, the sacred language of Cybarei, to ask nature to cooperate with us. The word I used, bloa’ma, just means ‘bloom,’ and it has no power without a gesture or contact and force of will.”

“Should I be studying…Bar-ee-vaiss? Before I try to do any…Cybarein?”

Kai smiles. “I will teach you words as they become relevant for what you want to do. It’s not a language we really use outside of practicing Cybarein, for the most part.”

“You keep saying ‘we.’ Who is we?”

“Cybrinn, we call ourselves. Followers of Cybarei. But it’s not…formal, like going to the zoche and listening to the priest drone about Chuezoh. This—the meditation, the practice—is all of Cybarein.”

Fifi nods like she understands, although she’s not entirely sure what Kai means. But she’s never liked going to the zoche and listening to the priest drone about Chuezoh; finding the life force in the rhododendron is much more fulfilling and satisfying for her.

“Another meditation. The water this time. Put your hand in the pond and close your eyes. Listen to it, feel it. Ordinarily observation would be part of it, but you do that already, with your drawing, and it’s meant to be…holistic….”

Kai might have said more, but all of Fifi’s focus has shifted to the water of the pond, trying to hear and feel it and find its energy. It’s not alive in the same way that the rhododendron is, but Fifi trusts that Kai knows what he’s talking about.

She has no idea how much time passes, but behind her eyelids Fifi gets the impression of silvery ellipses, imitations of ripples, in time with harp-like trills that she feels in her skin rather than hearing. As she moves her hand, the water seems to dance with it.

“Open your eyes, and pull your hand out of the water while saying stui’gya to make the water rise with your hand,” Kai’s voice interrupts Fifi’s meditation.

“How do you say it? Stwee gyuh?” she asks. Most of her focus is still on the water, although even with her eyes open it’s getting hard to see it. The sun has likely set completely, from the way the sky looks. We’re running out of time, at least for this lesson. But worrying about that won’t help her practice any more than it does with drawing or music, Fifi suspects.

“Stui’gya.” He repeats it a few more times, making Fifi say it after him each time. The word feels clumsy and awkward on Fifi’s tongue. “There it is. That’s right. Now say it one more time as you draw your hand out of the water.”

“Stui’gya,” Fifi murmurs, slowly pulling her hand skyward. For a few moments, a thin stream of water, like what might pour out of a bottle, follows her hand before giving up and splashing back into the pond. A squeak of surprise escapes Fifi’s lips and she looks at Kai, eyes alight with wonder and a little pride.

“Congratulations. You did it,” Kai commends Fifi. His smile lights up the darkening courtyard. “I know it probably doesn’t feel like much—”

“Two days ago I didn’t know even this much was possible,” Fifi interrupts, beaming. “And now….”

“You’ve completed your first lesson as a cybrinn. What do you think?”

“I want to do more. I know we can’t tonight—it’s gotten so dark—but if you don’t mind continuing to teach me—”

“You’re a fast learner. I don’t mind. But we shouldn’t…become too predictable. Your attendants might suspect something is amiss.”

Fifi nods and picks up her sketchbook. It feels good to have something to hold onto, to steady the excited pounding of her heart. “Right. Not tomorrow evening, but the evening after? In a different courtyard?”

“Yes. The one with the statues of past kings, perhaps?”

“I haven’t been there in a while. I’d be happy to see which plants are in bloom.”

“Then I will see you there, eve after next. But you should go, before someone starts looking for you.”

“Right. Until next lesson, then.” Fifi gets up and walks towards the nearest door, but she can’t bring herself to move with any urgency. She’s too caught up in listening to the breeze and the plants around her, breathing the flower-scented air of the courtyard. Learning just a little of Cybarein has unlocked something in her, something she feels she’s always yearned for but couldn’t name or put into words. Going inside seems like something of a betrayal, like leaving that part of herself behind.

It’s only for a little while, she reminds herself. Even without a lesson the next day, there’s nothing to stop her from going into a courtyard on her own and practicing what she’s already learned.