Young Writers Society

As much as Finnley would prefer to create the spell he needed to help Mia sleep better on his own, he knew it wouldn’t be good this time. He hadn’t done a spell on his own before, and didn’t want to mess with things he didn’t know about. If the only consequence was what Mia or his mother thought of him, he could handle it. Magical consequences... those were entirely different. He had to tell Mr. Vaughn about it.

Finnley went as briskly as he could to the shop after school so he could ask the old man before he lost his nerve. As soon as he arrived, however, Mr. Vaughn loaded him down with practice work while he attended to a customer who seemed to have actually come in for the antiques. Finnley dutifully worked his way through the work — it was just like busy work at school. Can you correctly copy this spell? What piece of this spell is missing? What would you need to activate this spell? What object would be best to place this object on? There had to be enough magicians out there for someone to have made a magical workbook.

Still, Finnley enjoyed going through it methodically. The missing pieces of spells seemed to click into place, and he felt they were right without checking the answers. It was as if he could feel the spell, though that was silly. If faced with an unfamiliar piece of magic drawn up on a piece of paper before him, Finnley felt sure that he could somehow sense its purpose, even without reading the inscription around it. If he thought about it a lot, he thought he could even sense where there were other objects with spells in the room...

“Finnley!” Mr. Vaughn called, creaking up the stairs. “Sorry I took so long.” He stopped when he saw Finnley with the workbook closed on his lap. His eyes slowly pulled from the workbook and he looked Finnley in the eyes. “Did you finish that work I gave you already?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, a little bit nervous.

Mr. Vaughn took the workbook from him and flipped it open. Finnley watched his bright blue eyes flicking over the pages, saw them widen in surprise. “They’re all correct,” he said. He looked up at Finnley again. “Could you do one for me right now?” Finnley nodded, and he folded the page back to a new one, a little farther into the workbook.

Finnley took it from him and picked up his pencil. It was a half complete spell he needed to fill in the other side of. The description said it was a spell for preserving objects. Finnley quickly drew in the other half of the spell and wrote what he felt was the appropriate inscription to go along with it.

Mr. Vaughn lifted the workbook out of his hands and studied the spell. A slow smile crept onto his face. He leafed through the pages until he came to the one he was looking for, then settled next to Finnley on the couch. “This is the answer sheet,” he said. “See the difference between this one and yours?”

“Yes,” Finnley said. He’d spotted it as soon as Mr. Vaughn showed him the page. “The spell centers on keeping the object the same, making sure it’s unchanged. That’s not what I did.”

“No. You had that in there, but you said something here... defense. You used the word for protect. Why?” Mr. Vaughn’s gaze was making Finnley uneasy, but he was still smiling, so Finnley took it as a good sign.

“I don’t know. Just my interpretation of preserve, I guess.”

“You guess. The words are similar in English, but they’re taken much more literally in the magic language,” Mr. Vaughn responded. “The spell in this answer key would keep the words on the paper the same as long as the spell lasts, but the paper will still yellow and tear and crumple. The spell that you wrote will actually preserve the whole paper, and keep it from these things.”

“So why put this in the answer key?” Finnley asked. The difference between the two spells was clear, but the reasoning wasn’t. “It’s not worth very much.”

“No, it’s not,” Mr. Vaughn. “This is an old workbook, out of date. Errors seem to be abundant — more each time I look through it. This was one. Instead of relying on your official knowledge of the language and a word that would achieve the goal, you intuitively understood what needed to happen.”

“That sounds about right,” Finnley admitted. “I didn’t put much thought into any of these.”

“You’re a natural magician,” Mr. Vaughn said. “Any magic blood in your family? That could be one explanation.”

“Not that I know of,” he replied. He had a strange, sudden pang of longing. He wanted to see his father, to tell him about this, to ask about his family heritage. But he hadn’t seen his father since the year before Allie’s death. It wasn’t any good to think about what couldn’t happen. “Mr. Vaughn,” he ventured, seeing his chance, “I was wondering... I mean, if I can write the spells so well, could I activate one? On my own?”

“You could probably do a simple one here...” Mr. Vaughn stopped when he saw Finnley’s face. “You’re planning something, aren’t you? Using magic by yourself?”

“I haven’t done anything yet,” Finnley said hurriedly. “But it’s just Mia. She’s been having nightmares, and I just want to do something.” There is was. He felt helpless to do anything for Mia, for his friend. Mr. Vaughn’s face softened.

“The sleeping spell in that book?” he asked, nodding to the textbook in Finnley’s lap. “I... I don’t want to encourage this. I don’t want you doing any magic outside of my sight. But if I don’t let you, you’ll do it anyway, right?” Finnley was about to answer, but Mr. Vaughn waved a hand. “Draw it out. I won’t let you go do it without practice.”