Ordinary Magic

People often say the world is getting smaller, but this simply isn’t true. A wizard could tell you that. At least it isn’t true in the way they mean it. Railroads and airplanes, newspapers and telephones; man’s industrial prowess has been said to shrink the world by connecting people in newer, faster ways, as if the maps were so folded that all eight billion people lived right on top of each other. However, a wizard would tell you we are less connected, and further from each other than we have ever been. Teleportation has dried up, telepathy is waning, mind melding has gone the way of the dinosaurs, and the ley lines are less reliable than public transportation in America. But more than just parlor tricks, some ethereal tether has slowly evaporated in the space between man and their neighbor, between you and me. And a wizard would tell you, obviously, it’s magic.

Life, as everyone knows, is magic. The feeling of grass on your bare feet, a first kiss, a child’s imagination, your mother’s intuition, and the comfort of good company; all of it is magic. It might be assumed, then, that more people would mean more magic, but that turns out not to be so. Because life is not made of magic, it consumes it. A wizard could tell you that.

And if you were in the storage room of the Sixth Street library on the seventh Saturday since September a wizard would tell you that, assuming you were also a wizard. If you were not a wizard you would be firmly and enthusiastically asked to leave. However, if a practicing wizard who had paid his or her bi-annual dues, of course, and attended a meeting of the North American Fraternity of Sorcerers and Sorceresses, the main topic, neigh, the only topic of discussion would be the thinning supply of ambient magic. As the world's population swelled, the reservoir of magic available to any given individual has decreased in accordance with the laws of supply and demand. This phenomenon has come to be known as the Great Diminishing.

The diminishing effect of modern magic has been noted for ages, but the correlation with population was discovered shockingly recently. In the early aughts, a committee had been formed by NAFSS to investigate the possibility of any actual magic being employed at the offices of the so-called Wifi Wizard. No magical arts were discovered in the investigation, but the committee did walk away with a new understanding for the unfamiliar concept of “bandwidth,” as well as much new confusion about the concept of “clouds.” It is unclear whether the new theory of the Great Diminishing was catalyzed by interrogating Harold, local franchise operator of the Wifi Wizard, or by the information the committee accessed in the following weeks of high speed internet they agreed to as part of a limited time offer, but either way a new theory was suggested, debated, tested, and concluded. More people means less magic.

“We’re in crisis,” said a woman in an oversized gray fur. Dramatic shadows pooled under her eyes and undulated slightly as the single lightbulb suspended in the center of the room swayed slowly back and forth. “The latest projections are bleak.”

“An understatement Moira. We’re running out of options, and time,” said a short man with thick bottle glasses and the sleeves of his blazer tightly rolled up around his forearms.

There were eight NAFSS members crammed into the storage closet at this year’s annual meeting. A smaller showing than past years, but that was expected in a smaller space. They had not always had such unglamorous quarters. For nearly the last one hundred years the fraternity had convened within the pages of a book on a shelf that could only be found by those who already knew where it was.

Those twentieth century wizards who had spellbound the book to contain a room the size of all the empty pages in the library had thought themselves very chic and debonair. Negative space spells had become quite popular during the rise of modernism, and they had thought ensorcelling it to secrecy was so clever. Unfortunately, their penchant for secrecy may have been a little too clever. Gradually over the years those who “knew where the shelf was,” were replaced by those who were pretty sure where the shelf was, and they were replaced by those who had an idea where the shelf was, and eventually only those who suspected there had at one time been a shelf remained. Finding the shelf had long been a nuisance, but recently the time it took to locate the secret stack had eclipsed the actual amount of time spent meeting. Three years ago, after a seventeen hour search party, the remaining enchanters settled to congregate in the library’s storage room. They agreed that the last item on the agenda for that meeting, item eleven, would be to appoint a more suitable meeting location for next year’s conference. They didn’t get to item eleven. They didn’t get past item one that year, nor the next year, or the next, and at this rate it looks like they won’t be relocating from the storage room anytime soon.

The palaver was interrupted when the door opened and a woman in a crumpled top hat squeezed in, as a sliver of light from the outside briefly blinded those crowded into the dark room.

“Sorry I’m late,” Theresa said, with a hint of embarrassment, and skirted the edge towards a metal folding chair.

Theresa came from a long line of teleporting mages and was known to arrive fashionably late for grand entrances, appearing suddenly and dramatically. Last week, however, she had gotten stuck inside her bedroom wall for several minutes while practicing. So today, she decided against such showmanship, and was late because her taxi driver took a wrong turn. Like many wizards of late, she was losing the knack.

“As I was saying,” Moira continued. “The Great Diminishing escalated quicker than we thought. Within five years the bandwidth of ambient magic will be too stressed to support any spellcraft, and within ten ordinary magic will be as difficult as the most sophisticated enchantments ever were!”

“Ordinary magic,” is a general term used by wizards to describe all that is naturally whimsical and sublime in day-to-day living; the aforementioned feeling of grass on barefeet for instance. Were humans to lose their grasp on ordinary magic, life would cease to be lively. Some would argue that grasp is tenuous already.

“No thoughts on that Skard?” Moira asked of the hairy man across from her.

Skard Squirrellson, the Druid of Central Park, has long been known as a passionate and fiery wizard. He often wears animal furs and painted patterns on his skin; he’s been known to filibuster with his concerns about the decay of the squirrel habitat and yell about the heat of the planet. Today, uncharacteristically, he's arrived simply in a hoodie and a five panel hat, and has spent the entirety of the meeting so far on his phone. He shrugs.

“Case and point…” Moira motions condescendingly. “The decline of ordinary magic,” she rolls her eyes.

“Now Moira,” the man in the thick glasses adds. “It is of the utmost importance that in these trying times we stay united. There is strength in numbers, perhaps we should redouble our efforts in outreach. If even half of our active members would come to these meetings we would have ten times this attendance.”

“Please,” says Calathea, Sage of the Midwest, “We all know everyone who can still rub two broomsticks together and get a spark is in this room. Ten thousand years of sorcery and now it’s up to us.” She waggles her thumb, gesturing to the room.

“McAlister, on the other hand… he might have something to add. Where’s he?” chimes in Magnificent Mordecai.

“Do you mean Doctor McAlister?” Moira asks sarcastically with air quotes.

“Professor,” corrects Calathea.

“Sorry, Professor McAlister,” says Mordecai.

“Well he’s still a doctor,”

“Doctor Professor,”

“That’s unnecessary, just be one or the other”

“No, I think he’s a doctor of professorship… or maybe it was a professor of doctoral studies?”

“Oh, I thought his first name was Professor, and he has a doctorate.”

“Well either way, his email signature says ‘Doctor Professor McAlister,” says Skard

“His what?” Moira asks.

“The email he sent five minutes ago? Is that not what we’re talking about?” Skard turns to show his phone screen.

Moira reaches over the table snatching it from his hand. She pulls a pair of reading glasses from her coat and begins to read the missive aloud. “Dearest NAFSS brothers and sisters, please excuse my absence at this year's conference. I am regretfully, and deeply, otherwise occupied. I know you will all be greatly concerned with discussing the consequences of the Great Diminishing, but I am currently too busy solving the issue to offer you my thoughts on the subject. Please continue with meaningful conversation despite my truancy. Sincerely, Doctor Professor McAlister.” She blinks a few times dramatically before announcing, “well, great! I suppose we’re all in safe hands then. Do we even need to go on with the meeting?”

“Well we do have several other items of concern on the agenda. They’ve been somewhat accumulating the past few years-”

“I was being sarcastic, Mordecai.” She snaps, “Let's ‘continue with our meaningful conversation.’ Someone tell me something I don’t know, and it better not include the words ‘doctor’ or ‘professor.”

Gremmylmite the Great Fire Worm will consume a statistically significant portion of the earth’s fiery mantle before his death at the end of this century, as predicted by the lesser studied Yestrodamus, and the world will literally and physically shrink by a few inches. But metaphorically, the world is more expansive and remote than it has ever been, and growing wider still. There just isn’t enough magic to hold us all together. Doctor Professor Jeremy Artemis McAlister II set out to solve this problem, and against all odds, and unbeknownst to all but his only child, he did. And the jury is still out if she really appreciates it.

McAllister had spent a lifetime attempting to quantify magic; in all this, the north star of his effort, the elusive Holy Grail of his ambition, was a final solution to reverse the Great Diminishing. This eccentric man functioned as the high beams on the front of the car, blazing brighter and further into the unknown darkness of the mystic arts than anyone else.

But every brilliant light casts a shadow. For every one thing Doctor Professor Jeremy Artemis McAllister II knew about being a great wizard, there were two things he did not know about being a great father. And as it turns out, as it always does, the answer is always in the last place you look; in the dark.

The good Doctor Professor’s first step towards a true solution began the only way any development of staggering genius can, by total accident. In this case, an accident long forgotten, nearly a decade in the making.

For young Jillian McAllister, growing up in the Doctor Professor’s household was a touch chaotic to put it lightly.

“Magic is by definition an exception to the expected,” her father often said, “if you wake up one morning and you are you, that is to be expected. That’s what normally happens. If you wake up one day and you are an amphibian… Well, that’s probably magic.”

There was no room for juice boxes in the Doctor Professor’s fridge, because it was already full with potions. They rarely entertained guests because the furniture could walk, and the armchair was rather shy. She had finally had enough when her distracted father misplaced her homework assignment… or rather, if only he had misplaced it.

“Miss-what-ed?” she asked

“No, miswhened,” her father corrected. “I spilled a little bit of future elixir, so I’m just not sure when it is. Thank goodness it wasn’t miswhated, then we wouldn’t even know if we were looking at it. It’ll turn up eventually.”

On that day, Jillian decided she wanted nothing to do with her father’s world of wonders and sorcery. But as that world had all of his attention, the outcome was that she had nothing to do with him. He scarcely noticed.

“Did you read it?” Jillian’s late mother had asked her husband those many years ago.

“I didn’t have the time,” he said, his nose in a book of runes.

“You should make the time.”

“I’m sure, it’ll turn up eventually.”

“It was about you dear,” she said with a sigh. “I’m afraid if you wait too long, you won’t have the chance to know what you missed.”

Today, ten years later, in his attempts to pull back the veil and illuminate the secrets of magic itself, the Doctor Professor had piled up a mountain of theories, and a vast hoard of near answers. But none of them were complete. Characteristically he found himself buried in his work when he was roused to attention by a warm yellow light coalescing in the air above his studies.

A gentle scent hung in the air.

“Smells like time travel," McAlister said to himself, after a sniff.

Then a sound like a popping balloon if it was recorded and played in reverse. Appearing from nowhere a piece of loose-leaf paper drifted to the ground. He picked it up tenderly between his forefinger and thumb, slowly nagged by a memory at the edge of his consciousness. It reads,

“An Ode to the Moon - by Jillian McAlister

There are few things so familiar as

That most frequent nighttime guest

That soft pale orb that has hovered

Above a thousand seasons, charmingly scarred,

Brilliantly imperfect, routinely obscured

The familiar face I see has hung over

my memory of every night

But, I’ve never seen the other side.”

It’s about you, the words of his late wife came to mind. This stoic scholar of all that is secret and superstitious was not one for emotions, but he suddenly found the wet spot of a tear on the page. This man who knew so much about the arcane, didn’t know what he was feeling, or why. But he thought of his wife, now lost to him and all the living, and he missed her. He thought of his daughter, lost to him and him only, and he regretted the way he had spent the bulk of his time on this planet. He was a moon in her life, locked in orbit, impossible to touch, a familiar face, and an unknowable dark side.

Another tear began to well, so he moved the small piece of paper to prevent further water damage when suddenly he noticed what the page had landed on. His daughter’s lost schoolwork had landed on his most barbaric and profane discovery. A potential solution to his great dilemma that he dared not pursue, but unable to resist the answers on the other side of a question, he had fully fleshed out. There lay his only paper never published, never even submitted to the NAFSS, Doctor Professor Jeremy Artemis McAlister II’s Complete Guide to Vampirism.

He had discovered a way to steal the magic from others and take it for his own. A shameful non-answer to his dilemma. Stealing magic from others didn’t mean there was truly any more magic, just more for some than others.

Then a thought occurred to him. What if these same principles were applied another way; a less self-absorbed way? And so, quite unexpected, he called his daughter.

The meeting was awkward, unfamiliar, but tender. After only a brief catchup he told her.

“I want you to have something of mine, it’s the only thing that has ever really mattered to me. But recently I realized that you matter more.”

He handed her something.

“Is this a prank?” Jillian asked.

“I could see why you would think that,” he winced.

In her hand he placed a small silver disk with a ring and a button, a classic childhood joybuzzer.

“I mean technically y- well it’s hard to expla- I had to do it like that because- well… just put it on.”

She slips the device onto her right middle finger.

“Shake my hand,” he says.

What happened next was quite a shock to the professor, strictly metaphorically.

The innocuous magical device was designed to drain all of the magic from a person’s body, transferring it to the wearer. After volumes and volumes of research, the Doctor Professor had expected only one outcome; he had expected to die. Which in retrospect he now realized was a very inconsiderate way to begin reconnecting with his daughter, no matter how generous the inheritance that followed would be.

McAllister had thought of the device as a means for shuffling the pieces around, taking magic from some, redistributing to others, a zero sum game. However there was a variable that he, in his single-mindedness, had not considered. He had not considered that anyone would ever voluntarily surrender their most precious and innate resource. In doing so now he had reverse engineered the solution. If magic is the source of the connection between all of us, then more people didn’t mean more magic, but perhaps more connection did?

“Is this more of your magic tricks Dad?” Jillian asked, confused. “You know, about that. I’m glad you reached out actually. I’ve been thinking lately, maybe it wasn’t fair of me to completely write off your whole… thing. I mean, if you spent so much time on it, you must think it’s pretty important. Maybe you could teach me a few things?”

For the first time in recent memory, Doctor Professor Jeremy Artemis McAlister II answered to a simple name… Dad. He smiled. He thought about the meeting he was missing as he looked into his daughter’s eyes, and it crossed his mind, maybe next year we’ll get to item 11.