The tenth chapter in a continuing serial novel, The Department of Whimsical Enchantment … Find the first part here: Chapter I, the second part here: Chapter II, the third part here: Chapter III, the fourth here: Chapter IV, the fifth here: Chapter V, the sixth here: Chapter VI, the seventh here: Chapter VII, the eighth here Chapter VIII, and the ninth here Chapter IX.

What if we combined Dark Academia Romantasy with a School for Teachers of Magic, set in France, with all the soul-destroying bureaucracy, petty rivalries, and obscure rules that nobody ever tells you that that implies …? Well. I suppose you’re about to find out! Please subscribe to receive the ongoing updates!

The story so far: Elizabeth Harding, a young English woman, finds herself - not totally of her own full volition - in a teacher-training programme for Functionary Magicians of the Imperium of the Unseen in Bordeaux, France. Hi-jinks, obviously, ensue …

October arrived, and the trees began their solemn, joyous parade: reds and golds and yellows and bronze. Eliza saluted the Gatekeeper of Château Mondésir as she passed – he tipped his cap at her – and then she allowed herself to dawdle among the woodland paths beneath the riot of the Autumn leaves. She repeated to herself the words that Uncle Trevor had spoken that weekend, when she had been to visit. He had stood on the terrasse at the back of the house at dusk, and held his Thyrsus-staff in one hand, a horn of ale in the other, and quietly, feelingly, spoken into the fading world at evening:

Tonight we light the First Fire

October has arrived, the Pyre of the Year, the wood is stacked in cords, the resinous and the hardwood, the kindling and the logs.

We have gathered nuts and mushrooms; we have taken in the hay. The meadow is shorn once again. We have picked the apples, plums, and peaches.

The vineyards all about have stripped the vines. The grapes of wrath, the grapes of ease, the grapes of merriment, the grapes of dream.

Mist and rain in the morning dusk gives way to still-warm sun and fast-slanting light in the afternoon.

Golden light. Honey and amber. Wistfulness, regret, melancholy, nostalgia, sweet memory.

We ease into the slumberous mood.

Pyre of the Year.

This Fire of Autumn.

Warm us, light our nights, unfrost our tingling hands.

Pyre of the Year

Burnt offering.

Gather. Gather. Gather.

Around the Fire.

Around the Hearth.

Around the Hollow

Behind the Hearthstone.

She asked him, what did he mean by the “Hollow Behind the Hearthstone”? He gave her a funny sideways look. She did not talk to you about that, he asked. No. She had not. You will find out, he said, by and by. Now, as she looked through the trees to the shining lake of the grand park beyond the grounds of the Château, on which a veil of mist did outlast the night, she repeated the words again. “Pyre of the Year … This Fire of Autumn … Burnt offering … gather, gather, gather …” She seemed to hear a music behind the words, within the words, upon which she could not put her finger. She seemed to hear a song from long ago, and wondered if her mother sang it. She shivered suddenly, and felt very very lonely. Bereft. She hugged her satchel against her.

She heard her name called. “Eliza! Coucou! Come and join me!”

It was Morgane, joyfully waving to her, from her perch on a giant tree-stump in a clearing off to her right. When she reached her, the other young woman shifted along and patted the wide wooden perch beside her.

“Here, do you want some coffee?” She had a silver metal flask, and poured out two cups into the twin receptacles which in the cunning lid nested one within the other. Eliza took it gratefully and warmed her hands around it, brought it pensively to her lips but did not drink.

Morgane cocked her head at her. “Huh. You’re doing a Thing.”

“Hmm …?” Eliza looked up from her reverie.

“Yes, you’re self-consciously posing in a way that says the word … ‘forlorn’, I think it is.”

“Yes. Good word. I suppose I am.”

“It’s okay, you are allowed to be forlorn. I’m only commenting on it because I like the word ‘forlorn’. I like to say it. ‘Forlorn’. ‘Forlorn’. Yes. Ten-out-of-ten word.” She spoke quietly, gradually allowing a smile to come into her voice. Eliza could not help letting a smile creep across her own features. She turned to Morgane and then bestowed upon her a full and real and radiant smile of thanks. The other giggled and looked away, blushing a little.

“You’re beautiful when you smile.”

“I rarely smile so much as that.” Eliza sipped the coffee. It was strong and thick and perfumed with cardamom. The fragrant steam rose up around her cheeks, and she smiled once more into the rim of the cup.

A comfortable silence – how rarely such a thing truly is! – was brewing between them, when they both turned, startled, at the crunch of a footstep at the edge of the clearing. It was Malachi, the moustachioed and melancholy Irishman, their classmate. He was wearing a very long blue-grey tweed greatcoat, and matching cap, and appeared to be pacing along while reading aloud to himself from a small dark-blue leatherbound book, as if a priest with his breviary. He stopped when he saw them, and gradually lowered his tome.

“Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you. I was just … reciting incantations. You know how it is.”

“It’s okay,” said Morgane. “Please, come and join us. We have a great stump.”

He picked his way across the clearing, through the fallen leaves and ruddy piles of pine-needles, and swished the skirts of his coat (almost a cloak, really, in effect) into place before he sat carefully down beside Eliza.

“Well now. How are we, this fine misty moisty morning?” he said with smiling eyes.

Morgane spoke, with a sparkle of delight. “Eliza is feeling forlorn. And I am feeling full of the joy of a beautiful morning, with its smells and sounds and twinkling dew upon the spider-webs and lovely light …”

Eliza smiled to herself again, and could not maintain her loneliness. Here was companionship, and comfort, and only an arrant curmudgeon would rebuff it. What a treasure was this girl, she thought. Malachi too smiled and took a deep breath.

“Ah yes! Breathe that pungent perfume of the underwoods! Feel the soft caress of mists!”

They all three then sat silent, for a long moment. The awakening woods whirred with a bird or two that twittered and then swooped across the clearing; the mist had risen off the lake, and its still waters glimmered in the rising sun. The deep, mossy, damp vapours of the forest floor rose round them. For a moment, Eliza realised, there was perfection. And as she named the thought, the moment passed. They heard a call. “The class will start, we shall be late! Beware!” It was Gustave: the pale young man was hurrying along the path some way from them, towards the pre-fabs, and shouted out as he passed – not cheerfully, but it seemed with a genuine edge of anxiety in his voice.

“Yes, yes, Mister White Rabbit!” grumbled Morgane in playful exasperation, and tried stiffly to rise to her feet. Malachi took her hand and swiftly, gently, pulled her up, without it having seemed like anything. She brushed off her skirt and nodded her thanks, gathered her flask and cups and book-bag. They headed for their lesson.

As they walked, Malachi contrived to fall back beside Eliza, when they met some of the others as the paths converged, and Morgane went to greet them.

“So,” he started. “You are nominated at Albertus Magnus.”

“Yes. You are too though, aren’t you? I haven’t seen you at all!”

“They have … put me somewhere out of the way. Where I am not too visible. There are reasons for this …”

“Yes, well! Never mind!” Eliza found herself saying, before suddenly realising that this was a strange response. These mysterious reasons actually did sound rather intriguing. Why should she be all of a sudden dismissive? And as she thought this to herself, she remembered that this was something of a pattern. Any time Malachi seemed about to divulge some element of his strange and storied career, someone else would cut him off and move on. Did it really seem like he was such a bore? Surely if anyone had interesting stories to tell, he would. She thought too of the times when they had all been sharing their own histories and backgrounds. He never had. Or at least, she didn’t remember if he had. Had he tried, and been ignored or cut off?

In the three seconds it took her to think all of this, the expression on her face must have subtly gone through a number of changes. He watched her closely.

“So you see …?” he simply asked.

She nodded.

“If you want to have a chat sometime, come and see me in my office. It’s Room H595. They’ve put me in charge of the ENSAD classes: Envoûtement pour Spécialistes d’Autres Disciplines. If you can find your way there, you’ll mostly find me there. I’d be interested to hear how you’re getting on. You are a strange case, indeed.” He said that last without malice, but rather wonderingly. Clearly, he liked a strange case, himself.

Their morning passed in rather a blur of convoluted information. The Instructrixes were there, and asked them all to report on their progress, but then did not appear to listen to anything that was said, instead invoking platitudes about la pratique institutionnelle, and la méthode. The famous Method which, as Eliza had long ago learned, was essential to implement – impossible to describe or explain. Having dissertations returned to her covered in red ink, and being marked three out of twenty, she would be told that “there were some interesting ideas in there – but ‘ceci n’est pas une dissertation’ …” She would beg for further elucidation, only to be told that la méthode was not to be expounded; much like the famous opinion of Justice Potter Stewart in Jacobellis vs Ohio, vis à vis pornography, one might only say: “I know it when I see it” (funnily enough, of course, the text at issue was a French film; presumably the Anglophone equivalent comes – I beg your pardon – more clearly labelled). Finally, her moment of clarity had resulted not from anyone’s explicitation of the thing, but from one her younger tutors, who had passed her a packet of papers (surreptitiously, as if handing off state secrets or a big bag of drugs), containing dozens of dissertations (not essays!) that he had written himself while in a prestigious prep school before getting in to Para’ Sup’. Reading his tiny, crabbed, meticulous handwriting over hundreds of pages of writings on obscure metaphysical subjects, something had clicked, and she was off to the races. It was, indeed, something that one must rather feel than understand. She was then able to write the way they wanted, but to conserve that certain creative flair proper to the Anglophone scholar – so often sorely lacking chez les français. This was to be her secret weapon; she could take that rigorous structure of the French style of argumentation, but at the last minute remove the obvious scaffolding, and let the building with its Gothic follies and eccentric proportions stand proud. In one’s magical working, exactly the same principle held; she would apply the Cartesian balance and structure to the Working, but she would animate the whole with … well: what other word is there for it, but Enchantment? And hence, her brilliant performance in the trials of the Magistère. They didn’t know what hit them. Too often, the French candidates would proceed in a way that was perfectly correct, perfectly scholarly … but it lacked that touch of quaintness, of whimsy, of thinking things slantwise. There is, need we remind ourselves, no word in French for quaint or queer or whimsical. One might be perfectly correct, and still lack that – dare we call it – je ne sais quoi.

At mid-morning, a colourful colleague of the Italian school of Art Magic took over, and demonstrated a rather pleasing set of techniques that drew on prestidigitation and conjuring, producing from a box of tricks elaborate streams of ribbons, card-tricks, jugglings. It was a relief, and everyone sighed with delight and let themselves be carried by the flow of the patter and the flourishes produced by the stocky, Brylcreemed illusionist, Maestro D’Annunzio. He led them through their paces on some basic misdirection and sleight of hand, and much hilarity was had – moreso, even, at their errors, as when Ambrosius let explode a whole deck of cards he tried to manipulate, in a fountain of flying suits across the room. Mercurio, as might be expected, was rather a dab hand at all of this already, and made things disappear from under a swatch of red silk with panache, only to discover them behind the ear or out of the décolleté of a subject.

That afternoon, according to the schedule (Eliza still did not have access to the online workspace, but the others kindly screen-capped and sent it on, on their WhatsApp group), they were to see Mister Graves and Nettle again, and it would be erroneous to say they did not hurry back a little sooner from their lunchbreak than they had for previous sessions – the lecture-theatre plenaries on Institutional History of the Mysterium, or Evolutions in the Imperial Code Status of Secularism in Magical Education, to name but those.

Shortly after they had reconvened in the classroom, Nick strode in with a thunderous look, and dropped a stack of papers with a thunk on the desk at the top of the room. He looked around at them all accusatorily. Nettle ducked around the door after him, and bobbed her head almost apologetically. She darted a look at him – still fuming, apparently – and then stepped forward, subtly taking the lead.

“Hullo everyone. Never mind Nick, he’s just had some bad news, he’ll get over it, won’t you Nick? No need to take it out on –”

“What I want to know is …” he cut in. “Who’s been complaining about the quality of the instruction? Who’s been talking shit in the online feedback reports?” He gestured at the pile of papers. “You know they went and printed them all out for me? So I had to read them all? And then they chewed me out and told me to deal with it? Don’t you know not to actually fill in these things with the truth?”

The class all looked around at each other; after each training session, they received a feedback form to fill in, “to improve your experience and promote excellence in the Institute for the Instruction of Imperium of the Unseen Functionary Magicians”. Strictly anonymous, these surveys were supposed to bring a level of quality control to the instruction they received. Eliza, having come across these things before, had started filling the first and then, realising the level of vitriol that was leaking into her answers, deleted them all. She had not filled in a single one since. If they were truly anonymous, then not answering was not something one would be answerable for; if, as she suspected, they were far from anonymous, better not to give hostages to fortune with the truth or with placatory lies.

“So come on, out with it!” Nick barked. “Who’s been shitting on their eminent Instructors and Instructrixes in the comments?”

There was silence. Nettle looked around at them sympathetically.

“You know,” she said, “you have to learn the diplomacy of these things. They do know who says what, obviously. And if you have grievances or complaints – I hate to say this – but it might be best to just swallow them and suck it up and wait until the end of the year.”

Charlie had gone very red – not with embarrassment, at least not only – and she finally exploded. “But what are we supposed to say? That everything is fine? That this is all good? That we feel appropriately ‘supported’ and ‘prepared’ by this … whatever it is?”

“Do you realise that I’ve already been called to the principal’s office twice for perceived slights against the authority of my tutor?” Charlie wasn’t done. “Do you realise that during these training sessions I’ve been getting comments about my clothes, my hair, my piercings, my politics?”

“Not to mention the casual racism …” Mitra muttered, lowering his head, pushing his hair behind his ear.

Rima next spoke up: “They gave us a unit to study last week that unironically went into a whole thing about the ‘Clash of Civilisations’, and the fact that the ‘Western Tradition’ was under threat. It’s pretty fucking rich, given what’s on the news every day. My family in Beirut had to leave their home under rocket fire …” She took a deep breath, seemed to look off and up to elsewhere, and then looked straight at Nick again. “Do you think all of this is okay?”

Nick paused and looked down before answering.

“Look.” He seemed to gather himself. “What I believe … what any of us believe … it’s beside the point. It just doesn’t matter. I’m here to do my job. You’re here to do your job. And your only job at the moment is to sit down, shut up, take it, get through it, and qualify. You want to achieve the Consecration, become a functionary magician-teacher? Then you keep your head down, tell them what they want to hear, play the game. You want to be a revolutionary? Then maybe you picked the wrong job. You are here to be trained as agents of the Mysterium. You will represent the values and the policies of the Mysterium. And if you can’t do that …? Then you should walk out now. I told you this before. You are free to go at any time. Unlike some of us …” Here he trailed off and hung his head. Clearly, there was something else going on. Nettle came over and touched his arm.

“Nick … it’s going to be okay. Promise. All of you,” she looked around the room. “It may sound harsh, but he’s not wrong. There are things that you have to just accept. It doesn’t mean, in your heart of hearts, that you must compromise your beliefs, or become what you are not. But it does mean that if you want to get on in this world, you are going to have to be canny, be clever, be careful.” She walked down between the desks, lightly resting her hand on Fatoumata’s.

“For some people, joining the ranks of the functionaries of the Mysterium is something that they do because their convictions align with the values of the Imperium, of authority, and they wish to wield, in their own small way, a little fraction of the great power of Imperium, of the Empire of the Unseen, the Mysterium. They wish to police others, to control others, to test others, to tell people what to do, to make sure they do what they’re told … and, if they don’t, to punish them.”

She walked around the back of the class, and some heads turned to follow her. Her voice seemed to rise, to gain in resonance and in vividness.

“I have seen those people … I have seen them become Quaestors and Lictors, Justiciars and Legionaries, Emissarii and Consiliarii. I have seen them become teachers. Magisters. As you will be.” She stopped by the windows at the side of the room, near where Eliza and Morgane were sitting. She looked at them sadly, and then defiantly. “But I have known also those – so many – who do what we do because their ambition is not the wielding of power, but rather to serve. Their vocation is to the care of their charges, their students, those whom they guard and guide. Their vocation is to be the protectors of the innocent, the mentors of the young, the counsellors, the shepherds, the Wise. I look around this room –” She turned, at the front of the class, and spread her hands before her; her cloud of silvery hair seemed an electric halo around her head; her eyes shot cold fire. “– and I do not see aspirants to any petty power. I do not see any who delight in domination. I only see people who wish to use their gifts: to serve, to guide, to protect, to aid.” She lowered her hands slowly. The air crackled around her.

“Do not prove me wrong.”

She turned and faced the board. They had never seen her like this. Even Nick looked spooked: both impressed and in awe. He stood and put a hand to her shoulder, and they realised that she was trembling. Sobbing silently, as it might be.

“I …” Nick was at loss, for a moment. “I’m sorry for earlier. You weren’t to know. Nettie’s right. There are good reasons to do what we do. What you do. And we are here to help you do it.”

Nettle turned, and her eyes were red. She blew her nose.

“Sorry. I tend to get a bit carried away, I’m not sure I …”

Suddenly Fatoumata stood up. She put her hand on her heart.

“O Captain, my Captain.” Her voice rang out. Nettle, in turn, placed her hands on her heart and looked back at her. Their gaze each held the other. Mercurio stood up and began applauding, closely followed by Charlie, Mitra, Eliza, Lamia, Rima, and then the others. Flicking her eyes around the room, Eliza noticed that Sibilla, Ambrosius, and Cécile were much slower to stand. And Gustave … Gustave sat hunched in his chair, staring at his desk, a hectic flush in his pale cheek. Nobody remarked upon it; certainly, most noticed it. They all sat down again rather quickly. The moment became swiftly awkward, as with many collective expressions of emotion or conviction.

She looked at him. “Nick, we should tell them.”

He slowly shook his head. “What would we tell them …?” His voice was quiet.

“The truth.”

Everyone sat up, on the edge of their seats. There was a truth, behind the truth? A world behind the world? It would not be the first time, for any of them, to encounter such a moment when the veil was rent in two, when the curtain opened, to show the hands that pulled the levers. To learn magic was to experience a succession of such moments: never sure one had reached the final revelation; sure, indeed, that one never had. Those who believed that they had finally uncovered the Truth were most often lost in conspiratorial delusion. Those who could not withstand the Trembling of the Veil, between Thisworld and the Otherworld, had most often not their place upon this path.

Nettle stared at them, a long moment.

“What do you all see, when you look around? Think. What do you see, when you see the people in whose midst you are?”

Everyone hesitantly looked around the room.

“We’re a group of students?” ventured Charlie.

“Yes. What of it? What kind of group?” Nettle encouraged.

Malachi, who had been keeping his own council, spoke up. “We’re an unusually diverse group of students.”

Nick pointed a finger at him, and pulled the trigger. “Right! And what of it?”

“Wait now one moment,” Fatoumata spoke. “Isn’t this group more or less representative of the general population?”

“Exactly,” said Nick. “You are unusually representative. Unusually diverse. Do you think you would find this in the other Domains? Do you think Theoretical Magic looks like this? You’re the United Colours of Benetton! Even Enchantment sections in the other Institutes don’t look like this! You think the magician teacher-training groups in Paris or in Lyon look like this? Absolutely not! Look at yourselves. Look who’s around you.”

Everyone started to look and assess with a little more attention.

Nick was on a roll now. “Look at you: we’ve got nearly half the group who are not white; we’ve got Indian by way of Île Bourbon, Senegalese, Algerian Kabyle, Lebanese, Vietnamese; we’ve got Irish – which doesn’t quite count as white, obviously – Northern English, Italian. And then within the “Franco-French” group, you’re not exactly the classic profile: we’ve got Basque, Breton, Travelling Folk … and Gustave, your family is Hungarian, yeah?” Gustave nodded. “And Charlie, yours is Polish?” She assented. “Which means basically nobody fits into the typical mould of the Grandes Écoles Ésotériques. And that’s not all.”

Now they were all looking around, slightly frowning. They had not fully taken note of all of this.

“Tell me,” said Nick. “How many of you are actually straight?”

Nettle stepped forward and said quietly, “Hang on, Nick, I’m not sure we –”

“No, this is important!” he insisted. “They need to know.” He turned back to the group. “Are any of you actually straight?”

There was a slightly awkward shuffle, even an embarrassed laugh or two.

“Well, I’m certainly not!” said Rima defiantly.

“Me neither!” grinned Charlie.

Nick stalked around the desks, clinical. “So, Ambrosius, I know you’re gay, you’ve said as much …” The latter nodded, guardedly. “Mercurio, need I even ask?” The addressee bowed. “Lamia, Fatoumata, I know you’re married with children, but …” Fatoumata laughed and gave a sort of salute of concession, and Lamia held her hands out helplessly.

“I don’t think …” Malachi began, but Nick cut him off.

“Mate,” he said. “Don’t tell me you’re completely straight. Your waistcoat begs to differ.”

It was indeed a rather splendid shade of viridian silk, with embroidered dragonflies upon it. There was no doubt a touch of Décadence implicit.

“Mitra, Morgane, Cécile, Eliza … I can’t say for sure, but my gaydar is pretty infallible, and if any of you tell me you’re a hundred percent straight, I will honestly eat my hat.”

All of them exchanged bashful glances; indeed, the glances were perhaps rather more speaking now than they had been before; without realising it – or perhaps with perfect lucidity – Nick had opened up a very deliciously wriggling can of worms among the entire group. The possibilities were endless …?

“Niccolo. You forget me?” Sibilla gave him a long and level look.

“Sibilla. How could I ever? You transcend all such questions.”

She seemed satisfied.

Nettle took up the narrative.

“And see … this is not a comfortable point to raise either but … how many of you – you don’t need to actually answer – how many of you have issues with neurodivergence, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, personality disorders …?” Everyone looked around again, some avoiding other’s gaze; clearly, not a one but was somehow touched by the question. “See … they know this. It may not be in your official file, but it is on file. They know who they are dealing with. They knew who you were when they chose you for this programme.”

Cécile spoke up. “Wait. This programme? I thought we just attained the Magistère and then got assigned to one of the Institutes? What do you mean this programme?”

Nick and Nettle exchanged a look.

“What do you mean this programme?” Lamia repeated, bristling.

Nick waved Nettle on, slightly helplessly.

“So,” she began. “You all remember the Hierophant’s Encyclical two years ago? Hierophant de Vermiis?” There were nods. “There was a … commitment, in the Vita Nuova document, to attain a certain level of … diversity among the corps of Magister-Functionaries. After significant popular pressure, the Hierophant conceded this policy. And …” She trailed off.

Nick presented his open hand to the group. “Well. You’re it. You’re the diversity.”

“What do you mean we are?” asked Rima. “… just us …?”

“Yeah.” Nick nodded. “You lot … after examination of your applications … were chosen – hand-picked, you might say – to fulfil the quotas. You’re the diversity hires.”

“Hang on a second,” Charlie burst out. “You mean we wouldn’t have gotten through except for … whatever …?”

“No, no!” Nettle tried to reassure them. “You all met the criteria; you all attained the Magistère! But … well. They chose to put you all here. Together. You’re the … experiment.”

“Does that mean,” asked Mitra, “that they didn’t want us spread among the other groups …? As if we might … corrupt them? What …?”

“We can’t say what exactly it means,” said Nettle. “But it does appear to be the case that they wanted to meet all their diversity quotas all in one go, and put you all together.”

“Nettle …” Nick looked slightly ill. “We can’t say for sure, what it means. But we have some ideas.” The two instructors looked at each other once more, wary. This was the moment where they might decide not to go further; she nodded at him, he nodded back, once.

“We think …” It was hard to say it out loud. “We think that, considering that there are certain factions and interests which are strongly opposed to any favouring of diversity, to any positive discrimination, in the hierarchy … indeed, to the very presence of … agents … of the Mysterium who are not Bleu-Blanc-Rouge, who are not ‘Native French’: white, straight, ‘normal’ … We think that they may be putting you all together, and putting you through things in a certain way … Because they want you to fail. They want you to provide an example for why diversity doesn’t work. And so, Nettie and I …” She nodded at him to go on. “… we think that they may be setting you up for disaster, to prove their point. We think that the hierarchy does not … have your best interests at heart.”

The room was silent.

THE HOLLOW PATH IS A MEETING OF MINDS AND HEARTS, TO FOSTER EXHANGES AROUND MAGIC, ART, ENCHANTMENT, CULTURE, POLITICS, AND POETICS ...
RE-ENCHANTMENT. RE-WILDING. RE-MEMBERING.
RESISTANCE.

[you can follow along with the transcript, though it is imperfect: it can’t quite identify the speakers (most of whom are, in fact, me), and it get things occasionally wrong. I considered making a spruced-up version, and indeed began, but then I realised that it runs to NINETY PAGES and decided I had better apply myself elsewhere …]

The ninth chapter in a continuing serial novel, The Department of Whimsical Enchantment … Find the first part here: Chapter I, the second part here: Chapter II, the third part here: Chapter III, the fourth here: Chapter IV, the fifth here: Chapter V, the sixth here: Chapter VI, the seventh here: Chapter VII, and the eighth here Chapter VIII.

What if we combined Dark Academia Romantasy with a School for Teachers of Magic, set in France, with all the soul-destroying bureaucracy, petty rivalries, and obscure rules that nobody ever tells you that that implies …? Well. I suppose you’re about to find out! Please subscribe to receive the ongoing updates!

The story so far: Elizabeth Harding, a young English woman, finds herself - not totally of her own full volition - in a teacher-training programme for Functionary Magicians of the Imperium of the Unseen in Bordeaux, France. Hi-jinks, obviously, ensue …

The sun gradually rose lower and later in the morning, as the Equinox approached; when Eliza left the cosy flat in the quiet roads behind Saint Séverin, the golden light slanted differently against the yellow stone of the buildings. In the daytime, still one felt its warmth, but in the shade the underlying chill of the air lurked, waiting for its moment. She shivered, thrilled, to the gradual approach of Autumn. O Season of Mists! Place of my birth! Sweet Memory …! She was a native of Autumn, with her October birthday (Libra Sun, Taurus Moon, Scorpio Ascendent, for those playing along at home); the feeling of this time, for her, was always one of being older than her years, even as the day came she would count them. A time that spoke to her in nostalgia, and in yearning. A melancholy sense of all that passed away, as the Year gradually, ruefully declined. She quickened her step along the path beneath the trees that lined the grassy triangular park to the leeward of the church, taking care to set her foot upon each small brass medallion set into the pavement bearing the scallop shell that showed that you were on the Pilgrimage: the Camino passed through here. Her square-heeled strappy black leather shoes clocked pleasingly as she walked; she wore black tights today, for the first time, in deference to the changing weather, but knew she might regret them by afternoon. A dark grey A-line dress with long sleeves, a semi-ironic Peter Pan collar and exaggerated cuffs. Her trusty satchel. She often considered that she dressed just slightly like a parody of herself. She remembered vividly that time she had burst into her friend Sara’s room (they shared quarters in their Oxford college), very early one Sunday morning; she had been up all night working out a very complex set of Alchemical equations, and could not wait to share her results. She was dressed like a caricature of a Goth librarian. Sara, who had also been up all night, but had rather performed the Alchemical experiment with her own body as the athanor, drinking an extensive combination of potions and elixirs, rolled over and took one bleary look at her and croaked: “Fucking hell that’s a lot of Liz at once …” She turned back to the wall and groaned, and Eliza brought her a glass of water, left it on the bedside table, and quietly withdrew.

She was not always good at realising when others might not share her enthusiasms for various subjects, or at least not this minute. She vowed once more to try to read the room more sensitively than she sometimes did. She stopped off at Rey Verde-Reina Nera, which had quickly become her favourite coffee-shop and bakery in the area: her usual order, tall oat-milk latte with an extra shot, a heated cinnamon roll, to go, was prepared for her without her having to ask; by the time she reached the top of the queue it was already ready. The baristas were unconscionably good-looking, most of them Mediterranean or Latin American. Sometimes she came and sat for hours at the table facing the counter, where she would work on preparing classes or correcting papers. They all smiled at her conspiratorially, seemed to let her in on the secret, but somehow she had only managed to exchange pleasantries with them, never quite to get into their conversation, as it flourished in the cracks between customers, as they whirled along behind the counter, servicing the hissing local god of the race-car chrome Italian espresso machine, or around the room, between the tables, like Flamenco dancers. She was almost certain that they were Alchemists, all: certainly the owners, probably the staff, given the name of the place. That was nothing too unusual: coffee-roasting – torrefaction – was the kind of trade, like brewing, distilling, dyeing, tanning, maroquinerie, confectionery, perfumery, mixology, which tended to attract Alchemists – which often had their roots in Alchemy. It was maddening though. She wished that she could be friends with them, that she could be in on their little world. Especially that one barista with the red streak in her hair, and her pierced lip, and the intriguing long narrow glyph tattooed between her breasts, that of course one could never quite see all of, without … Well. Eliza thought of a few scenarios where she might see all of it, and then suddenly realised that she was staring at the woman’s cleavage in the here-and-now, as the latter held out the paper bag with her order in it, over the till. Eliza shook her head, as if waking up, and stammered, “I’m sorry, I was just …”

“… Entranced,” the other finished for her. “Encantada. I know. I see.” She smiled a slow, sly smile.

Eliza took her order, blushed, and fled. Afterwards, she thought she might have profitably answered something very witty and self-deprecating and yet flattering, but since she had not, she could never ever return to the café again (obviously, she would return again).

One of the particularities of Rey Verde-Reina Nera, at least as far as she was concerned, was that it was very difficult to find. It was never quite where she expected it to be, and indeed seemed to wander several streets away from where one ought to come upon it. She was trying to get to know the city without resorting too much to online maps and GPS, but instead rather strolling around and paying attention to things – this again was something that her father had taught her. He hated using GPS, and going on a car trip with him had always been an exercise in uncertainty and frustration. But he was very sanguine about it, and considered every wrong turn an adventure. He told her that if you wished to really get to know a place, you must walk it: wander, amble, play the flâneur, get lost, get found again, ask your way, encounter the unexpected. Her mother had used to laugh and remind him of the famous story of the Englishman who, seeking his destination in an Irish village, had asked a local man, who considered for a moment, and then responded: “Well. I wouldn’t start from here …” Seeing as her father’s job entailed a very large amount of tootling around the place, it was amazing that he didn’t have more trouble with his constant lateness and lostness. This was the thing though: he worked for the local council as a surveyor (and, beneath that guise, as a Geomantic Cartographer); his whole job was making maps. He loved maps – just not the digital versions. He considered that one must truly know the territory to make the map, and that the only way to truly know something was to discover it. Along with his incredibly detailed survey maps, he would also produce far more idiosyncratic ones, drawn freehand from memory, which had landmarks like “very good dog”, or “tree worthy of note”, or “try the fudge from this shop”, or “avoid this pub at all costs I owe the landlord twenty quid”. She took her discovery of Bordeaux thus seriously, according to her father’s technique: a kind of homespun Psychogeographical experiment: to know the territory, one must discover the territory. Trial and error, wandering, drifting, fucking around to find out. Solvitur ambulando. So the mind-map is drawn, as the feet trace the streets and alleys and avenues and squares.

It was thus, despite the very direct transport link, by bus, that she often flirted with lateness to her classes at Lycée Albertus Magnus. But no matter how she dallied, she always seemed to arrive just on time, waved through the gate by Khadija, trotting across the grand first courtyard as the sun came up. She was moving into her second sequence with her students, and had decided to stay within her own comfort zone: spooky classes for the Spooky Season. The younger ones, the Secondes and Premières, would have a unit on “Telling a Spooky Story”, the older ones a more detailed cultural excursion: “The Season of the Witch”, primarily dealing with the Witch-Trials in Early Modern Britain. The first, a lesson in how to weave a mood, an atmosphere, and to provoke an emotion; storytelling is, after all, at the very heart of the Magic Art. The second, well: we must learn our history, after all. But it was not only that; the unit would culminate in a game of Witchfinders: and there, we would begin to put our Guile and Glamour into practice, as accusers, and accused, and as Inquisitors.

She was pleased with her ideas; she had carefully written up her step-by-step progressions, with fully worked-out lesson plans for each stage, with links to resources, with meticulously-crafted PowerPoint presentations (some of the Witch-Trials material, admittedly, had come from ‘one she’d prepared earlier’: a literature seminar in which she had used the Witches in Macbeth as an example of the back-and-forth between cultural representation and magical practice, each echoing the other and feeding back into its mirror image. But as her tutor at Wainscot College, Dame Barron, always said: ‘Use everything at least thrice! Once as a chapter in your thesis, once as a class you teach, once as a conference paper, once as a chapter in a volume, once as a magical working! Dear me, that’s more than thrice, isn’t it? Well! You see what I mean!’ She had been very fond of Dame Barron). Once they were beautifully prepared (several late nights, and a long, delicious Sunday in Rey Verde-Reina Nera, when she ate breakfast, brunch, and afternoon tea while she worked, and the rain hissed down on the cobblestones outside, and she kept hoping that the barista with the red streak in her hair would ask her what she was doing: but she did not), she both sent them by email and printed copies for delivery to the pigeonhole of Madam Belphégor. She heard absolutely nothing back. She caught glimpses of her tutor once or twice, most often sitting in the Grande Salle des Profs, surrounded by Alchemists and Astrologers of a certain age, gallantly paying their court to her. That particular day, Bathilde did wave, rather gaily, but neither summoned Eliza to come to her, nor broke stride in the anecdote that was clearly charming her auditoire. And so, her young charge turned and tried to fade into the wall. It must be remarked, this is something which she actually could do, and so it is perhaps no great surprise that in merely wishing she might disappear into her surroundings, she actually effected a mild form of a Disappearing Spell, or a Pass-Unseen Charm. This is why Bertrand Pozzo – “Man-bun” – walked right into her. She nearly fell, as he had been barrelling into the room at a fair clip, but he caught her as she did, and held her as if he dipped her deeply in a dance. They froze in that attitude for a fleeting instant, and then righted themselves very quickly, Eliza smoothing down her dress and blushing, Bertrand stammering an apology.

“I am so very sorry, I did not see you, I wasn’t looking where I was going …”

“It’s alright, I had made myself slightly invisible by accident, it’s not really your fault …”

“Hmm. Can I offer you that coffee we talked about … Look, I have the means!” He held out a hand in which winked two little goldish fifty-cent coins.

“How could I refuse a draught of that intoxicating elixir,” she deadpanned. He seemed impervious to irony or sarcasm, and bounded off to the machine to get the coffees. Eliza half turned and then jumped in shock, for Bathilde was right there at her shoulder, uncomfortably close. She could smell her perfume of hemlock and brimstone, and her breath of cinnamon and something else less identifiable.

“Hello darling,” she cooed. “Well look what you found to play with, isn’t that just adorable? I do like them like that myself ... so lithe and muscular and tanned … quite the delectable little morsel. Do let me know when you’re done with him, won’t you? My friends and I could find some … use for him.” She shivered theatrically, and gave the impression of letting out a sound between a miaow and a roar – Eliza heard it, but was quite aware that no-one else did. Madam Belphégor turned on her heel and strutted off with a swivel of hips from side to side as she receded. Bertrand was back, with the little plastic cups of coffee in his hands. Or rather, with five little plastic cups of coffee precariously grasped between several fingers.

“Who was that?” he murmured, rapt.

“That was Madam Belphégor, my tutor,” she snapped. And then dropped her voice. “I’d stay well away from her if I were you. She’d eat you right up.” She realised, seeing his face, that this prospect was … intriguing? and went on quickly. “Why pray tell do you have five coffees in your hands? Here, let me …” She carefully extracted two of them, without spilling the others.

“Oh!” he grinned sheepishly, and his attention was all hers once more. “I didn’t know how you take it, so I sort of got one of each: short, black, no sugar; long, black, one sugar; short, white, no sugar; long, white, sugar; and, uh … long, black, one sugar? I think?”

“I’m not sure that’s absolutely ALL of the options, but I appreciate the effort. Long, white, sugar – for future reference. Or: medium latte, oat-milk, extra shot, one sugar. In case the improbable happens and we’re ever in a place where they make real coffee.”

He beamed at her (he really did have a delightful smile, which lit up his whole face, and revealed dimples just above the carefully sculpted line of his beard). He inclined his head to indicate a high round table where one might perch on stools, just behind the long coat-rack, and so slightly out-of-the-way. She assented, and followed him. Today he was wearing a black tracksuit, but his top was unzipped all the way to reveal a very tight white singlet, which hugged his chest and abdomen abominably closely. He attempted to make small-talk, asking her how she was getting on, how were her classes, what did she think of the students, and what about the training days at the Institut. She answered him briefly and pleasantly, but carefully guarded herself from letting any charm or interest show. She did not do him the courtesy of turning the questions back on him, regardless of the fact that they were all, presumably, exactly as relevant in his own case. He seemed not to mind, and kept up the solicitous suite of perfectly pedestrian enquiries. She was relieved: he was just as banal and forgettable as she had expected. Move along, move along, nothing to see here. She did have a brief qualm when he reached up to the top of the rows of pigeon-holes to pull down a kit-bag, and his singlet rode up to reveal his perfectly-sculpted abs, and razor-hips – Apollo’s belt! – but she waved it away internally like a buzzing fly. Imagine asking someone ‘how they were getting on at work’ as an opening gambit …? Quelle idée! Despite herself, she remembered the rather different approach essayed by Pierre Pellegrin, that first day they met. She had been sitting with her book at a table outside La Plume de ma Tante, her favourite café in the neighbourhood of the Collegium Invisibilis Parisii. If she was not mistaken – and of course, she was not – it was Meditations on the Tarot, by Anonymous (later revealed to be a certain Valentin Tomberg), a great favourite of hers in those days. She was possessed of a rather tasty vintage edition, much thumbed-through, much annotated, much bookmarked. Suddenly, a disreputable-looking youth plonked down on the chair opposite her. He had on a rusty black velvet jacket and tight trousers out at the knees, clumpy tattered boots, a strange little hat, out from under which his wild, unkempt hair bristled. His face was pale and wan, three-day stubble and dark circles under the eyes; he was smoking a filthy long-stemmed pipe, apparently upside down. With a puff of blue smoke, he removed the inverted pipe from his mouth, and spat: “Well? Cuts or bruises?”

She just looked at him, perplexed.

“Which do you prefer, I mean? Cuts or bruises?” He puffed blue smoke again.

Alright. She would see where he was going with this. “Cuts,” she said curtly.

“Sleeping or waking?”

“Sleeping.”

“Sleeping or dreaming?”

“Dreaming.”

“Summer or Winter?”

“Winter.”

“Winter or Autumn?”

“Autumn.”

“Eat-in or takeaway?”

“Eat-in.”

“Paper or plastic?”

“Paper.”

“The night, the light, or the half-light?”

“Oh,” she softened. “… the half-light.” She recognised the quote from Yeats, and that was the beginning of Everything After. Pierre Pellegrin kept up this strange catechism for some time, occasionally nodding, as if she were answering correctly; some questions had obvious answers, some were clearly just a matter of taste; some seemed designed to isolate – in particular – a worthy target for his attentions. As he spoke, he still puffed on his foul pipe, and somehow managed to order a demi of bière blonde without actually saying anything, just giving an agreed-upon sign to the waitress, who brought it, and winked at Eliza. It ended with a particular question:

“Dead or alive …?”

She hesitated. He put his hand (rather grubby) on hers, and looked deep into her eyes and her heart, and she was doomed. Pierre Pellegrin. What a little shit. They were together for nearly two years.

When the bell rang for the next class to start, she left Bertrand Pozzo in the Grande Salle des Profs, and trotted off to brave the many stairs and corridors that would bring her – if she was lucky – to Room D606. It was a tricky one. There was a moment when you had to find a false panel in a stairwell lit only by a far-off blinking neon strip, somewhere among the flaking mustard-yellow paint and frankly rather evil-looking graffiti. This led through a very claustrophobic narrow passage to a part of the building which appeared inaccessible by any other means. Sometimes, in the darkness of the passage, Eliza would hear a distinct snuffling sound, and hurry her clopping footsteps. Once, something scurried, and she felt slightly ill when she got out and leaned against the ancient wooden balustrades that led up a gigantic stone spiral staircase on the other side (which definitely looked both too old and too big to be in this particular building. If you looked up, you seemed to see at least twenty floors above you. This, of course, was impossible. Eliza was not at all tempted to try to reach the top, just to find out; too many have been lost that way). It was a fact though – and hardly worth even remarking upon – that from the street-side perspective, on the Cours de la Marne, only the first façade of the building was really visible; there was nothing to be seen of the several towers of seven, eight, and nine storeys within. One should have been able to see them, but one was not. It had long ceased to impress Eliza that the buildings of Wizards might have impossibly large interiors, or heights and depths unlooked-for, and unseen. The Invisible College in Paris was one such example: the blank walls – with only a few high windows – of its exterior, its one main gate (through which none might pass who did not have the password), its apparent extent, taking into account the different streets which seemed to delimit it: none of this could account for the vast warren within, the multiple and successive courtyards, the grand buildings, the chapel, the cloisters, the passages under vaulted arches from one section to another. She had often tried to draw the map (according to her father’s techniques) of the entirety of the interior; it was not possible, it did not answer to the laws of geometry and space. Its name, therefore, was quite appropriate: this was indeed an Invisible College. She had loved her time there more than she could say. Unlike most of the institutions of the Mysterium, this one admitted also the practitioners, the Magisters, the Ordained, of the Ecclesia, the Church of Rome. As such, it was rather unusual. Here, the Laws of the Separation of Powers were held in abeyance, and one might meet clergy and cloistered orders as well as all sorts and conditions of magician. She had felt much delectation in discovering the subtle theology and the High Ceremonial of the Church-folk, in temporary truce with the secular Mysterium-approved magic-users.

Eliza used to sit there, in the Court of the Fountain, with the musical tinkling of ever-falling water as a backdrop, and watch the black-robed friars and the white-wimpled sisters of many lands moving among the easy-going crowds of students of the magical arts and sciences, of the magic of the body and the spirit. It pleased her ecumenical temperament to see all of these together. There seemed rarely any resulting conflict. Of course, the members of the Ecclesia who were attracted to this peaceful place were rarely those of the more extreme and rigid Orders, or of the more intransigent and illuminated Confessions. Those, she had encountered too, betimes. Stories for another day.

Now, she focused her attention on the task ahead of her: to teach the Premières (sixteen- or seventeen-year-olds) the next lesson in the sequence entitled ‘Telling Scary Stories’. With the Secondes, a year younger, she mostly concentrated on the diegetic elements: the setting, the atmosphere, the characters, the action, the rhythm, the climax. She used a genial collection of folk tales and urban legends, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, by Alvin Schwartz, with its slightly horrifying illustrations by Stephen Gammell, an American classic, as examples of the kind of thing one might aim for: creepy tales to tell around a campfire. The students were quite able to identify the tropes and beats of a classic scary story. The culture was saturated with them. This is a fundamental building-block of Enchantment: to tell a story, to gather in your audience’s attention, to frighten the living daylights out of them. But for the older students, she went further: we must work upon the language itself, and horror stories provide us with a perfect example. In establishing the mood and ambiance, for an effective Scary Story, we can allow ourselves all manner of enormity, when it come to language.

She told them: I want you to come up with a story that is utterly over the top. I want it to be excessive, overwhelming, GOTHIC. And, to do this, we must reach for language that appeals to the senses. We must look to all sensory impressions of sound, and light, and movement; of smell, of taste, of tactile sensation. She verified their understanding of the concept of onomatopœia; the meaning is slightly different in French, but they soon understood: a word that makes the sound that it describes: splash, boom, click, crunch, slap. Now, she told them: you must imagine the words that thus describe something that does not make a sound. We might call these, ‘mimetic’ words. Words that describe effects of light and movement: flicker, glimmer, gloom; totter, stumble, swish, grasp. What is the meaning of the actual phonemes involved? Do they have – in English – some inherent meaning? What is the difference between glimmer and glitter? Or between shine and gleam? Why do they differ? What is the difference between mumble and mutter? What about grumble? Why does one insect scurry and another skitter? What is the difference between stride and strut? Amble and saunter and swagger? How can we identify the inherent – or culturally constructed? – qualities of letters and combinations of letters that produce these words that mimic their meaning? How is the light of a candle different when it gleams and when it glows, and when it flickers and when it gutters? How do the phonemes involved evoke these meanings, without our being consciously aware of them?

She remembered – and she shared! – a passage from Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur, which she remembered vividly from a lesson on just this topic (though he had not said as much overtly) from her English teacher at the Grammarye school in Harrowgate. She had been twelve. His name was Mr Kennedy, a tiny gnome-like man, who would twitch his little round glasses up his nose in indignation at the barbaric transgressions of his teenage charges. He would stand up very straight, and declare a punishment: “Carrington! A hundred lines! ‘I must not commit fraud in the library’!”, or indeed his favourite: “Harding! Two hundred lines! ‘I must not say nothing when it obviously something!’” She had loved him very much, and had him as a teacher of Magical Literature and Language all through secondary school. Her father told her he still saw him sometimes, around the town, and he always asked after her, and asked that his well-wishes be passed on. That day, he had written on the dusty blackboard in his perfectly regular chalk-script, these words:

Dry clash’d his harness in the icy caves

And barren chasms, and all to left and right

The bare black cliff clang’d round him, as he based

His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang

Sharp-smitten with the dint of armèd heels—

And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,

And the long glories of the winter moon.

She wrote it, just as he had, in her slithering black marker on the whiteboard, and read it out to them, repeated: “And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,/And the long glories of the winter moon” … “Do you see?” she said. “Do you hear? ‘The long glories of the winter moon’ … Do you see the work that does, the looong vowels, and the stillness of the ‘level lake’, the roundness and the shining of the ‘winter moon’ …?”

She saw just a few heads hesitantly nodding. She must explain further. And she would. But they must learn this. That language was not merely composed of denotation and of connotation, of sense, but also of the music and the rhythm there imbued. They must learn to place their fingers on the harp-strings of the words; to manipulate the well-tempered instrument of the concatenation and the euphony and clang of vowels and consonants, of combinations of magical phonemes to create a devious music, with which they would effect their ends upon their listeners. They must learn to wield the strange music, rough magic, subtle siren-song of the English language, which had arrows in its quiver undreamed of, in the French. To learn “to make them hear, to make them feel – before all, to make them see” … Just as he said, Cher Maître.

She raised her wand (for she was using it today) – a slim, graceful baton of birchwood – and she began to conduct them like a choir. She would make them see.

The eightth chapter in a continuing serial novel, The Department of Whimsical Enchantment … Find the first part here: Chapter I, the second part here: Chapter II, the third part here: Chapter III, the fourth here: Chapter IV, the fifth here: Chapter V, and the sixth here: Chapter VI, the seventh here: Chapter VII …

What if we combined Dark Academia Romantasy with a School for Teachers of Magic, set in France, with all the soul-destroying bureaucracy, petty rivalries, and obscure rules that nobody ever tells you that that implies …? Well. I suppose you’re about to find out! Please subscribe to receive the ongoing updates!

The story so far: Elizabeth Harding, a young English woman, finds herself - not totally of her own full volition - in a teacher-training programme for Functionary Magicians of the Imperium of the Unseen in Bordeaux, France. Hi-jinks, obviously, ensue …

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The rest of the day passed in a blur: Eliza had five classes on a Monday. She almost forgot to eat her – delicious – lunch, and when she finally did, at the one-hour break she had at three o’clock, there was no-one in the Crow’s Nest to share with. She picked at the delicacies Uncle Trevor had prepared, with little appetite. She met most of her classes: two Seconde, one Première, one Terminale, and one STMA (Sciences et techniques de la magie appliquée – a somewhat more practical stream aimed at students who would end up working in magical supplies, spell maintenance, supernatural waste-management, that sort of thing). This latter group was small – only eleven students – and made up of all boys: taciturn, awkward, inarticulate. They all dressed in a manner even more uniform than those in her other classes: almost all black, clothes not to be noticed. They had a hard time formulating even the most rudimentary answers to her questions. They seemed deeply embarrassed to be there at all. They seemed to be slightly scared, or discomfited, by her; she vowed to herself that these ones, in particular, she would learn their names and win them over. As her day ended, she stopped by the Crow’s Nest one more time; there was no-one there; the tiny, empty staff-room had only a sad late light of afternoon that captured motes of dust, and a smell of ancient carpet-tiles and long-ago lunches.

She hurried off to get her train, making the mistake of getting on the “Express Bus” at rush-hour, which advanced so slowly that she wished she hadn’t, covering the mere two stops in over twenty minutes. Finally reaching the train station at Bordeaux Saint-Jean, there was more of the same: the platform for the train East towards Sarlat was crowded, seats were hard to come by. She found one momentarily, at the back of the train as was her wont, only to offer to give it up when she saw approaching a young mother with a hefty infant strapped to her chest, and several bags and cases. The woman was dark and pale and curvaceous, incongruous in Southern climes, all dressed in black; she stowed, above, a rolling luggage and a violin case, and kept with her a backpack with the necessary for her child. Eliza had stood up immediately, and gestured that she might take her place, which the mother acceded to gratefully. She stood in the corridor beside them, and quickly heard that the woman addressed her child in English – though she had thanked Eliza in French – and was telling her a rhyme Eliza knew herself from her childhood: there was no mistake, it was a sing-song Enchantment spell, that her own mother had taught her.

“My my,” Eliza said, in English, “what an Enchanting child …” With just that slight emphasis on the word, so that a fellow practitioner of the Art would hear it.

“Oh!” The young woman turned, caught by surprise. “You’re … English …?”

“I’m English, and a student of the Arts,” Eliza said, with the common formula.

They got to talking. The woman’s name was Lucy, her daughter’s was Niamh (her family were originally Irish, though for three generations in Birmingham). She herself was an Art Magician, and by the way taught violin; her partner was a Magister in an esoteric lycée in Bergerac, newly appointed. They spoke of all of this in a slight urgent undertone, with some periphrase so that the worldly folk around would not quite notice. She had worked in Bordeaux, at the Opéra, transcribing magical musical scores for years, but had recently moved to found her family in the hinterland. And oh! Did it transpire that she had a flat in the city, which she only used but once a week to give her lessons, that she was hesitant to put on Air BnB, that she only loaned to friends and family in the holidays? Did it transpire that she would be interested to rent it out, to a young English magician in her postulant year …? It did. It will please you to hear that it did. Eliza and Lucy, united in their small conspiracy, of being magical folk in the great wide ordinary world, made there and then their compact, sealed by discreetly tracing a glyph that the latter drew up, which briefly flared as Eliza’s finger followed it. She would rent the flat, and Lucy would use it on Wednesdays only. A mutually satisfactory accord was made.

Eliza came away slightly stunned, from this interaction. Yes, of course, she had cast her magic to discover a place to rent; there had been very little available, through mundane channels: expensive, ex-centric, unseemly. She had worked up a spell, that previous weekend. A mere sigil would not suffice; this needed more extensive work. She had made an offering to Bríghid, as Goddess of the Hearth and Home, a long-held patron of hers, but also performed a rite to Bes, an obscure lion-headed Egyptian deity, protector of the home, women, children: her friend Sara at Oxford had sworn by him for property matters, and though she was not particularly au fait with Khemetic Divinities, here she made an exception. According to Sara, a petition to Bes, in matters of finding a home, never did go astray. And so, she followed the ritual instructions she had noted in her grimoire from back then: a ceramic cup of mugwort tea; an incense that she concocted herself, from the ingredients in Uncle Trevor’s materia cupboard and herb-garden; a clay idol of the God, with lion’s head carefully shaped, made from the rich dark mud of the stream at the bottom of their property; an incantation that she had transcribed phonetically, in what Sara told her was Aramaic. It couldn’t hurt.

And lo! it did not! A mere few days later, here she was, encountering the exact person who could offer her the exact thing that she needed. But these things do not arise from nowhere, nor fall into one’s lap for nothing: her father always had been a big proponent of this. You must speak to people. The most clear channel for your magic to manifest, is through the agency of those around you; thus, you must engage with them. If you ask for something, and then retreat into your hermitage, expecting it to fall from the sky, you will most likely be disappointed. If, however, you go out in the World, and speak to people, and tell them what you need, they will – someone will – answer you. Somewhere out there, is everything we need; we need but tell, but ask, and it will be given unto us. Dear old Dad, she thought. Not coming naturally to him, he considered it like a form of strength-training: building the muscles required, opening himself up to interaction, making a most conscious effort to chat. And it worked. His very assiduous effort to speak to people so often resulted in unlooked-for (and looked-for!) boons. His genuine interest in the folks around him pushed past his natural reticence, bore fruit: sometimes, only knowledge, interest, a stock of connection and anecdote; but so often, also, favours, tips, openings. He seemed lucky; he was not, he said: he just paid attention.

And so, she found herself, mere days after taking up her functions, with a pied à terre en ville, an apartment from which to base her operations. As it happened, it was a quick bus-ride North across town from the Lycée Albertus Magnus, and an only slightly longer bus took her West, to the Institut. The following day, Lucy met her after work, and showed her the place, gave her the keys, told her the idiosyncrasies and quirks of the flat. It was in the quartier, just outside the centre, of Saint Severinus, almost in the shadow of that ancient church which held strange relics, bones of several saints, a crypt that bore the stamp of far-off pre-Christian altars and rites, which was a stopping-place along the Camino de Santiago de Compostella, which was placed upon a vast and darkling necropolis, far pre-dating the era of the Church of Rome. Eliza would discover all of this, in time. For now, she was more concerned with the trip-switch for the ventilation, the operation of the sofa-bed, the trick to click the keys at the entry, and the door. Lucy took her for a drink afterwards, in the café on the corner, at the sign of the Petit Meunier. Several people saluted her as they passed, or took a table next to them: the local market on the square in front of the church had just finished; they knew Lucy as a long-time customer. She introduced them to Eliza, and they were her immediate friends. She could not help but feel blessed.

Uncle Trevor said it often: “Good things happen to good people, my darling! And that’s not just some hippy-dippy nonsense! You act right, you hold your head up and be decent in the World …? That’ll stand to yer. Your magic works better, leastways the Enchantment part.” Trevor seemed, indeed, the very paragon of the Enchanted Life; he couldn’t walk through the village without people falling over themselves to offer him greetings, and the surplus of their harvest, or a tidbit of news that could be useful, or a taste of their latest vintage or batch. His ingenuous kindness, the quality of his attention, made of him a figure of local veneration. But she saw the corollaries of this in everything: the way he would gently cradle a spider gathered from the bathroom tiles, and thank her for blessing them with her presence, before releasing her outside (Uncle Harry did not like spiders); the way he would sit in the garden at dawn, and name and greet each bird as it made its presence known; the way he would ask and bless and thank each herb as he cut it from the kitchen-garden, as he cut it for the dinner, or a poultice, or a spell: his constancy and care, to all the World around him, made the World, in turn, cherish and reward him. It was no great matter, as far as he was concerned: this was just the way to be. Eliza recognised her mother in this too, and tried to be the same. Uncle Harry was different: he was a more scholarly magician, often lost to his collections of ancient tomes and treatises, his scrying-glass, his astrolabe. His eyes were often fixed upon the Inner Worlds, the Upper Worlds, and the Otherworld, and he had less time for the bright World right in front of him; he was not wrong, it was not an error; only, he must sometimes shake his head and take a breath before plunging into the sensible World that he must inhabit, and he might sometimes be impatient with its laws and foibles.

Over the next few days, Eliza brought her scant belongings from Neymet, where the Uncles lived, into the City; it only took her three trips – and not so encumbered as that – to repatriate the best part of her possessions, those that she would need at least. Lucy had left her furnishings and some belongings, and Eliza was nothing loath: the books and posters and few bibelots gave the place a feel of habitation, which she had not been able to provide alone. The flat was on the ground floor, in a very typical échoppe bordelaise, a stout, square building of the local yellowy stone; they were typically of only a single storey, at most two: rows of what had once been shops and ateliers repurposed in the 19^th century as dwelling places. Many of them now had plants that seemed to spring out of the pavement, at their base, guarded by little shards of pottery or pipe, that bristled up against the façade or even climbed and clung all the way along it, clustering around the door, leafy shades; of wisteria, or Virginia creeper (vigne vierge, the virgin vine), or indeed actual grape-vines: at this Harvest-Time burgeoning with grapes, dangling like organic signs of so many medieval inns, announcing the wine to be had within. Grape (recounted Eliza to herself) comes from grappe, which means ‘bunch of grapes’; the word for grape is raisin, which we use for the dried variety; the word for plum is prune, which we also use for the dried variety; the word for pig is porc; the word for sheep is mouton; the word for steer is boeuf: pork, mutton, beef. The peasant Saxon word for when on the vine or on the hoof; the noble Norman word for on the table. The peasant word for the raw; the noble word for the cooked. It was ever thus. If you want to sound more elegant, use the French-derived synonym; if you want to sound more scientific and exact, the Latin; if you want to sound more rooted and earthy, the Anglo-Saxon: royal, regal, kingly. She rehearsed this quickly in her mind once more: a little potted piece to share with students, that she kept up her sleeve, in her treasure-house, her word-horde.

The first night she spent there, she lit candles along the mantle-piece, above the dormant fireplace, all painted white, and saw them reflect in the tall tall mirror in the cool dim room. She lit a bunch of rosemary, gathered from Trevor’s herb-garden and hung a season upside down to dry, now tightly tied in a club-like bundle; she blew the swift flame to a smoulder, and waved it slowly in front of her, watching the curlicues and filigrees of smoke that rose, then began the chant she knew and turned around the corners of the room, moving Sunwise (deiseal, as her mother taught her, clockwise, or rightwards, as opposed to tuathalach, Widdershins, leftwards, or anti-clockwise). The rising and falling of the musical words, in a language that she only half understood. The way the harmonics of the notes, at certain moments, vibrated in her chest. She was not a singer, but she had grown up with a singer, who was herself a Witch and Faery-Seer, and she knew that for the charm to take, the notes must strike the invisible chords of the World, and set them to quiver and vibrate. She ought to practice more, she knew. For when she shaped the flow of air from lungs through tongue and teeth and lips just so, she felt the World around her slightly shift, so she could know … It caused her entire body to shiver, the musical becomes the magical, crosses the line into the erotic. At Oxford, for one term she had joined the Wainscot College Choir; the choristers, boys of eight to twelve years old, carefully chaperoned, sang together with the academical clerks, of which she had been one: they sang the Early English Music of Taverner, Tallis, and Byrd; they dabbled in the polyphonic motets of Lassus and Palestrina; they assayed the Alchemical Baroque Oratorios of Gesmer and Howells: she was intoxicated, rapt. The feeling of letting the music flow through one, of blending one’s individual voice into the stunning, interweaving glory of the song, that soared between the pillars and unto the vaults of ancient chapels, that stopped the heart of an entire auditoire then let it beat again, in time … She had felt nothing like it before, and could hardly bear the swooning, lifting feeling of launch into the Empyrean. It was too much. The choirmaster – a kindly, balding, stuttering fellow, whose words flowed free only when he sang – gently remonstrated, said she might find her place, with work, among the First Choir. She handed back her rich viridian cassock, and fled before his calls could reach her ears and call her back.

It was around this time, when she had been a week in her new post, that she finally met her tutor.

Each postulant was provided with a mentor in their assigned establishment. These nominated tutors had been supposed to take a hand, from the beginning, in the integration and the formation of their charges; Eliza had already heard of the travails of her cohort, in their encounters and their contacts with their tutors. On the second Friday, when she was once again at the Institut for training, she had nodded tacit assent when asked if she had been taken in hand by her tutor. The fact is, she had not. But she did not want to “make waves”, and so on. There were one or two of the others who had not yet been paired with a tutor, or for whom there had been some complication. She, herself, had had no complication; she had simply not seen her tutor yet, and said tutor had made no effort to declare herself.

It was only the following Monday that she finally met her. She was in the Grande Salle des Profs, passing through briefly, as always, to check her pigeon-hole (and this time, she was rewarded with the actual arrêté d’affectation, the official document which formalised her nomination in her post), and wandering vaguely at the edge of other groups of chatting teachers, to get herself a coffee from the intractably recalcitrant machines in the corner. She had class the following hour, and so had a few minutes. She admitted – grudgingly – to herself that she might not be totally against the idea emitted by Bertrand, the Energetics-teacher-postulant, that he buy her one of these fifty-cent coffees. She had not run into him since that first day; the establishment was gigantic: she was not willing to allow that she was slightly disappointed not to have seen him. She did see the Red-Haired Girl, who was – again – dressed awfully well, and who was quietly and confidentially chatting to someone else who looked like a member of a rather elite department. Eliza couldn’t tell what discipline she was from, but whatever it was, it seemed vaguely superior in a way that bothered her.

It was then, that her tutor swooped down upon her.

“Oh my dear, you must be Elizabeth!” She was grabbed by the wrist.

“Eliza,” she said, mechanically (how soon we teach ourselves these things!).

“It is so good to finally meet you! Come, let’s sit and get to know each other!”

Her kidnapper steered her away from the coffee machine and towards the long, low couches in a square on the other side of the staff-room. Eliza took her in: she was a rather glamorous woman in her mid-fifties: her hair was a very expensive-looking dark red, to bronze, to gold, a gradual gradient achieved, surely, only through assiduous professional care. It was swept up on top of her head in a sort of loose beehive, and tangled-down tendrils around her face that curled and tapered in colour just so. Her face was heavily made-up, but very skilfully, her eye smoky, her lip dark red. She was dressed all in black and dark-red velvet; her legs clad in black fishnet, her feet shod in very high heels, black with a scarlet sole. Her heavily-lacy black dress cradled and held forth her opulent embonpoint; nestled in her ample cleavage was a pendant with … was Eliza mistaken? … a heavy-pewter inverted pentacle. Her eyes were large and expressive, deep green, and she opened them wide as Eliza looked back.

“Darling! Eliza then, is it? I have been so looking forward to meeting you, but you know how it is … la rentrée … ha ha ha! It’s all so much, isn’t it? I’ve been meaning to come and gather you up, take you under my wing, so to speak! And here you are!”

“I … I’ve been looking forward to meeting you too,” was all Eliza could think to say. A swift email would have sufficed. Her tutor ought to have been ‘taking her under her wing’ already for some time now.

“So!” the woman made an invocatory gesture with her hands. “My name, as no doubt you already know, is Bathilde Belphégor. I am responsible for your reception within the Establishment, and with monitoring how you get on, giving you some tips and tricks, mentoring you, nurturing you, guiding you. Oh, we are going to have such fun! Do tell me a little about yourself …!”

Eliza hesitated. Bathilde had no doubt already seen her file … or had she? She couldn’t tell. The woman appeared to have a rather cavalier attitude to her responsibilities. She pondered a moment, and then began.

“Well. My name is Eliza Harding. I’m originally from Yorkshire. I went to a Grammarye School, and then Wainscot College, Oxford. I did my postgraduate studies at the Invisible College in Paris, and then took the Magistère this year. I ... well. I came first.”

“Oh yes, how wonderful! I did think you looked like a very smart cookie!” Bathilde’s accent, in English, was almost flawless. A sort of orotundly posh Home Counties register, comforting and authoritative. She might have been narrating a very bourgeois cooking show. She sounded deeply at ease with herself, profoundly confident. Her laugh, when it bubbled up, was earthy, slightly dirty, a little bit like that eccentric rich auntie who would buy you vodka and offer you cocaine in the backstage area of a society wedding. Eliza had not had any aunties like this, needless to say, but she could sense the type a mile away; her contemporaries at Oxford had had these people in their lives: they often worked in media or PR in London. They might not be married, but had long-running affairs with men who were, and whose careers would come crashing down if it ever came out. Bathilde smiled conspiratorially, turned her head to one side, clutched her by the arm, made a deprecating moue that said “Oh, you and I know how it is, don’t we …?”

Eliza was – let us be frank – almost entirely won-over by Bathilde’s warm and sophisticated assault upon her sympathies. There was, however, that little sliver of ice in her heart. Don’t trust posh people. She knew it. Her whole upbringing and experience had confirmed it. And yet. They still – having all of the necessary resources at their disposal – managed to insinuate themselves into her good graces. She had known it from a little girl; her parents were not posh. But when she spoke, her accent – or lack of one – sometimes marked her out among her schoolmates as of a certain class. The fact was, both her mother – coming from Ireland originally – and her father – being from a rural low-class background – had to a significant degree “lost” or neutralised their accents. Her mother, when she sang, sounded far more Irish. That was her profession. When she spoke on a day-to-day basis, she sounded elusively Southern English. Her father too had mitigated his strong Yorkshire accent, for work, and sounded much more neutral. Eliza herself, therefore, not helped by her years in a Grammaye School (and so, a school for social strivers), and in Oxford, now sounded quite far from the rootsy Yorkshire accent she might have grown up with. It was only exacerbated by the fact that they had moved to Harrowgate when she in her teens – not the most down-at-heel postcode in Yorkshire, where one was wont to encounter vaguely posh people more than anything else.

There was something, however, about Bathilde’s accent when she spoke English, which activated a deep switch in Eliza: this was someone from the chattering classes, the ruling classes: she was to be trusted, deferred to, served. How strange, that a French woman could acquire such a spot-on version of such a specific way of speaking!

It was only a few minutes later, as they were ‘getting to know one another’, that Eliza heard her speak French, floridly, to a passing colleague (head of the Alchemy Department, she later learned). Her French had almost exactly the same quality: effusive, elite, to be trusted, to be listened to, slightly over-the-top, revelling in its catlike purr of pronunciation.

Bathilde overwhelmed her with praise and advice, that first day: it was not an official meeting, and they were to have few. But Eliza took notes in her pretty dark-blue-covered notebook, with her lovely fountain pen. Afterwards, looking at what she had written, she could hardly make head nor tail of it. At the time, however, it seemed eminently persuasive.

Later that day, she happened to be in the Crow’s Nest, and alone with Blaise; he had proven to be an indefatigable source of cynical and erudite wisdom. Perched upon his chair, his wand in hand (a pen-holder, such as is used in calligraphy, of a beautiful, worn umber hue), with which he punctuated his words, he answered her question.

“Oh yes, the inverted pentagram! You see, funnily enough, Madam Belphégor is overtly a Satanist!”

Eliza expressed her candid disbelief; after all, were we not supposed to avoid all signs of ostentatious religious belief?

“Well, this is it!” Blaise exclaimed. “The Satanists have performed, you know, the ‘greatest trick the Devil ever pulled’ …! The Imperium does not really believe that they exist! I’m not sure how well up on French Shadow History you are, but at the time of the Failed Rebellion in 1789, many of the prime movers behind the attempted revolution were Esoteric Orders: the Illuminati, the Rosicrucians, and so on. There was a strong element of Satanism in all of that, but after the victory of the monarchy, and then the coup by Imperial forces, the Satanists managed to convince everyone that they were actually an atheist movement, dedicated only to Humanism and the innate genius of Man. And so, early on, the Satanists managed to dissociate themselves from any accusation of Paganism and so on. They positioned themselves as eminently rational and scientific believers, devoid of any Theistic taint … But the fact is – we all know it – they perform literal Black Masses and worship the figure of the Adversary. I think it’s partly because they were so rabidly anti-Catholic, such great enemies of the Church of Rome, that they gained such acceptance. It’s funny: they are both Christian and Pagan, and are the only ones that are allowed to openly be such, in today’s Fifth Imperium.”

He gave Elizabeth a very speaking look above his spectacles.

“I suppose you could say: it just goes to show, it takes all kinds.”

Author’s note: this was first written as a response to the slight kerfuffle around some statements by Martin Scorsese in an interview, where he shat on Superhero Movies, way back when anyone cared about anything. Actually, I think he was slightly prescient: more and more, people are turning away from SuperSlop. Anyway, here’s what he said, quoted from the linked Guardian article:

"“I tried, you know?” the director said when asked if he had seen Marvel’s movies. “But that’s not cinema.” He continued: “Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”

So: Marvel? Detective Comics (you know, DC)? Why do people flock to these movies? Why superheroes? There are many theories. But let me suggest one: they are a simulacrum of what we’re missing. Their heroes are ersatz pagan gods and culture heroes, retrofitted to tell the mythology of Capitalism. They are secret agents with superpowers for people who lack all agency, all power. They are methadone for people who have never tasted the real thing. They keep our inchoate cravings at bay, and unidentifiable. Fandom allows people to belong to a cult of the Übermensch, and to live out fantasies of power and beauty, and destruction of their enemies. But it’s all totally empty, and it keeps it all on the screen, and so that’s where we look for it. That’s where we’re hooked to it. But actually, as soon as we dance under a lunar eclipse in an altered state of consciousness, or whatever you’re having yourself, we realise that the Marvel is all around, and within. We are all mutants with latent superpowers. And as soon as we examine the World and its narratives with forensic care, and it spills its secrets to us, we realise that we are all Detectives (from de-tectere, to remove the roof). Our lives are detective stories, secondary explorations of an original crime. Our lives are glorious battles against the forces of Evil, if we tell them the right way. All it takes is to tell yourself an origin story, discover and activate your powers, and then go out and fight for whatever abstraction you’ve decided is worth it. Or for people. Or for the planet. Whatever you’ve got that’s bigger than you.

And then … You’ll never need to watch a superhero movie ever again. Not even for fun. Not even in jest. You’ll be too busy saving the world.

However, in the current conversation, you are all concentrating on the present moment, and the decline of art-film, and art in general. And while all of the historical circumstantial narratives that you’re positing are spot on, there’s this other thing … See, I actually have a PhD in this. “What, in FUCKING SUPERHERO MOVIES?” I hear you scream? No. Though I’m sure there are a few of those out there, and many more on the way. Decline of the academy, etc. No, I have a PhD that focused on late nineteenth and early twentieth century adventure fiction, and its role in expanding the critical discussion of the art of the novel in France that would go on to create the French reaction to the Modernist moment (note: the French inspired Modernism, and made art that gets counted as Modernist, but they don’t really talk about it. Yes, it’s weird). That all sounds a little bizarre and niche and far-fetched, you say? Indeed. It is, after all, a PhD thesis in an academic landscape where there is very little left to say that can possibly benefit your career (one of the reasons I left). So the point is this, and it is in several parts:

1) One of the reasons that we experience an apparent decline in artistic standards and that “they don’t make ’em like that anymore”, is that actually, MOST narrative art has always been total shit. It’s just that only the good stuff gets remembered. Seriously. Look at a bestseller list from any given year before 1950 or 1960, and I guarantee you that almost every single thing on it is gone, forgotten, out of print, and deservedly consigned to the dust. Popular entertainment of the past does get dragged out and studied these days, but usually to figure out what the hell was going on in society at the time, which brings us on to:

2) Narrative art (and art in general) is a vehicle for ideology. “Popular” or genre fiction often carries a payload of propaganda and ideology that is more or less unconscious; the writers reflect and glorify the status quo of their time, often without even knowing that they’re doing it. That’s what makes them so fascinating to study today. What often marks “good” art is the fact that the ideology it carries is counter-cultural or questions or subverts the dominant paradigm of its time. Truly great art manages to LOOK like its pandering to the Powers that Be, while also subverting, questioning, ironising, and problematising not only the issues of its own day, but those of all subsequent days (Shakespeare, right?). So the fact that the current “popular genre fiction” of our day is propaganda for the Capitalist Miltary Industrial Complex? Totally unsurprising. But why these stupid stories about perfect physiques in body-stockings kicking the shit out of aliens? Well, that brings us on to point:

3) These stories have literally always been with us. It’s just that “superheroes” are a particularly blatant and literal reading of them. In the early to mid 20th century, they were Westerns. In the mid to late 19th century, they were Adventure Novels. Before that, they were Gothic Novels. Before that, they were Picaresques. Before that, Medieval Romance, and Saints’ Lives, and before that, folk tales, hero tales, sagas, legends, and all the way back to a certain subset of mythology. What the hell are they then? Well, I’m a sucker for Formalism, and I like Northrop Frye’s analysis (he’s the Thinking Man’s Joseph Campbell). In The Anatomy of Criticism, he identifies the four “mythoi” of narrative art as Comedy, Tragedy, Satire, and Romance. We’re all pretty au fait with the real (Aristotelian) meanings of Comedy and Tragedy, and we think we have a pretty good handle on Satire, right? But then there’s the Epic, which is little practised anymore, though we all think, again, that we know what it is, and did you know that in his Poetics, he also discusses Dithyrambic Poetry and Phallic Poetry? Yeah, me neither. Which brings us back to the Romance. We never talk about it anymore, and the word has been debased to mean “Stories About Love” (which, let’s be honest, they all are too), whereas in fact it’s one of the most important genres of all. It’s also usefully considered as the polar opposite (now in historical terms rather than as a trans-historical genre) of Realism. The 19th century in English literature is ALL about Romance versus Realism, and their eventual fusion in Literary Modernism.

However, where Realism, in line with the Rationalism and Materialism dominant since the Enlightenment, has always been more “high status”, Romance has always been suspect, dealing as it does with anything weird, strange, supernatural, magical, mythical, irrational, illogical … Fundamentally, it’s a genre that is not about realistic plots or characters, or “elevated” emotions and characters (like Comedy and, especially, Tragedy), but rather about entertainment, fantasy, and bodily sensation (fear, lust, excitement). The classic paradigm of Romance is the Quest Narrative, and its key elements are Love and Adventure. And so, the Medieval tales of knights in search of the Holy Grail, fighting for the Fair Lady, and defeating the Dragon, are paradigmatic. And, like all popular entertainment, these stories end up carrying the ideology of their times; so, in the Middle Ages, Courtly Love, Knightly Honour, Divine Right of Kings, and Christianity. When the actual Novel comes along, one of the first identifiable ones is a Satire OF Romance, and a commentary on the dangers of it: Don Quixote. When Daniel Defoe invents the English Novel, he does so with another classic Adventure trope: Man Against Nature, aka Stranded on a Desert Island, with Robinson Crusoe. But interestingly, Robinson Crusoe is not a pure Romance: it’s a hybrid of Romance tropes with Protestant Work Ethic, Spiritual Bookkeeping, and DIY Manual. And basically a how-to manual for setting up a Capitalist Society (complete with racist slave-labour). This weirdness continues all through the 19th century, with the Adventure Novel acting as a vehicle for propaganda for Empire: it is conflated with “real-life” accounts of the explorers and conquerors of (especially) the British, and other, Empires, and purports not only to teach boys how to be Good, Christian, Plucky, Manly Emissaries of Empire, but also to be moral and improving, unlike the much more suspect Gothic strand of Romance that continues throughout, carrying its scandalous cargo of Horror, Sex, Death, Guilt, Violence, etc. Interestingly, all of this stuff is much more gendered “female”, written for and by women. And as such, the subject of many campaigns that saw it as corrupting the youth (and also, it was suspected of corrupting the working classes, who were just attaining mass literacy). Long story short, the Romance has always been doing pretty heavy lifting in terms of both carrying out the propaganda of a society, and working out its neuroses and obsessions.

Today is no different. It’s immensely popular among the barely literate, and NONE of it will be remembered. When we remember genre fiction, it’s because it’s self-consciously playing with its own conventions, subverting them as it works within them, examining itself at play. And sometimes something like that, bizarrely, can become the canonical example of a genre that it actually set out to twist, subvert, and transcend. Some examples: Frankenstein, in which Mary Shelley basically epitomised, transcended, and made irrelevant all previous Gothic Horror, while also, incidentally, kicking off Science Fiction; Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, in which the Brontë sisters commented on, compiled, subverted, and epitomised all previous Gothic Romance (and, incidentally, the whole Romantic movement, and provided the two models for pretty much all Harlequin Romance novels ever written, up to and including Twilight [Wuthering Heights rip-off] and Fifty Shades of Grey [Twilight fan-fiction, but also Jane Eyre rip-off]); Treasure Island, in which Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the ultimate Boy’s Own Adventure, but made it into a troubling, psychologically dark and unsettled creature with no hugging and no learning; Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, in which Stevenson again (he’s almost unique in have TWO such genre-defining-and-bending titles to his name), in which Late Victorian Gothic is utterly encapsulated, including most of the scientific and moral issues of the day, anticipating Freud, and also Jack the Ripper!; Dracula, in which Bram Stoker, if you actually read the novel, provides a devastating exposé of the sexual hypocrisy, the racial insecurity, the colonial guilt, the fear of sexually transmitted diseases and women’s liberation of Victorian society …. I could go on and on; and, in general, I could go on and on and on and on, all throughout the twentieth century (ie HG Wells, pretty much everything he wrote, Arthur Conan Doyle, ditto, the 1920s to 1950s pulps, SF, Adventure, Fantasy, Weird Tales and all, Machen, Blackwood, Lovecraft (and how!), Chandler, Hammet, all of Film Noir, all of the Westerns, Tolkien and everything he inspired, all of the New Wave SF and Fantasy of the ’60s and ’70s, Ursula LeGuin, big time, Stephen King, so much, Star Wars, so much it’s completely meta); Everything Else Literally That is Popular Genre Entertainment: it’s all Romance. And its authors, if they’re dumb, are shills for the Empire, splurging its propaganda all over us, and if they’re smart are either doing that too, but making a shitload of money for it, or they’re actual artists, and they’re writing this stuff to subvert the shit out of the Powers that Be, and to decolonise our Collective Imagination. If you’re interested in reading more about the history of the Adventure Genre, I can recommend a short introduction some sap once wrote for no apparent purpose, readership, or remuneration.

The Notion and the Novel of Adventure

I come to give you news of the ONGOING project, The Department of Whimsical Enchantment. “Ongoing”, I stress, to reassure you that it is, indeed, to continue.

All good things come to an end, as the Summer must: the very moment of the rentrée that Eliza experiences in the opening chapter has come upon us; we must go back to ordinary life. But just as those of us in education go back to a more specific and demanding world than those who merely re-enter the world of work, so must I; and just as the students of the Institute for the Instruction of the Imperium of the Unseen Functionary Magicians get to experience an even more secret, strange, recondite version of that, so do I.

This year, instead of going back to being a public-school teacher, as I expected, and slightly dreaded, I was offered a very unusual opportunity; I cannot speak too much of it (I mean, I could … I had just better not), but suffice to say: I now answer directly to the Hierarch of the Mysterium, and have joined the ranks of the Quaestors … If you know, you know. I have gone over to the Dark Side, thinking – as I fear we all do – that surely, here, within the Belly of the Beast, I may do much good …

I won’t go on about it. It’s not that it would be a terrible transgression, but more just that it would be somehow lacking in taste. As a teacher, one has a certain duty of discretion; in my new role, more so.

And so, the last week or so has been spent in meetings and inductions and trainings and endless flurries of emails. It is a vast and labyrinthine system and hierarchy to navigate. It seems, in these first rose-tinted moments, that my new colleagues are notably warm, witty, and human. We shall see. Not all that glitters … Isn’t actually a NAZGÛL, as they say.

However: what is the impact for The Department of Whimsical Enchantment, I hear you clamour?

Well. I’ve been thinking about it, and of course I will not be able to maintain the breakneck pace of the initial two weeks. I might perhaps decide that I will hold myself to a strict minimum of a chapter a week, let’s say published on a Sunday night, when I’ve had the weekend to polish and finish it, add the curlicues and arabesques. That way, something sweet to start the week, or indeed if you are Far-West of me (as many of you are), then something pleasant for a lazy Sunday afternoon. If I do this much, then perhaps I shall manage to finish it by the Yuletide, as a gift to us all; unless of course, it sprawls into a flabby Monster, and spreads its Cyclopean Behemoth bulk across the year entire … (knowing me, this is not impensable … no matter: more to read for all us, if so). And if I hold myself to this – as is only right and fitting, considering my duty to you, my Subscribers, paid and unpaid (it has just that bit more heft if it’s paid though, I gotta tell you) – then yes, we shall receive this tale over the course of the academic year, just as it happens, more or less!

Actually, that might be fun: to try to keep track of the ACTUAL academic year as it happens; the current chapters take us, indeed, up to the first couple of days of school, right where we currently find ourselves … Ooh yes, that’s it! That’s the idea. Keep up with Time and Tides and Seasons! A school year in “Real Time” …

(whatever that means; Time is not Real, it is an illusion we impose upon our experience of entropic decay and linear movement of Consciousness, but provably arbitrary and artificial. More on that in another instalment in which I demonstrate that Time is, indeed, a flat circle: it a still pond across which we sail - but is also the Empyrean above and the Depths below!)

What I offer you, as well, is a continuation of my reposting of material from my blog (which is all – and always will be – free for all to access here: The Hollow Behind the Hearthstone), as well as other stray thoughts and musings. I hope there will continue to be a couple of additional pieces per week on here. Thoughts on Art and Magic, and their intersection and identity.

I will also be sharing individual episodes of the podcast I’ve been doing for the past couple of years, from time to time. I haven’t been able to keep up with doing new episodes – just too busy, or lazy, or dreamy, or dreary! – but I have over a dozen real humdingers in the bag to share with you. AND! I’m delighted to be able to share that I’ve just been a guest on a couple of really great – and very different – podcasts in the last few weeks, and more appearances planned, and I will share all of that with my own thoughts on the episodes here as well ...

So look. What can I say? I’m glad you’re here. It delights me more than I can say.

I dare to venture that there will be a lot of delicious things appearing here soon which will delight, enchant, terrify, and mystify you, in equal and unequal measure. I urge you: if you like what’s going on here, please Share your enthusiasm with your boon companions and sworn enemies; leave Comments, to feed my raging narcissism; Subscribe yourselves, to show me you care; Subscribe for money to make me feel horribly guilty if I ever slack off; buy my book, for no other reason than that it is wonderful, and a total riot, if you like the sort of thing we like (read about it here, and buy it wherever books are sold, in all disreputable outlets: Unreal City on Goodreads)

In brief: let us be Beloveds, and marry our Fortunes together … so to speak.

For a start, here’s something I prepared earlier, which I think many of you may rather enjoy.

In the meantime, remember:

“In order to Enchant, you must learn to be Enchanted”

(an idea first introduced to me by the very excellent Lee Morgan)

On the morning of the 25th of November 2022, after a night of little sleep, and much reflection, I went outside at dawn, and spoke these words : no notes, nothing written : spontaneous, inspired speech. Poetry.

I was driven to this gesture by my conversations with my friend Terra Vance, who likes my voice-messages. I thought :
"I could make a series of them: poems sent as messages to Terra....
Elegies for Terra..."
And that was how it started. I went out the next day, again at dawn, and shot the video : a delicate frost in the garden of the place I live.

With help from Andrew Rose, who cleaned up my voice-audio - just taken on a simple phone voice-recorder app - and then with the incredible collaboration of Heather Bentley, who composed the soundtrack, entitled "Ungovernable Music", and performed it on viola and cello, then did the sound-mix, and with the encouragement of Terra, who has been there every step of the way, we arrive at this.
This film.

It is, obviously, not for me that I do this.
It's for Terra. It's for our Beautiful Ungovernable World.
It is an Elegy, and it is a Warcry ; it is a Lament, and it is a Call to Arms.

If you find this film inspiring, or moving, or heartbreaking, or it fills you with the same love and rage that fuelled it, then please consider joining the kind of radical protest that is needed to act on it.

Protest, create, resist ...
Re-wild. Re-enchant. Re-member.

Rather than pledging to this publication, please consider making a contribution to your chosen cause. For us, Extinction Rebellion was the only one that made any sense. But I know that there are thousands of local, national, and international groups that are fighting for climate, community, to help the bereft and to struggle against the Dark. You know who they are. Reach out and offer your time, your money, your presence. Show up now.

The Hour is very late; it’s not too late.
But Money is not the Object.
Rather, we are.
We are the Object, and the Subject.
And the Earth is also Us.

O Beautiful Ungovernable World !
What have we done ...?

What will we do now …?

Here’s the text of the poem, which came to me out of the Great Beyond, and which I channelled through my person and the words and phrases of that substrate of “fragments shored up against these ruins” that is my literary heritage. You’ll notice a lot of those magpie-gathered fragments which surface in the flow of words.

It is a Gift.

o beautiful ungovernable world

what have we done

you say: how dare you come to me at this late hour

with love letters

with protestations of my undying loyalty

my undying regard

and I say no

I come not to praise you

But to bury you

I no longer speak just love

I’ve come to say goodbye

o Terra

what have we done

you shall be put to rest with muffled drum

we shall carry black banners

and in silent march shall bear you aloft upon our shoulders

and set you down once more within the earth

o glorious ungovernable world

we could not tame you

we could only enslave you and try to break you

and we did

but you will always escape our paltry grasp

we are but a flicker

then the light goes out

and you remain unshackled

untamed and wild and free

o Terra what have we done

ourselves even we tried to discipline

to make us march in lockstep

to make us stand in pyramids

with archons above us

with serfs below us

we knew our place

but that is not our place

you are our place

and that is not the body in which we might thrive

but you are

o what have we done to our body

this strange and self-abuse

we have pushed it to the limit

and we have thought that virtue

we have tried to wring every last ounce of effort

ounce of work

ounce of wealth

out of you and ourselves

that is not how we thrive

we were not made for this

you were not made for this

you were not made

no one made you

you pre-existed all such thoughts

you are our home

we are not your owners

we are your servants

we are your caretakers

and the dereliction of our duty has left you derelict

has left you Wasteland

Wasteland is all that’s left to us

and in the wilderness

some solitary voices raise that cry

o glorious ungovernable world

we cannot force you

we cannot tear from you all your fruits

and all the nourishment of the earth

give nothing in return and hope to thrive

but those voices crying in the wilderness they say

there is another way

that those who have tried to put you on a leash

to harness you

to make you drive the motors of this system of the world

have done the same to us

and we no longer have to take that

because we too are part of you

that beautiful ungovernable world

and these last years there have been hints

there have been moments

when we have escaped the watchful eye

of those cold Masters and run riot in the streets

with revelry and Carnival

and we have said no to the orders of those

who would put the yoke upon our necks

and drive us hard with scourges

make us run till exhaustion

make us push the wheels of those dark evil mills

no we are only some among your many children

we are only one small part of what does make you

no one made you

and at this hour though very late

the hour is not too late

to light the beacons on the hills

to pass from heart to heart

The Flame

and then with torches and our lances borne high

we shall take the black banners

with which we marched in your funeral cortège

and make them our standard and our battle cry

raise high the black flag and the white flag of surrender

for only in surrender to you

beautiful ungovernable world

shall we escape

and lay you finally to rest

we too I hope will come to rest

and all this ceaseless fretful stir

that only serves to profit those who torture you

and enslave us

all this desperate feverish stir will end

and we will come to rest

and you shall be appeased and gentled

we shall not tame you no

but hold you in our arms

as we would soothe a sleeping child

who murmurs and cries out in nightmare

and then from our own nightmare awaken

and look up

as I do now at dawn

and look to the eastern sky and say

the sun will always rise

and whether it rises on the Wasteland

or on some new world

we’ve yet to see

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The seventh chapter in a continuing serial novel, The Department of Whimsical Enchantment … Find the first part here: Chapter I, the second part here: Chapter II, the third part here: Chapter III, the fourth here: Chapter IV, the fifth here: Chapter V, and the sixth here: Chapter VI

What if we combined Dark Academia Romantasy with a School for Teachers of Magic, set in France, with all the soul-destroying bureaucracy, petty rivalries, and obscure rules that nobody ever tells you that that implies …? Well. I suppose you’re about to find out! Please subscribe to receive the ongoing updates!

The story so far: Elizabeth Harding, a young English woman, finds herself - not totally of her own full volition - in a teacher-training programme for Functionary Magicians of the Imperium of the Unseen in Bordeaux, France. Hi-jinks, obviously, ensue …

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Iris took her hand again, and she felt that little tingle of … something, at her touch. She led her back to the main corridor, and along it, stepping around and over the sprawling teenage bodies. At one point, when the huddled masses giggling around a phone blaring some snippet of silly video became impassable, Iris raised her voice.

“Coming through! Convoi exceptionnel! Bip-bip!”

The students hustled to the sides to leave a passage, and Eliza could see how they looked at Iris, her bright silhouette, her black corkscrew ringlets, her dancing eyes. They smiled back with delight. The Glamour was working, even at a glance. Was it too late to …? She was pulled along by the hand, and felt helplessly swept up in the wake of her colleague, and shrugged smilingly at the students as they went past, and the kids seemed to shake their heads in amused wonder too, at these teachers who moved like girls in the schoolyard, gaily and gladly and insouciantly … The Glamour was strong.

Arriving at a certain closed door, Iris turned to her and pointed. “Here we are! Got your keys?” The teenagers in the vicinity began to stir up from their slumps against walls, to turn from their scrums of secrecy, towards the door, and their new teacher.

“Oh yes, the keys …” Eliza fumbled in her bag, and pulled out the heavy bunch of various clanking keys that Khadija had given her. “I can’t quite remember …” She was fumbling through them, totally unable to figure out which one might work on this door: Room 717E.

“Now,” Iris gently lifted them from her hand. “Let me show you.” She held up each key as she spoke. “These ones, that open classrooms: each has a planetary glyph – that shows you the building, see, here we’re in E, so of course that’s Saturn,” (Eliza frowned: What?) “and then there’s an astrological glyph, which shows you the floor it works on, so as we’re on the seventh floor, obviously that will be Scorpio …” (again, Eliza tried to calculate how this could be the case, and failed) “Then look, you’ve got the keys with the symbol in yellow, like this one, and that means they’re Lightside keys, and you’ve got the ones in blue, which are Shadeside keys …”

A number of students were now watching with some interest; Iris was undeterred. Eliza was hopelessly confused. Her comrade went on:

“So! The Lightside keys work in the classrooms which have East-facing windows, while the Sun is rising: they function until the Exact Zenith (even if the Sun isn’t literally shining in the window at that moment, it’s an Astrological thing …), and then those rooms switch over to being unlocked and locked by Shadeside keys, whereas the other rooms which have West-facing windows, and during the morning hours worked with the blue Shadeside keys, are now unlocked by Lightside keys. Got all that?” She hadn’t, but Eliza found herself nodding helplessly, desperate to please her teacher. She half-noticed that several of the student onlookers were nodding sagely too.

“Now, just to be clear,” Iris held up a finger and looked around smiling that tricksy, brilliant smile at her audience. “There aren’t any classrooms facing South, or hardly any: only administrative offices. Those can only be opened by the red Fire-keys, and there’s every chance you’ll never even see one. There are very very few facing North – just a few very particular labs and studios – and those are opened by Nightside keys, not Shadeside mind you, Nightside. You will also, in theory, need a Nightside key in the early morning classes in the Winter, and maybe if you’re teaching after five or six o’clock in the evening, but you’ll have to ask Khadija for them specially, and sign them out leaving a piece of personal Activated jewellery as collateral or a Binding Sigil or something, they had too many people forgetting to give them back, or ‘forgetting’, I should say …”

Eliza just looked at her, stunned. What?

“And which key …?”

“Oh! Right, yes. The initial question. So. We’re in Tower E, Saturn, seventh floor, Scorpio, here we go, morning on the East-facing side of the Tower, so the key with the yellow glyphs … Here you go!” She held out the right key, the rest dangling in a thick bunch like the fruit of a tree of secrets and interdictions. Eliza took it, and … oh! Iris’s hand brushed hers, and she felt the same electric pulse. A thrill. Surely, this was not just her new colleague’s back-to-school Glamour? No time to think about it. She turned and unlocked the recalcitrant door, almost dropping her document-bag, and swung it open. The students didn’t move. Iris caught her eye, and gestured to her. You go in first … she mouthed.

Eliza did so, and then turned as they filed past her. Iris was still there, in the background. She shaped the words, silently again, ‘greet them’. Eliza began saying ‘Hello … good morning … hello, come in …’ as the students went past her. Some responded cheerfully, some with a grunt, some with a nod, but she understood, as she watched Iris watching her, and followed her looks and expressions, that she must meet their eyes, and catch their attention, each one, as they entered. Make contact. She had never thought of this before. Most of her few university classes had involved all the students coming in and taking their places and being ready when she arrived. She had never even considered greeting each one personally at the door.

Now, the teenagers were finding their places, choosing their seats, squabbling and chatting. Iris remained outside the open door. The students could no longer see her, but Eliza could. She looked intensely at Eliza, making sure she still had her attention – though now she must split it with her class – and then mimed very succinctly, this: let them find their places; wait until they are silent; make them all rise, those who have already sat down; now make them greet you as one. Her movements, expressions, and gestures were so eloquent that Eliza had no trouble understanding, and following, this silent tutorial. She found herself, eventually, in front of a silent room of standing students. She stood up straight, spoke out loudly: “Good morning, everyone!” and they chorused back, more or less in unison, “Good morning, Miss!” She lowered her hands, to allow them to sit.

She looked to the door, but there was no-one there now. Iris was gone. Her work was done, for the present. Eliza sighed, and turned to her class. Apparently, there were twenty-seven of them. And now they were waiting for her to tell them what to do. She closed the door.

The students looked at her expectantly. A few were starting to fidget and whisper. Okay. Fuck it. Elizabeth took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She hadn’t taken the time to prepare it, but it was a – let’s say – a here’s one I made earlier. A Glamour she had used on many occasions, a powerful one. Even just a touch of it would help her here, and it was the first thing that came to hand as, in her mind, she reached for something … The Woman Crowned with the Sun. She felt a gold light shoot up her spine and radiate out from her head in an aureole of light. It had something of the Byzantine icon, this Glamour that she had worked on, for so long, in such detail. A halo-effect, so to speak. She opened her eyes, and she could see the difference in the quality of their attention; the fidgeting had stopped, for now, and all eyes were on her.

“Good morning! My name is Miss Harding, and I am your new teacher of Magical Arts in English.” She opened her administrative folder to the class-lists. “So. You are Seconde – Magie Générale, Group G, correct?” There were a few nods and one loud ‘Oui!’ “I am now going to take attendance, and I would like you to say ‘here’, or ‘present’, when I call your name …”

She went down the list, and it was a nice way to buy some time and look around to see who she was dealing with. These were a class of ‘Secondes’, which meant they were all about fifteen years old. The French system has a bizarre way of counting school-years: primary school is even worse, with multiple levels of acronyms, but in secondary, the students begin at ‘Sixième’, or ‘Sixth Class’, when they’re eleven, and count down to ‘Première’, or ‘First Class’ when they’re seventeen; what are they counting down to? Lift-off? Who knows. In any case, the final year of secondary school is ‘Terminale’ – terminal velocity, perhaps – at which point they’re finished, and they’re launched into adult life. Collège (confusingly), or middle school, is from Sixième to Troisième, and Lycée, or high school, is from Seconde to Terminale. It takes a long time to get one’s head around this, and Eliza was only just managing, having to perform the conversion in her head every single time, almost like Imperial to Metric (which, well … it was quite funny now that Système Internationale – metric – originated in a New Imperium, whereas the holdouts of Imperial measures were – allegedly – parliamentary monarchies or federal republics. There will be cause to speak more of this later).

The Écoles Ésotériques were no different, and counted their classes thus as well, with some deviations and specificities when it came to the arcane appellations of the different specialisations that one might choose at the lycée level. Indeed, the Fully Operative schools were almost invariably only from Seconde onwards: that is to say, lycées. There were vanishingly few establishments that offered fully magical instruction to collège students, but they did exist, usually as combined with a lycée upper-school; rather, there were middle-schools that had covert magical teachers, whose overt roles were as teachers of mundane subjects. Many of us will have encountered such, even in our mundane world: teachers who were not fully of the Ordinary, but seemed to have access to a secret symbolism and sense beyond our own, which one might pick up in hints and allusions and clues and fragments.

As Eliza went down the list of names, and looked at her new young charges, she realised a number of things: the student body was diverse; there were names of many origins, some very French, some Northern, some Southern, some Basque (she thought she could recognise the Basque touch in a name by now); many also were Maghrébi, or Middle Eastern; not a few, also, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, one or two maybe Polish; or again, West African, or even a couple of East African ones. The overwhelming impression was of mixture; this was quite typical of France, today, but even more so of the South-West: it had been a crossroads for cultures from the four corners of Europe for millennia, and it wasn’t about to stop now. And it pleased her. She looked at all these different faces, and did her best to get all their names right, and she was glad.

However, the other thing most salient, at this first roll-call: fully eighty percent of the class … were boys. She ought to have expected it, ought to have known! But she just had not thought about it. Albertus Magnus was famously a Science and Tech focused school; the professions for which it prepared its young people tended to be male-dominated and masculine-coded: was it any wonder that a lot of them would be boys? The girls, six of them in this group, stood out: four sat together in the middle, and she could tell they were allies. Two sat either side, alone, and she could tell they were isolated. They were all quite prettied-up, but only to an extent; hair and makeup carefully done, some jewellery, but their clothes were much the same as the boys’: baggy jeans, hooded sweatshirts, jogging pants – all in shades of grey, and black, and cream, and white. And the boys … well. This might be a problem. Even as Eliza could immediately tell the girls apart and differentiate them by a certain look, or hair colour or style, or physiognomy … the boys … all looked the same. They all dressed as similarly as if they had been inmates in a grim prison factory (perhaps they were?); they all seemed to have exactly the same haircut, a short back-and-sides that puffed out on top like a mushroom, a wispy moustache and some acne. Some carried it better than others, but basically, the look was precisely similar. Later, she would tell Iris about this, who would laugh and say, “oh yes, the broccoli-heads!” They both laughed together, and when Eliza said she hadn’t expected to be teaching a cohort of young men who looked like they were just about to be conscripted and sent off to fight at the Somme, they both laughed even harder and Iris started quoting from “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, and Eliza thought, oh wow she really is amazing, and gazed at her with the kind of eyes she usually reserved for … well. Other circumstances.

Back in the classroom, that first day, she started the group of Secondes with a sort of “getting-to-know-you” exercise. Just as she launched into it, she remembered something else she had to do: establish the Class Rules. She was making them up as she went along. She Had Not Prepared. But it struck her as a good idea. She made a list on the whiteboard: Attention, Respect, Effort. If they would give her these, she would give them in return. She looked at the list. English, she added. We’ll do everything in English, of course. She quickly scanned the list on the board as a PDF with her phone, for future reference. Yes, she thought. That’s actually not bad. Covers a lot of the bases. No doubt, she would think of more later. She outlined to them the first unit she had planned: they were to work on “The Story of My Life”. This is, she explained, how we begin to weave our spell: how we tell our story. How we present the bare facts of our existence as a consistent and enchanting narrative. Which parts we choose to tell, in which circumstances. Which parts we choose to tell, to emphasise, to ourselves. The story that we tell others is the impression they receive of us; the story that we tell ourselves … is ourselves. As she spoke, she looked around at all of those young half-formed faces. What can you have lived? What might you not have lived? In a few of them, she saw immediate recognition of what she was trying to tell them, in clear, simple sentences, her voice pitched strong and bright, towards the corners of the room, her eyes alighting on one set of other eyes, and then another, and another. In some of those eyes, puzzlement; in some others, boredom, or sullen resistance. We’ll see about that.

“Now,” she mustered the Glamour once more, and gathered their attention with an outstretched hand, then snapped her fingers with a loud crack. Several of them jumped. “Here is the most important part: some of you will be thinking, oh I have nothing interesting to say, nothing has ever happened to me … Indeed. And so, the secret: you must lie.”

A few faces perked up, that had been erstwhile impassive.

“Nobody has a very interesting life. Those few who do, it’s often for the wrong reasons: they have seen things no-one should, been through things that hurt them. In both cases: we must lie. When you tell me the Story of Your Life – as I said, Written Evaluation – (What’s it marked out of, Madame? What’s the coefficient? they asked, in French) I want you to tell me some of the truth, and I want you to invent and imagine other things. Only make it interesting; only make it believable. Lying well is the beginning of Enchantment: it is this, among other things, that I am here to teach you.

“To begin with, let us practice lying, and telling the truth. Let us practice listening, and telling each from each.”

She quickly explained to them the game, ‘Two Truths and a Lie’, icebreaker beloved of corporate group-workshop facilitators everywhere. She encouraged them to choose their path: three banalities, or three enormities, only one of which was false; or an obvious lie that was true, an ordinary truth that was a lie. We want you to fool us. And the rest of you, meanwhile, we want you to judge: what’s true, what’s false, what’s probable and improbable. She demonstrated:

“I’ll start: I come from right near the town where Dracula originally landed in England; my mother was a famous folk-singer; I came first in France in the Magistère trials. Now. What is true, what is a lie? What is believable? What is probable? What is truthy, but not true? What rings false, but might just be?”

It was strange, as she had begun speaking, she had begun to lose her anxiety: she let fall the Glamour, and sailed on upon the plain world’s wind. She felt the rhythms and the sense constructed of eloquent speech: this was one of her most precious Gifts of all. Ex tempore argument, persuasion, elucidation of an Idea. This was – chief among other reasons – why she was so damn good as an academic: she was a brilliant communicator, an eloquent orator. The Gifts of the Bard. Though she might stumble and fall awkwardly silent in conversation, once it became Rhetoric, she soared. She had not been good at making friends in school. However, she had excelled on the Debate Team. This had not helped, in making friends. Even her team-mates, with their grudging admiration, were also her competitors, and tended to deploy her as a weapon more than consider her a comrade. She caught herself, as she conducted the class, directing the flow of the parole from person to person, taking it back up, rephrasing and questioning, feeling suddenly more competent than she had imagined. Enjoying herself. Why couldn’t she speak with such ease, always? Why couldn’t she feel so capable, in mere society? Why couldn’t she make friends? She thought of Iris, and godsdamn, she blushed and stuttered, and lost her place.

The fifteen year olds, more or less, were getting the hang of it. They had guessed and guessed, about her own truths and lies, and she had refused to tell them. They had laughed uproariously at the tall tales and outrageous lies proferred by their classmates, and ruthlessly found them out. She heard their delighted laughter, and knew that they were also learning, and within, she glowed.

By the time they had all presented themselves and their brief histories of true and false, the hour was nearly up, and she graciously dismissed them, and watched them file out, saying ‘Goodbye’, and ‘Have a good day’, and even (bless that girl) ‘Thank you, Miss’. She took a deep breath, then remembered she must enter the attendance details into the ClassWiz app. Leaning over her desk, trying to figure out how to do so, she realised: there was a whole other group of fifteen year olds at the door, waiting to come in.

Her heart sank and her stomach knotted and she went to the door, to greet each and every one.

The sixth chapter in a continuing serial novel, The Department of Whimsical Enchantment … Find the first part here: Chapter I, the second part here: Chapter II, the third part here: Chapter III, and the fourth part here: Chapter IV, and the fifth here: Chapter V

What if we combined Dark Academia Romantasy with a School for Teachers of Magic, set in France, with all the soul-destroying bureaucracy, petty rivalries, and obscure rules that nobody ever tells you that that implies …? Well. I suppose you’re about to find out! Please subscribe to receive the ongoing updates!

The story so far: Elizabeth Harding, a young English woman, finds herself - not totally of her own full volition - in a teacher-training programme for Functionary Magicians of the Imperium of the Unseen in Bordeaux, France. Hi-jinks, obviously, ensue …

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As she approached the shadowy gateway that led from the Cour d’honneur to the more modern courtyard beyond, she noticed once again the enormous stones plaques on either side of the gate: lists of students, ‘morts pour l’Empire’; one was from La Grande Guerre (1914-1918), one from La Seconde Guerre (1938-1947), and one was from La Guerre des Ombres, the Shadow-War. For this one, no dates were given, and the names were often clearly code-names rather than typical French given names. The Shadow-War has no beginning, and it has no end: there was quite a lot of space left at the end of the second plaque, and she could imagine a third going up next to it, a fourth, a fifth, until they reached clear to the corner, and then continued on around the courtyard. The Shadow-War in the Inner World was now mirrored by the Forever War in the Outer – but there too, no beginning is specified, and no end is in sight. Mundane media and governments do not call it that either, but all know that it is being fought.

She passed through the gate, and the shady, echoey space within the gatehouse, where some students huddled together around stone tables, their faces lit by the glow of their phone screens. None of them even saw her, she imagined. What need we spells to Pass Unseen, when nobody is ever looking anymore, she thought. And then she remembered Bertrand had spotted her across the courtyard while in the middle of a class, and felt obscurely annoyed.

She briefly popped in to the Grande Salle des Profs, where there were some couches, some tables, a couple of coffee-machines, multiple notice-boards, and where everyone had their casier. ‘Locker’, she thought, and shook her head. Not that. Just a little slot for mail and documents, with their names on them. ‘Pigeon-hole’, that was it. Why was …? It suddenly struck her: it’s for your mail. Delivered by carrier-pigeon. Of course. To ‘pigeon-hole’ someone: to place them in an already-established, prejudiced, stereotypical box in your head. She thought of Bertrand again. Dammit! Stop thinking about Bertrand! She thought of his arms, when he crossed them. No!

There were a few colleagues sitting and chatting, others lingering by doorways, or the coffee-machine. None raised an eye when she came in. She checked. No mail. She went down the dark corridor at the back, off which were a few rooms for shared computers – all occupied – the printers, and the common room for the teachers of Ancient and Modern Letters. These, along with Philosophy, were disciplines one might have expected to fall under Art-Magic (at least Eliza would), but instead they were firmly ensconced in the Scholarly-Magic Domain. They did not, apparently, let anyone forget it, particularly their colleagues who worked with other, lesser languages. She spotted one of them coming out, who she thought must be a postulant as well, as she seemed to have seen her at the Institut. She had long red hair, a solemn face, and was dressed just the correct amount of quirky to be chic. Eliza looked down at her own outfit, dubious. The Red-haired Girl went past her with what seemed a slightly hostile look, and was gone.

Fleeing the Grande Salle des Profs, Eliza went to brave the labyrinth of Tower E, where most of her classes would take place. Through a massive set of fire-doors, down long square corridors with blinking neon lights that barely illumined the lime-green walls and squeaking linoleum floors; up several flights of steps, but you must choose the correct stairwell, or you would come out in a different building altogether. Turn a corner, along covered walkways halfway up another tower-block. Many of the buildings in this part had bright-coloured panels or accents, supposed perhaps to help one orient oneself: but if one were not told what they meant, then the different colours and signaletic efforts only added to one’s disorientation, and the colours were, in any case, faded and of unsettling shades. She found herself, by accident, in the Centre for Documentation and Information (what used to be called ‘the Library’), and immediately apologised as her clattering entrance seemed to disturb a profound hush. The Archivist – tall, spare, bespectacled, severe – merely put her finger to her lips, and then pointed across to a different door which Eliza had not noticed. Ah yes. Can’t go out the way you came in. Crowd-flow management. There were only two students there, heads bowed over a gigantic leatherbound book at the corner of one table, but still. The Archivist did not lower her pointing finger, until Eliza followed her silent instruction and tried to dash while tiptoeing across the room, past the first rows of shelves, and out through the hidden door. It could barely be seen under all of the posters announcing events long-past, but she located the handle and pulled. It would not turn, nor twist, nor yield. Finally, she pushed it. And went through.

After what seemed like an eternity (she checked: thirteen minutes), she found her way to the seventh floor of Tower E. Here were most of her classrooms, and the tiny teachers’ room that served most of those in the Art Magic Department. Blaise would tell her, later on, that it was at first referred to mockingly as the ‘Niche des professeurs’ by the teachers in other disciplines, as it was barely more than an alcove, and for barely-relevant subjects. ‘As is often the case, however,’ Blaise remarked, with an erudite finger raised, ‘the pejorative applied to the oppressed minority was adopted and contracted, becoming NDP, and then, as the sound suggested, it migrated to becoming “Nid de Pie”, or “Crow’s Nest” as you would have it. Which is rather pleasing. I myself have been known to call it the “Nid de P.I.E.” And he smiled shyly at his own joke. However. Eliza, at this point, had not met Blaise yet, and could not yet benefit from his kind and gentle guidance.

Inside the Proto-Indo-European Magpie’s Nest, then, she found three colleagues starting their day: one larger-than-life, dramatic-voiced woman with theatrically extravagant clothing, all beads and scarves and feathers, who seemed to be in the middle of an indignant account of something; one very slender and poised young woman with black curly hair and sparkling eyes, dressed in bright colours, with something of a children’s TV presenter effect; one very small and wispy man, wearing a flowery shirt and a corduroy suit, with small halfmoon glasses, and a long, silky, soft pale beard, and gently undulating hair of the same quality that fell either side of his face. This was Blaise: you see, she had not had long to wait, to meet him. Blaise and the younger woman – who looked very much like a ballet dancer, in the way she held herself, thought Eliza – were paying close attention to the operatic tale of woe recounted by their colleague, or at the very least trying to look like they were.

Dolores – for that was her name, it would transpire – was speaking to them in French, but with a quite pronounced Spanish accent. Eliza knew, for she had looked into it, that in the school they numbered some twenty teachers in the Department of Enchantment who working in foreign languages. Of these, over half taught English, with a handful of Spanish, and then one sole solitary German teacher, Frau Hetzel. Eliza did not even catch sight of her for quite some time, reclusive as she was, and indeed there were a few of the Art-Magic teachers that she never did see at all. As for the wider staff of the school, the brochure that she had been poring over at the weekend – distributed at the orientation day – said there were over four hundred teachers, and as many various support staff, for three thousand students. She imagined she would never even see half of them, over the course of her singular year here, and not even a fraction of the students.

“… Wands! They let them have Wands!” Dolores was exclaiming. “How am I supposed to run my class knowing that there are students among them carrying their own pre-attuned Wands? It will drive me crazy! It’s bad enough that we have to worry about their phones, especially during assessments, but if I can’t even be sure about the magical tools they’re carrying on them, I ask you … How many ways to cheat do you want them to have?”

“For my part, I make them give up their phones at the start of every lesson,” said the young woman, whose name she gave as Iris, when she introduced herself later. “I would get them all to turn them off and put them in the Faraday Box at the beginning. After a while, it just became second nature to them. This was in my previous establishment though. Do we have Faraday Boxes in the classrooms here?” she asked brightly. She must be new too.

Blaise and Dolores sadly shook their heads. “We don’t, if that’s what you mean,” said Dolores. “Some of the other departments have them, but we haven’t been given the budget for it.”

“What about Leaden Strongboxes for their magical items?” Iris ventured.

Blaise laughed hollowly. “Now that would be a luxury! They’re not supposed to bring any personal magical items to school, but it’s on the, ah, ‘Honour System’ … so you can imagine how that goes.”

“I used to find it quite fun, actually,” Iris said. “Have them all come up and empty their pockets, and the secret compartments in their clothes, if they were flashy … Sometimes you’d get a kid who would just keep on producing more and more trinkets: amulets, talismans, charms-bags, coins … I remember one who made a game of it: he would take out tools, and potions, and objects, and then he’d pretend he’d finished, and then mime remembering ‘just one more thing’ … Like a clown with a never-ending handkerchief coming out of his pocket. But it was impossible to get them all. Some of them had Activated tattoos, or some piece of unobtrusive jewellery, a piercing, that they had had Enchanted for them. One girl even had her … what do you call those trendy travel mugs?”

“Stanley Cups?” offered Eliza, edging into the conversation.

“Yes, that’s right, Stanley Cups! Well, she had one of those Enchanted as a Chalice, and used it to transform Water-into-Vodka during class! I don’t know. If I have to police their bloody sippy-cups on top of everything else …”

“Back in my day,” Blaise mused, “we used to really make an effort to cheat. We would copy out our little aide-mémoires on the most miniature of scrolls, and hide them inside our watches, or sneak into the room and tape them to the undersides of desks beforehand. I once managed to clip notes inside my hair where it hung down around my face – it was the style, at the time. And I would take the expression ‘Off the Cuff’ back to its origin, and before an oral exam have made copious tiny invisible notes on the insides of my ‘French cuffs’ – as you lot call them …” He nodded to Eliza, clearly having already spotted she was an English speaker, somehow. He looked wistful. “You know, I think that with all the effort we put into cheating, we nearly might as well have just learned the stuff. But this way, you learned it by accident, all while feeling like you were getting away with something …” He smiled, and held out his hand. “I’m Blaise, by the way. You must be Elizabeth. Welcome to Lycée Albertus Magnus!”

“Oh, you’re the new English-Magic-Teacher!” exclaimed Dolores. “Well, let me tell you, you’re in for a rude landing in THIS place …” And she proceeded to detail many of the terrible impositions, obstacles, and enormities that Eliza was sure to suffer in the weeks and months to come. She did not stop. She was relentless. Blaise and Iris gradually gathered their things, checked their piles of papers and registers, and began to slip away. Dolores seemed like she was only just getting started. Eliza looked at her watch. Classes would begin in three minutes.

“I’m very sorry, I have to …” she stammered, and Iris interrupted her.

“Yes, of course, how thoughtless of us, I told you I’d bring you to your class, didn’t I …?”

“Thank you, yes!” Eliza grabbed her satchel and her document bag, and quickly stowed her lunch-bag in a corner (there was no sign of a fridge or microwave or coffee-machine).

She felt, as they rushed out of the room, that Iris had taken her by the hand and whisked her away, and when they found themselves in the corridor, she had the strange feeling that they had been running, hand in hand, now breathless, laughing, having fled the teacher, playing truant … Wait. None of this had happened. It was just something about how Iris had seemed to pull her out the door. She felt like they were schoolgirls, in cahoots, up to no good, thick as thieves … She looked at Iris’s face, puzzled, and saw her look back with a kind, impish, complicit air. Eliza realised that this was the operation of a Glamour, but she could not be at all sure that it was done on purpose; there are people who just have that quality, without even trying: the quality of making you feel in on it, privy to some shared secret, some conspiratorial glee. Maybe Iris had this effect on everyone (and a tiny voice in her head said, no, not everyone, you’re special, she loves you the most …).

She decided to address it head on: “Does everyone feel like this about you?” She had switched to English without even realising it. Iris followed, and turned out to have a beautiful English accent, very proper, slightly posh, with just a touch of French for added charm.

“Oh dear me no!” she exclaimed. “Only my favourites …” She smiled again that mischievous smile. “Come on. We’re going to be late for class.”

“Wait!” Eliza stopped her. There were students now streaming down the narrow gloomy corridor, clumping in groups, jostling, larking, loudly teasing – but many with their faces riveted still to the handheld glow of phones. “Wait a sec. Were you just Glamouring me just now? I felt like … I felt like we had just skipped class together, and were Best Friends Forever. What was that?”

“I’m sorry, I really didn’t do it on purpose, truly! You see … well, just before I came into the school, I found a quiet place and prepared that Glamour: you know, complicity, camaraderie, fellow-feeling. But it’s for my students! Hang on …” She pulled Eliza down a short dead-end corridor where there was no-one, for the moment. “Can’t have them hear me talk about this. Anyway. I do find that a little sprinkle of pixie-dust on the first day goes a long way, don’t you? This way I get them on my side from the start. I didn’t mean to let it spill over onto you …! Although, of course, we probably could be best friends, couldn’t we?” She smiled a secret smile, that flashed.

“You’re doing it again!” Eliza laughed. “Okay. Yes, I understand. I was thinking about it myself. Whether I should go in using Glamour on the first day. Or whether I should … I don’t know, save it for special occasions?”

“You have to be careful how you dose it … I’ve known teachers who got too dependent on it. They end up using it all the time. They don’t even know what it would be like without it. And then … well. That’s exhausting. And eventually, it cracks. Sometimes with quite spectacular results.”

“Yes …” Eliza bit her lip. “There’s the same temptation in everyday life, isn’t there? I mean, to use it all the time. Whenever you meet new people. In any stressful social situation. And then even with your friends. With … people you love. To try to keep up … the Performance.”

“I mean,” Iris rolled her eyes. “I’m not tempted to use it all the time in ordinary life. But that’s only because I’m so naturally effervescent and charming …”

“Whereas me …” Eliza looked at the floor.

“Whereas you …” Iris said softly, and leaned in to her. “You are lovely. You don’t need it switched on all the time. I think you’re just a bit shy.” She put a hand on Eliza’s shoulder, and Eliza looked up, and their faces were very close. Iris looked down at her lips, and then back up at her eyes, and for a moment Eliza was sure that she was about to kiss her … but she did not.

Iris breathed in and out, closed her eyes, and then opened them and smiled.

“You are lovely, and we are going to be best friends, Eliza. Come. I’ll show you to your classroom.”

How had she known to call her Eliza?

After the sudden surge of writing on this new project last week, I’ve had to take a few days away from it to attend to family and social commitments; of course I did, it’s August and I live in France: if I wasn’t occasionally having leisurely apéritifs and barbecues, and going to swim at the lake, and going to the fête du village with the insane cabaret show and fifteen different food-trucks and the dodgy fair-ground rides and shooting ranges, binge-watching Hilda with the kids, and mildly supervising their no-sleep sleepovers and taking them bowling, or haranguing them out of their holiday sloth to tidy their rooms, or spending a whole afternoon in the supermarket trying to figure out their insanely detailed and exhaustive back-to-school lists of necessary supplies … Well.

I thought it might be interesting though, before I begin to publish a new set of chapters, to write a little about the experience so far: I’ve not really tried anything like this before, and it’s been very stimulating and encouraging. It may not exactly be going viral (and I’m not sure I ever will), but I have had a lot of interest and support, and I wanted to talk about that first.

As I’ve noted, it was when I published the very first chapter of The Department of Whimsical Enchantment that my friend Franklin Habit picked it up and shared it with his fans, encouraging them to read it. Franklin is a dashing Knitting Influencer (it’s hard to fully explain, just go and look! Franklin Habit on Instagram), with sidelines in being an American in Paris and a historical ballroom dancer, among many other things. Franklin correctly calculated that people who enjoy his work might well like this project too: whimsy, humour, magic, France, etc. And when he recommended they check it out, they really did! My subscriber-count on Substack went up by nearly 200, from 142 to 325 in the space of a little over a week! Not all of these come from that one source, and it remains a low number in the grand scheme of things, but I was genuinely delighted.

To all of you who are new subscribers to The Hollow Behind the Hearthstone, and more particularly to the serial novel The Department of Whimsical Enchantment, welcome and thank you! I’ve been so hugely encouraged and motivated by the influx of interest. To those of you who signed up from other social media, and are opening these newsletters and chapters as emails, don’t hesitate to pop onto the app or the web-browser version of Substack sometimes and say hi, drop a comment, check out what else is there … I would love to hear from you, and already have heard from some of you. It’s great to know when people really are reading.

Some of the new subscribers were so generous as to take a paid annual subscription, and for that I am eternally, eternally grateful. Two weeks ago, I had zero paid subscribers, and now I have six! Again, in the scheme of things, etc … But. I have never made a big push to ask people to become paid subscribers, and I am committed to always keeping these writings free to access for everyone; what this does, though, is goes some way towards helping me in my struggle to “take time away” from paid work, or domestic or family work, for writing. It’s been very difficult to do so in the past couple of years, as I detail here ("Why I would not allow myself to write - and why I must, regardless"), but to know that Someone has paid for this has a certain kind of magic to it; we enter into a contract: I have an obligation. It helps. And so, to those people whom I do not know at all, but who were willing to bet some of their hard-earned money on being entertained and enchanted by my work: thank you. Thank you, so much. Not only that, but some of the new subscribers who discovered me through Franklin went so far as to ask if I had any other work available, and went and bought my already-published novel, Unreal City! (which you can do here! - or rather, you can read about it here, and buy it from all disreputable outlets, including Mammon-zon, if you must … Unreal City) I couldn’t be more delighted. As I say in the piece I wrote a few weeks ago, I never really expect to make a living from writing. I know I’ll always have to find time for it beside other work. This, however, makes it feel like people are listening, like I have managed to pique their interest. And there’s something quite different about selling your book to people you know in person, or those who have followed the story of its publication online and were already invested in your writing, to having people search for it and buy it on the strength of their impressions and recommendations they’ve received. Long may it continue!

Not all of my new subscribers, however, came in that particular wave: there are many other people with whom, little by little, I’m developing dialogue and banter and mutual appreciation for each other’s writing through Substack itself, and that also is a very strange and lovely pleasure: unlike writing friends on other social media, here I am connecting with people that, most often, I know nothing else whatsoever about. There’s something very magical about that: all we have are the words. I have been very much enjoying these new-found connections.

Also, among the annual subscriptions were not just those kind souls I do not know, but several I do know! I’ll be writing more about this very soon, but let’s just say: Amelia, Heather, and Greg, dear friends … I cannot thank you enough. You’ve always supported my work, and I thoroughly appreciate this further mark of your belief in me. I won’t let you down.

§§§

As to the writing itself: this project is one that I have been turning over in my head for the past year. It began on the very first day of my own induction to a year as a trainee teacher, at the end of August last year. It’s a very long story, but basically, after twenty years as a teacher in France, at university level while I was doing my post-graduate work, then at a private lycée in Paris, and then as a vacataire (somewhat like being an “adjunct”, but with its own whole set of contorted complications) at several different universities, and then as a contract-worker substitute teacher in local schools here in Aquitania, through an alternative educational project I started (The Hedge School – teaching kids, teenagers, and adults through conversation, creative activities, getting outside in Nature … yeah, it does sound cool. I wish it could have taken off!), I ended up deciding that I needed a stable salary again, for the good of my family. So, I resat the very difficult French teaching qualifying exams in English, did very well again, and found myself a trainee teacher in Bordeaux, with a placement in a lycée and taking classes, lectures, and workshops for half the week. The grand setting of that first day inspired this flippant post on Instagram …

But then, the idea didn’t go away. It occurred to me that it might make a rather good setup for a “Dark Academia Romantasy”-style story, but of course with my own personal spin on it. There is definitely a satirical aspect to the project: I love the foundations of both the Dark Academia style (is it a genre? I’m not sure … more of a vibe …?), and Fantasy and Romance, of course, are dear to my heart. I’ve read quite a bit of the more modern flourishing of the genres, and find some of it good, but much of it very bad. Still, as Sturgeon’s Law will have it, “Ninety percent of everything is crap”; we can’t expect every example of a popular genre to be good; often, it is popular because it does a great job of fulfilling the genre expectations, which means that of course it is formulaic: that is the whole point. The foundational texts of these genres were often not written as part of a genre because they helped to create it. That, too, is the whole point. I’ll have to write more about this in the future, as the study of popular genre fiction is what my PhD was about, and I would love to dig into my thoughts on all of it. Suffice to say, I dipped my toe into Dark Academia and Romantasy as someone who is deeply interested in these generic evolutions. Not precisely a fan of them, I would say: rather, an aficionado. I write this novel not as a send-up of these genres, but as an affectionate subversion of some of their tropes, as a delighted piece of play. I wanted, for my next writing project, to write something that I could absolutely have fun with; I wanted it to be light, amusing, a little frothy, witty, cynical, whimsical (of course). I wanted it to be fast-moving, agile, not to dwell or ponder too much: I wanted it to be entertaining, both for me and for the reader. Take the tropes, twist them, run with them, lean into them.

The question of whether I have succeeded so far is up to you. However, I note with some amusement that I have not been able to just keep it light and frothy! I think it’s funny enough – I’m definitely amusing myself, if no-one else! – and I do think that the tone is relatively light. I absolutely have not made it very fast-moving and plot-driven though. There are endless divagations on etymology and magical history; I have spent time dwelling on various aspects of the setting, which may be rather an egregious case of “setting the table”, and delivering world-building exposition through dialogue … although, that said, having them being set up as part of an introductory classroom situation kind of takes the curse off a little, maybe?

Another thing that I contemplated, when thinking about this experiment, was to try and make my writing style a bit more straightforward and to-the-point: much of the best genre-writing functions as a highly effective delivery system for plot, character, tropes; it doesn’t need to be – indeed, should not be – overly ornate, or overly self-conscious. A page-turner doesn’t have you pausing on every page to contemplate the eloquence of the writing, or its surprising and poetic qualities, or its philosophical insights. That is what it proper to literary fiction, rather, and as it should be. The writing, in much genre fiction, should get out of the way of the reader’s experience: of their immersion in the plot, the characters, the world. They should be wrapped up in these things – rapt, indeed – and hardly notice the pages going by, up way past bedtime. They should not be asked to stop and notice the writing, as that is not the point. The writing should grab them by the hand and shout “Come with me if you want to live …” Not contemplate, not appreciate, not ponder: live. Live the story. Live with the characters. Plunge into it all, forget where you are. And I … well. Let’s say, this is not my strong point.

I have never been able to restrain myself from reaching for effects. From trying to turn a sentence, spin a phrase, spark a thought, capture a moment or an experience. I cannot refrain from Poetry, if I’m honest. To try to hear the song of the lines as they spool out onto the page. To attempt colour, tone, rhythm. To attempt to evoke certain mysterious feelings of wonder and yearning. Now, I’m not saying I always succeed. That’s for you to say. I know, however, that if I am to be myself, then I must write as myself. I’m not going to be one of these literary writers who looks at genre fiction and says to themselves “oh, anyone could do that” … Because it’s just not true. Simplicity and efficacy of prose are much, much harder to achieve than they seem, to someone who does not respect them. This is also true of, say, Romance plots, Fantasy worlds, Science Fiction concepts, Detective Fiction investigations. You can’t write this stuff without actually loving it, and having read a lot of it. And I do, and I have. But that still doesn’t necessarily mean I can write it.

I cannot forbid myself from writing as it comes to me, from being myself – it would ring hollow and inauthentic and condescending if I tried to write “down” to an imagined audience. The thing is, though. As I have begun writing this serial, having already worked out much of the background and the characters and the plot in my head (I wrote hardly anything down, but all year I was thinking about it, and stewing it in my imagination), I have found myself continually happening upon new details and plot-points and character aspects. The plot, as it was in my head, is now twisting and ramifying ahead of me, changing as I write. I run into new minor characters that seem to spring up fully-formed as I write them; Bertrand, the Jock Energy-worker, popped up out of nowhere, and then demanded a name and a recurring presence; the Wicked Uncles, I only knew by function: as I wrote them, their names, their physicalities, their backstories just … coalesced. Suddenly, I knew where they were from (I can hear their voices, their accents, in my head. I’m not sure you can hear them in the writing, but I’m not trying to make them broadly caricatured). Nettle showed up, and imposed herself, based on a long-ago encounter with a Witch in real life. Nick seemed to arrive fully-formed. Eliza herself, who I had thought about for some time, seems to solidify, to become more real and complex and herself as I write her. And I am strangely grateful to her, that she has allowed me to tell her story.

Indeed, this is the alchemy: one of the best pieces of writing advice I ever had was from a friend who has had a brilliant career as a Hollywood screenwriter, mostly for TV. When we first met, he was just starting out, and I was a teenage aspiring writer, and he told me “Make sure that the protagonist is not you … You’ll spend all your energy trying to make them look cool, trying to present them in the best and most accurate and most complex way, the most flattering light … Make sure they are someone else, who things can happen to.” Wise words. Here, I am not at all writing about myself. I am writing about a young woman in her twenties, which is a more typical profile for a student-teacher (let alone a student-teacher-magician) than mine. Indeed, her portrayal is informed, as are those of the other students in her group, by those wonderful people I met this year, my colleagues, my comrades (if any of you are reading, obviously: “All resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental and plausibly deniable”). For a protagonist of a Dark Academia Romantic Fantasy, in any case, nobody would want to read about a middle-aged man: it just makes no sense. He is not the Hero on this particular Journey. No, she is. It makes far more sense. This is a young woman’s story. It could be a young man’s, too, I suppose? But no. We don’t need that, not here, not now. No more of that. This is her story to tell, to share. And she will tell it, through me. I am merely her amanuensis. I feel warmly affectionate and protective towards her; it is a privilege and a pleasure to spend this time in her company. I love her very much. Almost like a proud parent, wanting all good things for her, slightly afraid for her, very proud of her. Is this how we all feel about our characters? I don’t know. I do. I feel some of this tenderness for most of my characters, even the ones who are not the most appealing. I think that deep sympathy for the human experience is profoundly necessary for a writer; sympathy for people, curiosity about their lives, their dreams, their aspirations, their deep fears, their worst flaws. I feel it, as each one of Eliza’s classmates begins to take shape in my mind, and I hit on the configuration of details that suddenly seems to make them cohere. I think, “oh yes, that’s it … now I know you.” And it is strange, and intimate, and satisfying. It is beautiful.

You see now? I had meant this piece to be so much more down-to-earth and factual! And yet, here we are.

The alchemy, you see, is also the one performed upon my own life. All this last year, while I attempted to keep my interest and enthusiasm alive, I was forced to confront frustrations, set-backs, tedium, incompetence, maddening administrative Catch-22 situations, hoops to jump through, boxes to tick … And I thought: well, what if we made that part of it? It will have escaped no-one that another big aspect of the novel is the commentary and satire on French administration, education, society. Also, more generally, a commentary on school, higher education, academia, all of that. It struck me that, instead of some twee and cosy fantasy of Wizard School, we were confronted with how the sausage is made: how teachers of magic are trained, how, by mixing up the concept of Magic as an academic field, with all of its (literally) arcane sub-disciplines, with the actual experience of academia in the real world, and in France – how this might make an interestingly incongruous and potentially intriguing setting. With all of the attendant petty rivalry, backstabbing, one-upmanship, tedium, labyrinthine administrative quests, soul-destroying bureaucracy. Somewhere between the Romance of Dark Academia, the Wonder of Fantasy, and the Discomfort of the Campus Novel social satire.

As I made my way through this strange year of teacher-training, of teaching itself, of discovering the Mysteries of Bordeaux (a city I did not yet know), I kept making notes to myself, thinking “ah yes, that must go in!” And as for any writer, the idea of gathering and guarding these gems of detail and experience and characters encountered performed that alchemy on my everyday life of giving it a secret symbolism and sense, known only to me … This was my secret: all this, this Life … this, too, shall be my Art.

§§§

The final interesting consideration is this: it got me writing. One of the things I’ve often encountered in my writing life has been that I will embark upon a project, and then work away at it, a little at a time, for maybe years. I have written two complete novels, the first of which, Quai de Montebello, was my journeyman piece: it took me about six years, and it taught me to write. I tried to get it published for quite some time, and though I came close to getting an agent, it didn’t work out. I thought I might consign it to the desk drawer, but then some other stuff happened. It was taken on by a UK publisher, and I signed a contract for it (two years ago? Three now?), but I haven’t heard from them in a long time, and I am starting to wonder if they really exist at all. I wrote Unreal City as a distraction from my PhD thesis, for a competition run by Shakespeare & Company in Paris, specifically seeking novellas by unrepresented and unpublished authors. I wrote the first version quickly, to that deadline, and boy did I write! I got longlisted, but not shortlisted, and the eventual winner turned out to be a bit of a nepo-fraud who already had an agent and a publishing deal. So it goes. I have written the first few chapters of several other novels, all of which I do think would merit being finished, but I lost momentum, and then was taken up with my “real work”, both professional and the work of having a young family.

This has been a bit different: after practically forbidding myself from writing for the last two years, as I’ve discussed, I had so much energy bottled up, so many words crowding against the gates, that when I opened them, it was like a flood, like a shook Champagne bottle blasting (… yes, I’m well aware that that sounds a bit … there honestly was something of a long-delayed climax to it …). That first day I sat down to write, I hammered out 4,000 words straight away. Which is a lot. To put it into context, many writers set themselves goals of 1,000 a day, or sometimes even less: I’ve heard people who try to achieve 300 words a day. Now, don’t get me wrong, that’s actually really good. Because if you do that every day, well, you’re writing a novel a year. Let’s say that the standard page of a paperback novel is about 250-300 words, then 300 words is pretty much a page a day. And so, a 365-page novel in a year. Very good indeed! I sometimes wish that I could have such a regular discipline, but I’ve always been more of the “nothing for a few months, then 3-4,000 words a day for a concentrated period”.

I was even like this when I was writing my PhD; I remember, back then, there were days that I hit the 5,000-word mark. Let me tell you, writing 5,000 words of academic, footnoted prose in a day is a heady experience; afterwards, I felt dizzy, spaced-out, almost out-of-body. It required me to get into a sort of deep ZONE that was not often accessible. I did manage though, at times. Particularly in that last year, in which I wrote almost all of my 600-page thesis. In Britain, for example, a PhD thesis is much more typically between 200 and 300 pages. It’s much more achievable in three or four years, and much more easily convertible to a book project, if it merits it, afterwards. Even in France, where longer PhDs are more common, mine was considered to be a “thèse à l’ancienne”, a big doorstopper which took me five years and much heartache to write, and put me off academia for good (story for another time). I remember when I was on my exchange year in Berkeley, happening to read Papillon, by Henri Charrière (better known now in the Anglo world for the film version with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman, though the book was a huge international bestseller). In the introduction, it was noted that Charrière, when he was finally convinced to write his incredible story down (and it really is incredible, as is his wild energy and verve in writing), would knock out 5,000 words a day on his typewriter – this was considered an almost inhuman feat. Many years later, I thought “yeah, well I bet Papillon wasn’t looking up citations and putting in footnotes as he went, was he? Truly, doing a PhD is my Devil’s Island prison colony in French Guiana …”

The point is, I don’t think anyone can keep up a rhythm of 5,000 words a day for very long. It is almost inhuman. I’d be interested to know how many words Kerouac claimed to write, and at what speed, when he was famously composing On the Road on a continuous roll of typewriter paper taped together (I saw it on display in a manuscript museum in Paris once … it really does look cool). I know that doubts have been cast on that claimed feat, and I think it was Truman Capote who said: “That’s not writing, that’s typing.” Because, yes, anyone can write a continuous stream of drivel for however many thousand words at once, but what if it also has to be good …?

There were a few times over the last few years when I would plunge into a topic and bang out a 5,000-word essay in one night on it, but they were far too few and far between. I need some way to get back to a more assiduous practice. I knew that The Department of Whimsical Enchantment had the potential to be something that I would have a lot of fun with – the potential to be something good. Something that would be successful? I have no idea. I’ve had to stop thinking of things like that. For one thing, no-one knows. For another, I must concentrate on writing something I want to read, not something I imagine some imaginary reader or demographic wants to read. And in writing this new novel, I found myself doing just that. I want to read this, and therefore, I want to write it, and I want to share it. I want people to discover it. I think it’s a great adventure. I think it’s a yarn, a lark, a hoot. Please read; please share; please let others know.

When I wrote that first piece, I was not to know what would happen, but then, on a whim, I decided on the serialisation idea. I don’t know that it’s even something I’m trying to emulate: there are very very few serialised novels on Substack that have actually held my attention; indeed, for some reason, very little fiction at all. I think I come here much more for essays, and that’s what I want, so that’s what I get. I’m sure there are very good fiction pieces being posted, and I’d be happy to have recommendations. But I haven’t really found them yet. What I wanted, I think, was the idea that I would throw my hat in the ring and say “Here we go! I’m going to write a novel! Who wants to watch?” Shades of Monty Python’s “Novel-writing Olympics” … It’s not really a spectator sport, but if it were, Substack would be where it happened. This is why I’m writing this: to give you all an insight into the process. Writing as a spectator sport! A bloodsport! De l’écriture considérée comme une tauromachie …

And then, for the following week, I wrote FIVE chapters of around 4,000 words each! This is more than I’ve advanced on a writing project in a week, ever. What that means, is that up to the end of Chapter V, I’ve written a total of over 20,000 words … That means about 65-70 pages of a standard novel. This is about the place that several previous projects have stalled, but after months of writing. This is a place you can falter. However, I have to say … I’m only getting going.

And there was something that happened: you know that thing … do you know that thing? When you’re writing the opening chapters of a novel, when you’re still feeling your way, when your writing is … exploratory. You’re reaching for something. You’re not quite sure what it is yet, but you know it’s there. You’re figuring out your characters, their relation to their world; you’re trying to figure out what makes the whole enterprise tick …

And then this happens: you suddenly stumble upon a magical combination of words and circumstances, you hit that rhythm, you strike that chord. Suddenly, you have unearthed something of the emotional heart of your story. This is where it is. This is where it lives.

I wrote these words one night, about a week ago, at my desk. The music that Eliza is listening to in the text was playing – as it should be – the words fell where they should. The sweet spot struck. It hit, just so. Tears started spilling from my eyes as I wrote, and I felt like yes, yes, this is something.

Yes. I have something here.

Yes. This must live.

Thank you for helping it live.

This is the passage where it came to life:

Eliza headed for Home … (‘Eliza’, she repeated to herself, in the train … ‘Eliza’, she tried on, like a new dress she was not sure of. ‘Eliza’: a gift from a man she was not sure of, neither. It felt, somehow, good upon her skin: better than any other version of her given name had, or any other byname she had been given) … the train from Bordeaux Saint-Jean would take just over an hour: she arrived at a moment where she had forty-five minutes to wait, and spent them at the rather grand bistro across the way, drinking a citron pressé and watching the world go by. She had not yet found accommodation in the City, and so must return to where she was staying, with her Wonderful Wicked Uncles.

Uncle Harry came to the station to drive her back the twenty-five minutes to their place. The light now was fading, as it did earlier and earlier in these early-Autumn days; she had ridden the sunset home, turning the sky red, out of which she fled, over the hills, the vines, the little towns and tumble-down farms of stone and ochre tiles. She played ‘Cybèle’s Reverie’ by Stereolab on repeat, as seemed most fit: she set an alarm for five minutes before her stop. She fell asleep, the flickering landscape flying by. She awoke, when it was near-dark, and she was nearly Home.

When they arrived at Lammas House, Uncle Harry, tall and saturnine, dark looks of an ageing matinée idol, seemed to half lift her from her seat; she felt like a little child at the end of a long Summer’s day, dozing off on the car-ride home. He picked her up and carried her, half-asleep – or so it seemed – the house windows glowed amber in the dusk. Soft music playing; dinner would be cooking. Uncle Trevor, brewing up a storm. Harry brought her to her room, and whispered: “You go straight to sleep now, my love, if you wish. But if you’re able, Trevor will so want to hear about your day …” He laid her down upon the softest eiderdown, and kissed her forehead, and retreated through the door he left ajar.

After a few moments of suspension in that delicious in-between – day and night, sleeping and waking, hunger and satiety – she wriggled herself into wakefulness, and went down to the bright kitchen to regale them, to be regaled, with food, with comfort, and with love.

Later, beneath the willow-trees at the bottom of the garden, by the stream, she wandered with her feet bare and felt the moonlight upon her skin. She counted blessings, questions, things to-be-done, things known and things unknown. She thought of all she’d seen and done. And her Wicked Uncles, for their part, watched her slim bright phantom wander in the shadows there, and thought of how she reminded them of their dear departed, their beloved, her mother.

The fifth chapter in a continuing serial novel, The Department of Whimsical Enchantment … Find the first part here: Chapter I, the second part here: Chapter II, the third part here: Chapter III, and the fourth part here: Chapter IV …

What if we combined Dark Academia Romantasy with a School for Teachers of Magic, set in France, with all the soul-destroying bureaucracy, petty rivalries, and obscure rules that nobody ever tells you that that implies …? Well. I suppose you’re about to find out! Please subscribe to receive the ongoing updates!

The story so far: Elizabeth Harding, a young English woman, finds herself - not totally of her own full volition - in a teacher-training programme for Functionary Magicians of the Imperium of the Unseen in Bordeaux, France. Hi-jinks, obviously, ensue …

Uncle Trevor saw them off at the gate, in the dark before the dawn; he didn’t like to drive much anymore, especially at night, and so Harry did most of that. The car’s lights cast a glow upon the hedges opposite. “Right then, my darling. Got everything? Got your packed lunch?”

Eliza held up the whole separate bag that contained the extensive picnic he had prepared for her. “Yes, Uncle Trevor … I told you, I tried the canteen, and it’s perfectly fine …”

“For your first day though … You’ll be glad to have it, you mark my words. And I’ve made enough to share, so that you can give some to your new friends …”

“Oh Trevor …” she sighed, and then gave him a quick peck on the cheek. “What would I do without you two …?”

“Well, you’d be homeless and hungry, for a start. Your mum would never forgive us if we didn’t send you off right on your first day of school …” He sniffed slightly and appeared to have something briefly in his eye, then pulled her back and gave her a hug. “You go give them what for!”

In the car, Harry cleared his throat loudly. They mustn’t miss the train. Just to be sure, she had to take the one that left at 6am, and so leave their hillside farmhouse at 5.20am. Just to be sure. This would get her to the City at 7.15am, and after the ten-minute walk to the Lycée Albertus Magnus, she would have time to have a coffee, gather her thoughts, run through her prep for the day, before starting at eight o’clock most days, or half-past. That was the idea anyway. She was running through the timing again in her head, and in her belly was an aching ball of queasy anxiety. Her first day of school – not, this time, as a student, which had become a delightful ritual to her by now, but rather in front of a class of fifteen, sixteen, seventeen year olds. She had never done this before. A few seminars and tutorials teaching undergraduates close enough to her own age. But school-kids, never. She remembered school vividly; it was not that far away. She had loved school, but her fellow pupils … rather less.

And this was her first real day, her first Monday morning … and then tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, would creep in this petty pace from day to day, and on … She shook her head, banishing the thought; it didn’t have to be forever. There were ways out, she knew, though difficult to find. What did it mean that she was beginning her “career” as a functionary teacher-magician, and already contemplating her exit-strategy …? It meant she shouldn’t be here; she shouldn’t be doing this … Inside her, a voice screamed “THIS IS ALL A TERRIBLE MISTAKE”, and she shushed it and tried to banish it. She hadn’t realised that her self-soothing ‘shhhhhhh’ had been out loud, or that she was cradling herself, slightly rocking herself in her own arms, until Harry looked over from the wheel.

“Everything alright, my love? I know it’s not easy. Sometimes we just have to do what we just have to do, eh?”

She nodded, and felt a tear run down one cheek. She had to try not to cry. She had carefully applied just a little ‘healthy-glow’ makeup, judiciously conceived to make her look like she wasn’t really wearing makeup, but she could not forego the dark spider-lashes, the mascara, slight winged eyeliner, that had been part of her armour and persona since she was a teenager. Not, now, the full-on Goth racoon-eyes, but just enough. It contrasted pleasingly – to her – with her very pale freckled skin and white blond hair, and she would feel a stranger to herself, should she catch a glimpse of her naked eyes with their blond lashes in the mirror of a bathroom outside home. She dabbed her cheek with a tissue, and thought she must remember to check it on the train. Harry patted her shoulder awkwardly, and they drove on in silence. Unlike Trevor, he wouldn’t try to make her ‘talk about it’.

At the tiny country station nearest their village, she alighted from the car, and Uncle Harry patted his pockets and pressed a fifty-euro note into her hand – ‘Just walking-around money’ he said – and then kissed her on the head. “You go on now, my girl. You’ll be brilliant. All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. Off you go.” The words of Julian of Norwich, the medieval anchoress, were his habitual benediction and valediction. Her mother had used to say that, too. She walked through the gates onto the platform, still lit by lamp-posts in the gloom, and looked back to where he stood, a tall, dark figure against the silver phantom of their Bentley. He raised a hand, and she waved, and then she turned and left, and walked down the platform to where she knew the end of the train would roughly be, when it stopped. There was no-one else there, and the sky was starting to glow deep blue to the East, presaging the dawn out of which the train would arrive.

The Wicked Uncles, Harry and Trevor, had had their house in Dordogne for thirty years: she and her parents had used to come on holidays from her earliest childhood, and they even before. It was only in the last ten or fifteen years, after they had retired and managed to extricate themselves from their various activities in Glastonbury, that the Uncles had lived there full-time. Harry had been a promoter and manager in the folk music scene, and thus had they first come into contact with Annie McCarthy, Eliza’s mother, at the beginning of her career. He had helped her to her first successes, helped her to navigate those treacherous waters. Trevor had been an antique dealer and antiquarian, with a particular focus on esoteric and magical books and objects; both of them were very involved in the English Folk Revival, especially in its Pagan and mystical aspects: they knew the movers and the shakers of the Craft, the Druids, the Psychic Questers, the Reconstructionists, the Companions of the Grail; they knew the hierarchies of the Lodges and the Orders, and all that that implies. Unlike in France, where the neo-Pagan and folk renaissance had never really taken root, and were only now flourishing as an import for the amusement of the mundane population, giving rise to a festival circuit and a burgeoning sector of New Age online mail-order businesses and multi-level marketing schemes masquerading as spiritual self-help, in Britain all of those currents were closely interwoven with the actual Traditions and Practices of the Unseen. France had made its choice, from the First Imperium onwards, to suppress and demonise regional and folk traditions, and consolidate the control of magic under the Mysterium, to regulate its use as laid out in the Codex Mysteria; there were just a few notable regions, such as Brittany, Corsica, the Basque Country, where this had not worked as planned. Britain had no such codified magical law; the Star Chamber and the Templum Aulae had amassed a centuries-old body of precedent and magical jurisprudence, known as the Uncommon Law, and it seemed to work quite well indeed, thank you very much. On both sides of the Channel, of course, they scoffed affectionately at the ways of doing things on the other, all while being quietly fascinated with their Outre-Manche counterparts.

The village where the Uncles lived – in a rambling homestead they had named ‘Lammas House’, several farm buildings combined into one, overlooking a steep valley down which their property extended – had turned, over the years, into quite the colony of ex-patriate English owners of second-homes, lovingly restored, which for many had become first and only homes, especially since the Secession, and all of the tax and legal wrangling that it had imposed upon them. Many of them, implanted there for ten, twenty, thirty years, still barely spoke a word of French, and those few they did, with an execrable accent. They did not really seem to feel the need to ‘integrate’; they loved the landscape, the climate, the food, the wine, the fine old tumbledown mills, farmhouses, manors, châteaux they had bought for a song in the eighties and nineties; they did not quite see the point of the French, in all of this, except to provide them with said food and wine. They kept much among themselves, sunburned and loud-voiced, demanding to be served or accommodated, in the language of the colonist. Some local French folk, while pleased to take their money and to see them preserving the old-stone bones of the countryside, joked darkly that they seemed to still think themselves in Aquitania of Old, when it was indeed a part of the Kingdom of England. The village was called Neymet, and it was a bit of a sorting-mechanism for the Uncles, to hear the pronunciation a new-met local attempted: an example of ignorant ‘hyper-correction’ meant that many of the English said it ‘Nay-may’, or ‘Ne-may’, assuming that ‘-et’ at the end of the word, as usually in French, was pronounced ‘ay’; in fact, in this case, it was not: it was not a French word but rather an old Occitan one, pronounced ‘Ne-met’, with the ‘t’ voiced. It came from ‘Nemeton’, or ‘sacred grove’. The locals all said ‘Ne-met’, and rolled their eyes when a blow-in got it wrong.

Harry and Trevor actually made an effort. They both spoke very good and idiomatic French, though they could not quite shake their accents (Harry’s, Welsh; Trevor’s, East London): but they had chosen to keep their accents back in the old days, in England, when they might have chosen to lose them to get ahead, and they would not now give up this pride in their roots, not even for French. It was part of their personae, they would say. They tended to associate mostly with local French eccentrics, and those from many other countries too, along with a sprinkling of the more assimilated and curious British. The Irish and the Scots, as it happened, tended to blend in better, particularly the Irish. Harry said that it was because they actually retained a memory of what it is to be a true emigrant, not just a standard-bearer of Empire, on a Boy’s-Own jaunt to far-flung exotic corners of the globe, where they were everywhere At Home, and all belonged to them. He added, knowing something of this himself – being Welsh – that it certainly helped that they were conversant with another language all their lives, and knew what it was for English to be the language of the Oppressor, the Occupation. They knew how to integrate, assimilate. Trevor would chime in, “using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use: Silence, Exile, Cunning …” Harry would roll his eyes: “My love, use more Silence, please, lest I need to Exile you to your kitchen …” Trevor would look gleefully affronted; and so it went, between them.

The train ride, in the few days she had been doing it, had become a ritual for Eliza. She would make for one of the seats at the very back of the train, ideally on the side facing the direction of travel, ideally at the window. Ideally with no-one else in the four seats with her. Easier in the morning, the early train, when most people sat alone and widely-spaced, dozing or reading. She would watch the landscape flying by, as it gradually coalesced out of the gloom: on the right, to the North, the forested hills, the isolated farmhouses and châteaux, the villages nestled between the slopes; on the left, to the South, in the flood-plain, the fields of vines, the paddocks of a few proud horses, the level-crossings, silos and hangars, the glimpses of the river, Dordonia Herself. The clouds red and gold behind them, the gleam of light upon the Land, gradually growing. She would note the stations, and gradually learn their names, and their order. She would, as time went by, begin to recognise certain other travellers, who took the trains at the same time as she did, and which stop they got on, and imagine where they might be going, or to what: what job took them each day from the hinterland into Bordeaux, those two middle-aged women who would save a seat for each other, and put away their books when the other would alight, to quietly chat and laugh; what school they might be going to, what university, those pretty Maghrébi twins, that awkward boy with thick glasses and massive headphones, the young man with the natty line in different hats, for every season.

This first day of school though, she attempted to calm herself, and centre herself, performing an abbreviated Body of Light exercise (the bright ball of the Golden Sun, beneath your feet, that rises up your body, sending a glow of Energy through your limbs, that come alive in its Holy Light; at each point on its journey, activating the Centres of your Power, your Spirit-Body); (the more complete version of this exercise could be the prelude to attempting to astrally project your consciousness, in the form of your Spirit-Body, to travel in the Outer World, and in the Inner; astral projection was not Eliza’s strong suit: she had had some terrifying experiences as a child, doing it by accident, and had never felt very inclined to work on it assiduously; it was also, needless to say, rather of the Domain of Spirit-Work than of her own area of expertise, and as such, she had not had to concentrate on it as a core skill. These days in France, of course, it was often more the ‘Remote Viewing’ aspect, of tactical utility, that was emphasised, rather than travelling the Inner Planes, or Pathworking the Tree of Life, or other Otherworlds, which would have interested Eliza more. There was a strong overlap between these though, and the Art Magic Discipline of Dreaming – journeying in Vision, to meet the Other, or to see and manipulate the Weave of Time: of which, more anon).

Having centred and consolidated her potentia, Eliza would then often draw a spread of Tarot cards, and muse upon them throughout the journey through the vineyards, or scribble in her magical journal, recording dreams, signs, portents, abstruse clues, obscure plans. She might, if she felt like it, compose a sigil for some particular goal that day, scribbling the letters, reducing them, until they made a pleasing, charged glyph, which she would then activate at some point, and set to work. Sometimes, with the help of her choice of music in her earbuds, she tried to conserve the half-awake shadow consciousness of Dream, dipping in and out of the hypnagogic state, allowing herself to doze and dwell on the symbols and scenes which her dreams had apported to her in the night, perhaps noting words and lines as they arose, perhaps attempting some little making of a poem. She rarely showed her poetry to anyone; it was her way of talking to herself. From it, she made incantations, spells, songs, charms. She Wove. And this was part of it too, the business of Enchantment. To live with one foot in the Dreamworld, and to thread upon that long bright thread the words and phrases and images that could bridge the gap between the Waking World and the Nightworld. This is what we do. This is who we are. We walk between these Worlds.

Of course, as the term went on, she more often had to concern herself with administrative tasks: answering emails, correcting student papers, entering marks into the Espace Numérique de Travail on her computer or on the app (which had the twee denomination ‘ClassWiz’), planning lessons and sequences and evaluations. The previous week there had been two more days of ‘induction’ at the Institut; they had been treated to a sprawling series of divagations from the Instructrixes, Hortense and Gertrude, on the proper conduct of a class, the construction of a lesson-plan, a scheme of work, a sequence of lessons; how to adhere to the new directives on themes and contents, on methodology and pedagogy. None of it made sense; none of it was clear; none of it helped. When the Weird Sisters gave them one of their own sequences, as a model, it was incoherent and indulgent, and appeared to act as an apologia for Elders and Tradition, all while posing as a ‘modern’ and up-to-date unit; its theme was Passing on Traditions, between Generations, on the Internet. Eliza couldn’t keep her attention fixed on their pronouncements; she couldn’t read their faint transparencies projected like a shadow-play upon the screen; she couldn’t concentrate on anything. They invited in some other intervenors, a postulant from the previous year who told some horror stories about dealing with parents who tried to embroil him in a conflict between rival factions in the local Mysterium; another young woman who came to bear witness to the ordeal she had lived through, as a newly-qualified teacher in the Paris suburbs. This was presented as the nightmare posting, and possibly the inevitable trial by fire of all new Magisters: to deal with rowdy, barbaric, uncouth, violent youths (all issued from Immigration, was the subtext) in the housing projects in the banlieues; Eliza could practically hear the steam coming off Fatoumata as she seethed at the casual racism of the thing: she said nothing, and it was Malachi, in fact, who objected to the tenor of the presentation. The Weird Sisters laughed awkwardly, and dismissed these concerns. This is just how it is! they beamed. Malachi later told Eliza that he felt he must speak up on this, and other things, because as a middle-aged white English-speaking man, he might permit himself liberties that … others … could not. She thought it not untrue. He didn’t seem happy about it though, or proud, but rather bitter at the necessity. Eliza thought again, of what Uncle Harry had said about the Irish experience; her own mother came from an originally Irish family: it’s true that it was not the same.

She felt – after these induction days – not better prepared, but worse: anxious, confused, overwhelmed. The feeling seemed somewhat general, among her classmates; even Gustave, who presumably had been through all of this before, seemed terrified of what the new school year had to bring. On the last day of the pré-rentrée at the Institut, they had been subjected to the Ceremony of Nominations: Hortense took out, with a flourish, from her carpet-bag, a dark green velvet pouch; within were the jetons, the little round wooden counters with bevelled edges, each bearing a number, that they must fish out of the pouch, thus choosing their allotted establishment for the year. These are the very same jetons that we did choose, the Sisters declared, in Our Day. It was, they told them, a tirage au sort, a ‘drawing of lots’. Eliza knew, as she was sure did most of them, that this formulation was not deployed idly: ‘tirage au sort’ was a draw, but the word ‘sort’ meant ‘lot’, and also ‘fate’, and also ‘spell’. To ‘draw lots’ was also ‘sortilège’, any kind of Divination involving a random choice of objects; one did not only ‘draw’ a lot, but also ‘cast’ them: ‘jeter un sort’ was to cast a spell, to make one’s Fate: the principle of manipulating material objects not only to tell one’s fortune, but to create one’s Fate: it was intimately linked to the notion of ‘sorcellerie’ – French for Sorcery (and Witchcraft), and the source of that same word. This is why, in common parlance, the Crafts of Material Magic – Divination, Herb-cunning, Necromancy, Spell-casting, and other Workings of Matter and Fate – had come to be most often called in English ‘Sorcery’: with all of the dark, deceptive, untrustworthy associations of the magic practiced by the common folk, and Cunning Folk, throughout the ages. Eliza was protective of these practices: her father had been, himself, a hereditary Cunning Man, of a family of Cunning Folk. Here though, today, in France, one merely referred to ‘Material Magic’, or ‘Practical Magic’, and there was no value-judgement implicit in it; Eliza found that it left something missing, of the thrill of Darker Arts, to only speak of materia, and Craft.

She drew the jeton with the number ‘15’, which caused her a slight sharp thrill: it was a number that she had always had a penchant for. She wondered aloud, “But … if there are only thirteen of us, how does that work …?” Gertrude remonstrated: “Oh, but the numbers are not consecutive or sequential, ma petite … Each one signifies a certain Establishment, by correspondences pre-determined! And what luck for you! Fifteen! You have made a lucky draw. Lycée Albertus Magnus!” The others looked around in mild envy; it was a good placement, indeed.

There were three large fully Operative lycées in Bordeaux: Albertus Magnus, specialised in Magical Sciences, Lycée Comte de Saint-Germain, more oriented to the Magical Arts, and Lycée Pierre de Lancre, which provided many of the future magical jurists, Lictors, Quaestors … Inquisitors, so-called. For each of these three institutions, two of the postulants were named; with Eliza, would be Malachi; at Saint-Germain, Charlie – ironically in her own previous school – and Lamia; at Pierre de Lancre, Gustave and Mitra. The other students were spread among schools within the City and its environs which housed significant presences of the Mysterium, though they were not fully run by its hierarchy; those postulants needs must navigate the line between the overt roles they had to play, and the shadow-roles, between the exoteric school and its esoteric inner-workings. Both schema were complicated in their own way. Eliza was obscurely pleased to know that the droll, melancholy, mysterious fellow who called himself Malachi McGill would be around, should she need him; she felt somehow that should she need him, he would be there.

There had been a pré-rentrée day at the school too, the Friday before the Monday beginning of term: a large gathering in the salle polyvalente, one of the newer buildings towards the back of the vast complex occupied by Lycée Albertus Magnus. The principle, a tall bald fellow, with a shining brow, thick-rimmed glasses, a natty suit, near sixty or so, had addressed the hundreds of assembled staff and personnel. His presentation included complex graphs and pie-charts demonstrating the respectable results and encouraging growth of the establishment. Eliza had felt totally lost, and not found any of her department, nor had she really spoken to anyone at all: at one point, desperately looking for a toilet and only finding one locked and with a cleaning-hazard sign in front of it, she had turned to see a lank-haired, narrow fellow leaning on a mop, who squinted at her when she asked how to find an accessible amenity. He had suddenly lit up, and smiled, and whisked away the sign to let her in – just this once you understand – and grumbled about students making a mess of the facilities before the holidays. His name was Bruno, it turned out, and she counted him her very first ally in the place.

She had arrived late to the on-the-house lunch in the echoing canteen deep in the depths below the rear courtyard, and there was little left of the alledgedly locally-sourced, organically-grown delicacies to eat. The long tables were still mostly full of people finishing their meals; she recognised no-one from the presentations of new staff and department heads of earlier, and dared not approach any of the voluble, chatty groups. She took some bread-rolls and some cheese, for later, and fled back up the wide ringing stair into the sunlight. She sat on a bench in the cour d’honneur, the first courtyard, lined with lime-trees and arcaded arches, clock-towers at each end and gateways, spires topped with complex lightning rods, and nibbled on her bread and cheese, and tried gamely to suppress a sob.

Now, on Monday, on her First Real Day, she arrived along one of the major street arteries of the South of the City, from the station. She had stopped off at a French coffee chain she liked to buy a large latte with an extra shot and a cinnamon roll, and walked through the vaguely seedy neighbourhood that extended from the Gare, all sex-shops, barbers, derelict mobile-phone repairs, halal kebab or chicken places. Gradually, the streets became more salubrious, and she reached a pretty park with colourful modern art installations and a co-op café for food-delivery-folk on one end. The buildings became more grand and Art Nouveau, and then, there we were, the long railings and the neat little gardens and the high and stately gates, just off the main street, of Lycée Albertus Magnus. As far as the Outer World was concerned, it was a prestigious scientific and technical lycée, and thus it was announced upon the portals, in stone engraved.

She walked up the path to the looming gatehouse, the magnetic key-fob in her hand, and unlocked the entrance, stepped inside. She had made a point of chatting to the attendant at the reception desk, and already knew about where she liked to take her holidays, and the breed and disposition of her beloved dog; her father had taught her this: a shy man himself, he had always made these efforts, and they had always stood him in good stead with every little acquaintance that he made upon his way in the world. He used to tell Eliza: there is nobody on Earth that is not interesting – all it takes is you to treat them as if they are, and you’ll see. They’ll tell you everything, and it will be fascinating. Dear old Dad. He never was bored for a minute in his life, and he never ever met a taciturn tree-stump he could not become buddies with in fifteen minutes

Khadija, the Gatekeeper, waved her through, and gave her a big thumbs up “Bon courage pour le premier jour!” she called, and Eliza saluted gaily. She did not feel so cavalier at all, but hey. The sentiment was appreciated.

Through the brief dim coolth of the gatehouse, she emerged then into the grand first courtyard, the Cour d’honneur, where she had eaten her solitary snack a few days earlier. Now, it was much more lively: students and teachers went to and fro, and on one side, without the allée of plane-trees, she saw a whole class of teenagers performing a sort of slow-motion dance, almost like tai chi or a karate kata; she knew that they were working on Energy Manipulation, indeed she could nearly see the humming auras around them – she would need to sit and enter a trance-state of concentration to see them fully: some could do so without even trying; it was not her case. Suddenly, she spotted the teacher that was leading them through their paces … and recognised him. It was the finely-bearded, man-bunned fellow from the first day of induction at the Institut. Oh no. She put her head down and hurried her pace, and was just composing a Pass-Unseen charm under her breath when he saw her. He shouted to his group to take five, and jogged over to intercept her.

“Mademoiselle! I mean, hello …! Miss Colleague! Are you posted here then? I didn’t see you at the orientation!”

She stopped, and closed her eyes and took a deep breath to suppress her irritation.

“Monsieur! Cher collègue! Yes, I suppose it turns out we’re both nominated here. Now, if you’ll excuse me …”

“Please wait,” he said softly, and placed a hand upon her arm. “I haven’t stopped thinking about … our encounter. I wanted to say sorry again. I really shouldn’t have made fun of you like that. Accept my apology, I pray you.”

She looked at him. Really, his beard was so terribly well-groomed. Oiled as well, she had no doubt. Once more, he wore a cut-off workout shirt, this one scooped also at the neck, where it displayed his fine collar-bones, golden-tanned, gleaming with perspiration. His bare arms were … very very finely-muscled. Nothing exaggerated, not a body-builder’s look: rather, toned, sculpted, like a dancer’s. His tattoos were black curves of vaguely Celtic, tribal designs. His face was open and guileless. She tried to look away, and could not.

“Maybe you’ll let me make it up to you? Buy you a terrible coffee from the machine in the staff-room?”

“I might permit it,” she allowed.

“Tell me your name at least! I know I can find it on the roster, but I suppose we are some three hundred teachers here, and it might take me a while ...”

“Eliza. Eliza Harding. Department of Art Magic.”

“I’m Bertrand Pozzo. Postulant in Energy Work. Enchanté …” he took her hand, and for a terrible moment she thought he was going to kiss it, but he did not. The arch look he gave her when he said “enchanté” … that was enough. She held onto his hand for, she suddenly realised, quite a bit too long, and then dropped it like a dead fish. He gave an impish grin, and jogged backwards towards his class.

“See you around, Mademoiselle Eliza,” he called. She smiled a quick tight smile back at him, turned on her heel, and fled.

The fourth chapter in a continuing serial novel, The Department of Whimsical Enchantment … Find the first part here: Chapter I, the second part here: Chapter II, and the third part here: Chapter III …

What if we combined Dark Academia Romantasy with a School for Teachers of Magic, set in France, with all the soul-destroying bureaucracy, petty rivalries, and obscure rules that nobody ever tells you that that implies …? Well. I suppose you’re about to find out! Please subscribe to receive the ongoing updates!

The story so far: Elizabeth Harding, a young English woman, finds herself - not totally of her own full volition - in a teacher-training programme for Functionary Magicians of the Imperium of the Unseen in Bordeaux, France. Hi-jinks, obviously, ensue …

The door opened, and a thin, pale woman with a cloud of woolly grey-blond hair peeked around it. “Oh. Nick. I suppose I must be in the right place then. Sorry I’m late, I was picking figs.” She floated in, placed her laptop bag on the desk, and looked around at the class.

Antoinette was of an indeterminate age, somewhere between thirties and forties, and wore a simple dark blue-green shift dress and flip-flops. She pushed her wild mass of hair back from her face and nodded at them. “Nice to meet you all. I’ll be telling you a little bit about the support services and how to take care of yourself and your students. There’ll be a more detailed seminar on this later in the term, but for now I just want to make you aware of a few things that you’ll need to know. Let’s see; I’ve got a PowerPoint …” She took out her computer and looked for where to hook it up to the projector. Charlie caught Elizabeth’s eye and mouthed “POWER-POINT! OOOH!” Elizabeth chuckled behind her hand.

“Not always easy, getting the technology to work, is it? Nick, this is supposed to be your thing, where’s the HDMI cable?” Nick gallantly, but half-heartedly, rummaged around behind and under the desk. “You’ll notice,” continued Antoinette, “that it’s a bit difficult to connect to the wi-fi at the Institut … To log in, you need to use a fingertip sensor to offer a drop of blood every time. You can get an external sensor that connects to a USB port, like this …” she held up the device. “Apparently, they can also run on sweat or tears, but I’ve never been able to get that to work. Best is just to use your own phone as a hotspot. Although, most of the Institut is a network dead-zone … Ah, there we go!” The projector was on, and her screen gradually coalescing out of the mist.

The title of her presentation was “Institute for the Instruction of Imperium of the Unseen Functionary Magicians – Support Services” … It was simple, clear, and as she clicked through the slides, things appeared and were added-to in logical and easy-to-parse fashion. Elizabeth could almost feel a gasp of relief from the class at being shown something that was intended to be understood. The woman’s accent was a soft Lancashire one, her timbre pleasant to the ear, which also helped.

“So, my name is Antoinette Lovelace; you might as well call me by my work-name, ‘Nettle’ … Oh, did you do the bit about names yet, Nick?” She turned to her colleague, who was sitting to one side and looking at his phone.

“What?” he looked up. “Oh, the names. No, I didn’t. We can do that now. Where’s the sheet?” He cast about, and found it abandoned on a front desk on one side of the room, having done the rounds up and down the class to be signed. He snatched it up and flourished it.

“Yeah! Should have mentioned this earlier. Before you start school in a few days, you’re going to have to make a few decisions on how you present yourself. You’ll be hearing more about that. For now, we need to talk about your names. How many people here are already using a magical name rather than their given name?” Some hands went up. “You’ll want to think about that. As I mentioned earlier, you’ll do well to scrub your online presence of all mention of your given name, and any social media accounts will need to be completely anonymised. It’s important. Not everyone goes in for that ‘True Name’ stuff, but let’s just say, you wouldn’t hand someone who wishes you ill a lock of your hair or some toenail-clippings, so best to keep your True Name out of their mouths.”

Antoinette followed up. “It’s also an important part of how people see you, how they respond to you, now that you’ll be not only a magician, but a teacher of magic on behalf of the Mysterium, in public, as it were. Most of us find it useful to adopt a nom de l’ombre, a shadow-name, in the vein of a nom de plume, nom de guerre, nom de scène … and for much the same reasons as those are used. However, some people find also that their given name already has the right energy and aura, and that it is even more powerful to embrace it and use it openly. It’s a bold move. Maybe not for beginners. Right Nick?” She smiled wryly at him.

“Yes, thanks Nettie.” (they noticed he neither called her by her given name, ‘Antoinette’, nor by her magical name, ‘Nettle’, but by another diminutive … a sign of intimacy, or an attempt at dominance?) “Personally, myself, I used my own name: ‘Nicholas Graves’, or ‘Mister Graves’, is already ideal for the kind of magician I am. I suppose I should thank my parents for their foresight – literally, haha. Now, let’s go through the list. If I mispronounce your name, don’t bother to correct me, I genuinely don’t care …” He ran his finger down the sheet. “Now let’s see.”

“Sibilla. You’ve just written that. Is that your real name? Almost too on the nose for that, I suppose.”

“Of course. Why would it not be?” She stared at him, deadpan.

“And what’s your surname?”

“My … my nick-name?”

“No, sorry, your family name. Do you … have one?”

“Cupido. Sibilla Cupido.”

“Okay. Sibilla …” he properly pronounced the Italian double-l just as she had. “And you mentioned that you’re specialised in seership … right. I mean. Perfect. Moving on.”

“Next, we have Fatoumata Sarr. Your given name?”

“It is,” she confirmed. “And my mother is just known as ‘Mama Sarr’ … She is well-known, by that name; one of these days, I hope I will inherit it.”

“That’s good,” said Nettle. “If your name indicates lineage or inheritance, it can be significant to keep it, and to live up to it. I’m sure you will.” She beamed encouragingly at Fatoumata.

“Next,” said Nick. “Ambrosius Aurelianus de la Roz. Bloody hell, that’s a mouthful! Don’t tell me that isn’t a shadow-name …”

“As it happens, no,” said Ambrosius. “That’s my birth-name. My parents … thought I would be the fulfilment of an ancient prophecy … so …”

“Ah I see,” said Nick. “Ouch, mate. Many such cases. Anyway. Moving on.”

“Charlie Kowalski. Given name?” he pointed at her, the elfin fuchsia-haired alt-girl, who gave him a long, cool look back.

“Yup. Well, my parents called me ‘Charlène’. I chose ‘Charlie’, as it fits my persona better. I think ‘Charlie Kowalski’ sounds like a post-apocalyptic-punk wasteland-warrior. Like Tank Girl, you know?”

Nick’s face brightened. “Yes! Wow, spot-on. Love Tank Girl. I used to collect the original strips in Deadline …”

“Course you did, Nick,” laughed Nettle. “Because you’re so old … Yes, Charlie: good name, and you worked with what you already had to sharpen the persona you wanted to project. Nice.”

She took the clipboard with the list on it and carried on from where he had left off.

“Malachi MacGill. Ah, yes. There you are,” she looked at him, with a hard-to-read expression, somewhere between interest and apprehension. “Yours is a chosen name, I’ll wager.”

The man straightened up in his chair, and seemed to look wistfully into the distance, the past. “I have had many names. This is merely the one I have settled upon for the moment …”

“Okay, good for you! Moving on,” Nettle swiftly passed to the next person. If Elizabeth wasn’t mistaken, Malachi looked slightly put-out at not being asked anything further about his obviously extensive Lore. He crossed his arms and looked at the ceiling, possibly counting Invisible Things.

“Elizabeth Harding; given name, I presume?” Nettle looked up from the clipboard and found her gaze when she raised her hand. “What do you go by?”

“Yes, that’s my birth-name,” she said. Her mother used to say to her that it was a name that could lend itself to many personae: she could be Elizabeth, or Ellie, or Liz, or Lizzie, or Beth, or Betty … She had experimented, just a little, trying on these various selves, seeing which one she might recognise as her. “At Oxford, everyone called me ‘Liz’. And then, in Paris, they pronounced it the French way and called me ‘Lise’ [Leez] … So, I know it’s not very magical, but …”

Nick interrupted her: “Bloody right it isn’t very magical. ‘Liz Harding’ sounds like a Guardian columnist who does TV reviews and occasional think-pieces about influencers. We can do better than that.” He mused for a moment. “Now, Eliza Harding, that sounds like the name of one of the accused in a seventeenth-century witch-trial. Or like a nineteenth-century spirit-medium and campaigner for Women’s Suffrage …”

She looked at him – he looked pleased with himself, as ever – and turned it over in her mind: ‘Eliza Harding’. Yes, she realised. Yes. She spoke up quietly. “I like it. Thank you.”

“Okay, Blondie. I mean, Eliza. I told you we’d get on well.” He winked at her, and she suppressed a shudder of cringe. Or of something.

“Next then,” said Nettle. “Rima El Khoury. Your given name, or your chosen name?”

“Both.” Rima stated it, bluntly. “They gave me this name, and then I took it. It is not the name I was born with, but it is the name I earned. Long story.”

“That sounds good,” beamed Nettle. “You’ll have to tell us some time! I’d love to hear more about that. All of you, in fact. How you got your names, how you chose them, what they mean. Maybe as part of a little presentation about yourselves for next week? We need to really get to know each other, as we’ll be working quite a lot together. What about … Mercurio?”

Mercurio gave a flourishing bow. “My nom de scène, and my magical name, of course; I had another name, once. But that was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead.” They stood, and intoned sonorously, one arm held up: “I am become Mercurio, Employer of Words! … That other name and self is written now in the Book of Dead Names; however: that is not dead which can forever lie, and with strange play-on-words, a name may die.” Mercurio performed a reverence, arms spread to the sides, and Eliza found herself among those who broke out in spontaneous applause. The words had been declaimed with such theatricality that it only seemed fit. Nettle had clapped along, in delight; Nick had not.

“Oh, marvellous! That’s brilliant,” said Nettle. “You must be the one from the family of travelling performers!”

“Tis myself,” confirmed Mercurio.

“Well,” Nettle continued. “A good example of how the taking of a name can be about more than just one’s magical persona, but also one’s deeper identity. Not every mundane name becomes a Dead Name, but when one becomes truly Other than what one was, one can choose to bury it, as you demonstrate.”

“Reminds me, also,” said Nick. “If anyone is inspired by all of this to actually go in search of a new nom de l’ombre – I mean, ideally, it involves a whole quest and personal mythology, dovetailing with the other mythoi one adopts – as is obviously the case for Mercurio here – but sometimes it can just be research and leg-work, and finding le mot juste; in that case, I suggest consulting the Pseudonomicon: there’s a copy of it in the Institute’s library, if you can find it. It gives lists of magicians’ names in France going back to the First Imperium, when it became obligatory to be officially registered. There are also multiple appendices which give you methods of ‘finding’ your name: using methods astrological, elemental, mythological, alchemical, botanical, cryptozoological, numerological, tarological, teratological, geomantic, necromantic, New Romantic … the whole lot. Especially useful are the etymological tips and tricks – they don’t call them ‘tips and tricks’, obviously, this is a grimoire, but you know what I mean. The registry is particularly handy – not easy to use, it runs to about forty-two volumes now – to make sure that your chosen nom de l’ombre is not currently in use: and to make sure that if anyone has borne it before, you can accord your actions and persona with theirs, maybe even ask their shade, or their descendants, for permission. Also, I shouldn’t need to say this, but the world does not need another ‘Morrigan StormRaven’ or whatever, so don’t go all ‘American Wiccan’ on us, yeah?”s

“You really don’t like Wiccans, do you?” Charlie asked. Nick pantomimed whistling and looking around with his hands in his pockets, nothing to see here …. Charlie added “… or Americans …” in a mutter.

“Well! Thank you, Nicholas, that was … exhaustive!” Nettle went on, brightly. “Now, sorry, where were we? Who’s left? Next, we have … Mitra Mardévirin. Is that your given name?”

“No,” said Mitra, with a slight toss of his long, black hair. “I took that name when I moved to the Métropole. A reminder of my heritage and culture, both from India and from the Île Bourbon.”

“Perfect,” said Nettle. “And then Lamia Talafsa?”

“My name is the one I was given. But, it just so happens …”

“Yes. Lamia works beautifully. Good,” said Nettle.

“I do have another name, within Candomblé,” said Lamia. “A shadow-name I couldn’t even mention, unless to initiates.”

“And good for you,” said Nick. “But you’d wanna watch that: don’t be too overt about being initiated or practicing in other traditions. Non-French ones. Or, I should say, non-Mysterium ones. Looking at you here too, Ambrose. It won’t be to your advantage.”

Ambrosius cleared his throat and shifted in his seat.

“Then we’ve got … Morgane Astete. Your given name?” asked Nettle.

“It is!” beamed Morgane. “And I’m very fond of it. Of course, it’s magical too.”

“Of course,” said Nettle. “And finally, we have …” she looked around, puzzled. “Cécile Vô Danh …? Is she …?”

As everyone looked around, Eliza suddenly realised that she hadn’t seen Cécile for a while, but just as she was looking, suddenly there she was, sitting at the back behind her laptop screen. She was almost sure that she hadn’t been there a moment ago. It was entirely possible that she hadn’t wanted to be there, and so, effectively, was not.

“Oh, there you are! Is that your original name?”

“Mostly.” She offered, laconically.

“It’s just that …” Nick started. “Cécile … it’s just very … ordinary, isn’t it? What does the rest mean?”

She rolled her eyes in ennui. “My parents wanted me to have a very ordinary name. Because they wanted me to be French. I was called Cécile Vô. But I go by ‘Vô Danh’, in my work. It means ‘nobody’, or ‘nameless’ … Because I have had to learn to be no-one.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Nick, clearly, and uncharacteristically trying to win her back. “That’s really cool though. ‘The Nameless’ in Vietnamese is pretty bad-ass …”

Cécile just turned away and sighed in quiet exasperation. Eliza looked closely: was Nick … slightly blushing? Surely not!

“Okay!” Nettle swirled her hand over them and pulled it back, as if to net and gather their attention, which it did. “Now that that’s done –”

“Hey!” It was Gustave.

“Oh, sorry Gustave. Forgot about you. Well, we’ve been over this last year, haven’t we?”

“I told you Gustave,” said Nick, shaking his head. “It would be a lot better if you went with ‘Gustav’ without the ‘e’ at the end, but you didn’t listen. And now look! Back to square one!”

Nettle tutted and said something very quiet to Nick, and Gustave hung his head in grief and shame. Elizabeth’s heart went out to him, but then, like everyone else, in a moment she passed on to other things.

Nettle took up the presentation once more. “Now, that’s good, it was very important to talk about that. There’ll be more where that came from. Particularly for you lot, as teachers of Art Magic, we want you to be highly conscious of your projected persona, how you present yourself. I know that all of you must be artists of some kind, but not all of you will have been performers. And as teachers, that’s a huge part of the battle: performance and theatrics. And of course, that really takes a lot out of you. I’m here to talk to you about that: about taking care of yourself, your physical and mental health, and that of the pupils in your care. I’ve been fighting for five years to get them to include a unit on care and well-being, and this is the first year we’re doing it. They’ve only given me a couple of sessions with you, but we’ll see what we can do. I’ll be your referent for this sort of thing.

“As I said, my name is Antoinette Lovelace, and my title is more properly Doctor than Magistra: I have a doctorate in Physick from Old Holloway, near London. That means that when I’ve been placed in mundane schools, I’ve most often taken on the overt role of school nurse, school psychologist, school counsellor: I’m really a bit of all three. I specialised in Pharmakeia, but I’ve also worked quite extensively in Alchemy and Astrology. And I was lucky enough to be able to apply some hereditary gifts as well, which are very useful in my work: in little miracles – laying-on-of-hands, that sort of thing – Thaumaturgy. Jack-of-all-trades, you might say.”

“Better than Trade-of-all-jacks …” muttered Nick, sotto voce. Nettle shot him a Look, and Eliza flinched at the crudeness of it, but when she looked around, only Malachi’s raised eyebrows seemed to indicate having understood. Nettle went on:

“I do have an office up at the Château, which you are welcome to try and find if you ever need help, or resources, or just someone to chat with about what’s going on, have a cup of tea … My door is always open. Sadly, I can’t tell you exactly where my door is, as it keeps changing. They didn’t give me a stable address, so to speak. I’m not sure they actually want people to be able to find me. I’ll put my email address in the PowerPoint, which I’ll send on to all of you anyway. I may be able to guide you through the maze to find me, if you need to see me …

“Point is, this can be a very testing year, as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now. I’m sure you all knew this to begin with, but I cannot stress enough: it’s tough, and you don’t need to feel like you’re facing it all alone. You will be each other’s best resources, each other’s best allies. Please do your utmost to make and keep connections between you. It’s vital to your getting through the year in the best way possible. I’ll also be doing a talk to the wider cohort, all Domains, about ‘L’école ésotérique inclusive’, and about psychological well-being for teachers and students. We’ll be talking about disability, neurodivergence, gender, all of that. I’ll be bringing in other specialists. These are very real issues, obviously, and it’s great that we’re finally having these conversations.”

Fatoumata raised her hand. “Will we be talking about race and ethnicity in the Mysterium system, or …?”

Nettle bit her lip. “That’s … a very good question. Of course, the Imperium does not recognise ‘ethnicity’ or immigrant origins in census figures. And whether we should is … We should certainly talk about it. We should.” Fatoumata slowly lowered her hand, and slowly nodded. She understood.

“Now, the next thing I want to move onto –” Nettle began, but then the door burst open, seemingly of its own accord, and showed a silhouette in the entrance, against the silver late-afternoon light: a tall woman with very long flowing hair. She moved into the room, and Eliza, for a moment, seemed to see her black hair floating around her, as if she were underwater, her arms waving, undulating … and then the impression was gone.

The personage who entered was grand and elegant, wearing a black dress, black tights in despite of the weather, high heels. Her face was regal and commanding, with golden skin and very dark eyes and brows: she gave an impression of some hard-to-pin-down origin; her features could have been Magrébi, Middle Eastern, Central Asian. She stood behind the desk, her head high, imperious, and looked at them all a long, long moment. As she approached, Nettle had shut her laptop and backed away. Nick seemed to sink into his corner. She took up all the space; she absorbed all the oxygen.

At length, Nettle slunk forward, and began: “Class, I’d like to introduce you to –” The woman silenced her with a commanding gesture.

“I am Her Eminence Arch-Quaestor Suraya Merkandi!” Her voiced pierced every corner of the room, and resonated back. Her Voice, one might rather say. Or did she just sound like this all the time? Eliza looked around: everyone seemed to almost shrink behind their desks; their attention was rapt, and frozen. “I am the Chief of the Inquisitorial College of Aquitania, and as such, your Fate is in my hands! Your final trials, observed while conducting a class, shall be performed by myself or one of my team. We are five. You shall learn to know us better …” She trailed off, and her eyes widened, just ever so slightly. She was staring at Malachi, who sat more or less in the middle of the room. “… yoouuuuuu …” she hissed, and suddenly her hands were raised to waist height, fingers splayed, palms down, as if in readiness for … one knew not what.

“Yes, Suraya, it is I,” said Malachi, loudly and clearly, sitting up very straight. “Or should I call you, ‘Your Eminence Arch-Quaestor Merkandi’…?”

She slowly lowered her hands. “You should. I’ll wager, you will not. I cannot say it is good to see you, old friend.”

He answered: “I can only say, you have not changed a bit.”

And they remained like that, on guard, each assaying the other, for a moment that seemed to stretch into Eternity. If something other passed between them, than their crackling gaze, then it was in secret, and in a silent language no-one else there knew.

§§§

Eliza headed for Home … (‘Eliza’, she repeated to herself, in the train … ‘Eliza’, she tried on, like a new dress she was not sure of. ‘Eliza’: a gift from a man she was not sure of, neither. It felt, somehow, good upon her skin: better than any other version of her given name had, or any other byname she had been given) … the train from Bordeaux Saint-Jean would take just over an hour: she arrived at a moment where she had forty-five minutes to wait, and spent them at the rather grand bistro across the way, drinking a citron pressé and watching the world go by. She had not yet found accommodation in the City, and so must return to where she was staying, with her Wonderful Wicked Uncles.

Uncle Harry came to the station to drive her back the twenty-five minutes to their place. The light now was fading, as it did earlier and earlier in these early-Autumn days; she had ridden the sunset home, turning the sky red, out of which she fled, through the hills, the vines, the little towns and tumble-down farms of stone and ochre tiles. She played ‘Cybèle’s Reverie’ by Stereolab on repeat, as seemed most fit: she set an alarm for five minutes before her stop. She fell asleep, the flickering landscape flying by. She awoke, when it was near-dark, and she was nearly Home.

When they arrived at Lammas House, Uncle Harry – tall and saturnine, dark looks of an ageing matinée idol – seemed to half lift her from her seat; she felt like a little child at the end of a long Summer’s day, dozing off on the car-ride home. He picked her up and carried her, half-asleep – or so it seemed. The house windows glowed amber in the dusk. Soft music playing; dinner would be cooking. Uncle Trevor, brewing up a storm. Harry brought her to her room, and whispered: “You go straight to sleep now, my love, if you wish. But if you’re able, Trevor will so want to hear about your day …” He laid her down upon the softest eiderdown, and kissed her forehead, and retreated through the door he left ajar.

After a few moments of suspension in that delicious in-between – day and night, sleeping and waking, hunger and satiety – she wriggled herself into wakefulness, and went down to the bright kitchen to regale them, to be regaled, with food, with comfort, and with love.

Later, beneath the willow-trees at the bottom of the garden, by the stream, she wandered with her feet bare and felt the moonlight upon her skin. She counted blessings, questions, things to-be-done, things known and things unknown. She thought of all she’d seen and done. And her Wicked Uncles, for their part, watched her slim bright phantom wander in the shadows there, and thought of how she reminded them of their dear departed, their beloved, her mother.

The third chapter in a continuing serial novel, The Department of Whimsical Enchantment … Find the first part here: Chapter I and the second part here: Chapter II

What if we combined Dark Academia Romantasy with a School for Teachers of Magic, set in France, with all the soul-destroying bureaucracy, petty rivalries, and obscure rules that nobody ever tells you that that implies …? Well. I suppose you’re about to find out! Please subscribe to receive the ongoing updates!

After lunch, when the elusive others had rejoined them, they returned to the low stuffy pre-fab (again, Elizabeth was not sure exactly how many had been missing, how many they were … There was always that eerie phenomenon in magical groups of there being just one more person than there should be with you, or one fewer person than you might hope … The number of the group was never quite stable; not all of its members could be counted upon to be entirely corporeal, entirely present, all the time). The sky overhead had cleared; the blue empyrean rained a hotter atmosphere down upon them. As they filed in, they saw a tall, scruffy man standing at the desk at the front; he wore a corduroy jacket, despite the weather, over an ironic graphic t-shirt; his hair was dark and tangled, his trousers skinny, his boots pointy. He did not look up as they found their places, and not even then: several moments passed, as he appeared to consult his notes, in despite of their presence and their waiting. Elizabeth judged him to be mid-thirties, pale skin, good cheekbones, unshaven but in a ‘just-so’ manner: he was, like a Wizard, precisely as unshaven as he chose to be, neither more, nor less. His hair, it had to be admitted, did flop particularly well, just over one temple, just so. However, it was clear that he was arrogant and haughty, merely from the way he stood. Ugh. She hated him already.

Finally, after an almost intolerable interval, the new Instructor (one presumed) raised his head, and appeared to notice the gathered student-teacher-magicians for the first time.

“Oh! Art all here, who art here? Hands up anyone who’s absent!” he declaimed, in self-regarding tones. “I have a – what’s the word – a feuille d’émargement here, which I’ll pass around. I can’t be expected to learn all your names right off the bat …”

Immediately, Elizabeth rolled her eyes to herself; she couldn’t stand it when Anglos pretended they had forgotten the English terms for common phrases: she herself would immediately have proposed “sign-in sheet”, or “attendance sheet”, and foregone the pantomime. But oh yes, he was so assimilated, so Frenchified, wasn’t he. She crossly crossed her arms, and looked for validation to Morgane who was sitting to her left: Morgane was all eyes and ears, her pen at the ready to take notes, hanging on his every … Le Sigh. The Instructor proceeded.

“So, little intro, the name is Nicholas Graves. You can call me Nick. Or, some of my friends call me ‘Rob’. For ‘Robber’.” He paused, and raised an eyebrow quizzically. Nobody reacted, except Elizabeth, who let out an involuntary groan. He pointed finger-guns at her.

“Blondie, shoot. You get it?”

Very unwillingly: “Nick Graves; Grave Robber,” she sighed. There was no audible sign of anyone else grasping the feeble joke.

“Boom.” He nodded. “You and I are going to get on fine, Blondie. The rest of you, try to keep up …” He twirled a chair down with a practiced sweep, planting it, its back facing the class, and straddled it. Ugh. “So. Where to begin? Where to begin, indeed …”

To Elizabeth’s ears, he sounded like a posh public-school boy, with a veneer of Estuary English overlaid, to take the curse off. She knew his Type; Oxford had been riddled with them. It was all she could do not to mime sticking her fingers down her throat and retching, to Morgane, but the latter seemed still rapt, her full attention on their Instructor. Don’t be childish, she thought. There is always Something to Learn, even from people who are Wrong, in every way.

“Few words of warning, this is important: some of you will not make it to the end of the year. Feature, not a bug. It’s baked into the programme. Don’t take it badly. I’ll put this bluntly, because they won’t tell you until it’s too late: not everyone is cut out to be a magician, let alone to teach magic. You know the old saying, ‘Those who can’t do, teach’. Well, you may not have heard the next bit: ‘Those who can’t teach, teach teachers.’ Worth bearing in mind, for all you’re about to undergo. Bit of soul-searching might be in order: if you don’t think you’re up for this, if you have the slightest doubt, run away now. The Trials and Ordeals are bad enough – you know a bit about that, you’ve got the Magistère already. But imagine: all of that, plus you have to deal with teenagers on a daily basis. Everyone’ll say, ‘oh yes, but you get good holidays!’ Don’t be fooled. The holidays are rubbish. Every six or seven weeks you get two weeks off, to barely recover from your imminent mental and spiritual breakdown, catch up on your marking and your planning, vaguely think of doing your little Wiccan Wheel of the Year ceremony,” – dripping with scorn – “give up on that, then start all over again. Every Summer, you get just enough time to start to relax and seriously question your life-choices, and then you … start all over again. I would be delighted if two or three of you were to come up to me after class and quietly tell me that you were quitting. Of course, the only ones who would have the self-awareness to say that are exactly the ones who actually do have what it takes. Dunning-Kruger is a bitch, when it comes to magicians. The worse you are, the less you realise it, the more likely you are to experience self-induced magical psychosis or demon-possession. But don’t worry. It’ll catch up with you.” He paused and looked around. “Anyone want to run screaming from the room yet? No? Good. Let’s get on with it.

“The ‘Grave Robber’ line was supposed to be my segue, but I fumbled it: so, a few words about myself. I’m not a specialist in Enchantment, originally. My research and practice has mostly been in Necromancy and Divination: the Dark Arts and Fortune-Telling. So yeah … Sorcery. Burned at the stake stuff. The reason I’m here though: most of the faculty at the Institute are either stuck in the 1950s, or are literally from the 1950s, or before. Some, long before. And France, as you know, lags about twenty years behind the Anglophone world both in pedagogy and magical research. I’ve developed a handy sideline – strings to my bow, you know how it is – in Chaos Magic and Technomancy. Just what I’ve picked up along the way. Both of which they consider new-fangled nonsense. I’m here to tell you, you won’t get away without significant investment in both. You may not identify as a ‘Chaos Magician’ of any stripe – I know, it’s seen as a bit passé for practitioners who actually live in the 21^st century – but it’s an indispensable tool-kit. Consider it an operating system on which you can run whatever Specialist Domain you want; it allows you to customise and switch-up the different bits and bobs, as-and-how. I know it sounds a bit nineties, but you need to be able to hack your magic, jail-break your paradigms. And then, Tech-Mage stuff, well, I don’t need to tell you, the world we’re living in, which is more and more virtual, this stuff is key. Most people around here don’t even Know their Memes; with your students, you’ll have to, or they’ll be unleashing brain-rot hexes on you before you can say ‘boo!’. You need to be thinking about AI; constructing awakened Servitors to do your homework for you, and avoiding falling into the Sorcerer’s Apprentice Mickey Mouse Trap; you need to be building out fully-modded brain-wave-responsive autonomous-environment Memory Palaces in the Cloud; your online presence – which, by the way, you have to make completely anonymous as of yesterday – has to be a multifoliate, rhizomatic Hypersigil, working to create your chosen reality; you need to be … Techgnosis-maxxing …”

He paused, as if waiting for … applause? Gasps? Oohs and ahhs? Elizabeth didn’t know. She quickly scanned the room: fully half of her fellow students appeared to be engaged and taking notes. Though it was possible that the laptop kids at the back were playing Tarot Solitaire or sourcing magical materia on eBay. She caught Lamia’s eyes, which were cast quickly up to the heavens when they met Elizabeth’s: good to know, someone else who wasn’t buying this. Malachi too seemed sceptical: he had a leather-bound notebook out, and was assiduously taking notes with a silver-blue fountain pen – she could see though, from where she sat, that in fact he was constructing a very elaborate doodle: an Activated one, if she was not mistaken. Rima was slouched very far down in her chair, overtly scowling, and tapping her fingers impatiently on her (closed) notebook. The others were all at least affecting a polite attention.

Ambrosius raised his hand. “So you’re saying that we need to be studying things outside the Domain of Enchantment then? I mean, I did a module on Chaos Magic in undergrad, but …”

“I’ll stop you there, mate.” Nick pinched his temples with a slightly pained expression. “First of all, yes. That’s a tip kids, write it down. Just because you’re specialists in Enchantment, it doesn’t mean you can completely let go of everything you learned for the Magistère trials. At this point, everyone in this room is considered to have reached the level of Adept; we expect you to be conversant in the primary Paths and Pillars of all of the Domains. You will have been tested on them; you passed the tests. And don’t be fooled: very few of you are going to end up in establishments where you are only teaching your Specialist Domain; you may not even end up in schools that are Fully Operative. You mustn’t forget how few there are: mostly, to get into one of them is something that you manage towards the end of your career. No, you’ll often find yourself working in a mundane school, with only one or two colleagues, if that, that are covertly teaching magic: their exoteric roles are those of maths teachers, PE teachers, school nurses or psychologists – or, for Enchanters, most probably foreign languages, maybe art, maybe French. Remember this. Not everyone gets to go and work in Lycée Albertus Magnus, or at Saint-Germain …”

Charlie desultorily raised her fist. “Shout out. Whoop whoop. Alma Ma-terrrr …”

“Oh you went there?” Nick managed to look both slightly impressed and mostly sceptical. “Nice one. Anyway. As I was saying … Another thing you need to know: terminology.” He stood from his chair, and as he talked began to scribble words, arrows, circles on the white-board with a faint red marker, to illustrate his propositions. “I know quite a few of you haven’t been studying or teaching in France in the last few years. Those of you who have, bear with me, no spoilers please! The last-but-one Hierophant of the Mysterium, Apollyon de Vermiis, brought in some ‘sweeping reforms’ last year” – he did the air-quotes – “of the magical Baccalauréat, as well as the hierarchy, the admissions to higher level institutions, and the ‘accepted nomenclature’” – he did it again – “for the magical Domains, Disciplines, etcetera. You’ll have to make sure you’re au fait with all of that. Everything’s available on the Bulletin Officiel du Mystérium, but that’s about eighty-thousand pages or so. I’ll be brief: they wanted to bolster the image of the French Fifth Imperium as the home of no-nonsense, rational magic. Very Cartesian, very logical, no superstition or mumbo-jumbo. So, whatever you do, try to avoid saying anything about deities, demons, angels, familiar spirits, fae-creatures, whatever. It’s expected that you will work with these entities, but anything other than a purely scientific catch-and-release for research purposes, or an instrumental relationship of task-oriented practical working, is not to be discussed openly. No religion in our magic, innit? You’ll be getting whole seminars on this, the question of Secularism: the Law of the Separation of Powers, splitting the Ecclesia, Mysterium, Imperium … I’m sure you all know this off by heart. Well, you’re going to have it hammered into you all over again.

“The other thing is, like I said, ‘correct terminology’ … Don’t go around calling yourself or anyone else a Witch, whatever you do. Definitely verboten … I know that in English, we’re still pretty loose about these things, but instead of referring to the Domain of ‘Sorcery’, you’ll want to talk about ‘Material Magic’, or ‘Practical Magic’; for the scientific and scholarly disciplines, you’ll want to call the general Domain ‘Theoretical Magic’, or ‘Experimental Magic’: even ‘Empirical Magic’ – I know that’s a bit of a contradiction, but hey, get used to it. And obviously, this being France, the ‘Hard Sciences’ of Magic are the ones who get all the funding, all the prestige, and all the babes … Joking about that last one.” He smirked around for a reaction, and, getting none, proceeded. “Don’t whatever you do, talk about ‘Spirit Magic’, or ‘Spirit-Work’; spirits are out, we don’t talk about them at all if we can help it. We all know they’re there, we work with them, we’re just too polite to mention it. Best practice: call it ‘Energy Work’ – or else, ‘High-Energy Magic’ has been gaining traction recently. Spirit is Energy, Energy is Spirit, that is all ye need to know on Earth, blah blah blah. As for actual spirits, well, they’ll bring in some American Plastic ‘Shaman’ once or twice a year to give it a bit of the ‘Reincarnated Indian Chief–Spirit Animal–Sage Smudging’ woo-woo – you have no idea how racist these people are, even I find them racist – and call it a day. Best not to think about it too much. Finally, your field is a problematic one: they tried to get away with calling it ‘Psychological Magic’, or even ‘PsyOps’, but obviously that doesn’t cover it. ‘Psychism’ is slightly better, but still, not a good global term. They were trying to align the four Domains with the Magical Models – Psychological Model, Technological Model, Energy Model, Information Model, and so on, but it doesn’t quite work. Anyway. I would avoid ‘Enchantment’ and ‘Envoûtement’; ‘Illusion and Influence’ isn’t bad; some occult linguists were trying to make ‘Modal Magic’ happen, as in ‘modal verbs’: possibility, probability, capability, obligation. But I told them, stop trying to make it happen, it’s never going to happen. ‘Art Magic’ is still pretty acceptable, as it makes a good cardinal division between Art Magic, Scientific Magic, Spiritual – sorry, Energy – Magic, and Craft Magic. But look. We’re getting bogged down. Maybe some of you know this stuff. Maybe you don’t. Just be aware: words have meanings, which have effects in the world. You’re magicians. You know that.” Nick ran a hand through his floppy curls. The board was now totally full of terms, bullet points, lines, circles, arrows, scribbles: it was almost entirely incomprehensible, and that was almost certainly quite on purpose. He murmured, almost to himself: “Ah, the Thin Red Line, the shortest distance between two unrelated concepts, red string on the cork-board, where the Secret History of the World takes shape …” He shook his head and cleared his throat. “Well then. Smoke-break, anyone?”

He fished a packet of Benson & Hedges from his jacket pocket and made for the door.

The group, slightly stunned by his lengthy tirade, seemed to gradually wake from their torpor and some rose to follow him, including Morgane. Elizabeth didn’t smoke, but she went out with her anyway, to stretch and blink in the rustling sun and shade, without. Nick was leaning insouciantly against a tree, looking at his phone and blowing plumes of smoke into the air around him. Its volutes seemed to swirl and catch the shafts of light between the trees, and Elizabeth wondered if he was giving it a little Smoke and Mirrors Glamour, just to look cool. No doubt.

“Well!” she turned to Morgane, who was vaping something fruit- and candy-flavoured. “That was all a bit … much, wasn’t it?”

Morgane smiled a coy smile. “Oh, he is a lot, isn’t he? I think he’s rather dreamy …”

Elizabeth wondered briefly if her friend had been learning her English from 1950s romance novels, but passed on. A few of the others had filtered out. Malachi was sitting on the picnic table, ostentatiously packing and then puffing on a pipe; Lamia came to join them, finishing an expertly-crafted roll-up. She gave Elizabeth a frank look.

“So what do we think about …?” she nodded towards Nick.

“I want to say at least he was better than what we had this morning, but I’m afraid I … don’t think I can,” said Elizabeth.

“Well, I liked him!” Morgane beamed, through a cloud of pink-smelling vapour.

Ambrosius joined them. “I though it was all very interesting,” he said. “I took a lot of notes. Not much we didn’t know before, but he has a way of putting it …”

Suddenly, Sibilla seemed to appear in their midst. She had a knack for this.

“He speaks the truth,” she intoned. “There are those among us, who shall not make it to the end. I have seen it.” Everyone just looked at her for a minute, then looked away, up, down, elsewhere.

“Um.” Ambrosius took up the suddenly-deflated conversation gamely. “Anyone see who we have next? What does it say on the time-table?” He took out his phone and thumbed through a carousel of open apps.

“Oh, is there an official time-table?” Elizabeth asked. “I didn’t get that information.”

“Yes, look here, on the Espace Numérique de Travail of the Institut; you should have received an email about activating it on your academic email address …”

Elizabeth had not seen it, and indeed had not managed to activate her academic email; the platform was not only archaic and user-hostile, but appeared to require five-step authentification, including a phrenology-scan, a certificate of good conduct from the Inquisitorial College of the Mysterium, a validation of one’s Imperial military service or exemption therefrom, and a genetic karyotype document proving claimed ancestral lineage by a sworn alchemical clerk. Maybe French magicians tended to have all of this documentation to hand at any given time – probably the case, considering – but she had been stuck for weeks in the Ninth Circle of Bureaucratic Hell trying to convince people at the end of crackling phone-lines that were only open forty minutes a day, or in impossible-to-find offices in warren-like bastions of the administration, that these documents and tests either didn’t apply to her, were unavailable to her, or were – allegedly – in the post, somewhere. Seeing her seething frustration, Ambrosius just sent her a screenshot of the time-table on the class WhatsApp group they had created over lunch. The next intervenor was to be, apparently, Magistra Antoinette Lovelace, on “Wellbeing and Safeguarding”. Elizabeth eyed the subject title sceptically.

“Wellbeing and Safeguarding …” she mused. “Not very French, is it?”

“Not very!” It was Nick; he had popped up beside her. “All the rage these days though. They do pick up on trends and fads from the Anglosphere. Eventually. This kind of health-and-safety, politically-correct, Woke nonsense. Sometimes I wish they would just stick to their dusty old ways. You knew where you stood then. Do you know what the French for “Care”, as a concept, is?” Everyone shook their heads. “It’s ‘Care’ … Typical that there’s no word for that in French … Actually, that brings me on to … Let’s get everyone back inside.” He pointed to the door. “Awright everyone! Back to work!”

The group assembled once more, Nick stood at the top of the class and cracked his knuckles, eager to get into it.

“So! Just been doing a bit of smoke-break thinking, as you do … While we’re waiting for my colleague Antoinette to arrive – lovely girl, you’ll like her – I thought I might just say a word about this: you know we’re supposed to conduct the majority of our training in English, as of this year. You, also, will be expected to do most of your teaching in English. Now, I know that not all of you were aware of this. It’s a decision that’s been taken just this year, at the Summer Conference of the Mysterium. See, they’re starting to finally admit that We Have a Problem. French – and I’m not telling you anything you don’t know – is just not an international language anymore. And French cultural influence has been on the wane for fifty years. As in art, so in magic, in particular Art Magic. I mean, can anyone name one single French writer that’s been actually influential internationally in the last … thirty years, let’s say?”

Mercurio raised their hand. “Michel Houllebecq?”

“Yes!” Nick pointed at them. “Bingo. And if you can imagine a more dis-Enchanted version of the world than his, please let me know. But if you had to name one single other French author who’s had any impact in thirty, forty, fifty years? There’s no-one. Nobel prizes notwithstanding.”

Charlie spoke up. “Hey! I like Annie Ernaux!”

“As you should!” crowed Nick. “She’s good! But she’s an example, just like all the ‘French Theory’ crowd you get if you go back fifty years – Lacan, Deleuze, Foucault, Derrida, Barthes, Baudrillard – of something that was initially great in French, and then got taken up, mistranslated, misunderstood, misused, by an Anglophone intelligentsia. She’s one of the ones who gave us autofiction, for fuck’s sake (pardon my French). But nobody outside the Academy cares about any of these things. France can still hold its own in certain areas of high culture: notably, cinema, haute couture, haute cuisine, gastronomy in general, even though they’re losing ground … And they are still doing okay in the sciences, and in artisanal work, craft, luxury hand-made goods, all that. What they realised though, is that it’s in this area of the arts that they’re really falling behind. And that goes double for the Magical Arts. These are the arts of seeming, of meaning, of communication, of poetry, of music, of entrancement and Enchantment. And they were nowhere. They used to treat Envoûtement, as I said earlier, as basically a kind of PsyOps thing, a branch of espionage, propaganda: influence, persuasion, disinformation, seduction, illusion, disguise; as a way of infiltrating, subverting, mind-controlling; a way of tipping the scales of Fate, of optimising strategy: a Great Game tradecraft Domain of Magic.

“The problem was, they had forgotten something: the point of Enchantment, no matter how you call it ‘Psychism’ or whatever, is to enchant. It had to have something more than utility; it had to also have Beauty. It had to also have humour. Do you know what the French word for ‘humour’ is …?” Everyone shrugged. “It’s humour. And it’s a loan-word from English. The French have no word for humour. Oh yes, they can be witty, diverting, amusing, all of that. But they’re just not very funny. It was British philosophers in the 17^th century in Paris who introduced them to the concept of ‘having a bit of a laugh’. And they thought, ‘ooh la la, what is theez strange theeeng called ‘hu-moour’…? And so, they adopted it. But they never quite got it right. As you no doubt are aware. Or maybe not, if you’re French. Anyway. Point is: the French have no word for ‘humour’. They have no word for ‘whimsy’. They have no word for ‘quaint’, or ‘queer’, or ‘odd’. These are fundamentally English things. And they are fundamental to the proper practice of Enchantment, as it would seem.”

He sat down on the desk at the front of the room, seemingly drained by this impassioned tirade. The postulants, this time, were wide awake. They looked around at each other. These were things they had also known, or thought of, but never perhaps so succinctly.

“France is tired,” he eventually went on. “The Imperium is tired. French is a language of the past, and they can’t stop dwelling in it. But they are going to try and start. And you lot are a part of the pilot programme: to regain influence and the illusion of grandeur on the world stage, we must be able to work in English. That’s why I’m here. That’s why you’re here. Everyone in this room speaks French, English, and at least one other language fluently. I checked. And that is why you have been chosen, among other things, to make up the first cohort of the ex-Hierophant’s Vita Nuova project. About which, more anon. Okay! Here’s Nettie.” He flourished a hand to the entrance.

The door opened, and a thin, pale woman with a cloud of woolly grey-blond hair peeked around it. “Oh. Nick. I suppose I must be in the right place then. Sorry I’m late, I was picking figs.”

The second chapter in a continuing serial novel, The Department of Whimsical Enchantment … Find the first part here: Chapter I

What if we combined Dark Academia Romantasy with a School for Teachers of Magic, set in France, with all the soul-destroying bureaucracy, petty rivalries, and obscure rules that nobody ever tells you that that implies …? Well. I suppose you’re about to find out! Please subscribe to receive the ongoing updates!

“Ah! Here are our young charges …!” said the taller of the two presumed instructorss.

“Here they are indeed!” said the other.

“Come, come! Shall we begin …?” again cried the taller.

They both shepherded their new students towards the doors – now wide open, as it appeared – of the pre-fab classrooms. Elizabeth, her new friend Morgane, and their new-found classmates, all gradually percolated in through the doorway, and to the low and gloomy room within. The way people placed themselves within the space was as interesting as usual, to Elizabeth: four of the younger student-teacher-magicians (did they know each other already?) sat in a row towards the back, in the middle, and took out their laptops – a barrier between them and the instructors; potentially a means to distract themselves from the intrusive content of the session. Other postulants arrayed themselves along the sides in ones and twos, leaving a distinct gap front and centre – just as their own students would do in turn. Just as they would do themselves, the instructors tried to beckon people to fill the empty rows, to sit in front; two or three people moved forward a row, or one seat closer to the centre. Elizabeth sat with Morgane on the far side of the room from the door, under the long, low windows, not too close to the front but not too far away either. As the two teachers busied themselves with their paraphernalia and a projector, Morgane turned to her new acquaintance.

“So! Are you English then?” she asked breathlessly, switching to that language. “I did my year as an auditrice at Canterbury, I loved it so so much …”

“I am. Is it that easy to tell?”

“Well, you do have a tiny accent. You speak French much better than my English. Where in England?”

“Oh, ‘oop North’ … I’m from Yorkshire, originally.”

“Yorkshire …! Brontës! Moors! … Puddings! Rippers!”

“That more or less sums it up, yeah.”

“Also, you do have that English style, you know. The way you dress.”

“Do I?” Elizabeth was never sure if being told she looked or sounded “English” was entirely a compliment. She decided to take it as one though. Morgane seemed to delight in their immediate rapport – indeed, Elizabeth observed, she seemed the kind of person to delight in all things. She herself was wearing a black vest-top, and a long, light skirt covered in dark flowers which enveloped her legs completely. She had a noticeable limp, and one leg seemed very stiff. Marking Elizabeth’s glance, she raised her skirt to show her left leg was in a complex, articulated metal brace.

“Yes, you see my robot leg! I’m a cyborg. A clanker. It counts as a disability – well, it is a disability – and I get extra points on my applications in the inter-academic and intra-academic movement …I’m thinking of getting my heart replaced with a steam-punk one with gears and valves. Maybe my brain too. O, to be fully inhuman …”

“I think about it all the time …” Elizabeth murmured as they both hushed and turned back to the front of the class, as the conveners began their welcome address.

The taller of the two instructors began.

“Now we are all here …” she turned to her colleague, and spoke sotto voce, in French. “Are we all here, did you take attendance?”

“I didn’t take attendance, did you take attendance?” the shorter one hissed back.

“Uh, Magistra Gertrude, we are thirteen postulants present, if it might help you,” it was a young man who spoke, dark floppy hair that fell either side of his face, hollow-eyed, gaunt-cheeked, sallow-skinned, haunted-looking.

“Ah! Gustave! Such a pleasure to have you back with us! Well, though I deplore the reasons, I applaud the outcome! Everyone, Gustave is repeating his postulant year, aren’t you Gustave?”

Gustave looked at the floor, and a flush of feverish embarrassment flared in his pallid cheek. He mumbled that it was enchanting to meet everyone (“enchanté” as a response to being introduced was such a very obvious and ancient joke to make among Enchanters that it had practically become a cherished convention among them. Notably, it is perhaps the only instance in contemporary French where the verb “enchanter” is ever used).

Gertrude recommenced: “Now that we are all here! I shall present ourselves: I am Gertrude de Javerzac” – Gertrude pronounced with the French ‘g’, as in ‘je’, making her name alliterative: ‘Zhertruuude de Zhaverzac’ – “Magistra of the Mysterium, Instructrix of the Académie of Aquitania; this is my colleague, Hortense d’Alembert, equally Magistra and Instructrix. We are your guides and teachers in this year as postulants that is ahead of you. Is it not, Hortense?”

“It is indeed,” Hortense wittered. “We shall accompany you through the … Trials and Tribulations! of this year to come. I remind you: you received the Magistère, all of you, at Midsummer this year; you have a year and a day to attain the Consecration; if you pass all of the tests, if you excel in all the tasks, if you successfully face all ordeals … You shall be Consecrated, and the Magistère shall be confirmed. If not, as you have been pre-warned, the Magistère, the Elixir that is in your blood, shall turn to poison … We do not need to tell you what shall be the result.”

“Now!” said Gertrude brightly. “Let us make a ‘tour of the table’ to present yourselves! We must know with whom we have affair! As we do, you shall speak in English … You are aware, without doubt, of the reasons for this choice.” She gestured at the closest student, nearest the door, on the side opposite to where Elizabeth and Morgane were sitting. “May you tell us of yourself!”

A petite girl in a halter-top and denim shorts, vivid fuchsia-dyed hair, septum piercing and other parts pierced as well, heavily-tattooed, glasses, took her cue: “I’m Charlie Kowalski, and I’m from here, from Bordeaux. I received the Magistère after my studies at Bordeaux-Mériadeck. Before that, I was at the Lycée Saint-Germain. Should I say more?”

“Perfect!” Gertrude waved her hand at her. “We shall learn further, by and by! Who is the next?”

“I’m Mitra Mardévirin,” said a young, dark-skinned man, with shoulder-length straight black hair. He was wearing a vintage skinny t-shirt and jeans. “I’m French, from the Île Bourbon. I went to the École Saint-Ange on the Island, and after that to Université de Paris–Nouvelle Athènes. That’s where I gained the Magistère, on my second attempt, this year.”

“Our pleasure! So nice to see the Citizens from Outremer come to join us in the Métropole,” beamed Hortense.

Next was the boy who had spoken up earlier, the student repeating the postulant year.

“Gustave Nádasdy,” he mumbled. “I gained the Magistère by the correspondence course of the Club Pythagore in Strasbourg. This is my second attempt at the postulant year. I was graciously allowed to try again.” He seemed mortified by it all. It struck Elizabeth that he looked not unlike the famous manic self-portrait by his namesake, Gustave Courbet. She kept it to herself though. It would be a palpable hit, if Morgane got the reference, but a signal embarrassment if she did not. The next candidate indicated by Gertrude’s long, imperious finger stood.

“Please allow me to introduce myself! I am Mercurio …! A Them of wealth and taste!” The speaker twirled; they were slender and dressed in tight black clothes and pointy shoes, with a page-boy haircut, giving them something of the air of a medieval squire, but drawn by Aubrey Beardsley. “My training was at the feet of my parents, who are Travelling Folk of the Carnavale, and I attended the École Paranormale Supérieure de Lyon, and then the Université de Bordeaux-Mériadeck, where I received the Magistère! My greetings, gentles all!” They swept a deep bow at the attendance, and then sat with some sort of flourish that just escaped the eye.

The following person did not rise nor raise her voice.

“Sibilla, I am called.” It was the older woman with the perfect ash-blond chignon and the stylish outfit. “I am from Siena, in Italia. I attend the Scolomancia, the École du Dragon, studying with the Solomonari in Romania. Now, I am here for other reasons. I am a Seeress, by profession. I see what will become.” A frisson ran through the room at the mention of the infamous Scholomance, and of the premonitory gift. This would be grist for future milling.

“My name is Lamia Talafsa,” said the next candidate, a woman in her forties with henna-bronze hair, a few tattoos, dark-rimmed glasses, dressed a little hippy-ish. “My origins are Algerian Kabyle, but I grew up in France. I studied at Invisible College London, and then I lived for quite a while in Brazil, where my husband is from. I was initiated into Espiritismo and Candomblé there, and I was an external candidate for the Magistère, which I gained this year.”

“Oh, an external candidate! Felicitations!” said Hortense. “Quite the achievement!”

The next postulant was a tall and muscular fellow, long blond hair gathered in a top-knot and flowing down his shoulders, well-trimmed beard framing a face of near-impossible handsomeness. Elizabeth simply thought: “Thor”, and that was that.

“I am Ambrosius Aurelianus de la Roz,” he rumbled, like a sportscar idling. “I was a pupil at the Collège de Brocéliande, and then the École Paranormale Supérieure de Paris. I gained the Magistère at my first attempt, this year.” Again, there was a little stir: Brocéliande was notoriously renegade, teaching the ancient Celtic ways of Druidry; despite all attempts to bring it to heel, it was a centre of heterodoxy in the lands under the sway of the Mysterium. Brittany, more than any other region, had retained some of its native character, language, and independence, in the face of the iron rod of the French Imperium.

“Cécile Vô Danh,” said a bored Asian-looking girl: dark hair and glasses, baggy grey minimalist clothes, somewhere between skater and dystopian drone. “My paternal grandparents were political refugees from Vietnam. My mother is from Essonne. My father is a wine-merchant. I’m an Enchantrix. What more do you want?”

“Oh, that will be eminently sufficient, my dear!” exclaimed Hortense. “Who shall be next? You? How about you?” She jabbed a little finger at the next postulant. It was the older fellow, somewhere in his forties perhaps, with the drooping moustache and little point of beard below his lower lip (he told Elizabeth later that this style was quite pleasingly called an Impériale), a head shaved to stubble, and a somewhat dandyish version of the garb of an archetypal “Professor”: a light check jacket, in deference to the season, a dark waistcoat with a pocket-watch and its chain hanging from the fob, a velvet tie.

“Malachi MacGill, by your leave,” he said. To Elizabeth’s ears, his accent was a refined and melodious Irish one. “I have been of the number of the Midnight Court; I am an initiate of the Temple of the Alchemical Rose; I was a Druid of the Comhaltas na bhFia Bairr in some olden days. I have been a Magister at the Faculty of Magical Arts at Université de Paris–Nouvelle Athènes. I have been all of these things. But I am no longer; and thus I submit myself to your good care.”

Here there was a significant stir. The two instructors shared a glance askance: they had been warned of his advent. They were not quite sure what to do with him. They swept the moment past with fluttering gestures.

“Oh how nice to have you! A British postulant, no less!” chirped Hortense.

“IRISH,” uttered Malachi, with a such leaden boom in his Voice, that made everyone in the room wince heavily at its impact.

“United Kingdom, I should say! Pardon me, pardon me!” squeaked Hortense.

“Thus spake Samuel Beckett: ‘Au contraire Madame, je suis irlandais’,” Malachi intoned. “You shall do me the courtesy of GETTING IT RIGHT.” He once more let a clang of force into his Voice, and the Instructrixes reeled back. This was really quite irregular. To employ one’s Guile and Wiles of Voice in a classroom situation – as the student – was just not done. Nevertheless, they passed on as if ‘twere naught.

“And you? Yourself? Please share!” Gertrude gestured at the following postulant, a young woman of thirty or so, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, with very black skin and high cheekbones, natural hair in two bunches at the sides of her head.

“Fatoumata Sarr. I’m from Paris. I learned from my mother, who was Marabout and Chief of her village in Senegal, and I attended the Collegium Invisibile Parisii. I attained the Magistère this year on my first attempt.”

“Well! Very nice. Let us pass on,” said Gertrude brightly, without further comment.

The next candidate looked somewhat secretly amused. She was another woman in her thirties, with dark hair, dark eyes, and lightly-freckled skin. She wore baggy shorts past the knee and an oversized basketball jersey.

“Rima El Khoury is my name. I’m originally from Lebanon. I worked at the Consulate of the Mysterium in Beirut for a few years, and then I pursued further studies at the Université de Bordeaux-Mériadeck. I received the Magistère for the first time this year.”

“Ah! Very good!” exclaimed Hortense. “And you? Tell us of yourself!” She gestured to Morgane, who pushed herself slightly awkwardly, but insistently, to her feet.

“I am Morgane Astete, and I am from the Basque Country. I learned at home from my mother, a hedge-witch, and I had no intention of attempting the Magistère, but she insisted that I should.”

“Did she say why?” inquired Gertrude.

“I didn’t get a chance to ask. She’s been dead seven years.”

There was a palpable lull. Morgane looked at her desk, and then sat abruptly down again with a just-audible clink of her leg-brace. Elizabeth grabbed her hand under the table and squeezed it. She whispered: “Me too. My mother. Seven years.” Morgane looked back at her, sidelong, and smiled a brief, tight smile.

“And you, Mademoiselle?” said Hortense with a sweeping-things-along-and-under-the-carpet gesture. She gathered the attention of the room and rolled it out in front of Elizabeth.

“Hello, All. My name’s Elizabeth Harding. It’s in my family: my dad’s a Cunning Man, and my mam was a Fairy Seer. They sent me to a Grammarye School in Yorkshire where I grew up. I got a scholarship to Wainscot College, Oxford, and then I came to prepare the Magistère at the Collège Invisible in Paris. I attained it this year.” She looked around, nodding at the others, as if to include them all in her achievement, which was quite fair: they had, all of them, or nearly, gained the Magistère this year.

“Wait, Elizabeth Harding, is that right?” Mercurio had theatrically whirled around in their chair. “Are you that Elizabeth Harding?”

“I can’t imagine how many others there are …” Elizabeth deflected.

“Yes! You’re the one who came first! The École Paranormale Supérieure de Lyon took most of the top-ten places; two were from Para’ Sup’ Paris. But first place was neither! A candidate we had never heard of! An English girl! So that’s you! Zounds! Well met then, O Vanquisher!” Mercurio swept a very elaborate bow towards Elizabeth, which gave the impression of a broad-brimmed long-plumed hat being involved, though it was not.

“Charmed, I’m sure!” simpered Hortense.

“Charmed, more than I can say!” Gertrude raised her. “Such an accomplishment! And for one who is not from the Système, who was not raised with the Méthode! How delightful!”

Elizabeth would have blushed, but she had thrown up a little wall of protective membrane around herself: not enough that anyone would notice; just enough to shield her from emotion. She stole a glance around at her classmates, who, she realised, were all still looking at her, as at some fantastic creature. An English-speaker who had braved and surmounted the ordeals of the French Magistère! Such a thing was unknown, and she knew it. Those who tried usually failed, sometimes spectacularly – sometimes mortally. The road to Hell was paved with nice young English or American girls who thought they could have a quirky, picturesque, bohemian life as an art-magician in Paris … Their frozen corpses were skated-upon by the sleds of homebound demons, trampled by the hooves of herds of Devil-Swine. It had not been her plan to stay in Paris, to stay in France; but her year as a lectrice had turned into two, had turned into starting a Research Masters. She had fallen in love: with the subject-matter, with the City and its graceful rituals – and, accessorily, with Pierre Pellegrin, cursèd be his name. If anything, it was his fault that she found herself where she was now, and in this fix. This was not where she was supposed to be, but damned if she wasn’t going to win at this too.

As the student-teacher-magicians of her cohort had introduced themselves, Elizabeth had been carefully cataloguing the information they gave; one of her teachers at the Grammarye School had told them, once, that the minds of worldly folk could only hold, at most, seven things in them at once; beyond that, all fell out, higgledy-piggledy; part of their training had been to do very much more than that. She engaged her practice of the Ars Memoria, and opened, in her Mind-Palace, a new room. Within it, in a third-floor addition to the East wing, in a series of alcoves, six to a side of the room, she placed a statue of each of her classmates, and gave them attributes that signified each piece of information that she had about them. At the end of the room, she placed upon a dais the figures of the Instructrixes, with their distinguishing features and what she had so far learned about them. As she set these things in place, she learned them, they became fixed within her Mind’s-Eye. They were Known. Thirteen of us, in total, she thought to herself. Are we a Coven? And who, then, shall be the High Priestess? Are we the Apostles? And who, then, shall be the Christ? Her parents were not Catholic, in the usual sense, but both had come from that culture, and it was one that she had absorbed from them, despite all. It had been one thing that drew them together: in the North of England, being of long, old Catholic culture like her father, or an Irish transplant like her mother’s family, had meant something. She had always thought: better to be an Apostate Catholic in England than a merely drifting, lukewarm Anglican. There were no passionate, extreme Anglicans. It was a religion of eternal compromise. Catholics though, regardless of whether you still believed: there was fire and blood and oppression and inquisition and arcane ritual there, and if it was in your past, it was in your past, and it was worth drawing upon for many of the Workings of our Thing, if you could get past the many and valid objections to it, and concentrate upon the deep ritual inheritance, the grandeur and the pomp and the mystery. She loved a dim, vaulting church interior; she loved the smell of incense and old stone. She kept up with Saints and the Virgin, or the Lady, or the Mother (and knew that they were not the same, and that even within each category, there were multiple facets and personae).

Now that all were introduced, the Instructrixes began: they fumbled with their overhead-projector; they laid upon it transparencies, first upside-down and backwards, and then only backwards, and then in place. They called Gustave to help them with the “technical aspect”, and he jumped from his seat as if stung by a hornet and dashed to their aid. The “slides”, such as they were, were of elaborate Copperplate writing, faint and close, and elaborately sketched diagrammata, almost nothing about them legible. They waved away any and all objections, saying “oh, you may take pictures of them with your phones”, which two or three of the postulants attempted. They seemed more or less unconscious, in any case, of what was actually written upon the slides, and presented a session that laid out, in excruciating detail and almost no specific instruction, the Shape of Things to Come that term. Nobody but was left utterly confused.

There were dates and times and syllabi and programmes and technical details galore, but hardly anyone could make head nor tail of them. The few raised hands and questions were waved away impatiently; the requests for clearer information, or maybe a shareable PDF or PowerPoint were dealt with, with expedient dispatch. Nobody, after the long, fastidious presentation, was any the wiser. At its tortuous conclusion, the two Instructrixes seemed highly pleased with themselves.

“Now!” brightly exclaimed Hortense. “Are there any questions?”

Her audience, cowed into submission, said nothing.

“I believe we have been abundantly clear, then,” added Gertrude. “All of this shall be – potentially – on the final trial. You would do well, at all times, to learn by heart all that we tell you!”

“And what if you tell us things, as you have today, that contradict themselves?” drawled Malachi, the older Irish chap. “Are we to learn tout et son contraire?”

“Ahaha, how droll,” smarmed Gertrude. “Of course, your discernment shall tell you what is the correct thing to commit to memory. Everything we say, if you doubt, it is done by no accident: it must be a Test, you tell yourself. It is to you, to decipher the True Lesson, in all cases.”

“If we are ever wrong,” intoned Hortense, “it is not we who are wrong, but in all certainty you who do not understand what right and wrong mean! Bear this in your minds!”

With that, somewhat stunned and disoriented, they were dismissed for lunch. Some of the class had thought to provide themselves with pre-prepared packed lunches, Tupperwares of leftovers (for those who had families, households, where there had been Actual Cooking the night before: therefore, not many of them). Most of the rest, then, went across the road outside the gates to the Boulangerie-Traiteur, which was a rather superior establishment. It was the only one within several kilometres’ radius which provided lunch, and so, much patronised. The whirringly efficient and smiling staff moved the queue on as fast as could be, until everyone found themselves outside with their rather delicious sandwiches of jambon de Bayonne and chèvre, or poulet crudités, or thon à la niçoise, or their slices of pizza or tartelettes, and decided to head back over to the grounds of the Château together. They were falling companionably into groups of two and three; they were beginning to find their place among the others. Morgane announced that they must all follow her and eat together; nobody was brave enough to resist. They found the few who had forethought their dishes, almost all of them, and annexed two close picnic tables to their purpose, and ate their first meal together.

Elizabeth noted: Gustave, the repeat student, was missing, as was Sibilla, the mysterious Italian lady, and Cécile, the young French-Vietnamese woman. Everyone else seemed to be there; if someone other was missing, she noted, it was something in itself that she failed to notice it. They were unmemorable, or they were consciously dissimulating their absence. When it came to Enchanters, both were eminently possible: noticeable charisma, or pass-unseen discretion; these were among the elementary lessons of Glamour: to be Visible, or to be Invisible. We had learned both.

The lunch-break was convivial: they shared stories, they learned to know each other better. Elizabeth found herself quite readily welcomed by the mostly-French cohort; she found a little side-wise fellow-feeling with Malachi, the only other native Anglophone. Occasionally, they shared a Look, when their colleagues were being Particularly French. She learned that Ambrosius, apart from being an adept of art-magic, also was an esoteric blacksmith, and had a large following on Instagram where he shared his spooky blades, pendants, and other pieces. They asked him why he had not chosen to integrate the Material Magic stream, rather. He answered that Enchantment ran in his veins; as a Breton Celt, he could do no other.

Lamia told them with self-deprecating humour of her misadventures teaching magic in Brazil, and of returning to France with her two French-Brazilian teenage sons, whose practice did not sit too right with the Establishment in the magical school where she had enrolled them. Mercurio allowed them an insight into what it was to be On the Road with a travelling family of Carnavale Magicians; this was their inheritance and birthright, tightly held, lightly evoked. Fatoumata, shyer at first, warmed up and recounted her early life in the council flats on the North boundary of Paris, between Montmartre and the flea-markets of Saint-Ouen, where her mother, a respected village chief back in Senegal, received sorcerers and marabouts in her place, offering their services to the wider community. She had grown up watching all of these practitioners, and vowed that she would not only acquire the power and status that was theirs, but also that of the French Imperium establishment in which they lived: effectively, she had done both.

Mitra told them of his life upon the Île Bourbon in the Indian Ocean, one of the smallest and the furthest colonies of the Imperium: how his ancestors had come there from India as indentured servants; how they had gained foothold and community, how they had syncretised their Hindu beliefs and magics with those of the Africans and Europeans gathered in that strange Island of Meetings. Morgane hilariously recounted her tentative steps in witchcraft, guided by her eccentric mother, outside all the institutions: healing, cursing, blessing, finding, charming all things for their village neighbours. She had had no choice: she must be this. But she had never wished to pursue the academic path of magic, until that dream, heavy with significance, she had had last year. After that, there was no other way. The attending audience fell quiet: all could identify with a moment in which they seemed pushed in the direction they had gone. Who would choose it, freely? Who would wish this upon their worst enemy? The trials. The tribulations. The ordeals. Becoming a Magician, or a teacher of Magicians … it hurt. It was deeply, deeply dangerous. They had all lost someone, along the way. They all knew how quickly they might be Lost.

After lunch, when the elusive others had rejoined them, they returned to the low stuffy pre-fab (again, Elizabeth was not sure exactly how many had been missing, how many they were … There was always that eerie phenomenon in magical groups of there being just one more person than there should be with you, or one fewer person than you might hope … The number of the group was never quite stable; not all of its members could be counted upon to be entirely corporeal, all the time). The sky overhead had cleared; the blue empyrean rained a hotter atmosphere down upon them. As they filed in, they saw a tall and scruffy man standing at the desk at the front; he wore a corduroy jacket, despite the weather, over an ironic graphic t-shirt; his hair was dark and tangled, his trousers skinny, his boots pointy. He did not look up as they found their places, and not even then: several moments passed, as he appeared to consult his notes, in despite of their presence and their waiting. Elizabeth judged him to be mid-thirties, pale skin, good cheekbones, unshaven but in a ‘just-so’ manner: he was, like a Wizard, precisely as unshaven as he chose to be, neither more, nor less. His hair, it had to be admitted, did flop particularly well, just over one temple, just so. However, it was clear that he was arrogant and haughty, merely from the way he stood. Ugh. She hated him already.

Okay, what the hell. Here we go. I’m about to start publishing a novel in “Real Time” (as opposed to what … made-up time? fake time? what a stupid phrase) … I will break it into vaguely digestible morsels that do not necessarily correspond to the eventual chapter-breaks.

It is inspired by my just-finished year as a student-teacher (again) in France. What if one were to combine all the magic and wonder of the idea of a School for Sorcery with the insanely complicated bureaucracy, petty rivalry, and cruel power-dynamics of the French education system?? What if, Dark Academia Romantasy, only make it crushingly tedious for the characters, who gradually lose their will to live, if not their lives, to the murder-machine of the Educational System? Yes, I knew I was onto something FUN. And now, I have a month left to finish it before term starts again. Can I do it? Almost certainly not. Do you want to watch me fail?

I don’t know. What kind of monster are you?

Let’s go.

THE DEPARTMENT OF

WHIMSICAL ENCHANTMENT

PART I - NEMORALIA TERM

August-October

Chapter 1 – La rentrée

The last days of August announced themselves thundery and heavy, with a flat silver light that lined the bulking black masses of the lowering clouds. Elizabeth Harding alighted from the tram and watched it glide away into the distant, unknown banlieues of Bordeaux, before consulting once again the slip of paper that bore her convocation: date (today); time (soon); place … she looked around. Straight ahead of her, behind tall railings, among formal landscaped grounds, stood a stately 17^th century building. There were no signs or indications, nothing so vulgar, but the tram-stop was called “Château Mondésir”, and she presumed this must be that. Beside it, a long high wall around a leafy park; on the opposite side of the street, a tobacconist’s, a bakery-delicatessen, and a pet-grooming salon. It was not certain, however, that this château was what she was looking for – the place to which she was officially summoned: the IIIUFM, the Institute for the Instruction of Imperium of the Unseen Functionary-Magicians. She discreetly took out her pendulum, and, turning to shield the action with her body from passers-by, raised it with a steady hand. It swung once, in the direction of the Château, and did not swing back, remaining immobile, off-plumb, almost straining towards the building like a hound on the scent. Elizabeth nodded and palmed the pendant (carnelian) with a practiced motion.

Of course this must be where the Institute was – it had just seemed almost too obvious, too ostentatious. The Unseen Empire did sometimes hide in plain sight, after all. Only now did she take out her phone; the apps which had served her well in England were unreliable here in France, but despite having spent most of her time here for the last three years, for some reason she resisted making the switch completely. French magical apps always seemed clunky and ill-designed to her. She tapped the icon for the Vegvísir app, which was the eponymous compass-rose of crossed lines bearing Norse runes on each: a “Way Pointer” as the name implied, though derived not from a Viking Age bind-rune confection, as mundane Norse Paganism enthusiasts often mistakenly thought, but rather from 17^th-18^th century Icelandic sea-faring magic influenced by the grimoiric tradition and first attested in the Huld manuscript from 1860. Elizabeth’s inner voice actually trotted out a shorthand version of this erudite tidbit every time she used the app (or indeed saw the symbol on a t-shirt or a tattoo). She didn’t necessarily say it aloud; she just loved to be exact, and she loved to be correct, whether anyone heard her or not. In any case, it was a clever name for a psychogeographical GPS application, showing the mundane geography on top of which one could add layers as desired: ley-lines, sacred sites, holy wells, energy nodes, hidden paths and portals, intensive spirit activity, seasonal and astrological fluxes, that kind of thing. Now she activated it and saw that the street-map all around the Château warped and distorted in the orbit of the powerful nexus that it appeared to house. There were even a number of red, green, or gold dots: individual entities of sufficient potentia to register as moving blips, and who weren’t bothering to hide it. There also appeared to be some kind of artifact or holy relic of vast Radiance in the pet-grooming salon. This might well be a glitch, however.

Elizabeth shook herself and headed for what looked like the gate. Strangely though, as she walked, she did not appear to get any closer to it. Ah, she thought. Here we go. This was the kind of little game one must become accustomed to in dealing with the administration and the hierarchy of the French Mysterium, the branch of the Imperium concerned with the regulation and the instruction of magic. Labyrinthine office-buildings in which one must solve riddles and discover secret passages in order to proceed; switchboards that required the composition of magical formulae on the phone’s keypad in order to be connected to the next interlocutor; gates that kept themselves. This one ought to be child’s-play. She hurried her pace and tried to catch a better glimpse of the ever-receding entrance. It suddenly appeared to be behind her. She checked her watch: twenty minutes to the appointed time. Right. She looked, and could not make out where the gate delineated itself from the railings. Perhaps there? It blurred, as if a mirage. She glanced left and right, and, seeing that there was no-one on her side of the street at that moment, pulled out of her satchel and unclasped a small pocket-knife with a handle of white wood inscribed with glyphs. Squaring her shoulders, closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and swiftly drew a sigil in the air in front of her with the knife-point, and then traced a rectangular frame. This is the door, she said silently. Ceci n’est pas une porte. She stepped forward, and pushed. The gate opened. She was in.

Just inside the entrance was a little gate-house where an elderly man in uniform sat reading a newspaper by a boom-gate for motor-vehicles. He ruffled his broadsheet (who still reads those?) and put it aside, harrumphed, and asked her for her “convocation et papiers d’identification, s’il vous plaît, Mademoiselle” (who still says ‘Mademoiselle’, indeed?). She handed over her paper and her ID, along with the laissez-passer that allowed her, as a British citizen and operative magician, free movement in the French Fifth Imperium. He peered at them with a frown, until Elizabeth, sighing internally, gave him a smile and a tilt of the head in which she allowed just a little burst of Glamour to detonate. His face cleared and he returned her smile, but his own was not that of a man enthralled, rather one of recognition.

“Ah! You’re one of those! Be you welcome then, Mademoiselle l’Enchanteresse! They’ll be waiting for you.”

“Merci, Monsieur,” she dipped her head, in a movement that very subtly evoked a curtsey.

“Votre serviteur,” he sketched the tiniest of bows in return, his eyes twinkling, one almost might think with a Glamour of his own. Elizabeth did wonder. Perhaps he was of the Art? What better Path for a Gatekeeper, after all? She hurried on, along the curving paths that led to the Château. That seemed to lead to the Château. Oh, for fuck’s sake. Not more of this. She stopped to take stock of the way ahead.

Here, to the right of the main building, one path swerved over towards the large porticoed entrance, passing beneath a gigantic cedar tree, and around a graceful pond that was centred on the façade of the Château, with pebbled allées in geometrical lines and parterres of flowers, topiary’d box-trees, pillars, Classical statuary in white marble. Another path branched off before the Great Cedar, and led over towards another building complex, much more modern, and into shady lanes beneath pine trees and yews, with scattered benches and tables, and more and lower buildings. Looking around at all of this, Elizabeth noted that she was far from the only new student-teacher here for the pre-rentrée induction at the Institute. There were a few dozen young people – and some older – wandering the paths, checking the details on their convocations, searching for any indications as to where to go, some alone, some in groups of three or four. A few just to her right were sitting at a picnic table and appeared to know each other already. They were chatting and laughing, much at ease. She decided she must just take a chance, rather than wandering around feeling lost, like an idiot. She went up to them.

“Bonjour, excusez-moi,” she began, taking in their appearance: good-looking and graceful all, wearing loose-fitting and yet revealing clothes that allowed for movement. Oh. Énergéticiens. “I’m looking for my induction meeting … How can I find out where it is?” As ever, when speaking French, she noticed the subtle shift in their attitude as they heard her English accent. She prided herself on the perfection of her expression, but there was a stubborn intonation that betrayed her origins. The Uncles told her she ought not to try and lose it, but rather cultivate it. It was part of her persona, they said. Like Jane Birkin.

The lithe, toned young people stared at her a moment, and then one particular specimen with a sculpted beard, a man-bun, and the sleeves cut off his top to show his tanned, tattooed arms, stood up to address her. He was over a head taller than she was (she was not tall).

“There are cyphered signs at each branching of the paths,” he said. “You have to find them, and then you have to figure out how to read them. But maybe I can help you.”

“That would be most kind of you,” she said, calling him “tu”, just as he did her; she had learned that among students, and among teachers, this was standard: it was assumed we were all colleagues.

“Ah! Do I hear a little accent? You’re English, are you? What’s an English girl doing at the Institut?”

“Training to teach magic, just as you are I assume.”

“They let the English do that now?” drawled a dark-haired young woman, leaning on the table. “I thought that was all over after the Secession.”

“Some still can. Special dispensation,” Elizabeth replied, curtly. She didn’t really want to get into a big debate on Cross-Channel politics. She looked at her watch. Seven minutes. “Now, can you tell me where to go?”

“Depends on what field you’re in,” said another young man, this one in an expensive velour tracksuit. “We’re High Energy Magic, over there in the Cube …” he pointed to a large, square, modern building further down the path. “Theoretical Magic is up in the Château, of course. The Material Magic meeting is back through the trees, by the wall next to the park, in the Lodge. And then …” They all watched her face as he spoke, the penny dropping.

“Oh, you’re in Deception and Manipulation are you?” laughed the dark-haired woman. “You’re an Envoûteuse?”

The first speaker laughed too. “An Allumeuse then? I thought you were all supposed to be seductive sirens!” He looked Elizabeth up and down, rather broadly telegraphing his not being convinced.

The more old-fashioned terms for the magical fields and disciplines were something of a minefield in translation; the name of Elizabeth’s area of specialisation, Enchantment, was derived from the French (en-chanter, from Latin incantare: to put a charm, song, incantation upon), but in actual French one referred to Envoûtement, which had a stronger semantic load of domination, control, and manipulation. As was so often the case, the feminine form of the noun had sexual connotations: Envoûteuse was frankly seductive; Allumeuse just went one step further: floozy, flirt, tease – fire-starter (from allumer, to set alight – or to turn on).

The man-bun wearer looked at Elizabeth’s expression, and seemed to think better of his mocking tone. “Apologies, I’m only joking with you. The Envoûtement Section meets in the pre-fabs, over there.” He pointed to a clearing to the right, around which were a couple of low, ugly boxes with barred windows: 1970s pre-fabricated classrooms, still apparently in use.

Another one of the young women – tall, tan, blond – seemed not to have done with picking on Elizabeth. “So, la Petite Anglaise, enjoy pulling your rabbits out of hats and playing dress-up!”

This garnered a general laugh, except for Man-Bun: he had seen the look on Elizabeth’s face. Now he looked worried. She did not disappoint him. She took a sudden step towards him, right into his space, and raised her hand swiftly to his cheek. She let a blast of steely Glamour show, and pushed a sibilant, dissonant resonance into the Voice she turned upon him:

“YOU WOULD DO WELL TO TELL YOUR FRIENDS BEWARE OF WHO THEY TRIFLE WITH.” She stroked his cheek, as her Voice whipped out at him, traced a line down to his chin which she tilted up with one finger. “IS THAT UNDERSTOOD MY LITTLE PRETTY BOY.”

He was shocked, had clearly never experienced Glamour and Guile used so overtly or so expertly. He fell to his knees, and she held his chin in her hand, twirling a tuft of beard. She kept his gaze a moment, and gently patted him on the cheek, looked around at his group with a small, satisfied smile, and then was on her way. They all remained slightly stunned in her wake, and she muttered to herself, in English, as she left: “… All shall love me and despair …”

Still smiling to herself, she quickened her pace towards the shady clearing where the pre-fabs were situated. Typical. The Scholars get the Château, we get the cardboard boxes. Here under the trees, the scent of the thick red carpet of pine-needles was pungent; warm wood, cool shade; the dying Summer begins to build its pyre. Soon, she thought, the first chill of Autumn would insinuate itself into the air, and the brisk, bright days she loved the best begin. It seemed she was doomed to the rhythm of the academic year – it had been her life since she was a child, and she could not imagine things ever being otherwise. She loved everything about that early Autumn time when school began, when the universities gathered in another year’s harvest of students. That feeling of anticipation – that quickening – that came after languorous, still Summer. The shiver of newness, among old buildings. New books, new work, new people, new discoveries. The smell of a freshly-pared pencil, the tang of black ink, the warm leather of a satchel, the wheeling golden motes in a shaft of sunlight in the library stacks, the polished wood of floors, the dust of chalkboards. There was no real word for it in English, just the signs in shops from early August shouting “BACK TO SCHOOL”: a threat, an imperative, ordering children to repent, for the end was nigh. But in France, this was called “la rentrée”: it meant the going back, the return, the coming home. In France, everyone was on holiday in August (try getting anything done then), and so everyone was returning. It was not just a return, but a “re-entry” into the ordinary world, the world of work and commuting and habit. She remembered from her time in Paris how the flat glare of August, the empty streets braved only by tourists and the insane, would suddenly give way to that frisson of energy of la rentrée: the terrasses of the cafés in her neighbourhood would be suddenly thronged with tanned, well-fed, relaxed-looking Parisians, eager to compare notes on places they’d been, what they’d eaten, what they’d seen. For those in academia however, la rentrée was not a return to the ordinary world; no, it was a re-entry into another, stranger, cloistered world, bypassing the ordinary altogether: and for those who studied, taught, and practiced in the magical institutions, colleges, academies, and schools, it was a rarer, stranger, more secret world altogether. She would never tire of it. Every time, a sense of strange homecoming, to a home she’d never known; a sense of adventure and discovery, never knowing what was to come.

And this year, though it was not what she had wanted, not what she had chosen, should be no different; if nothing else, it would be an adventure.

As she approached the clearing where the Envoûteurs would assemble, she briefly polished her appearance: not through Glamour, but rather with a swift alignment of the persona she projected with the one in her mind’s eye. She straightened her spine, gaining a little height; she measured her gait, becoming more confident; she raised her gaze and opened her expression, becoming more curious and approachable. She saw herself: plain white sleeveless shirt, corduroy pencil-skirt, brogues with white socks, the outfit she had chosen to present herself in; blond bobbed hair, black spider-lashes her only obvious makeup. Her trusty leather satchel, well-worn and well-travelled, the strap across her chest. Yes. She saw herself, and she was satisfied. This is who she was. Today, at least.

She saw a number of others gathered around a picnic table in the centre of the clearing, and a few more on the periphery. Mostly young, mostly women, but not all. A dozen or so. These were to be her classmates, her cohort. She again unfrowned her forehead, and attempted a smile as she approached. The little voice that told her nobody is going to like you was very quiet, barely audible. She stopped at the edge of the group.

“Here for the practice of Illusion and Influence?” a young woman turned to her and asked brightly. She was a bit taller than Elizabeth (though that wasn’t saying much), and was buxom and pretty, with very long brown curly hair that reached all the way down her back. “I’m Morgane. And I’m here for it.”

“Oh yes. Deception, Manipulation, Espionage, and Seduction!” Elizabeth grinned back at her. “I’m Elizabeth. And I’m here for it too.”

“I’m trying to figure out who the teachers are. And who the cool kids are,” Morgane murmured, and then lowered her voice further: “We’re obviously the cool kids.”

Elizabeth joined her in looking around. Everyone there was dressed with at least a touch of that eccentricity and theatricality that Enchanters typically affected. They were a varied bunch, ranging in age between early twenties and, what, mid-fifties perhaps? She chose two she thought might be instructors: a very beautiful middle-aged woman with her immaculate ash-blond hair tied in a perfect chignon and an intense gaze; a man in his forties with a drooping moustache and an old-fashioned waistcoat, who was checking a pocket-watch on a chain. Time to call this session to order? There were three or four more who looked a little older, but half of the group seemed close to her own age, mid-twenties. These would be the ones that had come straight from their studies; the others would all have interesting stories about how they had found themselves here, retraining to qualify as teachers of the magical arts in the Académie of Aquitania. What must have driven them to this, Elizabeth wondered.

There was a stir behind them, and they all looked round. At the entrance to the clearing two women had appeared. Ah. These must be the instructors. One was tall and elegant: her blond hair coiffed and swept, her profile aquiline, her white shirt perfectly tailored, her Hermès scarf perfectly tied, her trousers and bottines giving the impression of jodhpurs and riding-boots though they were not. The other was plump and matronly, her dress a floral Laura Ashley, her tight, bright perm evoking a mid-century propriety. They looked somewhat as if one had requested “Englishness” at Central Casting, and been given two perfectly emblematic examples. There was a touch of Patsy and Edina from Absolutely Fabulous about them, only not quite as fabulous, and only absolutely. And of course, things being what they were, they were both French.

“Ah! Here are our young charges …!” said the taller one.

“Here they are indeed!” said the other.

“Come, come! Shall we begin …?” again cried the taller.

Thinking about that idea of “Poetic Fantasy”, and it brought this to mind: a novel I’ve been working on, on and off, for years. I struggled to find the “voice” of the book, for a very long time. But something happened with this passage. Somehow, something took off, took flight, within me. This was it. Here it was. This was what I had been looking for.

I would love to know what you think. I hope to be able to bring myself to finish it one day.

They had done this before. The dawn flit. Bills had come due, presented by thugs with cudgels, or the Watch had come running, whirling their rattles, bells rang out in the streets. A town had risen against the villains in their midst. Blades at dawn, the shadow of the gallows. They had thrown their stuff into knapsacks, splashed their faces in water, run with bundles from the inn, weapons drawn, through the slowly waking streets. They knew this drill.

From the beds of painted women, from smoky gambling hells, shutters barring the light, from piles of straw in stables, they came. The boy had run for his money, from inn to inn, from pillar to post; they had awoken in seconds, and knew it was time to go. The tide was turning, the sunlight must not catch them here.

First to the Moon on the Water, where Mirlo had roused the boy next door from where he slept three to a bed, a silver coin flipped, and the boy, understanding, ran headlong. They dashed to the docks, and the ladies of the Siren met them before they had left Old Shambles; the baby crying in Ewina’s arms, she rocked and shushed. Merimée d’Arault blew a kiss to a high window, where a fair maiden sighed, and turned and ran. Tiarnán Iasc quickly swept his winnings into a hat, and backed out of the room, and ran. Anbold the Wolf and Simnell Trout rolled from the bed where they had fallen, swords in hand, as Colum Bán hammered at the door. They swept out, cloaks flying, hurling a spray of coins at the inn-keeper’s lame daughter.

At the docks, as the sky shot molten red and gold across the Eastern horizon, across the hills on the other side of the Tarnemouth Bay, the Shadow shifted at anchor, a greyhound in the slips. They threw gear across the side, stowed it under the oar-benches quickly, quietly, as Nila and Demira made ready to cast off. Léono, running, puffing, his fine gaudy clothes trailing out of his open pack, jumped from the dock as they heaved the oars, at Thorgrim’s cry, and he caught the side by inches, heaved himself over. With a surge, they were away. Arnauld, curled in a ball in the stern, shivered and wept, red eyes looking back over the water and the wake as they left his home behind, his master, and all he had ever known.

They kept the land to starboard, out beyond the ninth wave, catching the wind in their square black sail. The Shadow slipped across the waters, cut the swell. The sail bellied out, they shipped the oars. They reached the open sea, beyond the headlands, the spray leapt at the dragon-prow. Rogrim stood in the bow, the black sword point down at his side, as the sky paled behind them, as they pursued the edge of blue darkness in the West. His body knew the lurch and plunge, his feet found their shift and roll. He threw the edge of his cloak over his shoulder, and leaned forward, staring into the spray and mist, where sea imperceptibly met sky, where night met day. They had almost no provisions. Only Simnell Trout and Tiarnán Iasc had liberated one cask of water and three of wine, a barrel of salt-pork, a sack of turnips, kicked them rolling down the dock as the others ran to help. Arnulf Legless, perched between the barrels, even now measured out water by the wooden ladle, eking it out. They would put in up the coast, near Ellerine, the White City on the Hill. The day was bright, their clothes were stiffening with salt-spray; they looked at each other, the pirates, and fore at their captain, and they exchanged quick smiles of stirring glee.

Aradia sat by Arnauld, her hand on his shoulder, lost in thought. Ewina was beside her, suckling the babe. The others had all taken their habitual places on the shallow benches, their gear stowed underneath. Heverick Kane skipped forward and leaned beside his captain, his eyes bright with the wind and waves. He murmured something to him, and Rogrim the Shadowblade turned, and looked back; he saw his crew, in their accustomed places, or so he supposed. Kane gripped his shoulder. Karlo, before the mast, caught his eye, and tilted his head up. The Shadow flitted across the waves. Fionn Dá Lough began a shanty, and voices joined his, a rolling round of mysterious song with nonsense words, learned long ago from long-gone sailor fathers, who sang it over cribs in Winter. High above, flew a raven and a hawk, riding the world’s wind, out of the dawn.

The small port of Kerveren, East of Ellerine, in the light of evening two days later. Fishing boats at anchor, and a salt-cod soup. On along the pleasant hills, they passed the shining white city, reaching up in stepped levels, stairways running up between cobbled courtyards with fountains, up, up, to the graceful white towers, like a spray of flowers at the head of the bay. Merimée d’Arault spoke a picture of his city to them as they passed, and recited the verses of the Lay of Léonore, who wasted away for love in one of those high towers.

Quiet coves and rolling hills, river-mouths and vineyards, windmills and bustling ports, they passed. Where the Rhennish met the sea, they saw a fleet setting out from Yonne, and curved away out to sea, passing wide beyond them. South-West to the tip of Harronia, with favourable winds, they passed between the Straits of Aliano, and saw the great Temple of the Star of the Sea rising on the mountain off the headland, shining in the dawn. They could see the Baraban coast, white in the gloom, across to the South, and they navigated the Meeting of the Waters, as the calm Middle Sea gave way to the wild Western Ocean. They turned North. On along the coast, past Ernagur’s towering cliffs and rocks thrusting up into the Heavens, the spray rising a hundred feet around them, on they went. Days dawned clear and cold, nights brought frost to beards and ice to seal the water cask. The stars were bright above, and Taril discoursed on the constellations; the Silver Road across the sky, the Morning Maiden off in the East above the land as the little lights winked out one by one, as the Heavens turned deep dark blue, then slowly paled. They put in before Sotaris, and in the high fortified little port-town of Temeris, they saw the Knights of the Flame, the Sun Templars, the black-robed Justicars, in the streets. They kept their heads down. They ate buttery crescent-rolls and drank mulled cider in a chilly tavern with sawdust on the floor, high narrow windows, a Sathar-Flame burning in a great censer in the centre of the room. From Daserne, a sheltered spot before you reach the shipping lines that come out of the Great City of Adra, where smugglers and pirates meet, they took on provisions and loaded up with water and ale. There they had to wait a week, for the storms of Winter were starting, and the wind was not favourable, and they twiddled their thumbs in a great beer-hall, where a dancing bear sadly plodded to the sound of skirling pipes.

In that week, Rogrim and Aradia had a room up under the roofs, thick dark beams cutting the sloping ceiling. It snowed. They lay under woollen blankets, a small fire banked in the grate, and she forced him to start the Practices of the Hidden Way. He couldn’t concentrate, and her dancing dark eyes in the firelight teased him. They sat naked, cross-legged, face to face, the flickering glow burnishing their skin, and he couldn’t even close his eyes, let alone still his mind; only when he lay in her arms, his breathing slowing gradually, his whole body glowing, could he ever think of nothing at all.

When the weather turned, Karlo roused them all from their torpor before the dawn. He’d been to the docks every day, furs wrapped against the snow, and tasted the wind, gauged the light. Now they could leave, for the last two stages. Across the iron-dark Winter sea they scudded, beneath the stormy skies, racing before the wind, whitecaps whipped up, the Shadow pitching and rolling with the swell. They made Trelor Port, two days off the Adraean coast, and stayed a night in that strange town, where many of the lads went to visit the famous weapon-smiths, and lust after Trelorian steel longswords, or spiked maces with elongated square heads, wielded in two hands by the knights of that island. They had no money, but what little they had carried from Negalia. Taril became accustomed to the sidling approach, the bashful glance, the wheedling request. He only ever advanced them a florin at a time, enough to pay for food and drink, the night’s lodging; Heverick Kane made a case for a coat of mail, but was rebuffed.

On around Trelor, and past the Isle of Eld, where they live in forts of vitrified stone, and all is rocky passes in high mountains, with nary a bit of grass or a tree, and the people keep themselves to themselves. Gekkeli Dhrineh, of all people, had been there once, and still remembered the great hall of the tiny keep where the strange pale people had hosted him, still remembered the lord’s iron bracelets and cold eyes, and the pale and shapely body of his daughter, uncovered in her tower room on a high bed piled with furs, under the eyes of her pet tawny owl. The ladies of fortune egged him on in the telling, when he glanced at them and cleared his throat, and soon there were tales exchanged of conquests and bedmates all around the Middle Sea, and all up the Harronan Western Coast, and ribald laughter, and roars. Merimée had possibly had the most lovers, but he was discreet; Anbold the Wolf, ugly as he was, could boast of women in the most ports, of children in many, of angered husbands in not a few.

From Eld and Trelor, they went North-North-West, and the weather grew fresher and milder, and rain swept down across them. Massed thunderheads on the horizon never reached them, and the sky at evening was a slipping stream, with silver shoals of clouds in its wide and limpid light. On the third morning from leaving Eld in their wake, there was an anticipatory stir. They knew this journey, knew it well. They knew that before noon, they would raise the Isle of Mists. They would sight the green hills of Ariú. The men shaved and trimmed beards in their shirtsleeves that morning, and drew out creased clothes they had kept free from salt-stains and rime. Heverick Kane donned his blue surcoat, with the golden lion of his family on it, its paw resting on the head of a dragon couchant. They dressed as if to meet a long-lost lover. Fionn sang, songs of home, songs of homecoming. As the sun rose to its height in the Southern sky, it was lost behind a haze of clouds, and only appeared as a glowing ball of pale light in the soft grey, from time to time. The Negalians and the other ones from the Lostlands far away looked on indulgently as the Tíriani, and the Lochlannach, strained forward, crowding to the prow. Rúairí Óg Crannoch climbed the mast, eager to be the first. And there, was there a dark stain on the horizon? Rúairí shouted “Ho! Ariú abú! Tíranann!”, and a cheer went up, and Karlo roared to them to unship the oars, to speed them in. They crested the waves, the ship fairly flew, the oars sending her skipping along the surface of the grey sea. There was a fine mist of rain in the air, that left a skein of droplets on woollen tunics, on hair, on eyelashes. The raven and the hawk were suddenly aloft, and flying for land.

Rogrim took his place in the bow, Thorgrim pounded the oarstrokes, Karlo roared each pull of the oars. Aradia slipped to his side, her sailor-love, and gripped his arm, as he looked ahead, trying to pierce the softness of the mist and rain, that hung in visible sheets, veils of ever increasing opacity before them, as the land seeped across the horizon, grew broader, gained relief and contour. There now, there were headlands disappearing fainter and fainter behind each other to the West, and to the East, a long low coast. They would reach the land near Maelgwyn’s Head, and follow the coast a little West, before entering between the Arms of Rígana, into the great long harbour of the South, at the head of which, at the mouth of the Sinann, they would come to Aveston, the great port city of Galloia, the seat of the Angathar kings of Ariú for a hundred years, once called Ava’s Dún, when it was a Lochlannach port, and before that, it was Inber Scéne, the beach where the Fír Bolg first landed, and blessed their homecoming. Fionn Dá Lough recited these things, in a high ringing voice, and all were silent, at his incantation. He was raising the land, as a bard should do. As they passed between the Arms of Rígana, he invoked that goddess, and told how the arms that now embraced them were the arms that bent apart the ends of the heavy golden torc, to place it around the neck of Gallos Great-Hearted, to bestow on him the sovereignty of the land of Ariú, as First High King, in the Time of Legends.

On either side of them, the land rose in the mists, low clouds blurring the tops of the green hills, grey hills, they raced between the Arms of the Goddess, and passed a couple of little fishing boats, whose men waved at them as they swiftly surged away. There, a little village nestled in a cove, and oh! a wisp of the smell of turf-fires, little trickles of smoke above the huts. The Tíriani and the Northmen, whose home this also was, were cheering in delight. It had been years. They pulled on their oars with a will, in time to the stroke beaten heavily by Thorgrim, called by Karlo, sweeping them on towards home. All through the early afternoon, they sailed up the harbour, and then, when they sighted the docks on either side of the mouth of the Sinann, when they saw the grey walls rising on the horizon above them, then they made out the dark Keep of Kings on the hill, and saw, as they drew closer, the huddled, serried houses, roofs of slate on the high houses, wet thatch on the low, the grey stone city, as it emerged from the gloom of the soft mist, all was damp and dripping, the rain began sheeting down now, imperceptibly heavier, then palpably heavy. Rainwater ran down their straining faces, they grinned and bore it, pulled again, and tilted, and cut the oar into the water, and pulled again, clenched teeth, rain running into their mouths, their hair slick to their heads. Veils of grey fell away, and revealed the docks, the masts, the hulls of a hundred ships. And Fionn stood up before the mast, and boomed the Song of Landing, the “Song of Amergin”, which that druid of the Fír Bolg was said to have chanted as they beached their ships on Inber Scéne, the song of the Land, of its beasts, the song that invokes the Fire in the Head, that claims identity with Ariú. As the last words of the incantation resounded, in the Oldest Tongue, as was spoken before even the Children of Anú or the Iron-Folk of the Everni had returned to the green shore, Rogrim felt a surge and rising in his chest. He almost understood the words, they stirred a thrill in his belly, and kindled in his head. He was coming home.

I just had the strangest experience.

I was working on a translation, correcting it for XXXXXX. It’s a translation into English of a 1930s French Guide to Beauty. She had warned me that it was precious and over the top, and full of repetitive nonsense, and it was. But as I read it, and her very skilful translation, I added flourishes and little grace notes to it, little filigrees of beauty to the words; the me of before would indeed have found it frivolous and ridiculous, but after watching Dangerous Beauty, last night, (and falling asleep an hour in), and after talking to you about Glamour and Mirror Magick, I found that this text was not at all as superficial and light as it appears, and indeed it seems to contain Deep Magick. It speaks to the Art of the Courtesan. It speaks to that feminine magic that the French understand so well, and which has not disappeared. And I thought I must send you the translation (about half the text is done now).

But as I sat at my desk, in this quiet and lovely time, where XXXXXX and I are both peacefully working side by side without speaking, I was finding it hard to focus on the words, swimming on the screen in front of me. Only through an intense effort of will could I stay awake and conscious. It’s been like this for some days. Sometimes, I can apply myself to tasks, indeed I sweep through the house as if possessed of a New Wind, an Energy, an ability to see what is not useful, what is messy, what is decrepit and rotten, and rip it away, sweep it away, with a batting of the back of my hand. I stand taller, I walk more swiftly, I am capable.

I thought : “there has been never any doubt about my ability to achieve almost anything, should I apply my mind to it; it’s only the application of the mind that is problematic”. And then, I thought, why should I sit in dark and squalour, when all I need do is blast away cobwebs and swirl a broom, when all I need do is gather the detritus that mocks us, lying in uncared-for piles, the dust of years, the accumulation of useless clutter, in my mind, my heart, my living room. Why not be swift and ruthless, for once, instead of lying in useless contemplation, waiting for my life to happen, waiting for the Other to take things in hand, knowing she will not, both of us passive aggressively letting the other fail in their duty, resenting, bitter-tasting on the tongue, letting the rot build up and lie in wait? I have been so long wallowing in the mire of myself, in the stagnant pool in which I contemplate my own reflection … There must be fresh water, from the Source. There must be a Bright Wind, that carries all before it.

On Christmas Eve, Lughaidh and I took our walk. I thought only to check the boundaries, to have a look. But the weather was crisp and cold, and dusk lasted all afternoon, and in the bright burning leaves against the soft greys and greens, I saw the Past, the Present, and the Time to Come. I bore my staff I found at the Faery Market in the Summer, Lughaidh his Sorcerer’s stick, with the gnarled top, cut now to his size, which I had thought was mine, but he has appropriated.

We walked past the hollow tree in which we fed the body of the Toad to the ants, around which they made their hill of black earth, and stripped the bones. We walked among the vines, and then along the Hollow Path. We went to the Menhir, and there we spoke to the Spirits of the Land, and I quietly told them : “I am to be your Steward, and your Guardian, custodian of this Land. I pretend to no lordship, nor no fortune ; I am merely he who comes to carry the torch ahead, and pass it on. This boy you see, who lives half in and out of Thisworld and the Otherwise, he is my heir. I cannot inherit, only hold in trust. He will one day look at all of this, and say, “This is mine, this is my place, I am of this.”

And then we walked on, and threaded our devious way through the vines to the rise on which squats the Fallen Tower, the Windmill o’ the Mage Kings. Lughaidh said we must climb up, and we found our way up through thorns and brambles, up the path that is worn by other feet than ours, too. We are not the only ones who go to make observance. The crooked door open, we descend into the green-molded Well of Souls : there the holes around the door where nest the Parliament of Owls, who have seen me, and swooped down upon me, who have studied me and loved me, and who have come to my window on a night of Eclipse and called their hollow howl to draw me out to play. I shuddered and refused, for I would not have found my way back, should I have run bare-chested, bare-footed, into that intoxicating night.

In front of Lughaidh, who accepted with only a few little questions, I drew out my grey-horn-handled knife, and held the staff in the left hand, and with the right, the blade, I drew the wounds in the world, and I called in the Quarters, on a rise and fall and rise again of music, I call ye in “Bel, Crom, Lir, Dis” … The Four Fathers. In each quarter, with the blade, I draw the cross (North, South, East, West) and I encircle it deiseail. The Celtic Cross is far older than Christianity : the four-armed equal cross within a circle. This is one of my “pentacles”. The others are the Triskele, and the three-pointed knot. I spoke a spell of welcoming and inviting in. Lughaidh watched, rapt. I told him he too would one day know to do this.

Christmas Day, and all its perennial enchantment came and went, and on that, I pass.

But on the Feast of Stephen, the 26th, I went out at dusk, and went tuathalach, widdershins, around the boundaries of the immediate Domaine, and went to the Druid Rock in the Glade, below the slope of the wood. There I called upon them all ; the Angelic Powers of the East, the Light, Saint Michael and Saint Raphael, Hermes, and Odinn is there too, the Wanderer, good old friend. His version of it is more tricksy, more subtle and ironic. The Angels are Blasting Light of All-in-One, and I like little to deal with them. But Saint Michael has made himself known, and wishes to be a part of the Work. I must grant Him that, for when an Archangel speaks, it would be well to listen. In the South, I called all the Living Beasts, the Souls of Blood and Embodied Fire : the Torc na Coille, the Fia Bairr (the Boar of the Woods, and the Horned Stag) the Toad of the Marshy Ground, the Screech Owl, the Dame Blanche ; these are Real and Fleshly, and yet they are also mystical avatars of the Land of the Domaine. In the South, the Living Souls, the Animal Kingdom, the Fauns and Fauna. The screech, the bellow, the howl. These are my Calendar Beasts. To the West, the Sunset Lands, the Fae : here the Good Green Folk, the Hidden Folk, the playful dancing presences just outside the line of sight.

I had not realised, before, to what extent they have been always with me. I had not realised, had no idea, that I was of them. That in some important way, I am not the child of my parents, not the child of the Sunlit World, but that I was born between the Dark and Light, in the half-light of the dusk, that I always did perform my solemn dance, alone, to music only I could hear. That my words and visions, from earliest childhood, spoke of another life that happened far away, under Other Stars, that do not set, that do not twinkle : bright pinpoints in the velvet night, the gathering gloaming. Under those eternal trees, that never lose their leaves, but only change from green and pale to the Fires of Autumn, and back again, in a wheel of seasons that we cannot see ; there is a Far Home that is mine, that I have never known, that I have never seen, only in the wildest and the most vibrant and violent of dreams.

When I think, sometimes, of taking ship into the West, to join my own people once more, I weep bitterly, for I never never will. I have had moments, opportunities. There have been times when I might disappear. When I felt them, close, close as breath, close as my shadow, but unseen. They were next to me, then, and their chiming music sounded, on the edge of hearing, and I rose, and nearly went. But in the end, the World called me back, and I could not leave the ones I loved. I could not leave this life, for all its pain and frustrations, its sterile dull and aching moments of impotent yearning. For I learned to see the unfurling magic of a flower in every fleeting moment of the turning of the light upon the walls of cities, of the crisp silvering of frost upon the grass, or the crackle of the hearthfire and the singing kettle boiling to make tea. I learned that all these day-to-day magicks and mysteries, the homely, the wholesome, the nourishing ; these were mine too, if only I would accept them. In Elfhame, there is nothing comforting and cosy ; there is only terrible beauty, and enchanting song, wild revels and dreamy wandering all the night. There is never a warm bed, a hearty meal, a child’s hot sleepy limbs that you enfold as they murmur into dreams, comforted by your steady presence. None of this belongs to the Fae, and how they envy it. Their breasts are only perfect, they give no milk. Their sexes are only furled flowers and proud stamens, dripping with the ichor of unimaginable pleasure ; they bear no children, they are unfruitful. Just as I am. But for whatever strange design they had, they left me here among the Living Folk, and left me gifts and talents, and then left me to myself. I would sink or swim, depending on how well I learned to Pass. I did. It nearly killed me, but I did.

And now, though years have gone by of merely passing, merely trying to survive according to the laws of Thisworld, I realise that I cannot renounce my nature and my inheritance either, but must be blessed and cursed to live between the worlds and cross back and forth the Hedge. Walk between the Worlds, and lead others on their journeys too, for I am that rarest of things, a Native Guide, the Familiar and the Strange, how one becomes the Other, so easily, so liquidly, so quicksilver, so elusive. That haunting strain of music, that little phrase that dallies just beyond our common hearing : I must not grasp at it, but only tune the ear to Nowhere, turn the Sight to vague and soft, and then I feel and hear and see the Things that go on all around us, around me, and they are mine and I am theirs. But I am my human family’s too, and there never was more Human, than the one who had to learn it as a Stranger.

We are more human, we live the joys and pains, the agonies and ecstasies more vividly, more raw, because we were never meant for these brute days, these nights of sweat and lust and blood; the Fae do not lust, nor mourn, they only tremble in an ever-yearning agony of Desire, that can never be satisfied, that can never be extinguished. Do I make myself clear? I hope not. I am not clear, and simple. I am Hidden, behind layers and layers and veil after veil, and having once shed them all in a ritual dance, it becomes apparent there is no substance underneath, but a swirl of dead leaves and twigs, Autumn’s leavings, and whoever me is, is already gone, vanished, always-already somewhere else.

Do I make sense? I know not, only the deepest, darkest senses, only the ones we learn early to discount, as leading us astray. The Ignis Fatuus, the Fool’s Fire, that lights our way out upon the marsh, away from the path, and leads us to our doom. Their Doom. We are the ones that hold the lantern, not the ones it leads astray. We are the strays, the Hidden Ways, the Fae.

And finally, all that being said, an envolée lyrique, there is the North, the Stone, the Tomb, the foul rag and bone shop of the heart, where we lie down where all the ladders start. The silence of the grave. The chthonos, the Underworld. This is the one that scares them the most, and this is the one they are all warning me about. Because She, the Veiled One, the Dark Lady, this is her Realm. Death, my Bride. Hella? Hekate? Persephone? All, and none. Black Annis, Mother Crone, Baba Yaga : they warned us about Her. But we know better. We know that long ago, there was a deal made with the Dark, and that only those of us who are Chosen can venture there, to pay the price and claim the prize. Most will lose their way, and that way madness lies. Most will die of horror, and, confronted by the rotting corpses and the carrion birds, the dank chill of the Tomb, Her Womb, will shudder and shut the door, and hang up charms against Her and Her many Daughters, for the Night is not their element. Most want to live by Day, and banish all thought of the long oblivion through which we all shall pass; She is the Void, and the Abyss : we have gazed into it, and It into us, and we liked what we saw.

They warn you: there is a Dark Thing that sucks your lifeblood, it feeds upon you, your vital fluids are sapped, this way leads to disaster and destruction and despair. What little they know! If I open a wound upon my breast and bring the Darkling Bird to suckle at it, am I not blessed? If I leave my window open at night, and the Screech Owl, and the wildly wheeling bats, the Death-moth, the Conqueror Worm ; if all these come to my Call, the Toad, the Serpent, the crawling, lowly things, the things of Earth and Darkness, do they not see that I am Gifted, Chosen, Wise beyond compare? For who can call upon the Powers of Darkness in full knowledge that there is no Evil here, no wrong, no malice, only that which goes so far beyond those petty concepts. This is the Great Dark Before, the Silence After. This is the Night, Lila. This is the Formless, that came before the Firmament. This is the Chaos, the Materia, the Rotting, Fruitful Matter from which all blooms. Spiders weave upon our skin, and skittering beetles spew from our mouths.

The Ancients knew it, and the Few, today. This is not performative Dark Aesthetics. This is pourriture, and rot, and decay, and the End of All Things. This is to embrace the glorious transience, and the here and now, sub specie aeternitatis. Small beneath the sky at night. In darkened sylvan amphitheatre, I, light headed, heavy footed, cast eyes to the Heavens, and reel beneath their void expanse. The Night. You know my thoughts on this ; it is where we are begotten, born, and die. It is our Last Home, the only one that will never cast us out. Under the cover of the Dark, beyond the Veil, we dream, we fuck, we whisper our names to each other, for nothing yet can take this away from us.

And so that night, I went down to the Spring, to that little altar to Manannán, my patron, my foster father. There I called him in, and called in Aisling, my fetch-mate, my companion : in meditation and vision she showed herself to me, all arrayed in Autumn, flaming reds and browns, her hair alight with bronze and fire. She lay me down among the crisp dead leaves, and her berry-brown raiment did she open, and cast off, and her long lithe pale limbs did she entwine me with, and her wild-honey kisses did she bestow, and the crisp fur of her was like the moss upon the trees, and wept for me. But for all her lover-sister-companionable embraces, she knew I had to go much deeper and much darker, later that night. I drank a bottle of stolen wine, and reserved some to pour out for the Dead.

In moonlight, in freezing cold, I went down between the mere and the frog-pond, and to the Ruins. There, where in the Summer it was hidden by the flourishing weeds and wildflowers, the Winter had laid bare the entrance, a broken doorway set deep, now, in the mound that Time has erected around what’s left of the old keep. A deep door into the Undercroft. I had feared to go there before. Superstition, or a worry about how solid those walls are, about falling debris and masonry. Not now though. I went to it gladly. We had explored it, a little, by daylight with the children for our first time. I knew the lay of the land.

Inside, the floor is wet earth, now, oozing mud from weeks of rain ; around, the cold damp stone is solid, the dirt floor mounting towards it in each corner. But towards the back of this underchamber, the floor rises, a pile of debris. In the middle of it, an opportune rock, a place to sit solidly ; I did, and faced the doorway, above which is a murder hole. The pale-lit door back out into the World reminded me of a great keyhole, and I sat in the midst of the Dark, and looked towards this weak and silvery light from the door. And in my right hand, the grey-horn-handled knife, and in my left, the Faery Staff, fire-hardened. I sat in meditation, and let the Dark and Cold come in.

I sat in perfect stillness, and silence, and then my vision flickered out, my eyes half closed, and I could see nothing, but only Darkness Visible. I whispered, chanted, called Her in. Invocation. Drips of frigid water echoed in the corners of the chamber. I was in Death’s Antechamber, I knew once more what it was to be a Soul that patiently awaits its Incarnation. I felt soft veils of cold, cold silk sweep round me. I felt a whisper, rising, unutterable silence. I spoke to Her. I went to her, not as a supplicant and subject, but as a proud Magician and Warrior. I recited to Her all my titles, all my Traditions, all my Works of Hands and Days, for she does not wish me for an acolyte or a blind slave ; no, she welcomes me, a prodigal son at last come home. A brother, a comrade, a lover. I intoned my titles and achievements, to show Her, yes, I am a worthy mate for you.

There was a soft whisper of wind around us now, even within the Chamber. I felt the Night draw breath, and then exhale, and Her quiet chill breath upon the back of my neck. I threw myself into Her embrace, and it felt like Home. And I felt my body sway with the sublime power of it, the mystery and the madness of it. I bowed beneath its weight, and then leaned forward, as if my chin was drawn by a long slender finger, cold as ice, pale as corpse. And I felt Her kiss. The soft, cold, blast of it, harnessed now into the gentlest of kisses; this is my body, this is my blood ; drink, eat, and be merry, for tomorrow, we die.

I felt her kiss, even as I reached for it, yearned for it. Her cold and speaking tongue slithered into my mouth, and the pale and freezing life within sought echo in the Outside, and found it. And then, once done, I turned from the stone seat, and struggled up through the “hole in the Ritual Chamber”, above. I planted my staff as I clmbed, and struggled out through bindweed and ivy, and then brandished my knief int he RItual Chambner; bursting out of the “HOle in the Ground” I came back up into the air that seeme so suddenly crystal cold and Clear. I was in the Ritual Chamber, under the Moon, once more. A bird fluttered and burst out of ivy and bays to flutterng explosion off into the Nihght. There were hootings and holerings. I cast the Circle again, and thanked na, marbh, no o pj

My Love. I can barely keep conscious; the Dark is pulling me in iince again. I myst wwrllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

[the communiqué ends here, trailing off into the Dark of the Unconscious …]

I do not wish to rehearse here every detail of my writing life; it would take my entire autobiography to do that, and I have no interest in that project for the moment. What I want to explore is this recent conundrum that has beset me: a sort of self-inflicted writer’s block. It’s not that I don’t have anything to write; my mind is teeming with subjects: three or four ideas for novels that I’m working out, at least two non-fiction books, countless germs of essays. It’s not that I lack confidence in my craft – I’ve come to accept, without bravado, that I’m really very good. Excellent, even. It’s not even that I fear not finding an outlet, not getting published, experiencing rejection. I’ve been there and I’ve done that, and it doesn’t scare me: never before has it been easier to take matters into one’s own hands and publish online (and I have, on Substack and elsewhere), or to set up a miniature publishing house to put one’s work out there.

(I’ve done that too, and I’m very proud of the result, which you can have a look at here: Unreal City on Goodreads. If you like what you see, please do buy it, it’s great. It’s available from all disreputable outlets, including A-Mammon-zon, but the very best would be to order it from your local indie bookshop, or order a copy direct from me, which comes with fulsome dedication and personal seals, stamps, and sigils, lavishly applied)

It’s not even that I fear I won’t find an audience: I’m resigned to the fact that some very few strange people, now and then, will find my work and absolutely love it, read it like I desperately wished it to be read in my secret heart, and hardly anyone else at all will. It is almost certainly doomed to remain a recondite pleasure.

This is closer to the problem though. I love writing, and I love creating mood and mythos around my work; I love making the podcasts I’ve made, the videos, the blog – my own weird little world (you can find it all here: A Tree of Links). However, for the last two or three years, and at certain other times in my life, I have forbidden myself from engaging in these creative pursuits from which I derive such joy and satisfaction. I do let slip a poem now and then; or an artful combination of words and image that I publish on Instagram; maybe a comment on another person’s post which has inspired me, and that I let meander on a bit too long and then turn into a post in its own right. Scribbled lines in my ever-present notebooks. A ceremonial poem to mark a family occasion. No sustained effort though. No bigger projects.

I do not let myself write, because writing doesn’t earn me any money. My family finances have been precarious, and apparently it’s frowned upon not to adequately feed and clothe one’s children. It’s a genuine conundrum. Without pouring massive time and effort not only into writing, but into online community-building, branding of myself, marketing, advertising, travelling to events and readings, there is no way that writing could become a viable source of income for me. There is also no way to skip all that “building” part, where one invests, earning nothing, in the hope of a pay-off, someday. And even then …

I know the economics of the thing all too well: it is almost impossible to make even a modest living purely from writing and writing-adjacent activities these days, as a mid-list, slightly esoteric author. Indeed, it would appear that the whole idea of the “professional writer” is not exactly something that we have lost; we never really had it in the first place: it was actually just a very strange blip that lasted through most of the twentieth century. Before that, almost all “serious” writers had patrons, scrounged money off their friends and families, had rich families in the first place, published privately or by subscription (yes, like Kickstarter), or were actually more like journalists than writers, in the sense that their primary publishing venues for their bestselling fiction were the pages of journals and newspapers, where they were paid by the word or the line for their serialised thrills. Basically, they already had the equivalent of the Hollywood adaptation or the Netflix deal. That’s right, The Strand Magazine was Netflix.

I was lucky though. I had given up on the idea of “making a living” as a writer many years ago – just as I was trying to embark on a serious career as a writer, as it happens. It was in my early days in Paris, when I was working in the bookshop on the Avenue de l’Opéra (it was the year The Da Vinci Code came out; Paris’s first Starbucks had just opened right across from our shop; it was the summer of the first great murderous heatwave of the twenty-first century in France: Signs of the Times, all). I was living in a garret up under the roofs; I was drinking cheap wine by the Seine at night; I was falling in love, over and over again. I was doing everything right. More on all of this another time, if I can stomach it. Anomaly in Paris. Just like all the other boys …

It was also the year – or was it the next? – that John Banville won the Booker Prize for The Sea. I was delighted. He was one of my literary heroes. I pressed it on many customers in the bookshop, who had come to depend on me for my latest recommendations, like a sort of book-sommelier. “And what is Madame in the mood for this afternoon? I have a cheeky little vintage from Siri Hustvedt that might pair well with the erudite melancholy and ennui I can see in Madame’s eyes?” I admired Banville’s work intensely: there were lines in it I knew by heart, symbolic and mythological schema that dazzled me. This was what a serious writer was supposed to be like. Unfortunately, I met him soon after, when he came to give a reading at the Irish Cultural Centre in the Latin Quarter, an old building that had once housed the Irish College, for Catholic seminarians fleeing English oppression to the Continent, and had also once housed me – for the first few months of that first summer. Again, more on that another time. Banville read quite drearily and self-regardingly, and the passage he chose, with its particular insistence on the voyeuristic, queasily inappropriate erotics in the relationship between its two characters, made me sink into my chair with an all-consuming cringe. He seemed pruriently smug, too, about his own “transgressiveness”, and the whole thing was just embarrassing. I can’t even remember which book it was, and perhaps I’m imagining it, but I think it’s a fair characterisation of a lot of his later work, when it’s dealing with sex (which it most often is). Afterwards, I went up to get a different one of his books signed, one I had brought with me for the purpose, and stood in the queue. I had composed in my head what I considered to be a really good line to deliver when meeting a favourite author for the first time: “I first encountered your books when I was much too young for them, and thankfully I have never quite gotten over it.” Something about that now seemed not arch, but creepy. One of the characters in the passage he had read had been a child. I handed over my book when I got to the front, and fumbled over my bon mot as he scribbled a vague signature. He looked up and frowned, said “Ha?” Then shook his head and barked a short sharp dismissive laugh. “Oh right, so.” He handed the book back to me and I took it and fled. He did not seem like a nice man.

This was not the lesson, however, that was to prove so valuable to me (although yes, it did teach me that it was better to not be a creepy aul’ bollocks, and probably better never to read at a live event, or to meet your readers at all). In fact, this had come some months earlier. In the wake of the Booker, Banville had been interviewed by the Sunday Times. This was one of Ireland’s best-regarded authors of literary fiction, at the height of his powers and celebrity, and now, with the Booker, his success. He told the interviewer that writing had never earned him more than enough to pay for, say, a family holiday once a year, and that the vital conditions for a writing life were to have a) an understanding spouse who also earned a good living (which he did), and b) a day job. Admittedly, his day job was as literary editor of the Irish Times, so a pretty good gig for a writer. But still. I remember being shocked: this was one of the top Irish writers of the time, and he couldn’t make a living from his writing! I realised then and there that I never would. One might think, perhaps, of the success twenty years later of an Irish writer like Sally Rooney: generally considered a “serious” and literary writer, but far more of a bestseller than Banville ever was. However, her work is much more accessible than Banville’s, less self-consciously “high-brow” (I say this without judgement on either of them; it’s just the way it is). And she has the Netflix adaptation, doesn’t she?

And so, at the time, I continued working in the bookshop, and hammering away at my first novel during my free time. I was immersed in literature, reading constantly; I was revelling in the bohemian life of being young and poor in Paris, hanging out with poets and artists and the wonderful team of young, international, and eccentric colleagues I had in the bookshop. All the conditions were in place. I finished the novel, after agonising over how to manage the ending, writing and rewriting it: I remember so vividly that moment, sitting in a café on my street, typing the last few lines. I announced the news proudly to my girlfriend at the time, and she punctured my elation with a sarcastic: “oh, I suppose we’re going to be rich now, are we?” Reader, I did not marry her. Neither, of course, did I get rich. I switched jobs around that time, and became a lecteur, a language assistant, in a Paris university. It was even better suited to the writing life: I had very little preparation to do for my classes, which were basically just conversation and practice of oral English.

I remember printing out my cover letters and sample chapters when there was no-one around in the English department staffroom, assembling my submission packets, sending them off to agents for whom I had some introduction – they represented friends of mine, or they were friends of friends. They all answered, kindly but firmly, that they did not represent the kind of work I offered (they were more into plot-driven “commercial fiction”, which my novel was not), or they thought it was good writing, but just weren’t “in love with it”, and only took on work they really felt passionate about; etc etc. I was a bit crushed, but kept going. Started another novel, thinking that first one might just be for the desk-drawer. I could see that it was a bit of a classic “angsty young man” début novel: very self-conscious, very introspective and reflective; not very much really happened in it. I was really trying to be literary, and the effort was too apparent. Even my friends, my fellow writers, found it lacking: often they criticised the unsympathetic protagonist; he was not “relatable” enough; why should we care what happened to him? I was adamant though, that it was written that way on purpose: he’s supposed to be kind of awful, and not very proactive. That’s what the novel’s about. I did get one reader – an ex-girlfriend from Ireland, who was in the process of becoming a very successful writer – who told me that all the things other people disliked about it were, to her, the strengths of the book. Sometimes, one gets a reader like that, who understands exactly one’s intentions. Sadly, she had no power to make something happen for it, and I didn’t insist. Maybe later, as she won more prizes, scored more publications, she could have made an introduction, or passed it on to a publisher or an agent. But I was not then, and am still not now, any good at actually following up on valuable contacts or avenues to aid in my success. Never mind the fact, for example, that at that time I still had an open door to a job in Hollywood, as a writer’s assistant on a series, with a possibility to pitch a script or two. Again, perhaps I’ll write more on that another time. I had decided, having tested it, that the Hollywood life was not for me; I had rather wither in poverty and obscurity in a Paris garret than go to glamorous parties in the Hollywood Hills. My friend and mentor, who held that door open for me still, would laugh about this with me: we were just very different people. When he read my novel, he told me he didn’t really feel like he could give me feedback: he compared it to someone who specialises in writing bubble-gum pop tunes being asked what he thought about a modern jazz concept album.

I’m getting lost in these reminiscences and digressions: on every link of these chains, a heart does dangle, of a day that I have loved, and wronged. Each one could be the occasion for a whole other essay: perhaps the autobiographical impulse is in fact alive in me. Perhaps I have a lot to share, a lot to say. And this is, in fact, the heart of the problem.

I’ll pass more swiftly over the time that came next: I was tempted back into academia, discovering research and falling in love all over again. I kept thinking: the life of a university professor surely offers time and space to read and write. Surely I could write fiction there, too, as many have done before me. I continued on the second novel, then wrote another that grew very much out of my research, and became Unreal City. But these forays into fiction started to feel guilt-ridden: after all, wasn’t I supposed to be writing my PhD thesis? It paralysed me: I couldn’t work on the thing I was supposed to (it felt like homework, but homework that is due in three, four, five years – crushing, ominous, abstract, open-ended), but I couldn’t allow myself to work on the things I wanted to. I finished my PhD, which I only managed to do after the arrival of my son, my first child, put it into context: I was no longer the centre of my own world, he was; I wasn’t having an existential crisis, I just needed to do my damn job. So I did.

I tried to get a permanent teacher-researcher job (the equivalent of “tenure”, but the French system is very different), and couldn’t. There was nothing going that fitted my research profile. I ended up getting offered a good job in a private school in central Paris, as teacher at lycée level (high-school) and head of the Native English programme; I had small classes of wonderful students who were fluent English speakers (either bilingual or very close to it), with lots of teaching hours. It was challenging and rewarding – I thought I must take this steady, prestigious job to support my family (we had just had our second child, a daughter). And surely, it would also leave me time to write…? But it did not. One (jealous) toddler, one newborn baby, a lot of hours of challenging, stimulating classes, administrative responsibilities, planning trips and outings, syllabi, entrance exams … No, I did not have time to write. And I was beginning to think I might have to give up on it altogether, and “settle” for “just” being a teacher. I loved being a teacher. And I did then and do now consider it a noble, meaningful, wonderful profession. But it’s HARD.

Something happened a few years in. Just after my fortieth birthday. And this, I definitely must write more at length about: my wife organised that my birthday present would be everyone chipping in to send me on a writer’s retreat for a week. I was seriously considering the idea that I might just have to grow up and put away childish things, and realise I was not a writer, and never would be. After all, I was hardly writing. But things changed. That week changed me, deeply. And then I blew up my life completely. And then COVID happened, and helped me ease out of that job that had become untenable (not because of the students or the work: purely because of the administration and a few very toxic colleagues who didn’t mix very well with my flare of mental illness … another story for another day). And at the same time, we left Paris and came to live in the South-West of France, in Dordogne. Having negotiated my redundancy, I was entitled to two years of unemployment benefits, and I made the most of it, managing the renovations on the house we had bought, setting up my little publishing company and putting out my first book myself. That really was an amazing thrill. I had lined up a number of other writers whose work I wanted to publish too. I launched the book in Cork, surrounded by the whole supporting cast of my early life, friends, family, even my old English teacher; I had another launch party in Paris, where the staff from one of my favourite bars rolled out a themed menu of fin de siècle cocktails (absinthe punch in a silver tureen!), where we screened a short film by my cover artist that dovetailed beautifully with my book. A heady time. But I did not have the follow-through to really sell my book. I moved enough copies to cover my costs, and I knew that that was not too bad at all.

Meanwhile, I launched an educational project, The Hedge School, in which I offered English classes to kids and adults that were based around playful activities, walks in Nature, games, art, conversation, storytelling, poetry, theatre. It was a good idea. Everyone thought so. But in that first year, I only had a handful of students, and it wasn’t enough. I took on private students through an online platform; I took on teaching hours in the university in Bordeaux (the equivalent of adjunct teaching, in North American parlance). I loved it. I had been teaching a full course-load in a Paris university too, during my transitional phase, staying there three or four days a week. Teaching literature, translation, what I loved. I was even – as it was a private university – allowed to be research supervisor for Masters students, and to teach Masters seminars. These university jobs – although they were not permanent – were perhaps my favourite teaching that I’ve ever done. My students agreed. I remember one of them, in one of my favourite classes, in the week before Christmas when I had done a class with them on Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, who came up to me and asked “Monsieur, do you like what you do?”. I asked her, “What do you think?”; she said, “I think you adore it, and that’s why you’re our best teacher.” I have never had a greater compliment. Yes, I am good at it. Because of my knowledge, my experience, my gifts in communication … but above all, because I adore it.

So I was teaching three days a week in the university in Bordeaux, running my classes on Wednesdays and Saturdays, teaching individual students online several nights a week, I was taking on academic and literary translations when I could. I was still trying – vaguely – to sell my book, filling individual direct orders. However, even with all of these things put end to end, I wasn’t making enough money, and my unemployment benefits were about to run out. I was benefitting from a scheme to encourage entrepreneurs whereby one could get full benefits while still making money as long as one was self-employed. And they say the French have no word for entrepreneur ! My wife – who is also self-employed as a translator – said, basically, “well that’s all very nice, but now are you going to do something to make money?” (it reminded me forcibly of that long-ago sarcastic “oh I suppose we’re going to be rich now, are we?”). She didn’t believe that my literary projects were ever going to make any real money (and I was pretty sure she was right). She also didn’t believe that my Hedge School project really had legs. I disagreed, but again I was confronted with the fact that my idea was good, my execution was good, but I just wasn’t good at marketing and communication, at finding clients. So many people told me they would like to sign up, or sign their kids up. Hardly any of them actually did. And so, while I was negotiating this financially precarious moment, with a lot of balls to keep in the air, I could not justify spending time “just writing”, either for my blog or on longer projects. It felt like I was … cheating on my work. Cheating on my family. How dare I do something that required significant effort, but made no money?

And so I would limit myself to writing little micro-blogging pieces, little texts I would publish on Instagram and FB under my “literary page” (The Hedge School there too). Occasionally, I would make a short video to upload there and to YouTube. I even dabbled in Tiktok for a while, but could never really see the point of it, for me. I would write short poetic fragments, and pair them with a picturesque or mysterious image, and send them out into the Sea of Stuff like messages in bottles, hoping that they would come to rest on stranger shores, and be found by someone who did not even realise they had been looking for just that. And it did happen, from time to time. I would quite regularly get messages from total strangers who were touched, moved, inspired by these little things I would write. But I wasn’t allowed to start another novel, or to get into one of those research-heavy book-length essays I had in mind.

This is the thing: I did have projects. I do. I have a sequel to Unreal City planned. I have a straight-up fantasy novel half-written (of a genre I might call “Poetic Fantasy”, in the vein of writers like LeGuin, Vance, Wolfe, Cooper); I have a whole series of “contemporary occult fiction” in my mind; I have a book on the Theory of Magic, and a book on the concept of Adventure (drawing on my PhD thesis) bubbling away. But I cannot start writing them. I do not let myself do it. It would be a betrayal.

The answer – flawed as it is – to my conundrum was to buckle down and once again get a day job. I thought I had escaped from the quotidian world of ordinary work. I hoped, I prayed, I begged that it might be so. But when, in the space of one year, my various projects didn’t take off, didn’t become sufficient to support my family, I was forced to go back, hat in hand. “Please sir, can I have some more steady employment?” One year wasn’t really enough. I needed more time. I should have got my shit together sooner, started earlier, worked harder, sold better, hustled more. But I did not.

I ended up going back and retaking the very difficult competitive exams required to be a French public-school teacher. I had passed them before, and done stunningly well, then deferred my placement to follow the university research track (this is standard practice). But when I was offered the private school job in Paris, I was forced to renounce my qualification. People (French people) thought I was insane to do so: once you’ve passed one of these exams you become a permanent and pensionable civil servant for good. It’s almost impossible to be fired (or even to quit, it turns out). So I took the exams again (a slightly lighter version for people with doctorates who want to go back to secondary teaching). The first time round, fifteen years ago, I came second in the country (unheard of for a non-French candidate, who usually have a hard time passing at all). This time, I came first. And so I went back to school. Part-time teaching, part-time teacher-training. Strange days. And I came out the end of it, with a placement in a middle-school, teaching 11-14 year-olds basic English. Not ideal. However, then there intervened a deux ex machina, and everything changed again. That’s not the story for today. Maybe not for ever.

Here’s the thing: I got a dog. Two years ago, not long after we moved to our current house, we finally got a dog. A childhood dream, now finally fulfilled. I had never even thought it possible. That’s her in the picture above: Naya. A beautiful hound. A harebrained mutt. She’s wonderful. And while, before, going on long walks around the village, along the river, through the vineyards and up into the hills and forests surrounding us had been a passion, it was an almost guilty one (shouldn’t I be working?), now it became an obligation, a duty. Got to take my dog for a walk! And so, every day, at first, and then as often as I could once I was back to working in schools, I would take her for long rambles through the woods, exploring, discovering, having adventures. At first, I would sometimes listen to music or podcasts, but I realised that this was totally wrong: I needed to be here and present in the World. All of the senses engaged. Observing, feeling, sensing. What I found was that this turned into an incredible kind of walking meditation. My body and my perceptions engaged completely, my mind was free to turn over and over the things that were obsessing me. And more and more, it was my writing. I would be hiking along the crests of hills looking over into the further valleys, finding strange ruins, isolated empty houses, weird glades of haunted atmosphere, and I would be going over the situations and ideas and characters for my novels, or working my way through my theory of magical practice. More and more and more. I would hardly ever even write anything of it down later, though sometimes I did, just a little. I was working on these constructs in Pure Mind: like a Palace of the Ars Memoria, I would elaborate the structure bit by bit, the scenes, settings, dramatis personae: the chapter headings of the magic book, the text of the introduction. And the next day, pick them up again, and work on them again, without actually writing. Writing is cheating on your family, remember? Writing doesn’t earn money. You cannot write, you must not write. Ah, but the mind’s its own place, and can make a Heaven of Hell, or a Hell of Heaven! In your imagination, you are free. If they take away your pen and paper, you shall write only upon the Book of Your Heart.

And now … it is inevitable. There are all of these novels, these essays, these books of ideas, that are clamouring to be written, that are bursting out, that are overflowing. I can no longer stop the flow. The dam is burst. If you are having writer’s block, consider: consolidate the block, make of it an impregnable wall. Forbid yourself from writing. Then see what builds up against that self-imposed obstacle. Then keep up the siege until the walls come tumbling down. You are both the attacking army and the defender. As Yeats said: “We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry” … Quarrel with yourself. Fight against yourself. You are your only worthy foe.

A few days ago, I came home from my walk between the hills and the woods and the vines, and sat down and started writing, the surge that came as the walls fell. Wrote 4,000 words that afternoon. I’ve decided to start with something just a little fun and silly (though, me being me, I’m sure I’ll manage to make it quite un-fun and serious as I go): I had an idea for a “Dark Academia Romantasy” novel, based on my year of teacher-training, but make it teacher-training for Magicians: magic-university meets French bureaucracy and labyrinthine administration, petty rivalries between academics: both a genuine attempt to write in the genre, but also a gentle satire of it, and of the French system and academia and teaching in general. I think it’s going to be quite amusing. For me, at least. And as in everything in life, that’s the most important part. If nothing else, at least amuse yourself.

A few months ago, my Uncle Tony passed away. As on a few other occasions of my family's history (a wedding, the death of my grandmother, the birth of my godson), I felt Called to make a poem.
There is something so powerful to this: to be the one who makes and speaks an occasional poem on a solemn occasion. I want to share it now, and so I do.
You need only know: Tony was predeceased by his incredible and wonderful wife Mary, only a year or so before (I could not be at her funeral, and I could not find the words to say). Their children are Paul, an incredible musician, guitar player, composer, teacher, and Claire, a flame-haired physician, doctor and specialist.

This is what it means to be the poet of the clan.
This is Inspired Speech, the duty and the gift of the File, the Bard.

"Just after I heard the news of Tony's passing this morning, I took my dog Naya out for a walk along the River Dordogne and up through the vines to the woods. As soon as I reached the river, a poem started to bubble up, from words I had used before and words I had yet to use. I couldn't stop to write; the hound pulls hard if I linger! At one point, I tried, but she barked and wouldn't let me concentrate. And so I went along the path between hedges and vines, and rehearsed it to myself in my head, and then began to speak it aloud; it wouldn't wait. And so I just put on my voice recorder and and spoke it out, along the path that skirts the edge of the forest. This is basically how it came out. I changed a few words here and there, but hardly at all. It would not wait; it seemed urgent. Later, and you'll see why, I thought I must make a recording of it, and so went to the river at nightfall and did just that. It's for you, Paul and Claire, first and foremost, but for all your families, our families, my family. I hope you feel what I tried to put into it. And yet I feel I put nothing in that wasn't there: it just demanded to be spoken, and I could do no other."

They asked me to speak a version of the poem at the funeral.
There is no greater honour.

The text is below.

LULLABY

For Tony

Your bed is a boat

So I would tell my restless son

When he could not find his way to sleep

And I’d say, come, we’ll go by river

Your bed is a boat, I’d say

A whisper, sing-song, song-spell

In his ear as I stroked his brow with never the same words twice, but always the same river

Your bed is a boat, and at the slipway at the port, I push you off

The current takes you, gently carries you to midstream

And off you go, the boat turning, swirling, you wrapped up with your blanket and your pillow and your stuffed rabbit

Your bed is a boat, and on you go, down the long, dark river of dreams into the Nightland

Past the mill, past the forests and the hills

Past the vineyards and the golden fields of barley

Past the town upon whose fortified walls and quays hang lanterns glowing ruddy brightly in the night-time

Under the great arches of the stone bridge you go and on down the river into Dream-Country

Beneath a sky that’s elegant with stars

Into the Forests of the Night between whose trees peep strange fantastic creatures and twinkle lights of will-o’-wisps and tinkling laughter and song of fairy feasts

And then you come to rest upon the shore in the dawn and there I’ll find you and we shall return throughout the day and do it all again

That’s what I said to my son

Now, to you, I say the same

This Lullaby

The words are different, but the river is always the same I say to you:

Your bed is a boat

But not some small boat packed only with provisions for one night, no

Yours is a more sturdy and noble boat, as befits a man of your stature

With a raised prow and a dragon’s head upon it

A strong rudder, high sides slung with shields

For we’ll give you a Viking funeral, as is only fitting

You there now, lying crossed arms upon your chest

Within the hull of that strong bed

Around you we shall place all the treasures that you’ve earned and that we owe you

We shall place all the things befitting a man of your stature, wrap you in a bearskin cloak that looks well on you

As befits a man who’s strong but gentle

Who’s shy but charming

Who’s serious but funny as hell

Who’s happy enough living the quiet life but who loves to throw a party

And all these beautiful balances we shall place within your arms

And around you all those goods and riches that you earned and that we owe you, all those gifts

The loved ones that you loved

The great love that you made, with her, your Lady

The places that you lived, no backs of hands were better known than those!

A knife beside you that’s as sharp as your mind

And a treasure of gold that’s as bright as your heart

The honours and achievements and accomplishments, not only yours, but those of all your children and their children, displayed with pride, just as your parents did before you

We shall pack around you all the things you loved and all the things we loved about you

All these combustible things

And we shall gather at the shore at nightfall, a little sandy bank under the trees, and we shall light a sacred fire there, which shall flicker upon our faces as we look from one to the other and catch glistening tears and smiles

And when we have said the words – never the same words, always the same river – we shall gather round the boat and put our hands upon the hull and gently push

And your small ship shall set sail upon the long dark wave

And your son, a Child of Air, from that quiet air shall pluck the plangent notes of a keen lament upon the strings of the instrument

And your daughter, a Child of Fire, shall pull from the embers the sharpest lancet that she has, shall change it into an arrow which she shall set aflame and wait

And as the current takes your noble boat it shall set sail with its precious cargo – you – surrounded by all of this, our love

These combustible things

Then, just as you’re about to reach the first bend in the river, beyond which we shall no longer see you, though we know you’re there:

The bow bends, the string stretches, the arrow arcs, parabola of fire in the darkening sky

Strikes sweet, strikes true, just within the prow of the boat

And all these combustible things ignite

An ardent flame, a funeral pyre, a beacon that sets off into the night along the dark river, to go ahead of us to light the way

And turns the corner where we shall no longer see it though we know it’s there

And you turn the corner and set off on your journey into the Nightland

And though we no longer see you, we shall know you’re there

And we shall each take a piece of the flame, each carry an ember burning home with us, from which we shall strike sparks

Because the river upon which we set you sail is not the Lethe, not the River of Oblivion, nor Styx, nor Acheron

It is Aletheia: the Unforgetting

And in its waters in which you bathe you are Unforgotten

And from its waters when we drink, they taste of flame

And we remember all you dreamed of

And you will remember all the dreams we ever have

10 January 2026

Once upon a time, there was an ugly, smelly old witch who lived alone in a murky pond. She got up when she wanted, and went to bed when she felt like it; she had frogs and toads and bats and rats and snakes and a couple of goats for pets, and she fed them all sorts of strange and venomous mixtures. She larked about in the pond all day, and occasionally went for walks around the neighbouring woods and hedgerows, gathering curious and fragrant things. These she used to decorate her pond, or to mix her heady brews. By night, she watched the sky, and sang softly to herself.

One day, a little girl called Josephine came upon the murky pond, and saw the witch taking her ease on the bank. She asked the witch what she was doing, and the witch replied “Nothing! What does it look like?” Josephine was puzzled. She had always been told not to answer “nothing” to questions. She asked the witch why she was so old and ugly and smelly. “What’s the point in being sweet-smelling and pretty, like you, except to please others? I’m very happy with how I am. And as for being old, well, it’s far preferable to being young, if you ask me! I’ll have you know, I get up when I want, and go to bed whenever I please! I laze around my pond all day, and I feed all the verminous and creeping things. I gather all the strange weeds and flowers from the hedgerows, and I make them into special brews. I answer to no-one and nothing, and I only please myself!”

“Golly,” said Josephine. “It’s a witch’s life for me! How do I go about becoming a witch like you?”

“Well,” said the witch, “it’s a long and arduous process. If you wish to learn to be a witch, there are a few things you must do first: learn all you can about plants and herbs and flowers and trees, listen to them, care for them, gather them, and brew with them; learn all you can about the sun, the moon, the stars, their turnings and their changes; learn all you can about the seasons, learn to smell each one coming, and to see everything that each will bring, and that each will take away; learn all the secrets that you can, and all the stories that you can; learn to tell, and not to tell, learn to lie, and how to find the truth; learn all the magic that you can, learn how to enchant, and to be enchanted, learn how to become invisible, and how to see; finally, you must learn all the mysteries of the human heart; learn love, learn pain, learn fear, learn joy and sorrow, learn hate and grief, and reverie and melancholy: learn peace. You must learn all these things by studying them closely, by living them fully - by sucking all the juices out of life, and going back for more.

“Then, when you have done all this, you come back here, and I’ll teach you how to be a witch like me.”

Josephine went away thoughtfully, and from that day forward, she lived her life rather differently. She thought of all the things she must learn, and all the things she must see and do and experience, and it seemed a lot. But she was quite excited about the prospect, and especially about one day beginning finally to learn to be a witch like the one in the pond.

And so she lived, and learned, and changed, and grew. She loved, and lost, and gathered herbs by the light of the moon, and rose at dawn to learn the songs of all the birds that greet the sun. She married, twice, and had some children, who she loved. She made things, and grew things, and saw and heard things. She kept secrets, and told stories. And every time she thought of going back to the pond, to finally learn to be a witch, she hesitated; perhaps there was still more to learn, still more she had not done yet? Perhaps there was a little more juice to be sucked out of life, before it was time to learn to be a witch.

One day, when she was not so young anymore, and when there was a weight of things she carried with her that she would not have traded for the world, had it been offered, she finally went back to the witch’s pond. She called out for the witch, and said she had finally come to learn. There was no answer. The pond was still and silent, empty. Josephine looked up and down, and all around, but there was no sign of the witch.

And she understood.

She threw off her clothes, and unbound her hair, and slipped gratefully into the murky water of the pond, and the toads and rats and snakes began to gather round her.