Magic in the Air: The Turbine and the Sprite

Chapter 5

"They warned me this would happen. Dammit! How could Matucket've gone behind my back like that ― selling off the quarry to the guild?"

Dean rarely saw his father flustered, but he knew from his tone and his talking with his hands that he was fuming. His knife and fork were still on the table.

"Oh, you couldn't have known, dear. How could you have, how could anyone have? Those Matuckets have always kept to their own just as we try to. They just did what anyone would do who wasn't blessed with a sprite like Artemis and a daughter to go with it." Their mother raised a forkful of roasted potato to her mouth.

Dean noted his father's narrowed eyes directed towards his mother as she emphasized "blessed."

His mother went on. "But I'm sure the guild will work out the kinks and have it running more . . ." Dean could see her fish for a word that would satisfy their father while getting her point across and being unclear to himself and Agnes. "Safe." She looked like she nodded as much in self-congratulation as in reassurance to her husband.

"I don't know, Tia . . . Artemis fainted? The whole area around the quarry was withered?"

Dean spoke up. "She did. And that's why we didn't get back until so late. We had to go looking for a fairy ring deep enough into the green to lay her in, and even then," Dean looked past Agnes to where Artemis lay on a cot beside her. "Even then, she's still coming out of it." He pulled his attention to Agnes and then to their parents, "the plants around the turbine were more than withered. They were all browned up and just crumbled if you even breathed on any of them. Looked like only the brambles were still tough." Dean was about to look over to Agnes for support and to get her to chime in, but then he remembered how much she hated talking about the sprites' weaknesses since she somehow felt like they were her own.

"That's not good." Their father's tone was grim. "Drawing up all that magic at once. So fast that the plants, the sprites even, can't keep up their own supply? Do they realize what they're doing? What kind of damage they've already done?"

"Magic's here because it's drawn into our world through rifts into the sprites' own world. So how is that a problem? Artemis even said that the sprites'll just bring more magic through. She said it wouldn't be a problem for them! Can't the city people and the sprites both be here?"

Dean remembered the sprite's words from only moments before she fainted. Artemis did say just that...

As he thought over what Artemis had boasted about, Dean couldn't find anything wrong with it. Magic came into the world through rifts at the points where it connected to the world of the sprites. There, magic was like air in the human world, while belief was a scarce but potent thing for the sprites. Or so Dean recalled from his own schooling and reading. So the two were swapped at these rifts, magic flowing into the human world, and belief flowing into the world of the sprites. There was supposed to be some sort of limit on the speed of the flow, but Dean couldn't remember that much about his lessons. He smiled to himself, remembering the bulk of Frances Yates' writings on practical magic with its precisely timed phrases and gestures. Using it sounds so much cooler than just reading about it.

Their father looked across the table to Artemis. The colour was back in her face but she hadn't opened her eyes since Dean and Agnes had brought her home. As he spoke he turned from Artemis to Agnes. "Whatever Artemis said, it's a problem because they'll drain the magic too quickly if that," their father bounced his hands in the air, "thing ― runs all the time. Or if more of them spring up nearby. Then who knows what will happen."

"Now dear, without these kinds of new things we wouldn't be so comfortable as we are. We wouldn't have our own typewriter, or the adding machine that makes our money so . . ." Their mother trailed off once she noticed their father's glare.

"No. The city might have given us a few things that make living easier, but these things are going too far. You might not like the sprites and we might be able to make do on our own after a few years of learning to live without them, but the land ― the world ― none of the land around here ― or anywhere ― would be so lush without magic. You sit pretty now, Tianna, but without the sprites our crops would fail without a lot of extra hands. Even then we'd only get one crop every season, and our best haul from the fields then would be as good as our worst is now. The fields would fail us for the first time since my great-great-great grandfather befriended Artemis' kin and they agreed to help get the farm going. We'd need to keep all the land here watered and clear ourselves along with tending the animals, and gathering enough of those herbs for your and Agnes' remedies, and still have to find time for your numbers and figures. Though what we spend would get bigger and what we earned would get smaller ― much smaller. Not to mention taking time out for market trips and making sure things don't spoil once they're out of the ground."

It took seconds for an answer to the dilemma to pop into Dean's head, though it supported a reality where the turbines were successful. His father vocalized it first.

"Sure. We could hire hands, but they'd be doing so much more than just picking bugs off leaves and putting seeds in the ground." Kurt shook his head. "What little we grew we'd have to split too many ways. We'd have to eat and wear what we grow and only that."

Their father leaned forward after their mother was silent for what he must have figured was too long. "Can you even imagine it? Having to run this place without magic? Without the abundance that Artemis and the others' help brings? No. These turbines ― they've got to be stopped. I don't care if the city promises us contraptions that can do what all the sprites in the world can do. It's all just bluster. We can't let them fool us. If we do, all this green around us will be drained away like water from a thirsty cow's trough. Those turbines need to end."

Tianna stood from the table, shoving her chair back across the floor in the process and keeping her eyes on her husband. "This is just the same thing you always do when something new comes up. Artemis only fainted because she was as small as some kind of bug. At her normal size, there'd be no problem ― I bet you. None at all." She grabbed her plate and stormed to the sink. Their father followed, trailing words of comfort and apology.

Dean had only to look over to Agnes, who had turned away from her supper to tend to Artemis, to know what he ― what any would-be Venturer ― had to do.

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Thanks for reading Chapter 5 of Magic in the Air: The Turbine and the Sprite! I'll be posting a chapter every Wednesday until the complete five book, fifty-part story is finished.

Feel free to leave your thoughts on this chapter and the entire ongoing story in the comments. I'll try to read and respond to them as soon as I can.

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