Tess's Coil

"He is so hardheaded!" Tess was tugging on a lever more fragile than it looked, and for her size, she could pack quite a wallop. The brass bent and threatened to break, so she gave way and took a deep breath. Of course, she had forgotten to disengage the safety. "Put energy back in," she mumbled as she used her foot to push out the dowel. "What does he think I was showing him?" Well, it wasn't the first time she'd come in second to Peggy. That girl probably had a charm cast on every senior classman.

Oh well. Tess went over to her box garden, which was enshrouded in sweaty plastic that was sleeved to the window and would normally be well-lit if not for the cloud cover. She checked the cables running into the canopy, then opened the slit in the tent and made sure the alligator clips were snug on the upper branches of the shrubs. "Good," she said to the plants. "This won't hurt a bit."

She was trying to be reassuring, though she wasn't quite sure if plants could feel pain. Well, she thought, that's exactly what magicians say right before whisking off a band-aid with their wand. It was never really true, but it pulled the wool over her eyes long enough to let them do the deed. In this case, she was just trying to bolster the plants' beleaf. Anyway, they always bounce back after a day or so.

She pulled the lever down to where the contact slid into the copper clip, then she began turning a small hand crank with ease. The crank was attached to a rotating joint beneath the table her garden sat on. Another pulley assembly beneath the table was attached to the end of the bar, lessening the mechanical effort of her handiwork. The table began undulating, and she could see the vague shape of the shrubs behind the plastic swaying in a dance of flora.

While Tess refused to practice practical magic, she did pay very good attention during spellcraft and design. For instance, she knew that the quicksilver spell was activated by a spiral motion of the tip of one's wand. Wand theory suggested that it took incoming magic and slowed it down enough to disperse the magic energy in an array of photons. It turned invisible magic into light, whether a spell was hostile or not.

Her Magic is Science textbook was open near the red globe of blown glass where the copper wires from her switch came together in a thin spiral within. This was not the first time she had done this experiment, only the first time with such mature specimens. And while the spiral began emitting photons within the red glass, Tess continued to glance back at the dancing plants to be certain they hadn't fallen over like last time. Once the red lamp was glowing to her satisfaction, she stopped turning the crank and the table garden came to a halt.

She smiled and approached the lamp, taking a closer look at the spiral of copper while it cooled back down to an orange-hot glow and then finally died out. Then, remembering the shrubs, she leapt back to the tenting and separated the flaps. She then deflated. They had all wilted but the smallest plant, which had not been connected to Tess's coil. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said, "let me get you guys some water and some fertilizer spikes."

While she tended the garden and removed the alligator clips, she pondered the implications. Over on the Globe, they had something called electricity that was responsible for their daily comforts. It sounded too much like magic for her not to experiment with the idea. Indeed, she had successfully put energy, whether magical or not, into the ruler by rubbing paper together. And again, she had put energy into her coil by working the plants. But she had to admit that Ian was right in one respect. Getting the same magic energy back into the plants again, or the paper for that matter, was the hard part, and it was going to take time.

Magic books proclaim that things absorb magic directly from the Root. Plants could use food and water to accelerate this absorption. Perhaps people and animals do likewise? This experiment showed they could indeed be tapped for it. It was only a matter of battering the thing. Put any object through enough distress, and it will slough off its magic. She thought about hooking Peggy up to the machine and laughed out loud, then felt ashamed. She didn't need that kind of karma. Some of the Vedas that lived out on the ice near Mount Mariatites claimed that any negative action or thought you introduce into the cosmos comes back at you tenfold.

Let Death sort 'em out, she thought. Eew, still stinking thinking. Genuinely concerned for her own mental welfare, she tried concentrating on caring for the flora. Outside, the thunder rolled and all the magic lighting wavered. Then a huge strike of lightning lit up the inside of the makeshift greenhouse, and all the lights failed at once. Lightning was not something she was afraid of, by any means. But the dark, however, she could do without. She reached a hand toward the hand crank, thinking to power up her red lamp, but stopped. The plants might not survive another go of her coil. Reluctantly, she took a deep breath and waited. Finally, the flames flickered back to life, and she grinned smugly.

Put a tally in the positive karma column for my love of the shrubs, she thought.