I’m running through a forest. Dense cypress trees, so close together it’s impossible to tell whether it’s day or night, line the path. I don’t know what I’m running toward, or from. My feet hit the rock-solid ground in an abnormal rhythm. There is a heavy thickness in the air, almost as if time is slowing down, and all my motions are blurring together. I look behind me. All I see are the trees reaching an ever-skyward height, an eerie darkness, and the footprints I left behind. But there is something else too. Little pieces of something shiny, but I can’t tell what. The eerie black mass continues towards me, regardless of the curves in the path, it continues to follow, spitting shards of poison crystal, becoming more lethal by the second. The wind is howling, lashing my hair across my face. The dark vortex swirls closer with the velocity of a raging storm. But I hear none of it. Just the sensation of air passing my ears as I’m running, and my heart pounding wildly inside my chest, keeping abstract tempo with my feet as they hit the ground. It vibrates me to the core. Suddenly, time speeds up again. Turning my head back around, looking to make sure it’s a straight shot in front of me, I shut my eyes. I lean forward, and keep running against the wind. And as suddenly as it had started, I stopped.

I come to an instant halt at the edge of a lake, almost losing my balance and about to fall in. Regaining my footing, and catching my breath, I take a closer look at the water. Vapor rises out of it, like dry ice. I reach my hand out to touch it, and it’s frigid. Winter cold. Below zero. I pull my hand back. It’s fractured. But there’s something else to the water. It has pieces of shiny in it too. And glass bottles. Glass bottles with the corks screwed on tight. Glass bottles with hundreds of thousands of millions of broken pieces. Glass bottles, all floating in the middle of a lake. But it isn’t just a lake. It has a river flowing into it, and in the distance I can see that that’s where the bottles came from. I look around. Everything, the cypress trees, the lake, the bottles, the sky, the ground, everything, is a shade of grey, only with a slight tint of what I thought its color was supposed to be. I look at myself. I’m immediately taken aback.

All over my skin. No, it IS my skin. Little pieces of shiny glass, in hundreds of thousands of millions of colors. It makes a mosaic, a kaleidoscope, with little rays and beams of colorful light coming from the cracks, just visible in between the glass. But my shiny pieces are different from the ones that were in the forest, which isn’t that far away, only a few meters. The shiny pieces on the ground are grey, and only reflect the light from the sun, which is the same dull shade. My pieces are luminescent, the light comes from them, brighter than the reflections of the sun.

I look back at the glass bottles, too far away to reach. But there is one, a small bottle, no bigger than my hand, floating just close enough to take. The bottle is cold from the water, but I unscrew the cork and empty the contents onto the grass. I’m unsure what impulse washes  over me or what it suggests, but I start putting the pieces together. It’s a little painful, since the pieces are shards of glass, but in a few short seconds I’m done. The object before me looks similar to that of a human, but relatively small. It doesn’t have features, just the shape of a person. I get up and walk around it a few times, inspecting my work. I notice the object has just a little color left, a few shades of muted blue and green. It’s odd, especially since when it was still in pieces, I was sure that it was grey… I also notice a piece missing, an empty space, right where its eye would be.

Without hesitation, but a pricking tug, I pick a piece off of my hand. The piece is still a soft yellow, but the space from where I took it turned black. I figure it is so small a hole compared to the rest of me, I can live with it. I kneel down, unsure of what’s going to happen. As soon as I touch the yellow piece to the figure, color starts spreading from its eye to the rest of its little body. Have I given it color..? I’m highly surprised as the tiny figure, only a foot tall, is now moving, satisfactorily examining itself, just like I had done before. It has no facial features, but it seems to look up at me, almost expectantly. I look back at the lake. Another small bottle has been making its way closer. I reach out for the bottle, and in another few minutes I have another grey figure built.

The colorful one turns its head from the grey figure, to me, back to the figure, and back at me. It steps closer as I hold out my other hand. It hesitates with its hand on mine. I don’t move. It pulls off a neon orange piece. Again, the piece keeps its color, but the space on my hand turns black. I’m okay with it. The first little figure shuffles over to the second one, and attempts to put the orange piece in the hole on its eye.

Not being able to get it to fit, the figure teeters back over to me and gives me the piece, looking over its shoulder and pointing back at the hole. As soon as I touch the orange piece to the grey figure’s face, colors start to spread again. I now have two little mosaics staring at each other, marveling at their colors. They hug my ankles, and then run to go explore. They touch the leaves on the ground that had fallen from the trees. The leaves start turning into greens and reds and golds. The figures leave green tracks in the grass. It’s amazing to watch.

I grab another bottle from the lake. As I build the figure, I notice how much bigger he is, about as tall as me. When I’m done, the figure has muted yellows and oranges. I pull a fluorescent gradient piece from my wrist and add it to the hole in the figure’s eye. It comes to life as the colors return to their full brightness, spreading from its eye down to the rest of its body. It studies itself too, holding its arms out to watch the sun shine through the pieces and make colored rays on the ground. The figure sees me and gives me a hug, grateful that I have taken the time to put it back together. It then takes my hand and guides me away from the edge of the lake. We run after the other little figures. We touch the bases of the cypress trees, and the trees turn brown and tan. We run our fingers over some flowers, and the petals turn purple and pink. We brush our hands over the soft grass, and the blades turn bright green. I feel pure joy, seeing unimaginable brilliance flow from our touch.

Still holding hands, the tall figure and I run back to the lake and reach for more bottles. I have excited bursts of thoughts about how much color the figures and I could bring to the world if I make more of them. I give away a violet purple piece, a cherry red piece. An emerald green, a flamingo pink, and a sunny yellow piece. I’m so happy to be bringing colors and figures to life, the few inches of skin turning black doesn’t bother me. Soon, all the land around the lake overflows with color. It’s such a thrill, an adrenaline rush, the feeling you get when an ecstatic shiver runs up your back, to see a world, a small part of it at least, alive and thrumming with something that hasn’t been seen in a very long time. I look around and see all the figures I have built, and the one sitting next to me, apparently smiling and helping me reach for more bottles. A realization dawns on me. I don’t need to run anymore. I’ve found where I’m supposed to be. There, dozens of unique, human-shaped mosaics playing and running around.

It is pleasant, but something feels a little off. I glance back towards the opening that shows the trail down the forest. I can see the cloud of darkness coming back, making its way towards the lake. I can’t believe it. It was supposed to be gone. Left behind and forgotten. No longer a reason to run and worry. Now it’s nearing again, just as vile as ever. I try to get the figures to run from the cloud, along the river and out of sight. I don’t know if they understand me, they seem confused. I make a wild gesture at the black mass, not too far away now, and snarl at the figures, trying to make them see that what’s coming is horrid. They seem scared, but of me, not what I was running from. Some of the figures run away, but most of them stay, too scared and confused to move or to know what to do. It’s exasperating and hopeless.

I back up to the edge of the lake, thinking the poisonous whirlwind will dissipate instead of touching the water. The mosaics and I only watch in horror as the vortex lurches into the clearing. But as soon as it does, the sound of a tree snapping and falling resonates in translucent waves, strong enough to almost knock me over again. Shaking my head, I look back at where the giant, dark cloud is supposed to be. It isn’t there. Instead, there are hundreds of figures, but they are black and grey, of all shapes and sizes. The grey mosaics are down on all fours, crawling through the glass pieces scattered on the ground. They’re missing pieces too, but they don’t have a single hole just where their eye should be, they have holes all over.

One of the grey figures approaches a colorful one, and puts its hand on its head. The colors start draining from the colored figure, melting down its body and pooling around its feet. The color absorbed into the ground, never to be seen again. As soon as the last drop is gone, the piece I had given the figure to cover its eye falls off. Time slows down again. I watch as the piece falls to the ground. I try to scream. No sound comes out. I try to run towards the figure before it falls apart again. It’s too late. Not a second after the first piece hits the floor, the rest of the glass pieces fall, starting from where the taller grey figure has its hand on its head, and they come off in a wave, a ripple all the way down, until there’s just a pile of hundreds of thousands of millions of colorless pieces on the ground.

The figure still standing drops its hand, falls to its knees, and starts sifting through the pile, trying to find pieces that will fill its empty spaces. When I reach the grey mosaic, I whisper.

“Why?”

It ignores me.

I manage to yell.

“WHY?!”

It looks up at me. Its face crinkles as if it blinked. A tear slides down its face. It resumes its task of sorting through the pile. I take a piece from my arm. I hand the bright crimson speck to the figure. It takes the piece from my hand, and attempts to fit it into a black space. When it doesn’t fit, the grey figure throws the piece away, and before I can pick it up again, the crimson soaks into the ground.

I disregard the useless mosaic in front of me and turn around. A cry escapes my throat as I watch the other grey figures demolish the remaining colorful mosaics. They don’t just peacefully place their hands on their heads. They throw them onto the floor. They step on them. They beat them against the cypress trees. All around I see the colors draining into the ground, and the rest of the glass pieces fall, and they come off in a wave, a ripple all the way down, and piles of hundreds of thousands of millions of pieces raining onto the floor. All the colors in the flowers, in the trees, in the grass, are quickly fading as well. The mosaic who had held my hand, I see it stretch out its arm towards me as an even bigger figure places its hand on its head. The fluorescent piece from its eye falls off as its face contorts with pain. He tries to reach for me as his colors melt off, and the pieces ripple apart. I feel my heart drop. I look at the lake.

There’s only one colorful figure left. The little one, the first one I had built. It’s trying to reach for another bottle. I run over before the grey ones have the chance to get to it. I gather the last bit of color into my hands. We glance around at the destruction. It looks like I had never been there. Everything, the cypress trees, the lake, the bottles, the sky, the ground, everything, returned to its shade of grey, only with a slight tint of what its color had been. The little one looks up at my face. It pulls the soft yellow piece from its eye, and places it in my hand. I try to put it back, but the little one won’t let me, he covers his eyes with his hands. When I stop trying, it uncovers its face. I’m so confused and lost as to why it is giving its yellow piece back to me. I whisper to it, almost crying.

“Why?”

It just blinks, and smiles a sad smile. It closes its eyes as their colors start dripping onto my hands, between my fingers, and down to the ground. I can’t believe I held a glowing, radiant, almost-person in my hands, and now all that’s left is a pile of grey glass on the floor, and the single yellow piece still in my grasp. I put the yellow back into the space on my hand. Black tears start streaming down my face.

All that’s left are grey figures, searching through the hundreds of thousands of millions of pieces on the ground, in a world of grey, in the clearing surrounding the lake, where it has started raining. Everything is blurry. I had been thinking that I still have color left. I look down. All I can see is grey. Barely audible, I breathe, “No.” Time slows down again. My hands are shaking violently. Slowly, they start crumbling into pieces. I can’t take it. I stumble and fall backwards into the lake with a rigid splash. It’s cold. Icy cold. I look above me, rain pelting the surface of the lake, as hundreds of thousands of millions of my glass pieces float to the surface, blocking out the sun. A crystalline solstice. Forever.

Kya

I glared at the pencil I had thrown onto my bedroom floor a few seconds ago. The lilting, sweet notes of my sister’s flute drifted in through my shut door, followed by a loud clunk and a “drat!”.

Ren was practicing some sort of levitation spell. It didn’t appear to be going well.

I sighed and ducked to pick up the mistreated writing implement. For a myriad of reasons, I had to master this spell.

One was that I had a quiz tomorrow I needed to not fail, to maintain my precarious B, to maintain my increasingly imperiled honor roll designation, to maintain my life and future as I knew it.

Drama queen? Nah.

And, I knew for a fact this was actual important life knowledge. No math magician had ever gotten a decent, rewarding job without knowing how to take the integral of a function.

So I had been told.

And they definitely didn’t get to be a policy expert without knowing how to deconstruct complex international problems—much less an alarm clock—down to their basic parts and concepts. If I was going to follow in my parents’ footsteps like I’d always wanted, I had to figure this out.

Ren

I glared at my penciled in notes on the stand in front of me. This wasn’t working. Why wasn’t this working?

This was the most complex spell I’d ever written. Last night, I’d levitated my stuffed animal with a few bars, and now I wanted more. I wanted to make the flimsy giraffe fly. I’d called in Pepper for help because our magic together would be easier.

Pepper was my best friend. He was currently perched on my desk with his bassoon, craned over to read the notes I kept changing every five seconds, and watching me warily. It seemed like a remarkably uncomfortable position to play in.

My piece didn’t violate the rules, did it? I didn’t see how, but the rules were always violated when I least expected them to be. Magic had rules and ethics. Neither were to be broken—rules couldn’t be, and ethics shouldn’t be. The ethics were easy: don’t hurt people with magic. The rules were harder: magic can’t violate the laws of physics. The problem was the laws of physics.

I had a C in physics. I knew I couldn’t make something out of nothing, but the laws seemed to me to change depending on what was being done and it was difficult to keep track. I couldn’t see how the spell I had in front of me was attempting to break any rules. There must be a different problem stopping Lulu the giraffe from sailing through the air.

I crossed out the three notes at the end of the fourth measure and changed them. “Again,” I told Pepper.

Kya

I redirected my gaze to the notebook paper and rewrote the equation for the thousandth time, hoping starting again would finally work. I underlined each part, granting myself that this was no basic anti-derivative, no simple deconstruction. The alarm clock faced me menacingly. I pictured the sweater I’d successfully unwound with the power rule, and the pen I’d taken apart with the quotient rule. I scrawled these rules in the margin and willed them to work on this function.

The third attempt had promise, the alarm clock top falling off and the numbers blinking into oblivion, but by the end it just beeped annoyingly.

I sighed. My sister could do this with a sweet sonata, quick and pretty; I’d seen it. My dad could take this same pencil and the clock would appear on the paper in seconds, deconstructed on my desk in moments. My mom could achieve the same with a few colorful brushstrokes.

I’d wanted their magic. It was technically inherited, after all (so I was saved from having cooking magic, it never having appeared in our family tree), but forgotten magics often reappeared after generations. I adored my parents’ art magic, but I’d suspected early I didn’t have it; my 2^nd grade teacher had called my kitty cat illustration a beautiful banana. Next, I’d hoped for music like my sister; I adored my violin after all, and this was when she was having such fun learning beginner spells.

But on my decision day, when I met with my counselor and she “suggested” my magic was math, I agreed instantly. We both knew: I could do my times tables faster than anyone in my class and my paper turning colors when I was doing sums was becoming a common occurrence. The week before, my paper mâché flower art project had burst into flames when I tried to divide fractions.

I’d cried on my decision day. Everyone else celebrated: Mom made a blueberry cake and framed the spell, calming purple and blue swirls. Ren had made (a small amount of) confetti fall with a stilted etude. They clapped for me, let me light the candles with fractions, gifted me a calculator, and Aunt Lily, the only living math magician in the family, called with her congratulations and support.

I supposed I could call Aunt Lily now. That would probably get me past this quicker, but though she was fun to play board games with, when it came to math explanations, she talked too fast and was always impatient with my problem solving.

Ren

The giraffe flopped off the bureau but fell to Pepper’s feet. He poked her tentatively and gave me a guilty look.
“I missed the flat”.

I smiled, relieved it was an execution problem and not a writing problem. “No problem! Let’s do it again.” I replaced Lulu.

It was not an execution problem.

I put the flute down and sat on my bed, dejected. I needed to be able to make up spells. I was going to travel the world to learn people’s magic, to share it, to analyze it. I needed to know how I did it to know how they did. I needed to know how to create.

I flexed my fingers, considering, and my eyes drifted to the ocean painting on my wall.

My room was decorated with my parent’s art and Pepper’s. He was one of the few that had two (or more) magics. Music was his primary one, so he was in my classes, but he could do amazing things with both music and art. I dreamed of writing spells that could unite multiple magics, but multiple magicians was about all I could handle at the moment.

I took the sheet music and tapped out the rhythm on my thigh. Pepper occupied himself reorganizing my bookshelf. Aha! This measure was wrong, the counting was impossible. I fixed it, hoping to get Lulu a bit further.

Next, I added a repeat and a coda in hopes I could land the stuffed animal too. The notes sounded awkward when I tested them, chiding me for not spending enough time in my textbook. Pepper tossed the tome to me and I flipped through for guidance to smooth the piece out.

“Ok,” I announced, “Let’s play it again.”

Kya

My violin stared at me, tempting me. I gave in, not at all reluctant to forget the spell for a few moments, but got only a few wistful strokes of the bow before Ren was banging on my door.

“Kya, I’m playing!”

I groaned and put it away. It was frustrating that Ren and I couldn’t get spell help from our parents or each other. Frustrating, but common.

The best magicians were born to parents with the same magic who were born to parents with the same magic and so on. It wasn’t a hard and fast rule, but it was more often true. Skill and talent at magic wasn’t genetic, but complex magic was hard. Knowledgeable families helped.

Like my friend Becki. Both her parents were math magicians, and she was brilliant at it.

Becki! I grabbed the pencil and scribbled out the quadratic equation I knew by heart to call her, factoring with ease.

Her face popped up in a window over my desk and relief flooded me.

“Hi Kya,, she said, looking up.

“Hello,” I told her. “Can you please, please help me with this antiderivative spell? I have a very stubborn alarm clock to dismantle.”

“Yeah, of course, what do you have?”

More relief.

Becki walked me through the magic and after fifteen minutes, a few concerning puffs of air, and some exciting sizzles, my alarm clock had been forced into cords, batteries, and mysterious metal parts lying in neat rows on my desk.

I shouted with joy and Becki laughed at this overreaction to math gone right. My outburst mixed with the music and another loud CLUNK came from across the hall, followed by a “drat!”.

Ren

Lulu fell to the ground again, but it was Kya’s fault this time. I picked the giraffe up with a sigh but laughed when I met Pepper’s amused eyes. I guess she’d finally figured out her spell. Or something could be on fire, but the ensuing giggles reassured me an accident was not the case. It had been known to happen; my sister’s magic was stronger than she knew.

Mine was not. Almost everything I had ever made happen with my flute was planned, all though I’d also planned for plenty of things to happen that didn’t. We played my piece again and the stuffed animal got further, but ‘flying’ was still a stretch to describe the movement.

“Can I?” Pepper asked, gesturing to the music. He asked now before critiquing or suggesting, scarred from the many times I couldn’t handle criticism or just wanted to figure it out myself. I was embarrassed about it, but still stubborn. I nodded. “It sounds like we’re from two different worlds,” Pepper said. “In the third line and the coda. And I think we’re in time, so maybe you could change one of the parts there.”

“The flute is supposed to be flying too far,” I explained. “And the bassoon is supposed to be grounding, but it just sounds like they’re arguing.”

He nodded but kept quiet. I picked up my pencil and reworked the grounding part, adding more echoes, a different chord. Then I let the flute swoop a little closer to the ground, a little farther into the sky, at different times.

“Again?” Pepper asked. I nodded and lifted the flute to my lips.

I focused on the image in my head to guide the sounds I was making. The notes went just a little too far up, buoyed by the bassoon part. I let the instrument sing, swooping up and down.

Lulu the stuffed giraffe sailed across my room and landed softly on my nightstand. I grinned.