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Learning Magic From Mint

by Cavan Terrill

      The girl’s name is Mint. Mother says that I’m not to go near her because she is bad. But once I read a story where a boy was told not to go near a girl because she was bad. Well, he did go near this girl and she was maybe a little bad, but she taught the boy magic and he became a wizard.

      This is why, when Mother and I are in the park, I sit on the swings and waiting for her to turn away. When she does turn, I run for the edge of the park, where the grass turns into cement and where there are lots of grownups standing around cardboard stalls with colourful signs.

      Mint is always standing here, talking to different men. Mint does not wear very much clothing, even in the autumn, and sometimes I wonder if she is cold. Now it is summer, though. She still wears less clothing than everyone else, but she does not look cold.

      She is talking to a man and laughing. The man is laughing, too, but I cannot tell if it is a happy laugh or not. When he sees me, he stops laughing and makes motions with his eyes. Mint looks down at me and smiles.

      “What you want, little man?”

      “Will you teach me magic?”

      She starts to laugh and so does the man, and this time it is easy to tell that it is happy laughter. I don’t understand why it is so funny because the girl in the story did it, but only because the boy caught her using magic on a goat. So maybe this is what I have to do. I don’t think there are any goats around here, though, but I’m sure she will use her magic in some other way.

      Soon, Mint and the man have stopped laughing because Mother is calling me. Mint tells me to go back to her. I do what Mint says.

***

      During dinner, Mother talks to me very quietly, but not softly. She is talking to me about Mint. “You shouldn’t go near her,” she says. “She’s not like us.”

      “Yes, I know,” I say proudly. And I do know, because Mint’s face looks different than everyone else’s face and her skin is a slightly different colour.

      “You don’t know,” Mother says. She is not looking at me.

***

      By the time Mother drops me off at school the next day, I have already come up with a plan. I will escape from school and go find Mint, and then she will teach me magic. I wait in front of the doors, watching the other children arrive. Some are still eating their morning meal, the white wafer of plastic crunching between their teeth.

      Mr. Lansing, the school’s groundskeeper, is eyeing me. He knows that I am up to something.

      He approaches and says, “Shouldn’t you be getting to class?”

      “Yes,” I answer. “But if I wait for a little while longer, I can learn magic.”

      Mr. Lansing frowns, mutters “Grade Ones”, and walks away. He keeps looking at me. I do not understand why my being a grade one is special.

      When I’m sure that Mr. Lansing is not looking at me, I turn away from the school and walk towards the park.

***

      She is at the edge of the park again, one foot on the grass, one foot on the cement. She does not notice me until I am standing beside her.

      “Hi.”

      When she looks down this time, I can tell that she is surprised. “Magic man,” she says. “Where’s your Mom?”

      “At home. She dropped me off at school, but I came here instead.”

      “Yeah? Why’s that?”

      “I want to learn magic,” I say.

      Her face is doing a lot of little moves and I can tell that this means that she is thinking her head into all sorts of different shapes. She is probably deciding if I am good enough to become her apprentice, so I stand up very straight to look taller. “Come on,” she says. I follow her to one of the cardboard booths, where she sits down. She hoists me onto the stool beside her. She talks to the man behind the booth, who pushes a bowl across to her. It is filled with something hot. I can tell because there is a lot of steam rising from it.

      “Mother says you’re different,” I say.

      She looks at me through the steam and I think that maybe she has to read my fortune in the bowl and that is why there is so much steam. “Your Mom’s right.”

      Mint puts the stuff in the bowl into her mouth. I cannot do this. It would hurt me. She can do it because she’s different. She knows magic.

      “I know you’re different,” I say. “You have a different face. Your eyes look like someone stretched them out.”

      Mint laughs. A happy laugh. “My grandparents were from Japan.”

      I think about what this means. I know all about Japan. “Are you a Toshiba?”

      Mint laughs again.

***

      In the story, the girl was too old to be a girl. She was the boy’s aunt. But sometimes she liked to do bad magic.

      Mint is not old. Mint is young and pretty, so she probably doesn’t do bad magic. That is only what old lonely aunts do.

      Mr. Lansing had followed me from the school. When he saw me with Mint, he began to ask her questions that made her leave. Then he took me back to school and the principal talked to me and called Mother and she came to take me home.

      Mother put me in my room. I am not allowed to come out for three days. Not for any reason. I do not like this Mother. The one I had last year was better. She did not leave me in my room. Sometimes, I wonder what kind of person the Mother I get next year will be. Maybe she will be like Mint.

      On the third day, Mint comes to my window. I know she must be magic, because she has never been to my house before. I opened the window and she came inside.

      “Hey, magic man, your parents home?” she whispered.

      “I don’t know. I’ve been in my room for two days and nine hours. It is my punishment for talking to you.”

      “Right. You still wanna learn magic?”

      “Yes.”

      “Well, come on, then,” she says, going back out the window. She helps me through and we walk along the street together.

      Mint asks if I’ve figured out how she’s different yet. I ask if she is a Honda. She says no. I ask if she is a Sony.

      “I’m a human,” she says. “Do you know what that is?”

      Mother has told me about humans. Stories about humans are in my head, too. But Mother’s stories are more frightening. They are not like the ones in my head that I download from school.

      “Yes,” I answer. “They are bad things.”

      She stops walking and crouches down in front of me. She looks at me and her eyes are moving a lot. “Do I look like a bad thing?”

      I shake my head. She does not look like the boy’s old aunt.

      “Why do you think humans are bad?”

      “Mother tells me. And so does my head.”

      “But you’ve never tried to find out for yourself?”

      I shake my head. Mint makes a face that shows her mind. Mint cannot be bad.

***

      We walk past the park and past the cardboard booths to a place with old buildings and a lot of people. There are so many of them that the sidewalks are not big enough. They have to walk on the road.

      The people in this place look different and walk different and talk different. And smell different.

      I ask Mint if this because they are magical, like her. I am worried that I won’t be able to do magic because I have no smell. Mint shakes her head and moves me quickly through the crowd.

      We walk into one of the old buildings. Mint takes me into a room and tells me to sit on the bed. The room is not very nice. Everything is old, and not in a good way.

      “What is this place?” I ask.

      “It’s where I live.”

      I am surprised. Mint is pretty and magical, so I thought that she would live in a palace. She would have a room the size of my house and wear long gowns and have servants and go to dances where she would dance with princes.

      Mint asks, “What do you know about humans?”

      “I know that they were living here before us, but they wrecked everything, so we had to stop them and put them in places where they’d only be able to wreck a few things.”

      “Well, this is the place,” says Mint. “This is the last ghetto. Is that all you know?”

      “It’s all I have been allowed to download at school. I’m just a grade one, so I cannot access many of the databanks,” I answer. I feel bad about being a grade one now. Maybe this is why Mr. Lansing said it that way. I want Mint to understand that I want to know more, so I keep talking. “They say that if we learn too much too fast we will break. That’s why we can only learn so much at a time. And why we have Mothers. So we can learn Life Experiences. At school, we have tests.”

      Mint holds up a hand. “I know how it works.” She does not look happy. “We weren’t wrecking everything,” she says. “Well, maybe a little, but a lot of people were trying to fix things, too. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, this is our world, and your people stole it from us.”

      I stare down at the floor. Mint has a carpet with lions on it. I want to ask her why people were wrecking things if the world was their own, but what she says about stealing it from her makes me ashamed. I do not want Mint to be angry. “I’m sorry.”

      Mint shrugs. “That’s alright. I can still teach you magic. Still want to learn from me, even though I’m human?”

      I nod.

      And Mint tells me what I have to do.

***

      When I arrive home there is still four hours left before I am allowed to leave my room. This is good because it means that Mother will not have noticed that I left.

      Mint has given me instructions on what to do. I am to wait until tomorrow at noon, when she will come to get me. So, I have to plan a way to get to the park without anybody following me. This will not be easy because Mother has made Mr. Lansing promise to keep an eye on me.

      When I get to the park, Mint will introduce me to some other sorcerers. Then we will go to a place where I will have to pass a test to see if I am able to learn magic. I have to crawl into a space with an object that they give me. If something happens when I am alone with this object, it means that they will teach me.

      I am excited. I am sure that something will happen. I sit in my room with my hands on a soccer ball, waiting for something magical to happen. Nothing does. I try again with my computer and my clock. When nothing happens, I decide that the object they are giving me must be special.

      Mint showed it to me before she brought me home. It is made of metal, but Mint says that it has a lot of different stuff inside that makes it very important. It also has a bunch of wires on it, and one long line coming off of it that the sorcerers will hold while I am inside. When I am in the right place, I will use a radio to tell them that I am ready and they will do something to the line to make the object magical.

      I bring up the picture of the object inside my head. I imagine being alone with it and telling the sorcerers I am ready and sitting there watching it. It will start to glow, and then it will start to hover in the air, and the wires will arrange themselves into a face.

      This face will tell me something very important. It will say, “You will be the world’s greatest magician.”

***

      I am at school, downloading data on the First World War. I am glad that Mint is not bad like the men with guns. I am glad I did not see anything bad like the First World War when I went to Mint’s part of the city, but I know that could not have happened because humans are not allowed to have guns. Even though I am glad that nothing bad happened, I think there is something about this that makes me feel sad, and it is not just because the people in the war were wrecking things. It is something outside of that.

      When the recess bell rings, it is time for me to put my plan into action. I walk out in the schoolyard and look for Mr. Lansing. As Mother has instructed, he is paying special attention to me, looking for me between every spray of water he directs at the plants.

      My plan is that I will run from the school and into the big shopping mall that is two blocks away. Then he will lose sight of me because the mall is a crowded place. I have to make sure that I have a good head start when I begin to run because Mr. Lansing’s legs are longer than mine and he might be able to catch up to me.

      I look back at Mr. Lansing. He is still watering the plants. I decide that I will run as soon as he bends down to inspect a flower. He remains standing and watering, and I begin to worry that he will never bend down, and I will not get a chance. As soon as I think this, though, he does bend down and I am ready. I run fast, and I am almost a block away before I see Mr. Lansing coming out of the schoolyard to chase me.

      I make it to the mall ahead of him, but not too far ahead of him, so I keep on running. I turn into a store and hide behind a rack of coats. It does not work. Mr. Lansing parts the racks, and I walk out beside him.

      “Let’s go back, shall we?” he says.

      I do not want to go back. I want to learn magic. I yell, “Get away from me, human!”

      I do not really understand why I said this, because it is not the truth, and only humans say things that are not true.

      Two people come up and put their hands on Mr. Lansing’s shoulders and his face begins to look unhappy.

      I run.

***

      Mint is waiting for me. She smiles, but her face makes it look like she is waiting for something bad to happen. Different men try to talk to her, but today she waves them off.

      When I first arrive at the park and see her standing on the cement between the cardboard booths, I think that she looks all alone, and this makes me feel sad for Mint. But I know I shouldn’t be. People are always talking to her, and she has her sorcerer friends.

      Mint takes me by the hand and tells me that we are going to meet the other sorcerers. She says that they might not be very nice to me, but they will only act that way because they have to. It is part of the test, so that they know I really want to learn magic.

      We meet them at a place down the street from Mint’s house. It is a big open room made of concrete with a lot of black stains on the floor and tools hanging on the walls. There are three sorcerers waiting for us, two men and one woman. The men have long hair and I wonder why they would try to make themselves look like girls. Maybe sorcerers are supposed to have long hair. They are all wearing long black jackets and, when Mint enters the building, she puts one on, too.

      The sorcerers watch me closely. Their faces move down and in. This makes them look angry. One of the men takes a step back, so I stop where I am and let Mint join them. They whisper for a while before one of the men tells me to start moving. I don’t know how he wants me to move, so I start jumping up and down.

      The man’s face moves in a bad way, and he hits me and knocks me over. It does not hurt, but I know it was supposed to. I stand very still.

      “Fucking droid,” says the man. His eyes are looking at Mint when he says this. He and the two other sorcerers walk ahead and Mint beckons for me to follow.

      We walk along the street and, eventually, the old buildings turn into new ones and the human smell disappears. I realize that we are no longer in the area where they are allowed. This is bad. Breaking the rules is forbidden. I look up at Mint, but her eyes are always pointed away from me.

      The sorcerers pick the quietest streets to walk on and always seem to have their heads down. I think that they can see everything, though, because whenever someone else appears on the street, we move out of sight before I even realize that there was someone who could have seen us.

      I am a little bit frightened because magic is not supposed to mean being scared of other people seeing you, and because the sorcerer’s black jackets remind me of something that was after the boy in the story. I know that I am safe, though. Mint will use her powers to protect me if she has to.

      We turn down an alley and arrive at the rear wall of one of the local doctor’s offices. I have been here once before, after I spent too long playing in the rain one day. I wonder why this place is magical. It seems very ordinary.

      The man who hit me turns towards me and bends down. He face is trying to smile but his eyes still look angry, so it makes his smile look very bad. He removes something from his pocket and holds it out to me. It is the object that Mint told me about. “Do you know what this is?” he asks.

      “It will tell you if I can learn magic or not,” I answer. His smile becomes real for a second and he does not look like such a very bad person.

      “Very good,” he says. “Now, do you see that shaft right there?”

      At the back of the building there is a small grate. I nod again.

      “Good. It goes straight up, so you’ll have to use your little droid powers to climb up. Once you’re at the top, you’ll see another grate that will lead into a very small room. This room has all sorts of replacement droid parts. When you’re there, you use this radio to tell us. And make very, very sure that the wire never breaks. Otherwise nothing will work.”

      I nod. Wire is attached to a little spindle on the object and it leads into something the man holds in his hand that has a button on the top of it. He holds out the object and the radio to me and pushes me in the direction of the building. While I am walking towards it, I look back at Mint. She is looking at the ground. I cannot tell if she is happy or sad. I am sure that she is nervous for me.

      The shaft is barely wide enough for me to fit inside. Just like the man said, it goes straight up. I measure it and it is only four meters. I have jumped higher things during recess. I jump and let myself into the room that the man talked about.

      It is strange to see all the parts. There are rows of arms and legs on the walls and some heads on a table. I pull on the wire, to make sure that it has not broken. It becomes tight, so I know that everything is alright. I tell the sorcerers that I am in the right place.

      I hear Mint’s voice on the radio. “Just sit tight, magic man. Everything will be over soon.”

      I sit down and wait for the magic to come.

Cavan Terrill is a science fiction writer from Ottawa. More information on him an be found at Blurredline.com.

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