The Winds of Folly (17)

A Folly is like a hole in a bucket or the sand in an hourglass, a thief, stealing the ether from everything around it.

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A Folly is like a hole in a bucket — the ether that permeates all things is draining inexorably away.

Or, a Folly is like the sand in an hourglass. At first, the sand in the upper chamber remains level, and there is no sign at all that sand is slipping through the hole. Then, the sand drains away in the center, making a deep hollow, even though the sand level along the edges remains high. Those grains of sand at the edge have no idea what is truly happening, or about to happen.

In Olden Days, the Follies were easily overlooked, but over time each Folly has become more obvious, and the deepening emptiness at its heart much harder to overlook. 

A Folly is a thief, stealing the ether from everything around it.

Ether is created by life itself. Every living cell generates a tiny amount, and organisms are clusters of cells, amalgams of ether. Larger creatures, like humans, Dragons, or even Faeries, are all focal points of ether. 

Within a Folly, the ether is stripped from all matter like a wet cloth on a line is stripped of moisture by the wind. But the ether is still created by living things, and still exists within them, even though it is stripped away before it can be used. This is the sense of wrongness any mage will feel inside a Folly. 

Everything a Kinnon mage is ever taught, during ten long years at the Black Isle, and even in the dark years of familial education before that, says that the use of magic within a Folly is simply impossible.

This is a lie.

At best, it is a grievous oversight, a symptom of how blinkered and narrow-minded the entire hierarchy of mages has become, how stale conventional thinking is, and how limited is any hope that such mages — mages like my brother — could ever find a solution to the Dragons' Problem.

That will be our doom. And we shall deserve it.

Kinnon mages can only ever learn half of reality, the half that is understood and acknowledged by the Dragons, who taught the Alfar, who taught our ancestors (albeit begrudgingly). And how much can any of us really know, compared to the vast intellect of a Dragon? We are like gnats compared to them. 

And we are like gnats when compared to Faeries, in terms of magical ability. Zhalghumi's kind must be our salvation. The Dragons have failed for so many millennia, their pride preventing them from even considering any help the Faeries might be able to offer.

I am so certain the Faeries could save us all, although I have no real evidence for it, only a supposition.

Zhalghumi reached inside of me and tore my ether, my life energy, from me, to free us both from our prison by farsending us to safety beyond the Folly. I know what happened, even as I know it should be impossible. And I see the repercussions every day.

I can't hope to understand something I can hardly even conceive of.

The lessons Zhalghumi never intended to teach me are that there is more to reality than what the Laws of Order prescribe, that Dragons are fallible, that impossibility doesn't exist (it is only ignorance), that Faeries exist outside of children's stories, that more magic exists than I ever imagined. My formal education was woefully incomplete. I would have to complete it for myself.

If the scholars of a particular field of study can offer no insight, no glimmer of truth, you must look to other sources. Eventually, you must look beyond scholars altogether. 

Magic has been part of our lives for longer than humans have existed. Some echoes of oral history have come down to us from the most ancient of times, from before our own written history began, before we were allowed to read or taught how, echoes of what we overheard as captive servants of the Alfar.

The stories we tell ourselves, parents to children, to siblings or cousins. Scholars dismiss and overlook such folk wisdom, ridicule the idea that ancient stories could ever be an accurate memory of Olden Days.

Scholars can be so full of self-importance, so confident in their own rightness, that they neglect to ask questions, or even look for answers. 

There are folk tales, bedtime stories, sayings, and anecdotes, about various impossible magicks. Some of them, at least, are memories, even if they are distorted or half-remembered or mistranslated. There is truth in them, somewhere.

And the truth will puncture any impossibility.

Continue reading with Part 18.