"Did your parents never warn you to stay away from the woods?"
The darkest of the shadows separated from the trees, pouring into the clearing like black smoke. It took shape, metamorphosing into a ghost with long green hair and billowing garments. Only the top half of her appeared to solidify: the rest remained as barely opaque vapour, like dark mist on a stormy morning.
The child stood petrified, her fists bunching up the hem of her kosode. She made no other movements. Her hair was poorly kempt and stuck out in odd places, as if she had risen in the middle of the night and decided it was the perfect time to flee the village. She was small; seven, perhaps, or eight. The ghost didn't know much of such things.
"Surely, they must have. Aren't you a bad child to disobey them so?" The ghost widened her smirk, revealing the pristine white teeth of a predator. Someone who knew her could have told the child her canines were not usually so sharp, the blade she carried was rarely so long, and certainly her hair only rippled without wind when she wanted to make an impression. But of course, they were quite alone.
The child said nothing. Her eyes were crimson, like a youkai's; the number of humans living in Gensokyo whose blood held more than a few drops of the supernatural was much higher than any of them surely would have anticipated. Those eyes widened as they met the ghost's gaze. That was the only physical reaction. There was no trembling; no loss of bladder control.
This rather irked the ghost. She didn't let it show in her expression, but a hint of vexation crept into her voice, almost like disappointment. "I see. You're simple." She hovered closer, so close even the least sensitive of humans could sense the power crackling on her skin. "Perhaps this will help you understand just who you are dealing with."
The ghost raised her arm towards the waxing moon, obscure behind a sheet of clouds but no less potent for it, and allowed instinct rather than thought to guide her spell. What emerged from her fingertips was an array of colourful orbs of light: red, blue, green, and purple. With a wave of her fingers, she sent them circling around the child, trapping her in their glow. After a moment's consideration, she made the orbs grow till each of the child's satellites was the size of her head.
The child's mouth fell open. She spun around, trying to follow the orbs' movements, but their speed was such that all she did was twirl at her own pace.
The ghost raised her hand. The orbs came to a standstill. Each light dyed a section of the child in their own hue.
The child dropped her gaze. The ghost couldn't see her eyes from the fringe, but she did see her hands, clinging to the fabric with white-knuckled fierceness. Here, finally, she began to tremble.
Only to raise her chin up, eyes glittering with excitement.
"You're a magician!" The words were uttered in a mixture of glee and awe.
The ghost straightened her back and gave the child her haughtiest look. "Of course I am. And you're an impudent fool unable to see—"
"What is it called?" The child interrupted, utterly ignoring the ghost's tone.
The ghost stared at the child. It was like watching a fish crawl out of a lake to go attend a tea party. Which, of course, wasn't entirely unheard of in Gensokyo. But still. It was a rare shock to the system. "What is what called?"
"The spell!"
"...Orreries Solar System." The ghost looked past the child towards the darkness. Surely this had to be a prank by some resident trickster youkai. No human child, no matter how foolhardy, could possibly think to march straight to the Forest of Magic on a moonlit night and quiz an evil spirit on spell names. But no. There was no other life in the vicinity but a lone owl and a nest of sleeping fairies.
"Orreries Solar System..." The child repeated the words with reverence. The light of the green orb cast an eerie shadow on her eyes as she turned towards it.
Then, without warning, she dropped down to her knees on the forest floor.
"Please teach me!"
Marisa woke up within a pile of rags.
She blinked, still half dreaming. When she moved, several of the rags fell from her back and back into the pile. Her eyes were full of dust. She rubbed them clean.
Reality set back in. Funny. There had been so many mornings like this already, but still she forgot where she was every night.
It was cold. She burrowed back into the rags, pretending she was a badger curling into its nest. There was no need to get up if she didn't want to. Lady Mima never said anything about it.
Marisa's stomach, however, did. It wasn't long till its growling grew loud enough that she had to get up.
She straightened the hem of her dress, relishing the way the soft fabric felt underneath her touch, and brushed her fingers through her hair. That done, she padded to the other side of the cabin.
"Lady Mima?"
The dim green light surrounding Marisa's mistress faded away. "What is it this time?"
"I'm hungry, Lady Mima."
The golden chain attached to Lady Mima's collar rattled as she turned to glare at Marisa. Her eyes were dark that day, almost black. Her expression made it easy to imagine she could sprout fangs at any moment and tear Marisa's throat open. "Didn't you just eat?"
"That was two days ago, Lady Mima."
Lady Mima squinted at her, like she was trying to see through her stomach to see if she was telling the truth. She slammed the tome in her hands shut with a loud snap, muttering something Marisa thought sounded a lot like "Humans."
She straightened herself to her full height, so that her long, translucent tail ended just inches from the floor. "It can't be helped."
She turned back towards Marisa. "What were you to do while I am gone?"
Marisa snapped her heels together and bowed her head. "I'm to get water and make sure the cabin is spotless when you get back, Lady Mima."
"And?"
"And I'm not to touch any books or anything that looks important."
"And if you were to do so?"
"And if I were to do so, I'm to swallow a barrel of needles and stick spikes in my eyes," Marisa said at once, pleased she could recite so well the litany Lady Mima had made her learn during her first day in the cabin.
"Good. Remember that." Lady Mima paused. "Not that these books will do you any good, anyway. Can you even read?"
"A little, Lady Mima." Lady Mima had already asked Marisa the same question several times before. She probably had really important things to remember if she forgot something like that.
"A little won't get you far. You'll need to know more kanji than any human from that miserable dunghill of a village if you wish to unveil all the secrets in my tomes. And that is before moving onto the ones in a foreign tongue."
"I will learn, Lady Mima."
Lady Mima smirked. "Right. At least you're not lacking in confidence." With a swish of her cape, she hovered to the door. "I will return at sunfall."
Marisa waved after her.
Once the door slammed shut, she rubbed the rest of the gunk out of her eyes and tottered over to make her bed. After arranging the rags neatly, she looked around to see where to really start cleaning.
Her eyes immediately went to the bookshelf. She buried her itching fingers in the hem of her dress. Swallowing needles would be no fun. But then, Lady Mima's commandments were a bit odd anyway. How was she supposed to keep the cabin clean without touching anything?
She looked around. There wasn't much to even clean, apart from the bookshelf. There was a Western-style desk and two chairs made out of dark wood and ink stains on it, a locked cupboard with silver handles that Marisa couldn't crack open no matter how she tried to pry at it, and of course, Marisa's nest in the corner. Lady Mima didn't have a bed. Lady Mima didn't sleep.
She supposed she could clean the floor.
She took the bucket and went to fetch some water from the forest spring. Crouching down on the floor, she had to wonder why she had to do this when Lady Mima could clean the whole cabin up by snapping her fingers. Oh well. As long as Marisa got magic out of it, she didn't really care.
Her stomach growled. She scrubbed twice as hard to forget about it. It didn't really work. While the food Lady Mima brought back tasted just fine, there usually wasn't enough of it, and the one time there was, there had been so much of it the leftovers had spoiled before Marisa could eat it all. It was difficult sometimes, going hungry.
She shrugged and kept working. That too was worth magic.
Magic...
Marisa's eyes returned to the bookshelf. She stopped scrubbing.
Her feet took control and walked her to the shelf at their own volition. It was beautiful, the same colour as the table but much shinier. Of course, what really interested Marisa were the books. The shelf was bulging with erudite-looking tomes, with scrolls and pamphlets crammed into every possible free nook. It looked like chaos, and Marisa loved it for it, almost as much as she loved the knowledge waiting between all those covers.
There was no dust on any of the books. No excuse to touch them. Severe punishment awaited her if she did and Lady Mima ever found out — and Lady Mima probably would find out.
But there were wondrous magical secrets just waiting for her to grasp them.
She rose to her toes and was just about to pluck out a book with red leather covers when a thought crossed her mind. Could Lady Mima have placed a spell on the bookshelf that would alert her of anyone with sticky fingers touching her books?
Marisa hesitated, on tiptoes all the while. She then grabbed the book.
It wouldn't budge from the shelf.
Dismayed, but refusing to give up — no point anymore; if there was a spell on the books, she was already in as much trouble as she would ever be — Marisa looked around and reached instead for one of the scrolls. She tugged at it experimentally, and it yielded to her touch. She pulled it out, beaming, all fear forgotten.
She rushed to the table and unfurled the scroll. There was a chart on it, meticulously drawn in green ink, with several notes in the margin. Some of the notes were in a Western language Marisa didn't know, while others included elaborate kanji. Marisa trawled through them, frowning, hoping she could siphon some knowledge just from the sight of them. Surely there had to be some way...
Hang on. It was possible one of the tomes was a kanji dictionary. It wouldn't hurt to look for one, anyway.
She left the scroll on the table and leapt across the cabin again. She scrutinised the spines of all the visible books. She didn't know how "dictionary" was written, exactly, but with any luck, she would recognise it.
Ha!
With triumph, she snatched the book. Better yet, this one was on a lower shelf than the first she had tried. She could actually pull this one out!
She did just that. Something else came out with it and fell on the floor. A crumpled scroll, shoved carelessly between the dictionary and another book.
Frowning, she took the dictionary to the table, then returned for the scroll. It was another chart, similar to the first, with a picture of what looked like long-tailed stars plummeting straight from the sky at the top.
Her mouth fell open. This one, she could read.
With trembling hands, she rushed to the table and splayed the chart over the first one. No mistake: though there were plenty of kanji on the chart, most of them were the plain kind she already knew, and the remaining text was in kana. There were even furigana!
By then, Marisa's heart was pounding harder than the night she had first met Lady Mima. This was exactly what she had been looking for. She giggled in delight as she traced the scroll's title with her finger
"Earth... light... ray..."
The sun was still low, so low only the faintest of rays made it over the trees. The pale crest of a waning moon was still fully visible, no longer reflecting any light in the pale dawn. It silently observed Marisa as the girl closed the cabin door behind her and crept away from the clearing.
Marisa breathed in the cool air, feeling eerie. Lady Mima hadn't told her she couldn't leave, but still she felt she was doing something very bad indeed. Worse than running away from home. That was something she had had to do if she wanted ever to be a magician.
But could she ever be a magician if she didn't cast spells?
She raised her chin and kept going, trying to let her excitement smother her concerns. The scroll for Earth Light Ray felt warm against her palm.
Her first idea about the spell had been wrong: it didn't actually summon stars from the sky. Instead, it called beams of light from underground, as radiant as the stars. That was cool too. Better yet, it seemed really easy.
That thought soon made her lose her misgivings. She let her eyes brush over the gnarled tree trunks and small forest flowers dotting the underbrush, smiling and reciting the formula of the spell in her mind over and over. The night she had encountered Lady Mima had been her very first foray into the Forest of Magic, and now, when she could actually see it, she liked it even more.
She'd like it even better if she could find a target for her spell.
Finally, she found what she was looking for. A solitary fairy in a dark green dress, dozing off against a maple tree. Marisa just barely kept her giggles from escaping into the wild as she hid behind a tree.
Leaning against the trunk, feeling its bristling bark scrape at her fingers, she went through the instructions one more time.
Step one: empty your mind. Marisa scrunched her eyes shut and tried very hard to think about nothing. A few seconds later, she opened them again. Surely that was enough. The instructions hadn't specified, and she was bored already.
The second step was more to her liking. Focus on where you'd like to cast the spell and picture it already there.
Marisa nailed her eyes on the moss underneath the fairy and imagined the whole spot engulfed in light.
Small, circular patches of light appeared in a line in the underbrush right next to the fairy. The fairy was none the wiser.
Step three: channel your power.
Marisa allowed the familiar sensation of cold fire fill her veins and make her skin tingle. Lady Mima had gauged her power as "negligible", but it didn't feel that way when she was actually using it. If anything, she assumed she felt like what gods felt using their powers as she took control of the fire and directed it at the ground.
Thin guiding beams like faint moonlight rose from the ground. The fairy shifted and turned to rub her eyes, still groggy.
That was fine by Marisa. Rushing out from behind the tree, she called out the name of the spell.
"Earth Light Ray!"
The fairy opened her eyes just in time to be skewered by a burst of terrestrial radiance.
Well, okay, not quite. But Marisa had cast the spell successfully, she was sure of that: beams of light, like reverse lightning, rose up to the skies, wan and pale in the morning light but still strong, still created by her, still incredible. And it did hit the fairy.
The fairy, more awake than she had ever been in her life, sprung up, wings fluttering helplessly against the more powerful current. Though she looked unharmed, a thin scream escaped her lips. Then, as the spell waned, she fell to the ground.
Marisa's knees buckled as the power drained out of her, and she leaned against the tree for support. That did nothing to the heady giddiness filling her with glee.
She had done it. She was a magician! Nothing her father or their neighbours had said would ever matter again! They would get to watch from the sidelines, seething but unable to stop her, as she became the greatest magic user Gensokyo had ever seen!
The fairy rose back up. She looked mostly fine, but her dress had been rumbled and there were twigs in her hair.
She shook her head once, violently, then turned to look straight at Marisa.
Marisa instinctively took a step backwards. She hadn't actually thought about what would happen after she had cast a spell, but had kind of assumed the fairy would fly away. Only, there was no mistaking the look of intense murder in her eyes.
"Sorry," she said, hoping it was good enough.
It wasn't. The fairy batted her wings and approached Marisa, her face twisting into youkai-like bloodlust.
And about fifty other fairies raised their heads from the moss.
Marisa stared at them slack-jawed only for a moment before her feet took over and began scrambling back towards the cabin. Where had they all come from? Had they all been sleeping in the underbrush? Not that knowing that mattered as much as getting away. Fairies weren't that strong on their own, but fifty of them could pound her into mincemeat. And these fairies looked like they actually wanted to do that.
The fairies were rapidly approaching, hissing threats and tossing their own innate magic in her way. A blast hit her in the shin. It stung like a nettle burn. She stumbled, but got moving all the same.
The cabin was within sight. She glanced behind her to see if she could make it in time, only to see a swarm of fairies with a vendetta darkening the sky. Even if she could make it to the door, she'd be pummelled before she could ever get it open.
Only one thing she could do.
It was much harder to call on her power again: it moved as sluggishly as mud, almost like it had a will of its own and refused to act again so soon after the previous spell. The warmth eventually returned to her veins, at the temperature of lukewarm tea than the liquid fire it was at the best of time.
Before she could aim it at the ground, however, she was swept off her feet.
She screamed and struggled, but to now avail: soon she was at the level of treetops. She stilled and squeezed her eyes shut, not wishing to break her leg or worse by falling.
It was then that she realised the arms holding her were bigger and stronger than any fairy had. She opened her eyes again, and saw they were draped in a rich blue fabric.
She still flailed out of instinct.
"You will stop that this very instant or I swear I will drop you and let the fairies have their way with you."
"I'm sorry, Lady Mima." Marisa pulled her limbs close to her body and turned her head up to look at her saviour. Lady Mima's brow was knitted in a tight frown. Her eyes were focused on the remaining fairies, who were hovering around them with apprehensive looks. One more glare from her sent the lot of them scurrying away.
Once they were all gone, Lady Mima flew to the cabin and placed Marisa on the roof before crossing her arms and straightening her back to loom over her.
Marisa bit her lip. "I thought you were going to be gone until sunset, Lady Mima."
"Yes, that is indeed what you thought."
Marisa considered this for a moment, then blinked. "Oh."
"Are you prepared to hear your evaluation now? It will decide your fate for the rest of your life."
A trill of fear crept into Marisa's stomach, but she ignored it. What was the point of being scared? She had known from the start she might die, and showing she was afraid would only make Lady Mima more angry. "Yes, Lady Mima."
"Right." Lady Mima crossed her arms. "Now that I have seen your power in action, I can confirm it's subpar at best. Your technique was naturally inept, and though you have proven that you can indeed read, the instructions were laid out so clearly an earthworm could have followed them."
Marisa's pride deflated. She kept her head up regardless.
"Furthermore, you disobeyed my explicit instructions, knowing full well what the consequences would be."
Marisa nodded stiffly. Her hands had began to knead the hem of her dress on her own. She stopped them as soon as she noticed.
"Well? What do you have to say for yourself?"
Marisa wrenched her gaze back up. Lady Mima's expression, stern at the best of times, was practically carved from stone.
What was she meant to say? Her father would have expected an apology, not that it mattered much. But Marisa had lived with Lady Mima long enough to guess words like "sorry" meant as much as the sound of gnats to her.
Instead, she asked: "How big do the spikes have to be, Lady Mima?"
Lady Mima frowned. "What spikes?"
"The ones for my eyes, Lady Mima. And the barrel of needles."
Lady Mima continued staring at her for a moment longer.
Then, slowly, a wry smile spread on her face. "Well done."
Marisa blinked, not understanding. Warmth pooled back into her body all the same.
Lady Mima unfolded her arms. "It appears you have enough resolve, curiosity, and rebelliousness to be a magician. Hard work can surmount the lack of talent up to a certain extent, and since you are this eager to learn..."
Marisa's eyes widened. "You mean...?"
"Yes, I will deign to teach you." Lady Mima's smile clouded over. "However, I expect you to follow my word to the letter from here on out. I will tolerate no more foolishness."
"Of course, Lady Mima!" Marisa felt like her face was about to split from the size of her smile, but she couldn't stop it regardless. "You won't regret this!"
Lady Mima's face took the same vague, faraway look it had taken when Marisa had first asked to become her apprentice, like her mind had moved into a completely different world. It was gone as soon as Marisa noticed it. "We will have your first lesson this evening, after you've eaten. Finish cleaning up the cabin by then, Marisa."
Marisa beamed. "Thank you, Lady Mima!"
Lady Mima gave her a quick look, flitting between amusement and annoyance. Then, she turned away and was gone.
Marisa was left alone to glow with joy. Finally, she would be a real magician. A really real magician, this time.
First, however, she would have to figure out how to get down from the roof.