The Hand Reclaimed

Danica Gray, the “Hand-Reclaimed,” stood at the top of the tower of Flame and Glory, watching the world end.

It did not seem that way to the people in the city below. They were all too astonished by the miracle to understand its implications. Nine stranger moons had suddenly appeared from the darkness of space, crowding around their doleful Oodrin, their native moon whose blue-gray light always ebbed and flowed perfectly with the months and seasons.

The call had gone up only moments before; word of the miraculous sight spread like fire amongst her apprentices, who all crowded out the front door and out onto the courtyard to observe the spectacle. In their excitement, in their wonder, they’d forgotten to see. She hadn’t, though. The moment the moons appeared, she’d closed her mind and reached out with her magic, her consciousness traveling along the hidden threads that bound the world.

The moons were not a miracle. They were the signal of doom.

Now, even as the city was transfixed by their beauty, the stranger moons were wreaking havoc upon their world. Earthquakes, fires, floods: like a mail-clad fist, turbulent changes wrapped around the four corners of the earth, and squeezed.

As she looked across the city, to the shoreline of the trade sea, she could feel the wall of water—2000 feet high—barreling at impossible speeds toward their kingdom. Even if she raised the bells now, it wouldn’t save the people of Nōska. In a matter of minutes, every building in the city would be leveled, and every one of its citizens drowned.

Even magic couldn’t stop this.

In the face of the end, Danica felt surprisingly calm. Perhaps it was a product of her age. She was 81 now—although many would swear she was 20 years younger—but if she didn’t look worn, she certainly felt it. Truth be told, Danica had been little more than a ghost since Charles, her husband, left this world. For years now, her duties to the tower, to her magic, and to her students were the only things that pulled her along.

Danica sighed deeply and pulled the book away from her chest. She hadn’t realized how tightly she’d wrapped her arms around it, like a scared child hugging their pillow for reassurance. She looked down at the thing and was surprised to find fresh tears dotting the cover of blue-gray leather—erhaps not so calm after all. It Is, the title read, embossed and lined in gold foil.

“My magic,” she mumbled numbly.

It must survive.

***

Danica Gray was born under the Servants’ Star, and like all children who suffered that fate, she was groomed to bear the burden of magic. Yet, at her birth, her parents had named her “son,” not “daughter.” Had things gone the other way, she would’ve been given to the Searatine Sisters at age thirteen to learn women’s magic. There, Danica would’ve been instructed in recordkeeping, astronomy, in ritual, poetry, and song. The Sisters would’ve taught her the words to conjure smokeless flame and how to predict, quite accurately, the days and times of births.

Instead, at thirteen, she was given to the “Crab Fathers,” that is, to the Brotherhood of Kine, to learn men’s magic. Four of them came to her family’s home on Welding Row, each with a mangled left hand and wearing the traditional boots and breeches of shark leather and cowls woven from fishing nets and old sails. They dragged her from her bed to the caves beneath the city where the Crab Fathers made their council, the place that people called Seagraves.

There, she was one of six born under the Star that year who would take up apprenticeship. She was given to Ethan Falhom. A Brother of prodigious size, Ethan looked more sea mammal than man, yet he was eerily quick with the switch. It was the primary tool of his instruction, one that he used often and without trepidation.

For three years, Danica was Ethan’s ward, and she served alongside him under the rule of the captain to whom Ethan had been bound. It was her duty to watch and to learn the conjuring of wind, the settling of waves, and the charming of fish, so that, when it was her time, and she was bound to a captain of her own, she would serve him well.

Of men’s magic, she had no talent; simple charms eluded her. She could neither conjure wind nor calm the waves, no matter how many times Ethan took the switch to her back. During the last year of her three-year training, Ethan barely spoke to her. He’d resigned himself to the belief that he had done all that he could and that she was unteachable.

Despite her failure at learning the magic of men, she was nonetheless claimed. At sixteen, after the Hollowing Period, her left hand was severed at the wrist and given to the captain she would serve, as tradition dictated. Colberth Howl, the captain of the Sarahbeth, accepted her hand at the closing of the summer. The captain, who was fond of coats with silver buttons and had a particular doglike grin, kept the hand in a jar of salt in his captain’s quarters, right next to his collection of chess sets. The man never neglected to pick it up and shake it anytime he called upon her to right the wind or delay a storm, which of course, she could never do.

The kingdom of Nōska wasn’t like other places on Irith. It was isolated, both geographically and by its absurd traditions that other kingdoms found unforgivable. The kingdom was often referred to as “the Sore of the North” or simply “Fishpiss.” As such, trade with the other kingdoms was fairly rare, but even still, whenever trade was done, Danica begged to hear about the magic from afar. She could never tell whether or not the merchants were spinning yarn, but if even a small fraction of what they said was true, the magic of Nōska was insignificant compared to what was conjured elsewhere.

During the year of the Yellow Spring, the sea went savage. Squalls constantly rose out of the gray depths and flung themselves against the shore. Even the most accomplished of Crab Fathers could do little against the onslaught. Whole fleets of fishing barges disappeared into the depths, either torn asunder by wind or shattered against the shoals.

Colberth Howl would not listen to reason. His pride was the pride of nine generations of sea captains. He knew, like everyone else, that Danica could barely divert a breeze, much less the raging of the open sea. Even still, he commanded that they set out before morning, confident that his crew would pull enough fish from the deep to feed the starving city.

Sarahbeth broke against the storms like all the others.

It was an empty barrel that saved Danica, a mere floating splinter amid the vast ocean—yet, somehow, Danica clung to it throughout the storm. In the morning, she found remnants of the Sarahbeth floating alongside her in the waves. She used a waterlogged rope to lash herself more securely to the barrel and let the tide bring her in.

Danica washed up on the shore half-dead, a few days’ journey from the city. In her sorrow, she considered abandoning her home. It was only her severed hand that marked her as a servant, as a Crab Father. Certainly, she could crawl away from the edge of the world and find a home in one of the southern kingdoms. Yet, the more Danica thought on it, the more she feared it. She knew nothing of the outside world. Confronted with the enormity of leaving, she allowed herself to believe that there was nothing for her in the kingdoms beyond. Yet, she knew that if she returned to the city, she would be shunned, even hated, but slowly began to see a power in that.

The first thing she did when she returned to the city was cut her beard. In an alleyway in Gullytown—the slums where the forgotten and destitute made their home—she sharpened her boot knife till it could cut the air and began her work. The chunks of hair came off like dock rope, matted and salt-stained, to fall at her feet.

Danica used what charms she could to pull fish from the water, and although she hated the spells that seemed to fight her, her skill at them improved. Maybe it was the combination of determination and necessity that snuck its way into her craft and gave it strength. But either way, with a city full of starving people, no one asked questions about a beardless crab father selling cod and yellowfin down at the docks.

Danica’s charms awarded her a steady income, and it wasn’t long until she could afford a room at one of the boarding houses near the docks. It was a wild place, full of wasted fishermen and widowed salt wives, who preferred late nights of whoring, drinking, and music, but no one bothered her much. She practiced at being unobtrusive and kept to herself.

That’s when she started wearing dresses. At first, it was only in her room, where no one could see. Danica purchased simple garments from a vendor who wouldn’t ask questions and did her hair neatly with a comb she had whittled herself from driftwood. She had no looking glass to tell her true, but in her mind just dawning, the dress transformed her.

After that night, she became more confident. Danica would go out at night and walk along the docks, being herself, letting the wind pull at her hair and dress. For long hours, she would stare at her shadow on the beach, admiring her elongated silhouette, gifted by the light of Oodrin, the moon.

That autumn, she met Charles.

Her boldness had drawn people to her, and she’d begun learning about hidden things. There were others in the city like her, other individuals with lives that most cursed or else pretended didn’t exist. They were impossible to find if you didn’t know where to look, but once you did, a whole society emerged from the shadows. It was a world of salons tucked behind false doors, protected by a cavalcade of secret knocks and rude passwords, but a world where she was welcomed.

Charles was an ambassador from Lûmar. He was tall and handsome, with a long dueling scar that ran all the way from his left ear to his lip. He was self-conscious about it, always turning that side of his face away from the light. Although he was dressed like a gentleman, the compulsion gave him a boyish demeanor that Danica found charming.

She’d never believed in whirlwind love. She thought it was a product of bard’s tales and bad poetry, but that changed with Charles. He was hopelessly romantic, always buying gifts and astonishingly expensive flowers brought in from the inland. Not a night went by that she wouldn’t find a note left for her at the boarding house, one brushed with his cologne and scrolled with obscene poetry.

That year, for her birthday, he’d hired a craftsman from Gildan to make her a hand of porcelain. It was remarkably lifelike, with slivers of pink coral for nails and brushed enamel that mimicked the freckles on her skin. It was easily attached with a series of silver buckles and white leather. When she put it on she could barely breathe. So enamored was she that Danica hardly noticed the wedding band nestled between the delicate porcelain fingers.

The marriage was a small affair, just a few close friends, but despite their carefulness, there was no way to keep it from becoming a scandal. Even so, Charles cared very little. Nōska relied on Lûmar for trade after all. It was the only Northern kingdom that bothered. Without the support of their kingdom, Nōska would be cut off. Behind closed doors, the aristocracy blanched and cursed the “affront to decency” but did little else.

Danica found that, for the first time in her life, she was afforded the opportunity to just exist. She wasn’t worried about food or shelter. She wasn’t constantly aware of those around her, mentally calculating which person might want to do her the most harm. She was in love, happy, the wife of a wealthy man whose political power granted her protection. But, even so, with everything that she had ever wanted in life, there was still something missing.

She had long since rejected astrology and the absurd notion that she was dictated by the stars to serve. She could not deny that magic was in her blood, but it wasn’t the ugly, wind-torn magic of the sea that called out to her; it was something else she couldn’t voice.

In the effort to discover the truth, Danica began seeking out tutors—subtly, of course—and was surprised to learn of a phenomenon previously unknown to her. She wasn’t the only individual born beneath the Servant Star that lacked potency. In fact, among the Searatine Sisters, nearly one in ten were unable to conjure even the palest of flame. Of course, it was downplayed, and the fault was always placed on the shoulders of the initiated. The sisters called them “Proudsworn” and believed that their lack of magic derived from their unwillingness to serve.

She found three such women in the city who agreed to teach her everything that they knew about woman’s magic. Their willingness to help her was tied directly to the enormous sum of silver she paid them, but more than that, from their bitterness. Among the Searatine Sisters, these women were regarded, at best, as little more than washerwomen and scullery maids and, at worse, cursed. There was a sort of satisfaction in sharing secrets of the sisterhood that had so mistreated them.

For sixteen weeks Danica met the women under the cover of night, and she asked her questions. She learned of the Searatine formulas, and practiced their delicate hand gestures until she knew them by heart. Even their incantations, she committed to memory, writing each syllable out on a series of cards that she kept in her purse so that she could study whenever she had a moment to herself.

From the onset, it was clear what had been missing. Where the magic of salt and sea had been impenetrable, the magic of the Searatine Sisters was as clear to her as blue in a summer’s sky. Immediately, all the self-hatred, anxiety, and depression that had strangled her spell-work for so long… dissolved. It was like she was born with a stone on her chest, and now, for the first time, it had been rolled away, and she could truly breathe. Danica understood women’s magic. She understood the sky, the flame, the stars. She understood dazzling light and warmth in a way that she never could comprehend the coldness of the sea.

Night after night, she would crawl into bed next to Charles, after studying till the sun peeked over the horizon, and would cry on his chest, not out of sorrow, but out of joy. This magic, it welcomed her, it held her tight. She wasn’t broken or unloved. Danica had always been whole.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

Danica had been the first person among her people in a millennium to understand a fundamental truth. There was no such thing as men’s magic or women’s magic: it was only that, for so long, the Kingdom of Nōska had divided the power between sky and sea, between male and female, cold and warm, that they were blind to the actuality. Magic, true magic, was so much more than they understood.

Danica began to write. First, it was just scribbles, then, after Charles insisted, she had a tome commissioned. It was a beautiful thing wrapped in shark leather and decorated with tiny salt pearls. She was intimidated when it came to the house, wrapped in good linen and nestled inside a beautiful rosewood box. The pages were spotless, a void of white, yet, after months of anxiety, she started her great work, and for the next three years Danica spent every free moment filling the tome with theories, diagrams, incantations, and rituals she devised herself.

Through the years, she’d hear rumors of the Effulgent Order, and all the other cults, towers, and magical societies that populated the civilized world. She thought they’d probably laugh at her work. All these years later, she still remembered the tales of the fantastic things that the traders and merchants from afar had told her concerning the magic of the known world. Perhaps her magic was pale in comparison to their wonders, but she didn’t care. This magic was hers. It was an art born from her heart and her experience, a thing tied to neither sea nor sky, a wild thing that refused to be defined.

The night that the work was finished, Danica climbed to the top of their townhouse, to a small rooftop garden where, in the summer, she and Charles took their suppers. Danica flipped to the last page and set the book up on the table. Then, she carefully removed her porcelain hand and set it on top of the final page to keep it from squirming beneath the shuttering of the wind, and began.

The incantation was devoid of the rhythms of the sea, nor did it intone starlight and flame. Instead, her magic spoke of horizons, of mysteries, of things that were queer and unknown. Her magic trickled, it whispered, it was held by eclipsing shadows and furtive glances. It was her life pulled apart and examined closely, a mirror and an opera-glass. From her chest, she pulled every sorrow and every jubilation. For the first time in many years, she conjured thoughts of her family, of her first tutor Ethan Falhom, of Captain Colberth Howl. She even thought of her proudsworn tutors. But most of all, Danica thought of her severed hand still drying in salt, in a jar at the bottom of the sea.

She had expected it to be painful, but it was not. The change was effortless, like drawing aside a curtain. Danica watched as the stump of her left hand elongated, bending left and right like warm wax, until, at last, her hand was reclaimed, not porcelain this time, but flesh and blood.

What followed next would be called the Dynactic Schism. Danica was not meek or mild when it came to the discovery of her new magic. Quite the opposite, she flaunted it. Of course, no great change comes without a price. The old orders, stanched in their mindless traditions, clutched with tooth and nail, desperately trying to halt progress, but their magics, which at one time had seemed so terrible, were shown to be feeble.

Quickly Danica gathered many to her, and she taught them freely, without the demand of servitude or sacrifice. From that point forward, the Kingdom of Nōska was forever changed.

***

She shook herself from the reverie, wiped her tears, and looked back to the horizon.

The sky was a storm of color. The light from the strange moons—the eerie fuchsias, lime greens, yellows, and reds—set upon the blue Oodrin, mixing and spiraling until the sky was unrecognizable to her.

She dropped to her knees as the first screams began to come from the docks. Even this far away she could hear them, a thunderous choir of voices begging for mercy, begging to be saved. It wouldn’t be long now.

Danica closed her mind to all of it. She spoke an incantation she’d said a thousand times. A simple spell to protect from the rain. She wove the spell around the book tightly, again and again, until she was sure the book was warded from ruin. Then she rattled off charms of protection, her own spells that rendered material safe from fire and rust. She tried to speak more, but the awful sound of the sea closed around her. The wall had swallowed half the city.

It was so ugly and cold.

She only had a moment to speak a simple prayer. Not a spell, not an enchantment. Just a hope.

“Survive.”

The savage mouth of the sea slammed into her tower, and nothing remained but darkness.