Chapter 1: Civilization (part 1)

Let us briefly address how the right book can tame a feral child.

I have since learned that there were once thousands of Workbooks. Before the Weavers appeared and the Burning wiped out magical knowledge across the world, any child who showed significant magical talent was given one as a…

Hmmm, how to describe this…

The Workbook wasn’t just my teacher, or my protector, or even a substitute parent. It was all of these and more. A child knows there is magic in the world, and the Workbook could explain it, all of the different kinds of magic I saw around me. This meant, of course, it taught me the fundamentals of what everyone calls magic—levitation and illusions and such—but it also taught me how to navigate the human world. To a nameless orphan who lived at the top of a pigeon roost and wasn’t too proud to scrounge their seed and eggs when pickings were lean, this was more magical than actual magic.

(Later, I’d learn that finding the Workbook had itself been an act of magic. I had cast a searching spell without knowing, driven by my very need alone. Such untargeted searching magic is common among young mages, and is apparently very dangerous—Workbooks were created, in part, to keep us from accidentally setting fire to the room when we merely needed a thick sweater.)

Imagine, if you will, the kind of child I was when I found the Workbook: skin long past filthy, reddish-brown hair matted into a single heavy knot, clothed in whatever I found that kept me warm. Nature being what it is, I’m sure I had parents at some point—sometimes I can remember a woman’s face—but I had made a habit of escaping from adults who pretended good intentions.

I’ve never inspected my reasons for doing so. I’m sure they’re quite dreadful. And yes, I know I’m making light of what might be a personal horror—it is my horror to ignore. Each of us faces what has made us what we are in different ways, and the only fact you must accept is that, as a child, I was alone in the world, utterly alone, until the Workbook. I understood nothing except survival.

This made me an alien creature, something which existed outside the normal parameters of human society. I knew there were children my own age who could enter buildings and not get chased straight out. Children who didn’t seem to steal, and never went begging or scrapping. But I didn’t understand how! They were as different from me as I was from a cow.

The Workbook was likely horrified by me, this wild creature with no skills or resources beyond thieving and easy access to very small eggs. Nevertheless, it rolled up its pages and set itself to the fine arts of civilization. The first thing it did was teach me how to clean. Myself, my clothing, the dovecote…filth was banished from my new world. I roosted amongst the tidiest messenger pigeons in Old BlueHouse. And I cleaned without the mess of water and soap, as the Workbook showed me how to use my magic through its ever-changing and elegant illustrations of a little girl casting simple spells.

Then, once I had mastered cleaning magic, the Workbook sent me out to find proper clothing. After a great deal of searching, I found piles of discarded children’s clothes in an alleyway behind a fine shop, casually tossed on a pile of garbage rather than sent off to the ragman.

“Rich people,” I muttered to the Workbook that evening, as I magically pulled stains and mended holes in the nicest dress I had ever touched with my own hands.

The Workbook rattled its cover but otherwise refused to comment.

The next morning, properly cleaned and attired for what might’ve been the first time in my life, the Workbook sent me into the human world to become part of it.

I don’t remember being nervous. The Workbook had never steered me wrong, so why would I question what it wanted me to do? So I marched down to Podson’s Park in my new-to-me dress, the Workbook bundled up in a leather strap with three children’s schoolbooks I had scrounged as camouflage, and flung myself into the lake.