Armand’s First Letter. Amelia’s First Letter.
17 June 1021, L’École du Sorciers
My dearest cousin Armand,
Though my heart itches to get out and scour the countryside for ley lines, it simply will not do—for your cousin Jane has become alarmingly mobile of late. She is not walking yet, may le Bon Dieu be praised, but even at her current rate of speed it chills my blood to think of her in a caravan raised several yards into the air. It is one thing to cause a haughty and insufferable man to splash into a duck pond; quite another to allow one’s beloved daughter to splash onto the landscape.
Thus, it seems that I shall be spending my time here in Toulouse for the foreseeable future, studying wizardry and antiquities by turns, while Maximilian proceeds with his work at the Embassy.
All is not lost, however!
You will remember the name of my fellow student, Claude Bergeron. Janine, Jérôme, and I all chose to focus on a particular stream of wizardry soon after we came to L’École; but Claude has taken by the longest time over it, for he is fascinated by all of them. It has been entertaining to listen to him gush over one and another month by month. But late last year he was summoned by Dr. Guisman, who told him, rather sternly, that “his eyes were bigger than his head,” that he could not master them all at once, and that the only practical plan, whatever his ambitions, was to tackle one stream at a time. He was to pick one, and get to work.
After a degree of hand-wringing, therefore, Claude has chosen to study the Fleuve de Vollant under the guidance of Dr. Peyronnet. Vollantine wizardry is much concerned with the vegetable kingdom, so he tells me, and he has been spending much time out in a back corner of the grounds, where there is a greenhouse whose existence I had not previously been aware of. He comes in for dinner smelling—how shall it put it? Perhaps “verdant” would be the best description: of leaves, and new mown grass, of flowers and decaying leaf mould and potting soil.
But there is only so much one can learn from plants growing in pots. Vollantine wizardry is less concerned with individual plants, than with what Claude calls la communauté des plantes, the “community of plants.” One must therefore seek them in their natural settings, where they are surrounded by their neighbors, and so it is customary for students of this stream to spend their summers roaming the countryside and making friends with the undergrowth.
Such ramblings are limited by one’s ability to travel swiftly, of course; and so I proposed a bargain to him: he may borrow our caravan for the next few months, provide that he map out the ley lines along his route. He was quick to agree; by use of our caravan he can get much further away from Toulouse than most students of his stream, and he is just as happy to do so by following the ley lines, for it is all one to the plants which way he goes.
He left us two weeks ago, headed north and east like a bolt shot from a crossbow. He took with him the best navigational charts of the region that we could find, and the tools necessary to plot the location and direction of ley lines with the necessary accuracy. Maximilian took him out for day to show him how to make use of them; he tells me that Claude was an apt pupil, and he has every expectation that we shall receive useful results. I hope he may be right.
We will receive letters from Claude as he wends his way, but I do not expect that we shall see him again until September. Or, perhaps not until the snows come; for he was joined at the last minute by Dr. Peyronnet. The good master, having no other pupil at the moment, seized the opportunity to become acquainted with the flora of regions unknown to himself, and to continue Claude’s education sur place.
Meanwhile, I remain here, struggling with my Florissant and my Brutus, making word lists and taking copious notes. I am glad that the survey will continue in the meantime, but I cannot help wishing to be about it myself.
Your envious cousin,
Amelia
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Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash
Zymurgia House 