quiet, this is a library

[lifes_sake]

Cam's in the library, waiting for Renée. "Waiting" here means "browsing until a quarter hour after ostensible meeting time". Renée is supposed to meet him here - on the way home for both of them, him from high school and her from elementary where she teaches kindergarten - but she is rarely punctual. Her co-workers or stray parents or the principal keep her after and Cam does notebooking, does homework, looks at the contents of shelves. It's a fine arrangement.

Today the contents of shelves don't seem so pleased with the setup, and one attacks him when he stumbles into a stack. Specifically, it tumbles onto his head. That's gonna hurt for a while. He picks it up to tuck it away again.

It says, So You Want To Be A Wizard.

Heh. Mis-shelved. This is a nonfiction row. Or maybe it's about stage magic or something? Cam's not going to find any use in that either, he can just about eat dinner without impaling himself on a fork and certainly shouldn't be handling delicate props, but it could be diverting while he waits for Renée and he wasn't finding anything else. He flips it open.

It's more interesting still than that; it's presenting itself like an actual guide to wizardry. This'll kill a whole afternoon with pleasant escapism. Cam checks it out, then turns around and spots Renée coming down the sidewalk. He bags the book and goes out to meet her.

At home, he takes it out of his backpack. The plastic film on it - it did have some, right? Just like every other library book? - is gone. Maybe it didn't have any. He didn't write it down; he's not sure. It doesn't look like a library book now. But it still says So You Want To Be A Wizard and he still wants to pretend to be a wizard for a bit, kill some time, put off U.S. History homework. He flips it open. He reads.

Comments

[pythbox]

Apart from Campbell, there is one 'Senior' wizard listed in the area and two more with no rank marked, but power ratings given on an unexplained scale. The Senior wizard comes with an address but no phone number, and their name is apparently Salix.

After the directory, the manual dives straight into the Speech: vocabulary, alphabet (all 418 common symbols), pronunciation (with a note that dialects vary widely between species and this version is human-specific), and grammar. This section only covers the basics, and very few words in the vocabulary list are explicitly defined; for anything that expresses a concept already found in English, even for some things that are only pretty close, the meaning is unobtrusively and naturally obvious.

[lifes_sake]

This is cool. And apparently it's way easier than Spanish. Cam gets out a notebook and practices writing symbols and transliterating things, humming to himself. He's not going to go bother strange wizards with the letter X in their names until he's gotten as far as he can with the book and a reasonable dose of caution. Then they can present him with the wizard equivalent of the SAT, he guesses.

[pythbox]

The Speech is magically understandable, but it's not magically writable; the symbols take an ordinary amount of practice and memorization. On the other hand, if he writes out a word correctly and looks back at it later, it's just as transparent to his mind as the version in the book.

[lifes_sake]

He's going to start notebooking in this language once he has it down well enough to not be consulting the table of symbols every time he needs to put down the next letter. He likes it. He copies the entire table into his notebook so he can have the reference without explaining to the guys at school why he is reading a book about wizards. He gets enough crap for steering well clear of all forms of sporting activity.

[pythbox]

After the initial vocabulary lessons, there are further sections dealing with the language - subheadings like 'Descriptive Naming' and 'Measurements'. Before it dives into these, the manual notes that specific technical vocabulary not covered in this introduction will be provided with the spells that require it, and 'this reference will adjust to usage'.

[lifes_sake]

Ooh. This is not just a magic book, or a magic book. It's a magic book.

...This distinction makes sense in Cam's head.

Read read read read read read read (notetaking!)

Yeah, the library's never getting this back, he'll tell them tomorrow after school that he has tragically lost it and cough up however much.

[pythbox]

Descriptive Naming, according to the manual, is a tricky subject. To really get at the essence of something, you can't just use names like 'this chair' or 'John Smith' such as you would use in ordinary conversation. This is especially true of people. You have to be able to describe a person uniquely, in terms of their own qualities and nature, in order to include them in a spell.

There is a worksheet provided for the naming of humans, in case he wants to try it on himself.

[lifes_sake]

He does! He does want to try it on himself!

[pythbox]

The questions range from the obvious (date of birth, height and weight) to the bizarre (favourite colour, favourite weather conditions). The list is extensive, but the formulas are set out plainly; writing out a serviceable descriptive name for himself is tedious but not particularly difficult.

A cautionary note, set off from the rest of the page in a thinly outlined rectangle, warns that writing and pronouncing his name correctly is of the utmost importance. There is significant leeway for ambiguous or missing answers in the formulas themselves - it's possible to create a sufficiently accurate name on incomplete information - but a typo, mispronunciation, or wrong answer can lead to unforeseen and usually unwanted changes when the incorrect name is used in spellwork.

[lifes_sake]

Ooh. Noted. He's very diligent. (His favorite color is silver and he likes clear, cloudless weather, the sort that would be the most fun to fly in if he could fly.) (He wonders if he can talk himself some flying when he's learned more.)

[pythbox]

As it happens, there is a section on Practical Spelling a little later on. But before that comes Preliminary Exercises.

The first of these reads:

To change something, you must first describe it. To describe something, you must first see it. Hold still in one place for as long as it takes to see something.

[lifes_sake]

...Okay?

Cam rearranges himself for comfortable holding-still instead of comfortable reading-and-notetaking. He sits, he waits.

[pythbox]

Nothing particularly interesting happens, for a few minutes.

[lifes_sake]

Sit sit sit sit someone is talking -

No. Somethings.

...They have his voice. That's weird.

They're his notebooks.

The one closest by is easiest to hear.

"He's going to have tremendous fun with magic."

"He doesn't believe in magic."

"But oh how he wants it."

"Yes, so much, so much -"

"But it's real. He's found some."

"That's lovely."

"He'll study so hard. He can if he cares."

"He doesn't care about school. School is dull."

"He cares about his future, though, that he does, school matters some there."

Cam is a little weirded out. But they're his, aren't they?

"Notebooks?" he asks tentatively.

[pythbox]

There is a chorus of "Cam!" "Hi, Cam!" "Hi!"

The voices aren't really voices; they aren't made of sound, that's just his brain's interpretation of information he is getting from somewhere other than his ears. There is a papery sort of texture to them, and they glide like the stroke of a pen.

[lifes_sake]

"Hi!" laughs Cam. "Wow you talk, that's amazing."

"We always have!"

"Now you can hear us."

"We wanted to help you!"

"You've been getting on all right but we can help."

"We're yours. Please don't worry about having told us secrets."

Cam is smiling a fascinated, pleased smile. "Not worried," he says. "Are you all - your own minds?"

"A little!"

"You change over time."

"But we're all yours."

"Cam, volumes one through forty-nine."

"You can do magic now! You could hook us up."

"We won't mind. We'd be one book if they made notebooks that size that you could carry."

"Ask the manual!"

Ask the manual. Huh. It would be a little silly if Cam's own notebooks and literally no other books could talk, wouldn't it?

"Manual?" he inquires slowly.

[pythbox]

The not-voice of the manual is a little older, more androgynous - less Cam.

"Spells for enchanting books," it says. "Practical Spelling, subheading five. Page three hundred and twelve."

And it starts reading out the appropriate page.

[lifes_sake]

Cam can read faster than it can talk; he says "thanks" and flips through its pages.

[pythbox]

There are several spells for enchanting books; the first one listed is for his exact purpose, combining multiple volumes into a single book with a manageable physical size that nevertheless contains all the preexisting information. There is a note that it's a variant on one of the spells used to enchant wizards' manuals themselves.

The required technical vocabulary is provided. There are no obscure special materials, like there are for some of the more difficult spells in later chapters. All Cam needs is a pile of books, enough paper to wrap them in, a writing utensil, and his voice.

[lifes_sake]

Cool.

Can he combine the notebooks with the manual, make the manual look like a spiral notebook...?

[pythbox]

This particular spell advises beginners not to try combining pre-enchanted books.

(The manual, if asked, will tell him it can look like a spiral notebook if it wants to. There is a reason not just anybody picks these up.)

[lifes_sake]

Cam does ask. He is pleased with the response! Now his manual looks like a spiral notebook.

He goes and gets some Christmas wrapping paper to wrap all his notebooks up, and then reads the details of the spell.

[pythbox]

It's a simple enough procedure: assemble, using the provided vocabulary and structure, a spell description that names each of the books and asserts that they will be collected into a single volume with the desired properties. Write the spell on the paper. Wrap the books in the paper. Speak the spell out loud.

[lifes_sake]

Cam goes through a couple drafts - on looseleaf, since he needs to put his current notebook in the group - before he and his chorus of notebooks are satisfied with the designed end result. He copies it onto the silver-snowflake Christmas paper, stacks the notebooks, wraps the Christmas paper around and cuts it off the roll, and then, carefully and rhythmically, reads through his spell.

[pythbox]

The result isn't flashy: abruptly, the Christmas paper contains a significantly reduced amount of book. Or rather, the same amount of book, compressed into significntly less space.

"Ooh," says the newly unified voice of Notebook. "I feel all sleek and stuff."