Nada's Escape

65- Maegyck.

Amy and I coach Macie up higher than we usually go. The breeze today makes us sway in time with the leaves.

"So we're starting the magic chart?" Macie huffs, sliding a notepad out of her little blue backpack. I envy her preparation. I'd barely remembered to scoff a sandwich for lunch before running here. Mostly to avoid running into Finley.

"Magical chart? Or a chart about magic?" I ask, stretching my arms to loosen up the muscles there.

"Yep, if we're going to be up against it, better name it." Amy chimes in, offering a triumphant smile to Macie.

"So as you know we've been looking for info in the library, which is a total mess by the way, but there's no discrete list of Huntsmen magic. Each source disagrees with the next and the next and the next."

"So we've got notes," Macie chimes in, flipping through her notebook to show me pages of scratchings. "But we don't know which are relevant."

"We think the talents of the Huntsmen here at this time are a subset of all the documented talents and so we want to list all of the ones we've seen so that we have a better idea what we're up against."

"Sounds... reasonable. But what does that have to do with ... what I told you about earlier" I shy away reiterating my struggles with Finley in front of Macie here. After all, she'd been ecstatic hearing about Finley and I snapping oaths. Amy and I had talked her down from insisting we go and break every sponsored oath in Norgara. The council would figure that out pretty quick.

I pry a strip of bark off the branch to my left and twist between my fingers. It crumbles into a stream tiny pieces, so easy to disintegrate. Amy runs her fingers through the last of the bark, disrupting the flow.

"You'll see when we finish." Amy replies.

"So I guess we start with enthralment." Macie sends a questioning glance to me, setting her notepad on her knees.

"Well... you get eye contact and a Huntsmen and then they can command you to do anything."

"Right. And that's different to when they get all the way into someone's head and completely brainwash them." Macie says whilst drawing on her pad. "Here," she shows us the start of a mind map, with just one primary node and two secondary branches. I can't read Macie's calligraphic scrawl but I assume she's split enthralment into the two types.

"Cool," Amy nods, "And then there's whatever's going on between Nada and Finley." My stomach squirms a little but Macie only lifts an eyebrow and draws another line.

We're all on the same side, I remind myself. I remain a little nervous even as I steadily oxygenate my lungs. I begin by qualifying, "So, it's always been a little weird between me and Finley." I continue to describe, as concisely as possible, what being enthralled was like that first time in Seven. There's no way to do a memory like that justice with words because every image, thought and feeling is annotated with a thousand anguished rememberings. As if describing thoughts or feelings would be easy under any circumstances.

"Warm, is that right?" Macie asks, eyes cut in half by the top edge of her notepad. I wonder if she's hiding a smile from me. "I hate to say it but... that sounds like brainwashing enthralment."

Macie's hedging makes my jaw twitch. Before I can demand to know what she's trying to hint at, Amy butts in.

"There's more to it than that." She pulls a lock of bright hair over her face, blowing through it absently, whilst giving me her trademark curious stare.

"Right." I backpedal through memories, grasping at straws of each, trying to determine their importance without delving too deep. "I'm not going to reiterate every single moment for you. It's been mostly the cold kind of enthralment, all through Seven. Then there was touch... five or six days after plan seventy-three failed." I describe it even more haltingly than before, distracted by the subtle shifts of Macie's forehead behind the pad.