Free The Magicians by Lev Grossman Page B

her fingertips. It was now molten from the heat, and it pulled like taffy. In four quick, sure motions she gave the marble four legs, then added a head. When she took her hands away and blew on it the marble rolled over, shook itself once, and stood up. It had become a tiny, plump glass animal. It began to walk across the table.
    This time no one applauded. The chill in the room was palpable. The hair stood up on Quentin’s arms. The only sound was the soft tik-tik-katikkatik of its pointy glass feet on the stone tabletop.
    “Thank you, Alice!” Professor March said, regaining the stage. “For those of you who are wondering, Alice just performed three basic spells.” He held up a finger for each one. “Dempsey’s Silent Thermogenesis; a lesser Cavalieri animation; and some kind of ward-and-shield that appears to be home-brewed, so maybe we should name it after you, Alice.”
    Alice looked back at March impassively, waiting for a cue that she could go back to her seat. She wasn’t even smug, just impatient to be released. Forgotten, the little glass creature reached the end of the table. Alice made a grab for it, but it fell and smashed on the hard stone floor. She crouched down over it, stricken, but Professor March was already moving on, wrapping up his lecture.
    Quentin watched the little drama with a mixture of compassion and rivalrous envy. Such a tender soul, he thought. But she’s the one I’ll have to beat.
    “Tonight please read the first chapter of Le Goff’s Magickal Historie, in the Lloyd translation,” March said, “and the first two chapters of Amelia Popper’s Practical Exercises for Young Magicians, a book that you will soon come to despise with every fiber of your innocent young beings. I invite you to attempt the first four exercises. Each of you will be performing one of them for the class tomorrow.
    “And if you find Lady Popper’s rather quaint eighteenth-century English difficult, keep in mind that next month we will be starting Middle English, Latin, and Old High Dutch, at which time you will look back on Lady Popper’s eighteenth-century English with fond nostalgia.”
    Students began stirring and gathering up their books. Quentin looked down at the notebook in front of him, which was empty except for one anxious zigzaggy line.
    “Final thought before you go.” March raised his voice over the shuffling clatter. “I urge you again to think of this as a purely practical course, with a minimum of theory. If you find yourself becoming curious about the nature and origins of the magical powers you are slowly and very, very painfully cultivating, remember this famous anecdote about the English philosopher Bertrand Russell.
    “Russell once gave a public lecture on the structure of the universe. Afterward he was approached by a woman who told him that he was a very clever young man but much mistaken in his thinking, because everyone knew that the world was flat and sat on the back of a turtle.
    “When Russell asked her what the turtle was standing on, she replied, ‘You’re very clever, young man, very clever. But it’s turtles all the way down!’
    “The woman was wrong about the world, of course, but she would have been quite right if she’d been talking about magic. Great mages have wasted their lives trying to get at the root of magic. It is a futile pursuit, not much fun and occasionally quite hazardous. Because the farther down you go, the bigger and scalier the turtles get, with sharper and sharper beaks. Until eventually they start looking less like turtles and more like dragons.
    “Everyone take a marble, please, as you go.”
     
     
    The very next afternoon March taught them a simple chant to say over their marbles in a crooked gypsy-sounding language that Quentin didn’t recognize (later Alice told him it was Estonian), accompanied by a tricky gesture that involved moving the middle and pinky fingers on both hands independently, which is a lot harder than it sounds.