Wisdom's Kiss (92 page)

The second, related magic challenge is this: a hero, by definition, needs to be weak. We want underdogs to root for, flawed individuals (like us) who persevere anyway. Even Superman has kryptonite; that's the whole point. But magic is not weak. Magic, even harmless "I can fly" magic, is the polar opposite of weak. So how are readers supposed to empathize with someone who possesses abilities and gifts we can only dream of—dream of resentfully?

Well, start by making the hero flawed in other ways. Harry Potter is stubborn, frustrated, doubtful. Or give the hero a nemesis—hello, Voldemort—who's even more powerful, which makes our hero thus weak and sympathetic.

I encountered both these magical conundrums while writing
Wisdom's Kiss.
In order to keep the magic secret, thus giving the reader (and me) more interesting issues, I present witchcraft as
universally loathed
within Lax—a perspective reinforced by Felis and Wilhelmina. This public peril is further cemented by Ben and Dizzy's private vows—they've witnessed, so painfully, how dangerous it can be.
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When Ben finally does practice magic, she does so reluctantly and fearfully. Even Dizzy recognizes the danger of their situation.
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Their joint hesitance encourages our rapport.

If you don't understand what I'm talking about, take a minute to picture the obverse. Imagine Dizzy and Ben strolling into Phraugheloch Palace shooting off fire and casting spells. It would ... it would suck. The only possible way to continue that story would be by making Wilhelmina an even more powerful sorceress who they must outwit and destroy in order to survive. Which—I must confess—has a lot of dramatic potential, and now I'm kind of bummed that I didn't think of it two years ago. But I didn't. Instead I had to figure out a way to somehow make these two witches seem oppressed, ergo sympathetic, while at the same time concealing their magic so it didn't engulf the story. And that's how
Wisdom's Kiss
ended up the way it did.

All this said, magic—once it is finally put to use—is one heck of a writing solution. Don't know how to get a character from point A to point B? How to finagle an escape? Win a battle or a heart? Magic, my dear reader; magic. Just be careful, because with magic as with salt, a little goes a long long way.

The
Globe d'Or
presents magical challenges of its own, as does
Trudy
.

Ben's earlier brushes with magic's dangers
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Author Commentary: Trudy's Sight
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I'll be honest: Trudy's sight was a total pain. My editor must have said a dozen times, "But I don't understand how she can...," and every time, I'd stare at the text and realize that deep down, I had no idea what I was talking about. So if you find Trudy's whole sight thing a bit confusing, comfort yourself that you're not alone.

As I mention
elsewhere
,
Wisdom's Kiss
began with the concept of a
girl
sensing the approach of something bad. I didn't even know what the bad thing was, but I loved the notion that the girl's clairvoyance would produce an intense and uncontrollable reaction. In fact, Trudy doesn't see the future so much as feel it, so it probably shouldn't be called sight at all (I'm just realizing this now by the way; oops).

Trudy, it should be explained, is not a prophet predicting such and such will happen, but rather an anticipator: "If this event does happen, I will feel_." When, in Bacio, she gags at her vision of the approaching carriage, she's anticipating her physical reaction to the grisly spectacle of other people vomiting. Yum. But because the future has not yet occurred, when she feels what's coming—that is, when she senses how she will react to that which has not yet transpired—she can work to make the upcoming event transpire favorably, in this case readying the inn for the arrival of retching invalids.

The bigger problem, as my editor kept pointing out, is why Trudy doesn't sense the future more often, particularly before something awful transpires. Why even talk to those boasting soldiers if she could sense it would end so badly? Why would her sight lead her through the palace to that miserable old lawyer?...Um, good point. I hadn't thought about that. So I had to add clarifications explaining that Trudy's sight is imperfect at best, that it sometimes functions days in advance, and that it can operate quite obliquely: her sight leads her to the legal scholar whose information, when Trudy repeats it to Ben, triggers Dizzy's escape to Montagne, which gets Trudy to Montagne via the Globe d'Or and thus to Queen Temperance, to her position as counselor to the throne, and to Count Rudolph of Piccolo. So her sight revealed her eventual but not her immediate happiness. See?
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On a more prosaic level, Trudy's sight prods her along, for she is otherwise rather passive and timid, and without it would never travel to Froglock or enter Chateau de Montagne or befriend Temperance. (This magical prodding moves the story along as well; descending a creepy staircase "because it's safe" saves us half a page of dialogue and dithering.)

It's worth noting that magic exists beyond Trudy as well. It's not coincidence that Trudy's scarf falls off as she's fleeing the Farina soldiers, her hair billowing "like a signal fire" for Tips, who is sailing above the road in the Globe d'Or, desperately searching her out. Nor is it surprising that Trudy's sight intensifies once she arrives in Montagne, for that kingdom has power vaster and older than human understanding.
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Given how unpopular (to put it mildly) magic is within the Empire of Lax, however, it struck me as rather foolhardy of Trudy to write a memoir describing her supernatural gifts; who knows the censure it'd attract. Thus the caveat that
A Life Unforeseen
is privately printed and circulated: Trudy gives copies only to people she trusts and never releases it to the public at large, certainly not the compilers of
The Imperial Encyclopedia of Lax
.
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