I woke up that morning with a beam of sunlight in my eyes and, as usual, my first thought was of her. I was lying in an adequate, if barely so, bed, and had left the inn room’s curtains open so that the sun would wake me, which I was already regretting. In my mind, I saw her just as she was back then, with hair as red as fire and a smile that could light a room even brighter than flames. I couldn’t help but wonder if the years had dulled either one, or if they were even brighter now.

As I rolled out of bed and started to dress myself, I replayed our courtship in my mind. We were stereotypes, I suppose. Clichés. What the poets and playwrights like to call “star-crossed,” but what ordinary people simply call unlucky. She and her family were from Old Magic, the kind of family whose Magic Book was in volumes and whose spells pass down by name if they're lucky, but often only through blood. Marrying into the family often wasn’t good enough.

My family, in contrast, didn’t even qualify as New Magic. My father’s spellbook was so thin that it didn’t need two covers, and if my mother wanted a new dress, she would have to sew it herself. Conjuring wasn’t an option. From the moment Saralyn accepted my courtship, her parents had all but cut her off from the family magic. They thought I was interested in her because of it. They were wrong, and ironically, it wasn’t until after everything fell apart that first time that I became a spell trader.

The relationship I had with Saralyn was never simple. She was married to another man when we met, and fire first passed between us, by which I mean she taught me the fireball spell. It was my first real spell, apart from some of the simple, everyday living spells they teach you up in the Peaks, like small fires and lights and so forth. I say that was when we met, though in truth we had known each other, or of one another, since we were children. But we never really met until her marriage started falling apart. She always had terrible taste in the men she married. I’m not sure what that says about me. I’m another man who courted her, but of course, we never actually married.

I still remember the night I nearly killed her husband. I’m not a violent man by nature. None of us in the Peaks are, despite what they say in the Flats. It’s true, I suppose, that our ancestors were the barbarians that the history books condemn, but their shadow has pushed us more into the light of civility than those whose ancestors feared ours. We have our passions, sure, but we forged an honor out of chaos, while they had nothing to temper.

But Saralyn’s husband did something that no man should ever do, and she couldn’t bring herself to do what needed to be done about it. Ironically, it was her own fireball spell that did it. We found out later that the medics had him for nearly three months, and that in that time, the truth came out, and once he was healthy, he was banished from the Peaks forever. By then, though, we were nearly a hundred leagues to the west, hiding their family carriage in some canyon and releasing the great cats that pulled them into the wild. Then we went our separate ways, for the first time, anyway.

But I’ll never forget what Saralyn said to me as we split up. It wasn’t a goodbye, or a farewell, or even a thanks for everything. It was simply a promise, a promise that we would meet again. It was a promise that I didn’t believe then, but that I managed to hold her to anyway, when we both wound up back home. When we did, we courted, and for a while, we both thought it would work out. Like with so many other things, though, we were wrong.

I couldn’t stay in the Peaks after everything that had happened. I was welcome enough there, but Saralyn was gone, and everything reminded me of her. I think about her enough when there is nothing familiar around. But I had learned a lot from Saralyn, not least of which was that I could learn. Strange, maybe, but despite the relative civility of the Peaks, formal education is decidedly lacking. The learning of spellcraft was almost strictly a family affair, and my parents hadn’t been able to provide much on that front. Saralyn, though, had.

I had learned her fireball spell easily. Almost too easily, in fact. She occasionally, though usually jokingly, accused me of having known the spell already, but I hadn’t. It was just easier for me than for others, I guess, especially when I discovered the cards. As Saralyn and I were running, and later when we were courting, she would teach me some of her spells, and I would put them down on cards. I started carrying them with me at all times, both blank cards and used ones. It made things easy for me. Almost laughably easy, in fact.

Before I left the Peaks, I had turned into a spell trader, which was virtually unheard of. Spells, as I’ve said, were family affairs, and anyway, they took months or even years to learn and to master. With me, though, it was different. I could teach spells fast and learn them faster. I traded Saralyn’s fireball to Kamrith Keelo for the famous Keelo family lightning bolt. I traded the lightning bolt to a wandering rogue for an icefall spell, which I then traded to the Grae sisters, individually, for three of their revered storm spells. By the time I left, I knew more spells than some of the patriarchs and matriarchs did.

Trade in West Isthmus was good for a while, and I took to the smoother spells of the fisherfolk even better than the hard-edged magic of the Peaks. Soon though, the Academies came for me and told me to stop. I guess I was on the verge of making them obsolete, if magic could be so easily passed from one person to another. Still, I left on good terms, and even traded with the schools for a few spells before leaving, on the promise that I wouldn’t trade their spells to anyone in the Isthmus. I never broke that promise, mostly because I’ve never been back.

It was when I came north, to the edge of the Mammoth Woods, that the spell trade dried up for me. I remember walking into the lumber camp, where eight woodcutters were working on felling nearly thirty trees, at once. Nobody was holding an axe. Instead, each of them were levitating three or four different axes, swinging at the trees with a nearly constant thwack that reverberated through the forest. I was, naturally, intrigued.

“Excuse me, sir,” I said once I’d located the foreman. “I couldn’t help but notice this spell you and your people are using, and I’m intrigued.”

The man, who I later learned was named Daan, looked me up and down. I know what he must have been thinking. I’m not a muscular man, and was clearly from somewhere else, and the northerners were always a bit distrustful of strangers. “Really?” He asked. “You don’t look much like a woodcutter to me.”

“I’m not,” I admitted. “But I am a collector of spells, and yours seems interesting. Would you be interested in trading for it? I have any number of fascinating and useful spells that would be fair trade for yours.”

But Daan shook his head. “Sorry, son, not interested. We don’t go in for needless magic up in these parts.”

“But surely, this is magic,” I said, pointing to the floating axes.

“Sure,” Daan said. “I said ‘needless’ magic. This makes the job go three times faster. That’s hardly needless, wouldn’t you say?”

“I’m sure I have other spells that are just as helpful.”

The man shrugged. “Maybe. But we have what we need.”

“Isn’t there anything you would trade for?” I pressed.

Daan was about to say something when a thought apparently occurred to him. “You willing to work for it? Do you know how to cook?”

“Cook?” I asked. “I suppose so. Why?”

“Well, see, our camp cook ran into a griz…ah, well, he decided to retire last week, and my cutters and me, well, we’ve been trying to make do on our own since then. If you help us out ‘til we can fill the position more permanently, we’ll teach you the spell. What do you say?”

I thought about it for a while, but ultimately, I agreed. I’m a spell trader, after all, and though I usually just trade spells for spells, I could certainly trade a week or two of labor for one. And that labor, as it turned out, was fairly easy. The woodcutters, despite their use of magic, seemed to work hard, and while they ate heartily, their tastes were simple. The forests, I admit, were not exactly to my tastes, but the air at least was clean and fresh, and all things considered, it was a life that was easy.

Their spell, oddly, was not. It was a strange thing. I had always been able to pick up spells easily before, but there was something about this one that I found more difficult. I could cast the spell, sure. After Daan taught me, I could elevate the axe with little trouble. But when I swung it into a tree, it felt as though my own arms took the brunt of the shock. This went on for days, and each time I grew more and more exhausted with the effort. While the woodcutters were felling trees and cutting them into pieces with comparative ease, I could barely dent one. Finally, on my last day there, I took a single swing at a tree before my hold broke, and the axe fell to the ground.

I caught my breath and went to cast the spell again when I felt a large hand come to rest on my shoulder. I looked over as Daan spun me around to face him, his expression surprisingly gentle. “Listen, son, I think it’s time we say that the grackle’s the grackle, eh?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, even though I already knew.

“Look, this spell, this place, all of this? It’s just not you, huh? Don’t worry about it. I’ve seen it before. Some people just don’t take to certain spells. So why not cut out, huh? Get out of here and do what you really want to do. Go find her.”

This surprised me. I hadn’t mentioned Saralyn to anyone in the camp. “Her? Who?”

Daan shrugged. “Whoever it is you’re pining for whenever you think we’re not looking. Whoever it is that drove you way up here in the first place.”

I sighed. I guess I didn’t know it was quite that obvious. “So you’re firing me, then?” I asked, unsure of what else to say.

Daan laughed. “Deal’s already done, remember? You cooked, I taught. I know you didn’t really learn the spell that well, but hey, your cooking wasn’t that great either!”

We shared a laugh, although my side of it was perhaps not as boisterous or invested. Ultimately, he was right. These were not my skills. I thought about my cards, my spells, and where I had obtained them and from whom. I had learned the spells of the Peaks easily enough, but they had never felt quite right. But the spells I traded for in West Isthmus…

“Daan,” I said. “I need to get my sea legs back. Where can I find myself a fishing boat to work for a while?”

The woodcutter considered. “South,” he said. “Go to the coast. There’s a town just past the crossroads where my cousin runs a small fishing fleet. Talk to him. He’ll take you on.”

“Thanks, Daan,” I said. “I’ll do that.”

I worked that fishing boat for a long time, and I was happy enough to do it. There was something about the constant motion of the sea that I liked, and there was plenty of magic around that town. Trade was good, and I learned to be judicious with what I traded away, sometimes getting two or even three spells for the price of one. Within a year, I think I knew every spell in that town, except for some of the secret ones the older folk wouldn’t talk about and the younger folk didn’t know.

And although the town was small, it was the only port along the coast for fifty leagues in either direction, which means there was a lot of ship traffic. Captains running the coast who wanted or needed to stop off for fresh water and supplies checked in to port, made quick trades, and left within a day or two. The harbor was not large enough for full-scale refitting or massive repairs beyond emergencies, and there wasn’t the population to give sailors the kinds of shore leave they would have wanted, so ships never stayed long. Just long enough to trade some magic with me and move on.

Eventually, though, the little town lost its luster for me. Nobody in town had anything left to trade to me, and even the captains and their ships had cycled through their route and were repeating, and while occasionally they would bring me something I had not seen before, mostly they just had the same old spells to offer, and nothing I was interested in. I had to face a choice, either get out of town or settle down permanently.

Throughout my time there, there had been a few women that I had pursued, a few who had pursued me, and even one that came close to a courtship, but nothing ever lasted. I just kept comparing them, or contrasting them, I suppose, with Saralyn. I could never quite forget about her. When someone is the first thought you have every morning, and the last thought you have almost every night, it’s difficult to get them out of your mind. Add to that the fact that I was so tangled up in my trade, in my collection, I knew that I couldn’t stay.

I can’t tell you now how long I wandered after that. I saw much of the world, although I never stayed anywhere as long as I did that little fishing town. The road itself became my home. I stayed in inns and taverns when I could trade a spell for room and board, and when nobody was interested in trade, I slept by the roadside, even when the rain was my blanket. It was an unmoored life, but not exactly an unhappy one. It simply became my routine, my normal. It was the way things were yesterday and the day before, and the way things would be today and tomorrow.

Then I came to Milisolan. Milisolan, the seat of the empire, the capital of an entire world. The opportunities for trade there were unparalleled. There were more people in this one city than in any other ten places in the world combined. I could trade for years, decades probably, and still not run out of people with new spells to trade for. It was a city of excitement, a city of energy, located in the center of the Golden Plains; the center of the world.

So why did it take me so long to go there? Because the city was a cesspool. Oh, it was attractive enough from the outside, with architecture that spoke to nearly infinite wealth and beyond infinite arrogance. The streets were smooth and kept meticulously clean, under penalty of law, as I would later learn. But a combination of the industry there and the stink of that many people left the city under a shroud of perpetual haze, a darkness that went somehow beyond the shade.

I hadn’t been in the city for even a week when I happened upon her. I was thirsty for something a bit stronger than water, and so found myself in an establishment known for both its drink and its entertainment. A gruff old barman with an eyepatch provided the former. By chance, at the hour I was there, Saralyn was providing the latter. Seeing her again after so long was surreal. For a long time, I stared at her face while she danced. Part of me couldn’t believe that I was really seeing her. Another part of me was shocked that my memory had preserved her image so flawlessly. But mostly I remember thinking that her hair was as red and her smile as bright as they had ever been.

After Saralyn was finished dancing, I continued to stare into the space where she had been for quite some time. I was lost in my thoughts so much that I barely heard her voice from behind me.

“I told you we would meet again.”

I don’t remember what I said to her. I’m not sure she knows. Maybe they weren’t even words at all. But when I turned around to look at her, she was staring at me, just staring, as if trying to reconcile the me she saw with the me she remembered. But she looked at me the way she used to look at me, and suddenly it seemed like it was years earlier, like the intervening years just melted away.

Neither one of us seemed to know what else to say, and I was starting to think the ice between us would never break again when she bent down in front of me. I didn’t know what she was doing until she picked up a card that had slipped out of my pocket. For irony or poetic justice, I would like to say it was the fireball she had taught me so long ago. But it wasn’t. It was just a blank card, waiting for my next trade. She gave it back to me, and we both laughed, and the ice was gone.

She invited me back to her home then. As she lit a small fire in the stove, using one of those small spells we all learned up in the Peaks, she was talking about home.

“I’ve had some blazeberry blend imported in,” she said, sneaking glances in my direction. “It isn’t cheap, but worth it. Would you like a pipe?”

I shrugged. “If you can spare some, I’d like that.” I had never much cared for the pipes, but the scent of blazeberry smoke would be a welcome and long-awaited reminder of home. She prepared the blend, handed me the pipe, and offered to light it. She knew perfectly well that I was capable of doing it myself, but we both knew that it was a gesture.

“You know,” she said as I breathed in the smoke, “when I saw you in the crowd, I wondered if you were going to say anything to me.”

“You knew it was me?” I asked.

She smiled. “You’re kind of hard to miss.” She pointed at my hair, which has been the color of polished silver since I was a small child.

After a long moment, I looked her in the eyes and said, “You’ve been kind of hard not to.”

She blushed, just a bit, and looked away. Her pause was longer than mine had been. “I should tell you…” she paused, “…I’m married again.”

I nodded. “I assumed that you would be.”

“Really?”

I shrugged. “Unless the men of Milisolan are significantly more foolish than we are back home in the Peaks, I’d assumed they’d have been fighting over you.”

“Flatterer,” she said. Then she reached over to a nearby end table and picked up a small, leather-bound book that was lying there. She opened it to a bookmarked page and handed it to me without saying a word. It was apparently a book of poems, written by a poet named Raiker Venn, a name I recognized as a poet who wrote some seven hundred years earlier. The page she had opened read:

I stared at those words for a long time then, wondering if Saralyn had known just how much they would affect me. I suspect that she did. She never wanted to hurt me, but she knew me better than anyone did. That one explorer, searching for what was already right there beside him, it was nearly more than I could take. I could see the words, burning like a fire on a clear night in the Peaks. They spoke to me, deeply and fully, as if my soul itself felt their fire.

And then I looked at her, and I knew where that fire came from.

I lived with them for a time after that, in the basement of their small house in the eastern part of Milisolan, an area known as the Capstone District. As much as I would have liked to be jealous of her husband, somehow I couldn’t bring myself to be. I had had my chance years ago, and it simply hadn’t worked. She was happy now, after a fashion, and her husband, at first, seemed like a decent man. He was an academic of some sort, and exceedingly fond of music, and we three often frequented the taverns in the Capstone to enjoy the music that was played there.

But peace in Milisolan, truly, in the whole of the empire, was already on its deathbed, though most of us didn’t know it until it was too late. It was a cloud of wafting nightmares that descended upon us all, a cataclysm whose clues were hidden by the empire itself until the mystery erupted around us. In a word: Revolution.

Most of us in Milisolan saw little need for revolution. My spell trade, as I knew it would be, was strong. There was plenty of magic to be traded for. The spells of the city and the surrounding area were as foreign to me as the woodcutters’ spell, but I could learn them enough to trade them on to others. Saralyn always had an audience when she danced, and her husband’s business seemed to be going well. I never knew what it was, at least not then. If I had, I’d have done something. Perhaps Saralyn’s fireball would have come in handy one more time.

No, those of us on the ground did not see a need for revolution. The revolution was in the air. The aven and the artificers of the Canal Marshes, through which most of the sewage from Milisolan passed, had had enough. From their places in the sky, held aloft on the feathers of the aven and the cloth and wood wings of the thopters, they saw what was becoming of the empire. They saw the choking cloud that hung over Milisolan, and they had watched it spread. It has taken me years of shifting perspectives to see what they saw. At first, I was simply angry, angry at everything I would lose after they attacked. But once that pain faded, I saw what they saw. I saw their desperation, their dissatisfaction, and ultimately, their sacrifice.

Of course, what I saw then was very different. First, we saw the bloodshed, the terror-ridden people flooding the streets and trying to protect themselves. Then we saw a Milisolan transformed, the clean white glove of the state replaced by an iron gauntlet. And it wasn’t long before we, Saralyn and I, saw the truth of her husband, and the business he had kept hidden for so long. There is no kind word for it, no shining veneer I can apply. It was the slave trade, pure and simple, condemned by all but the most wicked for generations. But in the shadows of the alleys of Milisolan, even the state might look the other way, if they were paid well enough.

With the revolution, his trade dried up. Mine did, too, but the difference is that when I ran out of people to trade with, there was nobody to come looking for me for their kickback. Those who had grown fat from the business of looking the other way were about to grow thin again, and so they stopped looking the other way. They came for him one day, and much more. His debt, they said, was more than they had taken, and they were going to get the rest of what was owed them. One by one, Saralyn was forced to sell everything she had, right down to that book of poetry she showed me that day.

I watched her lose everything she had, but the worst thing of all was her fire. I stayed with her for a while, but each day, her eyes grew more distant, and I felt the ice begin to grow between us. This time, though, there was nothing to melt it. And then, one day, I saw it, the thing that broke my heart, the thing that cast me out of that world completely. I saw her fire go out, felt the ice between us stab my very soul. And as we turned away from one another, I ‘walked away, and the world closed in behind me.

That was my first planeswalk. It took me quite a while to understand what had happened to me, to understand what I was, what I am. First I panicked, then I got excited at the possibilities, but I fairly quickly settled back into my old life, trading spells for spells. The Multiverse was wide open, and there were spells out there I could never have imagined. My favorites were those I found on the isles of Elentry. On one island, I traded for illusions, strong ones, ones that I could make look like anything I wanted.

And with those illusions, I played out my past, the life I had led, and the lives that I could have. Everybody she and I had ever known became actors in my play as I worked through scenario after scenario, hypothetical after hypothetical. I don’t know what most of them are doing now, or what sort of lives they had forged for themselves through the fires of that revolution. But I only care about her now, the only one I’ve ever really cared about.

I need to get back to her again. Like the perspective of those revolutionaries, it has taken me years to see it, but I failed her. It took me a very long time to see what I had done. In our past, there had always been ice between us, I had thought. And I had always relied on her to melt it. But now I see the truth. The reason she could melt it was because the ice had always come from me. But that last ice was not mine. It was hers. And she needed me to melt it for her. She needed me to reach her. And instead, I left. I left the whole damn world, and now I need to go back. I need to find her, and stoke the fire that I never should have allowed to die. I got so tangled up in my spell trade that I lost sight of what mattered. But I would trade every spell I have for just one more chance to make things right with her.

I would trade my Spark itself for her fire.