The Spell of Undoing by Paul Collins

Amelia. Later that night she suddenly sat bolt upright. She knew what had been needling her.
    She felt – important. Bleary-eyed, she glanced down at the seed-gem that all initiates were given. Its lambent glow made her smile. How protective the magicians were of their little brood.

    That first week flew past in a blur. Tab was dazed much of the time and had to keep pinching herself, half afraid she would wake back in Mrs Figgin's orphanage. Oddly enough, there were some similarities to her first home. The rooms, for instance, were very small and had to be kept sparkling clean. And there were rules. Lots of them.
    Tab didn't mind really. She was living her dream.
    They had classes in just about everything, though it would be months before the apprentices even began to think of specialising. Tab's favourite lessons were in levitation, foretelling, spells and charms, wind-working and storm-bringing, magical defence and attack, and most of all in rifting – that rarest of all gifts, the ability to hear the deep whispering of the rift currents, to locate the vortexes … and find the way home for Quentaris …
    Most of her fellow students were ahead of Tab, having started their apprenticeships nearly two months earlier. Amelia was actually two years in front. The guild believed in pairing younger and older students, and the arrangement seemed to work out well for both.
    Tab didn't see much of Philmon at first. Shortly after her arrival he had accused her of acting first and thinking later, which had stung her, for he had gained a promotion due to her. And Fontagu failed to turn up. Verris visited her a few times but he had no news of the ex-actor, and Tab slowly came to the belief that Fontagu had perished in the battle with Tolrush.
    She went one day to the Hall of the Fallen, had Fontagu's name added to the Quentaran casualty list and paid to have a candle lit on the anniversary of the battle.
    Here, in the echoing silences of the Hall, she whispered goodbye to Fontagu and wished him well.
    And after that, life continued.
    Tab's only real complaint in this whole period was that they never got to do serious magic. She mentioned it late one evening to Amelia, who was sitting on her bed, yawning, trying to read a thick volume called Levitating in Emergencies, which was one of Amelia's specialities.
    Amelia groaned and closed the book with a snap.
    ‘I am so tired,’ she said. ‘I think my eyes are about to fall out of my head.’
    Tab had to ask her question a second time. Amelia just shook her head.
    ‘You need to walk before you can fly. I know it all seems a bit of a mish-mash at first, but trust me, all those little bits build up into bigger bits. And suddenly they all come together. Like, a brick is nothing, yes? But thousands of them built this school. Millions of them built Quentaris. Once you can make a brick, you can make anything.’
    ‘I know all that,’ said Tab, ‘it's just that I'd like to –’
    ‘Be a natural, like Nisha or Stanas,’ Amelia interrupted. ‘Wouldn't we all, Tab? But they had to learn how to control their raw power. Nothing's ever easy, even though we'd like it to be.’
    ‘But I feel as though I have something in me, Amelia. I –’
    But Amelia was already snoring softly.
    Tab scowled with frustration. Here she was, the girl who had saved Quentaris almost single-handedly, and she was learning how to levitate pins, or remove warts. She wanted to do something big, really big. Something that would make people sit up and take notice of her, that would make the magicians take notice of her.
    Tab slumped back on to her bed.
    She was tired, too, but her growing frustration stopped her from sleeping. Even her visions – her mind-melding with animals – seemed to have faded away, though that might be in part because the magicians’ school was warded by strong magic, which perhaps suppressed her abilities.
    Desperate to sleep, Tab wove a relaxation diagram in the air. She had learnt the