“I might not be able to answer all your questions, but I can teach you everything I know about magic.” Charles smiled. “Do you know anything about mana?”
“Mana?” She tilted her head to one side. She had never heard the word before, not in her home country nor in any of the books she read.
“Mana functions as the source of magic. It exists anywhere and everywhere you could think of. For us sorcerers, it’s sort of like air,” he said, taking a deep breath.
“Like air? How?”
“It runs through pretty much everything—nature, plants, animals, humans… However, some people are born with an excess of mana, and they can use it to absorb the mana around them and convert it into magic. We call those people sorcerers,” Charles explained. To prove his point, he waved a hand, and a sudden gust of wind blew past them, making Lille’s braid sway.
“Is it possible to be born with a lot of mana but never become a sorcerer?” she asked anxiously.
Even if she had been born with an excess of mana, she would never become a real sorcerer if she couldn’t convert it into magic. She feared she might fail to use her magic no matter how hard she practiced.
“It’s extremely rare, but it is possible,” Charles mused. “Just like you, there have been other people who’re born with magic but don’t know how to use it. Some of them live their whole lives never learning. However, people can also become sorcerers in reverse. You can’t change how much mana you’re born with, but you can study how to use it. That means there are some sorcerers who can use magic despite not having much internal mana. Think of it this way—magical powers are something you’re born with, but sorcery is a matter of hard work.”
Lille was suddenly reminded of a friend from her childhood. He had lived in her neighborhood, and often liked to challenge Lille to races. She lacked coordination, though, so she ended up losing every time. Eventually, she got fed up with losing and decided to practice running every day. As a result, she finally won against him. The process of learning magic sounded like a similar concept.
“Your internal mana is like water in a bottle,” Charles continued. “The size of the bottle varies from person to person, but if you keep using it and fill the bottle with more than it can hold, your body will suffer the consequences. On the other hand, if you cork the bottle too tightly, the glass will crack and the water will seep out. For example…did you feel any different immediately after you left the tower?”
Once he mentioned it, Lille recalled that her body had felt extremely light the moment they flew through the window. She had assumed it was adrenaline from fleeing the tower, but perhaps it was related to her magic.
She described the sensation, and Charles nodded pensively.
“That must have been because you escaped the magic barrier. Also, I think you only started growing once you arrived here, for the same reason—the barrier wasn’t holding you back anymore. Before, it was stopping any mana from entering your body, as well as forcing your internal mana to stay put. The mana inside you quickly became inactive,” he said, frowning.
It was true that Lille’s growth spurt was a little too extreme to have been caused simply by eating well. Compared to a month earlier, she could reach higher shelves on the bookcases. Her eye level was now about the same as Leo’s, whereas before she had to peer up at him.
She looked down at her perfectly fitted sleeves and remembered how they used to hang loose on her arms. Before arriving here, she had been like a plant with its roots crammed into a tiny pot. But now there was nothing in her way. Now, when she took a deep breath, her lungs expanded and filled with as much air as she could muster. Now, she could sleep with all her limbs splayed out.
Charles had said it was because she escaped the magic barrier, but Lille thought there was more to it. Since coming to Charles’s house, her suffocating loneliness had disappeared. If not for him, she doubted she would have been able to breathe so easy.
“Master Charlie, is it possible to see mana? Or feel it?” she asked.
Apparently, like air, it had always been around her, influencing her mind and body without her knowledge. She couldn’t quite get her head around it.
Charles put a hand to his chin in thought, then pointed toward the sea of trees beyond. “Let’s take a look around the forest,” he suggested.
Lille followed him past the tree line, staying close behind. Abruptly, her field of vision dimmed, and her eyes had to adjust to the shade. The sun glittered through the gaps in the trees, casting soft smatterings of light across the earth, as if reflecting off the surface of crisp, clear water.
“How beautiful…” she marveled.
“The concentration of mana is very high in this forest,” Charles said. “Try closing your eyes and taking a big, deep breath. Keep holding it, then focus on every part of your body, all the way to the tips of your toes.”
Following Charles’s instruction, she inhaled slowly, concentrating hard. All of a sudden, a gold color flecked with green shone behind her eyelids. She jumped, faltering for a moment, but then a warm hand entwined with her own.
“It’s all right,” Charles reassured her. “Now, hold onto that feeling, and open your eyes.”
Slowly, she peeked through her eyelashes to see little spheres of light floating throughout the air. They radiated a warm, gold light.