After Brenden Vetch’s parents died, he continued to keep the animals on the small plot of land in the north of the country. He wandered far in his grief, listening to what the plants told him about themselves, information which he used to heal villagers that came an asked him. He also wandered so far north that he found a snow-covered mountain, and on one of the faces, a number of standing stones which he could sense had a name that was a word he had never heard before. After he came back to the farm, a tall, big-boned woman with animals in her hair, pockets, and even an ox with a broken horn following her. She invited him to be a gardener at her school of magic in the capital city; “look for the door under the shoe” she said. Towards the end of the summer, after having found homes for his animals, he walked to the capital city. In the morning he wandered towards to school, looking for the shoe. He saw a cobbler’s shoe hanging from a sign, and went in the door, although he seemed to be the only one who could see it.

Inside was an empty store, but beyond the door, Brenden found himself at the bottom of a large tower. The wizard Yar met him, having sense someone. After Brenden told him how he got in, the wizard mentioned that nobody had come in by the sign of the shoe for nineteen years (he implied that he was that person). Nor had anyone seen Od for nineteen years. Od had, some centuries earlier, rescued the city from multiple armies, and the king was happy to have her set up a school of magic in the city. Over the years, the school of magic had grown into the palace, or vice-versa, and the king now required all wizards to study at the school, where they learned what was permitted. If they refused, since they were a potential weapon against the kingdom, they were limited in where they could live and forbidden from leaving the kingdom. Brenden had apparently seen the elusive founder, who appeared somewhere occasionally. The school did need a new gardener, despite Od having not been seen in nineteen years, and Yar showed him to the garden on the roof and he began planting the seeds he had brought.

The magician / illusionist Tyramin was rumored to have arrived in the city, performing in the Twilight District (the somewhat disreputable nightlife district). That night, the quarter warden, disguised, found a school of magic student shortly after she walked through the gate. The Twilight District was strictly forbidden to students and being there resulted in immediate expulsion. She was insistent, claiming she was a princess, but the warden got her grudging compliance when he was clear that if she went with him back to the school he she could sneak back in, but otherwise he would take her to the headmistress, Wye, resulting in her certain expulsion. The “student” was really the king’s daughter, Sulys, in (a poorly chosen) disguise, so she went up to visit her grandmother, as her alibi said. There we discover that her grandmother had taught her various woman’s magic, simple things unknown to the wizards (who might be female), such as scrying with a bowl of water, seeing the future in a flame, and hiding things in a web of stitching.

After she left, her brother found her with the news that the king had finally chosen a suitor for her, the very skilled and very officious Valoren. He could read thoughts, and as the king’s highest advisor, was scrupulously loyal. Her magic was forbidden, since it was not taught at the school; she would never be able to have any emotional intimacy with such a husband. Her brother assured her that the other suitors were worse, although he did not know about her magic. Valoren did not help the situation by being always too busy with the king’s business when she tried to talk to him.

Valoren was busy checking out possible unauthorized magic. First, when he went to Brenden for a perfunctory flower to give to the princess, he discovered that no one had taught Brenden how to hear the plants tell him about themselves. More worringly, at least from the king’s point of view, it was unclear of Tyramin was simply a skilled illusionist, or whether he was a magician, and since he was from a neighboring kingdom, he needed to be investigated (hence the quarter warden the night before).

The quarter warden, Arneth Pyt, son of the head warden, kept trying various ways of seeing Tyramin. The first night he had seen some of Tyramin’s dancers with impressive illusions / magic, but no sign of the magician. The second night he wandered backstage before the performance, and found Mistral, Tyramin’s daughter. It was impossible to see Tyramin before or after a performance; his desire to create the best illusions required intense focus; she would ask him in a couple of days, but if he went and waited where she told him, she would take him to the front of the house, where, although he would (as he said) only see what everyone else sees, at least he would see it better. On the way he asked a few questions, and went silent. She insisted he had more questions, so he asked what he was thinking: why had she been mending a black dress back in the dressing room with red thread? She knew he had seen beneath her mask of merely occupying herself with ordinary repairs. The performance was magnificent: Tyramin, in a big mask, made butterflies fly out from a chest, followed by a cat, and then a dog which chased the cat. Boats fished in the middle of the air Dancers’ dresses lit up with stars that float upwards, fading rapidly. Mistral was enchanting, with stars in her hair and a white porcelain mask. And at the end, everyone vanished completely. While the crowd was in shock, and then applauding, he slipped behind the curtain. No, Mistral said, he still could not see Tyramin, but she would ask tomorrow. He said that he was the quarter warden, that he needed to bring back an evaluation to the king. If Tyramin only needed to convince him, she said he could see him the next day.

The next day Brenden discovered a plant that he had never seen, and nobody else at the school knew about either, a cactus. He could not hear it talk to him, and the library had no information on it beyond that it was a desert plant. One of the wizards suggested that the previous gardener acquired exotic plants from dealers in the Twilight Quarter, so he went out (he was not a student, so it was okay for him to go to the Twilight Quarter) in the afternoon. While he was there, a house caught on fire, and Mistral, who looked like a previous girlfriend to him, was trapped on a balcony. Out of need, he grabbed a scarf and lengthened it by magic he called up within himself somehow, and made a line she could slide down. He sensed a stream of water going to the fountain and routed it to the top of the house. He became disoriented, and then he found the house and fountain in perfect repair, with the crowd shouting in awe at Tyramin’s magic, surging into the performance house. Mistral hid him from the crowd in the costume room.

Princess Sulys had tried telling Valoren that she needed to talk to him, since it would be better for him to find out about her magic before they were married, rather than both hating each for a lifetime when he found out afterwards, but Valoren was too busy. She ended up meeting Ceta, a historian in love (mutually) with Yar. Ceta had also had no option in her marriage, but her husband had died shortly afterwards, which gave her a lot of freedom. She and Sulys went into the labyrinth that Od had constructed in the basement of the school to talk, as it was secluded and Ceta had planned to go there with Yar anyway. The labyrinth was impossible to navigate to the center, until you had worked through what was bothering you. Both found the center at the same time, as the labyrinth had given them different paths, but both came with more clarity of thought. Since Valoren was to busy to listen to Sulys, Ceta suggested that she do some of her magics so that he would sense it and come. However, none of them brought him down.

Valoren had learned that the princess was gone and could not be found. Furthermore, the gardener, in whom he had sensed latent power, had gone to the Twilight Quarter. A house on fire had been quenched with a river of water, but after it was out everything was restored to its original condition, with the crowd shouting Tyramin’s name. It was clear to Valoren that Tyramin was a clear wizardly threat, and had likely stolen the princess. He was heedless of his betrothed’s unauthorized magic in the labyrinth because he was focused, along with all the wizards in the school, on a wall to keep Tyramin from leaving the quarter.

Arneth met Mistral alone having hidden. He asked where Tyramin was; she told him that he was here with him; she had loved the illusions that her father (Tyramin) taught her, even though she could use magic, so when her father died, she continued using his mask, puppeteering it as if Tyramin were alive. Some of her crew knew, and some suspected. All she wanted to do was entertain, to bring wonder for an hour. Arneth understood, but he knew the king would not. This was further complicated by the fact that Brenden was not there; he had fled. Arneth advised her to leave quickly, since there was a limit to how much he could credibly delay without being seen to be obstructionist. He did indicate that he would love to join her if that were possible, and she indicated that she would like that; he was the only person who knew her without any of the masks she wore, and claimed to like the no-mask version the best. (Most people were in love with the beautiful version of here, with a made-up face, a cunning smile, a beautiful dress, and the stars in her hair. When the saw the real her, they said that she reminded them of someone ... else.) They found that the quarter was fenced in by Valoren’s wizard wall. Arneth left her for his duties but would try to find them before they left. Mistral left to thread together a spell to hide everything.

Ceta had found one of Od’s old scrolls in her research, which described some mysterious stones in the far north. She had asked Yar, who had no idea what she was talking about. But when Yar joined Ceta in the labyrinth, Brenden’s flight had been discovered by Valoren, who now suspected him and his unknown power. Yar realized that the map in the center was useless for getting back out because it was a map of the mountain where the stones were. By this time Yar had begun to realize that he was no longer the curious learner he had been when he entered under the shoe, but had been turned into a loyal servant who sought to knew only what he was allowed to know. He wanted to help Brendan against Valoren, so he stepped on the map, said the name of the mountain, and was transported to the standing stones. Shortly afterwards, Brendan arrived in haste, having been, as we learn later, harried by Od into being desperate to escape, and thus to communicate with his unconscious power into communicating with the stones. He did pleading with them to become one of them, and Yar saw him change. Then Valoren arrived.

News that the princess had been found came to the king, and also a request by Tyramin to perform for him—delivered personally by Arneth, after Mistral decided this was the most way most likely to get her troupe out of the siutation, by demonstrating the harmlessness of her magical illusions. The princess came to watch, and settled in behind her grandmother with some needlepoint—at her grandmother’s surprise she said that everyone expects women to be doing sewing, and as long as you look the part you can get away with all sorts of things. Tyramin performed brilliantly, then disappeared, hidden by spell of Sulys’ threads. Her grandmother, who was old and did not always realize when she was thinking and when she was talking, shouted to Sulys, “you used the thread spell I taught you!” The wizards agreed that there was some sort of magic going on, although they were not sure what.

Then a tall, big-boned woman with animals all about her person walked in through the door. Od had not been seen openly for maybe a century, and many were sure that she was no longer living. Trailing her were the standing stones, Brendan, and Yar and Valoren. She upbraided them for having turned her school away from pursuit of curiosity like she intended, into a tool for the king. She told them that the stones were old powers, that were in the land before people came, but people were afraid of it. When they took the form of people to try to deal with the situation, people became afraid, because they could no longer tell who were actual people and who were not. Fearful—for they could be destroyed—they became stones. She had coaxed Brendan out, and the stones trusted him, and so they followed him. Od thought that he might be able to figure out how to talk with and wake them up. As she talked, the wizards became curious again, even Valoren. With his world upside down, the king requested to talk with Tyramin, so Mistral revealed the empty mask—there was no Tyramin—at which point the king laughed, and allowed them to settle in the city.

Od Magic is an engaging read, but it not one of her best works. Od shows up at the end as a sort of deus ex machina. Contrary to real people, who change their core views only very slowly, the wizards—even political toady Valoren—all change from “the school is supposed to be train loyalty to the king for the protection of the realm” to “ohhhh! Curiosity! Of course, of course that is what a school of magic is for!” in the space of five minutes. Surely Valoren, who spent his life enforcing the king’s power, would be the sort to pay lip service in the moment but undermine the efforts of the new curiosity/independence faction. It also seems unlikely that ancient powers who are afraid of humanity would feel safe coming to the center of human power and settling down in the king’s garden just because they trust one human (who fled from that very city), especially when they can see how well that worked for the school of magic. There is no emotional insight here, unlike McKillip’s first book, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld.

In McKillip’s later books, magic is a sort of secular animism. Instead of magic being enabled or given by spirits, it is an innate power to reshape the world to one’s will. There is also usually some form of quasi-personified “ancient powers”, like the stones, which are neither spirits, nor are they convertible into power (like coal is convertible into electrical power). The hidden power of the young magician can initially only be accessed in times of strong emotion, but can be trained, which makes her fantasy all feel like coming-of-age stories (which are not necessary bad). Unlike much fantasy, McKillip’s magic is not “extra-natural” technology (like Harry Potter), nor is it nature-power or the power of a true name (like A Wizard of Earthsea), nor is it the hidden influence of Tolkien. It is the power of love to reshape creation to one’s loving will, so it has a strong component of beauty to it.

This element of beauty is central to McKillip’s books, and is the main reason I like her books. Harry Potter, for example, is witty and charming, but it is not really a world I want to live in. McKillip’s worlds, though, are always the sort of place that I wish were real (at least, as long as you possess the power, otherwise it would be more normal). It is a sort of beauty that is somewhat rare, even in fantasy. Sometimes I wish McKillip painted in the Hudson River school of glorious, magic-hour detail (Tolkien, for instance), but watercolor has its own charm. This book is perfect for a relaxing Saturday afternoon read.