I looked for the key, felt the engine turn over and opened my hand to release the clutch.
It burned me again, but it definitely wasn’t as hot and my hand was much closer to the water. Still, I checked my palm – this time it was going to blister for sure.
‘And again,’ said Nightingale. ‘Reduce the heat, keep the light.’
I was surprised how easy I found it to obey. Key, power, release – more light, less heat. Warmth this time, not heat, and a yellow tone like an old 40-watt bulb.
Nightingale didn’t have to tell me again.
I opened my palm and produced a perfect globe of light.
‘Now hold it,’ said Nightingale.
It was like balancing a rake on your palm: the theory is simple but the practice lasts five seconds, tops. My beautiful globe popped like a soap bubble.
‘Good,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’m going to give you a word and I want you to say this word every time you do the spell. But it’s very important that the spell’s effect is consistent.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘I’ll explain why in a minute,’ said Nightingale. ‘The word is lux.’
I did the spell again: key, motor. I spoke the word on the release. The globe sustained for longer – it was definitely getting easier.
‘I want you to practise this spell,’ said Nightingale, ‘and just this spell for at least another week. You’ll have the urge to experiment, to make it brighter, to move it around …’
‘You can move it around?’
Nightingale sighed. ‘Not for the next week. You practise until the word becomes the spell and the spell becomes the word. So that to say “lux” is to make light.’
‘Lux?’ I said. ‘What language is that?’
Nightingale looked at me in surprise.
‘It’s Latin for light,’ he said. ‘They don’t teach Latin in secondary moderns any more?’
‘Not at my school they didn’t.’
‘Not to worry,’ said Nightingale. ‘I can tutor you in that as well.’
Lucky me, I thought.
‘Why use Latin?’ I asked. ‘Why not use English, or make up your own words?’
‘Lux, the spell you just did, is what we call a form,’ said Nightingale. ‘Each of the basic forms you learn has a name: Lux, Impello, Scindere – others. Once these become ingrained, you can combine the forms to create complex spells the way you combine words to create a sentence.’
‘Like musical notation?’ I asked.
Nightingale grinned. ‘Exactly like musical notation,’ he said.
‘So why not use musical notation?’
‘Because in the main library there are thousands of books detailing how to do magic, and all of them use the standard Latin forms,’ said Nightingale.
‘Presumably all this was invented by Sir Isaac?’ I asked.
‘The original forms are in the Principia Artes Magicis,’ said Nightingale. ‘There have been changes over the years.’
‘Who made the changes?’
‘People who can’t resist fiddling with things,’ said Nightingale. ‘People like you, Peter.’
So Newton, like all good seventeenth-century intellectuals, wrote in Latin because that was the international language of science, philosophy and, I found out later, upmarket pornography. I wondered if there was a translation.
‘Not of the Artes Magicis,’ said Nightingale.
‘Wouldn’t want the hoi polloi learning magic, would we?’
‘Quite,’ said Nightingale.
‘Don’t tell me,’ I said. ‘In the other books, it’s not just the forms. Everything is written in Latin.’
‘Except for the stuff that’s in Greek and Arabic,’ said Nightingale.
‘How long does it take to learn all the forms?’ I asked.
‘Ten years,’ said Nightingale. ‘If you work at it.’
‘I’d better get on.’
‘Practise for two hours and then stop,’ said Nightingale. ‘Don’t do the spell again until at least six hours have passed.’
‘I’m not tired, you know,’ I said. ‘I can keep this up all day.’
‘If you overdo it there are consequences,’ said Nightingale.
I didn’t like the sound of that at all. ‘What kind of consequences?’
‘Strokes, brain haemorrhages, aneurysms …’
‘How do you know when you’ve overdone it?’
‘When you have a stroke, a brain haemorrhage or an aneurysm,’ said Nightingale.