Ritual Magic

the hell was that?”
    “That,” Grandmother said, “is the other expert we will hear from—Sun Mzao, known to some as Sam.”
    “The, uh . . .” Dr. Babbitt cleared his throat. “The dragon.”
    “Yes.”
    “Then that was mindspeech.”
    “Of course.”
    “I have never . . .” The psychiatrist shook his head. “How should I address him?”
    Out loud. It is tedious to sort through the mental chatter that passes for thought in humans to abstract what you wish to say. Do not address me now. I will first correct your conclusion that a lack of physical damage to the brain means that Julia Yu’s memories are being magically suppressed. They are not. The memories are either destroyed or unreachable.
    Dr. Babbitt straightened his shoulders. “I, uh, suppose, sir, that you have examined her thoughts, but that would prove only that her memories aren’t available to her.”
    The human tendency to settle on the convenient or comfortable answer is biologically based, as is the way you leap at conclusions like frogs jumping at flies. Resist this tendency. I recommend you review the work done by your Dr. Daniel Kahneman. It is flawed, but his metaphor of the two systems is a reasonable way for you to grasp the existence of your innate biases so that you may attempt to guard against them.
    “Dr. Kahneman? I don’t . . . oh, yes, heuristics. I’ve read his work on heuristics, but I don’t see what that has to do with—”
    You know I can read thoughts. You assume this is the extent of my ability to work with minds. You are wrong. You are also wrong about Julia’s condition. Of course, you lack a basic grasp of the interrelation between memory, identity, and sovereignty, so your failure to comprehend her condition is not surprising.
    “And you do comprehend it?” The doctor sounded both polite and skeptical.
    Not fully. Unlike you, I perceive it, but my comprehension is limited. I have never encountered a mind damaged in this way. I will now address Julia’s family. Do not interrupt. Edward Yu.
    Lily’s father didn’t bat an eye. “Yes?”
    Julia’s memory is not being magically suppressed. Either the vast majority of such memories no longer exist or they are severed from her mind. She does possess some badly fragmented memories from beyond the day when she observed her twelfth birthday, but she is unaware of them. This suppression is her mind’s own instinctive response. No effort should be made to direct her thinking toward those fragments. It is unlikely her mind would survive.
    Lily reached for Rule’s hand and held it tightly. She didn’t speak.
    “You are saying . . .” Edward’s voice broke. “You say there is no hope.”
    There is no chance that conventional human treatments will restore her memory. There remains a slim chance of magical restoration. This depends on whether we can determine what induced her condition and on whether the memories have been eradicated or are somehow severed from her mind. Understand that by “mind” I do not mean brain or the ability to reason. Mind is the product of consciousness combined with memory. It is not a wholly physical construct, but its nonphysical components are largely inaccessible by humans. Ghosts are a projection of mind. Most are uninhabited by consciousness, but not all. Lily
Yu.
    “Yes.” Lily’s voice was husky, as if with unshed tears. She kept a tight grip on Rule’s hand.
    The ghost of Al Drummond contacted you. What did he say?
    “If you know that much, why don’t you know what he said?”
    I sense the constructs you call ghosts, but I cannot hear them. I heard your speech to him. I did not hear his speech to you, which uses channels you would describe as spirit.
    Lily grimaced. “Spirit again. He said Friar was involved and that he’d be working this case with me, but mostly on his side of things.”
    Good. You will need his assistance, limited as it is likely to be. You and Cullen Seaborne are correct in assuming that the attack on your mother involves spiritual energy rather than purely magical.
    “But what does that mean?” she cried, frustrated. “I don’t have any idea what it means when you say ‘spirit.’”
    I congratulate you on awareness of your ignorance. Spirit is capricious, personal, universal, and indefinable. It can neither be shaped through will nor grasped by reason. It is often spoken of in terms of good or evil, and observation suggests that humans in particular access it through this