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    Gift of the Unmage: Worldweavers, #1
    Gift of the Unmage: Worldweavers, #1
    Gift of the Unmage: Worldweavers, #1
    Ebook296 pages3 hours

    Gift of the Unmage: Worldweavers, #1

    By Alma Alexander

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    "Who knew you'd be a true weaver?"

     

    Great things were expected.

     

    Thea Winthrop, Double Seventh, the seventh child of two seventh children, was the very definition of magic, greatly anticipated, and in whom much potential rested. But something was very wrong. It wasn't that she did magic badly - it was just that she couldn't seem to do any magic at all. The most magical creature alive... turned into the Girl WHo Couldn't.

     

    It was not until a last-ditch effort to wake up that absent magic, sent into the past to find a glimmer of a new and unique magical identity, that Thea's world begins to change, and she learns that her greatest strength might be the powers that she had yet to discover.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBook View Cafe
    Release dateJan 27, 2023
    ISBN9781611389210
    Gift of the Unmage: Worldweavers, #1
    Author

    Alma Alexander

    Alma Alexander was born in Yugoslavia and has lived in Zambia, Swaziland, Wales, South Africa and New Zealand. She now lives in Washington state, USA. She writes full-time and runs a monthly creative writing workshop with her husband.

    Read more from Alma Alexander

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    Reviews for Gift of the Unmage

    3.5/5

    33 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Galathea Winthrop is the seventh child of a seventh daughter and a seventh son, and she is expected to be a prodigy of a mage. Her birth is front-page news. Everyone awaits the news of her first signs of the great magic that will surely be hers.

      Little Thea proves to be a "magidim," i.e., apparently no magic at all. Ars Magica is the only subject she doesn't excel in at school.

      Finally, as a teenager, after years of special classes and special teachers, her parents conclude they have no choice. Her father arranges one last "summer camp" of special tutoring, hoping to knock her magic loose at last, and if that doesn't work, she'll have to go to Wandless Academy, the school for those with no magic at all.

      "Summer camp" gets moved up to April, and is nothing like what she expected.

      When it's done and she returns home, her ideas have changed a lot, along with her feelings about going to Wandless Academy. And what she finds at Wandless brings new revelations.

      This is a story of a teenager who has grown up disappointing the impossible expectations all around her, and discovering who she really is. Along the way, she also learns a lot more about her parents, her aunt, and the other adults around her.

      It's a good plot, and good character development. I'd love to talk more about the "summer camp" experience, but what I'd say would be spoilerific, so I refrain.

      Recommended.

      I bought this audiobook.
    • 3/5
      Thea is 14 years old. She's the seventh child of two seventh children, which means she is to be very powerful. Thea wants to go to the best magical University when she gets older. But, there is one thing holding her back...she doesn't have the magical touch, at all. She's not able to perform any magical projects. She feels she's letting her parents down. They have tried everything they can to help Thea find her magical nitch. Now, there is only one thing left to try and her father will call in a huge favor to try it.In her eavesdropping Thea knows her parents have plans for her and if these plans with some private lessons don't work, she will be sent to that place next year. That place is The Wandless Academy, where non-magical children go to school. Non-magical children and schools are the minority and she feels she will become nothing in a magical world without magical powers.This is a world where magic exists in a big way, and in many different specialities and levels. If you don't have magic, you don't amount to much of anything here, or as Thea feels. There is a big world starting to be created here with endless magical possibilities; from our traditional telepathy between family members to traditional magic with music or shepherd mages and different levels of mages. We even have portals to travel to different places and through time.This young adult read is not one for lots of violence or intimacy of boyfriend/girlfriend, but what I did enjoy from it was the American Indian mythology usage. This was a great mythology to set with this world. Alma relates the things Thea learns my using the beliefs to the current time and place Thea lives in. Thea starts off as a typical teenage child who in a way feels sorry for herself and guilty for her lack of powers, in relation to her parents. She has a wonderful and open relationship with her Aunt. As she is close with her parents, it's just she feels she has let them down, being expected to be so powerful. Thea really grows greatly through this book with what she learns while with Chevery. Then how she uses it when she returns home to willingly go to the Wardless Academy. Thea makes some wonderful and unusual friends there at the school. But it is a time she will never forget, for the things she accomplishes. I enjoyed the journeys Thea takes to understand herself. Through the beliefs and teachings Thea goes through she learns she has to be patient and the understanding will come ~ a great lesson to be learned by both children and adults alike.I enjoyed this first book, and will be reading the next book as well. I would suggest this book to a Young adult who likes to read of magic and Americal Indian mythology. I feel this book was a nice break from lots of fighting and violence and even the drooling love scenes. This is a nice read for a younger adult to sit back and enjoy, and the parents not worring what is in those pages.
    • 3/5
      The seventh kid of two seventh kids, the main character whose name I've already forgotten is supposed to have a ton of magic. But she doesn't. So her father sends her away to study with an Anasazi spiritual guide or something and she finds herself and talks with a Spider Goddess who isn't Anansi, because the trickster in the story is a wolf.But eventually she goes off to a school for people with no magical ability (which is a real rarity in the world, as there only seems to be one school in the whole world). And the school is the reason I selected this book with Novelist as a tool. So I was glad she finally got there.I'm not sure what I think of the inclusion of Native American elements. For the most part, it just didn't interest me. But I don't know enough to know if it was handled well, with knowledge and care, or not.After reading this and Shaman's Crossing by Robin Hobb, I came to the conclusion that I don't like spiritual journeys with a tutor/guide/teacher/whatever. Too much talking and perhaps magic I'm not comfortable with. Or just bored by.So, not bad, once she finally got to the school. But I'm not ready to put in an ILL request for the next book in the series either.

    Book preview

    Gift of the Unmage - Alma Alexander

    Gift of the Unmage

    GIFT OF THE UNMAGE

    WORLDWEAVERS

    BOOK ONE

    ALMA ALEXANDER

    Book View Café/Kos Books

    CONTENTS

    Worldweavers

    Wolf Moon

    Whispering Wind Moon

    Crow Moon

    Grass Moon

    Milk Moon and the Moon of Thirsty Ground

    Thunder Moon

    Moon of the Green Corn

    Harvest Moon

    Hunters Moon

    Ember Moon

    Long Nights Moon

    Acknowledgments

    About the Author

    About Book View Café

    Gift of the Unmage

    Published by Book View Café/Kos Books

    Cover art by Les Petersen

    Copyright ©2007 (original publication), ©2022 (current edition) by Alma Alexander

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever (except for quotations used for purpose of critical articles or reviews) without the author’s permission.

    ISBN (paperback) 978 1 61138 920 3

    ISBN (ebook) 978 1 61138 921 0

    WORLDWEAVERS

    Book 1:

    Gift of the Unmage

    Alma Alexander

    The first book for Lea, the eldest

    WOLF MOON

    1.

    You smell angry, Aunt Zoë said as she walked in through the door, sniffing in Thea’s direction like a hound dog scenting prey.

    She was always coming up with things like that. Things like The wind looks blue. Or That song was scratchier than a scouring pad! Or telling someone that their purple dress was ‘loud’, and meaning it quite literally. She heard things other people smelled, or saw things other people heard, or absorbed colors through the tips of her fingers.

    Although she had been only three at the time, Thea vividly remembered the time that Zoë had said that the wind was blue. It might have been the first real, coherent memory that she could lay claim to. She had piped up with enthusiastic agreement, and had not failed to notice the immediate excitement her words had caused. What she had failed to understand at the time were the reasons behind that excitement, and had happily mimicked Aunt Zoë’s strange ways on several occasions after that, seeking the approval that she had received the first time she had done it.

    But it had become all too obvious very quickly that she was merely saying the words, not experiencing them the way that Zoë did. The passing years had made Thea wiser. People had still been expecting great things of her when she was very young–anything she did, anything she said, might have a sign of the Double Seventh latency waking into its full potential. But it always fell flat, usually with someone sighing deeply, "Oh, Thea." She’d been almost six years old before she realized that her full name was not, in fact, both those words.

    I’m just upset, Thea said to her aunt, kicking the edge of the couch with the heel of her free foot, the one she had not folded comfortably underneath her.

    Have they been at you again?

    Thea made a face. "They’re always at me."

    What is it now?

    Thea gestured at the dining room table in the next room, where two objects rested amid an untidy heap of papers. One of them was a perfectly seamless metallic cube. The other was an irregularly shaped blob that may or may not have been made of the same material, and looked like something angular had tried and failed to hatch from a steel egg.

    What on earth is that? Zoë said, fascinated.

    Ars Magica class assignment. We were supposed to turn the cube into the ball.

    Zoë tore her eyes from the thing on the table and turned a sympathetic gaze on her niece. "Uh-oh. Did you do that?"

    You mean the blob? Nope. That was Frankie’s effort. The cube…is mine.

    The frustration and humiliation of an Ars Magica class were nothing new for Thea. The routine hardly ever varied—an assignment would be given, and then, at the end of the class, certain students would be invited to stay behind. Thea was invariably one of them; her brother Frankie, who was a year behind his peer group and known to be a klutz with anything magical, was another. But even Frankie could eventually do some part of the assignment, in however ham-fisted a way, while Thea could not even manage something that could be classified as a mistake. There would be others, whom Thea bitterly recognized as window dressing, who were there only to show that she was not singled out for anything—as though she could be fooled. The reactions of the others ranged from sympathy (from some who had to work harder at their own talents than the rest) to smoldering resentment for even being forced to sit in the same classroom as the two Winthrop siblings and being tainted by so much as being in their presence. One particularly vicious one had complained loudly about it afterwards in the cafeteria in terms of being forced to breathe the same air as Dunce and Idiot over there and how their ineptitudes were already eating at his own abilities.

    I can feel it, he had said in a mock-dolorous voice, his hand raised to his forehead in the manner of old television melodramas. It’s all fading, it’s all going awaaaaaay… this time tomorrow I’ll be no more than a dumb ’dim, and my parents will disown me…

    Ah, I wouldn’t worry, one of his henchmen said with a sly glance over at the other table where Thea sat by herself, with her hair hanging over her face to hide her flaming cheeks. Their parents still love them, wouldn’t you know….

    It only became worse when Thea and Frankie brought their Ars Magica transformations back home that day. Thea had produced hers with a sinking heart, without raising her head to meet her father’s eyes.

    What was it? Thea’s mother had asked.

    That, Thea muttered. It was the cube.

    "What was it supposed to be?" asked Anthony, the oldest brother. It was a Friday, he was home from college for the weekend, and he was full of more than his usual smug self-importance.

    Thea muttered something under her breath.

    What? Anthony said.

    "Oh, Thea, Frankie said. He produced his own effort, half cube, half shapeless blob. It was supposed to be…"

    "Well, not that," Anthony said with a chuckle.

    A ball, said Frankie defiantly. It was supposed to be a ball.

    You mean like this one? Anthony had picked up Thea’s untransformed cube and had been turning it over in his fingers; now he passed his other hand over it, murmuring a single word, and he was suddenly holding a smooth metal sphere that sat on his palm like an accusation.

    Thea grabbed for it. Give it back! That was mine!

    Oh, Anthony said, okay. He passed his hand over it again before she had a chance to snatch it, and it was back in cube form.

    "Anthony," Paul murmured, in a half-hearted reproof.

    Show off, Thea snarled, still avoiding looking at her father, her fingers curling around her cube as though she wanted to throw it. When I get to University—

    You won’t, Anthony said. Not at this rate.

    You wait! When I get to Amford—

    You can’t go to Amford, said Frankie. His words fell into the conversation like stones into a pond. Ripples of things that did not need to be said followed them into the silence. You can’t go to Amford, Thea. Amford is the University of Magic. You can never go to Amford, Thea. You can never…

    Not even Paul could gainsay that one.

    Thea stared at her hand, willing her fingers to uncurl from around the unforgiving cube. Then she very carefully put it down on the dining room table and walked away.

    She had meant to stalk off into her room and slam the door, but somehow she didn’t have the energy to move any farther than the living room couch where she sat and stared out of the window until her aunt had come into the room.

    Zoë was staring at the dining room table. Frankie’s supposed to finally graduate to the advanced class next year, she said thoughtfully. They deal with living things there. She was looking at the mangled thing that Thea had called the blob, and it was clear that she was seeing some poor rat or lizard half-turned into a human ear by Thea’s ham-fisted older brother. Is he in trouble?

    Not nearly as much as me, Thea muttered.

    "Oh, Thea."

    Thea jumped up from the couch. "Don’t you start! I’ve been hearing that all day. Even Frankie did the oh-Thea thing, and look at what he brought home. She rubbed at her nose with the back of her hand in a faintly reflective manner, as though she was using the gesture to help her think. Maybe I was adopted."

    Don’t be silly, Zoë said, and sniffed again. You’re a miserable little thing today, aren’t you? The very air in this room smells brown and shriveled, and it’s all your fault. It’s nice and crisp out—you want to go out for a walk? And tell me the rest of it? You’ll feel much better if you get it off your chest, you know. Maybe I can help.

    Get what off my chest? Thea said suspiciously.

    Thea, darling, you are prickly with secrets, I can feel them coming out of you like a porcupine’s quills. You’re upset about something that your parents haven’t told you openly—you’ve been eavesdropping again. I can always tell, you know.

    I don’t… Thea began indignantly, but just then a door closed loudly, and she threw a quick calculating glance that way and then nodded at Zoë with suspicious eagerness. On second thought, I’d like that. A walk would be good.

    Just taking Thea out for a wander! Zoë called out over her shoulder. Grab your jacket and run, she whispered into Thea’s ear, as she shepherded her niece out the door. If they don’t see you, they can’t stop you.

    Zoë was the kind of aunt who was less than beloved by responsible parents. She was a conspirator with errant children, with a fine disregard for rules and the charm to talk herself back into everyone’s good graces afterward. She was perfectly aware of the crisis brewing in the Winthrop household, centering—once again—on her fourteen-year-old niece, the child upon whom so many hopes had been hung on the day of her birth that Zoë sometimes wondered how she had managed to grow up at all under the weight of them.

    The Double Seventh—the most magical of the magical, the seventh child born of the union of two seventh children.

    The newborn Thea had made the newspapers on the day that her mother, Zoë’s older sister Ysabeau, left the hospital. Then, it had all been pure excitement—Zoë remembered the smell of the air on that morning, sharp and bright like electricity, the precious bundle cradled in her sister’s arms. The baby—Galathea Georgiana, as Ysabeau informed the waiting press with the air of having named a crown princess—had resented the hubbub that had greeted her arrival, and the massive concerted flash of the photographers’ cameras had been too much. The front-page photograph of the Double Seventh child had shown a bundle of dark blue baby blanket with stars on it wrapped around a small, tightly scrunched-up face which, at that moment, seemed to be mostly mouth.

    She has her father’s gums, her paternal grandfather had commented irritably when the newspaper had found its way to him. I suppose now that she’s famous she’ll grow up to be a little spoiled brat.

    And for a while it looked like Thea might do just that.

    The photograph and the accompanying front-page article had been placed in the Thea Book (all the Winthrop children had a scrapbook devoted to them). Ysabeau had a fondness for the photo, even if only because she believed that it had been an unusually good likeness of herself. But Thea’s scrapbook, started from the outset with a rush of hope and anticipation in a notebook much thicker than most of the ones devoted to her brothers, had remained disappointingly barren of material. Zoë had once told Ysabeau that she had never seen another single thing that smelled so much of despair.

    Thea’s thoughts were still mutinous as she and Zoë made their way down the street, leaving their dark footprints in the thin layer of snow on the ground. She was not aware that she had been stomping ahead on her own, leaving her aunt behind, until Zoë’s whistle brought her up sharply. She stopped, turned her head, and realized that her aunt was waiting a couple of hundred feet back.

    Over here, Zoë said. We’ll take the trail.

    But you usually can’t get through there after it’s snowed, Thea said.

    There are always ways, said Zoë mysteriously.

    Thea, her hands jammed into the pockets of her anorak, trudged back to her aunt’s side, her face thunderous. Aunt Zoë, if you want me to practice any warming spells, you know what comes next. Anthony would give you a perfect spring day. Frankie would make it hot enough to grow bananas or else he’d turn you into a human icicle. Me, I am just going to do a whole lot of concentrating and then nothing will happen. As usual.

    "You do have it bad, Zoë murmured. Let me do the spells, hon. Just come this way. The road just smells too hard, I need earth beneath my feet."

    They turned off the road, ducking into a hardly discernible gap between bare-branched bushes which, in the summer, might have been a blackberry thicket. Beyond them the underbrush thinned as taller trees, cedars and Douglas firs, started to tower above the narrow path. There was snow on the ground, but less than Thea had thought there would be. Whether that was due to the heavy evergreens or because Zoë’s warming spells were working, Thea didn’t know, but it was quite pleasant to walk through the woods in the crisp cool January day. Thea fought to hold on to her funk, but the winter air worked its icy fingers into the snarls of her temper, loosening them until all she still carried was a kind of detached bleakness.

    Zoë waited until she, in her own terms, finally smelled the change of mood in Thea, and then turned her head fractionally to smile down at her niece.

    All right, she said. Want to talk about it now?

    Dad’s eyes, Thea said.

    This was the sort of shortcut verbal telepathy that Zoë could follow with the ease of one linked by blood kinship. She nodded.

    Yeah, I can see that. Was it when the Ars Magica blobs came in?

    He’s used to Frankie being a ham-fisted idiot, Thea burst out. "He’s repeating this year of school, after all. When the… blob… came in, Daddy just sighed and rolled his eyes. But with me… with me… every time I fail…"

    He keeps believing in you, Zoë said gently.

    I don’t know, Thea said. I’m not sure if it isn’t just that he wants to keep believing in me. And every time I muck something up it’s like I do it deliberately, just to hurt him. I saw his face when the last reports came in from school. It doesn’t matter that I’m top of the class in math or in two different foreign languages. He turned straight to the Ars Magica report card and, well, you know what it said.

    No, said Zoë.

    What it usually says, Thea said, kicking a stone on the path with the toe of her boot. "That I’ll never amount to anything. That I can’t do the simplest thing that any toddler can do. That any newborn can do. I—can’t—do—anything! Thea punctuated the last sentence by sharp little blows of her fists against her legs. And then, the sphere…"

    Tell me about the sphere.

    "It was an exercise, as simple as that. We were supposed to take the cube and turn it into that sphere, just as Anthony did it. Everyone else managed it, pretty much, although it took some of them half an hour to get it right. They kept me back when the class left—they always do it—‘keep trying,’ they said, and just sat there and pretended not to watch me… Aunt Zoë, it’s like there’s this wall and I can feel it right there in front of me and it’s cold and tall and completely impossible to get around. And I’m on this side of it, and the cube is on that side, and that’s all there is to it. I could have sat there until the middle of next week and it wouldn’t have helped."

    I know it’s upsetting, Zoë said, but that isn’t what’s really bugging you. I’m guessing you brought the whole mess home and then went and listened at keyholes again, my dear child.

    Thea threw her a defiant glance. How else am I supposed to know? she demanded. Anthony would simply have used a spy spell. But I can’t. I’m useless. I’m completely pathetic.

    You are most certainly not so. You—

    In fact, Thea continued doggedly, as though Zoë hadn’t spoken at all, I’m so totally hopeless that they’re sending me to the Last Ditch School for the Incurably Incompetent.

    Zoë’s head came up sharply. What?

    I heard them talking about it in the kitchen, Thea sniffed, her eyes full of sudden tears. "They said… th-they said they would let me finish out the year in my own class, and then they are sending me… sending me… somewhere, I didn’t quite get that. Somewhere, in the summer, for someone to give me private lessons, or whip me into shape, or something. And if they can’t—if I fail even at that—then I have to leave the school, and go to that place."

    Which place? Zoë asked, honestly confused.

    Thea shrugged her shoulders with a violence that threatened to rip seams in her anorak. "You know. That place. The only school anywhere that has absolutely no Ars Magica in the curriculum."

    The Wandless Academy? Zoë said, raising her eyebrows. They’re thinking about sending you there?

    The Last Ditch school, Thea said stubbornly, clinging to her own definition.

    Thea, it’s hardly that bad… Zoë began, in tones of sweetest reason, but Thea was not in the mood to be reasonable.

    Uh-huh, Thea grunted. "And then everyone can breathe a sigh of relief. It’s the scrap heap of everything magical, Aunt Zoë. It’s the place where they send those who will never amount to anything, just so that they can get enough of a mundane education to be able to do something for a living. And now I’m supposed to go there. And I’ll have that stuck to me all my days. The one who failed. The one who sucked at things so badly that even her own parents washed their hands of her. And Anthony is going to sit there in his dorm room at Amford University, studying for his high thaumaturgy degree or whatever it is that he’s doing these days, and he’s going to smirk at me for the rest of my life."

    Do you have any idea as to who’s supposed to be ‘whipping you into shape’? Zoë asked.

    I’m not sure, Thea said. I just heard them talking. Why?

    It might not be so bad, depending on whom they choose, Zoë said. You’ve done such things before, you know. Like Madame Bellaria, for example, or last year, when— She closed her mouth with a snap.

    Thea looked up. What?

    Zoë bit her lip. Nothing.

    No, what? Thea said, her blood thoroughly up. Madame Bellaria taught me the violin, or at least tried to until they figured out I just didn’t have the perfect pitch that was required, and last year… What do you mean?

    Well… Zoë said unwillingly. She didn’t want to lie, not baldly, and yet giving Thea any kind of hard-to-take truth right now wasn’t going to help. Let’s just say that Bellaria is a Chanter Mage as well as a competent violinist, and that was the year you sang yourself to sleep every night, and they thought that music magic might be your path. And last year, when they sent you to stay with your Aunt Sarah… you know your Uncle Adam is a Class One mage, don’t you? And he did spend a lot of time with you that summer.

    Thea stared at her. They never said anything to me, she said. Although it makes sense now that Uncle Adam made me practice incantations every night before bedtime. He said it would help me… sleep. Her expression became thunderous again. Nothing happened, of course, she said. Maybe, if they’d told me what they were doing…

    There are plenty of people out there who do private lessons, as it were, and some of them are a lot of fun, said Zoë gently.

    Some fun, Thea said. She captured a stray strand of hair with the corner of her mouth and chewed on it furiously. They tried it the cheating way and obviously it didn’t work. Now they’re going to make me go to slave camp. You know what it’s going to be like. It’s going to be a whole wretched summer of frying my brain trying to make cubes turn into spheres or levitate stones. And the cubes are going to stay cubes, and the stones are going to stay firmly on the ground, and then I’ll come home from wherever it is that I’ve been, and Dad’s eyes…

    I’ll talk to your folks, Zoë said. I’ll see what I can find out, okay? I’ll come back and tell you. In the meantime…

    Thea shot her another mutinous look. What?

    It might be an idea to try extra hard for the rest of the school year, Zoë said. If you manage to keep your Ars Magica teachers placated with just small things, they may let you…

    No, Aunt Zoë, Thea said bleakly. Mom and Dad won’t let that happen. It was okay for Frankie to repeat a year—but not me. Never me. They won’t let them hold me back. Frankie merely sucks at it. With me… it’s different. There’s a point to prove. I can either do it big like I’m supposed to, or they’ll make sure I don’t do anything at all. It’s all magic or no magic for me. I’m a Double Seventh; if I fail, I totally fail. I can’t be a flicker—I must be a bonfire, or I must be out…

    Thea, Zoë began, a little alarmed, but Thea extracted a hand from her anorak pocket, pushed her wayward hair back behind her ears, and tossed her head. The gesture appeared almost angry, but when she looked up again her eyes were full of tears and there was so much misery on her face that Zoë bit her lip and simply gathered the girl into her arms. Thea clutched at her aunt’s anorak collar with both hands and wept into her shoulder.

    Daddy’s eyes, she sobbed. "I can’t come home again and look into Daddy’s eyes… I swear, Aunt Zoë, I’d rather die than make him go in and have to tell everyone that he’s finally given up all hope in his oh-so-special daughter… I can’t help it, I want to do well, I want to do well so badly…"

    I know, hon. I know.

    Zoë rocked Thea against her, letting her cry herself out.

    2.

    As it happened, Zoë knew exactly what Thea meant. There was something in Paul Winthrop’s eyes when he looked at his youngest—there was hope, and frustrated love, and bitter disappointment he tried very hard to hide but sometimes didn’t quite manage to tuck in behind his usual screen of calm acceptance. Zoë could remember that hope and a fierce pride that had burned in those eyes on the day that Thea had been born.

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