Plum’s discipline was camouflage magic, the magic of concealment, and she was considered an illusionist, which she was perfectly happy about. Being an illusionist at Brakebills was, if Plum said it herself, a pretty sweet deal. You got to hang out in a tiny invisible folly castle on the edge of the forest that was quite difficult to find unless you had an illusionist-type discipline. The castle was delicate and gossamer and very Neuschwanstein, which was a nice way of saying—though Plum didn’t say it—kind of Disney. To get up in one of the towers you climbed a ladder inside it, like you were negotiating a Jefferies tube, and there was just enough room for a little chair and a desk inside the round room at the top.

She didn’t like to be partisan about it, but it was way better than that poky cottage the Physical Kids got stuck with. When they had parties the whole place could be made to twinkle and float up into the air a little ways, like a fairy castle, connected to the ground by only a rickety, railing-less staircase which people were always falling off of drunk onto the soft grass below. It reminded her of the floating castle at the end of The Phantom Tollbooth. Hell yes, it was Disney. Disney FTW!

Once in a while people would ask Plum what the hell kind of an adolescence she’d had that she arrived at Brakebills so cocked, locked and ready to rock. She told them the truth, which was that she’d grown up on an island near Seattle, in comfortable surroundings, the daughter of a mixed marriage: one magician, one non.

She was an only child, and they’d had high standards for Plum, Daddy especially—he was the magician of the couple. As the one basket they’d managed to weave, she had to hold all their eggs, so they’d home-schooled her, and once her talent for magic revealed itself they’d made damn sure she made good on it. Daddy sat with her and made her practice her languages and her exercises, and she’d made very good indeed. True, she’d never been to prom, or played a competitive sport that you couldn’t play sitting down and in complete silence, but you don’t make a magic omelet without breaking some magic eggs.

That was the truth. And if she liked and trusted the person who asked, she would add that yes, it was kind of a lot to deal with: her outward affect was bright and capable, and that was no illusion, but equally real was the yawning pit of exhaustion inside her. She just felt so tired sometimes. And because of everything her family asked of her, she was ashamed of being tired. She could not, would not let the pit swallow her up, as much as she sometimes wanted it to.