She'd been trying to think of all of the Planes of her mother's book—or "Spheres," as the Alchemy book called them—as being separate, and that things somehow passed from one to another. But it wasn't like that at all; everything was layered on top of everything else, and everything coexisted at once. The physical world that everyone saw and lived in was overlaid with all of the magic worlds. The difference between a regular person and a magician was whether or not you could see each layer.
Which was why those nasty little gnomish things in the meadow had seemed to dig their way into the ground without actually disturbing it; they weren't really digging into the ground, they were moving themselves out of the Plane of the "real world"—which the alchemy book called "Middle Earth," and into one of the lower Planes, probably the Dark Earth Plane, where she couldn't see them anymore. And the Salamanders couldn't follow, both because they weren't creatures of Earth and because they weren't creatures of the Dark Ways. Every Sphere had a corresponding Dark Side, and as a Light Path magician, you didn't want to go there, unless you absolutely had to. Not because you could get hurt, but because you could get seduced and corrupted unless you were very, very careful. You couldn't go there, if you were a Light Path Elemental.
She could have, if she had known how to get her imagination to move her awareness into the Plane of Earth, because humans were uniquely able to move among all the Planes. But she wouldn't have been comfortable there, because it wasn't her Element, either.
Imagination. That was the key. Whatever she could imagine, if she could do it well enough, and believe in it, she could see.
Intellect ruled the Middle Earth, which lay between the Spheres of the Light Path and the Spheres of the Dark. It reflected both, though the balance shifted as affairs in the Middle Earth itself shifted, and as the balance of power between the Light Path Spheres and the Dark Path Spheres shifted.
Those who subscribed only to Intellect could never move beyond the Middle Earth. But those who explored Imagination and Intuition found the way into the other Spheres open to them.
And once you learned the symbolic logic of those other Spheres, you knew how to manipulate your magic, and how to counter the magic of other Elements than your own. Now, that meant that Eleanor would have a fighting chance of undoing what Alison had done to her, even if she wasn't as strong a magician as Alison. It didn't take a hammer to crack a nut; a little pressure applied at the right place would split it open. What was more, Eleanor had a shrewd hunch that Alison's spells only worked against her on this Plane. Once she learned how to move among the Planes, she could travel them relatively unhindered.
Once I learn to move among the Planes, once I really understand the Plane of Earth magic, I will find the key to break her spells! She knew that; it made perfect sense. Knowledge and understanding, not force, were going to be the keys to her shackles.
But to do that, to be able to step beyond this Middle Earth and into the rest, she would have to do a lot of work. She had once thought that preparing for the examinations to get into Oxford was hard work. This would be ten times harder. She was going to have to go completely beyond what she had always taken as "the truth" into a whole new set of truths—and then believe in them. Well, no one said it was going to be easy.
She got up and ran through her usual chores in an absentminded fashion; her hands and body did the work, while her mind repeated some of what she thought she was beginning to understand from the books.
It might have seemed odd, but amid all those philosophical musing, she did not forget to wash all those cotton shirtwaists and linen skirts she had brought down from the attic, nor to put them up—well out of sight of the bedroom windows—on lines in the garden to dry. It seemed very strange to be doing all these intensely common and practical things while her head was buzzing with alchemical esoterica.
And as she worked, she kept remembering links to the symbology of even the most ordinary things—as she scrubbed, she was also thinking. Water, is the Sphere of Emotion; although there are emotions associated with all the Elements, they all have more strength here in Water. Especially the nurturing ones—that's the Light Path, though, the Dark Path is the emotions that destroy, like a flood washing everything away in its path. And Water is mutable—solid to liquid to gas and back again, so it represents change, while unchanging Water, the Dark Path, is stagnation. And nothing can grow without it, so it also has an aspect of growth, but too much water can kill, so there's death. It can purify and pollute. It can fill or drown. The alchemical creature is the Hippocampus, showing the links among Water, Air, and Earth. Water is hard to control because it's hard to contain, not as hard as Air, though.
And then that, and a whiff of flowers, sent her into Air, the Sphere of Mercury, the Sphere of Memory. The strongest memory-trigger there is, is scent. More of a Sphere of Intellect than Emotion, though Mercury is changable and volatile, more so than water. The Zephyr refreshes, the Tempest sweeps away. Too much Air can intoxicate, too little and you die. It can cleanse, too, or destroy. Mostly, it's too thin to support emotion, or at least, intense emotion. Memories generally come at a distance; you can forget how you felt when you went through those incidents originally. Pride, though; there's pride there. And that's why Mercury is the god of liars, because people lie to bolster their pride and maintain their pride. And thieves, because thieves are proud of their skill. That's the Dark Path; there's no reason why you shouldn't take pride in your work, and there's nothing wrong with change. Hardest of the Elements to contain, but not so hard to control, since Fire devours it, Water ignores it, Earth deflects it—the Alchemical creature is the Phoenyx, even though the Phoenyx is also a Fire Elemental, showing the links among Air, Water, and Fire.
Scrubbing the floor led to—Earth. Alison's Element. The Sphere of Passion—Love, on the Path of Light, Lust on the Dark Path. Seduction, which sits on the line between the two Paths. Not changeable, no—it takes a lot to force the Earth to change. Passion is a really useful thing; you can't really create something that will live without it. Passion is an implacable force, like an avalanche—once you start it, it takes a long time to stop it. Maybe that's why she had to wait until I was in an emotional breakdown before she could bind me. The Dark Path isn't stagnation though—it's rot or sterility. Creator and Devourer; Earth is, among others, the Goddesses Erda and Hera, who are both prone to creation and destruction. There may be a key to defeating Alison in that, but what is it? The Alchemical creature is the Gryphon, showing the links among Earth, Air, and Water, even though the Gryphon is also an Elemental of Air.
She mused over that while she cooked, then lingered over her breakfast, having come around to her own Element at last. Fire— Sphere of Anger. Mars. The Alchemical Creature is the Dragon, showing the links among Air, Earth, and Fire. The Dragon of the Light is wise and ancient, the Dragon of the Dark is almost mindless and constantly in a rage. Fire cleanses and destroys. The Dark Path is the Fire that only devours, I suppose, since there is no Fire that is not in a state of constant change. The Light Path would be the Fire that cleanses? Or maybe the Fire that serves, instead of the uncontrolled fire that eats everything in its path. I suppose Anger can be productive; righteous anger, but what a narrow divide between Light and Dark! Righteous anger should lead you to Justice, which is why Justice is also here, but. . . but Justice is blind, and there is no Mercy in the Sphere of Fire. Justice? Judgment is more like it. And Anger, like Fire, is hard to control and the most apt to turn and destroy the person trying to control it. Hate—channeled anger. How do I control my anger? Because if I don't, it will control me. . . .