Did Springtide catch you by surprise this weekend? Or were you one of the lucky ones who bet on this date in your dorm floor’s pool? Students from other countries are always mystified by Osyth’s last-minute holidays. Magister Isaac Graham from Demonology explains it all to us in this interview.
Magister Graham, how does a demonologist come to be involved with holidays?
MG: Here in Osyth, the holidays are organized around the ley-line and the creatures that live on it. For seasonal holidays, that means elementals, which are normally classed as a kind of demon.
My lab is involved in determining which elementals are in Osyth at a given time, hence when the holidays aimed at propitiating those particular elementals should occur.
I understand some of the businesses in Osyth are trying to replace Springtide with a celebration of the Vernal Equinox.
MG: Well, they’d like a more predictable holiday. I can see their point. On the other hand, though, Osyth’s been welcoming the elementals for hundreds of years. I wouldn’t like to be living here the year they arrive and find that nobody takes any notice. I’d say do both, myself. Who can have too many holidays?
If elementals are demons, could somebody bind them and make them come at a predictable time?
MG: Demon binding is illegal in Osyth. In some other schools magicians have tried to bind elementals, but it doesn’t work well. There are so many elementals that a magician who binds one isn’t really controlling more than a fraction of what makes the weather, and he’s made enemies of all the rest. Or she, I guess I should say. People who bind elementals are torn apart by the elementals’ friends and family.
So elementals are social?
MG: Oh yes, very. They travel in flocks, like birds.
Could you attract them?
MG: Everybody tries, don’t they. Nothing works very well. I guess the old ways like washing the car or hanging out the laundry are the most effective.
So it’s officially Springtide this weekend. Did you make that call?
MG: Actually one of my graduate students did — Charles Plantine. He was on watch when the Zephyrids blew in on Friday night.
What do you mean ‘on watch?’
MG: This close to the usual date of a holiday, we have to keep a 24-hour watch for the elementals. We have a tent on top of the Magic Building.
So now what will everybody do? For those of us who’ve never celebrated a Springtide before.
MG: Springtide is like the opposite of Kindling. You open up your houses and let the elementals fly through; most people consider it very important that every window be opened. A lot of us will be shutting off the furnace, cleaning the fireplaces, switching from winter curtains to summer ones, putting up screens, cutting branches to force, and so on. The florists will make a lot of money this week; greeting Zephyrus elementals with flowers is thought to make for a good summer. Traditionally, you eat and drink flowers as well. For folks who don’t have houses to care for there’ll be a lot of parading from bar to bar in the city, all decked out in flowers. In the old days, a young boy and girl would be dressed up as elementals and they’d bless each bar with a branch of flowers. That’s declined as the student population increased in the city; going out to city bars isn’t so much of a family thing any more.
But you said none of this would affect the elementals’ movements.
MG: That’s true. But once they’ve arrived, you want them to be happy, don’t you?
What will you be doing this Springtide, Magister Graham?
MG: Oh, I’ll have all the windows open per usual. And I’ve saved up all the clippings from winter pruning so I can have a bonfire, and I have a bottle of Elderflower brandy. So I think we’ll have a pretty merry Springtide in the Graham house.
