Errand Mysteries

Hardest questions were almost always the ones that seemed the simplest, but that night she discovered that the Department of Mysteries had a particularly cruel way of proving it. The six questions prepared for the students were written on a piece of parchment that fit comfortably between her hands, yet they seemed to hold enough space for one to get lost in for a lifetime.

She had arrived at the camp while there was still some light in the sky and found the tables set up for the activity near the campfire. Benches, sofas, and a few chairs had been arranged around them, as if anticipating that people might need to sit in various ways while pondering matters no one had ever fully managed to explain. Small candles burned on the tables, their flames flickering whenever someone passed too close; beside them lay parchment, quills, ink, drinks, and snacks for those who might discover, too late, that two hours of deep thought could work up an appetite in even the most absent-minded student.

Stelle took her seat and received the black envelope assigned to every member of the department. She held it between her fingers for a moment, studying the silver wax seal; there was something about those envelopes that suggested a vital answer might lie within, even though they actually contained nothing more than six questions and a considerable amount of trouble. She broke the seal. The first question was about time.

If you could change one moment in your past, should you?

Stelle read the question twice before setting her quill down beside the parchment. Her first thought was, naturally, yes. Everyone surely had some moment they wished had played out differently, even if they spent years pretending otherwise. She herself could recall small decisions she would have made differently had she known what was to come. But changing a moment didn't mean changing only that moment. That was where things began to get complicated.

If she had made a different choice at a certain point, perhaps she never would have met certain people. Perhaps she would have ended up somewhere else, doing different things, and becoming a different version of herself. Even the memories she disliked were part of the person she had become. Stelle thought then of all the times she had lost something and ended up finding something else while looking for it. Her tendency to get distracted had caused more than one minor mishap, but it had also been responsible for some of her best discoveries.

Perhaps the past was a bit like that. You didn’t always have to love every part of it to acknowledge that it had helped bring you to where you were. She wrote a few opening lines and moved on to the second question.

What exists beyond, that you cannot see?

She liked that one immediately, though she wasn't quite sure why. Since childhood, she had found it easy to believe that things might hide something more than what was visible on the surface. She had searched for fairies in gardens because her grandfather had assured her they existed, opened books simply because their titles intrigued her, and spent far too much time staring at corners of rooms where no one else saw a thing.

For Stelle, the fact that something couldn't be seen didn't mean it wasn't there. It could be another room behind a wall, a creature hidden among the leaves, a star too distant to make out with the naked eye, or even an idea that hadn't yet found a way to turn into words. Yet she also understood that this could easily become an excuse to imagine just about anything.

Not everything unknown had to hold a mystery. Sometimes, a thing was simply out of sight. And perhaps that distinction was precisely what made it interesting.

Is any thought truly original?

This time, she frowned. It struck her as an unfair question.

How could anyone know they were the first to think something if they had no way of getting inside everyone else's head to verify it? One might come up with an idea believed to be entirely new, only to discover later that someone, at some point in history, had thought the exact same thing. There was also the possibility that no idea truly sprang from nothing. Everything a person knew came from somewhere, from what they had seen, heard, read, learned, or experienced. Even the strangest ideas had to be built from pieces that already existed.

Stelle looked at the tip of her pen. Perhaps originality didn't lie in inventing something from scratch, but in doing something different with what already existed. Like a drawing. There might be thousands of people drawing flowers, but none would draw them exactly as she did, even after seeing the same flowers from the same spot at the same time. The subject might be the same; the perspective, however, was not.

That explanation seemed quite reasonable to her. Although it could also simply be an elegant way of avoiding the question. She smiled to herself and continued.

What makes love powerful enough to overcome magic?

That was probably the hardest question for her to answer without resorting to one of those pretty phrases that sounded good but explained absolutely nothing. Could love overcome magic?
There were stories that claimed it could. Magic was full of examples where affection, loyalty, or sacrifice had achieved things no spell could have produced on its own. But Stelle wasn't sure that meant love was more powerful than magic. Perhaps they were simply different things.

Magic could compel, protect, transform, destroy, or repair. Love offered no such guarantees. A person could love and still make mistakes, walk away, feel fear, or cause hurt. Yet, that was precisely why it could be powerful. No one was forced to love another person. When someone chose to do so—even when they could have chosen otherwise—perhaps that was the very strength the stories were trying to explain.

Stelle thought of her family, the people she had met, and all the little things people did for those they loved without necessarily expecting anyone to consider them extraordinary. She didn't know if that could overcome magic. But she did know there were things a spell could never achieve in quite the same way.

What makes something truly gone?

That question made Stelle look up again. At first, it seemed simple. If something disappeared, it was no longer there. But the more she thought about it, the less certain she became. A person could leave one place and continue to exist in another. An object could break and go on existing as fragments. A photograph could be destroyed, yet the memory of what it depicted might linger for years. So, what did it truly mean to disappear? Perhaps simply ceasing to be present wasn't enough. Maybe something vanished only when no one could remember it, find it, or speak of its past existence. The thought struck her as a little sad.

There were so many small things that had likely vanished in just that way, unnoticed by anyone. Animals that had lived centuries ago, books no one read anymore, songs no one could recall in full, names carved on ancient headstones. Perhaps that was why people liked to keep photographs, letters, and old trinkets—not merely to preserve the items themselves, but to keep them from vanishing completely.

Finally, she reached the sixth question.

If you knew your future, would you still choose it?

This time, Stelle didn’t answer immediately. The question seemed far simpler than the others, yet it ended up taking the most time to ponder. Because a part of her wanted to know—of course she did. Stelle was curious, even when she shouldn't be. If someone offered her the chance to glimpse what hadn't yet happened for just a few seconds, she would likely accept before even considering the consequences.

But then came the second part: Would she still choose it? If she knew about a future decision and realized she would eventually regret it, would she try to avoid making it? If she knew something bad was going to happen, would she change whatever was necessary to prevent it? And if she discovered something wonderful, would she be able to live peacefully until the moment arrived, or would she spend all that time just waiting for it to happen?

Stelle realized then that knowing the future could be a rather strange way of losing it. Because if a person knew exactly what was going to happen, no decision would feel entirely their own anymore. Even a choice made of one's own free will could be influenced by the knowledge of what was to come. Perhaps the future was meant to remain unknown for a reason. Not because it was set in stone, but because it still had to be chosen.


Stelle finally set her pen down on the table. It had taken her much longer than she had imagined to answer those six questions, and she still wasn't sure if any of her answers were truly good. She might change her mind about some of them the next day. Or even before the night was out. But perhaps that was what the Ineffables had intended.

Not definitive answers. Just questions capable of lingering in one’s mind long after the writing was done. Stelle looked at the parchment again. The six questions were still there, exactly as they had been at the start, though now they seemed far less simple.