I was rummaging through some old books in my childhood bedroom and took one home called Skin Hunger by Kathleen Duey. By the next morning, I’d finished the entire book.
I wanted to reread it because it freaked me out as a kid — it’s billed as a Young Adult (YA) series, but it’s unbelievably dark: lots of starvation and hopelessness and poverty and claustrophobia (figuratively and literally). The central theme is about how people trying to do the right things fail miserably, and what happens after. Pretty bleak. I remember being hunched under the blankets compelled to keep turning the pages, while feeling a pit of dread in my stomach. (1)
Besides the fact that it’s wise, well-written, and horribly overlooked (such is the case for most YA fantasy), I noticed a pattern that has popped up in two other major fantasy books:
“I stepped forward and touched the gem believing that I would see magic, not the griddle cakes — magic.” (188)
Context: Hahp, one of the main characters, is in a school for wizards (but much less fun than Hogwarts) and is being starved to death unless he can learn to use a magic rock to conjure up his own food. The quote above describes the first time he successfully creates a meal (besides apples) after countless days of trying. The reason he’s successful is that he believes that he will see magic, not the food.
This mechanism — belief as the enabler of magic — also comes up in Patrick Rothfuss’s Name of the Wind series, when the main character is first learning how to move objects with his mind:
“Ben held up a chunk of dirty fieldstone slightly bigger than his fist. ’What will happen if I let go of this rock?’ I thought for a bit. Simple questions during lesson time were very seldom simple. Finally I gave the obvious answer. ‘It will probably fall.’ He raised an eyebrow...’Would it be fair to say you believe it will fall?’ ’Fair enough.’ ’I want you to believe it will fall up when I let go of it.’ His grin widened...”If you are going to impose your will on the world, you must have control over what you believe.’” (77-78)
Same thing happens in Tamora Pierce’s Realm of the Gods series, when the main character’s mentor is teaching her how to shapeshift by instructing her to imagine herself as that animal:
“Make your mind like that of the animal you join, — he told her. — Think like that animal does, until you become one.” (21)
So why do these authors keep coming back to belief as magic? Is it because it lets them flub their way through a magic system without having to explain any of the actual mechanics? Maybe. I thought that for a while.
But these authors aren’t lazy. They spend years building complex worlds with their own histories, cultures, and geographies. So why do magic systems depend on belief rather than something more concrete?
I think belief as a magic system is these authors’ commentary on, and homage to, the power of fantasy. Any kid who read fantasy and spent hours imagining cool monsters and pretending they were wizards can tell you: the best part is making shit up. Imagining things that don’t exist in our world. In fact, the best fantasy worlds out there are the ones that feel the most realistic — that have multiple species of dragons and maps for imaginary continents. The most powerful, moving thing we as humans can do is to imagine something — and to take it one step further, to believe that that something exists.
There’s a reason why we call belief a leap of faith — pure belief means we have no empirical proof (something that my partner reminded me has only been the dominant mode of thinking since the Enlightenment), yet we choose to believe in it anyway. Belief has been worshipped and ridiculed throughout the centuries, but it still exists: in religion, in art, even in psychology. When authors like Duey, Rothfuss, and Pierce create worlds in which belief is what makes things happen, they’re honoring one of the most precious and powerful things about the human condition.