Phlogiston!

Another Ah ha! breakthrough today.

There I was at work today, mindlessly taking cases off the Westlaw printer today and stapling them. [boring!] It was taking a long time for the cases to print off, and so my mind was wandering. I started thinking about my meeting with Pat Wrede tonight, and how I would have to catch her up on what I was trying to do with this new book, and how was I going to explain my system of magic to her, since I hadn't entirely figured it out myself? I was mulling over what kijjohnson and I had talked about, that winter magic builds up in lakes when the ice freezes over, and that the expansion of water as it freezes has something to do with this. I had a quick mental flash of Jack and Solveig talking, something about the structure of the palace, and how they have to accommodate that property of water of expanding as it freezes. Solveig says something about it in passing, referring to the standard scientific explanation, and Jack says, smirking, "Sure, go ahead and believe that's the reason, if you want to." And she goes away wondering, "what the hell was that all about? It's physics! That's the way water acts when it freezes. What does he mean to hint that there's some other explanation?"

From there, my mind cycled back to something that's been niggling at me: winter magic has something to do with the expansion of water. What about summer magic, which is governed by fire and air? And right then, as I reached for another case and stapled it, a word popped into my brain: Phlogiston! As soon as I was free, I went back to my computer, and looked phlogiston up on the Internet. You can read about it here.

Phlogiston was the first comprehensive chemistry theory, which surfaced in the 17th century and lasted about 100 years. I hooted with delight when I saw how this theory tied into the Greek philosophers' construction of the universe by dividing it into earth, air, fire, and water. This works with my summer/winter magic hypothesis. I suddenly realized something else which had prompted this line of thought: I had just send David Lenander a copy of an essay that was seminal to my thinking about the Harry Potter books, "Harry Potter's Magic" by Alan Jacobs. ( Here's the key excerpt to what triggered my thoughts today: )

That's it! Summer magic is phlogiston! It can't be measured in the physical world--in fact, it doesn't even exist, according to our scientists--but it is the key to everything in the magical world, at least as far as summer magic goes.

So . . . winter magic builds up under the lakes under ice. Where/how could summer (fire/phlogiston) magic get trapped and build up? Could it cause the Northern Lights? Fireworks? The Aquatennial Torchlight parade? The problem is that nothing traps it so that you can use it, like ice traps winter magic. Maybe that always gives winter magic an advantage?

Also: One key thingummy is the custom of "storming the ice palace"--fireworks are shot off over the ice palace, I think ostensibly as a fight between the winter king and the vulcans. Could this be a battle of summer and winter magic?

Of course, if you try to do summer magic (with fire) in the winter . . . could that be saunas?

Hmm. (Goes off to think some more.) Well, wish me luck on my dinner with Pat, that we manage to puzzle this stuff out!

Cheers,
Peg