"I've heard of powerful wizards that can cast lightning-spells, sir, but I don't know how someone would make lightning without magic. ...Is it safe?"

The idea that someone would want to spend a lot of time chopping wood also sounds pretty unlikely, but maybe the town mayor doesn't like it when people complain or something? Or maybe he's just really weird, that's also possible.

"It's all contained, in the walls and the light fixtures and whatever else needs it.  The bare wires definitely wouldn't be safe to touch or have around, no.  There are outlets in the walls to plug electrically powered devices into, but they're made safe too, you can touch them, just don't push metal into them.  What else... Don't cut any wires, don't disassemble anything that's powered, don't get anything electrical wet or it might shock you through the water.  If anything electrical catches fire, don't try to put it out with water, either.  ... I've never had anything electrical catch fire, to be clear, it's just the sort of thing that's important to know just in case."

"I can't really explain how electricity's made - they'll go over it in school, I think, maybe it'll make sense then - but for example, you know how rubbing wool cloth against itself will generate little bits of electricity, so it shocks you a little when you touch it, and you can see the spark if you do it in the darkness?  Of course that's not enough be useful, but it's that sort of thing - normal physical processes turning out to generate electricity for some reason, and then people optimizing them and scaling them way up and making sure it's a standard amount of electricity that's going in the wires.  I think the real thing they do involves wire coils and rotating magnets, but it does rather go over my head."

...That sounds like magic, just using wool or wire or magnets, whatever those are, as a component for casting the spell.

"What's a magnet?"

"A sort of weird rock that draws iron to it - I'll show you some, they're interesting.  I think they mine them out of the ground?  I'm not sure."

Magnets are absolutely going to seem like magic to her.  They do seem like magic, children always think so.  So much technology is based on weird things he can't explain and would have never encountered if they weren't technologically useful - which makes sense really, because humanity went looking for the most useful possible materials to do something completely new with, and why would those be commonplace? - but it sure isn't making it easy to explain how they're not magic to someone without any of that context.

...Yeah, those really sound like magic rocks. 

"What makes them different from magic rocks, sir?"

This is really a fascinating exercise in seeing how well he knows how the world works.  What does make magnets different from magic rocks?  How would he know if they were?

"Huh, that's a good question.  Can you just get magic rocks out of the ground without doing anything magic about it?  How do you tell if they're magic or not?  I'm really very sure people on Earth aren't doing any magic on a meaningful scale, but I suppose if the rocks were magic on their own I'm not sure how anyone could tell."

...That seems like the sort of thing that the person she's pretending to be probably knows less about than she does. She... doesn't actually have any idea how much that person should know. ...Though admittedly, neither does Mr. Dąbrowski, so as long as she leaves out anything very specific she can hopefully avoid being too far off?

"I don't know exactly, sir. I've heard that there's magic metal that wizards can use to make magic items, if they're really smart, and as far as I know it just comes out of the ground like that, but it's not like I've ever seen it for myself. I'd expect that a wizard could tell it apart from the regular kind by casting Detect Magic, but I guess that wouldn't work here. I've never specifically heard of magic rocks that can pull iron towards them but it's... a normal sort of thing to exist, if that makes sense? —And sometimes wizards and priests use... objects?... as part of spells, but those aren't magic, or at least not usually."

"Well.  I think it would be strange if there were magic rocks so common that I have a couple in my junk drawer, but I expect you think it would be stranger if magnets weren't magic, and I don't know enough to argue they aren't.  Maybe a physicist would, but I don't think Bobowa has any."  He's pretty sure the physics teacher doesn't count.

"I also think it would be strange for electricity to be magic when steam engines aren't, but that's... not a real argument. So I think we're going to have to leave this question for later.  ... What else did you want to know?  I don't even remember how we got to magnets."  Possibly it's that he likes talking about technology and is doing more of it than Agnieszka really wants to know.

"Uh...." She has kind of a lot of questions and she's losing track! She doesn't really expect to run out anytime soon! "...it seems like the laws about what sorts of things people are allowed to say are very different here, are they... the kind of thing that's possible to explain?" (As opposed to the kind of thing where you're just supposed to guess what the people in power want.)

"You're... generally allowed to say whatever you want?  It might not always be a good idea but it's not illegal."

He's pretty sure this isn't going to turn out to be the full answer to whatever confusing thing she's worrying about, but he's not immediately sure in what direction it'll be wrong.

...Okay, so it's the kind of thing where you're just supposed to guess what the people in power want, but even worse because they're not even bothering to make it clear at all what they'll hurt people over. "What sorts of things aren't a good idea to say, sir?"

"Uh..."  There's something going wrong in this conversation, but unfortunately he still has no idea what it is.  "I'm worried that you don't mean the same sort of thing I mean, but I'm not sure how to figure out what.  But - there's a lot of things that are obviously a bad idea to say, right?  You shouldn't... insult people for no reason, or spread unpleasant lies about them, or point them the wrong way when they ask for directions - all those things are legal but they're still just obviously going to make people dislike you and make everyone unhappy, right?  Are those surprising somehow?"

That's not really the sort of thing she was thinking of but some of those are also confusing!

"...it's surprising for it to be legal to spread lies? Or — back home it would depend on who you were spreading it about, and I know you said that's different here, but... as an example, what would happen to someone who went around saying that the person everyone thought was the town mayor's eldest son was secretly a bastard?"

"The mayor and his wife would be very annoyed with him!  People might stop talking to him – except the people who would instead want to hear all about it.  I wouldn't be surprised if the son got in a fight with him if he saw him on the street, especially if he was drunk, but if he seriously hurt him he'd still go to prison.  Not for as long as otherwise, maybe.  There might be – would probably be – people who didn't want to hire him, or work with him, and so on.  And also people who wouldn't care, or liked that he was standing up to someone influential.  But yes, that's exactly the sort of thing that's not illegal, just unpleasant in the normal human way."

"--Or – no, I'm sorry, I think I'm wrong about the law, it's just that the law wouldn't come up."  Now that he thinks about it he has heard about defamation cases, they're just always the sort of abstract thing that happens to ministers and political writers, they don't come to mind when a common child is asking about how she should act.  "I've heard about there being trials about this sort of thing, but-- kind of the opposite from what you expect?  Only when it's important people doing it.  If an ordinary person starts saying things like that, people will just be angry with him, but it's not really worth making it an even bigger issue by going to court.  If a politician or a journalist does it, then it might go to court, because – it's was public already, and it matters more?  But even then the judge will just... make them publish an apology, maybe pay some money, that sort of thing, if anything.  It's all symbols and politics, not something that's-- dangerous to people who aren't doing politics."

... He pauses and gives her a rueful look.  "I'm sorry, I keep talking and feel like the more I talk the more complicated I make things sound.  Did that make any sense?"

"...I think I understand what you're saying but I don't understand why it would work out like that."

"Hmm.  If you start with the law being so there's never much punishment for just saying something, does it make sense that the rest of it would work out like that, or still not?"

"So it's like... they wouldn't be able to hurt the people saying lies very much anyway, so if it's just an ordinary person talking with their friends it's not really worth it, but if it's someone important who's spreading lies they might go after them to make sure everyone knows" that they aren't supposed to believe it "that it isn't true?"

"Just so."

"So... Ordinary people can say pretty much anything, as far as I know, and important people can still say nearly anything but have to be a little careful about it.  Does that cover what you were worried about?  ... I admit I'm really curious what sorts of things you were worried about saying that might not be allowed, but I do understand how you might not want to tell me that, even if I'm really very sure it'd be all right."

"...There were kind of a lot of them. Or things that weren't against the law, but that you still might get hurt over. And — sometimes it changed, like they'd teach you something in history class one year and then the next year if you said it you'd be in trouble because they'd rewritten the history books."

"Ohh."  Ah, that sounds uncomfortably familiar, in retrospect.  "We... used to have some of that, before the transition.  It was always explained, 'We thought this last year but we were wrong and now we know better, and it's very important that everyone else also learns to know better', and I mostly believed it, but... really a lot of it was just what you said."

Nod. "...Usually they didn't even explain, they just pretended that was the way things had always been." When she was ten years old she tried to show off how good of a student she was by including some facts she remembered from the previous year in a history composition, and ended up with welts all down her back for her effort.

"That sounds worse."  He's not really surprised places like that exist, but... what an awful concept.  He's not sure he would've managed to get through school at all, that way.

"Well, if you're ever worried about saying something specific you could ask me about it first?  Unless that doesn't sound safe either."  She still has no reason to trust him, really.  "I would be glad to find you someone you might feel safer talking to, if I had any idea how."

If it's not safe to ask him questions he could just pick out a bunch of other people who agreed with him, but presumably he can figure that out for himself. "I understand, sir."

(She's guessing it usually would be fine to ask him, but it seems like it'd be safer to test that with the sort of thing that might have gotten her whipped back home than the sort of thing that might have gotten her killed.)

And they can sit quietly for a while, both definitely needing time to think.

At the next little station a woman with two small children sits down in their compartment.  She's carrying the little boy and then sits him in her lap.  The girl, maybe three or four, walks over to the window, puts a hand on Agnieszka's knee to stabilize herself, and does her small best to plaster her face to the glass. 

The mother protests, "Zuzia, leave the girl alone!" but doesn't sound like she expects much to come of it.

"—It's not a big deal, you don't need to hurt her—"