All goes well
When you wish on the Bell
Clearly I had my work cut out for me. Although there was plenty of space to add a few more lines, a certain H-E-double-hockey-sticks kept insisting it was the only possible rhyme to fit what was currently there—and I don’t even believe the infernal destination literally exists!
I could add another couplet, a pair of lines with an entirely different rhyme, but the word Vano had even fewer possibilities than bell. Maybe the word Crafting…but that only rhymed with rafting.
Then again, if I went with an A-A-B-A scheme, my third line could end on anything, so long as it fit into the rhythm. As this realization came to me, the phone Yuri held to light my Recrafting began to dim. He was practically vibrating with the urge to hurry me along—hopefully he wasn’t scared of the dark, not that I would call him on it—but even though I didn’t have the specific lines in mind, I could tell by the way things were clicking into place….
“I got this, Yuri.” It wasn’t a brag, not at all. Just a statement of fact. I cupped his cheek briefly and stroked his stubble with my thumb. “I got this.”
The surface of the wall was not exactly conducive to calligraphy. Not only was it vertical—it had the texture of those pumice stones you’d use to buff a stubborn callus off your heel. And I was none too keen to grind off the tip of my cockatoo quill on a gritty wall. Don’t get me wrong, I adore my quill. But calling it dainty? That’s being generous. Yet, when I skimmed my fingertips over the old Rufus Clahd image—when I encountered the relief of the Crafting that had watched over this cave however many years—I felt a rightness. Very faint. But it was there.
“Save the battery,” I told Yuri. “I can see it with my heart.”
Yuri didn’t like it—I could tell by the sound of his breathing—but he trusted me. He turned off the flashlight app and everything went dark. At least until my eyes adjusted, and the lights from the parking lot reflecting off the water bathed the cavern in the faintest wash of light.
I ran my fingers over the old Crafting again.
A-A-B-A rhyme scheme? Yes. Definitely.
All goes well
When you wish on The Bell
I steeled myself, set my quill to the wall without even inking it, and etched two more lines into the sandstone.
The votes are apparent
And so is the Spell
I’d have to trust the Spellcraft to know I was referring to the Spell that Vano dropped in, and not any other stray bits of Spellcraft that had accumulated in that big, crazy pile. But given that the tip of my quill felt the same as always once I was done scratching in my words—no dulling, no splits—and given that I’d experienced the telltale tingle I associate with Scribing, I was confident the Spellcraft was in our corner.
I read Yuri the Scrivening in its entirety, then put away my quill and turned to the mound of paper. Spellcraft has a special affinity for paper. While it wouldn’t do something as obvious as levitating the pertinent document or lighting it up like a party lantern, I wouldn’t be surprised if a breeze came in off the bay and separated whatever we were looking for from the rest.
That expression, don’t hold your breath? I must have been holding mine. And my lung capacity was evidently nothing to brag about. Because eventually, I couldn’t hold it any longer…and I sucked in a loud gulp of air.
And even that didn’t cause the papers to stir. But I told myself not to worry. We’d sense the Crafting just as soon as we laid our hands on it.
Unfortunately, several hours later, the only tingle I felt was in the leg that fell asleep from me sitting on it wrong while I sifted through a gazillion pieces of paper.
The way Yuri talks about Spellcraft, he makes it out to be an almost sentient thing—a capricious friend who more-or-less had your back…though they might subject you to a tasteless practical joke now and then, and their sense of humor left a lot to be desired. But even the least reliable of friends should really know how much the Boardwalk meant to me.
Maybe it just hadn’t heard my cry for help. “Should I add some ink?”
In the dim, reflected light, Yuri was reduced to a faint outline. He skimmed his fingers across the wall as he considered his answer, then decided, “No. Ink is not the problem. This is not an entirely new Crafting—and it is made not only of the two lines you added, but the lines which came before. Think. The sentence you created in the middle of the crafting could read as: When you wish on the Bell, the votes are apparent.”
“How did I not see it? Wait right here, Yuri, I’ll be back in a jiffy.” I hardly stumbled at all on my pins-and-needles as I dashed outside and scrambled up the embankment. Once I was at the Wishing Bell, I rummaged through my bag for a pad of yellow sticky notes and a mundane pen. The moon had set, but my eyes were sensitized to the dark—and the halogen lights over by the parking lot were really bright. But more importantly, I’d spent my whole life training to take strokes of the pen and use them to create words. And meaning. And magic.
Writing the words in the dark was no problem. But finding the right words was another story.
Wishing, I realized, was not as much like Spellcraft as one might think. When I Scribe, it’s with the certainty that something will happen. The mechanism of Spellcraft might not be fully understood. But, heck, I couldn’t tell you how electricity got from the power plant to my electrical outlets, either.
Wishing, though? Not only did it lack the collaborative aspect of Spellcraft—a quality which I’d apparently taken for granted up until now—but it lacked all the constraints, as well. Like a genie with a chip on its shoulder, my capricious friend Spellcraft was always on the lookout for a careless loophole to bung up the works. But making a wish, here and now…I felt I should just say what I wanted. Straight from the heart.
Save Pinyin Beach
As statements went, it was plain. Not only was there no rhyme scheme—and no attempt to plug potential loopholes—but I’d written the words plainly too, with only the most restrained flourish on the descender of the letter y.
I pushed the paper through the slot and waited for the mystical shimmer of Spellcraft to play across my nerve endings. But the wish was not Spellcraft. And I felt nothing. Even after I reached up to pat The Bell.
I’d really been hoping for some definitive good news to tell Yuri, but no…wishing really wasn’t much like Spellcraft at all.
I slipped and slid down the embankment and ducked into the dark hollow beneath the pier. “Anything?” I asked Yuri.
He held out his arms like he was dowsing for water. He concentrated for a long moment, then shook his head. “Nothing.”
“It’s not fair,” I said—and this was a position I did not take lightly, since I’d always been taught that fairness favors those who create their own luck. “Not only have we been playing by all of Spellcraft’s rules—and, mind you, the rulebook is constantly shifting—but we always treat it with respect. Pinyin Bay is our home. How can Spellcraft just sit back and let some outsider buy our entire shoreline right out from under our noses?”
Yuri didn’t do comfort. Not deliberately, at least. But he did pat my shoulder stiffly and say, “If the volshebstvo will not help us, then we must help ourselves. Fill your bag with papers. We will take them back to the truck, where there is light, and start searching.”
Brave words. Slips of paper had been piling up beneath the Wishing Bell for ages—and Yuri’s fall had mixed them all up, so we couldn’t tell the old from the new. But we couldn’t just sit back and do nothing, not like the miserly Spellcraft. And so, I waded in, opened my bag, and bent down to start shoveling things in….
And realized that I could see my yellow sticky note was on top of the pile.
Stuck to a small envelope.
A small envelope with a precise X marked across the seal.
I leaned across the precarious pile of paper and snagged the envelope’s corner. I must have been sure I’d expose Vano’s Crafting, because I felt vaguely disappointed that the telltale tingle was absent. Still, I thumbed open the seal as I walked the envelope toward the mouth of the hollow. On my way, I kicked aside a small metal object that skittered toward Yuri’s feet—his paintbox. But there was no time to be self-congratulatory about that. I was too eager to expose Vano for the traitor to Pinyin Bay he obviously was.
Once the envelope was open, I drew out a small card, and read it by the parking lot lights reflected off the water.
No Spellcraft. There was a date—today’s date—and a single word.
No.
“Dixon?”
“These are some fancy serifs on the capital N. I’d recognize them anywhere. The handwriting belongs to the head of my Spellcraft circuit. This must be what Vano was dropping off. Not a Crafting. A vote from his great-grandmother.”
And now we knew the single holdout keeping the Boardwalk buyers at bay.
I said, “Morticia Shirque sold off her mansion to those developers and immediately regretted her decision. I doubt any offer will change her mind.”
Yuri considered the ballot. “Should we worry that the only thing standing between these people and the Boardwalk is a sick, elderly woman?”
“If the black mold didn’t kill Morticia, I think she can handle that slimeball, Quint.” After all, what was he gonna do? Bore her to death bragging about dumb businessman things? Morticia was nothing if not shrewd, with decades of experience under her belt. No way would she let someone like Quint cloud her better judgement.
Just as I had that thought, another notion occurred to me.
Morticia might be immune to Quint’s dubious powers of persuasion.
But my cousin was a sitting duck.
“I’m sure Sabina’s okay,” I said hopefully. “Right?”
Yuri blanched.
“No? Then we’ve gotta warn her before she subjects herself to businessman tongue—or worse!” I pulled out my phone. It was dead.
Yuri was already making the call. He listened, scowled, and said, “She is not answering. Too early?”
Hopefully so…and not too late.