7:3
A carbon nanotube beach-tumbleweed, a kinetic sculpture that never stops shifting and changing its configuration, it is easy to get lost in the chaos of her mind. Keep your feet moving, your arms churning, and always keep a step ahead so the spun-sugar strands the color of a happy childhood don’t catch you.
“Hit her with another pulse.”
“She’s fighting it. I didn’t think that was possible.”
“Everything is possible.”
“It shouldn’t be for one of them.”
“Elemental. I told you not to take an Elemental. They defy the logic of the paradigm.”
“We should have stuck to those outside the paradigm but you had to mess with this group.”
“They are a microcosm. Don’t you see?”
“I see you’re pushing our luck again. That’s what I see.”
“She’ll conform. We just have to find the right trigger.”
“Girl is nothing but triggers. She’s burning through the threads faster than we can spin them.”
“She’s also burning through her pool. With no native energy entering here she’ll drain herself and then we have our opening.”
Keep fluid, like a great white shark who knows to stop swimming is death, or between one heartbeat and the next you’ll be flailing against the ethereal strands that wrap you in layer upon layer upon layer of ideas and thoughts and dreams and emotions and tears and screams and ‘this isn’t happening’ and ‘I wonder if there really is something better than this; something I imagine other people’s lives must be’.
“This isn’t happening.”
“Did she say something?”
Kim’s eyelids flew up, her gaze darting, searching for a touchstone in the dark. “This isn’t happening!”
A nimbus of fire burst from her, consuming the whisper-fine threads inserted through her pores as it pulsed outwards in a halo of destruction.
*
As usual the door slammed as soon as Ivan, bringing up the rear, entered The House. The only one that jumped was Abe, though Dempsey stiffened and turned to stare at the door with narrowed eyes full of speculation.
Abe touched the door then followed the wall to where it disappeared about twenty-feet to the left, trailing their heavily tattooed right hand along it then exploring the hazy places where the wall dissipated into a mist that wreathed the area. They poked their fingers through the portion of the wall that looked like a watercolor printed on the mist. When they drew back their hand the colors clung to their fingers, the wall stretching like putty before snapping back to the mist.
“Oh.” They rubbed their chin then moved over a few inches and thrust their fingers into the wall again. This time there was more resistance to the wall. It buckled at the press of their fingers, like the hard film that sometimes formed on jello. “Interesting.”
“Abe?” Dempsey asked, stopping next to them. “You going to stop fingering the wall soon?”
The tips of Abe’s ears blushed. They yanked their hand back from the wall, turning their back to it to whisper to Dempsey, “You don’t think its weird that the wall isn’t really here?”
Dempsey lifted a shoulder. “Seen weirder.”
Abe gave him an admiring look. Nodded. Then their eyes widened as they tracked the scene they were facing. “Why is there a forest in a house?”
“Pretty sure it’s not a house.”
“What gave it away? The forest?”
Patti dropped back to stand near Abe and Dempsey. “You questioning the reality of this situation?”
Abe jerked a nod, gaze still tracking everywhere at once.
“I had the same reaction the first time I came. Only for me it was the lobby of a really swank hotel and it was overrun by rats. Left less time for the whys.”
“Is that a tower?” Abe asked, eyes glued on the near horizon.
Patti looked in that direction and nodded. “Looks like.”
“In a house.”
“It’s not a house.” That said Dempsey strode forward, leaving Abe and Patti in his wake.
Patti hurried to catch up. Abe trailed her, their steps slower as they continued to gawk at the scenery.
“Then what is it?”
“It’s an artifact.”
“You sound certain.”
Dempsey balled his fists at his sides and kept to striding. “I didn’t get much from my interface with it but I got that much. This is an object that is made of Magick.”
“Is that what artifacts are?”
“No usually. But it’s the closest word I can come to explaining this,” Dempsey swept his hand over the soft grass they tread then encompassed the air with its crisp bite of early Spring and the watery sunlight that filtered through the clouds high up in the sky. “If I had a guess, I’d say it’s a portal but I’ve never actually found anything that can generate one. You said it felt like there was a sentience to it?”
“It opened the door when I yelled at it.” Gwen had quietly dropped back to eavesdrop on Patti and Dempsey’s conversation, content to remain quiet and assess what the guy said until she had something to add. “That suggests sentience.”
“It could have been set to respond to specific words. Do you remember what you yelled?”
Gwen gave him a dubious look. “No, Shady. It was a while ago.”
Dempsey nodded. “So, could be you said a key phrase or something that triggered the Magick of the object. Any better reason to think it’s alive?”
By then their small group had drawn equal to the rest, allowing for their input in the conversation. They gathered in a loose circle, Dempsey holding up one side.
“By it, you refer to The House?” Ivan asked.
Dempsey nodded. Everyone set to contemplating then Patti said, “The first time I came here I was directed to enter through the window.”
“By a song?”
At Patti’s nod, Dempsey said. “That could have been your Magick. Why do you attribute it to the house?”
Patti looked uncertain. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Does anyone else have any evidence to suggest this is something other than a Magick tool being used by someone?”
It was Dan that answered. “The first time we entered we were looking for three lost kids. It seemed like a house then. The next time it seemed like the same house but the rooms had been rearranged.” He counted off the points on his fingers. “Then it was a complete landscape, a cloud environment with the castle from Jack and the Beanstalk. On that trip it felt like we were interacting with songs that were playing as a background to our adventure.”
“But,” Prairie said, “That could have been Arfa.”
“Arfa?” Dempsey asked.
Prairie nodded. “The harp in the story. They were more than a harp and their spirit was connected throughout the landscape by golden threa-” she trailed off. “Huh.”
She turned to Dan, “Dan? I’d thought the strands coming from Arfa were the tether to their soul but could they have been threads like we found in the Diana house? The ones you spun into the tapestry we entered Cinderella through?”
“There were threads?” Abe’s voice came from the back of the group. Ivan and Ben stepped back so Abe could be seen standing there, the look of wonder still on their face as they traced the air with the fingers of their left hand. When they realized everyone was looking they dropped the hand and blushed.
“Yes,” Dan confirmed.
Abe peered at the landscape, their gaze like a hawk narrowing on prey. “You used the threads to make a story?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm?” Gwen asked.
Abe nodded. “Hmm.” They turned one-hundred and eighty degrees, raised finger ticking the air. “Did you ever see these strings again?”
“Yes.” Ivan said a note of contemplation in his voice as he followed the tick of Abe’s finger.
“What were they doing?”
“They were building the landscape we moved through to find Siobhan.”
Abe straightened, their shoulders squaring as their gaze took on the intensity of a bloodhound on a trail. “Are you sure?”
Ivan nodded. “Fairly. Yes.”
Turning, Abe searched out Dan, poking their finger at him. “You got Hope then?”
At Dan’s confused look Abe tapped the fingers of their left hand against the knuckles of their right, drawing attention to the heavy black lace tattooed there. Nodding his understanding Dan confirmed, “Yes.”
Ben gave Abe an assessing look. “Are you going to share with the rest of the class?”
“I am still working on the details.” Abe’s voice reflected their distracted expression as they turned to squint intently at the air. “Can we go to that tower?”
Ivan shrugged. “Sure. We were heading there anyway.”
Abe’s head bobbed. “Okay.”
Without waiting for the rest Abe scurried around the group and headed for the tower, their head still on swivel. The group caught up to them as they were standing, arms at side, head tilted back to gave up at the tower they’d stopped about twenty feet from; enough distance that by craning they could view the entirety of the tower, the top of which disappeared into the clouds. They lifted their left hand, tapped their chin. “I think there’s a window up there.”
Ben stopped next to Abe and craned his neck, his gaze following the path of Abe’s. “Looks like. What is that? About seventy feet?”
Ivan came up next to him and looked up. “About.”
“Why a tower?” Abe asked Dempsey to which the larger man shrugged. Prairie, next to them answered. “Rapunzel? We took their Rapunzel, maybe they took ours?”
Ivan looked back at that. “Why would you say that?”
Prairie looked down at her bone necklace, grasping it and rubbing several of the bones between her fingers. When she looked up at Ivan there were ghosts in her eyes. “Inside knowledge?”
Siobhan jumped, her eyes wide, and strode over to stoop and stare into Prairie’s eyes. “Are you saying that you’re seeing her?”
Prairie quickly rushed to deny that. “No! Just…” she rubbed the bones harder. “Sometimes I get a little direction. When women are in danger. It’s just-”
Siobhan’s shoulders sagged. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Good. That’s good.”
Prairie placed a hand on Siobhan’s arm. “I’d tell you if I saw her.”
Siobhan raised her eyes to look into Prairie’s. “Promise?”
“Pinky promise.” Seeming to realize the possible connotations of making such a specifically worded promise while caressing the finger bones of dead women, Prairie dropped her necklace and smoothed her hand over her hair.
“What do you mean you took their Rapunzel?” Abe asked, drawing Prairie’s attention from Siobhan.
“This probably seems pretty weird. Like you are coming into a story about seven chapters in, maybe?”
Abe nodded, sparing another glance for the tower. “Something like that.”
“We don’t really have time to tell you the whole thing,” Prairie said in a soft voice, “but the short answer is that people are being kidnapped and placed in fairy tales. We’ve had Jack and the Beanstalk, Snow White, Cinderella, and Rapunzel. We don’t know why they are being targeted or what is being done to them, exactly, but we have figured out that the kidnappings are tied to those stories. Two of them, Mal and Diana who were Jack and Cinderella, we found in this House, interacting with elements from those fairy tales. The other two, Nieve and Llora who were Snow White and Rapunzel, we found being held captive in other places.” She paused to stroke her chin. “We don’t know why two of them were in the House, in a fairy tale, and the other two weren’t.” She shifted her gaze to Dan, “I just thought of that.”
At his nod and assurance, “I’ll write that down,” Prairie continued, “The last we rescued was Llora. We think, maybe, the stories have to play out in this House and until they do the people who were kidnapped are at risk still. Nieve is very well protected, so is Llora, so we’re afraid that the kidnappers will probably look for other people to fill in for those characters. If I’m right then they took Kim as Rapunzel.”
Patti frowned. “Why do you assume that?”
“Besides this?” Prairie swept her hands to indicate the tower. “Her story.”
“What about it?” Ivan asked.
“The closet?” At Ivan’s confused look, she expanded. “It’s a tower?” She looked down, scuffed her toe. “Maybe?”
Ivan, smile fond, tipped up Prairie’s chin with a finger. “That’s kind of genius.”
Abe’s expression shifted between curiosity and contemplation then settled back on curiosity, their eyes bright as they darted around the group then took in the tower then focused back on Prairie. “You have fairy tales coming true? That’s awesome.”
“Not for the people who are kidnapped,” Siobhan muttered under her breath. When Abe looked at her for clarification, she waved them off then brushed her hands along her thighs and stepped closer to the tower, scanning the base. “See an entrance?”
Gwen, Prairie, and Patti joined her as she slowly walked around the structure. They hadn’t gone more than a few feet before Ivan started walking with them, spooling off details as his eyes inventoried them. “Drum tower. Rough estimate forty feet in diameter. If the walls are seven to ten feet deep, which was common in this type of construction, we’re talking an inside diameter of approximately thirty to thirty-three feet.”
When Gwen looked up at him with a quizzical look Ivan added, “Which is big. Around a seven-hundred square foot space.” When Gwen’s look didn’t smooth to ‘ah ha,’ he added, “A studio apartment can be three hundred to four hundred square feet. A big kitchen is around two hundred square feet.”
“So, a really big kitchen?”
“A really big kitchen.” He spread his hands about rib wide, then adjusted another foot or so. “Or a small cottage.”
They made a slow circuit of the tower, carefully examining the stones and the mortar looking for any sign of an entry way. As they drew back around to the start Ben strode over, hands in pockets. “Find a way in?”
Siobhan shook her head. “No.”
Ben dug his hands in, squaring his stance and sweeping his gaze over the flat landscape. “No place to hide an entrance like at the Alchemy Tower where we found Llora.”
“Too much to hope for.” Siobhan stood back to eye the solid stone wall. “So there has to be a trick.”
Abe had come to stand next to the tower. Placing their left hand on the wall they walked around the tower counterclockwise, dragging the hand as they went. Curious, Siobhan followed a few steps behind them. If she hadn’t been watching intently she would have missed the way the wall started to move, the straight lines of the mortar shifting so it formed a ripple pattern in the wake of Abe’s hand. At first the ripple was small, but it became deeper, forming a wake behind Abe that coalesced into a gaping archway as the blond came back to the start of their cycle.
Ben made a “wah?” sound and Ivan gaped. A small giggle escaped Prairie as she clapped her hands together like a four-year-old watching a clown twist a balloon into a puppy. Dan strode up to the wall, running his hand along the path of the ripples, a look of wonder suffusing his usually taciturn features. Stopping beside the arch, he looked at Abe. “How?”
Abe tilted their head, looked down. “This entire place is Magick. Can’t you change it?”
Dan frowned. Worked his toothpick. Stared at the grass then at the tower. “Maybe. I did it once.”
“Twice,” Gwen piped in. At his look she added, “You changed the threads into Cinderella and you did that thing to get Kim, me, and Ben out of the pit last time.”
“But not like that,” Dan pointed at the warped wall.
Abe gave an infinitesimal shrug. “You aren’t an artist so you wouldn’t do what I did. But you were able to change it?”
Dan nodded, his expression shifting to one of speculation as he prodded the ripples in the mortar.
Stepping around Dan and Abe, Ben ducked his head into the tower. “Is dark. Lights?”
Siobhan dug into her bag. “I made some more alchemy lights. I have five.”
Ivan leaned over Ben to look through the arch. “Give one to Ben. He can take point. I’ll follow so I won’t take one.”
“We could pair up.” Gwen suggested. “There’s nine of us and five lights so that would mean one for each of four pairs and then one to spare.”
Ivan nodded. “Me and Ben. You and…” he tapped his finger on his thigh, looking over the group, “let’s go with Prairie. Patti and Siobhan. That breaks up our healers. Dempsey and Abe. If that’s okay?” he stopped to look at Dempsey who nodded. “And that leaves the single with Dan. Works?”
The group nodded their agreement and Siobhan handed the activated lights to Ben, Prairie, Dan, and Dempsey, retaining one for herself.
Ben ducked his head back into the doorway then signaled the all clear and stepped through with Ivan close behind. Prairie and Gwen fell in, followed Patti and Siobhan with Dan, crossbow at the ready, Dempsey, shield up, and Abe, hands swinging easy at their side and their inquisitive gaze going everywhere at once, to bring up the rear.
The five lights lit the area they entered well enough that they were able to make out the interior without difficulty. That may have been helped by the fact that there was nothing there. Besides the stone floor and stone walls, that was. No furniture. No shelves. No lights either throughout the space or overhead. It was a big empty circular room with a stone floor.
The air was still, what you’d expect from a closed space, but it had none of the smell of neglect you might expect. No mustiness. No dust. If you stood close enough to the walls you could get a little bit of a stone scent off them, but not like wet stone or old stone or stone that was breaking down to release the scent of its interior, that earthy ferrous smell. Sound was neither amplified nor absorbed. The sound of their soles brushing the stone, either a shushing drag or the tap of heels, didn’t echo, nor did it disappear. Instead it sat there, on the still air, like a held breath waiting to exhale. Only no exhalation came and the expectation of breath hovered until you almost wanted to gasp to push the moment forward.
Gwen spoke for all of them when she announced, “Well, this is anticlimactic.”
“Found some stairs this way,” Ivan called from the far side of the room. They all piled out of the room and up the stairs which were as empty and still as the first room.
“Stay sharp,” Ivan called down the stairs. “Don’t let the quiet lull you.”
“Like we would,” Gwen muttered to Prairie.
“It feels a bit like we’re caught in a dream. Or in the lobby of a dream, waiting to enter it,” Prairie whispered back.
“You are very poetic,” Gwen replied.
“Am I?”
“Just take the compliment.”
Prairie smiled and focused on her steps. The stairs let out into another round room. Equally as empty. Equally as still.
Prairie looked at Gwen who made a show of buttoning her lip.
“Keep going?” Siobhan asked.
Giving a cursory look around the room, Ivan nodded. “Might as well.”
Another set of stairs. Another empty room.
“Dan?” Ivan called. “Do you see any sign someone has been here?”
Dan made a slow circuit of the edge of the room, studying where the floor met the walls. “No dust to disturb. Stone doesn’t give many options for tracks.”
Ivan nodded. “So, assume nothing but expect anything?”
Dan nodded. “Sounds right.”
As the group headed up the next set of stairs Abe said to Dempsey, “So glad you brought me along.”
“Sarcasm.”
“No. Really.” Abe made a show of studying the wall of the stairwell. Looked like stone, stone and, oh yes, more stone to Dempsey but Abe seemed to see more. “This is fascinating.”
“What is?”
“This entire place is a construct.”
“Sure?”
“I would have said no before this but the proof is right here.” Abe trailed the fingers of their left hand up the stone which rippled against their skin. If Dempsey was more poetic he’d say the stones were nuzzling Abe’s fingers, like an animal seeking connection. “It’s layers overlapping each other, each one almost transparent, just a hint of hue. Multiplaning.”
“Huh?”
On the stair in front of them Dan’s steps slowed as he strained to listen in to Abe’s explanation.
“Older animation companies used the technique to create depth. They put different layers of a scene on a pane of glass, then they’d overlap the panes and shift them by hand while a camera took photos of each frame.”
Once Abe got talking art the hesitation that hung over their every move fell away. Their hand movements got animated, their shoulders pulled up and dropped back, and their words came fast enough to fall over each other. “It is also used in computer animation. What we have here,” another caress of the wall, another nuzzle from it, “is closer to stereoscopic display used to put people into the scene in VR. Not that I can do anything with that, because electronics, but I’ve read about it. The things I could do if I could use a computer.” Abe’s expression grew distant for a moment, like they were imagining those things, then they visibly shook themselves and announced, “New room.”
As Abe said the group had reached another room. Again barren. Again silent.
“This shit is getting ridiculous.” Ben, arms akimbo, gave the empty room a recriminating look. “Building, are you fucking with us?”
The building did not answer. Ben threw up his hands. “Yeah. Thought so.”
With this he strode over to the opening to the next staircase. Ivan’s frustration was clear in his heavy stride, the set of his jaw, and a sigh that hung in the preternatural still air as he followed Ben.
Gwen grunted as she set her feet to the first step. “I could use a break.”
“Me too.” Patti leaned a hand against the wall of the stairwell, pushing off from it with each step.
“Some of us skipped leg day!” Gwen hollered up the stairs after Ivan and Ben.
“Shh!” Ivan yelled back. “Bad guys!”
“Because they won’t hear us coming from a mile off in this place,” Gwen muttered. “Anyone else think this entire thing is weird.”
“You mean,” Patti whispered loudly, “besides climbing a tower that is located inside a building?”
Gwen shot a finger back over her shoulder. “That. Anyone else getting antsy with the lack of attacks?”
“Yes.” Prairie and Dan’s answers clashed. Even Sass seemed to have an answer if their “squee!” was any indication.
A group visibly showing the signs of having climbed five flights of stairs without a break piled over the landing and into another room completely devoid of anything except empty.
“No one here. What a shocker.” Gwen stomped to the center of the room and promptly sat down on the relatively pristine stone floor. “I need a moment. And maybe some liniment. And a tequila.”
Siobhan sat down next to her. She lifted the strap of her bag over her head, breathing a little deeper as the weight of it settled on the floor. “It didn’t feel heavy four flights ago.”
“Hear that.” Patti plunked down on the floor, shifting to settle Sass’s house flat on the stone.
Ben eyed the door to the next set of stairs, juking back and forth on his feet. “We have to keep going.”
“To find more empty rooms?” Gwen asked.
Siobhan looked down at her bag, poking at it rather than digging. “We have to be missing something.”
“Yeah,” Ben grunted, “Kim.”
Siobhan’s eyes tracked the area, inventorying the empty space, the stone, the lack of any signs of habitation. She turned to look at Prairie. “You still think this is Rapunzel?”
Prairie nodded. “It makes sense.”
“So, what are we missing? Why is the tower empty?”
“We haven’t reached the top yet,” Ivan said.
“How much do you want to bet it will be the same all the way up?” Patti asked.
“They could be lulling us into a false sense of security and then, bam.” Gwen punched her fist into her palm.
“Rapunzel isn’t an active tale.”
They all turned to look at Dan where he stood, shoulders propped against the wall.
“What do you mean?” Siobhan twisted at the waist to look at Dan.
“It’s a fairly simple story.” He dug in the snapped pocket of his tac vest and pulled out a silk wrapped bundle. “Here. I’ll read it.” He unwrapped the silk and pulled out a book. At Dempsey’s look of interest, he explained, “This is the 1812 printing of Children’s and Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm. The first collected works by them. It includes Rapunzel.”
“Lucky you had it with you,” Dempsey said.
“Not luck.” Dan ran his finger down the page, then flipped through the book, stopping about halfway through. “Once upon a time there lived a man and his wife who were very unhappy because they had no children.”
As Dan read Prairie scooted over to where Dempsey and Abe were sitting against the wall. Once she was close enough, she leaned over and spoke quietly to Abe.
“I heard you before when you were describing the layers you saw here.” She kept her voice pitched low so as to barely carry beneath Dan’s reading. “Can I ask you about that?”
Abe drew up their knees and rested their cheek there, turning to look at Prairie with eyes that smiled without trying. “Sure,” they whispered back.
“What are the layers made up of?”
“I’ve always thought they were made up of all the elements of the world. Or maybe,” Abe shifted their gaze to the ceiling then back to Prairie, “more like the world was made up of them?”
“Thank you.” Prairie nodded and turned her attention to Dan.
Beneath Dan’s “the man, who loved her dearly, though to himself,” Abe whispered, “Why did you ask?”
Prairie rested her head back against the wall, letting her gaze go soft as she smiled. The smile seemed directed at something rather than nothing but what only she could see or say. “Spiritus – that’s what I call the place I go with my Magick – the place of the dead – is made up of layers. Unsubstantial ones. Like soap bubbles that you can walk through and they don’t pop. It’s not the best reference because you can’t walk through a soap bubble and not pop it but I’ve never come up with a better way to describe it. I think the layers are souls. Or the residue of souls. What’s left behind when someone leaves us. Perhaps the impact they have had on the world. But now I’m wondering if there’s more to it. Or less. I’ll need to think about it. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
A very small frown clouded Abe’s bright eyes. “I didn’t really give you anything.”
Prairie turned her head, rotating her skull along the wall, enough to look at Abe from the corner of her eye. “Does it take a lot to impact someone?”
“Hmm.”
Dan’s reading stopped abruptly. He held his hand against the page and looked at Siobhan, “This next part made me question why this is empty.”
“What is it?”
“’Oh! You wicked child, cried the Witch. ‘What is this I hear? I thought I had hidden you safely from the whole world, and in spite of it you have managed to deceive me.’” He flipped the page. “In her wrath she seized Rapunzel’s beautiful hair, wound it round and round her left hand, and then grasping a pair of scissors in her right, snip snap, off it came, and the beautiful plaits lay ou the ground. And worse than this, she was so hard-hearted that she took Rapunzel to a lonely desert place and there left her to live in loneliness and misery.”
As he stopped reading a sound like metal hitting stone came from the shadowed stairwell. Ben and Ivan, closest to the stairs, dropped into ready position, Ivan with his sword raised and Ben with daggers drawn. Those sitting scrambled to their feet, snatching up or fumbling for their weapons. In tense silence the group held steady, prepared to meet whatever burst into the room. Only nothing did. Ten seconds. Thirty seconds. A solid minute passed and nothing came out of the stairs at them. Ben tentatively stuck his head into the stairwell, drawing back with a frown marring his features.
“No one.” He gestured at the stairs with one of his daggers. “I’m going to check it out.”
“Got your back!” Ivan declared, putting action to words as Ben stepped up the stairs with Ivan close behind.
“Found something!” Ben’s voice carried down the stairs to the others. “Dan? Can you come here?”
“Yep.” Dan readied one of his crossbows and stepped out the door and onto the stairs. Drawing up to Ben he asked, “What?”
Ben poked downwards with his dagger, at the glint of metal on the stair. “Those scissors?”
Lowering his crossbow to his side, Dan stooped to examine the glint. “Looks like.”
“You do that, bruh?” Ben asked.
“Not sure.”
Gwen, who’d followed behind Dan, stuck her head around him. “What is it?”
“Scissors.”
“Like from the story?”
“Yep.”
“From the story?”
“Not sure.”
Siobhan stuck her hand in the space between Gwen and Dan and placed her hand on the scissors.
“Siobhan!” Gwen cried
Siobhan turned her head to look at Gwen. “What?”
“Your touching them!”
“Well, someone had to.” Siobhan picked up the scissors, moving slowly in case they came to life suddenly and tried to stab her. When they remained quiescent, metal cold on stone, she scooped them in her palm then stood up to examine them in the light of her alchemy torch. It gave the metal a distinctly green shine. “Look like scissors to me.”
“Yep.” Ivan gave them a look. “Scissors for sure. Can I?” He indicated the scissors with a poke of his finger. Siobhan held them out to him and he took them, raising them towards his face then rotating his hand to the left and the right, examining the scissors from multiple angles then sticking his fingers into the loops and opening and closing the blades several times. Finally he handed them back to Siobhan. “Just scissors far as I can see. Appear to be gold-plated but otherwise there’s nothing special about them. No Magick I can tell.”
“Can I?” Dempsey stepped up behind the group and indicated the scissors Siobhan held. When she handed them over to him, he laid them in his right palm. Touch them with the fingers of his left hand. Got a look of concentration for a moment before his expression fell back into the standard lines. Then he held them out to Abe. “Check these?”
Abe took the scissors from Dempsey. Held them very close to their face, their eyes crossing slightly as they examined the surface. “Marble Kuro Damascus Steel. Gold-plated.” They tapped the point where the blades met, drawing back their finger quickly. “Quite sharp.” Lowering the scissors from their face they looked to Dempsey. “Nice scissors. Complete construct.”
With this they closed the fingers of their left hand over the joined blades and squeezed. What appeared to be smoke, viscous and thick, bled from between their clenched fingers, flowing out until it hit the stone wall beside Abe and then flattening and becoming more like oil or perhaps ink which slid over the surface of the stones and disappeared into the grout between. From one second to the next the handles dissolved, appearing to melt into Abe’s hand and then more smoke coalesced between their fingers and drifted to become part of the wall.
The only one that did not respond with some measure of surprise or concern was Dempsey. Gwen drew in a loud gasp. Patti uttered “Wah?”. Siobhan leaned closer. Dan and Ivan fell back into some semblance of “ready”. Prairie looked at Abe’s hand, still clenched in the air in front of them, her gaze unfocused. And Dan leaned right up to the wall, eyes laser-focused on the where the substance the scissors had become disappeared.
Abe lowered their hand and took several small steps sideways so they were standing beside Dan. “You could do that.”
“No.” He shook his head as he traced his hand over the stone. “I can’t.”
“You can.” Abe reached over and tapped a finger on the Hope that stood out stark on Dan’s skin.
Dan turned his head to look at Abe. “Yeah?”
Abe nodded. “Yes.”
“Tell me how.”
Abe rolled their shoulders forward caved in their chest and spoke to their feet. “Believing makes things so.”
Dan remained silent, looking down at the top of Abe’s lowered head. “So, not believing?”
Abe raised their head. The gaze that met Dan’s twinkled with curiosity and understanding. “Makes things not.”
“Huh.” Dan crossed his arms over his chest so his crossbow pointed at the wall. He shifted his feet, dropping his weight back into his hips. “Huh.”
“Does anyone else hear that?” Patti’s question broke the moment, drawing attention from the wall and the impossible melting scissors.
Gwen went quiet, a look of concentration transforming her features as she clearly strained to hear something. “Hear what? A complete lack of sound?”
“No. Cornflake Girl.” Patti hummed and then sang a line. She stopped, looked at the others. “No one else hear it?”
Various indications to the negative. Patti closed her eyes, focusing. Through her mind the next line of Cornflake Girl by Tori Amos played.
Her eyelids snapped open. “That’s Kim!”
With that she pushed past Ben and Ivan and started dashing up the stairs, leaving the others to follow, or not, as they would.
Enter The Woods 