Chapter fifty-five

Fanemouth

 

Kathleen was grateful to have eaten but she was more and more worried. How far were these rumours just idle gossip? And how much did they indicate that someone knew who she was?  There were CRS spies everywhere, she knew that.  She shuddered at the thought of having to move, but she knew that she might have to one day, if they ever found out exactly what she had in her workshop.

She went back to her research; at least that would take her mind off Tom. She was full now and so she could concentrate a little more.  She returned to her temporarily abandoned train of thought – how to devise a spell that would kill those Outer Void creatures that had been magically adapted to operate in Skiophos; particularly the rays that had besieged Ortia and had destroyed the Deep Vault in John’s house.

She knew that the thing that had obliterated the blue clouds inside the rays had been living wood. However, what had been needed was a lot of wood and a lot of force. This seemed a particularly inelegant and contingent way of going about things.  What was required was a way of introducing the destructive substance directly into the blue clouds.

But what was the toxic substance in the wood?  She had taken branches from nearby trees (at night, of course) and she had extracted whatever she could from them and did experiments in tiny crucibles, eking out her blue essence for as long as she could. The tree extracts worked fairly well, clearing away very small parts of the blue cloud substance, but she need something which would work at much lower concentrations, or else fighting a single ray would require several pints of plant toxin.

She then moved to using crushed green leaves, buds, flowers and roots. They all worked to about the same extent. The hours began to pass again, unheeded. She tried more and more exotic things: wool, salt, sugar, spices, herbs, and so on into several more days and almost sleepless nights. Each experiment took laborious hours of extraction and purification.  The results showed that the essence of any living thing was effective but none of them seemed to have much potential to work at a broader scale.

When she had only enough blue substance for five more experiments she stopped and tried to think more clearly. She went back to the pub, she went for a long walk, even tried to read a book. But wherever she went she felt the draw of her little workshop and the tiny vial of blue puzzlement.

She needed to talk to someone.

 

***

Kathleen went down to her workshop, chalked out the symbols of the pentangle on the floorboards, and waited.  After about ten minutes the chalk outline started to glow dark red, and she began the invocation spell. A few minutes’ later images of a tall red haired, middle-aged, woman appeared within the circle. Kathleen hated it when this happened – the twins were identical seen through the haze of the visualisation spell. She really wanted to speak to Bronwyn, but now she’d have to take pot luck.

‘Hello!’ she said, screwing up her face as though she was finding it hard to see anything.

Bronwyn smiled broadly.  Her voice was happy but with a shiver of concern.

‘Katy! It’s lovely to see you. I hope everything is fine…’

‘Not really, Bron – I’m a bit stuck’

Bronwyn frowned sympathetically and began to move away.

‘Hold on there – I’ll get Gwyneth…’

‘No, Bron – I just wanted someone to talk to…’

Bronwyn did a double take and stared back into the vision.

‘About what, exactly?’

Kathleen realised that the answer to this question wasn’t entirely obvious. Why had she so wanted to talk to Bronwyn when Gwyneth was much more technically minded?  

‘I’m trying to make a spell that will work against those Outer Void creatures that John encountered’

Bronwyn nodded in a way that suggested that she might not have that much to contribute to this conversation, but that she’d give it a go.

‘How is it going?’ she asked

‘I’m trying to find something that can be injected inside the creatures and rot them’

 ‘That’s a good idea’

‘I haven’t found anything yet…’

‘Oh, that’s a shame. What have you tried?’

Kathleen went through everything that she’d tried, and it all seemed a bit silly when recounted. She just seemed to have such a problem concentrating.

Bronwyn frowned again and shook her head.

‘Are you behaving like an insane obsessive again, my dear Katy?’ she asked.

‘Oh, please stop that, Bron – it’s the way that I work…’

‘That’s no excuse – you need to eat, sleep and take breaks, even if you are the best alchemist ever!’

‘I know – it’s just hard to do that…’

‘You need looking after…but you know that I think that’

Kathleen sighed and her heart sank. She said nothing.

‘How’s Tom?’ Bronwyn asked, as if in all innocence

For some reason that she couldn’t really fathom Kathleen felt a lump in her throat that leapt up into her eyes.

‘He’s really… lovely’ she said, rubbing her eyes. She was so tired.

‘Poor you – you need sleep… and hugs… quite obviously…It’s a shame that I can’t give you any from here’

Kathleen took out a very ragged handkerchief from her pocket, blew her nose and rallied. She was determined to have a proper conversation now.

‘Thank you – I appreciate that’

There was a pause while Kathleen got her mind back into some sort of order.  Bronwyn waited patiently.

‘Can you remember anything that seemed important to you about the blue flyer in the council chamber?’ asked Kathleen

‘Not really’ said Bronwyn, ‘it wasn’t there long enough…it just dissolved away with a smell like rotting apples’

‘Yes’ agreed Kathleen, ‘it just decayed away – but that was because it had no protection – John said that the rays were surrounded by a membrane that protected them from the outside world. I’m sure that the outer skin was created by a powerful CRS witch; it has all the hallmarks of their work, sadly’

‘That’s certainly what John thinks’

 ‘What we need is some essence which will grow inside the rays, and some way of getting it past the membrane’ said Kathleen, mostly now talking to herself.

‘Sounds like you want to plant a seed inside a ray... which sounds like a very difficult task... but for the time being you need more food and rest…’ said Bronwyn, who sensed that she had contributed as much as she could to helping her friend for the time being. She had a final thought.

‘Tom loves you, isn’t obvious – let him look after you. Love is always in short supply...’

Kathleen looked up expectantly, as if Gwyneth had just posed a very difficult technical problem. She wrinkled her nose and prepared to end the connection.

‘Say hello to Gwyneth for me – tell her that I’m making progress. And thank you so much – you were very helpful...’

‘No I wasn’t! Anyway – good luck!’

Bronwyn’s image disappeared. Kathleen was left to consider her next move. She walked up to her hall, put on her sturdy boots, her hat and her coat and went off in search of the hardiest, fastest growing weeds, digging them out of the cold December ground with a tablespoon.

She returned, three hours later with daises, white and red dead nettles, teaberries and pansies.  Then she set to work extracting their essences and examining their propagating abilities. She had another three days and nights with almost no food or sleep, but she was getting closer.