Kathleen lingered over her tea. She sat in her
sitting room and stared out of the bay window. A tall young man was rolling beer
barrels into the pub next door, while a seagull sat on his cart inspecting his
movements. ‘Foolish bird’s got the wrong delivery cart’ thought Kathleen,
looking over at the fishmonger’s which was just three doors down. The seagull didn’t seem to care.
This wasn’t a
very exciting scene, but she couldn’t yet bring herself either to flush out the
still or write the letter to John. She sipped the last dregs of the tea and
watched the final keg roll satisfyingly into The Anchor. It was time to do something; but what? On balance, she
should write that letter; John would need to know what was going on as soon as
possible. The hopeful thought struck her that she may have run out of mail
paper. She got up and walked over to her tall walnut desk. Reaching inside her
cloak pocket she pulled out a small dense pebble and placed it in the palm of
her left hand.
‘allweddol’
The pebble
vibrated, shimmered and then turned into a small brass key.
She opened the
desk. There on the top shelf was a crisp and blank mail paper. Kathleen sighed:
that was that then. She’d definitely have to do something now. However, the
cream-white paper looked quite forbidding sitting there. It would have to be
filled with apologies and explanations; it wasn’t quite time to have to do all
that yet, surely?
The still was just as she had left it,
hermetically sealed by its unseen incantations. There was just the boring bit
left – vent all the collectors and clean up.
As Kathleen walked up to the still she
immediately knew that something was different. There was a very low hum
emanating from the end of the still. It was far lower than the hums and squeaks
that the still usually made, and those were only clear once the trigger word
had been said.
She walked down
the length of the still, listening. The hum was coming from the sixth chamber,
one of the two at the end of the still which the previous owner had said were
broken. This was strange. The witch put her ear to the cylinder. The hum was
not a single sound, but more like a bur of overlapping sounds, far more complex
than any tone usually emitted by the still. What was going on?
Kathleen’s hand
went up to open the valve on the collecting funnel. But then a thought struck
her. She had no idea what the trigger word was for this funnel. She glanced
over at the taped instructions: they just said that the final two cylinders
were broken.
Now she realised
what was going on. The end of the apparatus wasn’t broken at all. The mage who
owned the still had clearly never had anything that had distilled into the last
two sections and so she had concluded, quite reasonably, that they were
inoperative. Her heart leapt with excitement – she felt very foolish but also
exhilarated. What by the gods was in there now? The blurry hum must be some
essences of the Outer Void and they clearly were extractable. This would be a
vital discovery.
Except – she
still didn’t have the trigger word. Perhaps it was written somewhere on the cylinders.
She began to look at every cylinder and at every angle. She picked up a
magnifying glass and inspected every square inch. She knew in her sensible head
that she would find nothing, she had studied this device closely for fifteen
years, and never seen anything, but her eager heart demanded that she go
through the ritual.
After that all
that was left was the original instructions, now so brittle that she scarcely
dared remove them from the bench. But there might be something on the back! She
removed the papers exceptionally carefully and then showed the back to herself.
There was nothing; not a scribble.
Kathleen sank
back on to a chair, exhausted and despondent. Why hadn’t that stupid elf found
those ridiculous instructions? How was she going to make her big discovery now?
She peered back at the still – it was humming gently, just as before. How long
would that last, though? She had to find some instructions, or someone who knew
exactly how the machine worked. How would she do that?
Kathleen knew exactly what was required. For the
first time for a decade she needed to visit the University at Kinspit and she
needed to get there as quickly as she could.
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