Chương 34: Chapter 33 - Conversation

"There's a technique for handling magic that uses the nature of the spell and the nature of the magic to hold the power suspended in an inactive state until something sets it off," Iset said. We were all gathered in the kitchen. There were lots of good reasons to be there. Igor was preparing lunch, and thanks to his injuries, it would take him a lot longer to finish.

The lantern on the kitchen island and the sunlight sneaking through the boarded-up windows meant there would be enough light, and should more of the house collapse in on itself, the kitchen also had a good table to dive under. I had moved the chairs to make sure there was plenty of diving space. Iset was trying to explain… well, everything. Since I was there, looking at her with my big, blank, magical eyes, she was trying to explain it as simply as possible.

"It's like a mousetrap," she said.

"The nature of the wire—how pliable it is and how firm it is—means that it can be bent into a particular shape that, when set properly, waits for a trigger, then all the power is released and the mousetrap snaps shut. Until it's triggered, it waits without moving—all that power is hidden in the shape and tension of the wire." I nodded. I'd never seen a mousetrap in real life, but I had watched cartoons. Mousetrap humor was a staple.

"The proper name for it is biahexis magic," Iset said.

"Most American magicians call it retained magic." She nodded toward me.

"You call it 'trap magic.'" I glowered without thinking. Some reactions are instant and emotional. I knew all about "trap magic," and I hated it. Well, obviously I didn't know all about it, or Iset wouldn't be trying to explain it to me. What I knew was that it was one of the few types of magic that I couldn't see, which made it very dangerous. Iset said, "Mr. Northrop was the sorcerer who created and refined the techniques that magicians use to create retained magic.

It's been a hundred years, and no one can do it better."

"Wait," I said.

"Northrop? Isn't he the guy who owned this mansion?" Beside me, Mrs. Park nodded. Iset must have already talked this over with her. That meant that Mrs. Park—Misses Dahlia Park, mundane housekeeper—knew more about the magic than I did. A new low. Iset said, "Most likely." Igor raised his voice so we could all hear his grumble.

"It's an emergency, Iset. You can drop the 'most likely.'" I glimpsed a sigh escaping from Iset. It wasn't a sound. It was more like the mood drifted off her. I knew she could sigh, so she must have been holding that one back.

"You're right, Igor," she said. Igor's grumbling paused for one-one-hundredth of a second, then resumed. Conrad was standing behind me and Mrs. Park, leaning against the tall cupboards. Kappa was at his feet, looking from person to person as we spoke.

"You think that Northrop created this trap?" Conrad asked.

"I do," Iset said, "and I think that the mirror Emerra dropped was the trigger."

"Hang on a minute." I pointed at her.

"You said this was trap magic." I turned the finger on myself and waved it at my face.

"I can't see trap magic. What did I see in the mirror?" Mrs. Park glanced at me. I didn't care. Keep the details of my eyes a secret? From another soldier in the trench? Not likely.

"You said you saw a crowd of white human figures," Iset said, "but there was blue and green at the edges of them?"

"Yeah."

"You didn't see the retained magic. I think you saw the make-shift souls that went out to animate the zombies."

"Souls are white," I said.

"Aren't they? Like, usually?"

"A manufactured animation of life might look something like a soul, but the blue and the green at the edges means they weren't real spirits."

"Why would someone make a bunch of zombies to attack their own house?" Conrad asked. Igor spoke up.

"He didn't." We all stopped to watch him. He was struggling with the can opener. I got up from my stool and walked around the island to help him. When I took the can opener out of his hand (which probably would've been a lot harder to do if he hadn't been injured), he said, "Excuse me, I believe that I am the chef in this household."

"And I am an uncontrollable agent of mischief," I reminded him.

"Go ahead. Give me an order."

"I told you I could do it."

"I'm hungry, and you're slow." Conrad made a bid to keep the peace: "Igor, you don't think Northrop set the trap?" Igor gave me a last sour look, then turned to Conrad.

"I think he did. But he didn't make it so they'd attack his own home. Zombies are created to kill the living. We just happened to be the noisiest living things in the cage, so we were the easiest to find."

"But why would he make a cage?" One of Igor's eyes turned to Iset. It was a natural, unconscious reaction. If you needed an answer that you didn't have, you deferred to Iset. It wasn't long before we were all watching her. She stepped forward and placed her bandaged hands on top of the island's counter.

"The most logical thing I could think of was that he did it to contain the zombies."

"Or he did it to trap some poor bastard in with them," Igor said with a scoff. Iset hesitated, then muttered, "I didn't think of that." Since I was standing arm to splinted arm with Igor, I could make out a bit of his grumbling. The phrase "too nice" made an appearance. Conrad said to Iset, "Do you know why the cage is collapsing?" The mummy shook her head.

"But you've been thinking about it," Mrs. Park said. It was not a question. Iset tapped the countertop a few times, then pulled her hand toward her body.

"The barrier isn't a sphere," she said.

"It's an irregular prism. That means that Northrop defined the outer rim, then drew the barrier's walls up around that shape."

"So as it collapses…" Conrad said.

"It would collapse down, not in. That's why it's getting lower, but the edges have stayed where they were." Igor grumbled at me to drain the tomatoes, then work on opening the next can. While I did that, he said, "What does that have to do with why it's collapsing?"

"It takes a lot of power to hold that kind of shape. If the barrier and the spell that's raising the zombies are drawing from the same source, when the zombie spell requires too much power, the barrier's strength would be compromised."

"Draws too much power—like when a new row of zombies is raised?" Iset nodded.

"That would fit with what Emerra saw," Conrad said.

"And with how our roof collapsed," Igor pointed out. Mrs. Park spoke up, "Well, then, as an optimist—" Igor rolled the smaller of his two eyes.

"—I'll take some comfort from that. If there are no more zombies, then there's no reason for the barrier to collapse any further."

"As the Emperor of Pessimism," Igor said, "it behooves me to remind you that, if there is another row of zombies—depending on their numbers and power—we might not have to worry about the zombies at all!" Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Mrs. Park thwarted him by saying, "Which would also be nice." Igor harrumphed, then grumbled at me, "What are you grinning at?"

"Oh, nothing." I shrugged.

"I just feel like an exotic explorer who's discovered the last unknown refuge where optimism and pessimism meet. Surely, it must be a holy place." Kappa crept across the floor, stood up, and put his webbed hand on Iset's leg.

"Iset?" I tuned into his voice immediately. I couldn't tell you when it had happened, but at some point, I must have realized that Kappa was, sometimes, the most sensitive person in the room. It was worth paying attention to him. He sounded worried. Iset picked him up, perched him on her hip, and snuggled him close.

"You okay?" Kappa asked, sounding muffled. Iset didn't answer. My brain highlighted a few clues that I'd been happily ignoring until that moment. All the uncertainty. Iset's uneasiness. I finished opening the last can and said, "Iset, you said'if' the barrier and the zombie spell are drawing from the same source. Have you figured out what they're drawing from?" Iset didn't move when she spoke. Her arms were wrapped around Kappa's back and her shoulders were curled toward him.

With her head tucked, she looked smaller than she should have. Her voice was steady but soft.

"I've run the math a dozen times, but I can't figure it out. My initial assumption was that they'd both be drawing from the natural magic created by the environment—that's what any sorcerer would choose for these kinds of large-scale spells—but the amount of magic being used is too limited to come from the environment." The room went quiet as we all let that one sink in. Igor was the first to recover. I wasn't surprised.

"So it's drawing from something else. Something limited." He couldn't shrug with his bad shoulder, so he twisted his features into a dismissive frown and shook his head.

"It doesn't really change our situation, does it?"

"It does change our situation," Iset said.

"The best chance mundanes have to undo a spell lies in understanding the structure of the spell." Oh, I lunged on that bait.

"Can it be undone?" Igor told me to pay attention if I was going to be cooking. I couldn't look in two different directions (my eyes weren't that magical), so I stopped cooking while Iset answered.

"I don't know, and I can't know until I understand more about the spell. That's what I've been trying to explain. If I can't even figure out where the power that fuels the spell is coming from, then we are in trouble." The quiet emphasis that Iset had added to the word 'trouble,' soaked into my ears, then shifted, by some awful osmosis, straight to my nerves, lighting them up with some kind of icy electricity. Sure!

I had thought something like that—and some things a whole lot worse—but Iset was our local genius, and if she said we were in trouble, then we were in trouble -trouble. I looked at the others to see how they were taking it. Igor frowned so hard that it dragged the rest of his face down with it, morphing it into a grimace. Conrad crossed his arms, and his ears drooped. Only Mrs. Park—blessed in her ignorance—was mostly unaffected. There was a slight scowl of dismay, then her face cleared.

"Then what else can we learn about the spell?" she asked. We all stared at her. Her eyes went from face to face as she waited for the answer. When no one spoke, she huffed and added, "Obviously I don't know anything about spells—well, not your kind of spells—but I would think there's more to them than where they get their power from." My eyes darted over to Iset.

The bandages always hid her expression, but this time, behind the bandages, I could pseudo-see a stillness that made it look as if her mind had gone quiet.

"Come on then!" Mrs. Park said.

"We probably know who cast it. We know that he was an expert on…biahexis, was it? Sounds foreign. We know what the spell did…" She paused.

"Do we know what it did? Weren't there two spells?"

"The magic circle and the barrier," Conrad said.

"Do we know that they're different spells?"

"That, we do know," Iset said.

"Well, then, that's something! What other weird things have been going on around here?" Igor drawled, "You mean weirder than hoards of zombies rising from the dead and a collapsing barrier poised to crush us into bloody jam?"

"Yes," Mrs. Park said with zero indication that she'd heard the sarcasm in Igor's voice. If Igor's and Conrad's bemused expressions were anything to go by, Mrs. Park had effectively derailed their despair. I knew that she'd derailed mine. Without it, I didn't know how to feel. And she'd given my brain an assignment: find weirdness. There was a lot to choose from, and, frankly, it seemed rude not to help her.

Conrad's voice was quiet and had a grumbly-growl to it that meant he wasn't sure of himself: "I couldn't see Big Jacky or Darius." We all looked at him. He lowered his eyes and his ears dipped in embarrassment, but he forced himself to shrug.

"I could see the road on the other side of the barrier," he said.

"So could Mrs. Park. Emerra saw Darius and Jacky—why couldn't I?" When Iset spoke, she sounded even less sure of herself than the wolfman had.

"If Emerra could see them, but you couldn't, the easiest explanation would be that they weren't…there—not in the traditional sense of the word." Igor let out a grunt.

"That is weird." He bumped me aside with his whole body.

"Statues don't belong in the kitchen. Kindly remove yourself so that I can get back to work." I checked to make sure all the cans were opened and drained, then backed toward the side of the island where Iset was standing with Kappa still in her arms.

"That mist was really weird too," I said.

"Can you get mist this high in the mountains?"

"You can get mist anywhere," Igor grumbled, "but we don't usually get it in May, and never that late in the morning."

"It hardly feels like May out there." Mrs. Park shivered, then wagged her finger at the room.

"That is also odd."

"The smells are off," Conrad said.

"Still?" I said. He nodded.

"I can't smell barriers or wards, but ever since that barrier went up, the world's smelled different." Igor harrumphed.

"You'd think something strange was going on."

"There's Kappa too," I said. Kappa's head whirled around to look at me. Not wanting to relay his story in a way he didn't approve of, I watched for his reaction as I spoke.

"That first night, when the zombies showed up, he said he felt lost. Ever since then he's refused to go outside unless he has to."

"That could be because of the cold," Mrs. Park pointed out.

"It wasn't as cold back then," Iset murmured.

"And every time he does have to go out," I said, "he insists that Conrad has to go with him."

"The zombies," Igor said. I knew they were right. It was cold. There were zombies. We didn't really need more reason than that—but my uncertainty pestered me. It rolled around my stomach like I'd swallowed a prickly seedpod. I looked down at my bog-buddy. His top-fin was half retracted. He probably felt uneasy from all the attention.

"Kappa," I said, "why don't you want to go outside?"

"Scary," he mumbled. Iset petted his head.

"Is it scary because of the zombies?" I asked. Kappa thought about that for a second, then nodded. The fact he had to think about it blew my mind to smithereens. Some bored god must have crammed the souls of a dozen Viking warriors into his tiny body. Maybe that's why his teeth were so sharp. It also explained all the rawring.

"Is it scary for other reasons?" I asked.

"It's empty," Kappa said.

"Empty?" Mrs. Park echoed.

"Big empty!"

"Kappa," Iset said, "what do you mean by empty?"

"It's nothing!" He waved his small arms around." Big nothing!"

"What does that mean?" Mrs. Park asked. Iset shook her head. She was as confused as the rest of us. Kappa scowled, causing a series of folds to appear on his forehead.

"Like quiet!" None of us knew what to make of that one. We all waited, hoping for more details. Kappa raised his voice: "Lost quiet!" Conrad was the first to catch on.

"I think he's lost one of his senses."

"How so?" Mrs. Park said.

"That's what you get when all the sound goes away," Conrad explained.

"You get quiet. You get a big nothing. All the sensory input you've been receiving disappears."

"But Kappa can clearly hear us." Conrad left the cupboards, grabbed one of the dining chairs I'd shoved aside, and pulled it around so he could sit down in front of Iset, bringing his head closer to level with Kappa's.

"Kappa," he said, "is the big nothing in here too?" Kappa's webbed hands tightened around Iset. He nodded.

"But you don't mind it in here?" Conrad asked.

"I can see," Kappa said.

"You can see outside."

"This is home."

"Outside isn't home?" A ray of insight bumbled into my head, lighting it up like a drunk firefly.

"He hasn't memorized his territory outside. Seeing is no use if you don't have the place memorized."

"You think he's missing his sense of place in the world?" Iset asked. Conrad looked up at her.

"That would explain why he said he felt lost."

"But, Conrad, that's not one sense!" She spoke loud and fast.

"There's at least three that we know about! If all of them failed at once, there would be other catastrophic symptoms indicating some kind of brain damage." Feeling vaguely panicked, my gaze locked on Kappa. He looked nervous. He did not look brain damaged. Thank god.

"Could the barrier have cut him off from his directional senses?" I asked.

"No!" Iset insisted.

"The only way to cut him off from those senses would be to remove him from the world!" And Mrs. Park— blessed Mrs. Park—who knew next to nothing about magic, and even less about what was possible or impossible, said, "Have we been removed from the world?" I suddenly knew exactly what Kappa had meant; the quiet that followed that line was one big nothing. Igor scoffed.

"We have sunlight," he said.

"We have gravity." He leaned over the pot and started adding spices to the tomatoes.

"If that's not coming from the world, where's it coming from?" Mrs. Park said, "I'm sure I don't know, Ingvar. Could they be created by magic?" That was another question none of us knew the answer to. As per requirement, we all turned to Iset. One of Igor's eyes reluctantly rolled in her direction. Kappa gazed up at her. Seconds passed.

"Iset?" Igor said. Iset finally moved. Her head turned toward Igor.

"How could Big Jacky and Darius be there, but not there at the same time?" Igor put down the spice bottle he was holding, stepped back, and put his misshapen hands to his lopsided face.

"Oh, lord." I wasn't sure what was going on, but I'd found Igor's arguments persuasive—not to mention comforting. I felt they deserved to be addressed.

"But what about the sunlight?" I said.

"And the gravity?"

"I'm not sure, Emerra," Iset said.

"I don't know anything about how the dimensions work. That's forbidden magic. The research on it has all been sealed or destroyed. But that would explain why the natural magic of the environment has suddenly become a limited source." Judging by the fact my stomach dropped far enough that I could feel it squishing around in my toes, I must have found that argument even more persuasive than Igor's had been. The vague panic was back.

"Is there anyone out there we can talk to about dimensional magic?" I asked. A casual listener might have noted that my voice sounded rather high and hysterical. I was halfway to another stamp on my stamp card. Igor lowered his hands.

"Oh, you wish it was that easy. After all, you only have to find the one magician in the world who might know about dimensional magic, and who—even less likely— might be willing to admit it." He stepped toward the counter and resumed cooking.

"But how do you plan on contacting them? We have no electricity, and no cell signal. Do dead phones work across dimensions?" My cell phone wasn't dead. After Iset had borrowed it to use as a flashlight, I had turned it off to conserve the battery. That was, admittedly, stupid. It wasn't like I could use it without any signal. But, by gum, if I was still alive in three days and felt the overwhelming need to play one of the flash games that I had downloaded, then I was set.

And how like my brain to latch on to that ludicrously unimportant fact. The rest of Igor's question was still relevant. Dead or not, could a phone work across dimensions? I raised a finger.

"Um. Excuse me. Hi. Yeah. Dumb question, and—please don't laugh—but…where's hell?"