April 3, 2021
Typic-Rights Advocates to Try Again
By Helen Hickok
Starstaff reporter
The campaign to allow typics to hold national office may be down, but don’t count it out yet.
Volunteers in Maryland and across the country are lining up legislative sponsors for next year, hoping to reach the thirty-eight states needed to force a constitutional convention.
Despite the dramatic collapse of their efforts this year, they’re heading into Round 2 with a major advantage: Twenty-six states passed bills, all of which remain in force unless new legislation to retract them is passed. That leaves just twelve to go.
It was almost like falling through the looking-glass, this new life of theirs. Only in broad strokes did it resemble the one they’d endured before.
They brewed, picked leaves, wrote streams of thank-you notes for every donation (ranging from $6,900 from an E.K. Day of Baltimore to a nickel from four-year-old Maebeth Gilly of Des Moines, Iowa), walked in the forest as it burst into glorious life, had the Clarks over to dinner and even enjoyed entire twenty-four-hour periods without anyone wanting to interview them.
“You deserve a rest,” Lydia had said, so no one asked them to help with preparations for the march on Washington.
“Best live quietly for a while,” Rosemarie had advised, so they were excused from the efforts to rebuild a coalition of politicians willing to vote for typic rights.
One worry after another faded. Beatrix was not pregnant. No one accosted them, wizard or typic. And Peter, lying sleepless in bed one evening, suddenly hit on the way to help Mr. Freelow—give the man a small dose of the sleeping draft so Beatrix could bespell him while he was unconscious. It worked like a treat.
“I love this new remedy!” Mr. Freelow said as he made his way out the door the next day. “I feel so refreshed, you know, on top of the relief to my joints, andoh, I’m awfully glad for that relief, and surprised, too, because I knew you’re only to make brews for us—Mayor Croft was very clear about that,bless him—and of course I thought there was no bursitis brew so I said to myself, I said, ‘Fred old boy, you managed before somehow and you’ll manage again, and don’t you say a word to make those nice young things worry that you mind,’ but then you told me about the new brew just this morning and I came right over, andoh, I feelsomuch better!”
Peter knew that he too should feel so much better—delivered from imminent disasters to this halcyon life. But as the days went by, he felt almost worse.
The constant reminders of his magical impotence, those pinpricks applied over and over to the same wound, didn’t help. But it was more than that. The imminent disasters had distracted him from Martinelli’s death. Now he had plenty of time to think about his culpability.
It pressed on him when he woke in the morning and as he struggled to fall asleep. As he chopped ingredients. When he picked leaves. While he walked in the forest. During lulls in the conversation and often right in the midst of one.
He ought to be in prison. Hewouldbe, if the Pentagram knew he’d smuggled the weapon out, then allowed it to fall into the wrong hands. What was he supposed to do to make some amends for a harm that could not be undone?
His weekly visits to Mrs. Martinelli were woefully insufficient. There was nothing else he could do for her, though; she’d assured him that she needed no help, financial or otherwise. Really, the only thing he could think of was the task he’d already written off as impossible.
Find a way to neutralize Project 96. Make sure no one else was killed by it.
“Good,” Beatrix murmured when he explained his plan, which relied on her to carry out any idea he could come up with. “Let’s do it.”
A monthof work put them no closer to a solution, but it settled him in a way that brewing couldn’t. This effort required so much more from him, especially now that he’d stopped looking at the problem as something that the mental equivalent of elbow grease could fix.
He tracked down journal articles on spellcasting innovations. He came back from a trek to Washington with thirty-two books—on runes, defensive magical maneuvers on the battlefield, spell-hardened infrastructure and a variety of offbeat topics bought simply because you never knew where you might find inspiration. This time, unlike before, he spent ninety percent of his R&D time on pure R.
Then Lydia and Rosemarie came to visit, Beatrix’s sister wearing the apologetic look he now recognized as her I-have-something-I-need-you-to-do face. “I know I said you both deserve a rest, but …”
“Rest’s over,” Rosemarie said.
The gist of it was that the League’s march on Washington, now known as the Procession for Typic Rights, was four weeks away and they needed more help.
“Could you visit these vendors?” Lydia proffered a list. “They’re all open on Saturday—I checked.”
Peter nodded, looking it over. One public-address-system rental company, two water suppliers, three portable-bathroom purveyors. All in D.C.
“And I know we talked about having you two assist behind the scenes on the day of,” Lydia said, “but actually we’d like you both to speak to the crowd. If you’re willing.”
He blinked. “I thought we agreed that would do more harm than good.” Rosemarie had been quite blunt about it, in fact.
“We’ve made inquiries,” Rosemarie said. “It’s clear that the people who would turn out to hear you far outnumber those who would stay home in protest.”
