There is a small pond nearby. I shall be as the doomed hero of old, staring endlessly into my reflection.
But it is not myself that I hope to fall in love with.
Ceri spent so long in the bathroom that night staring in the looking glass, poor Ana had to leave and use the common one downstairs.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
BREAKTHROUGHS
Alison
The days slipped by as autumn took hold of Winwold, sweeping the college and the town up into a whirlwind of reconstruction, flagball games, and even an adorable autumn carnival which Keir insisted they attend to give Alison a much-needed break from her tireless research. (He won her a stuffed bear at a ring toss game. The game had been rigged, so he felt no shame in using a little bit of magic to defeat it.)
The relief of knowing that Leo was safe and that they could take their time with finding him a way home had been considerable. As Alison understood it, he was making some progress in communicating with the fairies, in part thanks to letters exchanged with Aras, Alison’s neighbor. They’d written to Ana’s father on Turtle Island as well, but at the rate it took for the post to cross the ocean, they’d be lucky to hear back from him by the Winter Solstice.
They also enlisted the help of the Ancient Languages professor, Professor Zerod. In exchange, he asked them for one thing: help with the annual SERSHO (Society for Equal Rights for Smallfolk, Humans, and Orcs) bake sale.
Everything was delicious: Keir made buttery shortbread, Ceri tried her hand at the egg tarts Leo had made her (the doughwas harder to make than it looked), Idris made traditional Formosan mooncakes, and Alison called her mother and got the sticky toffee pudding recipe her dad had loved. (She also called Ms. Varma from Andsaz Industries for her gulab jamun recipe and was amused to hear that they had underestimated just how much work she had done around there and hired not one, not two, but three people to replace her.)
But it was Rinka that stole the show with her chocolate-chip banana bread. It was unbelievably moist and rich with just the perfect amount of sweetness. Alison bought a couple of slices for herself.
(It also didn’t hurt that Ana dabbed a bit of the fairy “grey goop” on everything at the end, making every dessert into the best thing that anyone had ever eaten. SERSHO raised enough coin to cover their expenses for three years.)
While they hadn’t made much progress with a plan for getting Leo home, his suggestion to enchant the power-savers combined with Alison’s intuition about the power of her poetry had made for some interesting experiments. There did seem to be some kind of potential there, but the issue was endurance: as Idris had noted, spells that continued indefinitely were considerably more difficult to achieve.
At one point, they had considered trying to architect an “accident” similar to the vine that had nearly swallowed Herot’s Hollow, but the breakthrough finally came from a call on the long-talker with Gwenla.
“You know, the dwarven blacksmiths once carved runes into their blades and hammers. The young folks think runes are old-fashioned, but I wonder if there wasn’t something lost when we stopped doing it. Maybe if we took the enchantment you created, translated it into our runes, and carved it into the power-savers, it might last.”
“Do you think human magic will work with dwarven runes?” asked Alison.
“I can’t imagine it would hurt to try,” said Gwenla. “If it doesn’t work on the power-savers, maybe it’ll work on these kids. Gods know we need some way to get them under control.”
“You’re going to carve runes into the kids?”
“Oh no, not carve. But there’s a man around here that does tattoos. At this point, I think Yordin would prefer tattooed, docile children over the hellions that he has.”
Alison laughed. She had seen enough in one night to know that was true. “Any thoughts on whether you’ll be bringing Finnli back with you?”
“I’m going to have to. He keeps trying to grow vegetables in the dark down here. You’ve never seen such stretchy tomatoes in your life, and not a flower in sight. I have to do it for the plants’ sakes. It would be cruel to leave them alone with this little black-thumbed maniac.”
Alison had already known what Gwenla’s answer would be, but she enjoyed hearing Gwenla trying to justify what Alison knew to be the simple kindness that her dwarven friend could not avoid showing if her life depended on it.
Later that same night, as Alison read in the familiar spot by the fire in the library (this time with Willow in her lap), she came across a book on Samhain rituals.
“Listen to this,” she said to Keir. He was leaning back with his feet propped up, having spent a long day down in Norgate helping deliver a baby (a healthy orc girl). “On Samhain night, a bonfire is lit to open doorways between worlds. It’s thought that passage between fairy realms and the mortal world is possible.Passage between worlds, Keir.”
“Interesting, but I don’t see how that could connect to the horn,” said Keir. “All of the times Leo visited had something to do with the item in his possession.”
“Sure, but he didn’t interact with all of them. He skipped the locket and the doll. Maybe we’ve been too focused on the horn. What if we could bring him back with a ritual on Samhain? It’s just a week away.”
“You’re suggesting we light a bonfire and do what, exactly?”
Alison hadn’t actually thought of them being the ones to light the bonfire, but it wasn’t a bad idea. “I was going to say that Leo could do something in his world, but maybe it would be better if we did both. Maybe if we light a bonfire here and they light one there, and if we copy whatever their ritual is, it’ll open a door.”
“And what if it sends us to his time rather than the other way around?”
“Then I think you’re about to revolutionize medicine. Imagine teaching three-thousand-year-old fairies about anesthesia.”
