This choice: "No child, it would only serve to aggravate her further." • Go Back...Chapter #61Pieces of the Puzzle That Is Will Prescott by: Seuzz   "It's an interesting progression," Kali muses. Her eyes travel searchingly over your face.
It's Monday night. You haven't spoken to Miko much, and she hasn't spoken much to you. She had covered for Kali on their job while your mentor stayed at the house during the day and put you through an exhausting regimen of meditation exercises. To your intense discomfort, Kali had also led you into Miko's room and bid you examine and touch various objects. You'd done it gingerly, and not only because it seemed like an invasion of privacy. Many of objects gave you a kind of electric shock, giving you discrete memories--Miko's memories--associated with them. You have nothing like a complete set, but it's enough to make you jumpy.
Now it is evening, and though you are worn out, you are again in the living room with the two women.
"There's no reason that I should have to examine the Libra, not with you here," Kali is now murmuring, apparently to herself. "But it would help if I understood its structure. Will," she says in a firmer voice. "Describe the book to me, page by page. Start with its cover, progress to its frontispiece--"
"Its what?"
"Don't have everything I have, do you?" Miko says with a sharp grin. "I know what that is."
"Visualize the book, child," Kali says. "You can see it if you concentrate, can't you?"
You blink, and the Libra itself seems to blaze before you. "Yeah," you mutter. It's not a happy sight.
"Okay, so the cover is leather," you say. "Red. There are gold letters. They are really ornate and hard to read. I don't think they're magical, because I can't really make them out.
"If you open it, the inside of the front cover is blank, but a sigil will appear after you buy it. You have to press a bloody thumbprint to it to 'claim' it. The title page has a row of faces on it. They're like optical illusions, and they change.
"There's nothing on the flip side of the title page. There's a blank piece of paper. Except it wasn't blank the night I fell into the book. It was covered with a silvery writing."
"Was the moon out?" Kali asks sharply.
"I don't remember. I think so, though. It was pretty light inside the workroom. What does that mean?" you ask, for she has grunted softly.
"It means 'Hmm.' Continue."
You look at Miko, but her expression, though hard, is blank. "After you claim the book, you can turn that blank page."
"What do mean?" Miko asks. "You can't open that page before--?"
"Each page is locked," you explain. "You have to execute some spell before you can turn each page. But the spell doesn't explain what it does. Only after you perform the spell can you turn the page. The reverse side explains what it does."
"What's the point in that?" Miko says.
"I think it's a kind of test," you say. "You have to show you've got the guts to actually perform the spell before it will tell you what it's done."
Miko pales. "Diabolical, isn't it?" Kali says. "Continue."
"After the blank page is a page containing a lot of warnings. It tells you a little bit about the book, that it can make masks and disguises. It tells you to be careful, and not to perform the spells with a light heart."
"As if a thing like that could have a conscience," Miko snorts.
"After that is the first spell," you say. "It makes a mask. If you put the mask on someone, it copies them."
"And if you put the mask on, then you will look like that person?" Miko asks.
"No, the mask has to be sealed first," you say. "That's the second spell. If you put the mask onto another person, even yourself, before sealing it, then the second image will merge with the first, creating a new one. That way you can make new faces instead of just imitating real people."
"Clever," Kali says. "But the second spell?"
"It makes a kind of paste that seals up the inside of the mask. Then you can put it on and you'll turn into that person."
"Including memories?" Miko asks.
"No. That's the third spell," you say. Miko groans. "You have to assemble a full disguise. The third spell makes a kind of metal strip. Put it onto someone's forehead, and you'll copy their memories and personality. You can put that on without a mask, and you can walk around with them inside your head. You can put a mask on separately, though. That will make a full disguise. But the fourth spell will make a kind of glue so that you can put one of those bands inside a mask. If you put a blank band inside a blank mask, you can put it on someone and get their body and their mind at once. Then you can seal the whole thing and have a complete disguise."
"And then?" Kali asks.
You describe the spell that creates a golem, and the spell that turns a person into a golem, and the spell that puts a portable golem inside a mask. But it looks like Kali has stopped listening by then. "I begin to see a pattern," she says, "though it is incomplete."
"Like I said, the pattern is putting the pieces together."
"I mean I see the pattern in your own progression since acquiring Miko's imago," Kali says. "It recapitulates the progression in the book. First, you acquired her imago. But there was no 'sealing'. Unless--" Her eyebrows suddenly arch over her frown. "You kissed Will the night before he changed," she says, turning to Miko.
"To my lasting regret," Miko growls.
"You played dress up with him," Kali snaps. "Your feelings are actually ambivalent." Miko makes a choking noise, but Kali continues. "We've been assuming that the kiss was what implanted the imago, but possibly it caused this 'seal' to form, and that's what caused the imago to manifest during the night."
Miko stares at her. "Then what did I do to--"
"Oh, anything," Kali says with a wave of her hand. "You're a catalytic agent. Possibly Will picked up your imago at the airport. You're a very forward girl. You sealed it with a kiss." She taps her finger on the arm of the sofa as Miko glares at her. "But you have to learn how to do it consciously and deliberately, Will," she continues, fixing her eyes on you. "To change you back, even if not as part of your training."
"Okay, so I picked up Miko's imago, got it sealed, and then picked up her memories after reading that story? And after--" You glance uneasily at Miko, and shut your mouth. "But I don't have all of them."
"Again, a great deal of Miko is floating in the air," Kali says, seemingly as reticent as you about admitting to snooping in Miko's room. "Like a piece of grit at the center of a pearl, that story I showed you may have been a point around which some of Miko's mental matter spun and settled within you."
"Honestly, it sounds like you're improvising," Miko says to Kali.
"Of course I'm improvising. All hypotheses are improvised from meager evidence. We will have to test and refine the hypothesis over time."
"Even if this is how it worked," you protest, "the first spell also comes with instructions for how to take a mask off. That first day, I tried using it to take a mask off, and nothing happened."
"You're not wearing a mask," she says. You make a face. "I know, that wasn't a helpful remark, except insofar as it turns us from a false trail. The fact is, I suspect, that you are the mask, child, and you cannot remove yourself."
"I can remove him," Miko mutters.
"I would have to see the sigil in order to see how it works, though," Kali says, lightly stroking her chin with her forefinger. "I would have to speak to Charles about examining the book--"
"I can draw it for you," you say. Both women look startled. "Sure. I can practically see all the sigils in front of me.
"Then please do so," Kali says after a pause.
You oblige, and far more quickly than you thought it would take you. Kali holds the finished page gingerly. "If he can draw all those things," Miko starts to say.
"Hush. He doesn't want to and certainly doesn't need to. Isn't that right, Will?"
You nod your head fervently, then change it to a shake. "I mean, right, I don't want to."
"Yes. I will study this tonight. I hope to have a richer hypothesis in the morning. Good night, you both," she says in a distracted voice, and goes to her office.
* * * * *
Later that night you're feeling restless, and thinking of Joe and Frank, and that causes you to remember those composition books. You wonder if there's one about them. It might be fun to read.
Softly you pad down the hall to Kali's office. Before you knock, though, you hear her voice. Apparently she is talking on the phone.
"It was not an accident, Charles," you hear her saying. "We've been trying to avoid that conclusion, but I think we have to face up to it. There is a design being executed." She is silent for a moment, and guiltily you edge closer to listen. "He will need to meet Margaret," Kali says when she speaks again. "And since she is in ill health, the sooner the better."
You withdraw. It's wrong to eavesdrop. Kali, you hope will tell you about this conversation in her own time. But you could press it.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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