Chapter #42Progress Comes Quickly by: Seuzz   You're still thinking about this when you call your own replacement the next day and tell him to meet you after school. "You have a cure for that hex yet?" he eagerly asks after he arrives. You're at the river, far from prying eyes, so you can test out the new project in secrecy.
"Still working on it," you say. "It got really busy this weekend."
"It's always something else with you," he whines.
"So how about you some work on it," you retort. "I'll bring you up to date with my memories, and starting tomorrow you can spend the day at Blackwell's sorting through those sigil layers." He groans, and you have to speak sharply to him. Then you push him onto the ground and take his mask off. The stinky old hobo that's been sleeping under your face appears.
It'll take awhile to turn this mask into a remote, but you use some knockout powder to keep him out. You then set to diligent work. You start by putting the mask to your own face, so you can pick up all the memories the golem has accumulated, but you don't trouble over them. You use the Libra to strip your old mask clean, then put a complete set of your memories back into it before sealing it up. On the inside you carefully copy the "remote" sigil, using your essentia in the "paint" that you're using. It's long and exacting work to be done before you can put it back on the hobo. "All set?" Will Prescott asks when he reappears, for with your most recent memories he knows exactly what is going to come next.
You nod, and lay down on the grass as he scrambles to his feet. You close your eyes, concentrate, and mutter the incantation you'd invented.
It's as if you'd blinked. You are now standing by the river, staring down at yourself: He--you--is sprawled on the ground, jaw slack and eyes unseeing. You suck in a sharp breath. Yes, you are definitely in the golem's body.
You crouch next to your real body and study it. It is warm and breathing, and its pulse is strong. It appears to be in a catatonic state.
"Whoa, perfect," you say, and clap your hands. The movements feel very self-conscious, for you know you're doing them only to see what the golem will remember when you release it again. You mutter the words that will return yourself to control of your own body.
Another blink. You're staring at the sky. You don't feel the least bit sleepy or muffle-headed, and sit up abruptly. The golem takes a step back. "Whoa again. That is you, isn't it, boss?"
"Yeah." You laugh softly. "The earth moved. How was it for you?"
He shrugs. "Suddenly I wasn't in control of myself. Did stuff I didn't mean to." He smiles faintly. "We gonna use this trick on those assholes?"
You could, but it would involve bringing in a partner, because there would be two people--Joe and Frank--that would need controlling. But you could make a partner. Just slap an anima band on Caleb or Keith or--
Or your own brother, Robert. The Prescott brothers, pretending to be the Durras brothers?
But you shake your head. "Too tricky. And don't tell Joe or Frank anything about this."
"Duh, I'm you, not an idiot," he retorts.
"Well, let's hope I'm not an idiot. Now let's nail your mask back into place so Frank and Joe can't go snooping inside it."
* * * * *
Thursday. Jonathan--Joe--has been in a better temper, so in the showers after school you broach the subject of his girlfriend again. "How are things with Monique?"
"Maintaining," he says. He closes his eyes and squeezes the lather from his scalp. "She's still thinking about that crap you put in her head, I can tell, but-- You said you had an idea for how to deal with that?"
"I couldn't figure out a way to make it work."
"What was the theory?"
"The theory was fucked up. Fiddling with her mental imago inside a band and then getting the changes into the original's head."
"Memories are a function of anima," he says.
"That's why the theory was fucked up. I've got a new project."
Ian Carpenter comes in and turns on a shower. "Have you made any headway on that new chapter?" he asks Jonathan.
"Nah, it's a mess. Too hard."
"Are you asking Joe for help with your homework?" Ian snorts.
"No, I just want to see if he's getting anywhere with his," Jonathan says.
"It's a book about a big whale," you say. "Who gives a shit about a big whale?"
"What? Moby Dick? English?"
"No. The Scarlet A."
Ian does a double take. "You mean The Scarlet Letter? There's no whales in The Scarlet Letter."
"Oh, shit. I picked up the wrong one!" you holler.
* * * * *
After you're alone with Straussler again, you ask him about that golem that he and Frank shrank. "What did you do with it?"
"It's back at Blackwell's. Why?"
"I wanted to look at it. I couldn't make much of the sigil, thought if I looked at the thing itself it might show me something about what it's used for. I'll go over there and pick it up."
"Call Frank, tell him to bring it by the house. He sounds like he's going nuts out there."
"Anyone would, but I want an excuse to get away from the fake Frank back at the house for a bit."
"You mean the Frank that has Shabbleman underneath? What's wrong with him?"
"Exactly. Haven't you noticed how creepy he is?"
"Frank's always creepy."
"I don't mean that. I mean, it's like Shabbleman's shining through the mask. Or something."
"I hadn't noticed."
But you have. He makes you nervous. Maybe it's because he's a fake version of a Stellae, and is therefore missing something. Maybe the golem is aware of what he's missing. You feel like he's watching you furtively.
Still, you don't linger long at Blackwell's after Frank has given you the golem. It's about a foot long, though it retains the proportions of the original, and has quite a bit of heft to it, as though it's made of lead. After spending an hour with Frank, listening to him complain, you go back home and lock yourself in the bedroom. Even there you feel oppressed. It's as though something outside the door is trying to get in.
You flip through the Libra to the spell after the one that makes the remote and control masks. That's why you wanted the shrunken golem: the new spell calls for one. As with the previous spells there are no instructions, and you have to understand its mechanics in order to work it out. But it's not hard, for it's a simplification of the control/remote sigil. After an hour of tracing the logic you suck in a breath. It's very good news.
You remove the nail from your forehead and pull off the mask you've been wearing. You brush your hand over it until your own face appears in it. You lay it face down onto the sigil and lay the miniature golem into the concave interior. You rest your palm on it, and murmur the prescribed words while closing your eyes.
Your bodily imago appears in your head, and you almost pass out from shock. It's like the first time you went to an IMAX screening. The image is vast, almost three-dimensional, and though you can take it in at a glance, it is so huge you feel as though you are floating in space next to a monumental statue.
The imago isn't just huge, it is detailed. Like a mosaic, it is composed of sigils. You shake your head at the futility of your earlier project with those glasses. This is what you were trying to construct: your imago, complete and minutely detailed. You were building it up; this spell gives you the finished result.
But maybe all your work with those sigils and glasses wasn't for nothing. You doubt you could handle the overwhelming reality of this vision if you hadn't trained yourself by studying the sigils you'd put inside those glasses.
You look over this model of yourself, picking out details. Picking out? They spring out at you. You can see all the little pieces and how they lock together to give you your physical attributes. You see how to tweak them. You could do anything to it, from shifting the birthmark on your cheek to totally changing yourself into a duplicate of another person. The latter would be very hard work, of course. But right now you're looking for--
There it is. That damnable hex.
It looks like a spider or a tick stuck to the bridge of your nose just between your eyes. It is deeply dug into your imago, with roots and filaments burrowing throughout your body. You concentrate, and pull out one filament, and then another, and then the rest. You pinch at the body of the thing and pull it away. It vanishes.
You release the golem and open your eyes. The real world rushes in, and you shake the dizziness from yourself.
You don't feel any different, but you know how the spell works. You didn't just remove the hex from the imago in the mask. The sigil established a connection to your own bodily imago, and you know that you've removed the hex from yourself. You're now cured. You only have to copy your repaired imago into a mask and set it on the golem, and it will be cured as well.
Which might not be good news for the golem. The hex is the only thing keeping your doppelganger safe from Westside's bullies. Remove the hex, and they'll attack it with a vengeance.
Well, you'll think about that later. Now there will be a new spell to investigate.
Something brushes at the door, and with a jerk you look over at it. Is it the enslaved Shabbleman? There's something odd about the thing in the other room. You wonder what you'd find if you studied Shabbleman's imago.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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