This choice: Fix the blunder with the sigil • Go Back...Chapter #24The Ones Who Get Their Noses Where They Shouldn’t by: Nostrum   The irony of you and Caleb befriending the Mitchell twins sinks into you. If they’re twins, Sean might tell you a lot about how Taylor’s supposed to be. You’ve noticed Taylor has changed a lot, and you’re unaware of how much of Scott was really the late Scott Bickelmeir, and how much is actually Taylor’s own take on him.
However, you’ve done a lot of progress, and with Taylor and Lucy away, you have all the time in the world to make some real advances. And you’d keep the books close, in case the worst happens.
You immediately make up your mind. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
Caleb seems flustered. “Oh, uh, alright. I’ll still text you if you want to come. Bye.” He hangs up, and you definitely think of turning off the phone, to avoid more distractions. However, you still keep it on close, just in case.
Though you have a good grasp on how sigils work, and a demonstration of how a sigil can be folded and unfolded, you’re no closer to the answer after two hours of solid work. You grunt and hiss, wishing for a moment the dreams weren’t as cryptic as they do. You close your eyes, hoping you could take a nap and see if a dream pops up, but your active mind doesn’t seem to help.
So, you try to free yourself away from distractions. The sound of outdoors can’t get in, and your eyes no longer catch any rays of light, so all you need to do is strip off your thoughts. One by one, you strip yourself from your worries – about Blackwell, and your dad, and Robert, and both Lucy and her double, and as you think of your love life, even Lisa Yarborough – until there’s nothing.
And then, you feel as if falling. Upwards.
--
You have no idea if it’s a dream or if it’s reality, but you’re once again in the planetarium. However, this time, you see all the planets gravitating around you - “planets”, you call them, but you notice a few differences. For one, the Earth is absent; you move, turn around, but you can’t seem to see it. You do, however, notice the Sun and the Moon as well.
As you observe the planets in order, you feel as if you were watching different worlds in a mirror. Verdant yet volcanic greenery, a sphere glistening with a shiny metallic sheen, iron cliffs and frigid seas... Images of worlds so distinct to what you’ve seen from documentaries about the real planets, that you can’t help but think if the images gathered from satellites are hiding the truth about these worlds.
You stop at Pluto, for it is where you feel a strange sense of something that can only be described as belonging. It appears at first frigid and distant, dark and unapproachable, yet as you touch it, the planet seems to unfold itself, and you see the majesty of the intricate mechanism within. It is like a miniature star, with motes of light and heat pulsating to and fro from this brightness. Symbols both familiar and obscure to you gravitate, folding in and out of the inner sun; gears and circuits, mechanisms both ancient, modern, futuristic and beyond are but cogs in this amazing machinery, toiling endlessly in perfect order. The sight fills you with wonder, and you feel your mind resonate with many ideas. You feel lost in such a wondrous sight, but you feel a slight tug drawing you back, and Pluto folds itself until it seems cold and distant once more.
You turn. It is the Moon, standing atop you. You feel the same sense of kinship as with Pluto. The Moon, unlike Pluto, does not unfold itself as you touch it; rather, it ripples, as if you had dropped a small stone at the water. You look at it closely, and it is as if looking at a mirror, for you see yourself gasping and gazing in utter wonder. The world within, beyond your own sight, is tranquil – a perfect place to hide, to escape from everything, and with the mirror within, to truly find yourself. Then you realize why you can see yourself – it is a mirror world, but not in the sense that it reflects the world behind you, but the world within you.
You turn around, only to see the Moon and Pluto flanking you, circling you in a peculiar dance. If only you had a place as tranquil as the Moon, yet as industrious as Pluto...
...and then it clicks. The sense of belonging. The perfect workshop. A perfect workshop you could create, not in the physical world, but in this imaginary world of wonders above and beyond the physical.
Yet, you feel the physical world calling. There is much to do, and very little time. The planets disappear, but with the feeling that they expect your visit once again. You feel as if falling down, dragged by the inevitable gravity of this world, and as you turn around, you see Saratoga Falls as dusk envelops it. Two motes of light sparkle in the distance, close to Keyserling, but you are dragged to a singular mote standing very close to your home, very close to – no, inside the elementary school basement, to the only one standing inside that place.
You.
--
You wake up to see a familiar face glowering down at you. "So this is what you were doing with the stuff?", your little brother snorts at you.
"What?" You sit up sharply. "What do you think I’m—?"
Robert picks up the sigils primer and waves it at you. "You’re doing magic!"
Your heart skips. But then you laugh.
"Yeah, right", you chortle. "And as soon as I learn how to saw someone in half, I'll add you to my act. How the hell did you get in here anyways?"
"I followed you." Robert drops the book and picks up Taylor's mask. "So, who’s ‘Scott Bickelmeir’?"
"Stop touching what’s not yours!" You snatch at the mask, but he pulls it away.
"It's not yours either, it's Scott Bick—!"
You jump at him. "Hey!" Robert howls from under you. "What's the big deal?"
"It's not your property!", you yell as you yank the mask away from him in a panic. "You're right, it belongs to a guy I know at school. Scott Bickelmeir." You get up off Robert and look around for a safe place to put it. "If he caught you playing with it, he'd fold you up like a pretzel."
"Sure." Robert snorts as he sits up. "If he's anything like your friend Caleb, I could totally take him."
"He's a football player."
"How do you know any football players?" Robert's tone is scathing. Then his eyes pop. "Oh my God, is he that guy who was out at the house last week? That big guy?"
"Yeah."
Robert's mouth curls up in a leer. "Your boyfriend?"
"Shut up!" You wheel on him and hurl the mask onto the conference table with a snarl. It rings and bounces and clatters down the length of it. "Look, just go home. You don't belong here."
"You don't either." Robert swaggers over to your supply bin. "Tell you what, gimme my stuff here back, and I won't tell dad you're breaking and entering onto school property."
"It's not your stuff!"
"Sure it's mine! I got it out of the garbage! And you fucked me over when I told you I had it!"
"I need it, Robert! For my ... magic act." You hate having to play into that pretense.
He snickers. "Are you really studying magic? Cool, show me a trick!"
"How about I make you disappear?"
He plants his feet and crosses his arms. "Go ahead and try. 'Cos like I say, if you throw me out of here, I'll just go tell dad—"
"Fine, what do you want?"
"I want my stuff back! Or, at least, I want in on this magic act. Is this part of it?" Before you can stop him, he picks the mask up and raises it to his face. "Do you wear it while pulling a rabbit out of a—?"
He doesn't finish. There's a split second of confusion where you're not sure who's standing in front of you, and then Scott Bickelmeir—his eyes crossing—crumples to the floor.
--
So fucking typical!, you hiss to yourself as you frantically pull at Scott's face. I'm such a fuck up!
For not only did you let Robert get ahold of the mask again, and not only were you too slow to stop him from doing something stupid with it, but now you can't figure out how to get it off him! Oh, you know the magic words all right, and you know you have to pull at his forehead, not at his face. But you forgot to get Taylor to show you exactly how to position your hand.
So you yank and pluck and scrape at the forehead of the unconscious Scott Bickelmeir fruitlessly for almost a full minute before giving up and calling Taylor.
And, naturally, Robert wakes up long before Taylor and Lucy can get back.
--
At least one good thing comes of this colossal fuck up. Robert is no longer threatening to get you in trouble with your dad.
And you're even pleasantly surprised to find he's able to follow the complicated story and explanation that you're forced to give him after he's gaped and gawped at his new reflection in that dusty mirror in the corner. He believes it, too. Or, at least, when he starts to look skeptical—as you tell him about the book you got at Arnholm's, and the experiment you conducted with it with your dad, and of your dad forcing you to sell the book to Professor Blackwell; and of meeting Scott Bickelmeir, who told you he was wearing a mask and how he needed help getting it off; and of how you raided the professor's to get the book back (but failed), and of rescuing Lucy, who has been replaced at her house by a doppelganger—you only had to point to the mirror to remind him that it all must be true.
But then Lucy and Taylor get back. And neither of them looks at all happy.  You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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