“You seem to be of the opinion,” said Grimmon, “that thinking too hard sprains the brain.”
He really does talk like that. Goblins can be just as pompous as the rest of us.
“Actually,” I said. “I am thinking. I’m connecting with my muse.”
I’d been writing all morning and was taking a break outside, leaning on the battlement at the top of the castle wall overlooking the moat, gazing at the world beyond.
The tips of Grimmon’s ears wobbled. “Your muse? Don’t make me laugh. You’re not thinking, you’re procrastinating.”
“I’ll have you know, the words have been flowing onto the page lately.” I waved my hand like I was conducting an orchestra. “And I’m pleased with what I’ve written.”
“Yeah, right.” Grimmon sniffed and scuffed the sole of his shoe on a flagstone. “Anyway, I’m not here to talk about that. What I wanted-”
At that moment there was a loud bang.
As one, we turned our heads to the building housing Castle Silverhill’s laboratory. A column of smoke billowed from a window, staining the clear blue sky a delicate shade of mauve.
“Trewla!” I yelled, and ran down the steps to the courtyard below. A minute later, I was wading through the debris littering the laboratory’s floor, coughing as my lungs filled with smoke.
“Trewla! Where are you?”
“Over here,” she said, raising her head above a stained workbench and standing up. She was holding a dustpan and brush. Her hair was a wild, tangled mess, and her face and clothes were covered in soot. “What on earth’s the matter?”
“The explosion. I thought…” I clamped my mouth shut and shook my head.
“Oh, that. I was just a little too heavy handed with the fairy dust. Nothing to worry about.” She patted down her hair.
“Well, be careful next time.” If I sounded gruff it was due to the dust coating my throat.
I felt a tugging at my sleeve, and looked down to see Grimmon gazing up at me.
“Not now, Grimmon,” I said.
“It’s important. I’ve got a painting for you.”
And here it is: a scene from Daphne Mayne and the Goblin Quest where Daphne is crossing a magically created bridge over a chasm and the bridge’s guardian begins to materialise.
“You’re wasting your time,” said Grimmon. “It’s growing faster than you’re pulling it down.”
His foot gave a meaningful nudge to the knee-high pile of discarded moss next to me on the floor.
I wiped my hands on my dressing gown, leaving green smears across its tasteful maroon fabric, and stepped back from the doorway.
Even as I watched, more strands curled out of the damp curtain of moss blocking our exit from my studio, refilling the not-very-large gaps I had only just made.
“I did warn you,” he added, which jangled my nerves, seeing as I knew he would bring it up again and again in the future.
That’s if either of us had a future.
Right now, looking at the steadily thickening growth plugging the stairwell, I wasn’t sure we did. Images flashed through my mind of our skeletons sprawled across the floor, contorted in death by the thirst and hunger.
“Damned fairies! Why are they doing this?” I shook my fist at the moss.
Grimmon’s eyebrows shot up. “It’s your fault. You started it when you destroyed their toadstool ring.” His gaze turned to my desk, the top still soiled with crushed fungus.
The air grew still, like a thousand ears were waiting. Every tiny sound – from the gentle swaying of the blanket of moss at the door to the rustling of the threadlike fronds creeping over the floor – stopped.
“Well, they shouldn’t have grown it there! And I never invited them into the castle in the first place!”
To the sound of angry chittering, I strode across the room, batting a hanging strand of moss out of the way, and peered out of the window. I’m not sure what I expected. The roofs and walkways below didn’t look any closer, and climbing down the outside of the tower was best left to ants.
“What are we going to do?” I waved my arms to show my distress.
“There’s only way to deal with it,” said Grimmon. He fixed me with a hard stare. “Magic.”
My stomach dropped. You see, the last time I’d used magic, things hadn’t gone well. Which, to be fair, happens from time to time. Well, to me anyway. Although I wasn’t going to admit that to Grimmon.
But the main problem is that there are always Unintended Consequences. That’s why nobody ever uses magic for trivial things. You could be excused for thinking heating a cold mug of coffee with a wave of your hand would be a clever thing to do, but when the table the mug is resting on walks out of the door, or the tablecloth catches fire, or some other unforeseen thing happens, you might resolve to henceforth drink your coffee before it gets cold.
Grimmon was watching me closely. It wouldn’t do to show weakness.
I straightened my spine, stalked over to my stained desk, and laid a hand on the book of spells. It quivered in anticipation. As I opened it, I became aware of Grimmon’s hot breath on my elbow. He was standing on tiptoe next to me, craning his neck to peer at the pages of the sacred tome. Accompanied by the grating of his teeth, I casually picked up the book so he couldn’t see the pages as I leafed through them.
The thing is, he has an unhealthy interest in the spell book, but he’s afraid to touch it because whenever he’s snooped at it before – and believe me when I say it is not due to anything I’ve done – it burnt his fingers. You’re probably wondering how I know and I can reassure you it’s not because I spy on the goblin, but because the paintings on my studio wall told me. I put it down to another of those Unintended Consequences.
I hesitated at a page, raised an eyebrow and glanced at Grimmon. “Fireballs?”
“Are you mad? The moss will burn and you’ll end up setting fire to the whole castle.”
I nodded and turned a few more pages. “Ice. Freeze the moss and then…”
“And then what? If you thought it was hard to pull the moss down before, imagine how difficult it will be to hack through solid ice.” Grimmon shook his head. “You’re not thinking.”
I pretended to ignore him. “What we need are wings,” I said, paging further into the book. “I’m sure there’s a spell for that in here somewhere.”
“Tell me you’re joking. There’s no way my feet are leaving the ground. Especially not from some harebrained spell you drum up.”
“There’s nothing harebrained about my spells,” I began. Then my eye caught sight of something interesting on the page I had just turned to. I sucked in a sharp breath.
When I’m writing stories in my Hollow series, I try to make some of the magic used in Hollow pretty much run of the mill as far as the locals are concerned.
It’s kind of like we are today with electricity. We take it for granted that we can plug in a lamp, or a hairdryer, and it lights up or blows hot air (preferably not both). But three hundred years ago, your electrical appliance would have seemed like magic to anyone witnessing you blow-drying your curly locks. There would be a mob bearing pitchforks and flaming torches outside your house, coming to drag you off to the nearest bonfire before you’d even taken out your curlers.
Like electricity is to us, some magic is rather humdrum to the residents of Hollow. Not all of it, of course, because there’s some out of the ordinary magic there too. Nevertheless, they can make use of sympanometry without the slightest curiosity about how it works.
Back in our own non-fiction world, we accept that there are things we don’t understand. For example, you don’t need to know how a microchip works in order to use a computer, or how an engine works when you’re driving to your local supermarket at breakneck speed, late at night, to buy a card for your mother whose birthday you’ve only just remembered.
That’s how it is with sympanometry (the popular-in-Hollow branch of magic based on shapes).
A case in point is Krislemeen, the prickly, easy-to-offend leader of a bunch of rebels, who has no need to understand the principles of sympathetic shapes in order for her to use sympanometry to execute anyone unlucky enough to have offended her.
In the third book, A Taste of Steel, Drome rubs Krislemeen up the wrong way – as he does with almost everyone – and finds himself on the receiving end of the rebel leader’s ire.
I won’t give too much away, suffice to say, he’s only go himself to blame, which isn’t much of a comfort when he’s strapped atop a pile of explosives, waiting for the fun to begin.
For Krislemeen, the magic she’s using to trigger the explosives is rather mediocre. Drome, on the other hand – especially at that point – doesn’t feel sympanometry is boring and commonplace at all.
I’m sure you’d agree if you were in the same situation.
