Sidony wailed on the other side of the ward. Her palms were outstretched, hovering just beyond the flickering burn of energy. “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!”
But Benedetto was focused entirely on the page, and as he sketched Adrianna in words a shadow formed at the center of the workshop. It was an indistinct blur at the corner of his vision, but even that glimpse made his heart stutter.
A figure began to take shape.
Marginalia
Their classmates and their colleagues were dismissive. Men are too emotional, they said, too impatient. They aren’t cut out for the meticulous and tedious nature of calligramancy. Why don’t you butcher something and start dinner?
For years Benedetto worked hard to disprove them. He experimented with wild abandon, he embraced exotic imports from foreign lands, he wrote spells that stretched three feet long. They saw his experiments and his exoticism and his lengthy constructions, and they said oh my, oh no, this is proof positive that he only wants a shortcut. Magic isn’t a shortcut, they said. Magic is a way of life.
Sidony told him not to listen. She assured him that she knew many level-headed men and she was sure he was one of them. It wasn’t as comforting a statement as she thought, but he let it go. Well-intentioned, and all that.
Their teachers wielded switches and smacked their hands, their faces, the backs of their calves. Learn these words, they said. Don’t abuse them. Don’t twist them. Remember the importance of your role. The city depends on you, on all of you, to keep the lights lit and the mills turning and the walls secure against invasion. This isn’t a matter of personal glory but of maintaining a safe and productive society.
Writing shapes reality. Writing changes the world.
Lesson Five: On the use of a proper script
The final component of crafting a spell is, of course, the selection of a script. Majuscule or miniscule. Set scripts, cursive scripts, current scripts. A wise magician has several hands at her disposal.
Sidony had always been more enamored of the physical components of magic, the pens and pigments and pounces that encapsulated her intentions. She lost herself in cutting and carving and grinding, and it was almost an afterthought to write out the spell itself. Conversely, Benedetto purchased most of his supplies because he was so impatient to reach the final step.
He had mastered every form he attempted, and that was dangerous variety in a profession known for specialists. Simple rounded uncials, rigid and square capitals, tall exaggerated court hands, bold and italicized book hands—each and every one was at his disposal. He could scratch out light and temporary spells in rapid secretarial scripts or spend all afternoon with a quill pen writing in traditional calligraphic form.
Sidony did not know what he had chosen to write over Adrianna’s book, and she did not care. Something somber. Something fixed. A set script, no doubt, formal and slow. Perhaps something Gothic. It gave her a little more time.
But there was a shape forming at the center of the workshop. There was a shape forming and she couldn’t look at it, she couldn’t even dream of it; she feared she was already too late.
His ward burned the air between them but did not block sound or sight. Sidony wanted to beat against it, to scream at him, but she slumped to the floor instead, a careful few inches from blistering herself any further.
“It’s over,” she said quietly. “It’s a mistake.”
Benedetto hunched over his workbench, his entire body rigid. She could see the pain in his profile; the terror. Had anyone tried this before? Of course they had. There was a reason such spells weren’t taught in school.
“She’s dead.” Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat and tried again. “She’s dead and she isn’t coming back.”
He was crying, his tears splashing the page, and in the corner of Sidony’s vision the apparition wavered. Arms and legs and a dress that was slowly blossoming green. But not yet a face, not yet a face, oh everything holy please don’t plaster that little girl’s face on a parchment phantasm.
She felt it coming, panic at the back of her throat. Sidony shut her eyes and breathed deep. She tamped it down. Three years’ grief threatened to eat her alive, but she had worked hard in those three years. She had kept going.
Softly she called, “Benino.”
For the first time, he stilled.
“Benino,” she repeated. “Please listen to me.”
He would not turn, but he whispered in a sad and ragged voice, “Writing changes the world.”
Sidony hugged her arms, fighting everything in her not to look at the figure in the translucent green dress. “No spell is permanent,” she said. “The tannic acids will eat through the paper. What will you do, write her every day of your life?”
His shoulders began to shake. “You don’t want her back.”
“With all of my heart I do,” she said. “You’ve called me callous. You’ve called me cold. Did you think my pain any less than yours because I swallowed mine whole? The tragedy of being able to change the world is knowing that you can’t, not really, not when it counts. Darling, that isn’t really her. And you know it.”
His hand stretched, trembling, toward the tube of sealing wax that sagged beside his lantern. All he had to do was roll up his spell and seal it, and whatever he had written would snap into existence. An illusion in the shape of their daughter, her existence bound to a linen scroll.
“If you ever loved me,” she whispered, “do not pour that wax.”
He stiffened again, and she thought the battle lost.
But then he looked at her. Truly looked at her. And for the first time in three years, Sidony found her guard crumbling. She met his eyes without flinching, and when the tears welled up she didn’t hold them back. In the span of a few heartbeats, she tried to show him everything she’d never said.
His body shaking, Benedetto reached past the wax, to the finished scroll still humming with energy. Its seal snapped between his fingers with the finality of a cannon shot, and the ward disintegrated into so much dust. Before his nerve could leave him, Benedetto plunged his unfinished palimpsest into the closest flame. The old paper caught in a flash, the black and red ink bubbling into nothing. With it went the apparition, which tumbled to the ground as a pile of soft ash.
Sidony reached him just as he collapsed to the ground, and he buried his face against her neck.
Explicit
They held each other until the lanterns guttered, and then they began to talk.
© Copyright 2019 Samantha Mills
Samantha Mills - [BCS271 S02] - Adrianna in Pomegranate (html) Page 2