The Crimson Inkwell

by Kenneth A Baldwin

  “How did you do it?”

  “How’d I do what? Scone?” he asked, pouring me some tea. Why was everyone always trying to make me eat?

  “How did you convince Mr. Bradford to dress up like a knight and rob a bank? What tremendous risk! He was the President of the railway station. He’s lost everything.” I sat down, but I didn’t take a scone.

  “You mean to ask, how did you get Mr. Bradford to rob a bank?” he said, putting down the magazine.

  “Oh, come on. Knock it off already. Was it the hypnotist? Or perhaps it was a type of drug? Or was it something darker, like blackmail?”

  “I’ve never met Mr. Bradford in my life,” he insisted.

  “Then how did he know what I scribbled down on that little piece of paper?” Bram was testing my patience. I didn’t believe his excuses for a second, yet I answered my own question with a second. How did Bram know what I wrote down on that piece of paper? I took a breath and collected myself. “I understand. I’m grateful for the story, and I wouldn’t want you to feel like I would rat you out. If it is blackmail, and I were you, I doubt I would go blabbing about it either.”

  “It wasn’t blackmail,” he replied, coyly taking a sip from his teacup.

  “It’s just, well, I never meant for you to do such a thing. I wanted a story, I know, but I never thought that you might go so far as to commit a crime to ensure I had one,” I said.

  “I didn’t think this first episode would convince you,” he responded. “In fact, I was quite sure. You are sucked so far into the brick and mortar of this city that you could be, and indeed are, a foot away from magic and you still don’t recognize it.”

  “There is no such thing as magic!” I cried more loudly than I intended. I sounded like a child throwing a tantrum. There couldn’t be magic. I wouldn’t believe it, not in a world where a simple fever could take my father from me.

  “Said the woman who has experienced one of the most bizarre coincidences of the century, perhaps the millennium. How do you explain the bank robbery, then?”

  “Would you drop the mystical act already? I know that you had something to do with it, and I’m grateful. I just wanted to tell you that type of thing won’t be necessary.”

  “Don’t be blind, Luella!”

  My mouth dropped open, and I felt the uncomfortable, eerie feeling I had experienced when he revealed my pen name from the night before. “How did you know my name?” The nerve of this man! How dare he collect bits of my private life in such a way. “Have you been stalking me? I have friends in the police force, and I have half a mind to—”

  “The police force, there! Wake up! Admit that this type of thing is possible. Admit that, in the absence of a logical solution, your writing last night might just be creating an extralogical one. You wrote an insane story with the pen, ink, and paper. The story turned to life, just as I’ve seen it do before.”

  I stood up. It was a mistake coming here. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping to gain. An explanation? Closure? “You and I are alike, aren’t we?” I said. “We both peddle outlandish stories. I just write mine down, and you try to take in whatever sap will listen. I can’t believe I fell for such a thing.” I turned to make my way out.

  “Heavens above, woman! You are a writer with no explanations. You just report and don’t digest! Is that all you want from your career? Explain to me the Steely-Eyed Detective and his Fog Man then.”

  I froze.

  “I imagine this man to be of a certain integrity,” he went on. “After all, you insisted it was an official police report from which you derived your information. So, he must have been either a drunk or a man of unshakable conviction to report something he could not explain and risk the ridicule that came with it.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked facing him.

  “Because years ago, I also saw something I couldn’t explain,” he said with a grim smile. “So, consider your detective, and not in that womanly, admiring way I’m afraid you’ve already been swept up in. Haven’t you paused to ask yourself what he really saw in that alleyway?”

  My limbs were losing their weight. I could feel my head begin to spin. “It was a man in the fog.”

  “No. It wasn’t. This was a sober, resolute policeman. He’s seen men in the fog before. This was different.”

  Why hadn’t I bothered to consider this before? What had I been writing on? I slumped back into my chair.

  “A trick in the lamp light,” I offered.

  “Wrong again. That doesn’t explain the woman screaming, and it doesn’t explain the fog vanishing in a matter of seconds.”

  “A gust of wind… maybe the woman was the murderer trying to throw him off the scent…”

  “It’s much more disappointing than that, Luella. It was a phantom,” he said, clutching both sides of the table to lean over toward me and drive his point home.

  Magic? I could not doubt Edward. The more I knew him, the more I was convinced nothing could persuade me that he was dishonest, fanciful, or vain. Bram might make up stories to get his way. Edward, though, I could rely on for the truth and truth only. If he saw a fogman, then how could I discredit him?

  “Can you honestly tell me you haven’t felt the magic since you used it the other night? Has the pen not called to you?” he continued, leaning toward me, closing in.

  My heart quickened. My thoughts slowed down, and I felt like my mind was racing through a vacuum, working a mile a minute but with nothing to show for it. I tried going down a hundred different branches, pushing logic for another explanation, only to end up back at the awesome, terrifying word: magic. I thought about Edward and the dream I had where my father was an assailant. His question conjured up, for some reason I couldn’t explain, my recent outbreak of jealousy and even my flare of annoyance toward Mrs. Crow for asking simple questions. These feelings had been so unlike me. Was I just losing my temper, or was it something more?

  “Even if the fogman was a real phantom,” I stuttered, “that doesn’t prove anything about your pen.”

  “And it never will prove anything. But that’s the point of magic,” he said, settling back into his chair. “If the phantom is real, you can conclude that there are other phenomena out there for which there is no real explanation. Many of these can be explained away by our own ignorance, and someone with a true scientific background could illuminate their methods. But, there are still whole categories of irregularities that can’t be explained by the scientists either. One example might be writing something down on a piece of paper and burning it, only to see those very words come to pass on an unwitting stranger.”

  “But how am I supposed to differentiate?” It was a sweet nectar to drink, and I thought it was all too easy to get caught up in something like this. Soon, I’d jump at every shadow, and everything I couldn’t explain would be magic to me. That was no fit way to live.

  “Like I told you,” he responded, “magic has all kinds of camouflage. But it is at least somewhat replicable.” He looked so honest standing there between the shafts of light coming from outside. He had this attractive, contagious smile on his lips. “You haven’t touched your scone.”

  My mind was still spinning. I wanted to scream, or faint, or something. Magic? Real? If it was true, I was sitting with the owner of a pen that could make any story come true, any of my stories come true.

  “You said there were limitations on the pen?” I asked.

  “Oh yes,” he replied. “Remember, magic is in a war of self-preservation. It works so as not to arouse suspicion. From what I’ve been able to uncover, it won’t respond to attempts to influence your personal life directly. One man tried to use it once to meld his wife and his mistress into one person, poor sap.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing or maybe something. His wife met the mistress by chance while chatting in a cafe. She left him the next morning.”

  “A chance encounter,” I said.

  “Possibly.” He smiled like a scientist explaining
a discovery. Camouflage.

  “Well, what other limitations then?”

  “I’ve only been able to deduce a few for this specific artifact. It follows that the pen is very unlikely to create things that would be out of place for our time, at least in bringing things from a different reality or from the future. Your knights in shining armor, for example, worked I think because our era is still familiar with those stories. After all, horses are very commonplace, and most have us have seen a suit of armor on display somewhere. It’d be unlikely, though, for us to convince the magic to conjure up a fire breathing dragon. It’d be too ostentatious, draw too much attention.”

  “But you think that, so long as we are writing surprising, albeit possible events, they just happen to materialize?”

  “Think of it this way,” he suggested. “Maybe the pen is a little window to the future and just guides your hand to write whatever is just about to happen.”

  Thinking of magic like this, scientifically, well-studied, made it feel so much tidier and more comfortable. It was also a major relief to consider maybe the world didn’t react to the magic of the pen, and rather the pen foresaw details about the future. If the magic were real, I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty about the policeman who got cut by a sword taking down the knight robbers. How was I supposed to know they’d actually materialize?

  “That seems unlikely,” I replied. “You mean to suggest that Mr. Bradford may have been planning on robbing a bank in full armor even on his own accord?”

  He picked up a glass of water and a scone and sauntered over to the nearly dead potted plant by the entry flap. “I’d be inclined to agree with you, except that I’ve been noticing not a few strange things happening lately. Your detective’s fogman is only a small example. Have you had any strange dreams lately? I know I have.” He buried a scone somewhere in the pot and gazed intently at the plant’s branches. I did not feel comfortable discussing my dreams with him. Even if he was right.

  “But if the pen can’t directly influence your own world, it’s practically useless,” I said.

  “Except to someone like a writer of incredible non-fiction.” He smiled and came back to the table. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  If he was right, this pen could be my ticket to something so much more than writing whatever stories I could glean from the police department. It could be my ticket to the Golden Inkwell. On any miraculous story, we’d be first to print while other publications scrambled to get their reporters mobilized.

  The freedom swelled inside of me. I could write for anyone. I could leave Byron’s little magazine and go somewhere much larger. I could grant my sister’s desire and not marry him. I didn’t have to marry anybody if I didn’t want to. I looked across the table. Bram, uniquely handsome as always, looked at me intently with his honey-tinted eyes. He looked manly and dangerous sitting there. What must he have sacrificed to find this artifact? He said his comrades had died in its pursuit. What else had he gone through?

  There was more to this nomadic carnival worker than met the eye. I thought I could see something deeper in his face, a strange, enchanted depth in his very movements.

  “I’d love a cup of tea,” I said, unable to hide the wide smile forming on my face. “We have work to do.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  By the River

  BRAM INSISTED WE take a walk to talk it over. Both of us were convinced that just improvising and writing whatever came to mind was likely not the best course of action, just in case the pen did dictate reality and not vice versa. After all, Mr. Bradford was a ruined man. I’m sure he would insist that he was under some type of trance or experiencing the effects of a drug or fever, but even if he managed to escape a significant prison sentence, he’d never escape the reputation of being the armor-clad bank robber.

  I felt no small measure of guilt knowing this. But, as I had conceded before, it was like tossing an apple from a second story window, believing no one was below. How could I have known the pen would work? What’s more, I never named Mr. Bradford in my description. I just wrote words down on a piece of paper using nondescript pronouns. Mr. Bradford surely still had his agency.

  It also helped that Mr. Bradford had already earned himself a reputation for being a menace. Women were never eager to be alone with him, and men thought he had a funny way of conducting his affairs. There was never any type of formal accusation made against him, but he managed to find himself in the middle of more than one suddenly disrupted engagement and a couple of full-fledged marriages.

  No matter. Our quest was straightforward. I simply had to come up with another story to use as an experiment. If I could find a way to produce stories consistently that enthralled readers without creating situations that made people go to jail, then I’d be in business, likely as the most widely read writer in England.

  Bram didn’t seem as enthused as I was.

  “You’re telling me that you wield an immense power like this and you want to make trifling stories that don’t make any difference?” he asked. He peered at me over his shoulder. We sat side by side near the river, under a wide linden tree. His pointer jogged along the riverbank chasing ducks.

  “Well, I can’t very well go about ruining people’s lives in good conscience, now can I?” I retorted.

  “You don’t know them,” he continued. “Why should you care what happens to them?”

  “Bram, you are being entirely immoral and unethical!”

  “I’m just thinking in your best interest. Take this proposed one here,” he said, holding up a scrap we had scribbled on with a less magical pen. “It’s all well and good for this man’s house to be invaded by hundreds of frogs, but if another paper prints about an actually gripping murder, there’s no way you’ll outsell them.”

  “I disagree,” I said haughtily. “Would you really rather read about boring old murder more than such a peculiar circumstance as a house filled with frogs?”

  “The French will take it as a slight,” he said. I burst out in a fit of laughter. My cheeks hurt from smiling so widely, and my diaphragm, out of practice, ached. Bram looked at me and rolled his eyes, trying to suppress a smile of his own. His comment started something inside of me. I couldn’t remember the last time I laughed like this. Bram’s dog sauntered over, wet from the river, and shook out its coat. The water sprayed all over me.

  I laid back on the grass and tried to slow down my breathing, looking up at the many branches, mostly bare. The day was uncommonly warm for the time of year. The grass, turning yellow now, felt cool under me.

  The laughter slowly subsided, replaced with a euphoric glow. I felt a strong connection to the man sitting next to me, though we had only met once before. He offered me so much without thought of return. He had yet to give me any reason to fear harm from him, except for one thing.

  “How did you know my name?” I asked, pulling myself up onto an elbow. He watched the water in the river for some time before responding.

  “I don’t know if I want to tell you,” he said.

  “Don’t you think it’s a breach of trust? If you have some means of gathering information about me, I feel that I deserve to know it. If we’re going to embark on this… well, whatever this is… together.”

  “You’re going to have to accept that there are things you can’t know about me.” He tossed a bit of grass he’d been tying into a knot away from him and picked at another. “Besides, I’m not sure you’ll believe me.”

  “More magic?” I asked, eyes bright with wonder, ready to believe almost anything fantastical.

  “Not magic. At least, not the magic you’re thinking about,” he said, with a smile to himself. His smile was charming in an interesting, unique way.

  “Well then?”

  “I didn’t know your name the first time we met.”

  “So, you learned it, but how?”

  He drew a breath in. “After seeing you write something the other night, I was determined to see how the pen responded. I a
ssumed you wrote something adequately bizarre, and I was, in no small way, curious. After your Steely Detective story, which I found deeply entertaining, I wanted to see what you would whip up, creativity unleashed.”

  “Why thank you,” I chimed with a gracious and theatrical bow. What was I? Drunk?

  “I wasn’t quite sure how it would work, so I headed down to the police station to laze about and see if I could pick up any news about it there. By the time I got there, the Sergeant and a man I could only describe as steely-eyed,” here, he gave me a playful wink, “were standing over a very groggy version of you, sitting collapsed on a chair. They continued to call your name to get you to come to, muttering something about the shock being too great. Well, seeing you like that, I have to confess I felt a twang of worry, so I grabbed a neglected coat and hat, donned them, and stuck around, posing as a copper to ensure you hadn’t died of shock.”

  “How very chivalrous of you!” I jabbed. “Watching from afar to see if a woman sees her way through an episode.”

  “Oh, come off it. There was enough chivalry over by you to last you a lifetime over. Once you came to, you kept going on in this dazed sort of way about armored knights and bank robbers. I dropped off my coat and hat at the front desk, told the chap not to work too hard, and made my merry way out the door.”

  “So, you were spying on me,” I said.

  “I just went to the police station to hear a story, same as you,” he replied. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “It’s just very convenient, don’t you think, that you happen to be at the right time and place to learn so much about me.” I was baiting him. I was acting like a teenager.

  “And how else do you propose I get such information?”

  “The old-fashioned way. You ask me. We can spend time together, and you get to know me.”