Elfhome

“This shouldn’t hurt.” Tinker assured everyone as she used a handcrafted wax and iron-filing crayon to mark out a spell on the white stone.

Merry meeped nervously at the center of the spell.

Tinker was slightly mystified by the lack of trust she’d been encountering all day. She had heard rumors that the University of Pittsburgh had set up a magic research lab near the enclaves, complete with a large-scale spell casting area. It took her several hours to track down the small building, tucked just across the Rim, down hill and out of sight of the fairground. All the university people she talked to acted like she was going to blow it up or something. They’d been reluctant to admit that the building existed at first, and then to give her permission to use it.

Really — the only thing she’d personally blown up was parts of Ginger Wine’s enclave — and she didn’t think that should be held against her.

“It took three years and ten million dollars to build!” The university officials kept repeating, although when she finally reached the building, she had no idea why. While well built with cunning use of glass, stone, ironwood and poly-resin, it was basically just one massive slab of polished white marble resting on bedrock with a glass roof overhead to keep off the rain and snow.

Yet, even Oilcan was voicing concern. “Tink, I don’t really think this is a good idea.”

“I’ve done this spell before.” Tinker paused to dredge up memories of the last time she experimented with it. If she remembered correctly, the results had been disappointingly unimpressive. “On you even.”

“Yes, I know,” Oilcan flipped his datapad so she could read his notes. They read: The little mad scientist cast this on all of us today, she’s not pleased, is all I can say. Shakalakaboomboom. “I’ve let you talk me into lots of crazy things.”

“Did it hurt?”

“No. That’s not the point. You’ve never known what this spell does.”

“Not entirely.” She had to bow to the truth of that statement. “But I think I understand it now; it’s been a very informative summer. It didn’t hurt you and it won’t hurt her.” At least she was fairly sure it wouldn’t. “I’ve cast it on Blue Sky and it didn’t hurt him.”

“It made me dizzy for the rest of the day.” Blue Sky said unhelpfully. “John told me never to let you cast spells on me again.”

“It was the two hours in the Tilt-n-Whirl that made you dizzy.” Tinker said. “And I warned you about that.”

No one looked confident about her except for Pony and Stormsong, which was why she loved them best.

“Look, it’s a divination spell.” She paused in transcribing the spell onto the floor to show Oilcan her datapad.

Her grandfather had given her the non-indexed digital copy of the Dufae Codex after teaching her the key to the ancient book’s spell lock. Most likely it was his way of sharing the family secrets with her while slowing her down with the non-searchable copy. She spent most of her childhood building indexes and cross-linking the pages, testing various spells and adding her own notes to those of Dufae. She had this spell memorized, but for everyone’s peace of mind, including her own, she was triple-checking her work.

“The spell doesn’t act on the focus at all, but detects power connected to the focus. That’s why it didn’t seem to do anything when we were kids. Blue Sky has no connections, and our link to the Stone Clan Spell Stones is active only when we cast the resonance spell.”

“Why do you think they’re linked to an active power source?” He meant the kids in general. Merry was acting as guinea pig since the others had been so traumatized by the oni.

“I’m just gathering data. It’s what a scientist does when presented with the unknown. If it would make you feel better, I can do the spell on you first, just to prove it does what I think it does.”

“Yes, it would.”

Tinker finished drawing the spell as Oilcan and Merry changed places. There several divination spells in the Codex and it delighted her to no end to see that all the others had fingering diagrams beside them. Once she had Oilcan and the kids comfortable with her casting spells on the children, she planned to cut loose.

She quadruple-checked her transcription and spoke the command word. The outer shell of the spell powered up, creating a soft glowing dome over the entire spell, enclosing Oilcan inside the spell’s influence. The first inner ring powered up, a looping function that would keep the spell active until she canceled it. The symbol flickered one after another as the spell cycled around and around. The third ring created a second dome, fractions of an inch smaller than the first, marking out the true divination section of the spell. Showy but static at the moment.

“Okay, set up resonance,” Tinker told Oilcan.

Oilcan smoothly called the stones and a bright spike appeared in the spell’s half-dome, pointing roughly south by southwest.