Wood Sprites

They allowed themselves to be shooed to the formal living room, where a thronelike chair had been set before a smoky-gray backdrop. The photographer eyed them with surprise.

“Elves? Are you sure you two are at the right party?”

Jillian waved off the comment. “We’re just killing time until the next Shutdown. Then we’re heading to Elfhome.”

Louise shivered as the words raised the hair on the back of her neck.

11: Recipe For Disaster

Louise couldn’t shake the feeling of impending disaster all the next day. While she crawled through the Internet, looking for some hint that someone had created a magic generator, Jillian worked on translating the Dufae Codex.

To their dismay, the first few pages of the codex were incomprehensible. The author seemed to be making shorthand notes with only the minimum explanations. It was only when she reached the sixth page that she found a solid piece of translatable text.

“Finally!” Jillian cried. “I should have just skipped ahead to this.”

“Another dead end. Literally.” Louise stared at the police report detailing the death of the scientist she’d been researching. Or at least, the police were assuming he’d been murdered, as they hadn’t found enough of him to verify it.

“This is what page six says.” Jillian scrolled back to read her translated text.

“My theories are correct and incorrect. Yes, because the landmasses are identical on both worlds, finding the mirror site of our most powerful fiutana was as simple as following a map. Yes, power does leak through fissures between worlds at sites of fiutana. It is impossible, however, to set up a reliable resonance to the Spell Stones, which leaves me woefully unprotected. Also the magic seems, for lack of a better word, dirty. Even fairly simple spells have unpredictable results. Three different sites have produced the same failures. If I’m to stay on Earth, I will have to find a way to purify the magic. If I fail, I will need to return home. I should plan carefully, though, before returning. Who can I trust with this? How do I protect those I love when I do not know who is friend and who is foe?”

It was a disquieting echo to Louise’s findings. “So the first five pages are test results?”

Jillian scrolled back through the original text. “Yeah, I think you’re right. He says here that ‘three different sites have produced the same failures.’ Each of these pages has mystery words that don’t repeat, and three words that do. I’m betting the repeated words are the locations, and the nonrepeating are the spells he’s measuring. The numbers under them indicate the variation in the results.”

“So this codex is a record of his experiments in magic.”

Jillian flicked the digital pages. “I wonder how many years he was here on Earth before he was killed. There are hundreds of pages here.”

Louise considered her own research. “If we could find one of these fissures, then we wouldn’t need a generator. The way he said ‘three different sites’ seems to indicate they’re fairly common. I wonder if he included a map.”

“I’ll check.” Jillian started to scan quickly through the pages.

Almost immediately, though, Louise realized the mistake in her logic. “Dufae was in France and he died in 1792. Windwolf didn’t colonize Westernlands until 1930. That’s the whole point of him being the viceroy; he was the only domana on the continent when Pittsburgh was first transported to Elfhome. Dufae’s map would only show the fiutana in Easternlands.”

“Yeah, but there could be fissures here in North America. If they were common in Europe, they’re probably common all over the world. If we figure out the conditions that form the fissures by studying Dufae’s European map, we might be able to predict where they would appear in the United States.”

“Dufae said the magic is dirty.”

“One.” Jillian held up a finger. “There are a thousand more pages to his codex.” She held up a second finger. “Two. He didn’t go back to Elfhome.”

“So he figured out how to clean the magic?”

“I’m figuring that’s what this is all about.” Jillian held up her tablet and showed off a sketch of some odd-looking device. “This is page twelve.”

* * *

Louise continued to wade through a flood of information on Leonardo’s hyperphase gate. Every time she thought she was getting close to an answer, the information trail would stop. The last one filled her with so much uneasiness that she got up to pace.

“What?” Jillian asked.

“I have a weird feeling,” Louise said. “Like we’re doing something bad.”

Jillian snorted. “We’re always doing something that other people think is bad. Everyone wants us to ‘be good,’ and what they really mean is ‘make it easy for them’ and has nothing to do with ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ Like talking in the library. If no one is trying to get work done, why is it still bad? Because Miss Jenkins believes in learned behavior instead of rational thought. What we should be taught is compassionate response.”