Celia[1]
was struggling with the leg room in this corner of the snug. Her companion,
Kathleen[2],
who was much shorter than she, fitted in nicely. She looked a little like a
squirrel in the hollow of a tree. Their pints, whose contents were the colour
of peat water, were half empty.
‘Thanks for coming
round’ said Kathleen, ‘and I’m sorry we’ve had to eat here again’
This was what
happened every time. Kathleen would invite her round for dinner, but when she
turned up at her door she would have forgotten to buy anything, or something
would have blown up in her laboratory, and so they would always end up two
doors down in The Anchor. Celia hoped
this would always happen; she guessed that her friend, a woman unpredictable to
the point of eccentricity, would be a worryingly imprecise cook. She seemed to
leave all her precision for her day job.
‘Why don’t you eat
here all the time?’ asked Celia. She had just scoffed a steak and kidney pie
whose pastry had crumbled deliciously in her mouth.
‘I don’t like to
encourage him’ said Kathleen, pointing to a tall, dark haired, broad-of-beam
man with a beard. He was picking up dirty glasses and handing them to the staff
behind the bar.
‘The publican?’ Celia
asked, baffled, ‘in what way might you be encouraging him?’
‘I think he’s got a
bit of a crush on me...’
‘Really?’ said Celia,
very excited, ‘How can you tell?’
Kathleen tilted her
head to indicate that her friend should watch.
‘Tom’ she shouted,
just loudly enough for him to hear. His ears pricked up and he made his way
over to them immediately.
‘Hi Katy’ he said,
‘are we looking after you well enough?’
Celia was fairly
certain that, despite her relative size, he hadn’t really noticed her. Kathleen
gestured towards her.
‘This is my best
friend, Celia – Celia, this is Tom’
Celia struggled up
from her awkward seating position and shook his hand. Tom smiled broadly; it
was a lovely smile. Her first impression was wholly favourable.
‘You’re the first of
Katy’s friends that she has ever brought in here – she’s really not good for
business!’
Celia wondered
whether this might be because she was her only friend; prising her out of her
laboratory was almost impossible. It was a good thing that she liked beer so
much.
‘Sorry’ said Katy,
waving out from her cubby-hole.
‘They’re a rum lot,
anyway...’ joked Celia
Tom laughed, but then
caught sight of their empty plates.
‘Hasn’t Angie comes
and taken your pudding orders?’
Both of the women
shook their heads and accompanied that with the vague noise that scrupulously
polite people make that seems to say not
that that’s a problem, of course.
‘Oh, that’s bad. Give
me your orders and you can have them on the house... And I’ll get her to bring
you some more drinks’
‘That’s very kind of
you...’ gushed Celia, Kathleen just grinned.
‘I’ll have the apple
crumble... with custard,’ she said,
‘And the same for
me... thanks a lot’ added Celia.
Tom nodded ’... good
choice’. He cleared up their plates and walked away. Celia could hardly contain
herself.
‘Free puddings and
beer!’ she exclaimed, ‘you should grab on to him like a limpet’
Kathleen looked at
her and frowned.
‘I can’t have a
boyfriend’ she said, ‘it’s not compatible with my work’
Celia nodded – this
was true, unless it was a boyfriend was happy to see his girlfriend about once
a week, and then be expected to feed her before she disappeared again.
‘Well, maybe things
will change’ said Celia, pretty certain that they wouldn’t. Still, it must be
nice to have someone who liked you.
Kathleen’s mind had
drifted in a different direction.
‘We’re wasting time
in here’ she suddenly declared, ‘I’ve got something I want to show you'
Celia ate
her cinnamon-spiced apple crumble with thick custard far more quickly than she
would have liked. She knew, however, that once her friend had fixed her mind on
something it was best to let her set the pace. Celia insisted on paying for the
beers at least and she could see that Kathleen found this too time-consuming.
Her mind was clearly focused on something beyond puddings.
Kathleen insisted that they sneak out before Tom had noticed
they were gone. She strode out through the pub exit. It took less than ten
seconds to get to her front door. At the door Kathleen had a quick scan round
and then whispered ‘Ariab…Abari…Riaba… Riaba… Ariab’ There was a moment when the body of the door shook gently
as a series of whirs and clicks reverberated through it. It sounded like a
warder opening a prison gate with a dozen different sorts of locks and keys.
Celia knew that this was Angharad’s work – somehow she had made it so that it
responded to Kathleen’s voice alone.
After the sophistication of the entrance way the room that
was revealed behind it was always a bit of a disappointment. It was small
living room with two comfortable old armchairs, a table with a utility pine
chair, and a battered blue carpet piled up with papers, books and the
occasional item of clothing. It was undoubtedly untidy but it didn’t worry
Celia unduly, it’s what you expect for a scatty academic who spent most of her
time thinking or experimenting.
She sat in the chair nearest the big bay window. There was a
lovely view down over the harbour and she watched the moonlight paint the sails
of a clipper a luminous creamy white.
Kathleen was in the kitchen for a minute and then she came
back with a glass of water.
‘Look at this’ said Kathleen, as if she was showing off a
prize museum exhibit.
Celia looked at the glass of water. It was like every other
glass of water she’d ever seen. This didn’t worry her at all; she’d been in
scenes like this before.
‘What do you see?’ asked Kathleen
‘An ordinary looking glass of water’ said Celia
Kathleen nodded, smiling broadly.
‘Exactly. Now watch…’
She sat down at the table, put the glass down on to it, and
pulled out a sheet of paper from a folder. The paper was grey and rough: it
looked like cheap lining paper for drawers, but she knew that wasn’t what it
was at all.
Kathleen picked up a grey pencil from a small box and drew a
series of parallel lines on the paper, without a ruler. It was clear that she’d
done this many times before. There were twelve vertical lines in total, six on
either side of the mid-line of the paper. The paired lines closest to the
centre were almost touching and then every matching pair after that were wider
apart, with each succeeding distance about double that of the one before. Celia
was astonished that Kathleen could draw the lines so accurately; but she knew
she shouldn’t have been. Despite her many idiosyncrasies Kathleen was very good
at her profession. Celia had never met a better alchemist.
Kathleen drew a circle at the base of the grey paper, so
that the middle two pencil lines bisected it. She was ready. She took a long
thin glass pipette out of the small box and sucked up some water out of the
glass.
‘I only need a minim’ she murmured, ‘just a smidge, not much
at all’
She placed the lip of the pipette over the circle on the
piece of paper and then, with exceptionally steady hands, she squeezed the bulb
of the pipette so that a single drop of water fell on to the paper. The drop,
turned green as it hit the paper, and reformed almost spherically on the
circle. For a moment it rolled on the spot, like a tiny pea. The air around the
sphere hummed, like a violin string played very high. The sound, and the
rolling, were momentary, however, and then the sphere began to flatted and
diffuse across the paper. It slowly formed into an almost symmetrical pattern
of branching green curves, all meeting at the midline. It seemed to grow like a
living thing.
‘What’s that?’ asked Celia, astonished by the intricacy of
the pattern
‘It’s a signature of the world’ said Kathleen, ‘every drop
of water holds it…It just requires the right matrix to draw it out’
‘It looks like the silhouette of a short, rounded tree.’
‘Yes it does, it’s what the mages call a kitriodendritic form’
All Celia could get from this is that it was something about
a tree, which just seemed to be repeating what she’d just said but in more
complicated way.
‘What does it mean?’
Celia shrugged.
‘Mean? What does your signature mean? It’s just what the world looks like in alchemical terms…’
‘Well, that’s fascinating’ said Celia, wondering what use it
was to know the chemical footprint of the Universe.
Kathleen frowned and tilted her head slightly.
‘That’s not the interesting thing…’ she said, slightly
impatiently. She pulled a thick pile of papers out of her folder and spread
them out on the table. They all had what looked like identical patterns on
them. Each one had a date scrawled in the top left hand corner.
‘I’ve been testing the rainwater from my water butt every
month for the last twenty years...’
She pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to Celia.
‘So, this is the first one…have a look at it…’
Celia studied it carefully – it looked exactly like the last
one. She looked up at Kathleen.
‘Compare it closely
with the one that we just created’
Kathleen pushed the newly made pattern across the table so
that it was under Celia’s nose. She
stared back and forth at the two patterns – all she could say for certain was
that they were different.
‘You’ll have to help me here, Katy…’
Kathleen took a note pad out of the folder and opened it to
a page that had been illustrated using several different coloured crayons. It
looked like a good attempt at art by a five year old child. Kathleen placed it
down on the table. What it was only became clear after a lot of staring. It was
a rough drawing of the tree, with bole of the tree coloured in dark green and
the main branches coloured in strict spectrum order, with two shades of red and
two shades of green. Kathleen gestured at the coloured bit of the diagram.
‘These nine branches have shown the most changes over the
years’
Kathleen began pulling out papers apparently at random and
talking very fast; Celia found it impossible to keep up. Eventually she had to
put her hand to stop her. Her voice had an edge of pleading.
‘I’m lost’ she said, ‘can you just summarise your findings,
perhaps?’
Kathleen’s face fell. It was always like this; Celia sensed
that sometimes she craved more academic company. She was gracious enough to
attempt an explanation, however. She turned to few more pages of her notebook.
‘There are four branches that changed their shape suddenly.’
She flicked back and forth from her old diagram to her new one.
‘Can you see that?’
Celia’s eyes were adjusting to the patterns.
‘Yes – they were sort-of snake like and now they are more
like… well… standard branches; but much shorter and squatter than before’
Kathleen sighed with relief; Celia knew full well that she
would have found explaining that quite a struggle.
‘…So, these changes didn’t happen at once, but for all four
in one month the branch was long and serpentine and then when I looked again it
had shrivelled to this sort-of stumpy thing. And then those stumps began to
grow…’
Celia frowned.
‘As if someone had lopped the branches off?’ she asked,
tentatively.
‘Yes, and then they had begun to regrow…’
‘And that means?’
‘Something strange has been happening to the fabric of
reality… Something causing destruction followed by regrowth’
‘And what effect will that have?’
Kathleen shrugged.
‘I’m not sure – it could be natural or if could be something
to worry about… I wish I knew’
Celia realised that Kathleen was seeking human advice not
analytical input.
‘You must bring it up at the next Council meeting’ she said,
firmly.
Kathleen sat back on her chair, relaxing for the first time
since she had brought out her strange papers. She began to tidy them away back
in her folder.
‘Thank you’ she said, ‘I definitely will’
No comments:
Post a Comment