Community of Magic Pens

by Community of Magic Pens (epub)

  “Write something,” he said. “But don’t let me see it.”

  So she wrote cherries behind her hand and passed her pen to him.

  “Mm, cherries. That’s what you wrote, right?” he asked. When she nodded, he smiled and handed her pen back. “What about something you don’t know the taste of?”

  “I think so. I wrote caviar last night and got a salty taste, but . . . ”

  “I see what you mean. It could be your imagination filling in. We need a provable test.” He looked around, then wrote Lucy’s lip gloss and licked his pen. Well.

  Their eyes met.

  He chuckled. “I could ask to borrow your lip gloss now, or . . . ”

  “There’s a more direct way,” Lucy said, “if . . . ”

  “Direct is good,” said Jeremy, and leaned in to sample the lip gloss from where she’d applied it.

  The pen-taste effect faded with the winter weather, and was completely gone once all the snow had melted. Years later, Lucy asked Jeremy if he thought anyone else had discovered it, and not said anything, just as they hadn’t said anything.

  “Probably,” he said with a grin, wrapping her in a loving hug. “But we don’t need to know.”

  Kella Campbell (she/her) can usually be found in Vancouver, Canada. She likes tea and chocolate and happily-ever-after endings, which is likely the reason why she writes mostly romance. Even when she dips into other genres, her writing nearly always has romantic and relationship elements, because love is a joyful and inspiring thing. She writes short fiction in between novels, and hopes you’ll fall in love with her rock star heroes from a fictional band called Smidge, starting with Blade in Rock Star’s Heart. Find her and her books online at kellacampbell.com.

  Writink

  Ether Nepenthes

  Meena groaned and stretched their arms over the table, resting their forehead against the flat, smooth paper of their notebook.

  “Angha, it’s not working,” they whined, their voice muffled by the paper. “It’s not working at all!”

  “Which ink are you using?” Angha peeked out from the kitchen. “Aw, you look miserable.”

  “I am.” Meena groaned again. “I so am!” They sighed and let their head roll to the side, to better pout at their cousin. “How can I hope to win the contest if I can’t write at all?”

  Angha hummed and nodded. “Aye, that sounds hard. You’ve been disqualified twice, so . . . Last chance at graduation, mh?”

  Meena nodded.

  “So, what ink are you using?”

  Meena sat up in their chair with a grunt and glared at their pen. The ink cartridge was glowing a faint blue, with traces of green, red, and orange. “Think that’s, err . . . ‘Harmony and Peace’?” They shrugged. “But I tried every single one I had, so—like—‘Inspiration’ didn’t work either. ‘Focus’, ‘Endurance’ . . . ” They shook their head. “Maybe it’s better to accept my fate. Who needs to prove Headmistress Charbon wrong, anyway, eh?” They let go of the pen and sank back into their chair. “Maybe I’ll just . . . switch to a business major . . . ”

  Angha gave a weak chuckle. “Aye, like that’s ever going to happen. Give it another go, friend-o. I know you’ve got this.”

  The streetlights bathed their bedroom in orange and purple when Meena eventually withdrew for the night. They crumpled on their bed, letting the pen and notebook fall on the other pillow. For a while, they covered their eyes with their arm and tried not to think. The frustration was palpable—tension gripping at their limbs, a weight on their chest, a dryness at the back of their throat. They sighed, rolled over, and held the notebook in the orange glow of the nearest streetlight. The day’s attempts at starting their submission to the Twenty-Seventh Annual Aygosi College Short Story Competition shimmered in the light, each a different hue—each worse than the previous, if Meena were to judge.

  The day the Alchemist of Tivotri woke up without zer headscarf— wait would it be a headscarf? Ugh that’s a worldbuilding thing, I’ll just call it that for now— no, pen, don’t write my— ugh nevermind— so— headscarf, ze— err— ze knew the day wouldn’t— or did ze not know what else the day would bring? Argh nevermind I don’t even know what it’s meant to bring myself—

  Once, a long time ago, lived a poor and hard-working Scrivener who was poor and hard-worked every day in a conventionally European city because there was no Middle Age anywhere else apparently— I mean I could just— OK so, once a long time ago, lived a poor and hard-working Scrivener— no, a hard-working Scrivener, period, we’re going to want to go full utopia here— and they lived in— mmh— the great Madinat Al-Basatin— and it was a place of great gardens and— I suppose one day— something . . .  happened . . . Ugh!

  “Why is this pen not working,” exclaimed Lady Silvia, the magical meteorologist, exclamation point. Or not. She was looking at the forecast panel— board? Board— at the heart of the— centre of the great plaza. At the heart of the city. Which should have read ‘it shall rain in City this morning’, but which was reading, ‘it shall sun— be sunny, it shall be sunny in City this morning’. But as the heavy drops falling on her umbralle— umbrella! Please also correct my dyslexia, pen, it’ll save time in editing— oh no wait it’s time for lunch— I’ll get back to it after lunch, maybe then I’ll know why her pen’s not working because mine certainly is, stop writing my comments! Argh, where’s the manu—

  Meena sighed and dropped the notebook at their side, their hand still in the air. The meteorologist one was, by far, the most original and thus the least terrible of the three, except that Meena had no idea who Lady Silvia was, why her pen was not working, or how it even worked in the first place. What they knew was that the power of their pen depended on its ink, and how well the pen ‘resonated’ with its user.

  Well, it didn’t resonate with Meena, that was for sure.

  The same way their classmate could make a fortune with striking watercolours which came to life at the blink of an eye, Meena had hoped that investing in a high-quality magically-enhanced tool would help.

  “You still have to put in the work,” their classmate had said. Meena had then remembered why the two of them didn’t talk.

  What sort of non-empathetic answer was that, even? As if Meena hadn’t spent the entire afternoon, the whole six hours, glaring at the paper. As if they hadn’t been banging their head against the wall for literal ages.

  Meena curled their fingers into a fist and drummed at their forehead slowly. There was no point in losing even more sleep over it; with yet another sigh, they snapped their fingers and, as the shutters rolled down over the windows, changed into their pyjamas.

  In the half-dark of their bedroom, the magic ink still glowed softly. Meena buried the notebook under their pillow and did their best to think about something else.

  The Alchemist of Tivotri was pouring Lady Silvia, the magical meteorologist, tea in a modest set of earthenware, golden liquid dripping from on high— Or was it Lady Silvia who was being mother, serving zhem in fine china, the tea a dark, rich colour?

  Meena wasn’t quite sure. To their left, the hard-working Scrivener was hard at work, surrounded by hills, mounds, and valleys of empty cups of all kinds. A black cat was purring from her observation post up on a shelf, and Meena knew that her name was Headmistress Charbon.

  “Is this some sort of weird dream?” they asked. Everything was wrapped in cotton wool, soft and sweet, but not quite real.

  Lady Silvia opened her mouth, but no sound came; the Alchemist smiled, but zher figure faded at the edges.

  “Will you please all shut up? I am trying to work here.”

  The Scrivener hadn’t looked up, but Meena clearly remembered not describing hair that was the same as theirs. Black and thick, frizzy when it rained. The Scrivener also had brown skin, and a fidget cube in their free hand . . .

  “So I am in a weird dream.” Meena made a face. They were now sitting in something that looked like a white iron-wrought garden seat, but felt like
a rare wooden, velvet-cushioned armchair. The cup they were holding was either brown glazed earthenware or delicately painted china; the tea either clear and steamy, or brown with a dash of milk. It changed by the second, by the thought, or the blink of the eye.

  They put the cup back, or folded their hands on their lap, or leaned back into their chair— Or were they letting out a breath they hadn’t known they were holding?

  They sipped the tea. It tasted like nothingness; definitely a dream.

  “So, how do I wake up?” they asked. “I’ve got work to do.”

  “You’re not the only one.” The Scrivener’s quill was scratching across the paper furiously. “So much work! So little time! You need to sleep more.”

  “What?”

  “So I can work more!”

  “That . . . Okay,” Meena said, their eyes wide, and they decided to turn back to the other two.

  The Alchemist and Lady Silvia were still so very busy pouring tea for each other, blurry at the edges in pastel colours. It reminded Meena of a tarot card—the fourteenth major arcana, called ‘Temperance’ in most traditions, and conventionally represented by someone pouring water between two cups. Harmony, balance, alchemy . . .

  “Does that mean I should switch to magic again? I don’t—I don’t want to be a witchcraft major; that’s just creepy.” They shook their head and the whole scene shook too. “I don’t want to—”

  A blink and suddenly they were in a library—surrounded by columns and columns and columns of books, towering over the hard-working Scrivener.

  “There’s not enough time!” the Scrivener cried out, one hand grabbing a fistful of hair, the other tensed on the quill. “There’s not enough time! And when there’s enough time, there’s not enough work!”

  The towers of books started crumbling, plot points and narrative arcs unfolding all around them. In the chaos of dramatic reveals, bullet lists and tropes let loose, Meena found themself right next to the Scrivener. They were still crying out and writing furiously at once.

  “We are all doomed, doomed, doomed! We will never reach the ink-spring from which the words freely pour! We have been cast away, into the fog, banging our head against the writer’s wall!”

  “It’s called writer’s block,” Meena shouted over the rumble. “It’s not— It’s not—”

  But all the books, volumes, tomes, anthologies and collected works were sweeping down—and then back up, level rising, threatening to drown the two of them. Somewhere, the Archivist and Lady Silvia were drowning, too, suffocating in the pool of spilled ink Meena had failed to transmute into proper stories.

  It was all Meena’s fault, and there was no escape.

  Meena awoke with a gasp, their heart drumming in their ears and their hand already on the light switch. Only once their breathing smoothed and their heartbeat quieted did they realise how warm, sweaty, and thirsty they felt. They switched off their nightlight and snapped the shutters open again; outside, the sky was still a deep, nightly red above the city lights. They opened the window and, thanks to the noise-cancelling and pollution-cleansing filters, enjoyed the illusion of a breeze as they gulped from their water bottle.

  They needed a break. Too bad for the contest and the Headmistress, but no creative pursuit should give anyone stress nightmares. At least they hadn’t been screaming, since Angha hadn’t come to check on them.

  They yawned and stretched. Time to switch off the alarm clock and sleep in. They put pen and notebook away in a drawer of their desk, and went back to bed.

  “Are you reading about gay Elves again?” Angha’s voice betrayed her amusement.

  Meena looked up from the seventeenth chapter of Much Ado About Shiny Rings currently open on their ereader. “I’ll have you know that Lord Silvertears is my actual father who sired me for real and everything,” they said, in the most mock-serious tone they could muster.

  Angha frowned. “Who’s that one again?”

  Meena groaned and sat up on the couch. “I told you so many times, he’s the grouchy—”

  “Oh! The jeweller?” Angha took a seat next to them, the delicate fragrance of lavender steaming from her mug.

  “No, that’s his hate-sex buddy. He’s the ex-bard. The war criminal.”

  “They’re all war criminals, sweetie.”

  “You do have a point and I elect not to care about it,” Meena deadpanned, and then slouched back into the couch and their book.

  Angha sipped her tea. Lord Silvertears was debating whether to kiss or punch his nemesis for the fourth time in the same scene when she asked, “So you are done with your story, then? For the contest?”

  Meena switched off the ereader and scooped up a pillow to hide their face.

  “I’ll take that as a no.” Angha sipped her tea again. “Isn’t the deadline—”

  “I’m living behind this pillow now, so please let me enjoy the rest of my Charbon-free days in peace,” Meena supplicated from below the pillow. “I hate writing, I’m never ever doing it again, I should never have done it. I’m taking that pen back. Notebook, too. I’m giving all my worldly possessions to charity and starting a new life as a hermit in the woods!”

  “Okay.” Angha hummed. “Living off berries and your undying love for grouchy, old, supernatural fictional characters? Heating your little hut with animal dung? Never talking to a human being ever again?”

  Meena raised the cushion slightly. “Yes. Especially that last part. That’s the dream. Nobody, never again— Not even you!”

  Angha gently flicked at their ankle and shook her head with a smile, but said nothing more. She returned to her tea, scrolling down her phone, and Meena hugged the cushion, looking at the ceiling. The ambience manager was on the ‘early spring’ setting, even though it was the dead of summer and the energy bills their highest expense. Renewable energy was nice, Meena thought. It allowed them to be serenaded by birdsong coming off the hidden speakers in the wall, the bubbling of a water stream projected on the carpet, and the whispers of the wind in a ‘faraway copse of golden-green trees’, as the manual said.

  If even the technical manual of their ambience manager sounded better than their writing . . . Meena sighed. Beyond graduation and the Headmistress’s approval, they would have loved to get their hands on that sweet, sweet contest prize money. And they did like their ideas and their characters, all of them, but the words . . . were not flowing. Writing was simply not happening. The magic pen hadn’t helped; neither had pulling their hair over it for weeks and weeks.

  “Oooh, did you see this?” Angha asked, shoving her phone in Meena’s face.

  “Uh, what?” They blinked and pushed the screen away.

  “It’s an interview! From that—‘Echoes of Time’, that’s one hell of an interesting pen name—the person who wrote Much Ado?”

  Angha handed Meena the phone again, but they shook their head. “No, if it’s their last one, I’ve probably read it. I’ve read them all. The one where they say they only write for fun and if it isn’t fun, they put it aside and nothing’s more important than their well-being and stuff like that?”

  Angha hummed.

  “Yeah, I’ve read it.” Meena sighed and leaned back on the couch. “Bet they didn’t have to deal with mandatory contests and Headmistresses and . . . ” Their voice trailed off.

  Angha pursed her lips. “Well, have you tried?”

  “Tried what?”

  “Writing for fun?”

  “You mean, like fanfiction?”

  “Not necessarily— Write something that makes you happy. With that magic pen of yours. There’s an ink for that, too, I think.”

  Meena sat back up. “There is?”

  “Yes! I think it’s called something silly, like ‘Rainbows and Sparkles’.” Angha tapped at their phone. “Yep, here it is, promising you ‘joy and optimism’ in ‘a cheerful act of written creativity’.” She giggled. “Sounds like just what you need.”

  Meena stared at the page, and the page stared back. They had
cleaned off their desk for this, rearranged their room lighting, descaled their teapot and remade their bullet journal writing layout, although the last two probably counted as procrastination. Either way, they were ready. They felt ready.

  In the background, the ambience manager was playing a soothing mix of heavy rain, thunder and fireplace noises, with a picture of mountains as seen through a cottage window projected on the wall. The faint scent of overly sweet mint tea rose along with the steam from Meena’s cat-shaped cup.

  They took the cap off their pen; it glowed a bright pink. They licked their lips and leaned back on their chair as they brought their hands to a steeple under their chin.

  Something fun . . . Something that brought them joy . . .

  They took a deep breath; as soon as they opened their mouth, the pen rose and scribbled away.

  Stories, they started hesitantly, are meant to— many things, among which— bring us joy. Thus thought Ename, Scrivener of the Madinat Al-Basatin. Mmh. “Your pen does not work, Lady Silvia, because you are so frustrated— irritated— its resonance cannot— it cannot echo the beat of your thoughts if you do not listen to them yourself.” Yes, that works! That could be why her pen wasn’t working, she needs to be more in tune with her thoughts. That’s why she’s gone to the Scrivener for help. OK, I got my ending, now, how does the Alchemist fit into this? Is zhe the one who made the pen? Mmh, I’ll keep that for later, and focus on what I know for now. So. As the last light of the day shone on the crimson city walls, bathing Al-Basatin in an ochre hue, Lady Silvia strode towards the Scrivener’s office, her assistant in tow . . .

  When Angha peeked in, two hours later, Meena’s tea had gone cold, but they hadn’t even noticed. They were now lying on their bed, their face mirroring the characters’ emotions, their hands gesturing wildly. Angha smiled and shook her head, closing the door behind her. Dinner could wait; it was good to see Meena so enthused in their craft. She was already looking forward to ordering fancy take-away to celebrate. After all, who cared about the end result, as long as one enjoyed the process? Wasn’t that victory on its own already?