Arcane Wisdome

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  “Thanks,” said Tom automatically, adjusting the speed of the scrolling display.

  Watching the number slide by in clusters, Lucy once again wondered why Tom had asked her to help them.

  8

  “So what do you make of it? — those number-groups, I mean?" Ben asked Lucy as he walked along beside her; they lived two blocks apart, so his company wasn’t all that unexpected since it was dusk and her dad and Melinda didn’t like her being out alone after sunset.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  “There seems to be something to them — it feels like there ought to be — but I can’t figure out what." He glanced at her, then looked down Jefferson Avenue; most of the stores had turned on their lights, making the three-block-long shopping area glaringly bright. “You want to pick up a brownie at Francine’s?" It was the best bakery in the neighborhood.

  “Not tonight,” Lucy said. “My ... my folks are expecting me." A twinge of guilt went through her at being out so late and not calling, but she couldn’t bring herself to say so.

  “Okay,” said Ben, then, after going a dozen steps in silence, he asked, “Do you mind if I give you a call if I come up with anything on the Geeks’ problem? I’d want to run it by you before approaching them.”

  Lucy was surprised at his remark. “Sure. Okay. Why?”

  “You know what they’re like." Ben looked a little uneasy, and explained. “Anything that can’t be reduced to a mathematical formula doesn’t get their attention.”

  “I know,” Lucy responded, glad that Ben shared her reservations. “But they asked you to help them, didn’t they? That means you have understanding they need, whether they like to admit it or not.”

  “Because of what I know about games,” Ben said without a hint of bragging. “And a part of games, especially the interactive ones, is psychology, not math." He let this sink in. “So would you mind if I run anything I come up past you before I submit it to them?”

  “I probably won’t mind, unless it’s really ozwonked. Why?”

  He was ready with an answer. “You’re not a full-fledged Gothic Geek, but you know them better than I do. You can see things the way they do, and you have enough in common with them that they accept what you tell them. You know how to ... to present any theories or guesses I might come up with. They know you and they trust what you tell them. You’re a lot more likely to get through to them than I am. I think you could help me to explain myself in a way they’ll listen to — you know?”

  She did know. “Yeah.”

  “And you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt — they won’t." He didn’t sound upset by this, but there was resignation in his tone.

  “Probably not,” Lucy allowed.

  They were almost to Francine’s, and the sidewalk was busier.

  “Sure you don’t want to change your mind?" Ben asked, cocking his head in the direction of the bakery door; the delicious smell of vanilla, chocolate, and baking bread were tempting.

  “I’d like to, but I haven’t had dinner yet." She found herself smiling. “If it weren’t so late — ” She finished with a shrug.

  “Some other time, then?”

  Before she could think of an excuse not to accept, Lucy heard herself say, “Yeah. Some other time.”

  * * *

  “Where have you been?" Lucy’s father demanded as she came in the back door. He was still wearing a suit and tie and he looked worn out. His voice was raspy, and he moved as if his feet hurt. The vertical line between his brows was pronounced, revealing his worry.

  Behind him in the kitchen, Melinda was busy stacking dishes. For once, she didn’t look comfortable or elegant, just harried and stressed. “The twins said you weren’t here when they called.”

  “I’ve been at Tom Foster’s place, with the Geeks, like I told you,” said Lucy, bristling at his manner. “You were out. The twins were out. I left a note.”

  “We saw it,” said her father.

  “And you said you would call if you were going to be later than seven-thirty,” Lucy challenged.

  “We were in a meeting. We couldn’t call." The sharpness went from his voice. “We were worried.”

  “You could have called the Fosters when you got in,” said Lucy, determined not to let him off the hook too easily.

  “What good would that have done if you were out in their garage with the rest of them? And you were in the garage, weren’t you? Brian Foster never intrudes on Tom’s work." He made a visible effort to calm down. “I’m glad you left the note, but you should have called.”

  “Hey, dad, I don’t have a cell phone yet, remember?" Lucy said. “Not til I’m sixteen.”

  “There are phones you could have used,” he father said.

  “But no one was here to answer if I had called, was there?" She clicked her tongue. “Not even the twins." She looked around with feigned anxiety. “By the way, where are they?”

  “They’re at the Conklins; we asked Dan and Meredith to pick them up for us,” said her father impatiently. “They’ll be back shortly.”

  “But how long have you been home?" Lucy asked, aware that her dad hadn’t changed into his sweats, as he usually did in the evening.

  “We’ve been here about forty minutes,” he told her, doing his best not to be dragged into more wrangling.

  “So I would have had to have left you another message, on the phone, telling you what I’d already written in my note. What good would that have been? We’re all late tonight,” Lucy inquired in what she hoped was a reasonable tone, containing her indignation at all these complaints. She had to admit that he had a point, but so did she.

  “You’re supposed to call if you’re going to be out after eight-thirty,” her dad said stubbornly.

  “It’s almost nine, and it’s a school night,” said Melinda with none of the calm understanding she usually showed, which surprised Lucy. “You know that we worry about you.”

  Lucy flung up her hands in mock surrender. “Okay. I’m sorry." She had lost what appetite she had and now wanted nothing more than to go to her room and do her homework. Right now the last thing she wanted was to get into an argument. At times like these, she found studying soothing.

  “You need to eat,” said Melinda.

  “I had something with the Geeks." It wasn’t true, but she had done so in the past and thought Melinda might accept the fib.

  Her father sighed. “All right. But if you get hungry during the night, don’t blame Melinda.”

  Lucy sniffed and started toward the stairs, her news about Ditch Day untold,

  her questions about her dad’s and Melinda’s visit with the district attorney unasked. She made herself stop. “What did the lawyers want?”

  Melinda took a step back, and Lucy’s father said, “Apparently the accident Melinda witnessed wasn’t an accident. The driver whose car killed the people in the other one had been shot.”

  “Oh,” said Lucy, unable to think of anything more to say before she hurried up to her room. Only when she had closed the door did she realize she hadn’t told them about Ditch Day.

  * * *

  In her room, Lucy avoided her computer — thanks to the Gothic Geeks, she’d had her fill of computers for the day — and instead started in on her daily regimen of twenty-five pages of Frankenstein, hoping that the familiar tale would calm her. She was glad now that she had done almost all her Geometry homework on the school bus and her Spanish II homework during lunch; the cafeteria was a good place to study if you sat alone — almost as good as the library.

  After twenty minutes of Mary Shelley’s laborious tale, she abandoned the reading assignment and took A Witch’s Hornbook from its hiding place and began to thumb through it, not quite knowing what she was looking for, but trusting she would know it when she found it.

  On page 157, there it was:

  A Spell for Revealing That Which is Hidden

  Lucy gave a little yelp of satisfaction as she saw a small note next to the heading in her m
other’s hand: could be useful. Lucy felt that the note was a go-ahead from her mother, and began to read through the instructions, making notes to simplify the language and come up with a schematic she could follow. Maybe she could use the spell to find out what was wrong with the Geeks’ computer. She wasn’t entirely happy about the hacking they were doing, but she had to admit that the problem was intriguing.

  Ninety minutes later, she had another list of instructions gleaned from the archaic language of the Hornbook:

  1) Lock door and clear center of the room. Place two large candles marked with the symbol for the Sun and the Moon (a circle with a dot in the middle and a crescent half-circle) within the area chosen for the circle.

  2) Put down a ring of salt large enough to contain the caster of the spell, three candles (one red, one purple or black, and one yellow), a glass or vase of water, matches for the candles, a small jar of blue food coloring, three four-foot lengths of broad ribbon: red, black, and gold, each tied in a Turk’s Head knot, and a fourteen-inch long 3/8ths inch diameter wooden dowel with a rounded end. (pick it up at Home Depot or Lowes, and get sand-paper to round the end) Leave one portion of the circle open so that the caster can enter it and then close the circle of salt without disturbing other parts of it while reciting quatrain #1

  3) Charge the doweling, the water, the knotted ribbons, the candles, and the food coloring with quatrain #2.

  4) Touch the ribbons and the candles with the dowel, stating what hidden thing the caster wants to have revealed. Be specific.

  5) Untie the red ribbon, reciting quatrain #3 and wrap the ribbon around the red candle, then untie the black ribbon, reciting quatrain #4 and wrap the ribbon around the black candle. Last untie the gold ribbon and wrap the ribbon around the yellow candle, reciting quatrain #5.

  6) Light the first (red ribbon) candle reciting quatrain #6, light the second candle (black ribbon), reciting quatrain #7, light the third candle (gold ribbon) reciting quatrain #8.

  7) Place the glass of water in the center of the three candles, tap it with the dowel three times, reciting quatrain #9.

  8) Pour the food coloring into the water. Study the forms it takes as it sinks, make note of any images seen. When the food coloring is completely mixed with the water,

  break the circle with the dowel, leaving the candles and the glass of colored water in place.

  9) Step outside the circle, close it again with salt, then stand over the glass and stare into it, again telling it what you want to have revealed. The hidden thing sought should be revealed in the water.

  10) Sweep up the salt, untie the ribbons from the candles and braid them together. Blow out the candles. Recite the final quatrain to dismiss the spell. Gather up what you’ll use again.

  11) Take the colored water and salt some distance from the house to dispose of them.

  Note: if the hidden thing sought is concealed by magic, the spell might go awry.

  “Not that magic has anything to do with those groups of numbers,” said Lucy when she had finished reading over her instructions. “This is just an ... an experiment." Her eyes were tired, she realized, and she blinked to sharpen their focus. She saw that her mother had written something in the margin just below the final part of the spell.

  Allow at least two hours for this spell. The scrying won’t be rushed.

  Again Lucy found herself wondering if her mother had done more than just study A Witch’s Hornbook; it certainly looked as if she’d tried some of the spells. To clarify what scrying was, she logged on and went to the dictionary.

  Scry, to: intransitive verb, it read, to divine by gazing into an object; crystal-gazing, crystal gazing, fire-gazing, etc.

  Lucy thought this over; she realized that staring into the food-coloring-stained water was the scrying her mother meant, and she took the comment to heart. When she did the spell, she’d take her time with the scrying, whatever that meant. She was feeling a little foolish again, and only the thought of her mother’s interest kept her from abandoning the whole project. Scrying seemed a little too weird for her. “Especially since I don’t know what I’m trying to see,” she told the pages of the book.

  9

  She took up her evening routine — brushing her teeth, cleaning her face and putting anti-zit gel on it, and doing ten minutes of stretching exercises. Returning to her room, she went to her computer and sent out a couple of e-mails, added another page to her Environmental Science paper, then pulled back the covers and got into bed, determined to make the most of the night.

  After another shot at Frankenstein, she decided she would make an attempt at the spell on the following night. She knew she was probably jumping the gun a little — she was sure Isadora wouldn’t approve of any of this — but it would be nice to be able to do something the Gothic Geeks would be able to use; they might even let her try to cast a spell using a computer program. With that comforting thought, she prepared to go to sleep, with a textbook to lull her into dreamland. She spent the next hour reading her assigned pages for Environmental Science, knowing that Mister Laythrope was about to give another one of his pop quizzes. Finally she set the book aside and turned out the light.

  * * *

  Senora Calderon spent most of first period Spanish II reviewing the assignment for the final class projects; Lucy was almost through with hers, so she spent half the time making lists of what she would have to buy for doing the spell that night. English and Geometry passed quickly, without any awkwardness, aside from some whispers and pointed fingers from Emma Dunn, Catherine Browne’s wanna-be friend. Cyber science was unusually dull — Mister Daly sounded like his allergies were acting up and he wasn’t making his usual corny jokes, just drawing diagrams on the board — so by noon and Gym, Lucy had all her plans in place for casting the spell.

  She was skinning out of her clothes and reaching for her swimsuit when Gweneth Cavanaugh rushed into the aisle beside her and cast down her tote.

  “Is it true?" Gweneth asked as she hurried to undress.

  Lucy blinked. “Is what true?"

  “Nate Evers and Ditch Day?" Gweneth responded as if the answer were obvious.

  “Yeah,” said Lucy, noticing how Gweneth shook her head.

  “A sympathy date,” she said to Lucy.

  Since Lucy had already decided that was Nate’s reason for asking her, she said, “Why’d you think that?”

  “Because Catherine Browne has a broken leg — ”

  “Ankle,” Lucy corrected her.

  “Leg, ankle, whatever." Gweneth was getting into her volleyball shorts. “It’s all over the school that you’re a safe substitute for Catherine. Too bad.”

  The warning bell rang: three minutes to get to their activities. Both Lucy and Gweneth put on a burst of speed.

  “Any more progress with the numbers?" Lucy asked as she pulled up her shoulder straps.

  “No. Tom’s really bothered. He’s feeling embarrassed because he can’t crack the code.” Gweneth shrugged into her long-sleeved tee shirt and reached for her shoes. “So’s Curtis. Spencer’s ignoring it all.”

  “No new ideas?”

  “Not yet,” said Gweneth, tugging on her laces.

  Lucy hid her smile. “I’ll see if I can come up with something,” she said as she stepped into her sandals and hurried off toward the pool.

  * * *

  Lucy ate lunch by herself, trying to ignore the whispers and titters that came from the table where the cheerleaders sat: Alison was giggling as she glanced in Lucy’s direction, and Lorelai Miller was having a hard time containing her mirth as Tricia Guzman said something almost loud enough for Lucy to hear; she was pretty sure that whatever she had said, it hadn’t been friendly.

  Lucy could feel their eyes on her, creepy as wasps, and she would have eaten outside if she weren’t sure this would lead to more gossip. She continued to read her assignment from Environmental Science though she knew she didn’t retain more than a little of it.

  “Hi, Lucy,” Niki Martinu sai
d as she sat down in the opposite chair. Today she was wearing a black-spangled tee shirt and dark purple high-waisted skirt. She held out a bottle of flavored green tea. “Here. You need a little relief.”

  Lucy nodded. “Thanks.”

  “Nate Evers isn’t worth it; he’s a boy who likes having his way,” she said quietly. “Being good-looking doesn’t make him good.”

  “I suppose not,” said Lucy, realizing that had never occurred to her about Nate until Niki suggested it.

  “The Geeks may be Geeks, but most of them are worth ten Nate Everses.”

  “Except Bruce,” said Lucy, deciding that Niki could be right about the others. She’d never thought of them in that way before, and she had loathed thinking of Bruce in that light.

  “Ah, Bruce,” said Niki. “His mind’s half-way up the pants of every girl he sees. And he’s not the only one." She opened her own bottle of tea. “Guys like that are so boring and predictable.”

  “Yeah,” Lucy agreed.

  “Even the ones you think aren’t like that, are,” Niki said, staring away from Lucy, her eyes fixed on the table where the most popular boys sat. “It’s the ones you don’t think are that way who can be the most trouble, because you aren’t ready for it.”

  Months ago, Lucy remembered, there had been gossip about Niki and those golden boys, but it had died down; she opened the bottle of flavored tea. “I haven’t seen you at the Geeks lately.”

  Niki shrugged. “I’ve been ice-skating after school. My parents think I need to be more athletic, or that’s their story, anyway. They worry that I’m spending too much time on the computer, and not enough out there being active. It was ice-skating or tumbling, and I’m not built for tumbling." She picked up her egg salad sandwich. “My mom likes to make skating tops for me.”