8 Fall, Year 3

Totems

The sprinklers really save me a lot of time. I still have more than enough to do, but on Saturday I was having tea on my porch, trying to decide between fishing while I really had enough fish and mining while I really had enough ore, and then I had a great idea.

My grandpa's notebooks contain a lot of blueprints and instructions. I copied them all into a neat format two years ago and that way I also had a bit of a look of everything that was in there. I started making things like beehives, wine kegs and cheese presses, and when I ran out of obviously-useful things to make, the notebooks ended up staying closed on my table. By now they're in the drawer of a side table I got from Robin.

But those notebooks also had some fun decorations in them. So on Saturday, I got those notebooks back out of their drawer, leafed through for a while, and found instructions for making something titled a 'totem'. Grandpa drew several of them, one farm-themed, one beach-themed, one mountain-themed and one desert-themed. They looked pretty nice, and the simplest one to make seemed to be the beach one, so I figured I might as well make it.

I ended up adding some extra decorations to it, but now I'm finally happy with the result. There's only one line in my grandpa's notebook that I'm kind of curious about, an instruction to carve a line of symbols into the totem's bottom. I consider it kind of unnecessary, but on the other hand, totems tend to be a kind of thing that comes from ancient peoples and stuff like that. I figure I might as well do this for authenticity's sake.

Then I pick up my totem, give it a critical once-over, deem it worthy, and walk out of the house to look for a place to put it. It'd be difficult to keep it upright on the roof. On the porch it'd be behind the railing, it wouldn't be visible. I walk off the porch and turn back toward the house when I've reached the first line of crops, to get something of a wide overview.

The crook of the porch railing might do the trick. I walk around the outside because otherwise I have to go all the way around up the stairs, and lift the totem up – standing on the ground on the outside of the porch, the top of the railing comes a little higher than my eyes.

Right before I manage to put the piece of decoration down, when I'm holding it higher than my head, there's a flash of white light that blinds me completely and a loud whooshing noise in my ears like a storm wind. The ground disappears from under my feet and immediately reappears, but it's different now, suddenly soft and uneven. When I can see again, there is a gigantic black owl right in front of my face.

I scream and try to move back but I fall on my ass on the uneven ground, my heartbeat pounding in my ears. The owl doesn't move. There's something red in its chest, like a… stone?

Then I realize the owl is a statue. It has a red gem-like object set into its chest. But where did it come from?

I look around, still jerkily. This is not the farm. The ground is soft dry sand, and only a few yards away, there's waves lazily rolling in from an endless grey sea.

It's the beach.

I'm still dazed. I was on the farm, just a second ago. Now I'm on the beach. What happened? All I did was… try to put that totem on my porch.

Totem. Beach-themed totem. Requires coral and ****. Line of weird symbols carved into the base.

Magic.

I start trying to crawl upright, fighting with my own balance while my heart slowly stops racing like a madman.

"Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck – fucking – fucking –"

Magic. Damn the gods in this place with this fucking, fucking magic.

"Evan. Evan, my friend!"

I look up, bewildered, to find Elliott standing over me. Did he see me appear out of nowhere? Fuck, fuck, how do I explain this…

"Are you alright, dear fellow?" He goes on, "You look like you have well and truly seen a ghost."

I stutter trying to think of something to say. Elliott feels my forehead.

"I wouldn't suspect sunstroke, at first sight… Would you like me to get Harvey?"

"No, no, no, no, it's errrr… it's ahhhh…"

Think, dammit. What could I have seen at the beach that would make me act like this?

"It's aaaa…" I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head, trying to think less of teleportation totems and more of normal scary stuff.

"A gigantic crab, I swear, it was literally as long as my forearm!" I burst out, grateful for the moment of clarity.

"Oh, please don't worry about those, you mustn't. They're utterly harmless."

The content of Elliott's words slowly pulls me out of my stupor. Here I am talking about gigantic crabs and expecting him to put it off as a mirage, but instead he reacts like that's completely normal here?

"Hang on. Those things are always here? People swim here!"

"They are deep sea crabs. They stay far from the shore, as long as they have a say in it. Only Willy has an… unusual fondness for them, you could say. He likes to dredge them up from the deep and try to breed them. Now, I hope I'm not coming across as a barbarian, I have a weakness for well-made crab cakes myself. However, anytime I've mentioned their culinary potential in Willy's presence, he seems to… check out, as the kids say."

I stare at Elliott for a moment. I'm pretty damn sure 'the kids' haven't said anything along the lines of 'checking out' in that context for at least a decade. My brain just isn't working, anyway.

"Right."

"Alright? Yes? Are you with me?"

"Yeah, yeah. More or less. Sorry, I'm kinda… out of it. I don't know. Having trouble finding my wits."

"Such fickle things, wits."

Well, at least Elliott is exactly the way I'd expect him.

"Okay, well. Um. I think I'm just going to… leave."

"Give it some time to get back to where it belongs, of course," the writer nods in agreement. "It's probably more frightened of you than you are of it, you know," he adds with a little laugh.

"Yeah. I guess it is." I have no clue, really. All I can think of right now is how big are those crabs Willy routinely gets up here?

I take a few hesitant steps, realize that I'm staying upright, and start walking briskly back home. I need to do some deep thinking.

For one, there's no way I can doubt it anymore: my grandfather knew magic.