"Eda!" Hooty screamed as Luz held the door open. "Luz is home! Hi, Luz, you look tiiiiiiiiiired!"
"Not now, Hooty," Luz grumbled, leaning against the door to shut it.
She heard Hooty say, "Tired and gruuuuumpyyyyyy!" through the wood, and she let out another grumble.
Eda stepped out of the kitchen, looking just as worn down as Luz felt. "Hey, kiddo. Dinner's running a little late, to warn you." She turned and left the living room.
Luz followed Eda into the kitchen. "Need some help? Where's King, he said he'd help around the house more."
"He's around here somewhere, I dunno. And no, I don't need any help, it's almost done, I just spent half the afternoon working out how to cast a sentience spell using glyphs. Finally got it to work, too, but …"
Luz cracked a smirk. "But the vegetables all ran away?"
"Every time I think it's going to go differently," she muttered. "Anyway, once they stopped struggling, I got everything on the heat. Should be ready in another few minutes." She let out a huff and leaned against the table. She looked Luz over. "So what's your story, Luz, you look like you spent all afternoon chasing potatoes, too."
She let out a long breath and flopped onto a stool. "I definitely feel like that."
"Trouble with whatever secret project you're working on now?"
"Not trouble, today went fine. Great even. There's just a lot to figure out, and I've been just trying to make sense of it all the way home, and …" She sighed and slumped forward.
Eda circled back to the cooktop and stirred the pot. "Well, Luz, that sure sounds like a real whatever-it-is-you're-talking-about."
She straightened, letting out a chuckle. "Sorry. So I found this weird printing press in the basement that used to get used to print the Hexside Herald."
Eda cracked a smile. "I remember the Herald! Little bit before my time, but all the teachers still talked about the student staff that ran it, those poor, doomed bastards. At least, they talked about the Herald right up until they met me, and then I was always the witch they were complaining about."
Luz shared a laugh with Eda, then her smile drifted to confusion. "Wait, they complained about the newspaper? What, did they write stuff in it that the teachers didn't like or something?"
"Bingo, kiddo." She pointed at Luz with the wooden spoon, flinging stew across the table. She sunk the spoon back into the pot. "If there was even a speck of dirt that could be dug up on a witch, the Herald would find every last bit of it and put it in writing. The teachers used to call it the Hexside Harbinger instead, and they did everything they could to catch the students who worked on it, confiscate and burn every copy, and throw anyone caught with an issue straight into detention. Of course, that just made it so everyone read it and that there are still issues of it floating around today."
Luz grinned, leaning back on the stool. "Whoa, that sounds a lot more interesting than what I thought it was gonna be. So what happened to everyone? Did they get caught? Did someone turn snitch?"
"They never did get caught, none of the teachers could ever figure out who wrote it, or even how they made it. Then the part of the school they were all in exploded."
"Whoa." She knit her brow. "Part of the school exploded? Which part?"
"Beats me, they'd cleaned all of it up by the time I started going there. That or rebuilt it, I dunno. All I know is that the teachers couldn't find the paper's staff because they hid everything away, and then one day, kabam!" She slammed the handle of the spoon down on the table for emphasis, splattering more stew. "Not so hidden anymore after that. They never did figure out who the students were, but they must have been in the three classes that got wiped off the face of the Isles in the explosion, because they never put out a paper again," she finished, chuckling.
"… Are you laughing about dead children, Eda?"
"You know, Luz, I like you and all, but you can be a real wet blanket." She ran her finger over the bowl of the spoon and slipped her finger in her mouth. "Stew's done!"
Luz rolled her eyes, then rubbed her cheek in thought as Eda gathered a couple sets of stoneware for them. "… So if it exploded, why is the press still—?"
"Did I hear stew's done?" King shouted from the living room. "Oh, Titan, finally, I thought we were going to starve to death." He tromped into the kitchen with a glower, then brightened and ran over. "Luz! I didn't hear you come home!" He leapt into her lap.
Luz giggled and hugged him. "Hi, King!"
Eda muttered, "So you didn't hear Hooty shouting, but you heard that dinner's ready, I see how it is …"
He scrambled up onto the table, stole the place setting Eda had laid out for herself, and scooted back toward Luz's side, sitting down on the tabletop with his bowl out in front of him. "So how'd it go with Amity today? Did you figure out how the printing press works?"
Eda's muttering grew darker and she re-set her place, then ladled stew into the three bowls. "So you told King about this newspaper thing already but not me, I see how it is …"
Luz gave a nervous chuckle. "Eda! You were busy yesterday!"
"I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I don't hold a grudge," she said in a way that Luz could only describe as begrudgingly. "So you and your little friends are reviving the newspaper, huh? Hope your writers can find half as many secrets as the old staff." Her eyes narrowed. "Or are you going to make it legit again, like it was back before it got good?"
"We're not gonna make a newspaper at all." Luz spooned in a mouthful of stew. "Mmm, thanks for cooking, Eda."
"Yeah, yeah," Eda said, waving her off, though a pleased smile broke through her expression. "So no newspaper, huh? What's the deal then?"
"We're going to put out a zi—err, a literary magazine."
"Hah! Nerd."
"I mean, have you met me?"
"Making fun of Luz is always a good time, but this is just a distraction from the most important part of this conversation, which is Luz answering my question," King interrupted. "Did you get the printing press to work?"
Luz nodded with stew in her mouth. "Mm-hmm, mostly." She talked around her food, shoveling in more spoonfuls. "It took us a while, but we figured out the printing part. We know how to change what it prints, the speed it runs, and how to add pictures, too. We're pretty sure it can cut pages, but we're still working on that." She scraped at the bottom of her bowl, then held it out for Eda, who ladled in another serving. "I say we, but Amity figured all of it out, I basically just kept her company."
Eda ate her own meal while standing by the pot, chewing slowly. "Amity's the shy one with the dyed green hair, right? I can never keep your friends' names straight."
"Yeah, Amity has dyed hair. Shy, though?" Luz frowned in confusion. "Amity isn't really shy."
Eda shrugged. "Maybe she's less shy with you or something, but she's the one that's always quiet and easily flustered. I'm not a betting woman—unless there are actual snails on the table—but if you'd asked me what I thought she was like, I would've wagered that she barely talks to anyone, and when she does, she usually pretends to be meaner than she is to be left alone. Maybe it's just with me, though, I do have that effect on some witches," she said with a hint of pride.
"Hmm." Luz frowned down at her mostly empty bowl. "That does sound a lot like Amity when she's talking to … anyone besides me, and only, like, in the last six months. She's still a little weird around Willow and Gus even."
"Well, congrats, kiddo, you broke a shy girl out of her shell, that means you've got a friend for life, for what that's worth."
A small smile worked its way onto Luz's face. "You think so?"
"Titan, I dunno, do I seem that friendly to you?" Eda gave her an affectionate smile and ruffled her hair. "Anyway, I'm not surprised that Amity kid figured out your printing press thing, she does seem the brainy type, and if she's the same Blight I think she is, her mom was always sharp, too." She dug at the inside of her ear with her pinkie, looking bored. "What the heck even is a printing press anyway? Some human realm thing?"
Luz groaned and sunk back into her chair, pushing her empty bowl away. "That's what's been bothering me all day! I don't know where it came from! Humans have printing presses, but this thing looks and works totally different than anything back in the human realm. I wouldn't have even known it was a printing press if I hadn't turned it on and it started spitting out newspaper pages. But Amity showed me all these books and things, and it's nothing like anything that witches use for printing!"
"Hrm." Eda looked down at her bowl, then glanced at Luz's. "I dunno whether to be annoyed or proud that after all that time cooking it, you ate it in less than three minutes." She set her half-finished bowl on the tabletop and cleared Luz's plate, walking it over to the sink.
"Oh, I'll get that," Luz said, hopping up. "You cooked, I'll clean."
"Reasonable trade. It would be nice if some others in this house thought that way," she said pointedly in King's direction.
King glanced up from eating stew directly out of the pot. "What?"
Eda let out a huff and brought over King's abandoned bowl for Luz. "So anyway, this machine thing, are you sure it wasn't made by humans?"
"Not sure, but it doesn't seem likely. If it was, they changed the way it works a lot with magic. The only thing it does that works the same as a human printing press is that it doesn't magic the words onto the page, it presses them in like a stamp. Everything else is just magic changing stuff around, including how it makes the stamp. Like, you put in a page of writing, any writing, and it just makes that stamp out of metal, like it knows how to read. And that's just the writing part, we spent a while figuring out if we needed to refill the paper for it, but it just makes paper to print on. And you can add pictures, but you put them into the machine in a totally different place and they just show up where they're supposed to on the page. Human machines don't work that way at all. "
Luz let out a long breath as she scrubbed the bowl. "And now I'm confused, because you said the writing staff blew up in the part of the building where they made the newspaper, so why is the printing press not blown up, too? And it's definitely the printing press they used, there was still a page of the newspaper loaded in it. None of this makes any sense."
"Hrm."
Luz finished washing the pair of bowls and cutlery, then set it all to dry. She turned and frowned in thought at Eda's expression. "What is it? Do you know where the press came from?"
Eda raised her hands in surrender. "Not a clue, Luz, not a clue, this is the first I've even heard of the thing, never went hunting for something like that when I was at Hexside. I respected the Herald, but working on a newspaper's for nerds. It's just …" Her frown deepened in thought, and she looked past the kitchen, out toward the living room. "Let me look into it a little. There's something familiar about how you said it works."
Luz frowned in thought, then shrugged. "Okay. Thanks, Eda." King scrabbled down from the table, sighing in satisfaction, and Luz went to collect the empty pot. "You done with your stew?" She looked up and noticed Eda had left the kitchen.
"Eh, just leave it there," Eda called back from deeper in the house. "I'll heat it up later."
Luz shrugged and dragged the pot over to the sink. After eating and unloading some of her worries for the day, she felt less beaten down. She scrubbed and rinsed the pot, then headed up to her room.
With a sigh, Luz dropped onto her bed, still relishing in the feel of an actual mattress. Despite her smile as she sunk into it, she couldn't help but feel a twinge of melancholy. In hindsight, replacing her sleeping bag had been long overdue, but ultimately there was no other reason they'd gotten around to it aside from the destruction of the portal. She gave a guilty glance over at her phone, which she used less and less every day to conserve the battery. She wondered how hard it would be to convert it to run on captured lightning.
Slowly, she sat up on the bed, looking out over the room and letting her mind wander in a dozen different directions. As she did, an idea started to form.
Luz scooched off the bed and went to her desk. She sat down, dragged a stack of paper in front of her, and began to write.
The storm raged outside hard enough to make the windows rattle in the creaky old castle. Water wormed its way between the rough stonework, echoing drips on the floor alongside the howling wind and shaking glass. The heavy footfalls of the mad warlock sounded dull in comparison as he raced up the spiral staircase in the west tower. Lightning crackled across the sky, lighting up the walls in chunks cut with stark shadows. The mad warlock's face, a patchwork of scars and blisters, was thrown in sharp relief by a flash. A tiny giggle escaped his throat, drowned out by the thunder.
"Mustn't be hasty, mustn't be hasty," he tittered to himself. The further he went up in the tower, the more water seeped through, patting drips on the top of his bald head, and turning the stairs shiny and slick. He gripped the railing, knuckles white as he rose.
White blinded the room as thunder crashed at the same time. The mad warlock howled laughter as the tower shuddered, his cackles lost in the rolling roar, as if the sky was tearing itself in half. He barreled through the door and onto the parapet, soaked to the bone in an instant, his heavy robes turning to an anchor around his shoulders. He spread his arms wide as light forked and danced in the sky.
"They say it can't be done!" he yelled into the void, "but you will be mine, you hear me? You will be mine!"
From his robes, he drew out his long, thin, cold iron staff and held it out toward the heavens. The light shone in flashes over his palisman, a segmented, curled up insect that nobody could identify, save the mad warlock: a firefly without its fire.
A lightning bug without its lighting.
His cackle turned to a scream of triumph as the sky burst again, throwing itself with all its force at the cold iron staff, turning the metal to livid orange in an instant, burning into his eyes, casting the rest of the world into darkness. Trickles of hot blood ran down his jaw from his ears as the thunder took its rage out on the sky, the windows of the tower shattering, the stone of the parapet underfoot heaving, shivering, shaking loose. As the last of the lightning vanished into the palisman, the entire tower lurched, and the mad warlock tumbled into the darkness alongside it, crumbling off the mountain.
His laughter echoed through the valley as his body fell, his hands burned into his staff, its iron black and shiny from the flash tempering. Black and shiny everywhere but the lightning bug, which glowed white It streaked through the air like a shooting star as the mad warlock plummeted into the night.
Luz paused and tapped her pencil on the paper as she read over what she had so far. She crossed out a word here and wrote in a replacement there, then smiled to herself. She glanced out the window. The sun sat further down in the sky than she'd expected it to be, turning the window a blazing magenta as it sunk to the horizon. She pulled a couple fresh sheets of paper in front of herself, drew out some light glyphs, and suspended the orbs overhead, brightening her desk back to full daylight. She popped a kink in her neck and returned to her story.
