Five || Findings
Maybe this won't be a wasted trip, Mint thought.
They had cleared out most of the paper contents of the room. Rue was busy hauling up another set of them while Mint was, ostensibly, collecting the last remnants of goods to be pulled back up into the library proper. And she was doing that, kind of; she was just lingering a bit longer than normal on some of the papers, hoping to maybe catch a tidbit of information that could point her where she wanted to go.
Unfortunately, there wasn't much. All of the good stuff was probably squirreled away in the books, and Klaus had asked them to concentrate on bringing those up first so he could begin examining them himself. It wouldn't have been easy to get a look at them while they were moving those, and anyway it wouldn't have been easy to zero in on what she was looking for. Not that she was entirely sure what she was looking for; the passage Mira had found had been tucked away in a scribbled mess of doodles and notes and partially written in the language of old magicians. Klaus had been able to decipher it, but Mint was lost.
"Any more down there?" Klaus called.
She frowned to herself and shoved all the papers together into a loose heap, then took one last look around the room, checking for anything behind the shelves or the desk or tucked away in the corners of the room. But for all the double-checking she found nothing else out of the ordinary, no more strange artifacts sitting on top of doors or knotted spells waiting in the creases of the floorboards.
"This is the last of it," she called, and, papers in hand, she returned to the ladder. She dismissed the light from her rings and was plunged immediately into darkness, but she didn't need their illumination anymore; she could plainly see the opening above her, the chandelier positioned almost directly overhead, and she had gone up and down the ladder enough times in the last forty minutes to know where the rungs were. She tied the rings on to her belt again, tucked the papers under her arm, and clambered back up the ladder.
Back up top she tossed the papers onto the floor and yanked herself out of the opening. She emerged into the center of a pile of books and papers. Nearby, Rue was busying himself by straightening up a stack of their recovered goods; a little further away, using the printing press as a seat, Klaus was rummaging through the books Mira had initially shown him.
"So," Mint began, projecting her voice to Klaus. She couldn't tell if he'd heard her, but she went on anyway. "Nobody's ever found a Relic out here?"
There was a pause for a few seconds. Agitation gnawed at her stomach, and she almost repeated herself – louder, and a little less politely – when Klaus looked up.
"No," he said. "No, this is... this is all new to me. Magicians have lived here – quite a few, actually, given how out of the way Carona is – but I've never seen anything about an Aeon having lived out here. Of course a Relic might have been brought in by a magician, that's certainly a possibility..." He scratched the back of his neck and returned to the book. "It would certainly explain the disproportionate number of magicians that used to live here, actually."
"How's that?" Mint said.
Klaus was quiet again, but this time when he looked up he set the book down next to him. "Magicians were never very numerous," he said. "Being a magicians, the way we understand it, isn't the same as being able to use magic the way some people learn it today. Magicians dedicated themselves to their craft; from youth to death they honed their skills, built laboratories and workshops to experiment and craft, and scoured the world for artifacts that would improve their power. Many magic users tried to do this, but only a handful of them truly succeeded. Because of that, they tended to keep very much to themselves and jealously guarded what they had found. Magician ateliers are scattered around the globe, but magicians almost never built their workshops near other, contemporary magicians. If there are two ateliers built near each other, then one of them is invariably much older than the other."
"So...?"
"So," Klaus continued, "there is some evidence that at one point, Carona housed a handful of magicians who built their ateliers and conducted their research simultaneously– perhaps in conjunction with one another. It's mostly supposition and extrapolation, admittedly, but from what I've seen in Cadomon's notes he had reached the same conclusion and was trying to pinpoint their ateliers." He paused, and his expression lost some of its spark. "Although Cadomon was always physically frail. He was very prolific, as you can see, but he died quite young and never reached the end of his search."
"But there was a search," Rue said suddenly. "There was a map down there..."
"Right," Mint said, and practically dove into the stick of papers, rummaging around until she came back with the paper they had found lying on the desk. She unfurled it and flipped it around for Klaus to get a better look at. "This thing. He's got an atelier marked on the map."
"Bring that here, please," Klaus said, and Mint obliged, although she only brought it over for him to see; she wasn't quite ready to give up the map. Klaus leaned over and took the corner of it so he could get a better look, his brow creased. "I'm not sure," he said finally. "He might have discovered something, but... I'll have to look through the rest of the documents."
Overhead, the chandelier suddenly swung, its hanging crystals clicking against each other and sending out a strange, ethereal chime. Klaus looked up, then leaned over to look out the door.
"Somebody passed the barrier," he said. "It did that earlier when Mira left. She must be back."
Rue went to check the door. While he did, Mint tugged on the map, slipping the edge out of Klaus' loosened grip and rolling it back up.
"It's Mira," Rue said. "She's brought a float and a few crates."
"Perfect," Klaus said, sliding unsteadily off the press. "Start gathering up the books, please. The quicker we get these away the quicker we can get back to town and the sooner I can look at them properly."
They returned to Carona by mid-afternoon, after packing up the findings, scouring the little room one final time, and closing up the room behind them. The walk had been exhausting, between dragging the float across the bumpy forest path and forcing it uphill to the actual town, but once they were through Carona's forest-facing gate and onto the stonework streets, the trip became a simple act of navigating the short distance to the Adler house and unloading the crates into the living room.
From there, Klaus dismissed them.
"I'm going to need time to go through this," he explained. "It will be a number of days to look at everything–"
"Days!" Mint cried.
"–in depth," Klaus finished. "But I think I know what I'm looking for here. Give me the night. I'm sure I can at least confirm the contents of that map you two found. Come by tomorrow morning and we'll see what's what, all right?"
That same fidgety agitation was working its way through her again, but Mint clamped down on it and nodded. At least somebody else was doing the boring work this time; she'd never been much for sifting through documents and deciding what was important and what was crazy wizard ramblings. She would put up with the wait.
"Right, sure," she said.
"Best of luck, doctor," Rue added.
"Thank you."
Another round of goodbyes and farewells, and Mint saw the fruits of their labor disappear behind a closed door. Absently, she hooked one of her rings around her wrist and swung it in a broad loop.
"Well," she mumbled, "now what?"
No response. She waited another few seconds, then caught the ring and spun, looking up to see Rue's retreating back. A little jolt ran through her – frustration, annoyance – and she took off after him.
"Hey, woah, wait," she called. "Where d'you think you're going?"
He slowed down and half-turned to look at her, his head cocked to the side. "Back to the inn?" he answered, clearly confused by her question. "Ah... why?"
That was actually an excellent question. She pondered it for a moment, tried to pinpoint why she had needed to stop him. It bothered her that he had left so abruptly, that was part of it; if anybody was doing the abrupt leaving it was supposed to be her. But there was something else, too, that same niggling thought that had been chewing the back of her consciousness the previous night and, now that they had been left to their own devices, came back with renewed vigor. It was right on the edge of her tongue, right on the edge of–
"Where are you from?" she asked suddenly.
That caught him off guard. "Excuse me?" he said, turning completely to face her.
"Your accent," she said. "It's– augh, it's been bugging me since yesterday, where is it from?"
"I–" He paused, blinked a few times, his expression melting from confused to absolutely bewildered. "I don't have an accent."
"Yes you do," she said. "You hold your vowels a little too long and kinda pitch them up. Kind of? Augh, damn it, I know I've heard it before." She massaged her temples and clamped her teeth down in frustration, and waited a few seconds to gather herself before she looked up again. "So where are you from?"
He continued to stare at her. The silence between them crept on just a little longer, and she tried to read his expression. The confusion was gone, and he was regarding her narrowly, his brow furrowed, his head tilted. Sizing her up? Maybe. Deciding whether to talk? Definitely.
He must have resolved whatever was running through his head, though, because after a moment he began again. "There's a little village out on the north-western edge of East Heaven Kingdom. Greenvale. We lived a few miles out from there, had about an acre of land in the woods, mostly kept to ourselves."
Mint thought about it, what she knew of that area and whether she had actually traveled there, but it wasn't ringing any bells. She shook her head. "Naw, don't think that's it."
"Maybe you're hearing things."
She snorted and crossed her arms, flashing him a grin. "That's unlikely."
"Right." He turned away from her again. "As I said, I'm heading back to the inn. I'll see you tomorrow."
She nodded, and he carried on his way. His answer hadn't been satisfactory – at least, there was still something bothering her – but now she wasn't sure what it was that was bothering her and trying to figure it out while he was standing there staring at her would only invite questions in her direction, and that was not a conversation she was keen on having just yet.
. .
Rue stepped into the inn and immediately breathed in the scent of spices and lingering smoke. It was the same pleasant scent that he had felt when he had first walked into the bed-and-breakfast the previous day; the kitchen was silent at that hour, but its smells had woven themselves into the fabric of the building itself. The smell of it filled made him feel light and nostalgic; for a few seconds, he stood in silence, lost in thought.
"Welcome back, dear." The voice was a woman's, creased with age but still warm and tender, and Rue opened his eyes to see her standing behind the counter, smiling gently in his direction.
"Afternoon, Mrs. Cartha," he said.
"I saw you all leaving on a bit of an expedition," she said. "Did you find what you were looking for?"
"Maybe."
"I hope it all works out for you."
"So do I."
She leaned on the counter, resting her chin on her hand, and looked at him quizzically. "Are you off to bed so early?" she asked.
"Oh– oh, no." He shook his head. "No, I just... wanted to be alone for a bit."
She nodded, and he moved past the counter and up the stairs behind her, to the second floor of the building, then a couple of doors down to his room. He unlocked the door, stepped inside, and locked it right back up behind him.
The room was somewhat small and bare-bones – a bed, a night stand, a dresser-drawer in the corner, all accented by a simple rug – but the bed was comfortable and the sheets were warm from a recent cleaning and the window gave him a pleasant overlook of the town square. He happened to glance outside and see Mint wandering off to another part of town, and found himself relaxing at the sight. Not that he didn't like her – correction: not that he had any idea what to think of her – but that little interrogation a few minutes before had been bizarre, to say the least. And something about her...
Well, no sense worrying about it.
He turned back to the rest of the room and headed for the dresser. Sitting on top, largely undisturbed, was his own luggage, paltry as it was. He hadn't been sure how long he planned on staying in town and hadn't bothered unpacking in the interim, but with their discovery in the library he figured it would be at least a couple of days and hoped it would turn into more. If Klaus was right – if there was a Relic somewhere on the island...
He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe. Inhale, hold, exhale through the teeth. Calm down, he told himself. You've been through this before.
So many times before; a spark of hope, snuffed out before it had even managed to catch flame. He wouldn't allow himself to feel that elation until he could be certain. It wasn't worth it.
Eventually, his heart rate slowed back to normal. He opened his eyes, sighed, and finished crossing the distance to his baggage. He rummaged through the case, shoving through extra sets of clothes and a distressingly light coin-purse until he found the small leather-bound book sitting at the bottom of the bag. He removed it, and with it a half-worn pencil, and sat down on the edge of bed, facing the window. A thin red ribbon, its edges ragged and threadbare, was slotted near the end of the book, acting as a bookmark; he opened the book to the marked page and carefully set the ribbon aside.
His eyes roved over what was already written in the book; line after line of small script written in words he was sure nobody else could understand. The beginning of the book had been written in a very different time and mind-set; even without translating the dates or the text, the mindset was obvious. His entries were spaced further apart, each of them bearing a sizeable amount of text, each of them lined up daily. After a while it had been less than daily; weekly, monthly, sporadically. As time wore on his entries had gotten shorter, the dates further apart, his formatting careless and bunched together. By now it was necessity; he had only a few pages left in the book, and he was hoping to spare them for only the most important notes.
He took up the pencil and wrote down the date. Then, next to it:
Carona. You'd like it here.
He hesitated, contemplated, decided it was enough. Gingerly, gently, he replaced the ribbon and placed the book on the night stand.