Modern Magick

Toil and Trouble: 2

In my room at Home, I've got a little stash of Curiosities, minor artefacts, and assorted odds and ends. Some of them are useful, some of them aren't. Probably my favourite of the latter category is a beautiful old scroll, the real kind, made of vellum and with rowan-wood supports. It even has a tooled-leather case. It's paired with a quill pen — owl feather, not goose! Both are enchanted, so that anything I might choose to write upon mine will appear at once upon the matching scrolls of some other member (or members) of the Society. They used to be standard issue, but they stopped handing them out before I joined. I once found a whole, sorry stack of them in Stores, and took pity on this set because... because they're pretty.

What can I say.

The reason for their obsolescence, of course, is the mobile phone. When we all wander about with smartphones surgically attached to our wrists, who needs quills and scrolls anymore? A sad casualty of cruel, inexorable time.

But, I have to admit, a fair one. For when, a few hours later, my own personal scroll-killer buzzed and began to play Sussudio, it got my attention at once, and within two minutes I was rattling back down to Research and Zareen's broom-cupboard of a room.

Zareen opened the door right away. 'You're going to like this,' she said, grinning and ushering me inside.

I eyed the book with misgivings. It lay quiescent upon the desk, quiet as a proverbial church mouse, but I didn't trust it. 'I rather doubt that.'

'Oh, don't worry. It's much nicer now.'

'It is? What did you do to it?'

Zareen wouldn't meet my eye. 'Uh, just some minor tweaks. Never mind that. What do you think I found inside?'

'You've read it!'

'Sort of. There isn't much to read, as it turns out. Only a few pages have been used. It looks like a journal, used to record somebody's progress upon some kind of journey. Late Middle English, I'd say, so it's hard to read, and written in such deplorable chicken-scratch I can hardly make it out. So the destination's unclear — or at least, it was at first.'

Zareen was bursting with news, and very smug about it too. I didn't want to stop her, but I had to ask: 'Wait, where's Jay?'

'No idea. Anyway, the—'

'Stop right there.' I grabbed my phone and called Jay, ignoring Zareen's eye-rolling disgust. 'Toil and Trouble,' I told Jay when he answered. 'All due haste.'

'Be right there.'

I put my phone away. 'It's Jay's book,' I said. 'And I'm his... mentor, I suppose. Can't leave him out.'

Zareen waited with an exaggerated display of patience.

'What's the problem with you two, anyway?'

'Oh, nothing really,' Zareen replied with a roll of her eyes. 'I think he's a prude and a stick-in-the-mud and he thinks I'm reckless and irresponsible.' She gave me a half-smile. 'Just squabbles, Ves. Don't worry about it.'

Me, worry? I wanted to disclaim this charge at once, until I realised I was wearing my worried face. I hastily smoothed out my features and adopted an air of proper unconcern. 'I feel responsible for him,' I said by way of explanation.

'I don't think you need to be. I'll say this for him: he's far from stupid, and he'll always be okay.'

'Mm.'

Zareen looked at me shrewdly. 'He feels responsible for you, too, I think.'

'Me!'

Zareen grinned. 'Surprised? He was given the job of making sure we don't lose you somewhere.'