The Autumn Prince

37. Trees and Flowers

I left a message on Miss Gold's voice mail and she texted back an hour later, instructing me to wait in the office upstairs until I heard from her. The girls joined me, and we sat around the conference table with the staff laying between us while Becca scoured the Glim, flipping through pages seemingly at random and taking notes on the side.

"Nothing?" Rachel asked, taking a long drink from her sport bottle.

Becca peered over the top of the hagstone and shook her head, "Everything is gone.

"Gone? Gone how?"

"I can't find the instructions. I mean there's stuff here about the Fferyn, but it used to just show me simple spells, like say this and do that. There's nothing like that now, it just keeps talking about translations and threads and the ethereum, whatever that is. I just want to know what happened."

"Are you sure this wasn't the book's intention?" Katherine asked. Becca shook her head again and turned another page without looking up.

"I'm not sure about anything. The Fferyn used to have—I don't even know how to describe the difference. It's like trying to use a computer with no software."

"The runes are still there," I said. We'd taken turns looking at it through the hagstone, and other than its size it didn't look all that different to me.

"Yeah, but now they keep changing, like the words in the Glim." Her voice remained steady, but her manner was anxious and the reason for it was obvious. For a short time she had grasped the magic of the Fae and it was slipping through her fingers. She was desperate to get it back.

We sat in relative silence for several minutes, each in our own thoughts. The Fferyn was our only means of control over the strange world around us. If it no longer worked, all of us, not just Becca, had potentially lost a major advantage in our struggle to survive the attentions of powerful Fae. But I couldn't get my mind off the wicked looking tree that cast its shadow over our home. Its black trunk and red berries, and the fact that it had no reflection through the hagstone, made me think ominously of vampires.

Half an hour passed with no word and I was about to give up on Miss Gold when Becca looked up suddenly, startling Katherine. In the next second we all heard what had caught her attention.

"What is that?" Katherine gave me a meaningful look, clearly implying that it was my job to find out. I stood and walked slowly toward the bed, listening carefully. The rattling we'd heard stopped after a few steps and I looked back to the others with a shrug, but it immediately sounded again, louder, from within the artifact chest. Beneath the deep green cloak, the shallow, wooden bowl vibrated against the inside of the box. I pulled it free and held it away from my body.

Rachel spoke first. "What the hell, Tom? Not enough weird for one day?"

"Don't look at me," I said. It continued to vibrate, though less violently.

"Maybe it's ringing."

Everyone turned silently toward Becca, and she ducked her head in embarrassment. "I don't know, I guess I was still thinking how the Fferyn was like my phone. I keep it on vibrate so it doesn't interrupt. My phone I mean. That's what it reminded me of."

"What are we supposed to do with it?" I asked. She bit her lip and shook her head as if she had no answer, but then she opened her mouth and the words spilled out all at once.

"Well, it was in the chest so it's probably magic, and the only magic bowls I know of are used for scrying, like in Lord of the Rings when Frodo looked into the Mirror of Galadriel, which could see and hear things far away, and that's like a phone, right? And we're all here waiting for Miss Gold and I guess..." she trailed off and bit her lip, "Sorry, it's stupid."