Spellbound Resonance

Chapter 3

On and on we walked, and I looked in every direction, seeking out the fine details. Every Belaverian book and sketch and testament I’d ever swallowed was spilling from me, unfolding into perfect replicas. Everything glistened. No precariously hung shutters, no puddles in the alleys. The exactness of it all, the cleanliness, was all painfully beautiful.

The National Artisan House was ahead. Its marble columns reminded me of ancient ruins. I knew from my readings that the sculptor had had them in mind when he’d crafted the building’s facade.

The crowds of children funneled through the narrow cobblestone pathways and bloomed again into an expansive courtyard behind the building. Here, things were not quite as opulent, and I frowned despite myself. The stone walls were stained with limescale; the ground was not bricked or cobbled, but compacted with dirt. The tall perimeter walls were not lined in the same neatly trimmed hedges at the building’s front.

But the air smelled like a million known and unknown things—coffee, kerosene, pastry, tobacco, horse s**t. I heard bells and carts and voices upon voices—the cogs of a city perfectly churning, and my excitement returned.

Possibility. The sounds and smells and gleam of it.

It was, despite my father’s beliefs, possible that I would become a student of the Artisan School. Didn’t the teachers in Scurry say I had a remarkable capacity for the arts? “Natural aptitude,” one had called it.

If it wasn’t the Artisan School for me, then I would find a way to live among these tightly packed buildings and winding roads. If I couldn’t imbue magic, then I would ensure I was surrounded by it. It was still preferable to Scurry.

I would not be boarding another train.

Shoulders bumped into mine. Children continued pouring into the courtyard until we were pushed to its very edges. When it seemed the square surely could not fit one more body, another surge of entrants arrived, hustled in by the calls of chaperones.

We pressed together like cattle in an abattoir, shifting nervously. The smell of so many bodies soon became intolerable.

Finally, someone in navy blue lapels stepped out from the National Artisan House and onto the steps. He held a shiny brass microphone in front of his mouth. It screeched as he pressed its receiving button, and the sea of twelve-year-olds fell silent.

“Good morning,” the man said. He had small teeth and thin lips, a bulbous nose, large jowls, sparse hairs plastered over his forehead. There were posters of this man in all the taverns of Scurry. The first-shift miners threw darts at it in the evening.

“Welcome to the National Artisan House, children,” said Lord Tanner, the Head of House. A small smattering of awkward applause. Another of my pictures unfolding into reality.

The Lord Tanner. I beamed. What an incredible sight! And what extraordinary invention, to throw one’s voice so widely.

I was not alone in my wonder. A girl tugged my sleeve unconsciously and stood on tiptoe to see him better, and another cupped her hands to her mouth. But there were those who were not so taken. One mean-faced boy stood behind my right shoulder and spat on the ground right between his feet.

I, however, knew more than he did about the governing leader of Belavere Trench. I had studied his art. Lord Tanner had crafted marble statues around the city that depicted weeping angels and dying saints. He’d sculpted a granite bridge that scaled over three hundred feet across the Gyser River. He’d created these things with his mind alone. He was a stone Mason of the highest order, and the sight of him turned my skin to gooseflesh.

“To see so many of you is to feel immensely proud of this nation, and its people. People from all walks of life, coming together to celebrate community, prosperity, and…” But whatever else it was we were celebrating was impossible to hear. From behind, a low voice laughed derisively, then muttered, “f**k off.”

It was the spitter. Of course it was. A boy with dirty brown hair and an extremely clean shirt, standing too close for my liking. He smiled like he didn’t mean it, stood still like he wanted to bolt, stared at the man with the microphone like he’d knock the tiny teeth from his mouth, given the chance. The boy shook his head, shifted his weight to his left leg, then looked me right in the eye.

I was taken aback by their color. Pale blue. Crystal clear. Completely at odds with the rest of him—cracked fingernails, wrinkled trousers, the sole of his shoes gently peeled at the toes. A suntan that circled the bottom of his neck, a starched button-down shirt that made him fidget. He adjusted the collar and the sleeves like he’d found himself in someone else’s clothes by mistake. He was too skinny for his height. The belt around his trousers looped over itself.

I wrinkled my nose, mouthed the word pig, and turned back to Lord Tanner. Praise God.

“… and the Almighty sent to us His greatest creation, His daughter, who was not deity nor goddess, but a human who walked on this land as one of us.”

Idia, I thought, staring wide-eyed at the book Lord Tanner now held: the Book of Belavere. He read from it in a voice adults use when they believe what they’re saying is gravely important. I straightened my shoulders, determined to remember every word.

“Through Idia, the Lord spoke, and He told us this land was a Holy place. He bade us protect it, and when others came to sully its sacred ground, Idia led our armies, and she bled when we bled… and her blood was ink.” And here, Tanner held high a familiar stone.

It could have been a lump of coal if it weren’t for the sun that shone through it, filling it all the way up with light, revealing its true color. Blue like the deepest part of the sea, like slow-falling night.

“Terranium,” Tanner stated. “The most important ore our land bestows. For only within this particular stone do we find the crystallized blood of Idia, mined from the land, and given back to its people, even thousands of years after She was returned to God.”

Murmurs stirred. I shifted restlessly.

“Through idium, we are made better. We become the person God intended. Through Idia’s teachings, we know that creation comes from the body and the mind. Craftsman and creator. Both are equally vital in the turning of the world, for who will shift the Earth on its axis, once the idea has been conceived?” Then, Tanner’s free hand lifted.

Awe stilled the crowd. The children fell still and silent and reverent, for who could deny the miracle before them? I gaped at Lord Tanner’s empty hand, the way his fingers flexed and relaxed. Hovering above it was a small but perfect sphere of granite stone, spinning in the air by Tanner’s will alone.

Tanner watched the stone intently, just as we children did, and it began to change shape. Pieces broke away, crumbling to dust at his feet. I heard the minute cracks as it was carved into something new by no visible force. It became the model of a church, then a hammer, a clock tower. When he needed it, the discarded fragments at Tanner’s feet rose again to rejoin his sculpture, and soon the stone crumpled inward, and became a solitary planet once more, smooth and unblemished, rotating in the hand of its sun.