8 AUGUST | THE GREAT LIBRARY | PG The magical pollution hits Edwin at work.
warnings none
Edwin was concerned. Sutton Cottage had not been well when he’d left for work that morning, and when Briar had tried to put the gardens to rights the young man had fallen sick as well. Edwin had felt guilty leaving to go to work – had felt guiltier still with the wrongness he’d felt that whole day had disappeared like it had never been as soon as he’d stepped over the property line and he’d felt relief when it felt like he could breathe again. He’d resolved that he’d research the problem at any down time he’d had during the day.
He would have to do a cleansing, he thought. Sometimes, back home, the magic on magical estates went wrong. If a guest died, if something violent happened, things could go horribly wrong, and it could take years, decades even, to soothe the land and make it right.
He didn’t think any guests had died on his land. He didn’t think anything violent had happened – Sutton Cottage hadn’t alerted him to anything like that, and surely it would have, unless it had happened while he was off the property…
He chewed his thumbnail. Penhallic library, he thought, would have books about how to maintain magical properties, and would have books on the rites a steward would have to perform to set things right. In the meantime, he could try scouring the books on Vallo’s magic here in the Great Library to see if he could figure out the problem.
On a normal day at the library, he’d have plenty of time to do whatever side research he wanted to do. But Gansey seemed to be under the weather, and Edwin didn’t want to overtax him, and so he’d taken up a little extra work.
Including reshelving all the books that had come in the night before. Normally, Edwin didn’t mind doing it the slower way. He enjoyed the feel of books in his hands, enjoyed quietly memorizing where every book fit, even if he logically knew that it would be impossible to know every book in the Great Library like he did Penhallick.
But today, there were other things on his mind. So he closed his eyes and began the cradle. There were more books than he could move with his own magic, so he reached down to the ley line that ran under the library, and pulled it into himself.
The feeling was instantaneous. It was wrong. It was all the wrongness he had felt at Sutton Cottage, but now it was inside him, oozing like sludge through his veins. The books had lifted off the cart with the initial surge of magic, but fell sharply to the ground when Edwin’s legs gave out from under him. He felt the gorge rise in him as he fell hard on his hands and knees, but he forced it back, dry heaving.
Nancy, meanwhile, felt nothing. She had been curious about magic since Caleb had written his entry and half wondered if she ought to try it. She didn’t think she was particularly lacking in the defense department considering how proficient she was with any kind of gun or rifle, but it seemed like a good way to learn defense in a world that was greatly seeped in magic.
But, she hadn’t really given it much thought past Caleb’s entry and had gotten sidetracked immediately the day after – blame the summer schooling. Now, where most people in Vallo connected with magic were feeling off, she felt, well… just fine!
In fact, she bobbed her head to music through her earphones as she put away her share of the books, low enough that she could hear someone calling for her if they needed assistance but still loud enough to mouth along to the lyrics. She didn’t hear anyone call out but she did hear the sudden commotion involving several books and one human being falling to the ground.
Yanking her headphones out immediately, and putting her cart aside, she rushed over to investigate.
“Edwin! What happened? Are you okay?” She pushed aside the nearest books and made her way over to him, a hand on his shoulder as she bent forward.
Edwin flinched away from Nancy’s touch and dragged himself out of her reach. He dry heaved again, and, sure he had it out of his system, sat back heavily and rubbed his face with his hands. “Don’t touch me,” he said, and then took a steadying breath. “Please. I’m fine, thank you. I just…”
He looked at his hands, and frowned, and then, almost as a compulsion, he slowly and carefully cradled a spell. A sphere of light, dim and nearly murky, even in the shadows of the library. And then, the queasiness washed over him and the light winked out so he could hold the back of his hand to his mouth to hold in the gorge. It wasn’t as strong, and hadn’t come as fast as when he’d tried drawing directly from the ley line, but it was unmistakable.
“There’s something wrong with my magic.”
Nancy’s hands immediately went up, unsure if the not wanting to be touched part was him in particular or because something could seriously wrong. She probably should have asked, she realized, cringing inwardly at her decision.
“What can I do?” She asked, watching his process, feeling at a bit of a loss right now on what to do. “Should I call someone specific or…?”
Nikolai. Edwin wanted Nikolai here. Nikolai would know just how to hold him to make him feel better. But Edwin bit back the name, physically biting his lip to stop it from escaping him.
“No, no,” Edwin said, and gulped in another deep breath. “If you could get me a glass of water, please.”
Nancy didn’t waste any time standing up from her spot and rushing away to retrieve the glass of water. As a matter of fact, she practically sprinted. Sure, there may have been patrons raising an eyebrow at that, but she couldn’t care about that right now, so long as she wasn’t barreling over any of them.
Once she got back to Edwin, she held out the glass for him to take, keeping herself at arms length which seemed to be what he preferred. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to crowd you. Do you feel worse when you use the magic?”
By the time Nancy returned to him, Edwin had managed to pull himself up into one of the chairs at a work table, and was cradling his aching head in his hands. “No harm done,” he admitted, reluctantly. “I don’t like being touched. You couldn’t have known that. Thank you.” This last was said as he took the glass of water and took a long drink from it.
He nodded, and looked again at his fingers. He resisted, for now, the temptation to try another bit of magic. “I do, yes. It’s like being flooded by… by grime. Like it’s coated in pollution, and I’m pulling it all into myself.”
Nancy tentatively slipped into a chair nearby, still giving him some distance. Magic was simply amazing, she would be the first to admit that but her first entanglement with the supernatural was not good and Vallo both had a mix of both good and bad, and keeping a distance felt a little safe for the time being.
“Like you have to swim through really shitty waters and accidentally swallowing some of it?” Not that she had any experience with that but it was the closest she could imagine it would feel. “Well. Do you have to go home? I can take care of your share here, that part is no big deal.”
“That’s it exactly,” Edwin said. When he was at Sutton Cottage, not using the magic, it felt like a layer of muck coated his skin; bringing the magic inside of him made him feel ill.
He hesitated. Darlington had offered him the afternoon too, and the fact of the matter was he didn’t like being away from Sutton Cottage when the land felt as ill as it did. He certainly wouldn’t feel better, stepping onto the land that he’d inherited, but there was a guilt that gnawed at him, like he’d left his sick child at home alone when he should be caring for them.
“Gansey is unwell, too,” he said after a moment, and he suspected that Gansey felt worse than he let on. Edwin had only tried to draw on the power of the ley line temporarily, Gansey was made from the magic. “I would not like to leave the rest of you in the lurch.”
Nancy scowled slightly although she couldn’t blame him. She lost track of how many times she had pushed through something that was making her feel like absolute crap to get things done. It wasn’t exactly a good thing when you had the flu and you still showed up to school because you had to have the perfect attendance record…
“You wouldn’t,” she said firmly, though. “I can be pretty damn good with multitasking, doing the job of two other people. You looked like you were about to puke your entire digestive system out, Edwin.”
Edwin hesitated for a moment longer, and then nodded. “Yes, okay,” he said at length. “I don’t know that I would feel much better. I think the land of Sutton Cottage is feeling the effects worse than I am. But… But I would feel better in other respects.”
As far as the maze and the flowers went, it was probably best left to Briar to deal with once he and the magic had recovered, but that didn’t mean that Edwin couldn’t do other tasks for the house. Clean the floors and wash the light covers, as it were.
“Will you call me if you need help?”
Nancy could almost breathe a sigh of relief. She knew that kind of personality pretty damn well because she was one of them. Can’t let anything get in the way of work, must keep going! But even she sometimes needed people to tell her to chill out and take a rest, and she was glad that she at least had Robin to do that for her.
And occasionally Steve and Eddie too.
“If anything happens, I will call, yes.” She stood up, ready to walk him out if she needed to. Not that she thought he needed to be shoved out but in case he went down again and she had to call for help. “And if you need me to do anything… deliver sustenance later or whatever, let me know.”
Edwin managed a wan smile. “You and your girlfriend are pretty similar,” he said, remembering how eagerly Robin had volunteered to take Briar food despite hardly knowing him. “Thank you, Nancy.” He shot a chagrined glance at the books that still lay on the floor. It was unforgivable that he’d left them so long, and he felt a pang of guilt: he hoped none of them had been damaged in their tumble. He forced himself to his feet. “But I should clean these up first.”
The girlfriend remark brought on a feeling of giddiness that she probably won’t ever get over, even if it had been about two months now. But she didn’t respond to that part, and instead, Nancy shook her head, taking a step toward the books. “I can get that, Edwin. I’m serious. Go, it’s not going to take me long either.”
Every muscle in Edwin’s body was tensed as if he wanted to run straight to the books and comfort them, but he managed to hold himself at bay.
“You’ll be careful with them?” he asked, a little anxiously. The more he looked at them the guiltier he felt for leaving them for so long on the floor.
Nancy held back from rolling her eyes although one corner of her lips did still twitched up in a half smile. “I know the value of books, I promise I will be very careful.” Heck, she rarely let anyone borrow the books she owned after she remembered getting one book back with several pages dog-eared. That hurt.
Edwin knew that she would. He’d known even when he said them that his warnings were unnecessary; he’d seen Nancy handle books before, and he’d had taken no issue with it. Even still, he was reluctant to leave them.
He was already starting to feel better after his magic use, but he was still feeling off, and there was some part of him that desperately wanted to be with Sutton Cottage right now, even if being on the grounds of his estate right now had made his skin crawl.
“Thank you, Nancy,” he said after a time, making himself turn from them. “Please, don’t hesitate to call me if you need me. I’ll come back when I can.”
And with that, he turned from home. If this was a Vallo wide problem, he suspected there was very little he could do to help sooth the magic on the estate, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t at least try.