Chapter 2: Simon the thaumaturge

Simon Wells, April 28, 521

The scent of charged aetherium oil clung to my fingers as I awoke with a start, my forehead pressed against the cold brass surface of my thaumic calibrator. Another night spent hunched over my workbench. I blinked to clear my head and frowned as the morning light reflected off the prismatic glow of the floating tools orbiting my workbench, each emitting a soft hum at its designated position.

Through the round attic window, dawn painted the village below in golden hues and shadows. The rhythmic sound of Bornson's hammer at the forge echoed over the hill, mingled with the cries of seagulls. Normal sounds. Safe sounds.

Yet my hands trembled as I reached for my flow stabilizer.

Last night's dream clung to me like static. This wasn't the usual nightmare of my father's empty workshop, but something worse. A voice echoed in my bones, speaking in frequencies that made my thaumic tools vibrate. And beneath the black waves, something moved with impossible precision: it was neither flesh nor machine, but something that defied both.

I activated my diagnostic monocle and the thaumatic lens hummed as it scanned the workshop. There were no anomalies. The entropy resonator showed normal background energy levels. Even my precious auromantic compass rested peacefully in its holder, needle steady.

Everything was exactly as it should be.

So why couldn't I shake the feeling that something fundamental had changed?

The village bell marked the start of the day at eight in the morning, and its familiar chime set my floating screwdrivers into their morning dance of alignment. I saw my reflection in the polished brass of the caliper: dark circles under my eyes, my hair sticking out in all directions. Fifteen years old and already looking almost as old as my father had been.

As I gathered my tools, the echo of the dream pulsed behind my eyes. That voice. That form beneath the waves. The way my bones had rung.

Outside, the world went on as usual. The fishermen were preparing their boats. Marta the baker was on her way to open the shop. But as I stepped out into the morning light, my gaze was irresistibly drawn north, to where the black sand beaches glistened in the rising sun.

I go downstairs.

The copper kettle whistled two notes, a perfect fifth, as it finished boiling, just as I had calibrated it last week. I flicked my wrist and the magic spoon stirred the oatmeal in the pot without my touching it. Breakfast at the Wells house was a precise operation, each movement optimized by careful thaumaturgical engineering.

I rubbed my eyes to wake myself as the smell of toasted rye and honey filled the kitchen. Sleep still clung to the edges of my mind: voices like gears grinding beneath the sea, shapes moving at impossible angles. But the morning light made these things seem distant, absurd.

The pantry door opened as I approached, and I recognized the runic signature my father had programmed into the simple enchantments of the house years ago. I selected a jar of preserved bogberries from last summer's harvest, their color still intense from the preservation enchantment. The lid unscrewed as I placed it on the counter.

Clink.

My auromantic compass, which I had left on the kitchen windowsill, emitted a single sharp pulse. I froze. The needle wasn't spinning wildly, as it would in the event of a real disturbance, but it was definitely... shaking. Pointing north. Toward the black sand beach.

I stared at it until the oatmeal almost burned. The automatic spoon slammed against the pot in protest.

I wiped the last traces of honey from my lips with the back of my hand and picked up my work notebook. The leather cover, worn from use, opened to today's page. With a tap of my finger, the enchanted pen came to life and hovered expectantly over the pages of the notebook.

"Good," I muttered, rubbing my eyes to wake myself up. Sleep still lingered in the recesses of my mind, but work was work.

The pen danced as I spoke:

1. Bakery: recalibrate oven thermostat

(Marta is complaining again that her bread is burning. Probably just need to readjust the cooling runes).

2. School: Install the star projector I left behind yesterday

(Principal Orlen wants me to install the star projector I've been building for the last few months before astronomy class. I hope it works).

3. Lira's house: Boiler reparation

(Last winter's repairs held up well, but apparently they weren't enough to last another year).

The pen ended with a flourish, underlining "Lira's house" twice before returning to its holder. I frowned at the page. Three jobs. I estimate that will take between eight and ten hours of work. Today would be a busy day.

My eyes drifted to the harmonious compass on the windowsill. The needle gave another slight jerk to the north.

I closed the journal.

"Priorities," I said to the empty kitchen, with my bag already half full of additional detection tools.

The wet cobblestones crunched under my boots as I walked down the street, the tool bag heavy with the day's work. The morning air carried the comforting scent of wood smoke and freshly baked bread from the bakery ahead.

Old Harlow waved at me from his porch, where he was mending his fishing nets. "Simon! The tide predictor you built is malfunctioning again: it says high tide will come an hour early."

I nodded and made a mental note. "Probably just needs the gears cleaned! Salt buildup throws off the mechanism.!" It didn't take magic to fix it, just good engineering and hard work.

Next to the butcher shop, Boris was cutting meat and his daughter Eli was practicing her letters on a blackboard. I stopped to correct the way she was holding the chalk. "You're pressing too hard. The letters should flow like this." I showed her the proper motion.

Boris watched me help her and laughed as he sharpened his knives. "Always teaching, just like old Allan!"

Hearing my father's name made me feel a little sad, but I had no time to waste; I had work to do.

I walked on, the rhythm of the dough kneading growing louder and louder. Through the bakery window I could see Marta frowning at the oven, wisps of smoke coming out of the edges.

"Burning another batch?" I asked as I walked in.

She wiped her flour-stained hands on her apron. "Same as yesterday. That new thermostat you installed..."

"It needs to be calibrated properly," I finished. "I told you, these modern regulators need weekly adjustments until they stabilize. I dropped my bag on the floor with a thud. "Now let's see what you broke this time."

As I worked, my fingers automatically followed the diagnostic routine my father had taught me: checking the pressure valves, testing the heat distribution, adjusting the directional dampers that controlled the furnace's enchantments. Real thaumaturgy required precision, not just waving hands and crossing fingers.

Suddenly, the auromantic compass I carried with me went haywire and began to spin until it finally stabilized in the direction of the north beach. "How strange," I said to myself.

Anyway, work comes first. Any oddities lurking in the recesses of my mind could wait until the ovens were repaired and the village's daily bread was baked.

Time passed, and it took me about four hours to fix the oven. "Marta, the oven is ready," I said as I gathered my tools.

"Thank you, Simon!" Marta shouted as I left for the school.

The bell rang at noon. I arrived at the school.

The door creaked as I leaned against it, the weight of the star projector straining my arms. The acrid smell of fresh paint mixed with the damp smell of old textbooks: Principal Orlen must have had the students cleaning again.

"Careful with that!" The principal hurried to stabilize the wobbly suspension bracket. This contraption looks heavier than my mother's old iron stove!

I carefully placed the brass casing on the demonstration table and wiped the fingerprints off the main lens. "It should be. It contains parts salvaged from a tide predictor that took me three months to assemble." Each component bore the marks of long nights in the shop: the carefully aligned thaumatic channels, the repurposed cooling coils, the reinforcing struts I had forged from the propeller shaft of an old fishing boat.

The children began to gather around the table. Among them was little Jory, who said, "What is this? Can it explode?"

"No, unless I wired it wrong," I said, adjusting the aperture dial. The boy's eyes widened as I pointed out the triple-layer insulation. "That's why we have this. And those secondary cooling pumps. And this emergency shutdown switch that...' I stopped, realizing that I was explaining the safety features to a child who probably wanted exactly the opposite.

Director Orlen stared at the panel like it was going to bite him. "Are you sure it's stable? The last projector we had kept showing everyone's skeletons for some reason."

"That's because they were using unfiltered taumatic emissions," I said, activating the stabilization sequence. The projector came to life with a hum and its cooling fins vibrated gently. "This one uses patterns of reflected starlight stored in treated glass matrices. It's completely inert."

At least that was supposed to happen.

The familiar Andromeda spiral unfolded across the ceiling, drawing gasps of awe from the students gathered around the table. But as he adjusted the focus, something flickered at the edge of the projection: a cluster of stars that didn't match any of the diagrams in my father's astronomy manuals. Its strange, asymmetrical arrangement brought back a vague memory, like a half-remembered dream.

My tool bag vibrated lightly on the floor.

Director Orlen didn't seem to notice the anomaly. "Wonderful! Although..." He squinted at the unfamiliar stars. "Is this what Andromeda is supposed to look like?"

I stared at the pulsating constellation that was definitely not part of the standard celestial projections. The one that somehow made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

"It must be a calibration error," I said as I searched for my toolbox.

The school door clicked shut behind us, and the murmur of students still talking animatedly about the star projection faded as we stepped out into the afternoon sun. Principal Orlen wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and looked toward the horizon, where dark clouds were gathering.

"Well," he said, looking at me. Are you going to the party tonight?"

I adjusted the strap on my tool bag, already dreading what was to come. "I wasn't planning on going."

Orlen made a sound halfway between a cough and a snort. "Little Nessa is cooking this year."

I almost dropped my tools. "God, why?"

"Apparently she lost a bet with Lira." He shuddered. "The last time she cooked, old Harlow swore he hallucinated for three days."

I grimaced, remembering the infamous "fish stew" incident. The less said about that, the better.

"I'd rather lick a live wire," I muttered.

Orlen tapped me on the shoulder and grinned. "Then you'd better go. Someone needs to document the symptoms for posterity."

I grunted. The worst part? He was right.

Time flies...

The wind whipped my throat as I made my way down the cliff path to Lira's house, the tool bag banging against my hip with every step. The house looked the same as always: weathered stone walls, a thatched roof patched with salvaged ship planks, a chimney belching lazy smoke into the gray afternoon.

I knocked twice, as islanders do. There was no answer.

Then there was a crash inside, as if someone had knocked over a bucket. "Coming!"

I froze. It wasn't Lira's voice. Nor was it her children, Jory or Nessa. It was too old to be a child, but too young to be an adult.

My auromantic compass stirred in my backpack as if it were a living thing. I barely managed to pull it out before the needle went crazy, spinning so fast that the glass fogged up with condensation. The brass casing burned my palm, and the vibration ran through my arm like a warning.

The door creaked open.

There stood a boy, no more than fifteen years old, his clothes hanging off him as if he had shrunk since he put them on. His hair was long and matted with salt, and the skin on his nose was peeling from the sun. But his eyes were fixed on the compass as if he had never seen one before.

"Hey!" His smile revealed a broken tooth. This is an auromantic compass!

The needle suddenly stopped, pointing directly at his heart.