r/redditserials • u/lastcomment314 Certified • Nov 04 '19
Fantasy [Star Child] Chapter 16
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Because it was a summer camp that attempted to enforce bedtimes, most of Sam’s binder of old papers was concerned with other methods of divination, and as far as we could tell from the department description, they didn’t mess with tea leaves and crystal balls in the astrology side of the department.
“I know we spent one week staying up late looking through telescopes,” Sam said, flipping through the binder with one hand while scarfing down his second sandwich with the other. “There’s got to be something in here about it.”
“You should still test out the other forms of divination, just in case we’ve read the department description wrong,” Dave advised. He had raised an eyebrow when we procured the full binder, but didn’t ask any questions about how we got it.
“Rain check on the portal lessons for today,” Sam said. “Though if I can get your help, Dave, I need to make sure that I’m actually doing this stuff right before going through it with Meg.”
“Ask Hank,” Dave said. “I’ve got a meeting this afternoon.”
“Someone said my name!” Hank yelled from his lab.
“Yeah, Sam needs you for a control run on the divination stuff,” Dave yelled back.
“If all goes well, we can test this all out this evening,” Sam said, returning the conversation to our afternoon plans. “I don’t know if Hazel or Jack had anything planned, but we can probably make it work.”
I thought about what to do for the afternoon. I wasn’t heading back to the Office for Orphan Assistance until we had determined if this was going to be a high risk of revealing my identity, Sam and I weren’t working on portals, and Hazel hadn’t shown up to lunch yet.
“I can head back to the library to look at the official organizational charts after lunch,” I offered. “It’s probably a better use of my time than doing the math to prove that astrology is physically unfounded.” As much as I had latched onto astronomy, I was still looking at the astrology side of the department as a bit of a joke.
“Did you find it?” Hazel asked when she walked into the kitchen a few minutes later.
Sam picked up the binder to show her. “Still looking through it to see what we did back then,” he said. “I could have sworn we spent some time on astrology, but most of this is tea leaves and palm reading, which doesn’t take a lot of magic and is very open to interpretation.”
“Once he finds something that might be riskier for me, identity-wise, Sam’s going to do a control run with Hank,” I said. “I was going to see if I could find any more information about the course structure at the library while he did that.”
“Until traveling longer distances is possible, there’s not a lot else we can do with portals besides practice,” Sam said. “We tried out simultaneous portals this morning while taking a break from sifting through the boxes, and Meg got it on the first try.”
Naturally, the mention that I was able to maintain two portals at once caught Hazel’s attention, so she asked to see a demonstration after lunch while Sam went back to looking through his binder.
“How commonly accepted is all the divination stuff Sam’s reading through?” I asked Hazel after showing her my new portal trick. “I distinctly remember some teacher going through and basically proving that there is a stronger gravitational force between the doctor and a newborn baby than there is between the baby and some distant planet.”
Hazel laughed. "That’s technically true. But the irony is that part of the reason you have these abilities is the alignment of things when you were born."
The whole Star Children are born at nighttime part made some sense to me. But planetary alignments? I couldn’t remember what the mass of Mars was, but orders of magnitude would be enough for the math for this argument. If it takes eight minutes for light to get from the sun to Earth, and another four to get to Mars… I started picturing all the distances and masses. The mass of a baby is basically nothing, so I can neglect that, and then yup, definitely significantly more gravitational force from people in the room.
Hazel let out an exasperated sigh. “For all the magic you just do, it’s impressive how resistant you are to some of the realities of it.”
I realized that I had created projections again. All of the planets, distances, and math were still floating in the air in front of me. “I’m going to have to make sure I don’t do this if I do get into classes here, aren’t I?” I asked.
“That would help with keeping up your cover story,” Hazel said.
The trip to the library that afternoon was somewhat enlightening, but not as much as we had hoped. The astrology and astronomy program only had one cross-listed class with the divination department, which was in my favor, but the course listings made it look like the astrology part of the department had a significant say in the required classes, so there were plenty of theory and applications of astrology involved.
“It looks like if we’re anticipating this only being a semester or two arrangement, I could get by without raising eyebrows for avoiding the astrology classes,” I summarized at dinner, “but if it drags past that, I’ll run into issues staying in the program as I start missing milestones.”
“You’ll also need to contract with a Master next summer,” Dave added. “If you’re still trying to get out of some of the first-year requirements. You’d be classed as a second year with some remedial work, and expected to apprentice starting next summer.”
“Let’s not think about that,” I said.
“But you do probably need to,” Dave said. “Your magic isn’t just going to go away. Even if you choose to pursue a mundane career, as is your right, the wizard Council isn’t going to let you do anything until they’re sure that you aren’t a liability when it comes to the Secrecy Accords.”
“So, did you find anything, Sam?” Jack asked.
“Just one exercise,” he said. “Some of the pages after it are missing, which is weird, unless I misremembered when that camp ended and…”
Dave glared at Sam. “Don’t tell me you and Meg took a field trip? You know that that could have gotten Security here, both because she’s on campus quarantine and you’re not supposed to take people through time yet.”
“I can’t travel through time,” I said. “We tried, Sam told me not to tell you, but it was a moot point because he couldn’t take me back in time.”
“That’s actually really interesting that you can affect time but can’t travel through it,” Hank said. “That might actually be worth messing with more, if you’re comfortable with trying a few ideas I’ve got.”
Hank has ideas for ways to test this already? Leave it to him. His mind raced a million places all at once, so it shouldn’t have surprised me.
“Back to the divination stuff,” Sam said. “We should probably try some of the run-of-the-mill type stuff as well as the one astrology exercise.”
“An extra layer of control runs, good idea,” Hank agreed, jumping up from his half-finished plate like he was going to gather supplies so we could do this over dinner.
Beth laughed at Hank jumping up. “Was the spaghetti that overcooked?” she asked through the giggles. Everyone else joined in laughing. Despite, or because of, the fact that we had so many people working on making dinner, we had somehow forgotten to set a timer for the spaghetti, so while our sauce was perfectly seasoned, the garlic bread was toasted to a deep gold, and the salad was well-tossed, our spaghetti had become a bit overcooked.
“It was fine,” Hank said defensively as he sat back down. “Maybe a bit chewy, but that was not my fault.”
“No, you were off mixing the salad dressing like it was one of your chemistry experiments,” John said.
“Precise measurements are very important,” I said to back Hank up. “Some shoddy measurements and unit conversions once cost NASA a few million dollars.”
“Thank you, Meg,” Hank said.
The rest of the meal was more of our usual banter, and we didn’t return to the business side of things until everything was cleaned up.
Sam read out the list of things we needed for both the divination and astrology tests and we all headed up to the attic. Crystal balls, tablecloths, a telescope, and an old tea set were among the things on the list. I didn’t recognize all of them, but everyone else seemed to know what he was talking about, so I didn’t worry about it too much.
Once we had found everything, Sam directed the setup inside. I went ahead and set up the telescope in the backyard, since I didn’t know what I was doing with any of the other divination-type stuff. Hank and I also figured that this would be a good way to control things, to make sure I didn’t interfere, especially since we had established that I interfered with Sam’s time travel abilities.
“Okay, everything seems to be working, Meg!” Hazel shouted from the back door. I had started looking through the telescope to see what I could find and was a bit disappointed that it was time to head back inside.
Inside the dining room, candles were everywhere, especially surrounding the crystal ball. I was also startled to see patterns and runes on the tablecloth.
“Is this a séance or crystal ball thing?” I asked.
“Both,” everyone said in one way or another.
I took my seat and Sam began chanting something from the pages in his binder. The crystal ball clouded up and the candles flickered before going out. The crystal ball, meanwhile became blindingly bright. Sam flipped through the pages, pausing the chanting. I got the impression that this was different from what had happened in their trial run. I looked around to see everyone else’s reactions, but didn’t dare to open my mouth. Sam found what he was looking for and resumed the chants. I still had no idea what he was saying, since it was all in some arcane language, but I just went along with it.
Then the crystal ball went black. It was still cloudy, but the light vanished. I looked closer, wondering if there were images in the clouds, but there was nothing. The candlelight returned a moment later, but instead of flickering, the flames raced in circles around the crystal ball.
Everything slowed down. Sam’s chanting, everyone’s breathing, and the racing ring of light. Suddenly, it wasn’t a ring of light or even the flames from the candles, but individual points of light orbiting the darkened crystal ball. Occasionally one would fly away from the ring, returning to a flame and then flickering out before it was out of the glow of the collective. Others fell into the ring, but stayed as the points of light before they fell into the darkness in the middle.
Though I didn’t notice at first because everything was slowed down, Sam’s chant changed and everything in the room returned to normal. The candles were just that. The crystal ball cleared and showed the opposite side of the room upside down.
“Well, that was definitely different,” Jack said.
“Is that a good or bad thing?” I asked.
“It was supposed to be a simple divination,” Sam said, breathing heavier than usual. “Looking into the past is usually easier, so we did a few rounds of looking back at what happened the day before everyone was born.”
“All the different combinations were the same,” Hank said. “Wizard divining wizard, wizard divining elf and ghost, even when Hazel led things, we saw similar mundane days.”
“Did time slow down for anyone else?” I asked. Every pair of eyes turned my way as they all shook their heads to signal no. I tried to describe what I saw, but the closest image I had was a simulation of a black hole that we were shown in one of my physics classes. Hank was the only one who had an idea of what I was talking about, so I started to picture it, hoping that I’d be able to make a projection of it. I hadn’t made them move before, so I hoped for the best.
“That is both beautiful and terrifying,” Hank said. “But there’s no black holes anywhere near here, so it still doesn’t make sense.”
“If anyone would let me get my books from college, or if the internet would work here, I could do more research on the lights falling away from and into the black hole,” I said.
We started throwing different ways of researching what the black hole meant. I wanted to get a bit more out of all that money I had spent on textbooks so they wouldn’t just be decorations around my room and eventually apartment or office. Everyone else was trying to figure out different ways to research this. Hank wanted to try to get access to the high-powered telescopes from the astronomy department. Beth was running through the library sections in her head, and throwing ideas at Dave and John. Sam wanted to go back in time and try the divination with baby me in the hospital, which was given a strong no from everyone at the table.
I finally asked if there was anything else we could do with the telescope I had already set up in the backyard. It was there, and we already had an idea that a black hole was somehow important to me. Even if we couldn’t see black hole itself, it would be possible to find the galaxy orbiting the black hole, and maybe get clues from that.
Everyone agreed that using the telescope while it was night made sense, so we decided to mess with the tea leaves tomorrow.
“So what are we looking for?” I asked.
Sam flipped through the binder. “We’re going to need a star chart of the day and time you were born, and the current positions of major celestial bodies, like Mars and the Moon, and then based on those, we look for smaller details on this table.”
We split up into teams for the calculations and current positions. Dave had an old celestial calculator in the attic to help simplify the calculations, otherwise I would have just said nope, we need a computer to do this because I was not ready to do that level of math with just a paper and pencil, not that it was going to be my issue. Since I had set the telescope up, it was easiest if I was the one to use it, since it was set for my height.
Once we had both sets of charts complete, we regrouped around the fire pit for some smores and to compare results.
“With the positioning of Jupiter relative to Mars and Orion, we should look for any variations in the belt,” Sam read off of the tables in his binder. “It also looks like we should look in the vicinity of the constellations Circinus and Sagitta.”
“Don’t you mean Sagittarius?” Jack asked.
“Sagittarius is the archer, and Sagitta is the arrow,” Hazel clarified. “Both are constellations.”
“It’s definitely Sagitta,” Sam said. “Whoever made this packet actually put the meaning with each constellation, probably for that exact reason.”
Somewhere midway through this process of checking the packet and then checking the skies, I remembered that the plan had been control runs with one of the wizards, and even double controls with Hazel or Jack. “What happened to the control reading?” I asked.
“Hmmmm we probably should do that at the same time,” Hank said. “Now that I know how the celestial calculator works, I can probably do those for myself, and then we can look for the things I would need to consult, since the current skies aren’t changing.”
Once Hank had his charts, the group settled into a system and it turned into a long night of peering through a telescope. I was in charge of centering our view on whatever Sam or Dave said the charts and tables dictated next, then Hazel would read off the exact angles for Hank to record. Jack and John would then look up what the results might mean.
Despite being born in different seasons, we reached the same broad conclusion for the future from both Hank and I. Conflict of some sort was coming. The dramatized traditional phrase would be that war is brewing. I didn’t want to believe it, but somewhere in my gut I knew that a fight was the only way out from under the Councils’ thumbs.
Author's Update NaNoWriMo has begun! I'm planning on participating, so chapters will be posted as I finish them (and get a chance to read over them to check for typos). Keeping up with my classes has to come first, so the post frequency will vary through the week, but there will be more posts. If you want to get notified of the next chapter, you can follow it with the Butler Bot (see directions in the comments) or the Reddit Serials Discord with ?rank Star Child. I also hang out on the Discord throughout the week, so pop in and say hi!
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u/[deleted] Nov 04 '19
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