Chapter 2 Atticus #2
I ground myself, blocking out the noise of other people, and begin to count.
Zero, one, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one…
The Fibonacci sequence. It’s an old trick I adopted when I was young.
My aunt used to do the same thing, blocking out the noise of other people with knitting, counting her stitches.
It’s meditative, and I’ve always liked numbers.
There’s no room for confusion or interpretation. Numbers are literal, predictable, safe.
The counting does the trick, and once the shock fades, I gain my bearings.
I’ve found the right office. Twenty or so architects crowd the room, all of them hard at work, moving quickly about, the air alive with chatter.
It’s an open floor plan, with antique mahogany desks, large stained-glass windows, wall-long filing cabinets with drawers full of papers, and a chalkboard packed with diagrams and measurements.
There’s a big table at the very center of the room, brightly illuminated by a low-hanging suspended lamp, and everyone’s gathered around it. Their faces glow, their eyes sparkling, the lights from below blessing them with an otherworldly appearance.
And that’s when I realize it’s not just light beaming up from the table. It’s magic. The blueprint is literally glowing.
An older woman, with dark gray hair tied up in a neat bun on the top of her head and a pencil sticking out of it, looks up and notices me standing in the doorway.
“Atticus Garcia?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say, then correct myself: “Yes, ma’am.” Sibylline doesn’t give off “yeah” energy.
“You’re late,” she says, marching over. She wears low-heeled retro wingtips, a long tan skirt, a white blouse, and a man’s black necktie hanging loose around her neck, stylishly unkempt. She’s quite short, but she walks with authority.
Heat rises in my face. “I wasn’t, I—”
“You and me, let’s go,” she says, grabbing a coat from the back of a chair.
For an instant, I think she’s kicking me out, but then she thrusts a thick binder into my arms, giving me only a brief moment to catch it before she’s moving toward the exit, beckoning me to follow. I barely have time to grab my coat, forgetting my umbrella in my haste to keep up.
Her heels clack loudly down the hallway, sharp staccato taps that match the clip of her accent. One-two, one-two. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, so let’s not waste time, shall we? I’m Professor White, lead architect for restoration and preservation, your supervisor.”
I’m struck then, realizing I’m walking with a living legend.
I know all about Professor Anna White’s legacy.
She’s spent most of her esteemed career researching how magic was used long ago to create Sibylline’s whole campus.
I have all of her books on my shelf, and I’ve watched her in countless online interviews.
I once attended a lecture by Professor White with Dorian on a Sunday at the Cooper Union.
She’s an absolute icon and the chair of the architecture department at Sibylline.
I didn’t think I’d be actually working with her.
I almost have to jog to keep up, and she leaves the building without an umbrella. The cat is still waiting on the steps, its tail flicking curiously, watching us go.
Despite the rain, Professor White remains dry, not a drop on the shoulders of her tan overcoat.
Any other mundane person might think it’s a coincidence, but I know the truth.
She’s using magic. As I shield the binder with my body, Professor White glances at me and mutters a spell under her breath, and suddenly I’m also protected from the rain.
“At Sibylline,” she says kindly, “we make magic work for us. We are the architects of this world—never forget that.”
All I can do is nod. I won’t let her down.
Professor White’s eyes linger on the back of my hand, where I sketched the symbol I saw in the graveyard. “Is that a tattoo? Are you interested in St. Adolphus Hall?”
I glance at my hand. “Oh, no, it’s just a drawing. I saw the symbol and liked it. What’s St. Adolphus Hall?” I ask, curious. There is so much I don’t know.
“A secret society,” she says. “Kids call it St. Ad’s.”
“Ah.” A secret society, only for students, not lowly minimum-wage workers like I am. Emphasis on secret. Even someone like me who’s obsessed with Sibylline doesn’t know about it. One more privilege I’ve been denied.
“Watch out for them—they have strange ideas.” She waves her hand, and the evil eye I sketched vanishes from my skin.
I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to seeing magic used so casually.
It’s thrilling. Then she sets off at a march and I follow, my stomach twisting in knots.
Professor White crosses the diamond—the grassy quad now empty—and marches us through the music school, cutting through the lobby that’s full of the sounds of violin and cello.
Butterflies made of light dance out of the practice rooms, conjured by the music.
We exit, crossing the street and heading straight for a tower whose top is crowned in dewy mist. I realize it’s part of a greater structure, cathedral-like, with a main atrium occupying most of the block.
I follow her inside and find the interior mostly empty, like it has been carved out, and there are no lights, even of the magical sort.
What remains of the interior is covered in drop cloths, so it looks like great ghosts of giants linger in the darkened hall. Dust clouds the air.
“Arches is one of the older buildings on campus. We’re in the process of restoring the structural systems, but there’s a problem with the renovation,” Professor White says, gesturing to the building as she begins her ascent, climbing the switchback stairs of the scaffold as she leads me higher and higher through the center of the tower.
Something rumbles in the distance, and the ramp beneath me shakes.
I sneeze when dust fills the air. Professor White bids me gesundheit, then continues, “Since you have experience with mundane architectural practices, you should know that the buildings at Sibylline are different. Arches was designed, developed, and constructed with magic, and therefore it must be maintained with magic.” She pauses when yet again a soft rumbling echoes afar.
“You may find the job difficult or overwhelming. This sort of work requires a skill set that some do not exhibit. From foundation to finial, this entire tower resonates with the power of Sibylline. In times past, wizard architects who possessed great magical ability erected entire buildings”—she snaps her fingers—“like that, crafting their architectural visions by harnessing the spirits of the natural world.”
The way she says it, I sense something beneath her words, a kind of reverence, maybe even envy. It’s like a whisper, the deep desire radiating from her, and I yearn to know her thoughts. Too bad I can’t read them today.
“To build something like this…” Professor White’s face turns up toward the inside of the tower, her head shaking in awe.
“Even a brick wants to be something,” I paraphrase.
Professor White’s gaze shines with mine. “Louis Kahn,” she says, naming the famous architect. “You understand, then.”
She doesn’t know the half of it. Maybe in this metaphor I’m the clay yet to be shaped. “There’s power in creation.”
The way Professor White looks at me, I wonder if I’ve overstepped, but the smile on her face gives way to a question: “What does this work mean to you?”
It’s easy speaking from the heart. “Creating, to me, is like breathing. I have to do it, otherwise it feels like I’m dying. So to build something like Arches…” I gesture upward. “It’s a testament to life.”
Maybe it’s cheesy, but Professor White seems pleased.
“Very good, Mr. Garcia. But that is only the beginning of what we do here. There are no living architects that still possess the talents required for the job. Magic of this sort has dwindled over time, similar to how we’ve moved beyond inventions like Gutenberg’s printing press in favor of modern innovation.
So we must preserve what we have of this lost science of building with magic just like we would preserve a site of historical significance. But this particular task is difficult.”
“How so?” I ask, my feet trembling. Or is it the scaffolding that’s shaking?
“The builders cannot use modern technologies or materials, lest we upset the balance of the magic that thrives within Arches. So our task is twofold, to maintain the history as well as the power within. But—”
The scaffolding shakes once more, harder this time, and I reach out for something to hold on to.
Professor White stumbles, nearly falling, as the floor beneath us trembles.
Then all at once, a great hunk of stone shakes loose from the structure above and comes crashing downward, breaking and tearing the scaffold, ripping apart the wooden planks in its path.
It strikes a spot that’s only a few feet from where I stand.
I fall to my knees, gripping the boards beneath me, hoping they won’t crumble, tumbling along with that hunk of stone to the distant floor, three or four stories below. I freeze, hoping the floor won’t collapse beneath me.
I count numbers to maintain my calm as the air clears, the dust fading until once again I can see Professor White, her face caked in dust.
“You see what I mean?” Her tone is calm, as if she’d half expected that stone to fall. “There’s something wrong with Arches. And if we don’t find out what it is, we may lose the tower completely.”