Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Thirty-Nine Years Ago
Harriet is home. She seldom visits now—travelling taxes her and the new sector rules make it worse.
In a pale lilac dress and her favourite cardigan, she sits, ramrod-straight, on the sofa, a cloth-bound bundle in her lap.
Her white hair is pinned back. At eighty-seven she is no frail old woman—still beautiful, younger than her years.
Beside her, granddaughter Mary, forty-four, looks so much like Harriet did at that age: the same gentle gaze, the same quiet wariness.
We have completed the awkward introductions.
Harriet is loyal and never breathed a word of our secret. After Beryl’s transformation, she stayed four more years, then met her young man. I vetted him like a criminal—family histories, records, the lot—but found nothing amiss: simply a kind man who loved her.
Harriet told him, and later her children, about us, yet in their eyes we became eccentric, long-presumed-dead relations.
The truth has stunned Mary; she perches on the sofa’s edge, casting wide-eyed glances from the stake on the coffee table to the walls around her. Beryl stays silent.
“So this is the house you grew up in?” Mary asks.
“From when I were sixteen till I met your grandfather at twenty-three,” Harriet replies, accent unchanged despite decades of Beryl’s coaching.
“Right,” Mary says slowly. “So, until you were nineteen, Miss Beattie was a real person, and now she’s a sentient object. And the woman who cared for you was… is… a wizard’s house?”
“We don’t say ‘wizard’s house’—daft name, that. Miss House is…” Harriet’s voice softens. “Family. These ladies are me friends.”
Mary blinks. “Grandmother, that is some secret.”
“Oh, I know.”
“It’s a secret you have kept a very long time. So—I presume we are here for a reason?”
Harriet bites her lip, brown eyes shining. “Why yes, we are.” She takes a deep breath. “Miss House, I need yer help.”
Beryl twitches on the coffee table.
Through the years Beryl and I have helped many—never enough to draw dangerous notice, yet as the sectors tighten the peril grows. I would never refuse Harriet; I would do anything for her family.
Still, I sense she is about to ask something I shall not like. I do not trust the sparkle in her eyes.
Harriet, I say gently, what do you need from me?
Mary tenses. Though a powerful magic user, she has clearly spent little time with sentient objects. Each time I speak, she flinches.
Harriet pats her hand and smiles, then nibbles her lip. “I want to become a book.”
A blasted book. I groan.
Beryl shoots off the table. Absolutely not! She whirls through the air dangerously close to Harriet.
Mary lunges to shield her grandmother, but Harriet only smiles, untroubled. She knows she is safe.
“Miss Beattie,” Mary hisses, “please move away from her throat,” and pushes the stake aside.
Offended, Beryl hovers, then drifts back to the coffee table.
“Now, Miss Beattie, cut the theatrics,” Harriet chides. “I’ve mulled this for donkey’s years. Me George is gone, me health’s shot, and the doctors say I ain’t got long.”
You will not be a book, Beryl snarls.
“Miss Beattie, that ain’t yours to decide. I reckon I’d make a fine book. World’s changin’, tech’s comin’ in fast, and I’ve magic in spades. Technomancers get no respect—but if you saw what I’ve seen, you’d be gobsmacked.”
Her eyes gleam. “I’ve studied magic near seventy years—thanks to you, teachin’ me to read and sendin’ me off to school. I’m ready to pass it all on. Can’t stand the thought of all that dyin’ with me.”
To become a sentient object? Beryl growls. A book? Why not simply write one?
“It ain’t the same—and this ain’t vanity.” Harriet lifts her chin. “You became a weapon for vengeance. I’m doin’ this for me, for the next ones, for any mage who needs a leg-up. It’s my choice, and no one’s stoppin’ me.”
Beryl’s fury falters into heartbreak; Harriet is like a daughter to us.
I recall how I glossed the misery of my own existence—always drowning, always watching those I love die. Harriet has seen only the gold leaf, never the rust beneath. I will not repeat that mistake.
Harriet, I say gently, is this truly what you want? Let me offer an alternative.
She tilts her head. “Go on, then.”
Since I changed Beryl, I have researched. What Beryl needed was power and a soul anchored to purpose. You wish only to preserve knowledge?
Harriet reluctantly nods.
Instead of sacrificing your soul, I could extract your magic—your voice, your expertise in technomancy—and bind that to a book. A self-updating artefact, a living library within the pages, but not a sentient one.
She listens, eyes narrowing in thought.
Mary’s brows knit. “Different how?”
It would be an extension, not a prison, I say. Your soul would remain yours. It will not be you, but the book will know all you know: a magical copy of Harriet.
“A Harriet copy?” Harriet echoes, a faint smile tugging at her lips.
Yes—rather than trapping your soul, you can pass on your magic. Yet it remains a huge sacrifice. You will be giving up that magic.
She falls silent, a tear slipping down her nose. “You can truly do that?”
I absolutely can. I hesitate, then ask, What do you think, Mary?
Mary looks at her grandmother, searching her face. Fear sits just behind her eyes. “It is a solution. I have never heard of anyone gifting their magic. Will it hurt? Will it shorten her life?”
No. It will not hurt or shorten Harriet’s lifespan. But it will feel odd—cold. I shall leave her a sliver of power—enough that the absence is bearable—but the bulk will move into the book. A grimoire.
“May I name it?”
Of course.
“‘Harriet’ never did sit right with me. As a book, I’d sooner be ‘Hatty.’”
Hatty is perfect, I say. I do not wish to sway you, but this is still a sacrifice. You will feel changed. Are you certain?
She lifts her chin. “I’ve one foot in the grave already. I refuse to fade quietly. If I can leave somethin’ useful behind, I’ll count meself blessed—and I fancy some wee technomancer, fifty years hence, arguing with me magic. I don’t need me soul caged to do that. Let me do it this way.”
Beryl remains motionless on the coffee table.
Beryl. What do you think?
I think it is a good idea, she says at last. She sniffs. Thank you, House, for keeping our Harriet safe.
“I’ll do it today, now. Me mind’s made up,” Harriet adds.
Mary?
Mary nods. “If this is what you want… Miss House, I vow to keep my grandmother’s grimoire safe. If anything happens, I will let you know and guard it until the right mage comes along,” she whispers.
Thank you.
We go into the garden.
The grass is damp, the air cool. I conjure armfuls of white-and-lilac flowers—her favourites—and spiral them around the bench where she sits. Sunlight breaks the cloud, catching silver in her hair.
Mary stands close, one hand on Harriet’s shoulder, the other clutching the blank book. Beryl hovers at the garden’s edge, silent.
Last chance to change your mind, I warn.
“Not this time,” Harriet replies. “Do your worst.”
My best, I correct. Mary—hand her the book.
Mary passes it over, then steps back. I chalk and salt an intricate circle around the bench; sigils flower across the stones.
At my call, Harriet’s magic rises like winter breath—filaments tasting of electricity, decades of technomancy and stubborn study. Gently I draw each thread into the waiting volume. Runes and sigils etch along the margins and into Hatty’s spine.
Harriet shivers. “Cold—like someone’s opened a window inside me.”
Almost done.
I take a drop of her power and leave a sliver of mine nested in her chest, while the rest settles into the book. Hatty grows weighty in Harriet’s hands, humming with a life’s work but bearing no chained soul.
There. It is finished.
Harriet exhales. “Well, that were… somethin’.” She flexes her fingers. “I feel lighter—quieter, maybe.”
Mary’s tears spill over. “Are you sure you are all right?”
“I’m fine, love. Stop yer blubbin’. Bit o’ quiet never killed no one.”
On Harriet’s lap, Hatty opens of its own accord. A single sentence coils across the page in a spiky script:
’Ello. Let’s do some magic.
We all laugh.
The grimoire is awake—clever, responsive, brimming with Harriet’s magic.
Within hours Harriet, Mary, and the new grimoire depart. Beryl streaks away, hunting her monsters.
I wait for the small hours, draw in every brick and beam, fold the building into my filaments—
—and move.