Harrington raised both eyebrows; his gaze followed Cyan’s hand across runes and ciphers. His voice stayed even, measured, deliberately calm. “Is it dangerous?”
“All words can be. But yes, the way you mean it. Openings…well. Think about being able to open anything, one time.Anything.”
Harrington’s expression changed. “Don’t solve it, then.”
“I won’t.”
“Do you want to keep it here? For the Convivium Library. Magical.”
“Oh,” Cyan said. “Yes, probably. I’ll ask. I think they’ll agree; I want protections around it. Thank you.”
“Should you keep touching it?”
Dangerous, indeed. He put the scroll down. It rolled itself into a silent coil, with a rustle of belated warning. “Probably not. Thank you again.”
Harrington lingered. “There’s ink on your thumb.”
“Earlier. A copying-spell.”
“Ah.” Harrington swung away, turned back. “About openings, then.”
“Openings?”
“Opportunities. Encounters. Taking risks. I’ve been trying but I think I should try harder.”
“What?”
“Here. For you. You can wait to answer; I won’t put you on the spot. I think I understand that, now.” At which confusing point Harrington dropped a new folded page, a note he must’ve been carrying all this time, onto Cyan’s desk, and vanished.
Cyan, perplexed, unfolded thick golden paper. Graceful violet script inquired,Dinner, with me, tonight?
Bashful wanting lingered in the writing: a form of asking Harrington’d hoped a genius university-professor bibliomancer might like.
Dinner. Possibilities. An opening. A kind of magic, Cyan thought, feeling himself begin to smile. Given voice in ink.
He bolted to the office door. Harrington turned, most of the way down the hall, under the arches and pinned-up faculty notice-boards of the new Convivium wing; he turned like someone discovering hope, framed by dusty sunlight.
“Wait,” Cyan protested, desperate and certain, and dove back to his desk, unearthed a pen, scribbled a word in night-blue berries and dream-tea infused onyx, darted back.
He nearly collided with Harrington, who’d come to the office door, hovering, eyebrows up. Cyan held up the note: the yes, written as clear and plain as he could make it, under the question.
“Yes,” Harrington said, careful with the reading, as if his own happiness might shatter if given voice; and Cyan nodded, sure about the words and the ink and the wanting, all of this spell, and told him again, “Yes.”
The Motion of Missing by Pamela Ungrrr
“Katie’s here!”
The words sound like they are coming from the direction of the main door of the club. Riley, worried, looks over to the door when she hears Katie’s name. There is a crowd of people at the entrance of the club. Riley can’t see Katie yet. Katie slips through the crowd and sees Riley for a second, then looks away, avoiding eye contact with her. Riley catches the look.
“Katie?” Riley yells after her.
Katie doesn’t answer. She can’t, doesn’t want to, wouldn’t even know how to.
Katie makes her way into the back and through the doors leading to the dressing area behind the stage.
Riley stops looking in Katie’s direction and continues placing glasses into a bin and wiping down the bar. She hasn’t seen Katie there in weeks, ever since Quinn…Riley couldn’t even say the words to herself, let alone out loud.
* * * *
