“Let me see that pouch again,” Shara said, looking sideways and holding out her hand to Tel. The man pursed his lips, but finally dug the black pouch out of a pocket and passed it to her when she waved her hand impatiently again. “I thought you were just being a gentleman when you were paying for everything,” she said, the velvety material soft under her fingertips.

Tel shook his head. “Like I said, coins, well, anything you carry, really, picks up an echo of your magic.”

“But this pouch blocks it?” Shara asked, leaning back against the large tree, thin beams of moonlight through the foliage above their only light.

“As long as the chaos energy isn’t too strong,” Tel explained from where he sat beside her, his back against the same tree trunk.

After the stableboy had warned them about the Tailcoat, and promised on his mother’s life to take care of ButterBee, they’d done the only thing they could think of to lose their pursuer – they’d gone straight into the forest. Straight, and so far nobody would be able to find them.

Not even themselves.

Lost was an understatement, at least while it was dark. Once the sun came out, she’d figure out where they were. That was a problem for later, though.

“And a Tailcoat can follow this echo?” Shara asked, pulling a coin out and peering at in the dark. Nah, she couldn’t see anything special about it. Though, that was kind of the point of the bag.

“Anybody who practices can. Since you used your magic at the store, we had to be careful that we didn’t leave any more breadcrumbs,” Tel said.

“Gah, now you’re making me hungry again,” she said, dropping the coin back into the pouch, closing her eyes, and leaning her head back against the tree. If she fell asleep, maybe she could ignore the pit in her stomach. “We didn’t even get to go back for my pack,” she grumbled, and her stomach grumbled right along with her.

“That’s one foot, which means that would be four. Multiply it by the distance from here to…” Tel mumbled, and there was a small burst of chaos energy off to her side. Barely more than a butterfly or two from the feel of it.

“You count when you’re hungry? That’s weird, even for…” Shara trailed off as something delicious­­-smelling wafted into her nose. That…that smell. She knew it, and her eyes snapped open to find Tel’s hand out in front of her. And, more importantly, one of the meat-pies from Gravelburg in that hand.

“Here,” he said, quietly.

“You been holding out on me?” she asked, though she didn’t take her eyes off the meat-pie in case it vanished if she looked away. “I can really have this?”

“Go ahead,” he said.

“Got any more?” she asked, hands snapping up to grab the food, then immediately juggling it. “Hot. Hot! How is it hot?!”

“Uh, well,” Tel mumbled, but cut off as Shara shot to her feet and whirled around in front of him.

“You!’ she said, pointing a finger at him between juggling the hot food. “You’re a sorcerer, aren’t you? The counting, that little burst of chaos energy, this is what that was for, wasn’t it?”

Tel pulled his knees up to his chest, and he didn’t look at her, but he nodded.

“So…your magic…your magic must be to…” she said, putting the pieces together. Suddenly it made sense.

“Yeah…” he said.

“Is to make delicious meat-pies out of nothing?! That’s the most amazing power I’ve ever seen! Er, well, eaten,” she corrected, and took a bite. “Haaah, hooo…hoood,” she said around the scalding food.

No response from Tel, so she took another bite, then looked down at the man.

Huh, that look on his face wasn’t the kind he usually made when she was right about something.

“So, it’s not making meat-pies, is it?” she asked.

“No,” Tel said with a shake of his head.

“Food in general?” she asked. “Still pretty great.”

“It’s not that either,” he said.

Shara dropped down into a crouch in front of Tel, popping the last bite of the pie into her mouth, then chewing while she stared at him. “I’m out of ideas,” she finally said. “You out of pies?”

“No… I… okay, can you turn on your stopwatch for a few seconds?” he asked.

“If you’re a sorcerer, don’t you have your own watch?” she asked, but snagged the stopwatch out of her shirt. Her thumb traced the butterfly engraving on the back, the image of it clear in her mind from all the days she’d spent staring at it.

Mom, where are you?

“I do, but… I’m not sure exactly how far we are from Gravelburg, or if we’re being followed, and my watch is… very accurate. Turning it on while we have a Tailcoat looking for us might not be the best idea,” Tel said.

“And turning mine on is different how?” she asked, finger on the plunger, but she didn’t push it down.

“I sensed it when you used it back in Kulio’s shop. The timing of it is off, which means the chaos energy it creates is much weaker than it could be. With some light, I can fix it for you, if you’d like,” Tel said.

“But it’s not broken,” she said, thumb going back to the precious engraving. “Maybe a little beat up, but not broken.”

“Not that you can feel. No offense, but fixing things is kind of what I do. Being able to sense how much chaos energy they produce gives me an idea what’s wrong. If I had to guess, I would say a few of your internal parts are stripped from overuse,” Tel explain.

Shara raised an eyebrow, though Tel wasn’t looking at her. “Most men would get punched for saying that to a lady.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The Clocksmith slowly looked up at her, his eyes widening and his jaw dropping. “I…didn’t mean…not that your… you’re… uh…” he stumbled over his own words, and Shara couldn’t keep the laugh down any longer.

“Oh… you… you…” she tried, but couldn’t get the words out past the guffaws. Finally, she blew out a slow breath, had one little after-chuckle, then forced her face straight. “I know. You’re too easy to…there’s a word for it. Protract? No. Promote? Provide?”

“Provoke,” Tel said quietly, but his face was back to its neutral normality.

“That’s the one. So, back to my watch, you think it’s worn out?” she asked.

“I do,” Tel said. “I have the tools and parts to fix it in my pack,” he said, once more looking down. “If you’d like.”

“But you don’t have your pack. You left it in the inn, just like I did mine,” she said, a small pang at losing out on the treasures he’d saved from the enclave. Oh well, keeping him alive to get her into the Bastion enclave would be worth it.

Tel’s eyes went sideways, but he didn’t say anything.

“You… didn’t leave your pack in the inn,” she said. “Okay, seriously, it’s explaining time.”

“Turn on your stopwatch?” he asked, and she pushed the plunger down, glowing butterflies immediately forming around her hand.

“You’re the first person I’ve… shown… this to,” he said, but then slowly held out his hand, palm up, the butterflies shooting over to circle above.

Something about his pull on the chaos energy kept the snide remark buried deep, and she could only watch in wonder.

As the butterflies formed around her stopwatch, they shot over to join the ring of circling insects above Tel’s hand like something yanked them over. Faster and faster the ring spun, until the shape of it changed. No longer were they individual glowing butterflies, or even a stream of them, but instead a solid disc of chaos energy. A disc with…teeth?

A gear!

Shara tilted her head, watching the single gear suddenly split, a copy forming beside it, teeth perfectly fit with the original. Several seconds passed before a third gear appeared, making the three of them look kind of like a triangle.

Without the individual gears spinning, the whole triangle began to rotate above Tel’s hand, the gears pulling apart and only then beginning to turn. As the gears themselves turned, and the three of them rotated outward, they seemed to pull the air apart. No, not the air…reality?

A black hole formed between the three glowing gears as they spun, maybe as wide as her forearm was long, and this time it was Shara’s jaw’s turn to drop.

Controlled chaos.

“How…?” she started to ask, but cut off as something came through the black hole in reality to land in Tel’s palm.

Steam immediately rose off the fresh meat pie in the cool night air, and although the smell of it set her mouth to watering, Shara didn’t move to take the food. She couldn’t look away from the depths of that portal to…somewhere else.

Tel took the meat pie with his other hand, and there was another, stronger pull on the chaos.

Shara’s fingers clenched around her watch, the pull powerful enough her instincts told her she’d lose the watch to that hole if she wasn’t careful, but she didn’t turn it off.

Faster and faster the gears spun, more forming as the circle spread out and the portal grew. With the increased power came something like a buzzing in her ears, bone deep, nails on a chalkboard down her spine, and a foreign, cold air flowed out of the portal.

Where does it go?

“Almost…” Tel said, strain obvious in his voice, and suddenly his heavy pack dropped out of the portal onto his hand. The impact seemed to break his concentration, and the gears vanished with a sound like glass breaking.

The pull on the chaos vanished so suddenly, Shara’s hand jerked a touch in the opposite direction before she could stop it.

“Thanks…” Tel said, breathing heavily. “You can…turn off…”

Shara’s thumb pushed the plunger down while her eyes stayed locked on where the portal had been. She’d seen a lot of magic in her time. From her aunt’s to the others who’d helped train her, many of them very impressive, but nothing like that.

Nothing that had changed the form of chaos and then controlled it.

“What…what was that?” she asked.

“My magic,” Tel said, breathing a bit easier and holding out the meat pie to her. “It connects to…another place. A pocket dimension of some kind where I can store things and pull them back out. It’s generally pretty useless.”

Shara took the meat pie, barely registering the heat rushing into her fingertips, but didn’t put it to her mouth. A power to store things? Useless? If she had that…she’d never need to pick and choose between what she stole – she’d just take it all.

“Doesn’t seem useless to me,” she said, holding up the meat pie.

Tel shrugged. “You saw how much chaos energy it took to get my pack out. And it goes up exponentially by size…uh…that means the bigger something is, the more chaos energy it takes, by a lot. With your stopwatch, the pack was the absolute limit.”

Taking a bite out of the meat pie, damn good even if her attention wasn’t completely on it like it deserved, Shara mulled it over. “You did the first pie without my watch,” she pointed out.

“Something that size is about the biggest I can get with counting and calculating,” Tel said. “Your ability…the power to walk on air – that’s what it is, isn’t it? – now that is amazing.”

Shara took another bite. “Flying would be better,” she said around the food in her mouth. “Feels like I’m always taking the stairs.”

“That explains why you’re in such great shape,” Tel said, then seemed to realize what his words meant, and quickly looked away. “And, you should be thankful. Flight magic is very expensive on a chaos energy to distance ratio. What I felt when you were using your magic was much more efficient. If your watch was more accurate, you’d get even more versatility out of it.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, picking a tree opposite where Tel sat, then slid down it to sit across from him.

“The size and accuracy of a time piece is directly proportional to the amount of chaos energy it produces,” he said. “My watch would produce more energy than yours because it measures time better. A grandfather clock of accuracy equal to my watch would produce more energy because it’s much larger. Make sense?”

Shara nodded, the meat pie finished off. “And that would change my magic?”

“Probably,” Tel said. “But, without testing, I can’t say how. Most magic grows more versatile or directly potent…strong…with more energy. For me, I can pull bigger objects out of my pocket. For yours, well, I’m not sure. We’ll have to see.”

Shara licked her fingers while she thought over the Clocksmith’s words. Her power could be different, maybe even stronger if her watch was better? Why hadn’t her aunt or the others ever mentioned that? Did they even know?

With the Tailcoats constantly running around stabby-stabbing anybody who even turned on a watch, it was no wonder they wouldn’t have tested it, like Tel was saying.

“When can we try?” she asked.

“Once the sun comes up, I can work on your watch. If the problem is what I think it is, it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to fix it. Then we can get a move on. Uh…we should probably get a bit further from Gravelburg before you test too much though,” Tel answered.

“That’s fine, I’m good at being patient,” Shara said, her mind turning back the fantasies of what lay in wait for her in the Bastion enclave. Wait…if she could convince Tel to join her, with his ability…

“Tel, your magic, how easy is it to throw things into your pocket place?” she asked.

“Pocket dimension,” he said. “Anyway, it’s much easier than pulling something out, but still takes an inefficient amount of chaos energy.”

“Then how did you grab those meat-pies without me noticing? I was right beside you, even in Gravelburg with all the…chaotic chaos…there, I would’ve felt it.”

“Ah,” Tel said, looking off to the left again. That was his I-don’t-want-to-tell-you look.

“What is ah?” she asked, leaning forward so he knew he wasn’t worming out of this.

“I didn’t put them in my pocket dimension while I was with you,” he said then stopped, though there was obviously more to it. The man couldn’t lie to save his life.

“So, what? You snuck out in the three minutes I was in the bathroom?” Shara asked.

“You were in there much longer than three minutes,” Tel said.

“Do you think this hair comes easy?” she asked, grabbing a fistful of hair and pulling it forward. Then she pulled the twigs out. Stupid forest. “And don’t avoid the question. When did you get the meat pies?”

Tel looked down to the right. That was his you’re-not-going-to-like-the-answer look. “Last time I was in Gravelburg,” he said.

“Last time…? When was that? The pies were still hot.”

Another look to the right. “Two years ago,” he said.

“You…gave me…I just ate pies that were two years old?” Shara asked, spacing the words out slowly so she couldn’t possibly be misunderstood.

“Yes…?” Tel said.

Shara leaned back against the tree and shrugged. “Still tasted good.”