Gretchen departed the tower early the next day, as the twin suns were just starting to peek over the city’s eastern wall, staining the sky with vibrant shades of orange and red. She wound her way through the Arcane Quarter, its narrow lanes already bustling with activity.
Rounding a corner, she was greeted by the familiar sight of Bezoar’s Baked Goods, one of Gretchen’s favorite eateries. The bakery’s sign shimmered in the cool morning air, ever-burning flames causing the bakery’s tagline—PUT SOMETHING GOOD IN YOUR STOMACH—to glow. Delicious aromas of buckwheat, cinnamon, and vanilla wafted out of the bakery’s open front door, and only the weight of Gretchen’s responsibility to find the lost cat prevented her from stopping in for a bite. She marched on, if somewhat resentfully, and wondered not for the first time if Bezoar’s wasn’t violating the City’s Use of Magical Food Additives Act and adding some sort of addictive compound to their sweets. (They weren’t. It was just the butter and sugar.)
She continued on, passing a dizzying assortment of storefronts and their garish signage. On the left, a candle shop:
Chandler The Candler
Summoning Supplies For All Situations
Followed by:
Norman’s Gnomish Knifesharpening
Norman Periwinkle, Proprietor
She passed a dwarven tavern, quiet this early in the morning, followed by a recently-opened coffee shop that was the talk of the entire City and had a line out the door. Then she came to a pet shop. Its glass storefront window was a spiderweb of cracks, its interior covered in sullied newsprint.
“Newts, toads, axototl. We sell ‘em all,” a barker called out in an off-key and poorly cadenced sing-song. “Scorpion, pixie, homunculus. We sell ‘em all!”
Gretchen hastened her stride, the grimy establishment causing an unpleasant pressure to radiate up her throat.
“We buy, too, miss,” the barker said conspiratorially, rushing towards Gretchen. “Pay a hefty sum for fairy.”
A cold hollowness gripped her stomach, the feeling a harbinger of the muscle contractions that would soon cause her to wretch.
Bumblebee, riding on the brim of Gretchen’s hat, hissed; the sound was high-pitched, it was feral, and it was menacing on a visceral level.
“If you value your life, sir,” she said, each syllable enunciated with granite precision, “you will step away from me. And you will never proposition anything so abhorrent. Ever. Again.” She stormed away, making a mental note to stop by the Fae Embassy to report this store after she dealt with the cat situation.
The sights were an indistinct blur after that, as Gretchen weaved her way angrily through the Arcane Quarter and entered the Trade Quarter. A river ran through this section of this city, making it the perfect location for everything from dwarven smithies to grist mills and gnomish fabricators. She didn’t know where Elizabeth’s family’s mill was, but she knew it’d be along the river, so she blindly headed in that direction.
She eventually spotted a waterwheel and followed it to the mill.
“Hello?” she called out, knocking at the building’s wooden door.
The door opened a moment later to reveal a short woman, her face and clothes dusted in a light, patchy layer of flour.
“Oh, dear me,” the woman said. “That foolhardy girl really did it, didn’t she? She ran off and tricked a wizard into helping find her cat, didn’t she Miss…”
“Gretchen. And yes. Well no, she didn’t trick me. But yes, I agreed to help find the cat.”
“Oh please, you mustn’t bother Miss Gretchen. I’m sure the animal will turn up. I don’t want to inconvenience you.” The woman’s eyes were downcast and she was wringing her hands together. With a shock, Gretchen realized the woman was afraid of her.
“Mrs. Miller,” Gretchen said, her voice soft and calm. “You have a wonderful daughter, and I feel bad that she’s lost her friend. I want to help. Besides, it won’t take long. I’ll have Princess home in time for dinner.”
The woman looked up, her eyes round with wonder. “You really would help my little Lizzie?”
“Yes ma’am.” Gretchen nodded. “I’ll begin right away. I just need something that belongs to Princess. A collar, a favorite toy. Anything like that.”
The woman withdrew back into the mill for a moment then emerged again holding a small pink blanket. “Will this work?” she asked. “We keep this blanket next to the wood stove for Princess, she likes to sleep on it. When she’s not curled up in Lizzie’s bed, that is.”
Gretchen smiled. “That’ll do perfectly.”
She took the blanket in her hands, and began weaving her magic. This was the part that most ordinary humans hyperbolized, the part where they’d let their imagination run amok. They always thought a wizard had to chant out a spell in some ancient magical language, or use goat’s blood to draw some sort of arcane symbols on the ground.
Admittedly, while both of those techniques did have their places, the truth was that most practical magic was significantly simpler and more mundane. It was all about will and intention; it was about working with the forces of nature, rather than against them.
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And so, clutching the blanket tight to her chest, Gretchen closed her eyes. She breathed in deeply, imaging a current of air flowing over and around the blanket and then up into her nose before moving finally down into her lungs. She took this imaginary current of air and molded it, shaped it with her intentions and with the blanket’s inherent connection to Princess. She wanted to reunite the blanket with its owner. She desired to return what was lost.
After a long moment, she opened her eyes. The spells working was complete, and she could already feel the blanket tugging lightly in her hands. It had found the cat’s trail.
“That’s it?” the woman asked, manners all but forgotten in the dissonance between her expectations and reality. “Ain’t ya gonna cast a spell?”
Gretchen smiled patiently: it was a reaction she was used to. “And so I have, Mrs. Miller. I’ll be back shortly.”
[https://arobertmiller.com/assets/img/scene_break.svg]
Gretchen turned from the mill, following the gentle pull of the blanket. The spell she had woven worked on a temporal level, and was indicating the path Princess took when she left the mill last. Gretchen quickly left the mill behind as she moved through the streets of the Trade Quarter, all the while following the ethereal tug of the blanket.
“It’s so much busier here than the Arcane Quarter,” Bumblebee exclaimed from his perch on her hat. He was right: the Trade Quarter bustled with activity. The streets were wider here, their surfaces reinforced with gray cobblestones to facilitate the many oxen-drawn carts that filled the lanes.
“That’s the nature of trade,” Gretchen explained to the bite-sized creature. “We only see the finished products: the books or swords or what have you. But for each product there is an entire chain of events required to make it. To harvest the materials, to transport them, to refine them, and so on.”
“Well I wish I didn’t have to smell them,” he said as he wrinkled his nose and pointed to a nearby cart. It was piled high with harpy guano.
“Ah, yes, this is rather pungent.” She held a hand to her nose and tried to breathe through her mouth instead. The odor was so foul she could taste it, too.
“What do you humans even use that vileness for? What possible chain of events requires harpy dung?”
“Erm, I think it’s dried, processed, and then turned into some sort of perfume.”
“An ironic choice,” he said. “But that makes me wonder. Who invented that in the first place? Who was crazy or stupid enough to say, ‘Hey, let’s take this terrible smelling crap and try to turn it into something useful?’”
“That’s a good question.” Gretchen shrugged, then added with a laugh, “Maybe Uncle Barty knows.”
They carried on walking down the path—luckily, upwind of the odoriferous cart—and soon emerged into a large square: the Trade Quarter’s vast open air market. Hundreds of vendors and thousands of patrons packed into the space, which occupied several city blocks. The air hummed, filled with the sounds of haggling taking place in a dozen different languages.
Gretchen gulped. Princess would be quite difficult to find in a maze like this. Then she firmed her resolve. She wanted to prove Uncle Barty wrong, to show him that she could help this little girl without some sort of unintended tragedy befalling her. To prove that she was ready to move beyond the juvenile “apprentice” moniker, and earn the title of wizard that was her birthright. She moved forward into the market, letting the sights and smells wash over her, and tried to follow the flow with the crowd—lest she get trod upon.
Her temporal spell took her past a stall selling bolt upon bolt of fanciful cloths. The stall itself was a work of art, with large sweeping pieces of fabric suspended in the air to form a multi-colored awning. She stopped to feel one of the bolts, a rich purple velvet fabric that melted between her finger and thumb like butter when she rubbed it.
“Excuse me,” she said to the vendor. “Did you see a cat come through here, maybe two days ago? White fluffy fur.”
“No, sorry,” the woman replied. “You like that velvet? Softest thing you’ve ever felt, huh? I’ll give you a good price.”
“Thanks. And no thanks,” Gretchen said, hastily moving on from the stall. She didn’t precisely need anyone to confirm that Princess had come by, her spell told her that. But she did think it’d be useful to confirm. Plus after living with Barty so long, she just liked to chitchat every once in a while with people who weren’t so grumpy.
“Sprockets, springs, screws of all sizes!” A gnomish vendor, bald save for a small tuft of hair at the center of his head, called out from within a stall that was littered with every manner of mechanical detritus imaginable. “Shafts, sensors, servos, and schematics!”
The next stall was run by an orc, a short pair of tusks emerging from his lower lip and stretching nearly to his flat, broad nose. His nose housed a rather delicate pair of golden wire-rim glasses, and he looked at Gretchen over the top of the lenses as he spoke. “Hello young miss. You look like someone who can appreciate that sometimes the quill is mightier than the sword. I’ve the best quills in the City. Eagle, goose, hawk, ostrich, swan, I’ve got them all.”
“No thank you, sir,” Gretchen said. “I don’t suppose you saw a cat with white, fluffy fur come through here in the past two days?”
“Afraid not, miss,” the orc answered. He caught sight of Bumblebee then, his eyes lighting up. “Good day, small master. Certainly a distinguished member of the fae such as yourself often finds the need to write correspondences. Perhaps to a lover back home? I’ve hummingbird quills, too. No finer feather for a fairy, I assure you.”
“Alas, my writing hand is prone to cramping,” Bumblebee replied. “Good day.”
Gretchen tried to stifle a laugh, but failed, the sound erupting as something between a giggle and a snort. She quickly walked away from the stall, hoping that the orc didn’t think she was having fun at his expense.
“You little devil!” she chided merrily.
Eventually Gretchen found her progress blocked by a wall of people, all clamoring to get to a nearby stall. A small gnomish boy stood atop the stall shouting, “Spindleburr’s World Famous Axle Grease. New formulation boasts 25% increased viscosity and 30% increased lubricity! Patent just approved, only available here!” Meanwhile, a harried woman was passing out cylindrical containers to the overzealous customers while repeating, “Exact change only please.”
Gretchen lowered her shoulder and pushed past, eyebrows knit in confusion.
“Bumblebee, why in the world are people so worked up about axle grease?” She asked.
He shrugged his tiny shoulders. “How should I know?”
After what felt like hours, they finally emerged from the market. Gretchen let out a sigh of relief, glad to be free of the madness and the press of so many people. Without the mass of bodies around her, she could also smell something wafting on the breeze, and realized that she was famished.
The odor seemed to be coming from a tavern. Lazy wisps of woodsmoke rose from the river stone chimney, the distinct aroma of hickory wood evoking a nostalgic feeling of warmth and companionship. Layered on top of that was the smell of freshly baked bread. She even got hints of sautéed onions, garlic, and perfectly caramelized carrots.
With palpable regret, she soldiered on past the door of the inn, resolved to find that damned cat. That is, until she felt a faint tugging sensation in her hand as the almost-forgotten blanket resisted her forward momentum.
“Bumblebee,” she said, “I think Princess went into that tavern.”
“Thank all that is magical,” he replied, “I can hear your stomach rumbling from here. Let’s go in.”