The Fountain Pen

I think today was the worse day of writing I’ve had thus far. I only managed 700 some words. My brain just quit on me. It got to a point where I could not put two words together and opted to rest instead. Sadly that took most of my evening. The good news is I finished Chapter 6! I have the usual ePub and PDF available for your enjoyment.

As of tonight I am at roughly 33,000 words. I’m on track to “win” NaNoWriMo but I am seriously wondering about the story itself. I may not complete the draft until December. Over lunch I talked over my novel with my wife and realized neither Amanda nor Shelly has come back to the story. I’d forgotten about them. Needless to say they either get a bigger role or they might get cut in revision.

Without any further prattling here is the closing segment of Chapter Six:

Joe looked to Katarina for support, “You said you would help get me home… .” he let the thought hang.

“And I will.”

“So what is our next step?” Joe asked the two of them, eagerness coloring his tone of voice.

Ignatius rubbed his chin in contemplation. “I suppose,” he began, then continued with, “no. That will not work.” He suddenly slapped himself on the forehead. “Of course, why didn’t I ask this sooner? How did you get her in the first place?”

Joe gave Ignatius a blank look. “Something called the Springfield Effect? I don’t really know.”

Ignatius’s face deepened into a scowl. “The truth boy,” he growled “I will not be putting my life on the line by crossing Sikander for a liar.”

“I don’t know. Mortimer told me it was something called the Springfield Effect, honest,” Joe protested holding his arms out in front of him in a show of innocence.

“What he says is true,” Katarina chimed in. “We think the Hermit may have something to do with this.”

Ignatius hummed to himself, deep in thought. “But why Salem?” he said, thinking out loud.

“That’s what I want to know,” Joe said. “There are probably far more dangerous places to send me and have me killed than Salem. Unless … does he know about Salem’s Underground?”

“Most assuredly,” Ignatius said distractedly. “He knows quit a bit about this place actually. He used to live here, under a different name of course, and he didn’t associate with those from Second City.” Ignatius stood up and started pacing, deep in thought.

“It doesn’t make sense. Why send me to a city that can defend me from him? It seems like an awful risk to take, especially if I am supposed to be Helmut.”

Ignatius snapped his fingers with enlightenment. “It’s so obvious now. He brought you here because he prepared for this.”

“Come again?” Joe asked, fixing Ignatius with a quizzical gaze.

Continuing to pace Ignatius expounded, “Sikander is a meticulous person, always planning ahead for contingencies. I’ve known him to setup traps within traps just in case the first one failed. It would be just like him to have Salem setup to contain someone until such time as he could deal with them. Salem is also a fine lure as he knows many people of our uniqueness visit Salem throughout the year. He could easily expect and foresee that an enemy of his would one day visit this city, and then he would be able to trigger the binding and thus spring his trap. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s established many such traps like this in all the cities with a large enough concentration of our kind.”

“Makes sense I suppose, but how does that help us?”

“If he readied the binding prior to sending you here then the locus of the binding is here, in Salem. As such we should be able to locate it and then dispel it.”

“How do we do that?” Joe asked.

“Once we know what kind of binding it is then we’ll know how to undo it,” Ignatius said with confidence.

“I meant, how do we find it?”

“Ah. Yes, well that is a horse of a different color, as they say. That will take some old fashioned hard work, and a bit of luck I’m afraid.”

“You mean you don’t know where it is,” Joe said flatly.

“Well, no. Not really. It’s a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Ignatius said moving to stand at the entrance of the gazebo, looking out across the park.

Katarina sighed and explained, “A binding is usually itself bound to a particular object. From that object’s location a radius is usually set which determines the boundaries of the binding itself.”

“So all I need to do is find that invisible wall again and walk it’s circumference and we’ll be able to extrapolate where this binding is,” Joe offered.

“That is one way to do it, my boy, but there might be another,” Ignatius announced. He waved his hands toward the capitol building. “I believe we will find some answers there.”