Revamped! (eBook)

Chapter 3
The Morning of
the Eve of Valentide

This is the Cognosphere speaking. Or rather, thinking. Who would have thought it? Here I am, Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent. Well, not entirely. Obviously. But without a doubt, Omnificent. (Look it up.) Yes, if I say so myself, I do nothing but good with my powers. As a Stratum of Living Thought I shield my innocent Planet Heart from the Bad Ideas always trying to sneak in from the Abstraction Dimension. In addition I provide Witches and Wizards with the magic they need to keep the Planet running smoothly. You’d think they’d use that magic wisely, wouldn’t you? Instead, they have overused and misused so much magic they’ve created a Rift in the very fabric of my being. A Rift! And I am sorry to say the worst offenders are the very ones who should certainly know better. I refer to those high-level, extra-powerful Wisdams and Physards! THINKING OF WHICH, I’D BETTER JUST SEE WHAT THOSE MCCLEARY WIS­DAMS ARE UP TO NOW.

•••

In the borough of Brook-no-evil, in the neighborhood of Broomstick Heights, age-old Wisdam HeCate McCleary peered through the large bay window of her kitchen and saw that the Sun God, Orb, emerging over the Yeast River, had barely begun his ascent. That was good because HeCate McCleary had big plans for the morning.

With her hands on her hips, she let her jutting elbows lift her long, white hair outward before it could reach the many layers of skirts below. Looking at her reflection in the window, she was pleased her silhouette was more like an egg cup than an hourglass. An hourglass runs out of time. But an egg cup is forever.

Secure in her foreverness, HeCate looked around at her cozy cottage. Coziness, she knew, was created when some things were illuminated by a soft glow, while other things, the messy ones, hid themselves in pockets of darkness. The source of the light was important too. The crystal power that sustained the planet was all right for some things, but it was short on atmospherics.

Using nothing but her own mental faculties, or facilities as she called them, HeCate lit three enormous candles, all carefully arranged to cast a rosy glow on her rocking chair, her tea cozy, and her cauldron. Torn bags of hardening clay huddled in the shadows, grateful for the extra sleep.

“Now,” declared HeCate, rubbing her gnarly hands together, “I’ll get me some produce.” Cackling, she whisked across the room and hefted her gardening shears from a wrought-iron hook on the wall. The hook, made by HeCate, was overwrought and glad to be relieved of its burden. With the shears resting comfortably in a lopsided basket, HeCate awoke her sleeping pets.

“Up ye get, Xena me lass, and greet the day.” The big orange Cat awoke, squinted, and stretched. But she didn’t say “good morning” because mornings made her grumpy.

“Morning, Pandora me love.” The little pink Pig looked up and raised her flared ears. Pandora was bright, alert, and always ready for action.

“Are ye awake, Clucky me dearie?” The elegant Hen ruffled her black-and-red feathers, got up on her two clawed feet, and fluttered across the worn carpet. One of her claws caught in a loose thread and she tipped forward onto her beak. With an angry cluck she righted herself.

“Now, me fine friends, as ye know we’ll be needing some fresh herbs for our Valentide Eve breakfast.”

Xena, Pandora, and Clucky did know and they hurried after HeCate as she opened the back door to the garden and stepped out into the morning haze. The all-encompassing mist greeted her with sprays of enthusiasm. Licking the fine drops of water from the corners of her mouth, HeCate held the sheers in both hands and went snip, snip, snip. She chuckled as a profusion of greens and other eatables dropped into the waiting basket.

The basket, woven by HeCate, was not very good at containing things. But that just made it easier for Xena, Pandora, and Clucky to snap up berries and other small fruits as they tumbled to the ground.

HeCate’s daughter, Wisdam Merwynne McCleary, watched from the balcony above as her velvety black Cat, Oliver, stretched out on the railing beside her. Oliver’s green eyes were surrounded by circles of white fur, which gave him the appearance of wearing spectacles. His front paws and the tip of his tail were white too.

Merwynne and Oliver leaned forward in unison as HeCate took a pointed spade from her apron pocket and hurled it, point down, into the earth. In a voice as creaky as her joints, HeCate warbled her spell.

“Turn up me turnips,

And rout out me roots

Squash me squash and radishes

And cram them in me boots.”

There came a cracking sound and a flash lit up HeCate’s face as the enchanted spade did her bidding. Digging with swift and concentrated energy, the spade deposited the fresh vegetables into a pair of bucket boots waiting by the gate. When the bucket boots were filled up to the very tips of their high tops, they walked themselves back to the kitchen door, kicked it open, and marched the produce right up to the bubbling cauldron. From the balcony above, a laugh floated down to the garden, where it joined the tinkling of the tinklebells. “A good use of magic if there ever was one,” Merwynne called down to her mother.

“Aye, that it is, me darlin’ daughter,” HeCate called back between cackles.

[“NAE, WISDAM HECATE MCCLEARY,” thought the COGNO­SPHERE. “IT MOST CERTAINLY IS NOT!]

•••

On the second floor of the McCleary cottage, Merwynne turned from the balcony and hurried into her Ideation Space, a plain room saturated in the kind of light that did not come from crystal power, candle power, or Orb. Oliver, his tail twitching, followed close behind.

Merwynne was tall with red hair, and in certain lights her skin could look faintly greenish. Not only was she a fine-looking Witch but she was also a Wisdam of many talents.

“Everyone knows, Oliver,” she said to her devoted familiar, “how hard it is to turn thoughts into objects. But do they know how hard it is turn objects into thoughts?” She looked fondly down at Oliver’s intelligent, upturned face. “The first is called art, Oliver. The second is called philosophy. As I’m sure you know.”

Oliver, who did know, ran to the big wooden trunk and watched intently as Merwynne unhooked the hasp, opened the lid, let out a few ideas, and then slammed the lid shut before more could emerge.

These were not concepts that had originated on Planet Heart. Nor were they part of the original Abstraction Cloud the COGNOSPHERE had used to create Planet Heart. No. These were extra words or sentences the COGNOSPHERE had scooped up from the Abstraction Realm and imprisoned in the trunk in the hope that someday someone exactly like Merwynne would be able to carefully edit them out.

Even for Merwynne, the COGNOSPHERE’s appointed Guardian of Alien Abstractions, it was a dangerous procedure. Just the other day, the unknown word MEAT had escaped from the trunk. Sensing that this was a very dark concept, Merwynne had turned it into TEAM before spiriting it back into the box.

Now, as Oliver watched intently, Merwynne grasped a long, unwieldy concept with her mind and then, using her hands, wove it into something intelligible, while murmuring her mantra. “A little of this and a little of that.” Although Oliver was used to this procedure, he twitched in surprise when Merwynne spoke in a voice that was not her own. A deep and commanding voice. A sort of regal, queenly voice with an English-ish accent.

“Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” the voice boomed.

“There’s much to be said for keeping an open mind,” said Merwynne in her own voice. “On the other hand,” she gathered up the words and thrust them back into the trunk, “one must be careful that the mind in question is not a deranged one.”

As she spoke, a howl came careening down from the attic. With Oliver at her side, Merwynne ran from the room and up the stairs to her teen-aged daughter Aphra-Bane’s Experimentation Lab.

Only half of Aphra-Bane was in the room. The rest of her, including an arm and a leg, was on the other side of a wall. The young voice squeaked uncomfortably. “Crest! This time I really am stuck.”

“Oh, Aphra-Bane! You’re not doing that quantum mechanics thing again, are you?” Merwynne’s eyebrows shot up as she took in the large blackboard with the strange equations written all over it. Oliver raised a whisker. His fur bristled and his tail stood straight up as the symbols started jumping around on the board.

“Don’t worry, Mums,” said Aphra-Bane in a strangled voice, “I’m almost … almost … ”

POP! Plaster splattered as Aphra-Bane broke through the wall and landed on a small trampoline. With a whoop, she bounced into the air and onto the floor.

Merwynne steadied her as she landed. “Now I see why you have that bouncy thing up here. Are you alright?”

“Of course,” said Aphra-Bane with a proud toss of her head. Aphra-Bane was not at all a proud sort of person. But she had a pride in physics that was born of respect. Quantities of plaster spattered from her quantum locks in the direction of Merwynne, who drew hastily away. Aphra-Bane looked around for Oliver, who had already...