Chapter 28

Saturday morning, I woke up on the basement couch again. I didn't remember walking over to it. The last thing I remembered was my feeling of elation that the glyphs had worked. I must have been asleep on my feet. Harvey was now lying upon them, and I was under the afghan. I hadn't taken off my robe before hitting the couch, and part of the robe was balled up underneath me. It wasn't too comfortable.

I pulled my feet from underneath the cat and sat up. I felt pretty good. My watch, which I hadn't removed before falling asleep, said it was 8:34. I gave Harvey a couple of pets and headed upstairs to use the bathroom. Once I came out and went into the kitchen, I saw that Mom and Dad were both at the table. Dad must have decided to take Saturday off.

We exchanged good mornings. Dad said, "I went downstairs last night to tell you to get to bed, but you were already asleep on the couch, so I left you there."

"I must have been tired right out," I said.

"You guys really went at the music yesterday," Mom said. "I'm impressed with your progress."

"Thanks. Is everyone else still asleep?"

"Mary's up. I think she's taking a shower in the big bathroom."

As I munched down a bowl of cornflakes, Ursus and I formed our morning plans. I want to find some dead wood that's still on the tree, he thought.

I know quite a few places where we can look. Several vacant lots were nearby, some of them pretty big.

By the time I finished eating and got dressed, all of the kids were astir. I took Mary aside, "Do you want to go for a walk?"

"Where?"

"The vacant lot with the garage in it." I whispered, "Magic stuff."

"Oh, OK."

We put on our winter gear. Before we left, I filled a bucket full of packed snow to provide water for my rituals and put it aside. I took a folding pruning saw and an aluminum stepladder from the garage with me. As we walked, I explained what we were after.

The property in question wasn't that far away. We went down Dewey to the south end of Bradley, along three suburban lot widths to Cord, turned west and went one suburban lot length to the southeast corner of the undeveloped chunk of land. It was a good size, at least ten acres, over twice the size of the even closer vacant lot we called "the field." There was an old garage standing on it. The house that had gone with the garage had been torn down farther back than my memories went. I had decided to check this lot first because it had quite a few older trees growing on it.

The snow had developed a hard crust, and crunching through it was tiring. The first place we stopped to check was a clump of four old willow trees. Underneath the trees, the snow wasn't quite as bad. "There's some," Mary said. She pointed to a dead willow branch I should just be able to reach from the top of the ladder. I climbed up and cut it down. It was about two-and-a-half inches across at its widest.

There was also a knot sticking out of the trunk. It's still green, but cut it anyway, Ursus thought. It was harder to cut off than the branch had been, but I managed.

Ursus wanted a variety of woods, so I handed the branch and the knot to Mary and we tromp-crunched over to the remains of a hedgerow that ran along most of the west side of the field. Over there, it was adjacent to the yard of the high school, separated by a fence. As one might expect, the old hedgerow was a popular place for teenagers to consume illicit alcohol, and we saw several empty beer and wine containers.

Mary and I were methodically searching the narrow expanse of trees and bush. Branches kept snagging the damn ladder, but we managed to find good poles of maple and elm and about three feet of two-inch-wide ash. I heard Mary say, "Ew, gross," and I looked where she was looking. It was a dead goat, partially concealed by a dense part of the hedgerow.

"I'm pretty sure that's the goat I saw when I was scrying."

So am I, Ursus thought.

Animals had been at work on it. Ursus took control of our body and walked over to it. He bent down and pulled a few hairs out of the carcass. Mary asked, "What are you doing?" She sounded disgusted.

"Killing something creates a powerful bond between the killer and the killed. I might be able to use these in a spell that will help me find the person who made the sacrifice." Finding the goat had ended our desire to search more in the hedgerow, so we went home. We had enough materials to make a bunch of wooden amulets and maybe some other types of tools.

I didn't want my parents questioning what I was doing with the stuff we had collected, so we took the wood and the bucket of snow down to the basement without making any fuss. Because the stairs were near the back door, doing so unobserved and unimpeded was easy.

We had just finished stashing the stuff in unobtrusive parts of the storage room when Mom called down the stairs, "Mike and Terry were by. They were heading over to Danny's to work on his pedal car and wanted to know if it was OK to postpone practicing until after lunch."

"OK, thanks. I guess I'll head over there to see what's up." I didn't really want to go over to Dan's that much, because I had a lot of magic stuff I wanted to start. On the other hand, I expected to derive considerable benefit from the pedal car, and I hadn't been doing much of the work.

Go help your friends, Ursus thought. There's going to be a lot of time in your future to let magic take over your life. I accessed memories of long hours of solitary work.

Is it worth it? I asked.

Worth it, not worth it--it's what we are.

Mary opted to stay home and practice on the chord organ rather than go to Danny's with me. When I got there, the super tricycle was looking good. The heavy-duty basket was welded above the axle. Danny had cut slots in the basket for the chain and gears to pass through, and he had brazed on a few attachment points at strategic locations for the fairing. He had also found some long brake cables--meant for tandem bicycles--and had mounted caliper brakes on the rear wheels. Thank Bog, thought Ursus.

The fairing for the front of the pedal car was finished. Danny's mother had a hot-glue gun for crafts, and Dan had borrowed it. All of the seams in the fairing were glued together on top of narrow strips of corrugated plastic. He had also added several stiffener strips so that the fairing was self-supporting but entirely of plastic. Thus, it only weighed a few pounds. It was attached to the frame with zip ties so that it was easily removable.

The top half wrapped around the front wheel and came about halfway down its height. At its highest point, the fairing attached to a bent piece of conduit that ran across the width of the car and came about chest high on a man. Dan planned to mount a plastic windshield on top of the pipe at a future date, but he had not yet acquired the materials.

The bottom half came to within an inch of the front wheel, ran underneath the seats and all of the support structure, and attached to the tube the axle ran through. It was lower to the ground in the front than in the back, and had a seam to accommodate the change in height.

When I arrived, Dan assigned Mike and me to mounting the rear fairing while he and Terry worked on making chain guards. The rear fairing simply ran from roughly the outside edge of the seats--it was left unattached to the seats so that they remained adjustable--and attached to the sides of the basket and part of the frame.

Mike said, "Is the pedal car not totally kick ass?"

"It is. I thought we had established that."

"It's going to be great for picking up chicks."

"How so?"

"They see it and immediately want a ride."

"I guess I can see how that would work."

"Yeah. When Danny brought it home from school yesterday, he told me a hot girl asked him for a ride before he had it out of the schoolyard. He drove her home and got her phone number."

"I now see your basic motivation for making this thing," I said to Dan.

"Money and chicks are what make the world work," he said.

"What about art?"

"Most art is either about chicks or a way of attracting them."

Danny had made working doors from the corrugated plastic. We put those on after mounting the rear fairing. The hinges were zip ties, and the doors were held shut by cabinet magnets hot glued onto the fairing. When noon came around, the four of us had the pedal car almost completely faired. The chain guards weren't quite finished, and Danny still wanted to make covers that attached to the body and came halfway down the rear wheels. He also wanted to make fairings for the spokes. Still, it looked good. We took a couple of turns around the block and adjourned for lunch. The plan was to meet in my basement for band practice at one o'clock.

After I had eaten a handful of potato chips and one of the fried baloney sandwiches Mom was making with Mary's help, I gave Kirsten a call. After I had spoken to her father for a few minutes, he put her on. "Hi, Artie."

"Hi. The band is going to practice after lunch. Do you want in on it?"

"How serious are you about having me as a member?"

"Danny is dead serious, and I want you to be part of it, whether or not we ever become a real working band. No one else has raised any objections, and I don't think they will."

"I don't object," Mary yelled.