Bella landed on the desk beside Daphne and stared at the book the young Witch had retrieved. It was unfamiliar—so foreign, Bryony might as well have brought it home the day before she left. It was not written in any language Bella knew. Small symbols looped and slanted, sometimes bundled together, but mostly scampering across the page in lines and lines of written text. For all its unintelligibility, though, the handwriting looked eerily like Bryony's.
"Keep going," said Bella. "I want to see more."
Daphne turned one page, then another. It was all the same. By now, Titus had also joined them, reading over Daphne's arm in silence. Bella risked a glance at him, but his expression did not give away how he felt about this.
"It looks like a code," said Daphne.
"Do you recognize it?" said Bella.
"Should I?"
Bella shrugged. "Do they teach you codes in school? For... I don't know. Anti-dialectical communication? Like the Intercity Standard."
"That's not really a code, though. It's just a simplification, so it's easier to share recipes. I've never seen anything like this before."
Bella gave Titus a pointed look. "Have you?"
"Not at all." He tipped his chin ever so slightly. "But that's a reaction map, is it not?"
He'd indicated a small diagram in one corner of the page. Its lines swirled in symmetrical patterns like a stylized version of the flowcharts Witches used to detail the maturation of complex potions. Bella leaned closer, but she could make no sense of the diagram's annotations, either.
Daphne flipped a few more pages on Titus's request. The notebook only grew more complex the farther they went. There were lists formatted identically to the ones Bryony made for herself when gathering ingredients. There were sketches of plants Bella recognized, and a couple she did not. There were more swirling diagrams—almost certainly reaction maps, but so far removed from the ones Bryony normally drew, they jarred against the familiarity of the handwriting all around them.
One page appeared to be a map, also heavily stylized. Daphne pored over this for a while, then waited for Bella and Titus to both shake their heads before moving on. Another page was so packed with tiny calculations, it made Bella's head swim just looking at it. The numbers too were coded, as were the mathematical operations. Such a complex code must make Bryony's head ache to write in, yet her pen swept smoothly over the page, giving no hint of any difficulty. Even the start of the book, when Bella requested a return to it, gave every indication that it was already written by a practiced hand.
"Maybe it's an heirloom?" said Bella weakly. Daphne's brow furrowed. Titus might as well not have heard.
"The map might tell us where she went," said Daphne, flipping back to the page from before. "If this is actually a map, I mean."
"If you want to make an attempt at cracking this code," said Titus, "then by all means, you're welcome to it. I would like to keep running inventory."
Bella's wings tensed as she found herself caught between tasks. Supervising Daphne with the book would prevent any foul play on the young Witch's part. But a comprehensive assessment of what Bryony had taken with her would offer more immediate clues as to where she'd gone and how long she intended to be absent for. Bella clicked her beak, then rejoined Titus on reluctant wings. She found him standing with his nose lowered to Bryony's shoe-mat, tail flicking and hackles slightly lifted.
"What is it?" said Bella in alarm.
"She took her boots."
"The leathers?"
"No." Titus stepped aside, revealing a gap on the shelf behind the shoe-mat. "Her winter boots."
Bella stared at the gap, nonplussed. There was no reason for Bryony to need her padded, waterproof footwear—the sky today spoke of rain, but even if she'd walked all the way to Nerium, she would be indoors by now. If she found herself in need of ingredients, her casual leathers were waterproof enough to withstand a jaunt in the rain. There were no ephemeral ponds in the forest, and precious few streams this far from Baneberry Bog. Most of this stretch of the woods was sandy, and this autumn had been typically dry.
Titus hopped up to the nearest windowsill, hooked his tail about a plant-pot, and leaned just far enough to catch the handle of Bryony's front-entry cubby. So that was how he got in there to sleep on her winter hats. He pawed the cubby door open and sized up the belongings within. He probably knew them all, too. He certainly spent enough time in there to coat all of Bryony's knitted winterwear with a layer of black cat fur.
"She took a map," he said a moment later, still balancing on the windowsill.
"She doesn't need a map to get to Solanum."
Titus ignored her. "No other significant absences. So she was not anticipating a journey anywhere cold, I think we can conclude." He hopped down, leaving the cubby door ajar as if specifically to annoy Bella. "How is the decoding going, Daphne?"
"I'm trying," came Daphne's voice from the other room. Bella trailed after Titus as he rejoined the young Witch. Daphne tapped the page in front of her—the map again. "There's a place here that I think she visited; it's all marked up, and there's a path to it that doesn't look like one of the forest roads. There's another spot here"—she tapped the page's lower corner—"that could be Hyacinth, but only if this symbol here means what I think it might. Which it might not. I'm trying to find other instances of it."
"What's the location?" said Bella. "Is there any hint of that?"
Daphne shook her head. "It's associated with a couple lists, but not long ones. So it could be a place she gets rare ingredients. I don't know what direction it's in, though. I can't read the compass. And it might not be a compass at all."
She poked another symbol on the map—one Bella hadn't noticed before. A chill of recognition ran cold fingers through her feathers.
"I don't think that's a compass," she said, as casually as she could. Titus was already watching her. "Is there anything else that could indicate direction?"
"Not that I can see. So it might just be a place she knows, not somewhere she actually has to navigate to."
"Or an abstract rendition, if the roads aren't aligned," said Titus. "A moment, please."
Daphne withdrew her hands as the cat stepped delicately over the book, sniffing across its pages. He indicated an innocuous annotation near the map's destination. "This is recent."
"You can tell that?" said Bella.
"Fresh ink takes some time to lose its scent."
"It's written like a date," said Daphne. "Do you think—"
Lightning flashed outside. All three of them froze. The silence that followed stretched indeterminately, but no thunder rolled in on the lightning's tail. There was only one thing in this forest that caused dry flashes like that.
Titus leaped off the desk, breaking their collective paralysis. Bella nearly crashed into him again at the nearest window. The view outside stole the breath from her lungs. The forest around Bryony's house twinkled with ephemeral lights in blue, violet, and yellow. Those were Wights. And they were approaching.
"Bella, set the Wight-wards," said Titus with remarkable calm. "Daphne, grab the book and any relevant papers you've found. Clear out your belongings in case Bryony returns while we're absent. Let's pick this back up at your grandparents' place."
They scattered. Bella flew to her crow-door and ducked outside. The first potion bottle tucked beneath the house's eaves was right above her, she so yanked its cork-string and escaped sideways as its contents spilled out over Bryony's front doorstep. A quick tour around the house and three more bottles later, the Wights' advance had slowed.
Bella dove back inside. Daphne—stuffing the final pockets of her coat—shrieked and fumbled the tracking-potion bottle she'd retrieved from the entryway. Titus leaped to intercept it, but the young Witch managed to catch it before it smashed, splattering its residual potion all over herself and Bryony's carpet. Fragments of misty purple footsteps lit up everywhere.
"Let's go," said Bella, as much to flee the Wights as to get the kid out of here before she contaminated anything else. Tracking potions were notorious for leaving stains.
Daphne didn't need telling twice. By the time Bella had locked the door behind them all, the Wights had reached Bryony's garden. They milled about here, no doubt drawn to the open space. By the time Bella had stashed the spare key, though, even the garden-loving lights were spreading. Bella shuddered and winged after Daphne and Titus, leaving Bryony's quaint home under siege by a shifting, coloured sea of flickering creatures.
A/N: Today's ONC recommendation:
On Love and Desire by indigosa
On the day of their college graduation, best friends Desmond and Mercy decide to date. Everything's perfect. Except for the fact that Desmond can't feel any butterflies.