Chương 24: Chapter 22 ~ Back-Alley Magick Store

04/11/1111 EotTS 17: 39 Gysel exited the store and made her way over to Wyohla and whoever this man was. He was shorter than Wyohla, stood with a perfectly straight posture, and held his cane with both hands horizontally behind his back. It now made sense as to why Wyohla did not want to go inside, and why she had been walking so fast: she was waiting for someone. The man looked over his shoulder: it was the Spiritual Alchemy professor, with his silver monocle and bottomless glower.

He did not smile, nor acknowledge the pot-bearing woman in any form; he only turned back around to face Wyohla.

"Wyohla." The Spiritual Alchemy professor pronounced her name strangely: the 'Wy'—which everyone always pronounced softly—was said 'Vy.'

"Come to my office tomorrow for quarter-past fifteen." It was impossible to tell if he was annoyed with the presence of the person intruding on the conversation, or at Wyohla for using their meeting as an excuse to run errands, or if he was just like this—the latter, most likely, but the former certainly did not help. Wyohla nodded, and the Professor set his cane down, letting the silver tip click off the stones of the street.

He walked around her at a pace that seemed far too fast for a man with a cane, and left without as much as a goodbye; why did a man in early middle age need a cane anyway?

"You know him?" Gysel asked, as she removed the change from the bottom of the clay pot and held it out for Wyohla. Wyohla shooed the change away with a gloved hand.

"Yes."

"What is his name?" Gysel dropped the coins into her pocket; it was a pleasure doing business.

"He did not introduce himself."

"Ihvilakh. Professor Ihvilakh."

"Does he not have a first name?"

"Yes, he does..." Wyohla paused, looked over her shoulder seemingly to make sure Professor Ihvilakh was well out of earshot, and leaned in, just in case he was not. She put her mouth close enough to Gysel's ear that Wyohla's breath made the hair on the back of Gysel's neck stand on end. She whispered.

"Don't tell a single soul this." Gysel nodded.

"It's professor." Laughing, Wyohla rose, and took a step back.

"I do not believe his father would name him Professor. That is a prerogative he was given by the Academy. What is his real name?" Gysel asked; the theatrics Wyohla employed to only provide a barely believable, sophistic answer were extremely annoying.

"I have no idea, he has never told me. It is just Ihvilakh." That was not believable.

"How long have you known him?"

"Long enough."

"That is not a unit of time."

"I can't tell you the unit of time," Wyohla said in a firm voice (Mother had a similar tone: it meant no more questions) and turned around.

"You're lucky you got his name. He refuses to introduce himself... to anyone. Now, we are going to get you a divination deck." Wyohla started off in the same direction Professor Ihvilakh left in.

"A Lunar one?" Gysel followed.

"Gods no."

"Why?" That was strange; Wyohla had been pushing towards Luhnylla with everything else, so why did she stray here?

"Because it took me years to figure out a Lunar Divination deck and you need to have a consistent and healthy relationship with Luhnylla, each of her daughters, and each maiden if you even hope of it working. It's more accurate, but it's a lot of work. They are also really expensive in general, and you are going to want to get a weighted custom one, which costs even more."

"Would you buy me one?" Gysel asked, making the same wide eyes as before.

"Depends." Wyohla did not turn to look at Gysel, thus, rendering the face ineffective.

"If you find out your exact time of birth and tell it to me, I will pay for a weighted one."

"My birthday is on the twenty-first of this maiden."

"Nope, need the exact time you popped out."

"Oh," Gysel muttered Gysel; next time Mother and Father are written, it might be good to ask, to figure out when their daughter was born: if Wyohla was to be informed, that would be decided in the future.

"You can come back to my house after, and I can show you my Lunar Divination Deck," Wyohla said as she turned down an alley between a jeweler's and a cobbler's, and opened a warped door with a fading and chipping purple paint. She stepped in first, but held the door open, allowing Gysel to walk under her arm.

"All right." Gysel walked down the creaky, wooden stairs, holding onto the railing, as the old planks groaned and warped under her weight. Once at the bottom, Gysel waited for Wyohla; if anyone was to fall through the stairs, it would likely be the blonde, but Wyohla made it down to the dark stone floor just fine. Pushing her way through the grey curtain separating the staircase from the shop, Wyohla headed straight for a waist-high shelf against the left wall; Gysel followed.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. Wyohla's choice of vendor for Gysel's divination deck was interesting to say the least: it was a large basement shop with a low ceiling, that sagged in enough places that Wyohla was forced to hunch her back more than she was not.

"The art only really matters if you're a pedant," Wyohla said, as she pointed to the top row, which was all divination decks.

"Some argue that different art has different meanings or deeper meanings." There were sample cards showing off the art of each deck sitting atop the shelf, and Gysel looked them over. The oil paintings that people made of the knight-errant of prose and poetry were beautiful, but it was doubtful that there would be a deck with similar art; although doable, it would be difficult to get the detail on such a small space.

Pressing her lips together, she looked over the limited selection of three styles: there were etchings, watercolors, and a style reminiscent of what one would see in children's books. The etchings would be best, as it was the closest to the woodcut illustrations in all the old alchemy books, and would allow for a consistent aesthetic across the illustrations in both the books and the divination deck. Wordlessly, Gysel held the wooden case up to Wyohla.

"Good choice," Wyohla said with a nod, and took the deck from Gysel, then walked to the counter. With no clerk in sight, the counter was only staffed by a small, silver bell. A light shone from behind another curtain door behind it. Setting the deck down, she dug through her purse and produced a few coins. Wyohla rang the bell, but nothing happened. She put the coins on the counter and yelled that she was buying a divination deck and leaving the coins on the counter.

Taking the deck and putting it in her coat pocket, she started for the exit—did Wyohla leave the right amount? no, probably not, if anything, Wyohla had left more than enough and simply does not care enough to wait for the change. Gysel turned and followed Wyohla. The curtains had closed behind Gysel when a 'thank you' came from the counter; she stuck her hand through the curtains and waved goodbye.

04/11/1111 EotTS 18: 19 As soon as Wyohla stepped into her home, she removed her boots, left them in a slumped heap in the center of the entrance way, took off her jacket, and headed for the stairs, hanging the jacket over the railing. Gysel left her shoes neatly next to each other, kept her coat on, and followed Wyohla up the stairs. Wyohla did not stop on the second floor, only walking around the landing to the next staircase. Every door Gysel had seen had a keylock and was shut—assumably locked as well.

With a thin silver key, Wyohla unlocked a door on the west side of the house and opened it, revealing an iron spiral stairwell with dark wooden steps. She ascended, and Gysel followed. Dust motes drifted down from the top of the attic stairs in the faint remnants of the dim, late afternoon sunlight; the sweet, fruity scent of blue jasmine came with it. They entered the attic from a gap between two bookshelves.

The room was gorgeous, lined with black-oak bookshelves that spanned from the front wall with the round window all the way to the balcony overlooking the backyard, being only broken by a curtain directly across from the gap from which Gysel exited. There were—for a conservative guess—hundreds of books, all bound in a matching black leather with silver text for the title and blue text for the author.

A large, retractable silver shutter on the east side of the roof, directly above the area behind the curtain, covered what was likely a skylight, used to let in natural sunlight and light the room: no, it is likely used to let in moonlight; this was Wyohla's house after all.

"Are these all custom?" Gysel asked in awe. It would be nice to live here—it is desirable to live here, if knowing someone's exact time of birth, would allow Wyohla to turn someone into her thrall, that would be fine... well, only if the thrall could have access to this attic study.

"Uh-huh." was all Wyohla offered in response as she made her way to the desk on the south wall. The urge to touch the books was overwhelming, the desire to feel the quality of the pages, and take in big whiffs of the scents that waft from the paper: but knowing how expensive a hardcover book usually was, the thought of an entire collection of custom volumes and the individual price of each was enough to scare one away from merely asking if one could touch and smell the books, let alone hold them.

A large desk with a smaller shelf built into the back (which was also made of Wyohla's signature black-oak with white figuring) sat below the open window. A silver lamp sat on the right corner, but it had a thick layer of dust on it: either Wyohla rarely read, and the whole library was simply a 'bourgeois tourism' into Alchemy and Magick, or (judging by the light coming through the window) she used the sun and the moons to read.

A black and blue wool carpet with silver plaits on the sides sat between Gysel and the desk. It had been kicked up in some places and was not centered with the bookshelves. Wyohla did not seem fazed by this as she walked over the carpet. Wyohla pulled a book from the back of the desk. It was thick enough that Gysel could not have held it with one hand. It was easily about four-thousand or more standard pages and far thicker than the usual book was tall.

"That is the biggest book I have ever seen," Gysel muttered.

"It's not a book," Wyohla said, as she set the not-a-book on the desk. Gysel hurried over to get a better look: it was not a book, but a cleverly disguised clamshell box, like the ones multi-volume books come in. It was bound in black leather, and the Glyph of Luhnylla was set in silver on the front, with debossed etchings of the Maidens pressed into their specific sections.

"Just look, do not touch." Gysel set the clay pots down and stuffed her hands into her pockets. Wyohla opened the box; it was separated into two sections by a black oak divider. She removed the first section and fanned it out for Gysel.

"Each card is made of a small piece of black oak with my natal-glyph inlaid in silver," Wyohla said, beginning to explain the Lunar Divination Deck.

"In this case, I asked them to wrap it in a dark blue canvas and have the designs done in simple silver. There are two decks in a Lunar Divination deck. This one, which is the Lunar Tower in relation to the three moons, and the other, larger one, which is each maiden in relation to the daughters and Luhnylla."

"What do they do?" Gysel asked.

"Each card?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to be back at the academy for breakfast on the sixth?" Gysel scratched her legs through the fabric of her pockets—that is two days from now, but this would mean not having to leave the attic, well, only to eat and to go to the bathroom.

"Will you feed me?" Wyohla sighed, and rocked her head back and forth; the thin strands of blonde hair that escaped from her bun swished above the cards.

"I could, but I think it's best I just show you the cards." She pushed the cards back together and placed them back into the box, and moved to the next deck. After she had displayed every card, she returned the box to its home.

"Let's go back to your dorm so Lyma and I can show you how these work." Wyohla started back down the stairs. Reluctantly, Gysel took the pots and followed. Wyohla put on her jacket and pointed to the entrance way.

"Wait here." Gysel put her shoes back on, and did just that, waited. After about two minutes, Wyohla returned with two bottles of wine, each stuffed into a pocket of her coat.

"Let's go," she said as she put her boots back on. Gysel was still in awe when Wyohla led her out of the house and back to the Academy: there were displays of wealth, and then there was Wyohla's attic-study, which had surpassed being a mere display of wealth and moved to an exercise in aristocratic class differences. The cost of the raw black oak alone was likely more money than had ever passed through the past five generations of Neekhilsts.