Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

So hear me out. I think that ducks are behind it all. Ducks and their allies the geese and the swans. Not the grebes, though, or the loons. They are on our side.

Think about it: before the rise of mankind, ducks and their allies could move about freely and migrate as they pleased. But we put a stop to that, with all our hunting and our terraforming and our pollution. So what is the solution? End humanity!

That’s why all those flocks almost caused World War Three when they appeared on military radar. That’s why they suicide bomb planes. And it’s why they take over parks and claim them as their own. It’s all a long con to drive humanity to extinction.

They’ve been manipulating us all along, and no one has clean hands. Wake up to the truth! This may just seem like a duck related conspiracy theory, but I swear it’s true.

“Remember,” said Nevah, “the Arachneons prefer to wear headgear, and this says a lot about their intentions. We want to see them wearing their finest silk creations, towering gossamer edifices that are a testement to the beauty and strength of Arachneon culture.”

“Okay, right, sure,” said Agazaw. “And if their intentions are hostile…?

“Then the Arachneons will arrive wearing headgear made out of their defeated enemies, to intimidate us. Generally this means long bones formed into sculptures bound together with silk, but they have been known to use drained and mummified corpses for the same purpose.” Nevah shrugged. “It should be pretty obvious, I think.”

“Got it,” Agazaw said. “Spiders wearing hats, but in a nice way.”

It’s a little known fact that there is exactly one fish that is in charge of the weather worldwide. It’s true! Whatever that fish feels is reflected in the weather patterns, and the stranger the occurrences in that fish’s life, the stranger the weather. Normal depredations of marine life may cause things like floods, droughts, or even the odd tornado. But there have been much, much stranger occurrences.

Take, for example, the time that the fish was a tilapia that was caught by an angler using a cheese-based bait, posed for a photo, and then thrown back. That caused a rain of jellyfish in one area and a crimson tide in another. Then, of course, there was the time that the fish, a blue tang, was caught by a poacher and lived out the rest of its life in a salt water aquarium? That caused a tornado outbreak, an El Niño, abnormally high Arctic pack ice, and the eruption of four volcanoes.

The moral of the story? Be nice to fish. You never know which one controls the weather.

Oh, and if the fish dies? You don’t want to know. Trust me on this one.

Isaac Wright, Isis’s older half-brother, was 15 years older than her but despite this they have always been extremely close, especially after the death of Isis’s father and mother in a car crash. He had long supported her financially via his work at the Wickerby, Driftwood, and Ember wandworks, enabling her to attend an expensive Montessori school a few hours away.

Eventually, however, Isaac began to be taken into the confidence of Obadiah Driftwood, the factory foreman, and Cyrus Ember, the school principal. As he had proved himself exceptionally able, he was used in a scheme that was intended to cut the third owner out of the wandworks, Elijah Wickerby, who was largely disengaged from the daily working of the place. Isaac earned a considerable sum of money–paid in gold–for this assistance, and was able to stop working on the literally soul-sucking mock assembly line, but he was greatly disturbed by the revelation of how the wandworks was operated, and by the fact that the quality and expense of a wand, rather than the skill of the person using it, was the deciding factor in their magical aptitude.

Isaac put into place a plan for ending what he saw as an inhuman charade. First, he began documenting the true inner workings of the factory in a series of notes, which he hid throughout the campus. Then, using his official position as a janitor, he began to secretly copy files at night using a stolen wand. Finally, he presented his findings–and the plot against him–to Elijah Wickerby, intending to turn Wickerby against the other two while blackmailing him into going along with a plan to wind down factory operations.

Instead, Wickerby reported the contact to his partners, who immediately put aside their plans for Wickerby and conspired to murder Isaac. While they succeeded in luring him into a killing zone under false pretenses, a running battle ensued leading not to a quiet death in the factory, as the men had hoped, but a loud and public one in the school. Even though the Davis police were able to squelch any serious investigation, ruling the case a tragic accident, enough information reached his sister that she began planning to avenge him, using the large amount of money he left to her in a living will to fund it.

Cyrus Ember cuts quite the figure, with reading glasses, a well-trimmed beard, and long white hair that he keeps in a ponytail, all worn over a series of expensive and custom-tailored suits. He does his best to project a grandfatherly air, and is widely seen by staff and students alike as having their best interests at heart in the constant struggle against parents and the board of trustees. This cultivated image is, however, a total farce.

In reality, Cyrus Ember is very much the son of his father Ehud Ember, and his father’s father Slias Ember: a cold, calculating man who uses his ability to seem warm, friendly, and caring as a ruse to make his enemies lower their guard. By utilizing Officer LQC Sparks as the hate sink for all his most unpopular actions, Ember is able to run Magnolian Academy his own way while remaining blameless and absolved. He is also heavily involved with the wand factory co-founded by his great-great grandfather, though he leaves most day to day decisions to his co-owners.

Ember is quite aware that the factory is essentially a charade designed to drain its workers of their life forces and use it to charge wands, but is committed to it as preserving the only way of life he has ever known. He was willing to kill Isaac Wright to keep the secret, and he is willing to do the same to his sister Isis, but he remains convinced that both Isaac and Isis were put up to their actions by a third party, a competitor or industrial spy or bleeding heart organization. He cannot conceive of someone doing it simply out of revenge for a loved one, as there is no one save himself that he would ever do that for.

Officer Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Sparks is the Magnolian School’s Sorcery Resource Officer or SRO. As a result, he is a sworn police officer in the town of Davis, complete with badge, but spends his time at the school and is only rarely called upon to do any police work outside of it. He still shows up to work in a full blue uniform, however.

Despite being named after an illustrious forebear, Officer LQC Sparks is a suspicious, irritable, and unpopular man at Magnolian, widely loathed by students and teachers. The LQC in his name is often taken to mean “Low Quality Cop,” which Sparks will react strongly and negatively to. This is quite deliberate on the part of the school’s principal, Cyrus Ember, who is well aware of Sparks’s shortcomings but prefers to use him as a hate sink, pinning him with unpopular decisions and the enforcement of rules. While seemingly undermining him at every turn, Ember nevertheless has Sparks’s total loyalty due to his gift of a rather low-quality wand, which Sparks has taken to carrying instead of a pistol.

He is not a smart man, nor a creative one, but Sparks does have a certain cunning about him and, unlike most students and staff, he is allowed to sling spells with the intent to harm. Rumor has it that he only knows one spell–bullet ant, a spell that feels like the pain of being stung by a South American venomous ant.

“What was your brother up to in the factory?” Ember said. “What had he learned?”

“I don’t know,” Isis sobbed. “He never told me before he died.”

“Bullshit,” Ember spat. His wand came up again. “Tell me, Wright. In your botany class, have you gotten to Florida yet? Have they told you about the manchineel tree, also known as the death apple?”

A tremor passed through Isis at the name.

“No? Pity. It’s a fascinating tree. Verdant…tall…and overlooking some of the most beautiful beaches in the country. Laden with ripe, inviting fruit, shining and green.”

The principal lifted his off-hand, which was curled into a claw, leaving his wand hand resting limply on the chair back.

“It’s also quite toxic, through and through,” Ember continued. “Manchineel is one of the most toxic trees in the world, dripping with burning, blistering sap. Even standing beneath the tree during the rain will cause blistering on unprotected skin.”

Ember’s wand came up, hovering above his other hand. “Why, it seems you’re standing underneath a manicheel during the rain, Wright. Why are you standing underneath a manicheel during the rain?”

He dropped his wand into his off-hand, and immediately Isis felt a searing, burning sensation over every exposed part of her body. The pain was so intense that it made Sparks’s bullet ant cantrip seem a tickle in comparison.

“Who put you up to this?” Ember said, flatly. “Who are you working for?”

“N…no one,” Isis croaked. “I’m here…by myself…for my brother.”

“Bullshit,” Ember growled. He lifted his wand again, tossing it back into his dominant hand. “It seems the rain is letting up, but you are unwisely plunging your hands into manicheel sap and smearing it all over yourself. Do you think like cures like, Wright? Why would you do such a foolish, ludicrous, thing?”

Even though her skin was unmarked, the sensation was suddenly a hundredfold worse, a thousandfold. Isis could feel, could all but see, angry red chemical burns spreading across her arms, blisters raising and swelling at the touch of the toxic sap.

“Tell me who you are working for. Is it the Anti-Wand League? The Mundanocratic Party? Siggur Wandworks GmbH?”

“I’m…working for…myself…” Isis said, straining in agony against her restraints. “You…you killed my brother…I had to know…why…”

Sparks had regained his composure and was now standing behind Ember. “Maybe she’s telling the truth,” he said. “It could just be a personal vendetta.”

“Sparks, you’re an outsider, so I don’t expect you to understand,” said Ember, grimly. “The Wickerby, Driftwood, and Ember Wandworks is my life. Magnolian Academy if my life. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to protect my way of life against all comers. If I don’t make absolutely sure the girl is telling the truth, I am failing in that charge. Do I make myself clear?”

“Y-yes, Principal Ember,” Sparks said.

“Good.” Ember turned back to Isis. “Is that a manchineel death apple I see you picking, Wright? I know it looks enticing, but why are you eating it? Such a silly thing to do.”

Isis had the sensation of biting into something juicy and piquant, even though her jaws were clenched shut. The sensation was pleasantly sweet for a moment, but before long a bitter note of pepper crept in, and then all at once the burning sensation was inside her mouth, coursing to her stomach, and constricting her throat. She wanted to scream, to howl, but all that could escape her mouth was a weak hiss. There was no real constriction, no real swelling, but she was gasping for air and slowly turning blue all the same.

“Just tell me who sent you, who you work for, and maybe–just maybe–you won’t choke to death,” Ember said.

The door flew open, revealing Principal Cyrus Ember, wand in hand, academic robes blown back by the force of the blow. His face was a mask of silent fury above his beard, far more furious than Isis had ever seen him.

“What,” Ember barked, “is the meaning of this?”

“I-I can explain, Principal Ember,” said Sparks, rising to his feet. “We caught Ms. Wright in the very act of-“

“And already strapped her down in the Disciplinary Suite, I see,” Ember said, striding over to Sparks. “In mid-application of a Greater Bullet Ant enchantment, as well. Extraordinarily painful.”

“Yes, Principal Ember, but-“

“I am doing the talking now, Sparks,” Ember barked. With a flick of his wand, he tossed the Magical Resource Officer aside like a rag doll. He then grasped a chair, turned it around, and sat down on it, resting both hands on the chair back.

With Sparks’s concentration broken, the incendiary pain from the Greater Bullet Ant enchantment quickly faded, but the ashes of the pain still left Isis gasping.

“T-thank you, Principal Ember…” she gasped.

“Pick yourself up, Sparks,” said Ember, his gaze resting, unbroken, on Isis. “Has she said anything?”

“She…she has been extraordinarily resistant to the pain, Principal,” said Sparks.

“He has been questioning me, accusing me of all sorts of lies,” Isis cried. “He-“

Ember curtly waved his wand at her, briefly silencing her with Maxine’s favorite classroom control spell. “This is why you don’t start interrogations without me, Sparks,” he said. “I’m surprised your wand doesn’t go off in its holster, you miserable incompetent.”

Sparks seemed to crumble a bit. “I’m sorry, Principal Ember.”

“Spare me your sniveling.” Ember said. He dispelled the silence enchantment, leaving Isis’s labored breathing and gasps audible. “I will do this myself.”

“It’s a lie,” Isis cried. “It’s all lies! Sparks made everything up!”

“Oh?” Ember said. His eyebrows arched. “Are you telling me that my Magical Resource Officer has been chasing at paranoid shadows, letting his imagination run away with him, and accusing an innocent little girl, one of our star pupils, of all sorts of fantasy?”

“Yes,” said Isis. “He’s been against me from the start.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. The man hasn’t an imaginative bone in his body,” said Ember, cooly. “If anything he’s been blundering from the beginning. I’ve told him time and again to leave you be, that if you go to ground we will learn nothing. But now, I fear, the time has come for our little non-magical infiltrator to tell all.”

“You…you know?” A sensation of dread, blazing and more painful than even the Bullet Ant enchantment, welled up inside Isis.

A flash of something flitted across Ember’s face. Isis thought it might have been pity, before she realized it was contempt.

“My dear girl,” the principal said. “I’ve known from the very start.”