Work Text:
There was a water basin in the basement, with some little glowing paper crafts gently floating atop the water.
It had taken a while for Ford to notice it.
But, after hiding from his brother working on dismantling the portal for the past few days, he finally spotted it when taking a moment to stretch his legs.
He’d planned to look around the basement more, see what else Stanley had brought down over the years. It was… Cluttered, but in a Library Backroom way. Things were organized, if not very neatly. And he was curious about what his brother had decided to hide in the secret basement that may have also been used in Stan’s work on the portal. Or simply because he’d wanted to keep it from the nosy busybodies of town.
Give his mind a break from the portal itself and let it look over other things.
Like old science journals and textbooks or algebra studies or- well, anything else Stanley had found interesting enough to keep. Besides, if he was in the basement, then the children weren’t. And Stanley was protective of them, so keeping them out was a small way to make things less dangerous.
(He wasn’t hiding from Stanley after his brother had yelled at him. After the reality check his brother had forcibly given him. After being forced to realize how much he’d already lost before Stanley had even entered the picture. No, he was just… Reacquainting himself with the world before he properly rejoined it. That was all. It was fine.)
Then he’d noticed the soft orange glow out of the corner of his eye and found the basin and the rather cozy nook it was set up in.
There were three little crafts there. A boat, a lantern, and a crane. All of them glowing softly in the dim lighting of the basement. The boat and crane a soft orange and the lantern a gentle yellow. They were actually rather pleasant to look at. The side area they were set out in looked… meditative. The shallow basin they were floating in was sat on the floor, and there was a low table stacked with books and writing implements strewn out across it. Several cushions were on the floor, making it just comfortable enough to sit down.
There were a few more little papercrafts, all neatly flattened in a few shoe boxes on the opposite side of the basin from the desk. They were all yellow-orange paper, by the looks of them, but they weren’t glowing like the ones in the basin.
However, it was still very strange to see something like that. Had Stanley made them at some point? It didn’t seem like something his brother would have made. But, then again, Stanley himself was very different from what Ford had remembered. So perhaps they were normal even if Ford found them strange.
And he couldn’t help investigating anything he found strange. (Hopefully, Stanley wouldn’t be upset about him looking at them. Ford would be careful with them, nonetheless.)
At first, he had thought there was some kind of little light inside them that was making the soft light. But when he’d sat down and looked closer at the little crafts, he realized there wasn’t a tucked inside light that was making them glow. The paper itself was glowing.
How curious. Ford thought to himself, leaning forward to observe the crafts. They looked surprisingly sturdy, despite their make. He would have expected the paper to be coming apart by now, considering they were floating in water for (presumably) several days. Most papers would have been thoroughly waterlogged and losing their shape, but they almost looked new. Like they’d only just been placed in the water.
Perhaps Stanley had treated the bottoms of the paper with something that repelled the water? Wax of some kind would do the trick. Or perhaps they weren’t actually made of paper and were instead made of something else that simply looked like paper.
He gingerly picked up one, the boat, to examine it closer and see if he could tell what it was made from. (A tiny boat that definitely felt like it was made of paper. If a very smooth type.) And a voice echoed in his mind.
Stanley’s voice echoed in his head.
“Ford fell through the broken Gate in the other room. I have to fix it so he can come home again. It might be his only way back. He wanted to keep it a secret, so no one that lives outside the Shack can know about the Gate.”
Ford gasped, nearly dropping the tiny boat.
How…? He looked down at the little boat with wide eyes. Stanley’s voice had sounded slightly different, younger almost, but he could still hear the sadness and determination that had colored his brother’s tone.
(The use of the word “gate”, while not a wrong term for the portal, was not quite correct either. Then again, a portal was a gateway so it was still a feasible word to use.)
Ford ran his fingers over the paper, trying to find some explanation for the voice. But all that happened was the voice replaying when his fingers tapped the sides of the boat. Like it was a snippet of something that Stanley had said to himself at some point that, somehow, the little boat had stored within itself.
Was the paper some kind of… Magical messaging spell? Some kind of magical paper Stanley had gotten and used to- Leave a reminder for himself? To remind himself of what happened to Ford and why he was working on the portal?
(He ignored the uncomfortable feeling in his chest at the thought.)
Ford slowly placed the boat back in the water, looking over the other floating origami as he did. Were all of them messages Stanley left for himself?
He reached out for the crane next, his curiosity too strong to ignore. (What else had Stanley felt was so important that he needed to have it written in magic to avoid forgetting it?)
”Do not trust the Blind Eye! Ignorance is only bliss until it gets you hurt or worse. No matter how much they think they’re “helping” by doing it. Memories are part of you, no one should ever take them away. Memory thieves are just as dangerous as the things they think they’re protecting you from.”
The pure anger in that message made Ford jump in surprise. But then the words sank in and sent a chill down his spine.
He vaguely remembered the Blind Eye. He had deduced they were a cult of some kind with an interest in his work before he’d gone through the portal. He hadn’t been able to figure out their reasons, however. If they were trying to help him or hinder him in stopping Bill’s plans. They had simply been just another bunch of figures that fed into his rampant paranoia at that time.
Stanley’s reminder seemed to imply that they had some way to remove someone’s memories… He called them “memory thieves” after all.
People with such power were not to be trusted. Such power was far too easy to abuse even if you had good intentions behind it. The longer time went on, the harder it was to justify what was actually helping and what would put people at more risk if they forgot about it. Forgetting dangerous things has a very high risk of only getting you hurt later on, as well. Because you would forget that there was danger in the first place and end up walking right into it without realizing it was something you needed to avoid.
(It was nice to know that there were things that he and Stanley could be in complete agreement about.)
It was a good thing that his world’s Fiddleford had destroyed his memory gun. He… Had destroyed it, right? Ford was fairly certain he had… Unless these people somehow stole another version of it or Fiddleford’s plans for it. Which was possible, though unlikely. His old assistant would have mentioned the break-in if it happened. They probably had a different method that let them take people’s memories. Possibly something from the area that they found that allowed them to perform something like that.
He made a mental note to look into it later. People like that were far more dangerous than even they realized. To themselves as much as to others.
(Fiddleford had likely moved back to California long ago. He doubted his old friend had been in danger of encountering those people. They had appeared after he’d quit the project, after all.)
He returned the crane to the water, tapping a finger against the lantern instead of trying to pick it up.
“I’ve been going insane trying to understand magic and why so much is different depending on who you ask. Finally gave in and made a book that has everything I know in it, just so I can find some throughlines for the others. I put the Crown on the front of the first one to make it easier to find.”
Now that had Ford’s interest.
His brother wrote a book? On magic? When did he learn any? Where had he learned it? It sounded like it was different from what he had studied, based on the comments about consistency.
Ford’s eyes trailed to the books stacked on and around the table beside him.
What were the chances that one of them was the book in question?
Considering that this was Stanley, fairly high. He turned to the books and started carefully searching through them. The note said something about a crown, but what did that mean? Did he just print a crown on the front?
Ford checked the front and back covers of every book. It was probably originally a blank cover, otherwise, Stan wouldn’t have been able to put an image of his own on it. So anything that already had writing there was automatically out. Along with any silly pictures on the front. There were a few nicer-looking books with patterns over the entire covers, but none with crowns.
He paused at a book with a plain, dark blue-green cover. Some kind of fake leather and sturdy to the touch. But what caught his eye was the front.
There was a constellation pressed into the front, with light blue paint in the stars. He knew it was the constellation Cassiopeia. That was what every constellation map in the world labeled it as.
But… He had a memory of a freckled, gap-toothed little boy squinting up at the stars from the beach. Frowning as Ford read constellations from a book he’d borrowed from the library and they both tried to find them in the sky.
“Cassio-what? Why would anyone call it that?”
“It’s from a Greek myth! She was a queen who bragged too much and got punished for it.”
“Why would they put her in the stars if she did something bad? That’s dumb. It doesn’t look like a lady anyway.”
“Well, what do you think it looks like then?”
“Hmmm… I think it looks more like a crown!”
There had been several constellations like that. Cygnus was an umbrella or a parasol, Stanley insisted that Ursa Major was actually a manta ray, Gemini was a marker stone of some kind and several more. But at that moment, as Ford looked down at the book in his hands, he remembered that his brother saw Cassiopeia as a crown.
He opened the book to its first page, where there was a star shape of some kind carefully drawn and the words “The Magic of the Realms of the Sky” written over the top of the page. And, at the very bottom, in very small writing.
‘First Book, if I end up having to make more.’
Found it. And now it was time to start reading.
Stanley’s book seemed to be a mix of a beginner’s guide and an index of magic.
Which, while different than what Ford normally would have liked, was still educational in its own right.
Some things were explained, the how and some of the why, but others seemed more like a list of the magic that Stanley had, apparently, learned at some point in time. Trying to put everything he knew to paper so it could be referenced more easily at a later date.
(He wondered if Stanley had struggled with it as much as he had when he’d first tried to learn magic. It had been quite a hurdle over his years writing his second journal. There had been a few who’d questioned why he was learning their kind of magic but had moved on once he’d explained that he was a researcher.)
Much of this particular type of magic was done through gestures, movements, and steps that created an effect of some kind when performed. But there were a few that seemed to use a mix of materials to create paints and items that had effects that could either be stored or triggered at a later time. Much of them used stone or cloth as a base that was altered magically, and for many the trigger seemed to be either light from a castor or a fire.
He had seen some things about capes in the book that seemed almost more cultural than magical purposes. So perhaps part of the emphasis on certain things came from whatever culture that Stanley had learned this from and not simply a personal preference. Which was also very interesting but brought up questions of what the culture even was.
Stanley had a rather elaborate cape that Ford had spotted upstairs. It looked heavy, with some kind of scales layered on top of it. Perhaps the scales had some kind of spell woven into them? He would need to examine it to confirm that theory.
Maybe once Stanley had gone to bed, he could look it over…
The drawings that Stanley put in looked as though they’d been done with a brush, and were very simple. They were meant to convey actions step-by-step and not just depict what something should look like. But they were also very simple, borderline stick figures for many of them. Which, while informative, were a tad plain.
(Stanley used to be much more artistic… He had loved making comics when they were children. But, perhaps, his skills had grown rusty before he’d taken over Ford’s life.)
Interestingly, Ford noticed the references to the creatures from Shack. Mostly in the form of doodles in the corners of pages and a small section of the book Stanley had labeled as “calls”. He assumed it meant some kind of magic used through the voice, which seemed different from the verbal spells Ford had used before and had more limited effects from what he could tell.
(But that also held the interesting theory that these creatures may actually exist, somewhere in the world…)
One definitive effect seemed to be the ability to find other users of this particular brand of magic via a “call”. And not simply someone capable of that magic but an active practitioner of it. Assumedly, that meant that there was no active hostility or severe competitive streaks in them. Or that something had happened that required them to have a way to seek each other out. Perhaps they had been developed in the wake of a disaster of some kind?
“Deep Calls” allowed some form of divination magic as well, letting someone find the direction of a goal they were after no matter where or how far from it they were. Which sounded like it would be incredibly useful if one was lost or trying to find something important in a short span of time. Though there was a note about needing to know what it was you trying to find in the first place…
(He was tempted to try it himself, but there was a chance that doing so would alert Stanley to what he was doing right then. And he… Didn’t want his brother to yell at him again to meddle too much before he knew what he was dealing with yet.)
But… He could try one of the other spells listed. He had already learned some magic, so he knew a bit about how to make it work. Many of the spells seemed more cosmetic, or to help emphasize an emotion or state of mind. (Better communication of one's thoughts and feelings.)
One of the gestures perhaps? Something small and simple that wouldn’t cause any trouble. Perhaps the butterfly charming one?
He flipped back to the page showing the spell and reread the small description for performing it. Then he set the open book on the table, rose to his feet, and, with a small calming breath, slid into the stance. Pulling at the feeling he’d come to know from all his previous attempts at magic.
There was a moment when all he felt was the faint beating of his heart, and then there was a small flicker of light. And a single, golden-hued butterfly fluttered into existence and landed delicately on his outstretched hand.
Ford let out a small, wonder-filled breath at the little creature.
It was warm to the touch and cast a soft golden glow over his hand. And there was something almost… Childishly magical about having something like a butterfly land on one’s hand.
He couldn’t help the soft smile at the tiny animal as he slowly, carefully, brought it closer to himself.
This was a magic he’d never seen before. He would definitely try to learn more.
(Even though there was a whisper in his chest that said it wasn’t as alien to him as any other kind of magic he’d tried before.)