Page 7 of Boy of Chaotic Making

He then said something in French under his breath that Merritt didn’t catch. Granted, had he heard it clearly, he still wouldn’t have known what it meant.

“Don’t stay out too long,” Merritt chided, and turned for the house.

“Dinner in one hour” was the only response.

Inside, Merritt hung up his coat and satchel on a hook near the portrait of an unknown woman. Even Owein didn’t know who she was. The painting was faded, and when Owein’s spirit had occupied the walls, it used to occasionally melt or walk about the house, as the boy saw fit. Now she just hung, the only life within her the paint strokes that the original artist had given her. It felt wrong to remove the portrait. And so Merritt tipped an imaginary hat to her before heading upstairs.

“Paper came for you,” said Beth as she bustled by, a duster in her apron pocket and a broom in hand. “Left it on your desk.”

“News or work?”

“Work.”

“Thank you,” he called, though she didn’t slow for conversation, merely continued on to the library. Yesterday she’d decided to undertake reorganizing the volumes there by author’s name. Merritt did not envy her. Mayhap the library had once been organized as such, but Owein,as a house, had possessed a nasty habit of throwing books, so titles were merely shoved wherever there was a space for them.

Sure enough, a great ream of paper sat at the corner of his desk in his office, as well as a stack of notebooks. The place was spotless, his breakfast dishes cleared away, the trash bin emptied, the glass window looking out into the bay free of marks. Owein was curled up in the corner on the oval-shaped bed Hulda had given him for Christmas. His fur had developed white patches over the last few months, albeit not ones usually associated with age; they seemed to sprout at random, all over his body, instead of around his eyes and snout as might happen with a geriatric canine. He showed no other signs of age; his dog body remained spry and young.

Owein glanced up when Merritt entered, then rested his head on his paws.

“Long day?” Merritt asked, crossing to the desk and pulling his latest notebook, nearly filled, from its top drawer. He was working on his third book,Two More in the Study. This one was a mystery about two feuding families locked in a magicked house for an entire weekend. Every six hours, someone was murdered. Everyone believed it to be the house at first ... but indeed, it was one of the family members!

Merritt hadn’t figured out which one yet. But he’d get there.

He had an hour until dinner, and a little light left, so he sat down and read his last page, catching himself up on where he’d left off. He’d written, very lightly, a few notes for himself on the next page. He erased them and started anew:

Yet surely Annie had not been in the kitchen that morning—Louis himself had heard her retching upstairs before breakfast, as the smell of eggs had greatly upset her pregnant constitution. He couldn’t believe Benjamin capable of harming a soul, not when he’d cried over so much as a squished spider in childhood. Who, then, could have left the poison? And had he, or she, brought it with him, or had it been in the cupboards all along?

An idea struck him then. If he could—

His pencil, already down to half its length, snapped in his hand.

“Bother,” he muttered, and opened his second drawer for a new one, as well as a sharpener. He began the slow process of peeling back wood from graphite, trying to keep his ideas in his head.

He slowed halfway to a decent point and glanced at the broken pencil, his mind drifting back to the article published today. Or, more specifically, to Gifford. He hadn’t taken a magic lesson from the fellow in a few months, but he remembered them well. Had even reread the dry essays the man had provided for his enrichment.

Merritt possessed quite the odd concoction of magic spells, made all the more surprising by his discovery of them so far into adulthood. He could make wardship walls and talk with plants and animals, but he had some chaocracy as well, passed down from Owein’s side of the family through his biological father. It was weak, but he’d done quite a bit of destruction with it once, unintentionally, of course, so it was certainly part of him.

Chaocracy. The magic of disorder, which caused disorder of the mind in retribution for its use. But there was another side to chaocracy—if something was already in a state of disorder, then the magic could be used to restore order. “Restore order” was a spell he and his great-whatever-uncle Owein shared.

So Merritt set down the new pencil and the sharpener, and picked up the broken ends of his pencil. Held them together and focused.

His magic, they believed, was tied to his instincts and emotion. Chaocracy, supposedly, to his temper. But did that mean he had to be blindingly angry to make it work?

He stared intently at the crack in the pencil. Tried to will it to mend the same way he willed wardship spells to form or mice to quiet.Mend. Fuse. Fix.

And for a moment, the crack began to repair itself.

Then stopped.

Sighing, his thoughts somewhat scattered, Merritt pulled the pencil apart, dropped it on the desk, and leaned back in his chair. “Not worth it,” he muttered.

The pencil pieces then drew together like magnets and stitched into one whole. Merritt did not believe for a second that it was his doing.

You’ll get there,Owein said, pawing over to the desk. Only Merritt could hear his words, thanks to his communion spells.

“Perhaps not. I’ve your spell, but it’s been diluted by two centuries of plebian breeding.” He continued sharpening the new pencil. By the time he was finished, he’d need a candle. “Normally I’d be put out that a child can do anything better than I can, but, well, I suppose you’re not, really.”

Which had become a very curious thing to Merritt. Owein had died at the age of twelve but lived for over two hundred years in this house. Often alone, sometimes with tenants. Yet he still acted every bit a child. “I suppose when you’re not limited by society or body,” he mumbled, “you can be whatever you want.”

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