Page 43 of The Messengers of Magic

Chapter Thirty

P en sat behind the counter, staring at the dust motes dancing in the pale light filtering through the window. Days might have passed, maybe weeks, but he’d lost count. Time had begun to warp, stretching and folding in ways he couldn’t explain.

He’d watched people pause at the window, faces inches from the glass. But not one of them saw him. Just as Iain and Dottie hadn’t. He’d shouted, waved, jumped up and down. He’d even written desperate notes and taped them to the windows, but nothing worked.

He’d tried phoning someone, anyone, but every call met him with static or silence. No dial tone. No voice.

There was a letterbox built straight into the front wall, just a square of weathered copper, its surface softened by age, streaked in places with green where time had crept in. The flap outside still faintly read Feather Thorn , the letters dulled but intact.

Inside, the slot led to a narrow copper chute, no wider than a shoebox. Pen had cleared out the spiderwebs weeks ago.

He slid a letter in, and it landed with the same soft tick it always did. This hadn’t been the first letter he had tried to send. Despite the postman checking it each day, the letters piled up, untouched.

Even the radio offered nothing but a whispering void of white noise. It was like he’d been erased from the world, as though nothing he did could leave an impression.

At first, he’d tried to escape. The doors, the windows. But no matter how hard he fought to leave, he always ended up back behind the counter on his stool, as though he’d never moved at all.

Eventually, Pen came to accept the impossible: he was stuck in some kind of loop.

Each day, the same half-bottle of milk reappeared in the fridge.

The same eggs. The same ground beef and other staples he’d stocked up on the day of the eclipse.

He was grateful for that, as the alternative would have been grim.

Without the books, he might have gone truly mad.

They were his lifeline. His only companions.

He looked up at the old model ship dangling above his head.

He imagined drifting through fog, anchorless and forgotten.

At sea , he thought, at least there’s a hope someone might find you .

But here? Even hope had begun to feel like fiction.

A faint metallic scrape broke the stillness.

The bell above the door gave a cheerful jingle as it swung open, and Dottie walked in, followed closely by Iain and the constable.

Pen shot to his feet, heart pounding against his ribs. Finally. Someone had come.

“Dottie!” Pen’s voice cracked, hoarse from disuse. Relief flooded over him as he stepped toward her, ready to pour out everything he’d been holding in.

But she didn’t turn to face him. None of them did.

Dottie walked right past him, her gaze sweeping the shop’s interior, as if he weren’t there, mere feet away.

His heart slowed, and a creeping cold settled over him as he watched her.

“Pen?” Dottie called, her tone laced with concern.

“I don’t think he’s here,” Iain murmured, glancing at the constable. “Maybe he left a note?”

Constable MacDuff headed through the back door, up toward the apartment. Iain trailed after Dottie, deeper into the rows of books.

Pen followed, calling out, waving his hands, doing anything he could to break through.

But it was like shouting underwater, his voice didn’t reach.

His presence didn’t register. A ghost. That’s what he’d become, a spectral echo, but made of skin and bone, invisible, intangible, trapped within the walls of the Feather Thorn.

The search continued. Dottie and Iain moved through the aisles, calling his name, voices laden with mounting worry. Each unanswered call twisted in Pen’s gut like a knife.

The constable returned, shaking his head. “Nothing up there. Did you find anything?”

“No, nothing,” Dottie said, her voice dropping with disappointment.

“Do you think he might have hurt himself?” the constable asked.

A look of concern washed over Dottie.

“Dottie, you know I wouldn’t—” Pen began on reflex, then stopped. It was pointless. She couldn’t hear him.

“No,” she said at last. “There’s no way. He wouldn’t do that to his brothers.”

She stepped closer to him, so close Pen could almost feel the warmth of her next to him.

He reached out, placing his hand on her shoulder; it passed straight through, his fingers slipping through her like headlights cutting through thick fog.

His chest tightened, breath catching in his throat.

He stared down at his now-trembling hand.

This wasn’t strange anymore; it was terrifying.

“Maybe we should leave a note,” Dottie suggested, glancing around the room again. “Just in case he comes back. Let him know to call us.”

Iain nodded. “Maybe he’s gone back to America.”

Dottie pulled a pen and ledger pad from the front desk and began to write.

Pen,

Come over or give us a call when you get back.

We’re worried about you.

Love, Dottie.

Pen hovered beside her, reading the message. Desperation gripped him in that moment, and he snatched up the pen as she set it down. He scrawled in the blank space beside her words.

I didn’t leave. I’m still here. Please, help me. I don’t know what’s happening .

Dottie didn’t react. Didn’t pause. Didn’t even glance at the fresh ink that now screamed from the page.

He watched them leave, one at a time. Dottie stopped in the doorway, one foot out and one still inside the shop.

She looked back in, one last time, her eyes scanning the space as if she might catch a glance of him.

For a heartbeat, Pen dared to hope. But then she stepped out, and the heavy oak door closed, shutting with unmistakable finality.

He paced the rows of books, his mind a blur of confusion.

Nothing made sense. All the natural laws, time, space, reality had all buckled.

He found himself sitting on the godforsaken stool again, but this time of his own volition, though the act felt no less futile.

Dottie’s note looked up at him, the familiar loops of her handwriting offering no comfort.

Beside it lay Liber Loagaeth , the book by John Dee.

It had been resting in that very spot for weeks.

For some reason, he’d never put it away.

His eyes flicked to the painting of Dee on the wall. The key Rowland had taped to the back. Maybe none of it was random.

Pen picked up the book. He’d skimmed it before, but never fully read it. He’d never had time. Now, with nothing but time, he cracked the spine and began at the beginning.

It wasn’t fiction; it was a record. Dee’s documentation of an angelic language, received through the scrying of Edward Kelley. Page after page revealed the Enochian alphabet: symbols, rituals, invocations, each intended to unlock a piece of divine knowledge.

As he read on, a chill crawled across his skin, prickling the back of his neck. Rowland had known about this. That much was clear.

Nearly a quarter of the way through, Pen froze. He knew those symbols. He pulled the lucky penny from his pocket and flipped it over with his fingers as he thought. Where had he seen those markings? A book? No, a map? The celestial maps tucked away in the desk drawer of the hidden room.

Snapping the book shut, he clutched it tightly and hurried to the trapdoor.

He descended the narrow staircase, stale air rushing to meet him as he entered the secret room below.

At the desk, he set the book aside and pulled open the heavy drawers.

The maps were there, just as he’d left them.

He laid them out, opened the first one, and scanned the inked constellations and meticulous lines.

There, on the right-hand side. Tiny faded symbols. He reached for Liber Loagaeth , flipping feverishly until he found them. The three cryptic symbols. They matched exactly. He traced them with his fingertip. Then looked back at the translation in Dee’s text. Celestial Opening.

Heart pounding, Pen pulled the next map into view. Two more symbols leapt out at him. He thumbed through the book again, cross-referencing the forms. Time. Shift.

The pieces were falling into place.

These weren’t just celestial charts; they were a cipher, a hidden code interwoven with the Enochian language. Maps, yes, but to something far beyond the stars.

It was the third map that stole his breath. There, written across the parchment in careful ink, was the word he’d seen before. Monad. The very word etched onto the side of the watch.

His fingers trembled as he traced the string of symbols clustered above the name, symbols identical to those he had found in the book.

With painstaking care, Pen began to translate. The portal’s Key lies within the alignment of the heavens.

The map slipped through his fingers.

He dashed up the stairs, footsteps thundering through the empty shop. At the counter, the watch waited. Its face glinted faintly in the dim light. Grabbing it, he rushed back to the hidden room and laid it beside the map and the open book.

His gaze fell to the back of the watch, where the metal had been delicately etched. There, almost invisible unless you knew what to look for, was the Enochian symbol for Key.

Pen tore open the drawers, pulling out every journal. Most were filled with mathematical equations and notes on cosmic events. But one held what he was looking for. A detailed drawing of the watch. Beneath it, a single line:

Astral Synchronum. Created by John Dee and Giordano Bruno. Designed to open a portal between Heaven and Earth.

He read on.

Rowland had believed the Synchronum could manipulate time itself. That under the right celestial conditions, it could create a rift, a wormhole, through which time could be bent or broken. He had hoped to use it. Not for fame or power. But to go back. To save Carolyn.

Pen’s grip tightened on the old worn journal. The night he’d pressed the buttons… there had been an eclipse. He hadn’t just wound the watch. He’d accidentally activated the watch. Opened a door. And stepped through. The horror of it settled like ice. He was trapped. Caught in a fracture of time.

And it was his fault.

He doubled over, pressing a hand to his mouth as nausea coiled in his gut. Not just a mistake. His mistake. Desperation had driven him to act before he understood the cost. And now, the world he’d known was gone.

But there was no time to dwell on it. If he was going to escape, the answers had to lie within the journals, within the complex equations and celestial charts, the symbology scrawled across every page.

He wasn’t a mathematician. Not even close. But he had time. All the time in the world.

So he studied.

Bit by bit, night after night, the hidden room transformed.

The walls bloomed with notes, observations, equations, and sketches.

Pen tracked planetary paths, mapped celestial alignments, drew connections between Dee’s rituals and Rowland’s theories.

Symbols danced across the damp stone walls, constellations stitched together, constellations of meaning.

He stopped keeping track of the days. They bled together into one long, sleepless pursuit. Each night, he climbed to the apartment, telescope in hand, and watched the skies. Mars. Venus. Jupiter. He learned them all. Waited for them to fall into place, like tumblers in a lock.

He was no longer waiting for a rescue. He was preparing for a release. The stars would align again. And when they did, he would be ready.