Page 45 of Shelf-Made Man
Alfie resumed combing Tobias’s hair with his fingers, which felt lovely. He seemed pensive. Eventually, he spoke in a quiet voice. “I refuse to believe that this is the end for us.”
“But Alfie,” Olve began.
“Oh, I know. Good doesn’t always triumph over evil. Not all stories have happy endings. Terrible things happen to even the best people in both of our worlds. But still. There must besomething. We have all had so much magic and wonder in our lives—I can’t believe it would all suddenly disappear.”
Tobias appreciated Alfie’s optimism but didn’t share it. Sometimes things were just shitty, and there was no rhyme nor reason to it. Very few people led a truly charmed life.
“I’ll fight anyone who tries to hurt either of you,” he promised.
Olve gave a sad smile. “You did turn out magnificently, didn’t you? Everyone says such terrible things about trolls, yet they overlook the fact that most trolls simply want to keep to themselves and mind their own business.” He sighed. “But fighting will do nothing but get you hurt. There are so many of them.”
“I’m going to get hurt anyway. Might as well make at least one or two of them sorry they messed with us.”
He closed his eyes and, lulled by Alfie’s fingers, drifted into sleep.
The floor was hard,the lights too bright, and nobody brought food, which left the three of them hungry, desolate, and crammed into a small cell. At least water and a toilet were available, for which Tobias was grateful. His skull was still tender, but the nausea, dizziness, and fuzzy-headedness had subsided.
He knew that as unhappy as the situation was for him, it was worse for his companions, both of whom had been tortured here. And while Tobias had plenty of padding to sustain him for a while, Alfie was much thinner, and Olve was emaciated.
Olve and Alfie were good company, however. Olve was happy to share stories about Aunt Virginia, about his own adventures, and about how he’d found Tobias. They both taught him a lot about their world, and in turn, they asked about the world he’d lived in.
“I wish I could see this operate,” said Olve, cradling Tobias’s cell phone in one hand. Nobody had bothered to empty Tobias’s pockets before locking him up, but the phone was useless. Either the battery was dead or Apple products didn’t work here.
“It’s due to the magic-proofing,” Alfie said confidently.
“But cell phones aren’t magic. They use electricity, microchips, radio waves…. It’s all just physics.”
“Perhaps magic is physics as well.”
Olve perked up. “That’s an interesting idea. We can’t generally see electricity or radio waves, butvarious devices can channel them in different ways. Magic could exist as an unseen force that is used in some ways by wizards, in others by trolls…. I so wish I had the chance to explore this! I would set up experiments, you see….” He chewed his lip, his mind clearly zooming through the possibilities.
Tobias thought about the different types of software he might modify to help with those kinds of experiments. The data would be fascinating to analyze.
“I’d start by magic-proofing a room,” Olve said thoughtfully. “Although I daresay I’d make it more comfortable than this one. Tobias, can a room be made impermeable to the forces that make a phone operate?”
“Sure. Anything that’s dense enough will work. I’ve had clients that couldn’t use wi-fi in their offices because of what was in the walls. They had to use hard-wired connections instead.”
Both Olve and Alfie stared blankly, and then Olve returned to his thoughts. Tobias’s poor brain was ticking along too. “Hey,” he asked them, remembering his question from before he lost consciousness. “How does a room get magic-proofed?”
They looked at each other as if each expected the other to have an answer. But then Alfie simply shrugged. “It’s not something I’ve ever had interest in doing. In our castle we primarily used healing magic, and why would anyone want to block that?”
Olve rubbed his chin. “My apprenticeship ended too early and I never learned that, or a great number ofother things that would have proved useful. Such as how to successfully transfer an elf without transforming him into an inanimate object.”
Alfie reached over and patted Olve’s foot, clearly wanting to show that he held no grudge.
Tobias, however, frowned in thought. Apparently Snjokarl had magic-proofed only this cell and not the rest of the palace, since Tobias had been able to use his tracking and transferring skills in other areas. It implied that magic-proofing required a physical space, and perhaps a limited one at that. What if it really was the same as blocking radio waves?
Tobias stood and stared at the nearest wall.
Alfie stood too and put a hand on Tobias’s back. “Beloved? Are you all right? Is your head?—”
“I’m fine.” That came out snippier than intended, so Tobias gave him an apologetic smile. “Just give me a minute, okay?”
“Of course.” Alfie stepped back.
The wall was… unremarkable. It was made of stone, just like the rest of the palace. But unlike the white walls and floor in the fancy parts of the palace, those in the hallway where they’d first appeared and in the dungeon had been plain gray. Nobody cared whether their dungeon looked upscale. Maybe here, the white wall served a utilitarian purpose.
Tobias scratched at it, but nothing happened. For the first time in his life, he wished he had claws instead of ordinaryfingernails.
