Love Charms and Other Catastrophes (18 page)

“Leave it to us,” Fallon said, nodding. She gave Sebastian a quick good-bye kiss before heading on her way with Nico and Martin.

“Sebastian, I'm going to need your help securing two missing ingredients for my charm,” Hijiri said. “You have your recorder?”

“Always,” he said, pulling the tape recorder out of his pocket.

“Great. Make sure you have a new cassette in there.”

“And Ken,” she said, “you have your slingshot?”

His mouth dropped open. “I'm coming with you?”

“Why do you look so surprised?”

He ducked his head. “I don't know this town very well. I just assumed I'd be staying behind.”

“That's
our
job,” Femke said firmly, much to her sister's distress. She pointed out her parents in the back of the crowd. Mr. and Mrs. De Keyser wore matching stern expressions. “We're lucky our parents let us watch.”

“Keep an eye on the other competitors,” Hijiri said. Even with Detective Archambault scrutinizing the challenge, she felt better knowing her friends were looking out for her too.

Sebastian shoved his hands in his pockets, a lazy smirk on his face. “So where are we going, Kitamura?”

“The first thing I need,” she said, “is ‘silence in a clamor.' This is a huge component in crafting a love charm about communication. An arguing couple can't hear each other unless we wedge silence between the noises, to show them how listening goes again. Do you know of a place?”

Sebastian's eyebrows scrunched in thought. Just then, the belfry struck eleven in the morning, covering the town with its sober, beautiful tones. His smirk returned. “
That's
where we're going.”

*   *   *

Her legs burned as they ran down the street, over a cobblestone bridge, and through a neighborhood that was the shortest route to the belfry. Sebastian led the way, skidding around street corners and shouting directions as they came closer.

Grimbaud's belfry towered over the town, a narrow brown brick structure that housed forty-eight carillon bells. The bells were said to have rung since the town's birth.

“We don't have time to wait in line,” Ken said, eyeing the people waiting to buy their tickets to climb the belfry's 355 steps.

Hijiri realized the same problem. She hoped that the entire town knew about the competition. That would be enough to get them through.

One of the belfry workers guarding the narrow side staircase saw her and waved them over.

Hijiri, Ken, and Sebastian ran through the tower's halls and found the main staircase up. Of course, tourists were already struggling their way up the belfry.

“We're in the middle of a challenge,” Sebastian yelled, cupping his hands over his mouth. “Not trying to cut on purpose. Please make way.”

Tourists grumbled and pressed themselves against the old brick walls of the narrow spiral staircase as Sebastian continued his message. A few people clapped—they must have been locals—and cheered Hijiri as she passed.

“We don't have to go all the way to the top,” Sebastian reminded them. They needed the bells.

The carillon room was underneath the stone parapet where most of the tourists shot their panoramic photographs. Hijiri, Ken, and Sebastian squeezed themselves into the room just in time to catch a performance. The bells hung like grave, ancient creatures. Each bell was attached to a manual keyboard, controlled by the carillonist's musical whims.

The carillonist, a weathered man with knotted knuckles and rheumy eyes, bowed before taking his seat at the keyboard. Hijiri had expected the playing to be delicate and precise, so she gasped when the man used his feet and fists to play the chords. The roughness of his playing translated into a familiar love song. Tourists mouthed the words. No one could compete with the deep vibrancy of the big bells and the fairylike chiming of the small ones.

Fallon once told Hijiri that her older brother, Robbie, and his girlfriend had snuck into the belfry to take photos with the bells. She wondered how they had done it since the bells were well-protected from harm, suspended over their heads. The corners of the room were decorated with retired bells, lovingly polished but still old and regal-looking. Some bells were behind glass. Others had been suspended by sturdy rope.

Sebastian took out his recorder. “How do you need it captured?”

Hijiri asked him to repeat his question twice before answering; the sound bordered on deafening in its beauty. “Catch some of the bells,” she yelled, “and then the silence, and bells again.” The silence would be worthless to her charm without the noise framing it.

They stared at the bells. One second. Then five. The man's fist hit the key destined for the largest bell. Drowning in the bell's voice, so deep she felt the vibrations to her bones, Hijiri knew that this was the moment to strike.

Sebastian hit the record button. Ken stilled next to her.

When the vibrations ended, the carillonist raised his hands to begin the next line of music. In the few precious seconds between, there was silence. No screaming children. No chatter. No cameras flashing.

Hijiri dared not move. She stared at the red light on Sebastian's tape recorder. Time slowed.

The bells sang again.

Hijiri was out of the room in seconds, murmuring apologies if she stepped on someone's feet or elbowed them too hard. They didn't have time to stay listening. Sebastian and Ken weren't far behind. By the time they reached the bottom of the belfry again, the air was deliciously sweet and Hijiri happily pocketed the cassette tape. Her ears throbbed from the vibrations of the carillon room.

Sebastian shook his head like a dog trying to dispel water. “Should have brought earplugs,” he said. “Ouch.”

If Ken's ears hurt, he didn't mention it. “What's the other item you need?”

“This one's going to be harder,” Hijiri said. She didn't know if they could pull it off quickly. “I need a bird's nest.”

Sebastian didn't question the request. He thought hard.

Ken, however, ruffled his hair and asked, “Why a nest?”

“It's symbolic of the home a couple builds together,” Hijiri said. “My charm needs a foundation of comfort and trust. It's the only way the truth can come out comfortably.”

“I like that,” Ken said, his eyes gentle. “Building a home.”

“You would.”

“What does our home look like?” he asked.

“It's made of charms. Not very sturdy.”

“Ah, so we
are
building one together,” Ken said, his eyes crinkling. “And here I thought I was the only one working at this relationship.”

Hijiri sputtered. “The only relationship we have is puzzle and solver.”

“Stop flirting, you two,” Sebastian said. “Let's go find some nests.”

*   *   *

Sebastian had taken them to a private garden only minutes away from the belfry. The garden, functioning as a backyard to three large houses, was almost completely shaded by bowing oaks. A careless gardener had left the gate open so they slipped inside and searched the trees for a nest. They found one that looked empty, but they couldn't reach it without low-enough branches to climb.

“This is where you come in,” Sebastian said, nodding at Ken.

Ken grabbed a pebble from the soil and notched it in his slingshot.

“Careful,” Hijiri warned. “Don't want to break it.”

“I'll hit the corner. You'll have to catch it before it hits the ground,” he said, closing one eye and aiming.

True to his word, he knocked the corner of the nest, sending it tumbling into Hijiri's hands.

By the time they returned to Verbeke Square, the other love charm-makers were back onstage, crafting. Hijiri ran through the cheering crowd and up the stage's stairs to her table. Fallon, Nico, and Martin were waiting for her up there with her materials.

“Is everything here?” Fallon asked.

Hijiri scanned the table. She dropped the cassette tape and nest with her other ingredients and double-checked that nothing was missing. “Yes. Thank you.”

“You can do this,” Nico said.

Hijiri wanted to tell him that if everything worked with the charm, she'd love for him to use it too. That was, of course, stepping on the no-love-charms decision he and Martin had made together, but she could still hope.

She had crafted a few communication-based love charms in her time, but this was the first that centered on repairing a lovers' quarrel with honesty. Hijiri placed the bird's nest in the center of the table and shifted her supplies around. She felt the townspeople watching her. The sensation was like hundreds of ants crawling on her skin. She pressed her lips together and lowered her gaze to the table.
As long as I don't look up, I can do this. It's just me and my charm.

Slowly, Verbeke Square and its distractions began to dull. She started crafting.

 

Chapter 13

KISSABLE

The beauty of charm-making was that the process always varied. Each charm-maker, no matter the discipline they studied, had a different way of creating charms. Hijiri discovered that her way had everything to do with symbolism.

Materials she collected for love charms had some kind of meaning to them—whether she gave them meaning or they came with the connotations already. If she combined certain items in certain ways, she made a functioning love charm. Most of the time.

Hijiri lit the orange candles that Fallon, Nico, and Martin brought back for her. The relaxing scent of zested orange wafted, evoking exactly the kind of lively date-night feeling she had wanted when she first searched for them (and subsequently broke her old table). When the wax melted, she tipped the candles over and drizzled the nest with wax.
Orange candles for approachability and loosening the tongue
, she thought. Pressing her symbols into the action.

Fallon hadn't had trouble finding the twin stainless steel forks Hijiri had bought at a thrift store ages ago; they were small and had three prongs, used for dainty desserts rather than meals. She wiped both forks on her shirt before securing them on opposite sides of the nest, prongs facing out. “This is about eating truths,” she muttered, “and digesting them with courage.”

The nest began to hum underneath her fingers.

After sprinkling the nest with sugar—to dull the sting of truth—she picked up Sebastian's cassette tape. She opened the cassette gingerly, gently pulling out the tape so it spilled like a ribbon on the table. She closed her eyes and felt for the short recording. The pads of her fingers thrummed with the bells' ghostly vibrations when she found it. After snipping the excess tape ribbon, she wove the tape through the nest, over and under the dried orange wax and forks. “Even if the world is watching, even if you argue again and again, you will stop and listen. The space is there, waiting within the noise,” she whispered.

“Five minutes left,” Bram said, checking his watch rather than the dwindling hourglass.

Hijiri checked her love charm, touching each area to make sure every piece interlaced with the others. One piece unconnected, and the charm didn't stand a chance of working. She looked over at the other love charm-makers.

Sanders had somehow made his table into a makeshift kitchen, with a hot plate (extension cord disappearing into the crowd) and eggs carefully wrapped in cloth. An omelet filled the edges of his saucepan. Periodically, he scooped castor sugar out of a paper bag and dripped a jewel-like liquid—
rum
, she read, squinting at the bottle—onto the delicious-looking creation. But what kind of charm would that dessert carry?

Ryker and Gage tinkered with what looked like a broken vacuum cleaner. Gage stuffed its insides with magazine pages of sharply dressed men and beautiful women. Clea and Mandy surrounded themselves with a palette of powders and liquids. They kept staring at her, sizing Hijiri up, as they picked their lineup of charms. Hijiri turned away, her stomach clenching.

Bram dramatically counted down the seconds. The top of the hourglass emptied. “Time's up,” he said. “Stand back from your tables.”

Hijiri wiped her hands on her jeans.

“This is the exciting part,” he said. “What have our love charm-makers created for each other?”

Detective Archambault stepped onto the stage and took the microphone. “One moment,” she said sternly. “I must examine the love charms first.”

Hijiri reminded herself to look the detective in the eye when she came to her table. She was nervous, unsure of what the detective was expecting to find.

Detective Archambault lifted the nest, sniffed it, and closed one eye while turning it this way and that. “Clear,” she said, moving on to Sanders's edible love charm.

The audience waited respectfully, though some of the younger children were restless and tugged on their parents' hands. When the detective finished her examination, Bram asked the paired love charm-makers to stand on opposite sides of the stage with their charms.

Sanders handed his sugared omelet to Ryker and Gage, while Hijiri stepped right into giving her charm to the Metamorphosis owners.

“This is a love charm that improves communication,” she said, loud enough for the audience to hear. They'd find out soon enough what it would do. Sanders hadn't bothered with an explanation; he just handed out forks and knives and told the Heartwrench owners to eat.

“Cup your hands around the nest,” she said, helping position Mandy's and Clea's hands so that they stood facing each other, the nest held between them. Then she stood back, waiting.

The air around Clea and Mandy smoothed, becoming silky and warm like sunrise on a cold morning. The audience's curious murmurs dulled. Hijiri knew they would have felt the change too. Clea and Mandy seemed to forget about the audience. Where they were. They stared into each other's eyes. Then the truth came.