Codex Born

4

Frank Dearing was not a good man, but my years with him made me happy.

I loved his fields almost as much as I loved him. I was stronger than his other hands, able to work longer without breaks. I gave strength to the plants that needed it, and I rooted out those dying from rot or insects before they contaminated the rest. Frank’s family had lived on this farm for three generations, but I knew the crops in a way he never could.

I seduced him for the first time in early March, a month after I had stumbled onto his farm. Snow melted beneath my bare feet as I hauled bales of hay from the barn. The cold didn’t bother me, and I enjoyed the crisp wind on my skin. I had taken to wearing shorts and old T-shirts, hand-me-downs from one of the other hands. They were too small, but I liked the way they hugged my flesh.

When I finished spreading the hay, I returned to fetch the ax and hose. The water trough had frozen over again.

I felt Frank watching as I swung the ax through the ice. I glanced over to see him standing on the porch, sipping his coffee. His desire warmed my body in a way sunlight never could. I pretended not to notice, but adjusted my stance to better display the curves of my legs and ass. When I hauled broken chunks of ice from the trough, I allowed the water to drip down my chest. My nipples tightened, blurring the line between pain and pleasure.

I used the hose to rinse away the hay that clung to my skin, then slicked my blonde hair back. I could feel the hem of my shirt stiffening from the cold, which surprised me. With the heat surging through my blood, I half expected to see steam rising from my body.

I smiled at the sound of his boots as they crunched through the snow. I would have known him by his footsteps alone, strong and solid.

“What the hell are you doing, girl?” he asked gruffly. “Get into the barn and change into some dry clothes before you freeze to death.”

“But I haven’t drained the hose yet,” I said innocently. A delighted giggle escaped my lips when he blushed beneath his beard. I could feel his desire. It had followed me from the very first time he saw me. Instinctively, I pulled that desire into myself, twined it into my own, and sent it back, strong enough to make him gasp.

“I’ll take care of that. You get yourself inside.” He slapped my ass to send me on my way, and the pleasure of that sharp blow made me gasp and bite my lip. I blew him a kiss and scurried away.

I stripped off the T-shirt and pulled on a too-large red flannel, shivering as the heavy fabric brushed my skin. I had only fastened the third button when I heard Frank enter the barn behind me. I moistened my lips with my tongue and smiled, but didn’t turn around until his arms encircled me, his rough hands tugging the shirt away to grab my breasts. I breathed in the smell of coffee and cigarettes as he kissed my neck.

I was home.

WE WERE STILL STANDING in the garden when I heard Nidhi pull up on the motorcycle. Lena’s leather jacket hung loosely on her shoulders as she ran into the backyard to join us. I brought her up to speed while Lena paced circles around her tree.

“How many of these things are inside of her?” Nidhi asked.

“Twenty-eight.” Lena shuddered. “I’ve tried to crush them, to seal the bark around their bodies, but nothing works. I’ve hardened the core of the tree the best I can, and they’re not strong enough to get there yet, but they burrow through the bark and the outer layers of wood like it’s made of balsa. And when I try to enter the tree myself…” She held up her hands. Blood welled from tiny cuts and gouges on her palm and fingers.

“That shouldn’t even be possible.” I knew it was a stupid complaint as soon as the words left my mouth. Possible or not, it was happening. But Lena wasn’t physically shoving her hands and body into the oak like a butterfly crawling back into a cocoon; she became the tree. Her physical body was something she doffed and donned again as she entered and left her oak. How the hell could these things attack her within her own tree?

Unless it was an attack on the tree itself, one which somehow translated into wounds of the flesh? I didn’t understand enough about how Lena’s bond with her tree worked. “If they’re mostly hiding below the bark, what if we peeled the bark back to get to them?”

“Skin me alive, you mean?” Lena asked, her tone deceptively mild.

I winced. “Sorry. I didn’t—”

“It’s all right.” She moved her hand over the tree. Bits of bark fell away as the insects burrowed through the wood to follow. “They’re too quick anyway. They’d just move to another spot.”

“What else have you tried?” Nidhi asked.

“We haven’t,” I admitted. “Without knowing what they’re made of, it’s hard to know what weapons would work best. They looked metal, which means there’s a chance a magnetic blast might affect them. I could also try to strengthen the tree itself.”

Lena frowned. “Strengthen it how?”

I waved a hand toward the house. “Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic series has characters who can empower plants and make them grow at ridiculous speeds. If I can tap into that book like I did with the Asimov story—”

“Then you could char another book and knock yourself into a coma,” Lena finished.

“Not to mention the question of control.” Nidhi moved to stand between me and the tree, her arms folded. “You have no idea what that would do to Lena’s oak. To her.”

“I could call Nicola Pallas and request an automaton.” Gutenberg had constructed his magical golems as bodyguards five centuries ago, armoring them in spells and metal keys from his printing press, essentially turning them into living books. Among their various powers, they had the ability to drain magic from others. I was certain they could kill these insects, but I had no idea what such an attack would do to Lena’s tree.

“No automatons,” Lena said firmly.

“Why attack Lena’s tree like this, and why now?” Nidhi asked. “They could have waited in the branches and swarmed down as she approached, or let her enter the tree then burrowed in after her.”

“Please don’t give the magical dryad-eating bugs any ideas,” Lena said.

They hadn’t just attacked Lena’s tree. After burrowing into my house, they had also attacked my computer, which had layer upon layer of Porter spells protecting it. My e-reader probably had a lingering taste of magic as well, thanks to Jeneta using it to pull raisins from a poem. “They’re drawn to magic. Like overgrown, spell-sucking mosquitoes.” Which meant magic might lure them out of Lena’s oak.

I turned toward the house, but Nidhi was faster, stepping into the garden’s archway and blocking my path. “How much magic will it take to draw them to you? What do you intend to do to them once they’re out? Lena had to carry you out of the woods earlier today because you burned yourself out with your time-travel spell.”

“Time-viewing spell.”

She ignored my correction. “If you blow your mental fuses trying to pull those things from Lena’s tree, you’ll only make things worse for all of us.”

“Stop derailing my plans with logic and reason,” I snapped. If I could track down a children’s book with one of those cartoonishly powerful supermagnets, I might be able to rip the bugs out of Lena’s tree, but it would probably tear up the wood in the process. Not to mention I’d need a trip to the library or bookstore. My collection didn’t include many books for that age group.

Not many, but there was one that might work. And it had the bonus of being awesome. “When the Porters need to shut down electronics, they use a book to generate an electromagnetic pulse. You don’t have to manipulate the energy like I did with the chronoscope, and energy is actually easier to create than matter.”

“We don’t know that these things are electronic,” Nidhi said.

“Different kind of energy.” I gave up on trying not to grin. “We think they’re metal, right? Ever see what happens when you put silverware in a microwave?”

I ran into the house and grabbed Why Sh*t Happens: The Science of a Really Bad Day. We’d still need to get them to poke their heads out of the tree, but once they did, microwave radiation should be as effective as a bug zapper.

As I turned to leave, Smudge raced down my arm, every step like a droplet of boiling water on my skin. He jumped onto the side of the shelves and sprinted toward the ceiling. Once there, he clung to the plaster and crept forward, his attention fixed on a pencil-sized hole.

“Be careful.” I opened the book and skimmed the section that explained how a metal-rimmed plate could do very bad things to your microwave pizza. If there were stragglers in the roof, this was the perfect opportunity for a test run.

Smudge crawled back and forth, never stepping directly over the opening as he laid down one gossamer strand after another.

“You were there when those things drilled through metal and glass, right?” Spider silk was strong, and Smudge was laying it on pretty thick, but—

Three insects shot out of the hole, tearing through the web as if it weren’t even there. The first was a ladybug the size of an almond nut, with what looked like brass rivets for spots. It cleared the way for the rest, but at a cost. Webbing tangled its wings, causing it to fly erratically back to the ceiling. Delicate legs gripped the edge of the hole as it scraped its wings together, trying to rid itself of web.

The second was built like a dragonfly. The third, more waspish in shape, flew for the back door.

I tracked the dragonfly, touched the book’s magic, and pointed the pages at the ceiling.

The magic wasn’t as spectacular as I had hoped, but results were what mattered. The insect flashed orange, like a tiny light bulb burning out, then dropped to the floor.

I turned to get the ladybug, but Smudge was too close. He circled the struggling insect, like a predator playing with his meal.

He struck too quickly for me to see. The web clinging to the ladybug went up like gas-soaked rags. The flame didn’t hurt the metal, but whatever the wings were made of, they weren’t as strong. One broke away and fluttered, smoldering, to the floor.

The ladybug charged Smudge, who left a blackened path along my ceiling as he retreated. The insect darted in again and again. I couldn’t see what it was doing, but every missed strike caused a thread of white dust to fall from the plaster.

Smudge raised his front four legs, waving them like tiny flaming swords. The ladybug hesitated, then sealed its shell and ran directly into the fire.

Smudge flared blue and fell. I lunged without thinking, catching him in an outstretched hand before he hit the floor.

Pain travels quickly along the nerves. I had a moment of clarity as I realized what I had just done, and then I was screaming, “Stupid, stupid, stupid!” through my teeth and fighting the urge to fling the burning spider away. I ran to the kitchen and transferred him to the tile floor.

The ladybug was burrowing back into the hole. Keeping my burnt hand curled against my body, I raised the book with my other hand. But the ladybug disappeared before I could get the shot.

An angry buzzing sound warned me as the wasp swooped toward my eyes. I dropped to the floor. Forget guns and books, I needed a laser-powered fly swatter. I searched the shelves, trying to see where it had landed. It hadn’t followed its buddy into the ceiling, and the room was silent, which meant it was creeping around, waiting for a better chance to attack.

The back door slid open. Lena gripped one of her bokken with both hands. “Don’t move.”

She was staring at a spot on my back. I slowly twisted my head until I spotted the wasp perched on the waist of my jeans. “Aw, crap.”

Lena’s bokken whipped past, close enough to tug my hair in its wake. The insect shattered into fragments, and her weapon embedded itself in the floor. She wrenched it free and leaned against the shelves.

“There’s another one,” I said. “It burrowed into the ceiling. I want it in one piece.”

“Why?”

“So I can take it apart.”

I grabbed a metal spatula and used it to carry Smudge to the kitchen sink where I could examine his injuries. Clear fluid that smelled faintly like diesel oozed from cuts on his forelegs. Blue flame danced over the cuts, never actually touching the fluid. Like gasoline, it was probably only flammable when it evaporated. Leaving the book on the counter, I returned to my library.

My classification was loosely based on the system we used at the Copper River Library, but in addition to sorting books by genre and author, mine were also classified by magic. Healing texts were on the end of the middle shelf, where they would be easy to get to in case of emergency. I picked out a copy of Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm and flipped pages one-handed until I came to “The Water of Life.”

My hand throbbed, the pain growing worse with every beat. My palm was red and blistered, with blood oozing from the edges, but it was the blackened skin in the middle that most worried me. The pain wasn’t bad there, which suggested nerve damage.

Shock threatened to make me drop the book. I sat on the floor, resting it in my lap. “It springs from a fountain in the courtyard of an enchanted castle,” I read softly, imagining the scene in my mind. The prince hurrying to get to the spring before the clock chimed twelve, grasping the cup in one hand, reaching…

Through the yellowed pages, I touched the hammered metal cup in the prince’s hand. I eased the cup from his grip and carefully pulled it free. I spilled half the water onto my shirt. Lena caught my hand, guiding the cup to my lips.

A single swallow of the cool water was enough. The blisters dried, and the charred skin sloughed away from my palm. I used my fingernails to scrape away the worst of the dead skin and dried blood.

My arm was trembling, and sweat streamed down my face and neck. I pulled myself up and brought the cup to the kitchen. I spilled several drops into the sink where Smudge was resting. He didn’t move.

“Come on, buddy.” I reached down, but yanked my hand back when his flames flared higher. I grabbed the spatula and tried to nudge him toward the water. He just twitched and curled into a tighter ball.

Lena slipped a hand into my pants pocket and pulled out my box of Red Hots. She took one of the candies between her thumb and forefinger, dipped it into the cup, and placed it in the sink in front of Smudge. A single droplet clung to the candy’s surface.

Smudge slowly uncurled his legs and crept forward. His two front legs hung like snapped twigs ready to break away. The cuts had stopped burning, leaving only a tarry, blackish scab on each leg. His mandibles closed around the end of the candy.

“Thank you,” I said, surprised at how difficult it was to get the words out past the knot in my throat.

She kissed my cheek. “You’re welcome.”

I didn’t look away until Smudge began to move his forelegs again. A ripple of red fire spread over his body, vanishing as quickly as it had begun, except for the scabs on his legs. Those continued to burn, smelling like burnt hair and oil, until both legs were clean and whole once more.

I left Smudge in the sink with another piece of candy and picked up Why Sh*t Happens. “I’d call that a successful proof of concept. Let’s go clean up your tree.”

I circled the oak to make sure stray microwaves wouldn’t accidentally fry anything behind the tree. “Where are they?”

Lena pointed with one of her bokken. “The lowest is dug in at knee level.” She tapped the bark with her weapon, marking each of the twenty-eight insects. The highest was a good twelve feet up.

“This will probably hurt,” I warned her.

Nidhi clasped Lena’s hand and said, “Think of it as radiation treatment to burn away a tumor.”

“The dragonfly in the house cooked fast.” I reread the pages I had used before. “I’ll need you to lure them to the surface.”

Lena nodded and dragged her fingers through the bark. It wasn’t long before she jerked her hand away.

I aimed the book at the tiny pincers, which sparked and popped. Lena hissed in pain, but when I pulled the book away, she said, “Don’t stop. It’s working.”

I cooked the insect until Lena confirmed it was dead. I didn’t want to linger too long in one spot, as the microwaves could also boil the water in the tree, drying and cracking the wood. Lena touched the tree again, luring a second insect to the surface.

“They’re burrowing,” Lena said.

I aimed the book skyward while I waited for her to bait the next. “You said they couldn’t get to the heart of the tree.”

“They’re not going deeper. They’re trying to get out.”

She pointed to where the first insect was emerging, and I cooked it in place, but they were digging free on all sides. I got two more, and then they were flying toward me. I stumbled back, trying not to trip over the pumpkins. For someone who rarely ate vegetables, she grew an awful lot of produce. I moved the book back and forth, trying to blast insects out of the air. A miniature lightning bolt jumped between two of the bugs, and both fell like tiny burning meteorites.

A beetle landed on my arm. Pincers dug through my shirt and the skin beneath. Another attacked the back of my hand.

Lena’s bokken hummed through the air. Nidhi tried to grab the bugs off of my skin, but for every one she ripped free, three more found me. Others landed on the book and began chewing through the cover and paper.

I ended the spell and flung the book to the ground. Lena joined Nidhi, and crushed several of the things in her bare hands, but by the time we tugged the last one off of me, the rest had returned to the tree.

They had bored numerous holes through Why Sh*t Happens. The spine had suffered the most damage. When I picked the book from the dirt, half of the pages tore free.

“How many?” I asked.

“I can feel nineteen crawling around.”

I picked a metal horsefly from the ground. The microwave had been a little too effective, warping and melting the delicate metal.

I headed back toward the house. “I need something I can dissect.”

Once inside, I pulled The Demon Trapper’s Daughter by Jana Oliver off of the shelves. I had cataloged this book for the Porters several years ago, and I knew exactly which scene I wanted.

My hands tightened around the cover as I recalled the opening pages of the story, in which the protagonist tried to capture a Biblio-Fiend, a small, mischievous demon who liked to urinate on books. No way in hell I was letting that into my living room. But later on, when she faced the larger demons…

I flipped to the chapter I needed, shoved my hand into the story, and pulled out a glass sphere the size of a softball. “Let’s see what happens if we freeze them.” Looking at the hole where the ladybug had vanished, I added, “Assuming we can find the damn things.”

“They go after magic, right?” Lena jammed her bokken into the ceiling and gripped the hilt with both hands. Her fingers sank into the wood. Tiny spikes split away from the blade, sprouting buds that uncurled into small, waxy leaves.

I hefted the sphere. I didn’t have to wait long.

“Get ready.” Lena flinched. “That stings,” she muttered, then yanked hard. Chunks of plaster ripped free, exposing broken slats and insulation. The end of Lena’s wooden blade had grown like a bonsai tree on superfertilizer. The ladybug was burrowing into the wood, but as I drew back to throw, it took flight, swirling erratically toward the back door.

Lena yanked her tree—sword—whatever it was now out of the way, and I hurled the sphere at the fleeing bug. Glass smashed against the doorframe. Magic spread like liquid nitrogen, creating a white cloud. The door frosted over, and a web of cracks spread downward.

Lena stepped back and brushed a shard of curved glass off of her arm. Tiny slivers shone in her hair and clothes.

“Are you—”

“I’m fine,” she said. She pulled a piece of glass over her hand to demonstrate. The shard dented her skin, but didn’t cut her. “Tough as bark.”

The living room felt like a meat locker. I had never used Oliver’s books before. Those things were more potent than I had expected. I hurried into the kitchen to check on Smudge, who was huddling protectively over his half-eaten candy, his body burning merrily against the chill. The water pooled in the other dishes was frozen around the edges. Once I knew he was safe, I returned to the library and joined Lena in searching for the ladybug.

Glass crunched underfoot. The ladybug had to have been caught in the cold, but with so much glass and ice scattered across the floor, it was hard to find a little blob of silver metal.

“Isaac.” Lena pointed to the door. The ladybug had gotten halfway through the glass when I caught it with the sphere. Before I could figure out the easiest way to work it free, Lena tapped the door with her sword, bringing the whole thing down in a shower of pebbled glass.

“What happened?” asked Nidhi, running onto the deck.

“We’re fine.” Lena’s bokken slipped from her hand. Nidhi started toward her, but Lena waved her back. “I’m all right.”

I grabbed a pair of pliers from the junk drawer in the kitchen. Already the ladybug was trying to move, legs and wings clicking erratically. I tightened the pliers around the body until I felt the metal shell begin to bend.

I brought it to the office and switched on my lamp. The shell was grooved silver. Two of the six legs had snapped off from the cold. One of the wings beneath had burned away, leaving little more than a stub. I fetched a Q-tip from the bathroom and tried to clean the soot from the other, but I succeeded only in snapping it. Under the light, the broken wing looked like a tissue-thin strip of nacre peeled from the inside of an oyster shell.

Beneath the shell were gears that would have made a Swiss watchmaker weep with envy. The eyes were like droplets of red wine. Garnets, maybe?

“What is it?” Lena asked.

“Not a clue.” Disproportionately large copper mandibles clicked at my fingers. “What steampunk adventure did you sneak out of? Cherie Priest? Girl Genius? You’re gorgeous, whatever you are.”

“And in the meantime, its friends are drilling deeper into Lena’s oak,” Nidhi said tightly.

I winced. “Sorry. I got—”

“It’s all right,” said Lena. “We’re used to you. ‘Look at the shiny magic thing trying to kill us, isn’t it awesome?’ I’ll be happy to admire them with you as soon as we get them out of my tree.”

I held the tip of a wooden pencil in front of the ladybug’s head. It snapped cleanly through both wood and graphite. “I see several types of metal in there. Copper and silver. Possibly steel.”

“Were they created with libriomancy?” Nidhi asked.

“Most likely.” Only a few people could manipulate raw magic. Far more could use books to help them shape that power. “I’ll check the Porter catalog when I’m done here to see if I can figure out what book they might have come from.”

I looked around the office. I didn’t know where my magnifying glass had gone, but I spotted something else that should work. Holding the pliers tight, I squeezed past Lena to the 10” telescope tucked into the corner. A built-in rack on the side of the scope held a set of eyepieces. I grabbed one from the middle and returned to the desk.

Holding the two-inch-long metal-and-plastic tube to my right eye, I peered at the insect. I had to look through the wrong end of the eyepiece to bring things into proper focus, but it worked well enough.

“There are no welds. The shell looks like it’s riveted to the body.” The rivets appeared to be copper, but they were impossibly tiny, as were the hinges and joints below.

The ladybug snapped at me, the mandibles clicking audibly. The sight of those magnified, serrated pincers reaching for my eye made me jerk back so hard I almost dropped the pliers.

I tested a magnet next, but it had no effect. Whatever metals this was made of, they weren’t ferrous. “I need a better way to hold this thing while I study it.” Superglue on the joints should effectively paralyze it, though that might obscure the finer details.

Before I could go digging for the glue, Lena reached past me and stabbed a toothpick through the center of the ladybug’s body. She gave the toothpick a vicious twist, eased the pliers from my hand, and set them aside. She raised the still-squirming thing into the air. “Hold it by this end.”

I swallowed and took the toothpick. With the eyepiece lens, I could see the tiny white threads growing from the toothpick through the interior workings, like parasites devouring the bug from within. I would have felt bad for it, had its cousins not been doing the same thing to Lena.

A coiled spring down the center of the back appeared to provide movement, but I saw no place for a key, no way of winding that spring once it died. I might be able to wind it with a pair of jewelry pliers, but more likely I’d just break something else. I set down the eyepiece and used a straightened paper clip to fold one of the legs back. A gear the size of a snowflake popped out of place as a result of my clumsy efforts.

I pulled the lamp closer. Mechanically, this made no sense at all. Tiny pistons and gears manipulated the legs, but I saw no way to coordinate or control their movement. “Let’s see if you have some sort of brain in there.”

I grabbed the pliers, tightened them carefully around the insect’s head, and twisted it free of the body.

The ladybug went dead. The spring jumped free, followed by a sprinkling of gears and rods. No way was this Humpty Dumpty getting put back together again. I set the body on the desk and studied the head through the eyepiece. Inside, tiny silver prongs held an oily sphere in place, like a jewelry setting designed for the world’s smallest engagement ring.

I used the paper clip to pop the sphere free. It landed on the desk without bouncing or rolling, despite being perfectly round. I touched it with my finger, and it stuck to my skin, allowing me to study it under the lens. I placed the tip of the paper clip to the sphere, and it clicked onto the metal like a magnet. When I tugged it free and set it on a piece of paper, it clung there just as easily.

“What is it?” Normally I would have enjoyed the way Lena’s body pressed against mine as she peered over my shoulder, but now I barely noticed.

“It’s called a boson chip.” From what I remembered, it would stick to just about anything through a kind of subatomic static charge. I felt a sense of magical pressure, like a balloon inflated to the bursting point. “Harvested from the brain of a fictional silicon-based hive mind. This little thing could store every book in the Copper River Library, and it would still have space for Nicola Pallas’ music collection.”

“You’ve seen them before?” asked Nidhi.

“I’m the one who pulled them out of a bad space opera.” I stared at the chip. “Victor Harrison had requisitioned a batch for one of his pet projects.”

Victor was a legend among the Porters. He had the amazing ability to make magic and technology play nicely together, and had built everything from a telepathic coffee maker to a database server that transformed would-be hackers into various reptiles. He had also jinxed my telescope so that every time I looked at Mars, Marvin the Martian popped up and threatened to destroy the Earth with an explosive space-modulator. Victor was more than capable of putting together a set of pseudoliving metal insects.

Rather, he would have been capable of doing so, if not for the fact that Victor Harrison had been murdered earlier this year.