Episode XII - A Study in Amethyst

            There was the sound of coughing as something moved beneath a pile of displaced pipes.  Ellis let his eyes dart towards the noise for a second and saw Von Spektr rising from the debris of his laboratory.  It seemed he gravitated underneath movable objects in the event of a disaster.  It was not a transferable skill.

            “Well?” he asked, “What happened?  Did it work?”

            Ellis gestured mutely towards the apparition surrounding the ring and the Former Baron’s eyes lit up.

            “Oh my!” he said.

            “I told you this was dangerous!” Siren’s voice cut through the confusion with crystal clarity.  She was rising from behind a workbench, revealing a face covered in green soot.  “I told you, but did you listen, you stupid, stubborn old man?”

            Ellis coughed and Siren’s burning gazed was redirected towards him, making him flinch, but obviously she saw the spirit at the same time because her mouth fell open and the fire in her eyes was quenched in moments.

            “What is that?”

            Throughout all of this the apparition itself had been staring around at the mess of the laboratory, looking genuinely amazed.  Its figure and features seemed out of focus, but as Ellis stared he began to realise that it was a woman, perhaps in her middle years, with her hair tied up.  She was not at all what he had been expecting, although he wasn’t entirely sure what would have been.

            “I think…” the woman began slowly and Siren’s eyes widened a little more, “I think I’m a bit lost.  Would anyone mind telling me where I am and why there’s all this… mess?”

            The Former Baron stepped up, cleared his throat and brushed a little soot from his jacket, then he replied, “I’m very sorry, Madame, the mess, I’m afraid, is all mine.  I was just performing a little experiment and it proved to be a tad, shall we say, unstable.”

            “Oh, you’re a Philosopher, are you?” the woman asked.  She sounded very dazed and confused, but Ellis remembered her voice from only a minute before.  She had sounded very much like Von Spektr then and she had said something…

            “Are you a Philosopher as well, then?” he asked.  “It’s just that… you said that something had worked.”

            “Yes!” she replied, sounding for all the world as if she’d only just remembered.  “Yes, I am.  And I was performing an experiment.”  She glanced at the Former Baron.  “Perhaps I interfered with yours?”

            “Oh, I very much doubt that Madame, but let me say, it is a great honour to meet a fellow enthusiast.  Could I perhaps have the pleasure of your name?”

            The woman smiled vacantly and Ellis could see that she was trying to remember.  He felt a pang of sorrow for her.  Somehow they were going to have to tell her that she didn’t have a body anymore and he had no idea how she might take that.

            “Ah, you know, it’s the strangest thing,” she began, “but I can’t remember at all.”  She gave a little nervous laugh.

            “That’s okay,” Von Spektr replied, his voice suddenly very soft and calm, “these things can happen.  What do you remember?  Take your time.”

            “I was performing an experiment.  I can remember that much.”

            “And can you remember what the experiment was for?”

            “I… I think it had something to do with… with another world?  Does that make sense?”

            “Yes, you’re doing well.  What else can you remember?”

            “There was… a bright light… a bright purple light and then… it’s funny, but after that I can’t remember anything until just now.  Are you sure I didn’t interfere with your experiment?”

            “I think we need to explain that experiment,” Siren said suddenly, “don’t you agree, Franck?”

            The Former Baron sighed, “Yes.  Yes, yes, yes, I suppose we must.”  He gazed across at the ghostly woman and gave her a warm smile.  “Dear Madame, I hope you do not think it rude of us, but our experiment was, essentially, an effort to communicate with you.”

            “With me?  Why… why would you need to speak with me?”

            “It would seem,” Von Spektr continued, “that there is a very good reason for your lack of memory.  Your experiment, whatever its aims were, seems to have put you in a unique position, at least so I would gather from the manner in which we found you.”

            “And how did you find me?  I thought I’d just… woken up.”

            “In a way you have.  You see, that purple light you described is most likely the last thing you saw before you became imprisoned-”

            “Imprisoned!?”

            “Yes.  In that ring.”  He pointed down to where the woman’s chest ought to be.  She glanced down.

            “What?  What is this?  I can see through myself!  I’m… I’m a ghost!”  Her voicing was rising in tone, becoming hysterical, and then suddenly it switched.  “Well, I suppose that’s all very logical.”  Now her voice was extremely calm and rational, just like when she had first spoken.  “The summoning took a lot of energy and so the ring must have reached out to the nearest energy source it could find and sucked it all in.”

            “Summoning?”  Ellis could hardly believe it.  It was just like the Former Baron had suggested: someone had called him into Shadow.

            “I’m sorry,” the woman replied, “but what summoning are you talking about?  How did I get like this?  What has happened to me?”

            Siren stepped forward past Von Spektr and reached out a hand towards the woman who instinctively reciprocated the action with one of her own insubstantial limbs, drawing it back as it passed through Siren’s wrist.  The pirate didn’t flinch.

            “It’s okay,” she said, her voice as serene as still water, “we’ll do our best to find out for you.  Don’t panic.”

            Tentatively the woman her out her hand again and Siren opened her palm to let her touch it.

            “Can you feel me?” the woman asked.

            Siren nodded.  “You’re warm.”

            “I can’t feel you.  I can’t feel anything right now.”

            “Madame, you would appear to be made entirely out of hypostatick energy and whilst I can appreciate that you might be scared by that, there are some good things about it as well.  We know a lot about hypostatick energy and I have been studying it all my life.  You also seem to have repressed memories of everything that’s happened to you and that should help us as well.”

            “Repressed memories?”

            “Yes.  I suspect you won’t remember at all, but just a minute ago you told us that your experiment had been a summoning, possibly bringing Alice here-”

            “Ellis.”

            “-into this world, as he was the one who found the ring.  You also said that it needed your energy to continue.”

            “And when you first woke up you said that something had obviously worked,” Ellis added.

            “I did?”

            “As I said,” the Former baron continued, “those memories are repressed and they only seem to surface every now and then, but even that will help.  Really, you have nothing to worry about.  You’re in good hands.”

            “I think, until you can tell us what your real name is, we need something to call you,” said Siren.

            “The stone!” Ellis shouted out, “The gemstone in the ring!”

            “What about it?” asked Siren.

            “Well it was purple wasn’t it?  We could use that as a name for her!”

            “You want to call her Purple?” Von Spektr asked, clearly confused, “Is that a common name in your world?”

            “No, but we could give her a name that means purple, or the name of the stone itself.”

            Von Spektr leaned forward and examined the stone in the ring as it hovered in mid air surrounded by the light of the woman.  “It looks like an amethyst to me.”

            “How does that sound?” Siren asked, looking into the woman’s violet, glowing eyes, “Amethyst?  No, Amy!”

            “Amy sounds nice,” the woman said with a smile, “I think I like that.”

            “Then, dear Amy,” the Former Baron said with a slight flourish, “let’s see what we can learn about your condition.”

            It took a while for Von Spektr, Siren and Ellis to pick up all the pieces of broken equipment and sort them from those that might still have a use.  Slowly they built up a pile of useless parts and all the other equipment was rearranged around the room so that it might be where it was most needed.  Ellis suspected it was the closest thing to cleaning the lab had ever experienced.  Amy watched on with nervous interest the whole time, showing no signs of remembering anything else.

            Eventually there was no more debris on the floor, all the workbenches were upright and Siren had even found a mop and bucket to clean up the layer of green soot which had coated most surfaces.  Von Spektr had argued with her that it wasn’t necessary, but there was no stopping her.  She also suggested that other areas of the house might be next, which made the Former Baron even more pale than usual.

            A workbench was pushed over to where Amy remained ‘standing’.  All efforts to get her to move had failed and it seemed that the ring was still fixed in place over the pedestal despite there being nothing left of the clockwork mechanism that had supported it.

            “I think that the first thing that we need to do is provide a jolt of energy big enough to break the bond between the ring and the brass pedestal,” the Former Baron explained, rubbing his hands in anticipation.

            “Won’t that be as dangerous as what we’ve just done?” Siren asked in disbelief.

            “Oh goodness, no.  To ‘wake’ Amy needed a lot of energy, more than even I had anticipated, which I think is something to do with that ring, but to unbind it should only require a little kick, so long as it’s not directed at the ring itself.”

            Siren looked unconvinced, but didn’t say anymore.

            The Former Baron attached a line of tubing to his pump and then circled it around the pedestal a couple of times before connecting it back to the pump.  Next he flicked another couple of switches and then stood back, beaming.  The machine hummed quietly, but apart from that Ellis couldn’t tell if anything was happening.

            “You should be feeling a little more free now, Amy.  Can you try to move forwards?”

            She strained, visibly, but it didn’t look like she was moving at all.  “No,” she said, her voice wavering dangerously as she spoke, “it’s no good.”

            Von Spektr stepped back over to the pump, flicked a few more switches and the humming sound grew louder.

            “How about now?”

            “Fearfully Amy reached forwards and, flickering slightly like a candle flame, she managed to stretch a little beyond the point where she had been trapped, before flickering back into place.

            “You see,” Von Spektr said with a hint of smugness, “we are getting somewhere.”  He flicked another couple of switches and the humming turned into a low churning sound.  The tubing began to vibrate across the floor.  “Give it one more go!”

            Once again Amy strained against her invisible bonds and then, quite suddenly, she leapt forward.  To Ellis it was like she was a figure on film, moving through a sequence with several frames missing.  He found it quite disturbing and stumbled backwards against one of the workbenches. There was a tingling sound as the ring fell to the floor by Amy’s feet.

            “You did it!” Amy shrieked, skipping about on the spot, still in the manner of an old silent film character.  “Oh, thank you, thank you!”

            But the Former Baron was already bending down to pick up the ring.  “It seems we’ve not just released the ring from that spot but also you from the ring.  How unexpected.”  He held the shining ring up to the light of a burner and Amy flickered and shimmered around until she was staring at it beside him.

            “I made the ring myself,” she said, in the same rational tones as before, “from aetherised silver from the mines beneath Skyshade and a piece of stone I found in the ruins of the first breakthrough, which I hoped would be from the world of the blue skies.  My intention was to tear a hole in the barrier between the world by pulling something through it from the other side.”

            Everyone turned to look at her and then Ellis spoke.

            “But there wasn’t a hole, not that I could see anyway.  Should I have been able to see it?”

            “Yes,” said all three Shadow residents simultaneously.

            “Then there isn’t one,” Ellis said, his heart sinking, “so, how am I ever going to get home?”

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