Based on the notes of Blaire Faraday
When I was working at the Radio Communications Office, back in England, I was connected almost weekly with one American soldier who had enlisted in the British Army. Victor used to call to report where he was. Since he was a member of a team of MI7 coordinated by Mr. Athenida, his job in the front was to secure artefacts and pieces of architecture created with magic. The communications were brief, but in a year, we’ve managed to form a friendship of sorts, since he always asked to speak with me. The calls came from everywhere in the mainland: Somme, Verdun, Trieste, Jutland, and from each new information we had to gather, write, and send to Mr. Athenida’s office and tot eh British Archives. Every week.
Until the letters stopped coming.
Missing in action during a reconnaissance mission in the south of France. Last transmission had been at Cevennes Forest, as he was following local rumours about an Egyptian Temple and the other half of the Galathean Crown.
Why was I telling you this? Right, the Base. Sorry.
In a fraction of a second, right after Mr. Athenida had hit the pole, a thick mist, like the one at the Avalon surrounded the road. The buses hadn’t stopped at all during this ordeal, continuing down the pavement which seemed to be surprisingly longer than we saw at first glance. In fact, I had the feeling of driving through a cloud the whole time the opening spell was active. Before Dr. Tang could finish her rosary of expletives, we were rushing through an empty city.
—What the Hell? —was the last thing she said before being out of breath.
We were going down a hill to a large city in the middle of a green island in a vast, calm, and empty deep-blue sea. For what I could see during the rush, it was a full-scale city with buildings, and churches, parks, a lighthouse; but also, a lot of buildings you wouldn’t see in the same place, a ziggurat, a forest, and a large region of white blocky buildings without windows surrounding a larger one giving us the back.
Wherever the base was in that place, it seemed amazing I’d never heard of another secret city in the world, especially giving that secret magical cities weren’t exactly, well, “secret” at all. After the Schism, the Magical Community was characteristically known for not being able to keep secrets between themselves, something that was truer in the “Old World”, where most of us lived hidden in plain sight. It was custom to keep tabs on places to hide in case of emergencies. Places like Nihteard, Heaven’s Cove, or the old Coven buildings in in their namesake’s cities in Europe. These could be the size of rooms, like attics, or cities, like the aforementioned.
—Ladies and gentlemen— the voice of Mr. Athenida resonated onside the metal bus—. What you are seeing is not a regular place. Welcome to Terra Nova. For the next year this will be your home and, while we work a proper transportation, no one besides retrieval is allowed to leave the Base until further notice.
The conga line made by the shuttle buses cracked. We were the only ones going through the coastline, the others disappeared into different streets. The bus did a sharp turn and went with the lighthouse in front of us far away. We’d almost forgot about Mr. Athenida, until we saw him turning from the driver’s seat, where I was sure he wasn’t a moment ago. His voice, when he moved his lips, didn’t come from him, but from the bus itself, as it had been happening before.
—I’m sure you still have questions, but that will be for introduction by your department’s directors tomorrow. Now, since this city has a couple of places which have been deemed safe for you to stay in, we will be sending your team to four houses in the area.
—Did he just implied we are going to share a house? —Ursula’s voice came from behind me—. I don’t think my wardrobe is going to fit in.
—You haven’t seen the house yet! —I said.
—I still think it’s not going to fit…
Since the Retrieval Department was separated in four teams, each house for each team, an appropriate thing if we were going to live together for a while. Mine was the last one to be delivered, and by the time we stopped on the driveway of a two-story Georgian house, Mr. Athenida was, again, missing from the bus. The place was across the street from a green hill ending in the cliff and the lighthouse, and the edge of the property had marking of where a gate and a tall rick fence used to be.
As I said, it was a two-story large Georgian house, with white windows and grey roof-tiles. I recognised the colour of the bricks, since the Academy used the same ones; a mixture between the dusty red and reddish grey, which gave it the appearance of being an even older building. I don’t know if it was due to this or the shape of the windows, or even the owlish carvings from the base of the columns, but the place was familiar. The only thing that seemed out of place were the flowerpots, close to a small greenhouse attached to the rooms to the left, they seemed too new for a distinguished place like that.
Though we hadn’t left the train with our luggage, I was surprised when we came down the bus, which immediately drove away, and saw large boxes, suitcases, trunks, and hatboxes.
—As I said before— Ursula repeated when we came close to the luggage—, my wardrobe is not going to fit in there.
—What did you have before, love? A villa just for nightgowns? —Iggy picked up her trunk, the most battered one I’ve seen in my life, and went towards the house—. Come along, or we are going to spend the day here until we eat each other like a pack of bears?
I am used to travelling light, ever since I left the Academy for Dauphin College. With my steamer trunk, and a couple of cardboard boxes, everything I could ever need was in there. Ursula, on the other hand, had not just five large trunks like mine, but also a dozen of hatboxes and a couple of those new suitcases that were taller instead of wider, so you could pack dresses completely extended so they wouldn’t wrinkle. Dr. Tang had her briefcase and a couple of heavy boxes filled to the brim with books of different eras. Mugsy whistled, and her car appeared from the corner, also loaded with her things and the baby’s.
The entrance had a marble chess floor and lemon pastel walls. From each side a stair going up to the second floor, a couple of closed doors, a small lounge at the end of this hallway, the latter with a couple of chairs and an ancient Ming Dynasty’s vase in a marble pedestal.
—Where is the music coming from? —Professor Linde asked when he walked behind me through the door.
A large crate was in front of his face, so I had to move him from his path so he didn’t misstep on Ursula’s hats. He was right, though, there was piano music coming from the upper floor. Was someone else on the house? Or was that an artefact? Was the entire house an artefact? The music continued and seemed to follow us when we went on our way to explore the house, from each room, but stopped on the moment Dr. Tang put her foot on the first step at the stairs.
Layout, right. Without it, the following pages are going to be one hell-of-a-mess. So, as you enter and before the beginning of the stairs there are two doors, one on each side. The one on the left is the library, with a couple of chairs, a wall with head-to-toe bookshelves, and a Persian rug. On the right the master bedroom with a wardrobe, a writing desk, an empty steamer trunk, and vases with dried flowers. Inside this bedroom were two other doors, one was a bathroom, and the other was an office. At the lounge you’ll find another two doors (whoever designed this place, had symmetry in their mind), again, one on each side. To the left the smoking lounge with a liquor bar, and to the right the dining room. From the earlier one, an archway to the greenhouse.
From the latter, a false wall to a basement, with the kitchen, the pantry, and the servant’s quarters. Both the kitchen cabinets and the shelves in the pantry were filled with whatever food we would want or need, and things that are essential to life, like soap or cotton balls.
Upstairs, a small lounge right on top of the one downstairs, with five chairs covered in sheets and a large white piano. There were a couple of bathrooms and six bedrooms, most of them had twin beds, but those on the corners of the house had queen size beds. All of the bedrooms gave me the uneasy feeling of a place which had been lived on for a long time and now was completely deserted. Though I wonder if the island/base have some kind of preservation propriety, since I’m yet to find a cobweb or a speck of dust anywhere here.
No one was there. No one playing the piano, nor in any of the rooms. The music began again when we were back on the first floor for our things, and stopped again once we climbed up.
There weren’t fights about the rooms, we are adults. Well, there were, but not really. After months living together in Alcatraz and the train, we were aware of a couple of issues, which made the sorting of the rooms easier.
Mugsy snores, loudly, louder than her car, Okay, I’ll stop. And her and Brigitte were up at the crack of dawn, which is incredibly annoying when you are also one of those people who can’t stay in bed even when your life depends on it. Off she went, to the master bedroom on the ground floor, though we originally thought on sending her to the servant’s quarters with earth and mortar between us. In the end, we didn’t. She’s like a sunflower, needs natural light.
The rest of us pulled straws, and I got one of the corner rooms, on the side of the lounge. Ursula was on the opposite side of mine, Dr. Tang on one of the small ones, as did Ortiz. The last two corner rooms, the ones from which you could see the driveway and the lighthouse, were for Prof. Linde and Iggy, who just threw her trunk on top of the bed and went to see the piano.
Since it seemed to have been updated since the Georgian Era, the house had internal pipping and electric light. What was better, and better than the Academy or my flat, is that it also had hot and cold water in the bathrooms.
—So, whose house do you think we are? —I asked Ursula when we went downstairs.
—No idea, but it has the enchant of the decadent things.
Though the place didn’t have any dust or cobwebs it had fallen in some sort of shabbiness, probably due to age. The marble and wooden floors had scratches on them, the painting of some of the rooms had peeled away in certain areas, and most of the electrical candelabra seemed to have the faint splash of green rust you see in bronze. It wasn’t complete disrepair, though. For a place that should be around two hundred years old, it was in quite good shape, but some things could still be improved.
Dr. Tang and Mugsy, the latter with Brigitte on tow, followed us through the hidden door into the kitchen. We were all sharing theories, where we were, what were we supposed to do, and everything in between. However, by that point what we were was hungry, not curious. Long ago, when I was writing my thesis, I had managed to live eating little, sleeping less, and surviving from the most pure and distilled version of anxiety and fear of failure. That and coffee, lots and lots of coffee.
—I imagine Mr. Darbinyan will tell us a bit more about this place when he arrives— I said, following Ursula—, I hope.
Ursula was the first to reach the end of the stairs, but froze when she reached the counters next to the stove. The others stumbled onto ourselves, not knowing what happened. She turned, and with the most dumfounded expression went to ask us.
—Please, tell me anyone knows how to cook— was what she said, while the other three tried, and failed to contain our laughter—.
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