Coming To Terms

The Aldritch Academy of Magic, Sorcery, and All Things Presently Unknowable was a menace. This was, of course, well-known by the citizens of Aldritch proper. No one had forgotten the incident three years past when an aspiring necromancer had accidentally raised all the dead buried on city grounds, which had led to a harrowing forty-eight hours where the deceased had outnumbered the living by an uncomfortable margin and had, in more than a few cases, decided to increase their numbers further by settling some old grudges before the necromancer had been able to set things right again. And, of course, there had been the meteoromancer who, in testing out a rain-making spell, had accidentally caused the Great Flood of ’06.

All prior catastrophes, however, paled in comparison to the Academy’s most recent kerfuffle which had resulted in the City of Aldritch gaining sentience. All queries directed to the Academy by the citizens of Aldritch regarding this sudden and discomfiting change had, thus far, been met with a resounding silence.

While no citizen was entirely unaffected by suddenly living in a sentient city, Jeannie was having perhaps the most difficult time adjusting to the change. This was because Jeannie was the Aldritch Department of Planning and Zoning. When the Department was initially founded several centuries before, there had been some debate as to whether or not one person could, in fact, constitute an entire Department. However, as almost no one moved to or from Aldritch and streets and buildings were rarely created or altered, those debating the issue were unable to offer an argument in support of hiring a second employee for the Department and it was concluded after a mere two minutes and forty-five seconds that the Department could, indeed, consist of a single person.

Jeannie’s primary responsibilities in the days before the Dawning of Awareness (a great deal more profanity was currently being used in descriptions of the event) had been settling disputes between neighbors over the placement of fences and shrubbery on property lines and recording various minor changes to buildings, such as the addition of a floor to the McCabe’s house and the relocation of the stables on the Frost estate from the East side to the South side. It had not been an exciting job, but it had suited Jeannie’s love of order and she had been quite pleased with her position.

An average week generally involved no more than two visitors to the Department. On the second day after the city gained sentience, there was, for the first time since the Department’s founding, a line out the door of the tiny office, through the center of Aldritch City Hall, and out the main entrance of that building as well. There was also a great deal of yelling and shouting.

“Mulberry Street is gone!” Mr. Peters, who happened to be at the head of the line, was currently shouting. “Just gone! I stepped out of my flat this morning and almost ran headfirst into the side of MacPherson’s Tavern! Had to crawl out the bathroom window just to get out of the building! It won’t do, I tell you, it just won’t do!”

“No, Mr. Peters, it won’t do at all,” Jeannie agreed calmly, scribbling down the addresses by memory in her notebook. MacPherson’s Tavern should have been three blocks from Mr. Peters’s flat, never mind where Mulberry Street had wandered off to. Mrs. Crandle had told her not five minutes before that Pennington Lane was missing as well. Hopefully the missing streets were all together somewhere and not scattered about. It would be much easier to locate them that way.

“Well, what are you going to do about it, then?” Mr. Peters demanded.

“Have a good long talk with Mulberry Street, as soon as I can locate it, and explain why it needs to go back home,” Jeannie said. “I just need to find out from your neighbors what else is missing and then I promise, I’ll get right out and start looking.”

“Well, all right then,” Mr. Peters said, mollified for the moment. Jeannie suspected if he had to crawl out of his bathroom window again tomorrow morning he wouldn’t be quite so accommodating, but she’d take what she could get. Mr. Peters headed out of the office, only to be replaced by Mrs. Wilmington, face already beet-red from the amount of yelling she’d been doing generally while awaiting her turn to yell at Jeannie specifically.

“My whole shop’s upside down!” Mrs. Wilmington yelled. “All of the clothes I made, up there on the ceiling like it’s the floor, and I can’t get to any of them! How am I supposed to sell my clothes if I can’t get to them?”

“Definitely a problem, Mrs. Wilmington, and I’ll be looking into it right away,” Jeannie agreed. Privately, she felt like whether the inside of a building was right-side up or upside down was no business of the Department of Planning and Zoning, which mostly dealt with the outside of buildings and the general use of those buildings, but she didn’t think saying so would go over terribly well under the circumstances. Best just to agree and carry on.

It was going to be a long day either way.

*****

The sun had long since set by the time the last of the citizenry had lodged its complaints with Jeannie and vacated her office. It would have been nice to simply claim the workday was over and go home, but she suspected the next workday would be all the worse if she didn’t get at least some of the issues sorted out by morning. If she’d thought it would have done any good, she would have gone to the Academy and demanded they simply reverse whatever they had done to cause this latest disaster but, like as not, no one there really knew what had happened or how to fix it either. So Jeannie gathered up her two full notebooks of complaints and a map of Aldritch as it had been last week and set out to see what she could do on her own.

Two blocks from City Hall, Jeannie realized that the street in front of her had remained perfectly lit the entire way because a streetlamp was following her. She turned to look at it. If a streetlamp could be said to look sheepish, this one did. She sighed.

“Thank you,” she said, because one should always be polite, even if it was to a streetlamp. The streetlamp immediately stood a little straighter and went back to following her as she continued on her way.

A few steps later, the uneven cobblestone street which was always turning ankles and tripping the unwary abruptly smoothed out. It still looked the same, but despite their uneven appearance, the stones were abruptly level and easy to walk on, no longer feeling bumpy and harsh against the soles of her feet. A suspicion started to take shape in Jeannie’s mind.

“That’s very kind of you,” she told the street. It rippled slightly and seemed to smooth out even further. “I’m going to Mercat Cross. Will you take me there?” Another ripple, and a tall circular base topped with a torch appeared before her, no more than a block away. “Thank you.”

Like most of those in Aldritch, Jeannie had lived there all her life. She had much the same complaints about the city as everyone else—the Academy and its antics, the inevitable handful of neighbors that seemed intent on making life difficult for everyone else, the occasional feeling of claustrophobia that came from living essentially on top of other people day-in and day-out with no escape. But Jeannie had no real desire to leave Aldritch, and neither did most of its other citizens, not even those who complained about it the loudest. Because she loved knowing where every small passage and lane led, where every tiny shop was hidden, the menu of all the restaurants by heart, and the names of all the citizens. And at the heart of it all was Mercat Cross.

Mercat Cross sat directly at the center of Aldritch and was where all public gatherings had been held since the founding of the city. It was where official announcements were posted before there had been such a thing as City Hall and where official announcements were still posted now, because people were more likely to look there than they were to go to City Hall to check for them. It stood to reason that if Mercat Cross had been the beating heart of the city when Aldritch was just an ordinary city, it might well be the real beating heart of the city now that Aldritch was a sentient being.

Jeannie stepped into the town square and sat down facing the circular base of the Cross. The streetlamp took up a position behind her as she spread her notes out on the ground. Carefully, she placed her map above her notes and looked up at the Cross.

“Hello, Aldritch,” she said. She hesitated. Thus far, the city had not actually spoken to anyone. This part could prove a little tricky. “My name is Jeannie. I’m the Department of Planning and Zoning. I was hoping to discuss some things with you.” The torch, which jutted high into the sky, flared to life and bent down towards her. That seemed like a good start.

“I understand this is all very new to you,” Jeannie said. “It’s quite reasonable that you’d want to stretch your legs, so to speak. Only, there are a lot of folks here depending on you. We need your streets to help us reach each other, and we need your buildings to provide for our families.”

The torch tilted slightly to the right as if considering this. Jeannie pressed on. “Consider the children. I’m sure you were only trying to make them happy by moving the schoolhouse to the bottom of Landon Lake today, and it was very thoughtful of you to do that before there was anyone inside, but if the children don’t go to school, they won’t learn important things they need to know to help them as adults, like reading and history, not to mention how to get along with others properly. So we need your help to make sure the children can get back into the schoolhouse tomorrow. You see?”

The torch nodded slowly. Jeannie smiled up at it encouragingly. “This is a map of what you used to look like. Now, I certainly understand if you want to make some changes. Nothing wrong with that at all. I mean, telling you where to put your own streets would be like someone telling me how to fix my hair every morning, right? Only I thought we might be able to come to some kind of agreement where you could let me know what your plans are, so I could pass them along and keep people informed, you see. Mr. Peters misses Mulberry Street terribly.”

The torch bent forward further, as if to get a better look, and Jeannie held the map up for it to see. When it pulled back some minutes later, there was a faint popping sound. “Did you put things back like they were on the map?” Jeannie asked. The torch nodded. “Thank you, that was very kind. It’s all right if you want to make changes, though. Just let me know and I’ll pass the word along. Most people around here are really good about things like that, as long as you give them a bit of warning. And if there’s something you want to change but you’re not quite sure what changes you want to make, just let me know and I’ll help if I can, all right?”

The torch seemed pleased at that, the flame flaring brighter for a moment. “Thank you for your help. I’d best be off home now. It’s late, and I suspect tomorrow’s going to be a busy day. I’ll keep in touch, though, promise.”

Jeannie gathered up her things and headed towards her flat with a last wave towards the Mercat Cross. The streetlamp escorted her all the way to her door. Her head had barely touched her pillow before she tumbled into sleep.

*****

Despite Jeannie’s expectations, no one showed up at the Department of Planning and Zoning the next day. Aldritch had, apparently, taken her words to heart. Not only had all the streets and buildings been returned to their original locations (and orientations, if the lack of a screeching Mrs. Wilmington was anything to go by), but Jeannie discovered over time that Aldritch had taken it upon itself to make some other improvements as well. 

Leaky roofs no longer leaked. Old plumbing worked like new. Broken windows were now whole glass. Aldritch took care of its own. Which was not to say, of course, that it did not sometimes get restless and move about. Mulberry Street in particular retained its habit of wandering off for days at a time, only to reappear with no real clue as to where it had been. But Aldritch kept to its agreement with Jeannie and always let her know so that she could post a warning about the changes to the city, and the people of Aldritch just gave a collective long-suffering sigh before shaking their heads and going about their business.

They all still agreed, though, that the Aldritch Academy of Magic, Sorcery, and All Things Presently Unknowable was a menace.