Still, it gave Jake an idea. Maybe Pindor was on to something. Could his science and their alchemy be used together somehow? What if they were combined?
“Red and green make yellow,” he mumbled, remembering the demonstration by Marika’s father.
Jake took the battery from Pindor and bent down to pick up a sliver of blue crystal that had fallen to the floor.
Taking a step away, he tipped up on his toes and placed the battery and the blue crystal in the bronze basket.
“Jake,” Marika said. “We’re not supposed to touch that.”
Jake glanced over to her. Her words of warning had sounded unsure.
Pindor was less reluctant. “Nothing’s going to happen.”
Jake kept his gaze on Marika. If she said no, he would obey her. But her curiosity only seemed to grow. She was like her father in that regard.
“‘Alchemy is…nine parts chance,’” Jake said, quoting him.
Marika took a deep breath and crossed to the door. Jake feared she was leaving, but she only closed the door they’d left open. She turned to Jake and nodded.
With a smile, he reached and pulled the chain. The basket rose into the air.
Jake took a step back. Sunlight flashed and sparked as it refracted through the hundreds of crystals embedded in the gearwork overhead. At first nothing seemed to happen—then the mechanism began to turn a little faster. It scattered sunlight into rainbows on the walls.
“Jake…” Marika warned.
And it began to spin even faster. Steam escaped tiny valves and began to whistle. Gears spun into blurs.
“We have to stop it!” Marika yelled.
“How?” Jake asked.
They all ducked down as the mechanism churned into a whirling mass of glass and bronze. It heaved and groaned and rumbled and sighed. There was no stopping it.
As the mechanism sped faster, the entire room began to shake. Tools and crystals rattled on the table. A stack of books toppled over. And still it spun even more furiously.
Jake backed to the table. What have I done?
“Jake!” Marika cried out. She lifted up the second battery, still in her hand. Sparks shot out one end, snapped through the air, and were sucked into the churning mechanism.
Jake hurried to her side and grabbed the battery. It shocked him, stinging like a snapped rubber band. He tossed it to the tabletop, where it rolled and knocked into a chunk of red crystal the size of a goose egg. Sparks shot from the battery and struck the gem.
It immediately ignited, blazing like a crimson sun.
Before Jake could move, the red crystal melted straight through the tabletop. It wasn’t just as bright as the sun—it was as hot!
The crystal dropped through the bottom of the table and hit the stone floor. Jake sighed with relief—until the granite began to bubble at the edges of the crystal. It was trying to burn through the stone floor!
Jake pictured the crystal burning from one floor to the next. When would it stop? Would it stop?
Marika stood frozen in shock.
Jake rushed over and grabbed one of the silver hammers. If he could strike the crystal, turn it off like Marika’s father had done before…
He turned Marika. She nodded, immediately understanding his plan.
Together they dashed over and dropped to their knees. Jake shielded his face—against both the brightness and the heat. Through his squinted eyes, he saw the stone. It had shrunk to the size of a robin’s egg. It now floated in a pool of molten rock.
As Jake reached forward with the hammer, the crystal shrank faster and faster, as if consumed by its own inner fire, like a dying star collapsing in on itself. Jake paused. In a matter of two seconds, the crystal had burned down to the size of a piercingly bright pinhead. Then it blinked out of existence.
“It’s gone….” Marika said, and shifted back. Her expression was a mix of horror and curiosity.
The molten pool of granite quickly hardened, as if it knew its very nature was wrong and sought to quickly reverse itself. Soon all that was left was a blackened spot on the floor.
The same couldn’t be said for the table.
On his knees, Jake stared at the underside of a perfectly round hole in the bronze tabletop. He could see straight through it. The metal was no longer hot, but the damage was done.
“Look!” Pindor said.
During all the commotion, they’d failed to notice that the mechanism over their heads had slowed. It no longer raced and whined. It merely spun. Jake stared up at the delicate mechanism. Did it sound extra creaky? Was it wheezing a bit more loudly? Had he wrecked it?
From its heart, the bronze basket slowly lowered out of the mechanism. All their eyes were upon it.
Pindor pointed to Jake. “It’s your sy-enz. You look!”
He was right.
Jake reached up and tipped the basket over and caught the battery in his palm. It looked unchanged—but there was nothing else! He searched the tray. The sliver of blue crystal was gone.
Jake glanced over to the smoky spot on the granite. Had the crystal vanished the same way? Had it been burned up by the mechanism, perhaps fueling its wild spinning?
Marika asked, “What happened?”
Jake could only shake his head. This was beyond him.
Marika’s brow crinkled. She picked up the other battery from the table and handed it over to Jake. Her expression said she was sick with worry. She was done fooling with his science. Guilt shadowed her eyes and caused her to chew at her lower lip as she glanced back to the table.
Jake felt a stab of pain at her distress. It made his own guilt all that much worse. He remembered the words he’d said to her, quoting her father—that alchemy was nine parts chance. But he failed to take to heart what her father had said after that. And more often than not, dangerous.
Jake stared at the two batteries in his palm. He could’ve burned the entire tower to the ground. He gathered up his penlight, inserted the batteries, and screwed the top back on. Out of habit, he thumbed the switch. Light shone out. He clicked it back off. The penlight still worked. He shoved it into one of the pockets of his safari pants.
“What are we going to do?” Pindor asked. He stared at the melted hole. “The Magisters will hang us by our thumbs.”
“I’m sorry,” Jake said.
“You should be!” Pindor snapped back.
Marika frowned at them both, planting her hands on her hips. “You told him to do it, Pin. None of us said Stop. We’re all to blame.”
Pindor didn’t argue. His face merely sagged with the truth of her words. “And tomorrow’s the Equinox. And the Olympiad! Everyone’s going to be there! Once my father hears about all this, I’ll be lucky to see the sun before the next Equinox!”