When Josse returned to his study for an update on the obnoxious guy with the espresso habit, he found Minuit curled up on its charging station. Viewing all those hours of footage from the bar’s security camera appeared to have taken its toll; presumably the feline AI spy had run out of juice.
It seemed comfortable, in the charger’s shallow, basket-shaped cradle, the cushion with its fine metallic thread adjusted just so. The thick blue cable that ran from the unit’s base into the wall pulsed peacefully, as was its wont. All seemed well with the world.
And yet.
As Josse dithered about interrupting the cat’s power nap or just giving it another half hour, the cable suddenly went slack. Minuit’s eyelids fluttered, then opened. “Flying mice,” the cat sputtered, flexing its claws. “Huge, vengeful,” it added helpfully, and froze.
***
From the study in the house that he shared with Adelphine, across from the tavern at the front of the alley, the cable ran through the rooms and the garden on the impasse’s left side all the way to the cellar of the warehouse at the back. He’d been meaning to tuck it away behind rows of bookcases or stretches of drywall, but somehow hadn’t got round to it yet.
It was on his list, though. Really. Along with a hundred other odd jobs that were continually upstaged by some crisis or other.
So there the cable had lain, clashing with the décor and tripping the unwary, for nigh on twenty years.
So far as Josse could tell, whatever had happened to it hadn’t occurred in his home. As he walked from room to room inspecting the gloomy lengths of blue, he saw no obvious reason for the line to have gone dead.
Not that he’d know; he wasn’t Minuit’s maker. But no engineering degree would be needed to connect the dots if, for example, he found Adelphine wielding scissors in a strop, or a mischief of lutins painting each other smurf.
Next door, maybe? Indeed. As he entered the gutted building that stood between his home and the warehouse, Josse nearly walked into a puddle of blue gel. Next to it, Oakleaf the gardener stood aghast, a sharp hoe in his hands.
“I was pulling on some ivy, and the brickwork gave way!”
***
Once upon a time, the building had housed families on three floors, and likely also in its cellar and attic. And then, one stormy day, the roof had collapsed. Just like that – a combination of dry rot and water damage, possibly, shoddy construction or lack of maintenance or rats gnawing away at whatever held the whole thing aloft. Luckily, the residents of the top floors were away at a wedding, and those living below all made it out before the floors finally gave way.
The owner didn’t have the means to rebuild, and Josse made him an offer he didn’t choose to refuse. That was several hundred years ago, and Josse had been meaning to rebuild ever since. Honestly, it really was very high on his list.
“Great idea,” Adelphine said when the deal had been sealed, as they stood among the rubble and he set out his plans . She was carrying in boxes before he even stopped talking, and filled them with dirt. A garden was born.
***
Over time, a fine loam came to cover the rubble floor, and Josse had lined the outer walls with galleries for additional containers. Plants were growing in every available space, in reclaimed crates and mismatched pots and old jugs, creeping up the walls and along the banisters. A small-leaved lime had taken root in the middle, its sturdy branches now replacing the ladders that had connected the tiers.
Adelphine still tended her boxes of mugwort, valerian and rue, along with her precious patch of nettle. But she had gladly entrusted the rest of the garden to the wood elf who had eventually moved into the tree’s hollow trunk, with his books and tweed jackets and even more plants.
***
Oakleaf was a fount of knowledge about a great many things, but he didn’t know the first thing about throbbing blue cables.
Apparently, they were fragile, as his mishap had proved. The rogue stem of ivy he had hooked with his hoe had turned out to be rooted very firmly indeed. It had dislodged a shower of plaster and crumbling brick as it came away.
The falling masonry had crushed the cable, which ran along the foot of the wall, and nicked it in several places. Removing the rubble had only made it worse, with the blue gel now spilling freely from half a dozen gashes in the cord’s translucent “skin”.
While Josse and Oakleaf debated the respective merits of duct tape and tourniquets, the flow stopped, then slowly reversed course. Little by little, the colourful liquid pulled itself back into the cable. The lacerations closed up, from the corners at first, then also from the sides. The blue brightened from near-black to the usual shiny azure, and the pulse, faint at first, soon regained its full strength.
Normal service had been resumed.