This week’s image hails from Bute, on Scotland’s west coast. Besides the usual praise due to a lovely new (to me) place, I was struck by how mainlandy the island felt. Normally when I head to the islands I find myself in a place that feels other in some sense. Bute felt more like home, I think. I write this with no judgement. I expect I need another visit, at least, to see what I mean by that.
The pictured building is now a Scottish Water pumping facility. Clearly, to me at least, the structure was originally supposed to be something else. For some reason, while we were on the island I was unable to find out any more than that. I did plenty of searches. As I encountered dead-end after dead-end my determination to solve the puzzle and learn its history increased. Well, until my kids needed me to engage with our holiday and get my nose out of my phone.
I had fully intended to write this with a plea for information but I tried one last web search first. The first link up told me everything. Ladies and gentlemen, the modern internet!
Disappointingly, when built in the 1930s it was a public toilet. In fairness, that’s more useful than some more glamourous purpose, but still. It would have been nice if the place had had a more exciting reason for being.
Anyway, enough truth. Time for a story…
Ailsa sat back on a boulder and brushed a stray strand of hair from her face. The sea breeze running up the firth blew it right back again. She turned her face into the wind and closed her eyes against the sun.
She’d done it. She’d built her Tower.
Well, kind of.
Under the laws of the Wizards’ Circle, no Tower could rise higher than its owner’s rank. As a first level initiate, Ailsa’s Tower could be no more than a single storey. Calling it a tower seemed a little silly. It was little more than a weird round bungalow. Indeed, most sorcerers waited until they’d reached the rank of First Degree Wizard. That was the tenth rank in the Wizards’ Circle. A respectable height for a tower. Of course, tower’s were supposed to be extended upwards over time. It wasn’t even that difficult to do, in principle. Nothing more complex than what Ailsa had achieved by herself. Without any master’s guidance even. True, she’d performed her magic over many days, whereas expanding an existing Tower would had to happen all at once or risk damaging the existing structure. The one rule on Tower extensions was that any new floors had to be added at the bottom.
Most sorcerers would wait, but Ailsa couldn’t. The location was critical and she wouldn’t risk another discovering it. Wizard Towers were traditionally built on sites of magical significance. Ley lines were so well known that even unmags, the un-magical, were well aware of them. Of course, unmags had no idea of their actual potency nor the uses for their raw power. Naturally, the major ley line junctions were now fully occupied. Some few traditionalists still fought bitterly over the last scattering of tributary streams. These were barely worth the effort and certainly not worth the bloodshed.
Modern sorcerers had turned to alternative sources. The Skyweb was gaining popularity. A counterpoint to the skein of power that formed the ley lines, the Web formed a network of magically conductive channels. In the sky, obviously. A Tower that reached into the Skyweb couldn’t tap power but it could move it. In massive quantities. It had led to a different type of magic. One that the ancients would barely recognise. It was fresh and exciting. Until a week ago, Ailsa would have given anything for a prime spot on the Skyweb. Not that she’d have needed to. The Web was relatively untapped. Unoccupied building sites outnumbered the members of the Wizards’ Circle by many thousands to one.
At Bogany Point Ailsa had found something else. An Emergence. Mythologically rare, an Emergence was a place where a magical phenomenon appeared. Theory claimed that the phenomenon was a balancing force sent into the world to right some iniquity. Of all the Thousand Towers, only three were said to be located at an Emergence. In the entire history of the Wizards’ Circle nothing had emerged from these places. Even so, they were the mightiest of the Towers. Wonders were worked there that defied understanding.
A few metres off the shoreline the water began to foam. Ailsa smiled as she turned to watch the kelpies churn the waves. White hooves broke the surface followed by three beautiful equine heads. One stranger and two familiar faces. The ones Ailsa knew had first emerged four days before.
By luck, she had been walking on the beach at the time of Emergence. The first kelpies to grace the world in a dozen centuries. They had burst from the waves so near to her that she had no choice but to meet them as friends and hope she wasn’t wrong. She hadn’t been. The kelpies had projected an aura of peace and contentment. They stood together on the shore for moments that seemed suspended from time. Heartbeats or aeons may have passed in stillness before the kelpies moved.
The taller had turned to the water. He stamped one great hoof in the waves. Oil and grit and detritus from decades of fishing and freight fleets rose above the surface. It all hung for a brief second then flew to the kelpie. The majestic horse gathered the filth into its mouth and swallowed them down. Black and brown hues coursed over the kelpies coat and swirled in a dirty maelstrom before dissipating.
The kelpies had departed after that. Back beneath the waves. That was the moment Ailsa had claimed the site and started building her Tower.
Now her single storey Tower was complete. For now. And her two kelpie friends had brought another. She wondered what balance they would correct and hoped that she was on the right side of it.
Brandon Lim 