Agatha H and the Voice of the Castle

Van spun about to see Agatha standing on top of the counter, gleefully examining the interior of the café’s coffee engine, parts of which were also littering the area. The mechanic Van had called in (out of desperation, since the device was almost spark-like in its complexity) looked up in annoyance at the interruption. Agatha picked up a condenser. “Yes! I see! A simple double boiler with a rather clever condenser and percolation system that recycles the steam! Ha!”

One of the waitresses, a stout woman with a no-nonsense air to her, who had been striding towards her, an iron ladle gripped in her hand, suddenly found herself nose-to-nose with Agatha, who demanded: “Do you carry any information on the coffee extraction process?”

The woman blinked. “Uh—We have a book for sale by the cashier. It’s only—”

Agatha stood by the cashier now. There was a buzz of turning pages. “Ha!” She snapped the book closed. “This is but a simple exercise in chemistry!” The terrified cashier now found herself in Agatha’s spotlight glare. “Where is some raw coffee?”

The girl froze. But Agatha had been standing still for as long as she could. “Never mind I shall find it myself!”

A tearing sound came from behind the counter. There was Agatha, her hands buried in an open sack of coffee beans. She pulled a fistful up to her nose, breathed deeply, and then frowned. “Interesting! The end product doesn’t taste anywhere near as good as the smell would lead one to expect.” She swung about and gave the stout woman a grin. “I can fix that!”

The older woman shook herself. “Now, that’s enough of that! You get out of there!”

Agatha stepped closer to her and fixed her with a stare. “I need parts!” She deftly plucked an order pad from the countertop along with a pencil and pressed it into the woman’s hands. “Write this down!”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Who—” Agatha’s smile vanished and her voice harmonics changed. “Write. This. Down!”

The woman swallowed and put pencil to paper. Agatha began to speak.

On the other side of the room, Vanamonde’s jaw dropped. “Did… did she just give a direct order to Rinja and…and not get smacked? But she couldn’t—”

Van’s babbling was cut off by his grandfather, who administered a sharp dope-slap to the back of his head. “She certainly could!” The old man sounded worried now. “Listen to her! Can’t you feel it? This girl is a Spark!”

Vanamonde went pale. He swung around to Agatha’s companions, who regarded him with a smug innocence. “You didn’t tell us she was a Spark!”

Wooster looked at him over his cup. “We told you she was a Heterodyne.”

Zeetha delicately nibbled a cream-filled éclair. “Naturally, one should assume that a Heterodyne would also be a Spark.”

Krosp licked the last drop of cream from his bowl and snagged another container. “It’s not our fault you didn’t believe us.”

Suddenly Agatha was there. “Here’s your book back.” The book appeared in Van’s hand. It was warm. “I can tell you wrote it even though you used a false name.”

“I—you can?”

“Oh yes, word choice, sentence structure—anyway, all the spelling corrections are marked in red.”

Carson snorted. A slip of paper was thrust into Van’s other hand. “And here is a list of things I require, please.”

Van looked at it blankly. “Of course, my lady.” Agatha vanished. Van shook himself. “Wait—What did I say?”

Carson’s smile soured. “What our family has been saying to Sparks for generations. We wouldn’t have survived, if we hadn’t.”

Van glanced at Agatha’s friends and dropped his voice. “But…you could say that about anyone in Mechanicsburg.”

“I am leaving!” Herr Mitrant—the mechanic who had been attempting to repair the café’s coffee engine—now stood before Van. The stout little man was furious. “I am a Master Artificer!” He pointed at Agatha, who was rooting about in the man’s toolbox. “And this girl is…she’s…she’s touching my tools!”¹⁴