The Rithmatist

”
    “What about springworks?” Joel said.
    She waved indifferently. “Da Vinci was a total hack. Everyone knows that. Completely overrated.”
    Joel smiled, enjoying his sundae. “How did you know what flavor to get for me?”
    “Just felt right,” she said, taking another bite. “Joel … did you mean what you said about chalklings a bit ago? About my skill?”
    “Of course,” Joel said, and took a sip of his soda. “I’ve snuck into a lot of lectures, and I’ve never seen a professor on campus create chalklings anywhere near as detailed as yours.”
    “Then why can’t I get the other lines right?”
    “So you do care?”
    “Of course I do. It wouldn’t be nearly as much of a tragedy if I didn’t.”
    “Maybe you just need more practice.”
    “I’ve practiced a ton. ”
    “I don’t know, then. How did you keep your chalklings back behind your defenses? It didn’t seem tough to you at all, but it’s supposed to be very difficult.”
    “Supposed to be?”
    “I don’t know for certain,” Joel said, shoveling a bite into his mouth. He savored the sweet, creamy flavor, and then licked the spoon. “I haven’t studied much about chalkling theory. There isn’t a lot of material about them in the ordinary stacks, and Professor Fitch doesn’t teach chalkling classes—he’s the only one who would let me sneak in and listen on a regular basis.”
    “That’s a shame. What do you want to know about them?”
    “You’ll tell me?” Joel asked with surprise.
    “I don’t see why not.”
    “Because you flipped out when you realized that I was learning about inception ceremonies.”
    “That’s way different,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Are you going to ask or not?”
    “Well,” Joel said, “I know that sometimes, chalklings respond better to instructions than other times. Why?”
    “I don’t know if anyone knows that. They usually do what I want them to, though others have more trouble.”
    “So, you know the instruction glyphs better than others?”
    “I wouldn’t say that,” Melody said. “Chalklings … they’re not quite like the other lines, Joel. A Line of Forbiddance only does one thing. You draw it, and it sits there. Chalklings, though … they’re versatile. They have a life of their own. If you don’t build them correctly, they won’t be able to do what they’re supposed to.”
    Joel frowned. “But, what does ‘building them correctly’ even mean? I keep looking through the books, and what I can find says that detail will make a chalkling stronger. But … well, it’s just chalk. How can the chalkling tell if you drew it with a lot of detail or not?”
    “Because it can,” Melody said. “A chalkling knows when it’s a good picture.”
    “Is it the amount of chalk that’s important? A lot of chalk makes a ‘detailed’ drawing instead of a nondetailed one?”
    Melody shook her head. “Some students my first year tried to simply draw circles and color them in as their chalklings. Those ones always died quickly—some just rolled away, not going where they were supposed to.”
    Joel frowned. He’d always seen Rithmatics as … well, something scientific and measurable. A Line of Warding’s strength was proportionate to the degree of its curve. The height of a Line of Forbiddance’s blocking power was proportional to its width. The lines all made direct, measurable sense.
    “There’s got to be some number involved,” he said.
    “I told you,” Melody said. “It has to do with how well they are drawn. If you draw a unicorn that looks like a unicorn, it will last longer than one with bad proportions, or one that has one leg too short, or one that can’t tell if it’s supposed to be a unicorn or a lion.”
    “But how does it know ? What determines a ‘good’ drawing or a ‘bad’ drawing? Is it related to what the Rithmatist sees in their head? The better a Rithmatist can draw what he or she envisions, the stronger the chalkling becomes?”
    “Maybe,” she said, shrugging.
    “But,” Joel said, wagging his spoon, “if that were the case, then the best chalkling artists would be the ones with poor imaginations. I’ve seen your chalklings work, and they’re strong—they’re also very detailed. I doubt that the system rewards people who can’t imagine complicated images.”
    “Wow. You really get into this, don’t you?”
    “Lines of Making are the only ones that don’t seem to make sense.”
    “They make perfect sense to me,”