The Rithmatist

found what he was looking for, pulling it out of the dresser.
    “A key?” Melody asked.
    Joel pushed past her, rushing to the stairwell. She trailed behind. “What’s the key for?”
    “We didn’t always live in that room,” Joel said, passing the first floor and continuing on to the basement. The door he wanted was at the bottom of the stairwell.
    “So?” Melody asked as he unlocked the door.
    He looked at her, then pushed the door open. “We used to live here,” he said, pointing toward the room beyond.
    His father’s workshop.
    The large chamber was filled with shadowed shapes and a dusty scent. Joel walked in, surprised at how familiar the place felt. He hadn’t stepped foot past that door in eight years, yet he knew just where to find the wall lamp. He wound it, then twisted the gear at the bottom, making it begin to hum and shine out light.
    Illumination fell on a dusty room filled with old tables, stacks of limestone blocks, and an old kiln used for baking sticks of chalk. Joel walked reverently into the room, feeling his memories tingle and shake, like taste buds encountering something both sour and sweet.
    “I slept over there,” he said, pointing to the far corner. A small bed stood there, and a couple of sheets hung from the ceiling, arranged so that they could be pulled to give him privacy.
    His parents’ bed was in the other corner, with similar hanging sheets. Between the two “rooms” was furniture—some chairs, chests of drawers. His father had always talked about building walls to split the shop into rooms. After he’d died, they hadn’t been able to fit any of the furniture in the new room, so Joel’s mother had just left it.
    Joel smiled faintly, remembering his father humming as he smoothed chalk at his table. Most of the chamber had been dedicated to the workshop. The cauldrons, the mixing pots, the kiln, the stacks of books about chalk composition and consistency.
    “Wow,” Melody said. “It feels … peaceful in here.”
    Joel crossed the room, feet scraping the dusty floor. On one of the tables, he found a line of chalk sticks running the entire spectrum of colors. He slid a blue one off the table and rubbed the length of chalk between his fingers, the coating on the outside keeping his fingers from getting color on them. He walked over to the far side of the room, the one opposite the beds. There, hung on the wall, were chalk formulas detailing different levels of hardness.
    The chalk formulas were surrounded by pictures of the different Rithmatic defenses. There were dozens of them, drawn by Joel’s father, with notations along the sides explaining who had used them and during which duel. There were newspaper clippings about famous duels, as well as stories on famous duelists.
    Trent’s voice drifted into Joel’s head from memory. His father reading out loud about those duels, explaining to Joel with excitement about brilliant plays. Remembering that enthusiasm brought back a menagerie of other memories. Joel pushed those aside for the moment, focusing on something else. For in the middle of all those formulas, defenses, and newspaper clippings was a particularly large sheet of paper.
    Drawn on it was the looping Rithmatic pattern they’d found at each of the crime scenes.
    Joel breathed out slowly.
    “What?” Melody asked as she stepped up beside him.
    “That’s it,” Joel said. “The new Rithmatic line.”
    “Wait, your father is the kidnapper?”
    “No, of course not. But he knew, Melody. He borrowed money; he took time off; he visited with Rithmatists at all eight schools. He was working on something—his passion.”
    Melody glanced to the side, looking over the clippings and the pictures. “So that ’s why,” she whispered.
    “Why what?”
    “Why you’re so fascinated by Rithmatics,” she said. “I asked you once. You never answered. It’s because of your father.”
    Joel stared at the wall, with its patterns and defenses. His father would talk about them at length, telling Joel which defenses were good against which offensive structures. Other boys had played soccer with their fathers. Joel had drawn defenses with his.
    “Father always wanted me to attend Armedius,” Joel said. “He wanted so badly for me to turn out to be a Rithmatist, though he never said anything. We drew together all the time. I think he became a chalkmaker so that he’d be able to work with Rithmatists.”
    And he’d done something wonderful. A new Rithmatic