The book was called Tinero’s Treatise on Conjuration. On the title page, the author added his own subtitle: Looking for America.

Isa looked up at Ealda. “Where is this Tinero now?” She blinked back a tear. “I need to see him.”

“He is dead, child. He was old - ancient - when I got here, twenty years ago. He has passed.” She seemed to study Isa. “Are you kin?”

“No. I don’t know. Probably not. But he’s--” Isa touched the letters on the page. “He’s from my home. Is there a chance that he didn’t die, that he returned to America?”

"Are you certain he is from your lands? I was hesitant to show you the book because of his madness."

"America," said Isa. "It's right there."

"That is a fallacy. He might have heard the name; he might have thought he made it up." Ealda put a finger on the book. "You cannot leap to this conclusion. Such fancies are--"

"I have to hope." Isa tried to keep tears from falling. "It's the only lead I have, the only piece of, of hope. Maybe you all just thought he was crazy, right?"

Ealda withdrew her finger. "Perhaps. I was only an acolyte when he.... When he left here."

Isa picked up the book, and as Ealda had done earlier, she held it to her chest, hugging the book tightly. “Thank you. Thank you so much. I will be careful with it.” She began to rise, and Ealda’s hand shot out, and talon-like fingers closed over Isa’s forearm. Through the bracer Isa could feel the priestess’ grip. “The book,” said Ealda, “stays here.”

“We had a deal! I got your stupid herbs.” Isa tried to yank her hand free.

“Do not make me angry. You may read the book.” Ealda relaxed her grip on Isa’s arm. “You may not take the book.” She stood and walked quickly to the door. “Come. I’ll take you to the stacks.”

Up they went, climbing 2 sets of stairs and navigating around a dozen corners until Isa was thoroughly lost. Ealda threw open the door of a large room. High windows dominated one wall, and the room itself was crowded with small desks. Several people - men, women, elves, humans, and other humanoid figures - sat at desks with heads down reading intently.

“You will not be disturbed here,” Ealda whispered in Isa’s ear, and the priestess’ hot breath made Isa shudder. “When you are ready to leave, or if you need to use the closet, hit the bell and wait.” She looked at Isa. “Do you understand?”

Isa nodded and set Tinero’s Treatise on the desk.

Once she was alone - as alone as one can be in a library - Isa opened the book once more. There is was, the title. She hadn’t dreamed it -- there on the page was the word America. With a glance at the other people in the room, Isa turned the page.

The next page had an editor’s note. It said, The study of Conjuration owes much to Gerry Tinero. He lived and worked here at the Bywater Temple for nearly 60 years. 60 mostly productive years. This book, for all its flaws, is his legacy, and although it’s hard to understand the mania that fueled the early years and the outright paranoia and madness of the later years, we preserve his Treatise just as he left it. The brilliance and madness of his mind will be on full display to future generations who did not know him. Judge him not too harshly.

Madness, huh? With a sigh Isa began to read…..

Vern said I should write it all down. He said that even the personal stuff might matter in the success of the magic. Magic! I still can’t quite wrap it up in a bow, you know? At first I thought I was dreaming. Cliche but true. I thought I’d fallen asleep working on a Talon installment.

But here I am trying to learn to do magic. Make magic? Cast magic? I don’t even know the right words, but Vern says if I want to get home, this is the way, the only way.

Which does beg the question of how I got here, right? Did someone cast their magic on me? Or maybe it was a mistake. A happenstance. A God-damned accident. Wrong place/Wrong time. But how is being asleep in your very own bed being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Maybe there are no answers to this question, but that won’t stop me from asking. For now I just need to write it all down. As Vern would say - did say as he put a God-damned feather quill in my hand and a bottle of ink on the desk - “document it.”

And so in the year of our Lord 1951 - at least back home it’s 1951. Who the hell knows what year it is here - they don’t even have running water, no way do they have a Betty Grable calendar like the one Joey has ihanging n his garage.

So let’s call it Year 1, right? Gerry’s Year in Magic Land.

I don’t know what I’m doing. But then I really didn’t know what I was doing last week either. Different kind of magic maybe, tapping out stories on the typewriter.

Thanks to Vern, I’ve got a stack of books beside me. Books of magic. Real magic. As a kid I would have probably given my arm to have even one of these books. Real magic. But now I just want to see Jane again. Walk in Central Park. Take in a show. And it sounds like the only way to do any of that is to race through these books. Vern says the spell I need is a class 9 spell. 9th grade spell? I have 2 years of college so this will be a piece a cake, right?

Isa paused. Class 9? Plane shift was class 7, right? But she tried to remember where she’d heard that. It was early on. She’d asked Lund, but she’d also talked magic with the strange wizard Fedru…. Had she written anything down, though? She reached for her bag, and sensed more than saw movement from the corner of her eye. A robed figure raised one finger in warning. Isa slowly opened her bag and reached inside for her notebook. She showed it to the figure, who gave the slightest of nods.

But her notes were woeful, and Isa vowed to do better in the future. She’d been here, what 5, no 6 days now - was that possible? Had it been longer? Longer, because she and Joth had been traveling to and from Hanchen for 4 days.

However long it had been, she needed to be systematic in her research and notes. Starting now. She flipped to a fresh page of her notebook and wrote “Gerry Tinero” and beside it “America Spell.”

She spent several hours reading and periodically (when Tinero got going about pronunciation in spells, he could get really boring really quickly) skimming the book. True to his word, Tinero started with the beginner spell mage hand and worked upward from there. As she read, she learned a lot about Gerry Tinero and about magic, and a little bit about Varana. It was hard to say how much of the cultural tidbits were still relevant. Ealda had said that he had been dead close to 20 years, and that he’d been an old man then.

Maybe he’d arrived in Varana old, but he didn’t seem old in those early pages. He seemed her age - young, confused, lonely. Isa found that she both liked and felt a little sorry for Gerry Tinero. Had he been able to finally get home to Jane, Central Park, and Broadway?

Isa let her hand rest on the book and rubbed her eyes. She’d made her way through about half of it. Tinero had just been going on about his success with the spell dimension door. That had seemed promising until Isa realized that it would only take you 500 feet from your current location.

Gerry had known that going in, but had neglected to expand on that limitation in his notes, but Isa couldn’t blame him. This document was for himself; he didn’t know that another American would be reading it 60 odd years later. Plus he had been at his studies a few years by then and perhaps his attention to detail had flagged. He knew now that learning that class 9 spell wasn’t going to be like 9th grade physics, and so his spell notes were sometimes not much better than shorthand.

He did sometimes make small asides in the margins - probably where he got the reputation for madness. One read: I miss traffic. Yeah, traffic. It took me months to learn to sleep with the quiet. I grew up in Hell's Kitchen. Standing on 52nd and 9th and you can smell the bagels at Izzy Einstein’s. They're just coming out of the oven and oh man! Izzy, he didn't care if you were Italian - eye-talian - you could have lox just the same. Lox. They don’t have salmon here. Or maybe they do, but not here in this little corner.

Thinking about bagels and lox made Isa realize that she hadn’t eaten in hours. She needed food and sleep, and then she could come back and finish reading Tinero’s book. She gave the bell a small tap and picked up her own notebook.

A robed figure - maybe the same one who’d cautioned her about opening her bag - hurried over. “I’m ready to go, for now,” Isa told him, her voice pitched low. She laid a hand protectively on Tinero’s Treatise. “I will be back to read more later.”

He nodded and picked up the volume. “As you wish,” he said in a whisper, and although she knew why they were both whispering, his words came out like a hiss.

Spoiler: Isa's Character Sheet

Name: Isa Chamberlin

Race: Human

Height & Weight: 5ft 6inches / 120 lbs

Class: Fighter Level: 3

Alignment: Good

Background: Stranger in a Strange Land

Hit Points: 20 AC: 13

Current Hit Points: 20

Combat: +4 to Hit

Weapons: Rapier (left hand) 1d8 +2 (piercing) / Quarterstaff (right hand) 1d6 +2 (bludgeoning)

Coin: 21gp, 10sp, 22cp

STR

11

0

DEX

14

+2

CON

11

0

INT

13

+1

WIS

13

+1

CHA

12

+1

Saving Throws: Str and Con +2

4

Acrobatics* (Dex)

1

Medicine (Wis)

1

Animal Handling (Wis)

1

Nature (Int)

1

Arcana (Int)

3

Perception* (Wis)

0

Athletics (Str)

1

Performance (Cha)

1

Deception (Cha)

1

Persuasion (Cha)

3

History* (Int)

1

Religion (Int)

3

Insight* (Wis)

2

Sleight of Hand (Dex)

1

Intimidation (Cha)

2

Stealth (Dex)

1

Investigation (Int)

1

Survival (Wis)

Special Attack: Two weapon fighting. When you engage in two-weapon fighting, you can add your ability modifier to the damage of the second attack.

Class Features:

Second Wind - On your turn, you can use a Bonus Action to regain hit points equal to 5 + your fighter level. Short or Long Rest before you can use it again.

Action Surge - On your turn, you can take one additional action on top of your regular action and a possible Bonus Action. You must finish a short or Long Rest before using it again.

Martial Archetype: Surgical Fighter

3rd level - Clinical Eye: Spend 1 combat turn studying your enemy and learn one of the following: if the enemy is equal to or stronger than you in strength, dexterity, or constitution. Can spend up to 3 turns to discern all 3. Can be used outside of combat as a free action - spend 1 minute to learn all three.