“Apprentices, we are, as you know, all hands-on to prepare for the blood moon. The masters have decided that a suitable task for the apprentices will be to work on the mechanical voice boxes. The specification is uniform for each personifate, so this is the best task to get started with.”

Prue had read a little about voice boxes in her library studies.

“Apprentices who have been with the Guild for a year can proceed on the projects, and I will check your work. Apprentices who have been here under a year, please come to the front table.”

Seven apprentices came to the front. Master Tinubu placed a cube, about the size of a dice, on the table. Prue had certainly been expecting something a little bigger.

“While our own voice boxes, our larynx, controls the flow of air, the mechanical voice boxes we make at the factorium control the flow of signals and translate that into sound. The ghost’s own frequency results in the voice so there is only one possible, unique sound. If we don’t get the mechanics quite right, it results in static or silence. The voice box is complex micro-engineering, but the mechanics are easy to follow if you stick with the step-by-step instructions.”

Master Tinubu looked to the door. “I had hoped Master Sollentude would join me to get you all started.” She glanced at her pocket watch and sighed. “Well, we’ll have to just get on with it. She went to the cupboard then gave them all a copy of Inner Mechanical Workings of the Personifate by Hannah Woolstenbury, Volume III, which was as thick as one of Lavender’s spelt loaves.

“Chapter Eleven onwards. You’d better get reading, then tomorrow you can make a start on the mechanics.”

*

By the end of the afternoon, as they walked back to the transport hut, there was so much information going around in Prue’s brain that she longed for sleep just to give it a rest. The voice boxes were fascinating, but it had been difficult to concentrate when her mind kept drifting back to her memory research. She looked back at the factorium, then she realized with a bolt that they hadn’t checked the trap in two days!

“We’d better check the trap. If some poor animal was stuck there, I’d feel terrible.”

“I’d almost forgotten about it, what with that business at the spirit lights,” said Edwin.

“It’s time to take it down anyway. Whatever killed the personifate is probably long gone,” Prue said, although there was still that seed of doubt in her mind. What if it hadn’t been a joke? What if there was more to the creature she’d seen? “We need to keep an eye out, in case Cora and Larkin try anything again,” she added.