“We should be able to print loads more using this!” I proudly puffed out my chest at the wax-strengthened stencil, whereas Lutz just crossed his arms and cocked his head.
“...Hey, Myne, didn’t the High Priest say not to print too much? Is printing loads more really a good idea?”
“Waxing the paper will let us reuse the stencils, which means we can print over a longer period of time.”
“Don’t dodge the question!” Lutz yelled, but I had no intention of giving up my picture book stencils. I would eventually be using movable type printing for text-heavy books, but illustrations had to be remade.
“This is to lessen the load on Wilma. Isn’t being able to reuse stencils just better in every way?”
Lutz, knowing how much work it was for Wilma to draw the art then cut out the tiny lines, grimaced and rubbed his forehead. “Just the art stencils, alright?”
I waxed exclusively the art stencils, which I then gave to Gil. All the printing was now done by him and the gray priests in the Myne Workshop.
Lutz had a little more time on his hands thanks to Gil taking care of workshop business, and as a result, Lutz, Damuel, and I were able to spend our days alternating between going to the workshop and Gilberta Company, and going to the temple. The Italian restaurant was close to being done, its doors and window sills in the process of being installed, so I was actually pretty busy going there with Benno and visiting the ink workshop to record research results from Heidi, among other things.
“Myne, why’d you fall silent? Thinking of something?”
“Uh huh. Kamil.”
“Again?”
Despite my busyness, my mind was always dominated by thoughts of making toys for Kamil. According to reports from the orphanage, Dirk loved the wooden rattle I had made, but whenever he tried to hold it himself he’d drop it on his face and start crying. I felt bad thinking about a toy falling on Kamil’s cute face and hurting him, so if possible I wanted to make something that would be less painful.
“Lutz, I think I want some little bells.”
“What for?”
“I can use them to make a rattle small enough to squeeze.” There were a lot of bells and other metal objects that made noises here, but I hadn’t seen any that looked like cat bells, the tiny round bells you might find on an animal collar. It might be hard to get them to make a pretty sound, but the design itself was simple enough that Johann could probably make them if asked.
“Okay. Let’s go to the smithy.”
The smithy wasn’t far from the ink workshop, and I eagerly started making my way there.
“Morning.”
“Welcome, welcome. Heeeey! Gutenberg! Lady Myne’s here!” A smith who I had never seen before turned and casually shouted for Gutenberg without even a flicker of a smile on his face. Apparently they had gotten so used to the name that it wasn’t even a joke anymore.
Johann came to the front of the workshop and weakly muttered for the smith not to call him Gutenberg, but was very casually ignored.
“Lady Myne, what brings you here today? I haven’t finished the styluses yet.”
I had actually ordered a wide range of different styluses for writing on the wax paper, which meant the job would take him longer to finish.
“Well, you could actually have some apprentices do this work instead, but I want some bells like these.” I started drawing the schematics for the cat bells, which Johann peered at with great interest. As expected, he had only ever made larger, more traditionally shaped bells, never small and round ones.
“Lady Myne, are those notches just for decoration?”
“They’re important for producing the right sound. The notches don’t need to look exactly like this, but please don’t exclude them entirely. They need to be narrow enough that the balls inside won’t fall out.”
Bells would apparently make different sounds depending on the size of the notches, the thickness of the metal, the size of the balls, and the materials used, but I didn’t remember the details for all of that. All I knew was that if you put metal balls inside of a larger metal ball, it would make a noise when shaken. Once they were ready, I’d have him put the smaller cat bells into a larger metal shell; there needed to be two layers so that the noise would still be audible when put into a stuffed animal.
“...Yeah, these won’t be too hard to make. Are these for printing too?”
“No, I want to use these for baby toys. Even I order things unrelated to printing sometimes,” I said with pursed lips.
Johann beamed a wide grin. “Hey, this is the first time you’ve ordered something unrelated to books or printing. I thought books were the only thing you cared about,” he said, a clear sense of relief in his voice. Right now my head was full of Kamil, but in general I only cared about books. That said, I didn’t feel the need to correct his misunderstanding. He could be happy while it lasted.
Or so I thought, but Lutz went ahead and shot him down. “You were right. Myne only cares about books. If you think you can escape your fate as Gutenberg, you’ve got another thing coming.”
“I know that. Can’t you at least let me have a little hope?” Johann said with an exaggerated groan. Lutz slapped his back and said he needed to get used to me as soon as possible, which was the nail in his coffin.
“Yup. And Lutz, don’t forget you’re my oldest, most respectable Gutenberg,” I said, which for some reason made him slump over just as sadly as Johann.
Why? I was just trying to give him a compliment. So strange.
“I’ll just be going straight home today,” I said to Damuel after leaving the smithy. But at that moment, the chime of bells sounded out
