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Marinette shook her head, shoving one page to the side. “Okay, let’s skip this part. What was next?”
Alya sighed. “Equal parts eye of newt, king’s crown, and panacea.”
“Uh-huh. Right, right. What was next?”
“The divine creation component—the bracelet’s made of silver, so that should be it, right?”
“Right, of course. How about the first one again?”
“Essence of kapur—that’s camphor oil.”
Adrien, curled up in the beanbag in Marinette’s room, rested his head on his fist as he watched the girls pore over the notes Alya had translated. They were trying to repair Ginjii’s bracelet—if Gabriel had been able to repair the peacock Miraculous using the information from the Miraculous Book, then they should be able to do the same. But the translation was slow going.
In the meantime, Ginjii’s bracelet was tucked safely away in the Miracle Box, where the little hedgehog kwami could rest in peace.
The trapdoor flew open and Nino practically fell into the room. “Dude! I found something!”
Marinette lunged forward to catch his arm before he could slip back down the ladder, and she pulled so hard that they both sprawled across the floor. Adrien turned away with a wince, having seen Nino’s elbow hit Marinette’s stomach, and Marinette’s shoulder hit Nino’s chin.
“Okay, come on, guys.” Alya leaned down to carefully untangle the other teens, kissing Nino’s forehead before tugging his cap back into place. “What’d you find, Nino?”
“Check this out,” Nino began, dropping into the beanbag with Adrien and looping an arm around his shoulders. “After the Kid Thunder stuff last week, Chris’s class was doing some special lessons about thunder and lightning. His teacher just so happened to mention that there’s a special kind of glass made when lightning strikes sand.”
“Lightning glass?” Alya ran back to the desk, digging through the pile of papers.
“It’s called fulgurite,” Nino called after her. “And—you’re never gonna believe this!”
Marinette snorted. “There’s a lot I’m willing to believe, Nino.” She had a few kwami nesting in her hair, and others racing around the room in an incomprehensible game of tag.
“You can just buy it!” He tugged on Adrien’s shoulders, shaking him back and forth in his excitement. “Mylene knows a lot about crystals, right? So I called her and asked—Chris wanted some after his teacher talked about it—and she told me where I could get it!”
Nino dug into his pocket and pulled out a small paper bag. “Ta-da!”
Marinette swooped in to pick it up, staring down into the bag. “This is great, Nino! Good job!”
Nino tapped the brim of his cap and nodded. “All in a day’s work, Milady.”
Adrien elbowed him in the side. “That’s my line,” he protested with an exaggerated whine.
“Yeah, yeah.” Nino pushed him away with a laugh, though he let Adrien fall right back against him.
“That’s two ingredients down,” Alya sighed. “We’ve still got four to go—five, if you count the silver.”
The room fell into frustrated silence. Adrien had a notepad on his knee, where he’d written down the last of the ingredients, and he stared at them thoughtfully. Were they an anagram? No, that didn’t make sense. They could be a code for something—but Alya had already decoded the pages, so another code wasn’t likely.
Alya sighed again. “Sorry to break this up, but I need to get going. I’m on babysitting duty tonight.”
“I better go, too,” Nino added. “Mom’s been working late all week, but she’s actually gonna be home for dinner tonight.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Adrien said quickly, seeing Marinette still focused on the papers in front of her. He followed his friends down the stairs and to the back door, waving them off as they walked down the street.
Then he paused, in the bakery’s backroom, and took a second to breathe.
It still felt a little strange to call Marinette’s house his home, but he was getting used to it. Aunt Amelie was still his legal guardian, but Tom and Sabine were more or less his foster parents now. Life with the Dupain-Cheng family was very different from life in the Agreste household...but Adrien felt like he’d never been happier.
“Hello, Adrien.” Sabine smiled at him when he walked into the bakery. “Did your friends leave already?”
“They had stuff to get to,” he explained, smiling back. He liked the bakery. Tom and Sabine never minded if he wanted to help out, or if he just wanted to sit in the corner and keep them company. It was warm and cozy and so very different from the life he’d once led.
“What do you have there?” Sabine asked. “Is that homework?”
He’d pulled a stool up to the counter and set his notebook on top of it. His earlier efforts at translation had mostly turned into random scribbles on the page, and he gave a heavy sigh as he stared at them. “We’re trying to figure out what herbs these could be,” he explained, letting Sabine glance at the pages. It wouldn’t hurt to let her see it, as long as she didn’t know what it was for. “We need to find out what the common name for these is.”
“Let me see...chandana, eye of newt, king’s crown, and panacea?” Sabine mused, studying the page. “Well, panacea is an old-fashioned name for ginseng. It has a lot of uses in natural medicine, and some people think it can be used to help cure anything.”
Adrien’s heart was suddenly racing. “Really?”
Sabine nodded. “One of my uncle’s neighbors sold natural remedies in her shop. I always thought it was so fascinating, and she taught me a lot about herbs.”
“Do you know any others?”
She stared at the page, running the tip of one finger over the words. “Chandana doesn’t sound familiar...oh, but you know what eye of newt is, right?”
“It’s not...it’s not really an eye, is it?”
“No, of course not,” Sabine chuckled. “It’s mustard seed. Some of the old names are just descriptions. For example, cowslips, those little cup-shaped flowers, were called fairy cups. See?” She gestured to a vase at one end of the counter, where a few sprigs of tiny yellow flowers had been placed in the arrangement. “A mustard seed is a tiny ball, no bigger than the tip of your pencil, so it looks a little bit like the eye of a very small animal.”
Adrien nodded, making a few notes on the page. Mustard seed and ginseng...those didn’t sound too hard. “And king’s crown?”
“Let me check something, dear.” Sabine patted his hand before moving across the bakery. Adrien pulled his phone out, sending a quick message to Marinette to let her know what he’d found out.
Sabine came back, placing an old book on the counter beside Adrien’s notebook. “When my uncle’s neighbor passed away, she left me a few of her reference books as keepsakes,” she explained. Adrien stared at the neat lines of hanzi as Sabine thumbed through the pages. A strange, spicy odor clung to the book, reminding Adrien of the smell that lingered in his father’s office sometimes.
“It’s possible…” Sabine mused. She rested a finger on the page, her brow pinched in thought. “King’s crown could refer to a number of things...do you know what these herbs are supposed to do, or is figuring that out part of your assignment?”
“Uh, I think...” Adrien stammered. It wasn’t really an assignment, but he couldn’t tell Sabine that. “I think they’re for healing? For—for medicine?”
Sabine nodded to herself. “There are a few different things here, but you’re probably looking for wormwood.”
Adrien frowned. “Isn’t that a bad thing?”
“Oh, no, dear. The name might seem unpleasant, but it’s a very useful plant. It can help with digestive issues or inflammation, with the proper dosage.” She hesitated. “You’re not...trying to make anything with these, are you?”
“No, ma’am,” Adrien replied quickly. It was technically a lie, but he tried to forget about that. They weren’t making a medicine to ingest, it was to repair the hedgehog Miraculous. But telling Sabine they needed the herbs for a spell would probably just make her worry. “We just needed to find out what they are.”
“Well, good luck with everything else,” she said cheerfully, closing her book. “Was there anything else?”
Adrien’s phone buzzed. He checked it discreetly, finding a message from Marinette.
-Chandana = sandalwood
“That’s everything,” he said, a smile spreading across his face. “Um...Sabine? Could I...could I stay down here a little longer?”
She smiled at him, leaning up enough to kiss his cheek. “Of course, dear. Stay as long as you like.”
…
It was Alya’s turn to burst into Marinette’s room the next day. “I’ve got it!” She climbed up the ladder in record speed, reaching back to haul Nino after her. “Girl, I’ve got the last piece!”
Adrien, curled up in his usual beanbag chair, gave Alya and Nino an embarrassed wave. Some of the kwamis had been asking about comic books, and he’d been volunteered to hold one and turn the pages so the little creatures could read it. Tiny, colorful beings fluttered around him, reading the words off the page and arguing over the pictures. Plagg was planted firmly on the top of Adrien’s head, chasing away any kwami that tried to perch up there, and turning his hair into a tangled mess.
Nino had a paper bag under his arm, and he stopped at one end of Marinette’s desk to unload little packets of herbs while Alya flipped open the case she’d brought and held it up for Marinette’s inspection.
Marinette frowned, staring into the case. “Is that a...what is it called?”
“A soldering iron!” Alya exclaimed happily. “So, you know how the twins are all about space now, right? Last night, they wanted to watch this program about how astronauts make repair in space.”
“They...solder it?” Marinette guessed.
“That’s not the point,” Alya shook her head. “They talked about what they use for that. All the technical stuff about what holds up best in space. The girls ate it up—but that’s not the important part. The program went through all the other types of soldering that aren’t appropriate for outer space.”
Alya set the case down on the end of the desk, opposite the packets Nino had unloaded, then dug in her pocket and produced a spool of wire.
Marinette gasped. “Silver?”
“It’s used a lot in fancy electronics,” Alya said, flipping the spool in the air. “So, we swung by Max’s on the way over and borrowed some of his equipment.”
Marinette rushed around the table and threw her arms around her friend. “Thanks, Alya! You’re a lifesaver!”
“Hey!” Adrien pretended to pout from the beanbag. “I found the rest of the stuff! What about me?”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re a genius.” Alya rolled her eyes, but she was grinning from ear to ear when she reached down to haul Adrien to his feet. “So...ready to do this?”
…
Marinette had brought out her big work table and set it up in the middle of the room, taping some of the translated pages from the Miracle Book in a row along the top edge. “Adrien?”
He’d run downstairs for the kitchen scale, and had carefully measured out the precise amounts of the herbal ingredients. “I think this is right?”
Nino leaned over his shoulder, studying the little dish Adrien had arranged the herb powders in. “Looks like the picture, dude,” he commented.
The four herbs—sandalwood, mustard seed, wormwood, and ginseng—had been ground into fine powders and lined up in the upper half of a porcelain saucer. They’d had to do some math to figure out the proper amounts of each ingredient, since the book was so old it didn’t list ounces or any other modern measurement system.
“Alya?” Marinette called.
“Right here.” Alya held up an eyedropper of camphor oil—they’d had to find an essential oils shop to get some that was undiluted, and Alya was wearing gloves to protect her skin. She carefully dripped the oil into the saucer, coating the bottom half.
Marinette gingerly eased a little cone of incense into the center of the saucer, making sure it was touching each ingredient. She struck a match and stuck it to the top of the cone, then stepped back.
The incense flared to life. The kwamis spiraled up, encircling the space, paws spread out as they began to channel their own magic into the spell.
Marinette reached for the soldering iron...and hesitated. “I’m no….”
“Girl. You’ll be fine,” Alya said gently. “You’re the artist here, remember? If anyone can fix a piece of jewelry, it’s you.”
“Yeah, what Alya said,” Nino chimed in. “You got this, Marinette.”
Her hands were shaking. Ginji’s bracelet was being held up by a clamp, the jagged break through the center easy to see. Marinette picked up a piece of the soldering wire and it slipped right out of her hand. She bent down to look for it, and Adrien joined her. He knelt beside her, finding the length of wire before she did.
Adrien stood up, gently pulling Marinette to her feet. “You’re the keeper of the box,” he whispered. “You’re Ladybug. You can do this.”
She met his gaze, her eyes wide and uncertain. “I don’t know….”
“You’re Ladybug because you can do this,” he said. “It’s who you are.”
Marinette bit her lip and nodded. “Tikki?”
Red magic swirled around her, and Ladybug stood in her place. She picked up the wire and the soldering iron, adjusted a set of goggles over her eyes, and leaned over the bracelet.
Sparks flew. The kwamis hummed. Smoke spiraled up from the incense as the ingredients began to swirl together. A strange haze seemed to fill the room, and the air seemed warm when Adrien took in a deep breath.
The smell was so familiar. Nothing like the strong-scented incense or herbs. It was warm, and it filled his chest with an aching sense of nostalgia.
It smelled like his mother. He didn’t know why—she’d never worn a perfume like this—but in that moment she was all he could think about. Something deep in his chest loosened and broke away, and he was flooded with a burst of faint, warm memories. Her hands beside his on the piano. The sun in her hair as they walked through a garden. She was laughing and smiling, her voice lifted in song while he carefully picked out the tune.
Then it was gone, the memories fading as quickly as they’d appeared. Adrien blinked heavily, the world suddenly swimming back into focus. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Alya wiping tears away, and Nino putting an arm around her to comfort her.
“It’s done,” Ladybug said. She lifted the goggles, and looked up, giving them all a cautious smile. “I think we did it.
The kwamis all cheered. Adrien leaned in, studying the bracelet in the clamp. “You even matched the pattern.”
“The spell did that, as soon as I filled in the crack,” Ladybug replied. She hesitated, but picked the bracelet up and placed it on the palm of her hand. “Ginjii?”
A bright yellow kwami exploded out of the bracelet, flying a fast circle around the room. “Ladybug!”
Ladybug held up her hand. Ginjii zoomed another few circuits around the room before flying over to hover over her palm. He was bright, practically glowing, his big brown eyes staring up at Ladybug.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“You fixed it!” Ginjii gave a cheer and zoomed away, darting in sharp diagonals across the room. “You fixed it—she fixed my bracelet!” He bounced around the other kwamis, who added their own cries of joy to his.
“Ginjii!” Ladybug called him back over. The yellow kwami happily flew over to her, nearly vibrating with excitement. “I have to ask you something very important.”
He nodded. His hedgehog spines quivered with excitement as he stared up at Ladybug, too full of energy and joy to truly stand still.
“Everyone you see here, has made it their mission to help protect the world. We all do this of our own free will, not because of orders or obligations. I would never command you or anyone to join our cause; so I’m going to ask you. Will you help us?”
Ginjii spun around in a happy circle. He spotted Adrien and rushed over, rubbing his face on Adrien’s cheek. “Friend!”
Adrien laughed, cupping a hand around the kwami. “It’s good to see you again.”
Ladybug cleared her throat. “Ginjii?”
“Ladybug?”
Adrien bit back a laugh as Ginjii sped away from him to hover in front of Ladybug. He couldn’t blame the kwami for being excited— they had no way to know how long ago his Miraculous was damaged, but by the way he was acting now it had to have been a long time. But now his Miraculous was repaired and Ginjii was healed and stable. He could be a strong ally for them...and a good friend.
“Will you help us?” Ladybug asked again.
Ginjii turned a little somersault over her hand, giggling to himself. “Yes! Yes! Yes! My friends—I will happily help my friends!”