Chapter 4
It took less time than Shin'nen had expected to finish her grocery shopping. Unimpeded by draconic interception, it was easy enough to find the market Grimalkin had mentioned. The only trouble came when the cat insisted on choosing her dinner in person, and Shin'nen found herself the object of a baker's dozen odd looks as she tried to reason with the meowing cat. Though the market's prices were more than she'd come to expect from the enormous grocery store back home, she soon had more than enough groceries to keep the miniature Good Luck Bear company in her backpack with two plastic bags besides. Between the weight of the groceries and the ever-shifting cat draped around her shoulders, Shin'nen was oddly glad to come to the door of the Agency.
“I met a dragon today,” she rattled off to Asque, seated where she'd left him at his desk that morning. “Are they all that rude, or was it just his age? I always thought they'd be more refined and worldly, somehow. Rebekka said he was only two hundred, but I guess I don't really know how old they get. Do they really live to be thousands of years old, or is that just one of those myths?”
Asque shifted some papers on his desk. “Your parents called.”
“Well, I'm guessing his—my what?”
“Your parents. I do expect you know them. As I remember, you wrote them a rather frantic letter nearly a week ago. They were quite irate.”
Oh, God. The letter. She'd forgotten about it, forgotten all except that she'd written one to tell them what had happened, and perhaps she'd been a little panicky and not altogether coherent, but she'd been meaning to call them or email them and sort it all out, but then how exactly did you get a dial tone here and she hadn't quite found an internet cafe yet and everything had just been so distracting--
Asque continued as though ignoring the look of growing horror on her face. “They have said they will be here tomorrow to take you home.”
Shin'nen blinked thrice, swallowed. This was somehow very confusing. “And—you're just—letting them?”
“I hardly see how I can stop them.” His voice seemed flatter than usual, all sarcasm and annoyance bled out of the tone. “You may be considered an adult in some situations, but financially and legally you are still under their guardianship.”
“But--” Shin'nen found herself stammering. “But what about—about all that stuff about me learning how to control my magic and not healing car wreaks and making more work for you?”
The wizard began marking a form casually. “Well, you're no longer my problem. That's the Minneapolis agent's duty now. I've already sent her your file.” There was a tense silence in which the scratching of Asque's pen seemed almost deafening. He glanced up, frowned. “Well, you'd better get to work now if you expect to have that mess of yours packed by morning.”
It was another moment before Shin'nen managed a baffled nod and broke her limbs from the casing of shock to move mechanically toward the stairs and apartment. Reaching it, she dumped her load unceremoniously by the door and sat abruptly on the still pungent carpeting, sending Grimalkin scurrying to avoid being deposited with the various bags.
A few days ago, she'd have been elated that her parents were finally coming to her rescue. Life at the agency had seemed like a nightmare, something only her parents and their engulfing embraces could possibly wake her from. They'd arrive in the battered Volkswagen van, gather her into their arms and whisk her away to small town Minnesota, where the closest thing to magic was the way the snow covered everything after a blinding night and made the world glitter come morning. She'd known it was a silly way to think, that just by going home everything would magically reset and things would be back as they were, but somehow imagining Mom and Dad, valiant in sweaters and unnecessary down coats, made her feel safer.
But now . . . now she wasn't sure what she thought.
She hauled herself to her feet, ignoring the yowls and mental shouting of Grimalkin, and began methodically putting away her purchased groceries. Milk to the fridge, cereal to the cupboard, open the cat food and give the kitty a meal. She had just gotten everything unpacked! It seemed so . . . so sudden.
After the groceries were filed away, she stood still for what felt like an eternity, then went to the bedroom and began filling the Rubbermaid tubs once more. Grimalkin was saying something as she folded away the clothes from the closet, but she couldn't understand what it was. Finally there was a flick of a crooked tail at the edge of her vision and the cat was gone. It was for the best, really. Cats didn't talk in Minnesota, after all. Not in the sensible Midwest. It was only here, on the coast, where things got all confused like that. It was the sea air. It made things go funny.
She realized finally that there was nothing left to pack. It didn't seem to have taken as long to put away her possessions as it had to set them out, and now the apartment was just as empty and exhausting as it had been—oh, God, was it only?--two mornings ago. The only color left in the apartment spilled from the tub of stuffed animals, which hadn't shut properly. A pink paw dangled over the rim, and Shin'nen snatched the bear up and clutched it to her chest. Sitting herself on the couch, she curled herself on the couch and curled herself about Cheer Bear, hoping in the back of her mind that this bear wouldn't fail her as all the others had.
There was a knock at the door, but she didn't move. She'd probably imagined it, of course. She didn't live here, and no one would visit an empty apartment. The knock sounded again, and she wondered if perhaps the sea air made people hear ghosts, too. Finally, the door creaked open and a voice, no nonsense, came at her back.
“I expected you downstairs twelve and a half minutes ago. I don't appreciate being left waiting.”
Shin'nen blinked twice, blearily, then raised her head to peer over the back of the couch. “What?” she croaked.
“You're late,” Asque said from the doorway, arms crossed over his sweater vest, face a perfect mask of perturbation.
“I . . .” She swallowed, shook her head slightly to try to bring her thoughts back into focus. “I thought you said I was the Minneapolis agent's problem now.”
“Lucinda is an idiot.” He glanced around the room, noting the absence of the posters and knick-knacks that had so briefly colored it. “I can hardly expect her to teach you anything useful. I should at least be able to give you some pointers so you might survive the summer. However, since you seem so very disinclined to actually attend such a session--”
“No, I—I'm--” She shook her head again, dragged herself to her feet. “I'm coming. Sorry to keep you waiting. Thanks,” she added almost inaudibly as they began the trek back down the stairs. Asque's mouth twitched, and Shin'nen pretended he had almost smiled.
***
The drive home was uncomfortable and silent. The length didn't help, either: twenty-four some hours enclosed with two people she'd forgotten how to talk to. Shin'nen hadn't remembered just how long it had taken to reach the coast last fall, even stopping on the way to wander state parks and lounge around poolside at a Microtel. Then, they'd made a mini vacation of it, but now the travel seemed like a frantic flight, and Shin'nen couldn't decide if she even wanted to be making it. That her parents had certainly driven the distance in one shot hardly helped soothe her guilt.
In the late-night hours leading up to her parent's arrival at the agency, she'd considered telling them they hadn't needed to come, that they could just join her for dinner and spend the night and head home, without her, but she wasn't that brave. Secretly, she was glad they didn't carry cell phones; the imposed radio silence let her keep pretending she could put off explaining the things she didn't want to think about. In the end, of course, she'd put it off too long, and to turn around, all her belongings somehow crammed into the space around and under the seats in the blue Volkswagen van, was more than even her imagination could manage.
She'd woken up that morning to find, for the first time in her conscious memory, that she was alone in the building. Somehow she'd immediately known the usual wizard fixture of the office's desk wasn't there, and a thorough search had proved it, and secretly she was grateful that he hadn't been around when her parents arrived. For a while she lightened her mood pretending he had actually slept in, as she had, after the cram session of the previous night and early morning, but of course that was ridiculous. There was a handwritten sign, bold in thick marker, taped beneath the plaque of hours on the front door, declaring that he was out on business and the office was closed. Maybe, she thought, he had wanted to avoid the confrontation as much as she had. At least he had the means to do so.
Grimalkin was still gone, as well, and Shin'nen wished she could recall what the cat had been telling her before leaving in a cat-ish huff. She knew Shin'nen would be leaving, she was there, she had to know—but she hadn't returned, not even appeared in a tree to say goodbye. The practical part of Shin'nen was glad; while she knew her parents would be accepting of the cat, two border terriers back home hardly would be—always her parents' reasoning against farm cats on the small prairie acreage—and she had no idea how she'd navigate the cat through the various state borders that she recalled required proof of vaccinations for feline passage. So she'd written a note for Asque about the cans of salmon Friskies and left the My Little Pony throw, still sprinkled with cream and lavender hair, crumpled upon the upstairs table, hoping she'd be forgiven.
She hadn't been sure what to do about her almost-friends at the bakery. It seemed like the sort of thing that should be explained in person, not over the phone, but sleeping in later than usual had thrown off her schedule. By the time she'd thought to leave she was paralyzed by the thought that her parents might arrive before she got back despite the supposed full day of driving from rural Minnesota to the bustling seaboard. Finally gathering up the urge to make the phone call, she'd been thwarted by the impossibility of finding a phone book, for although she knew the office must contain one, her first inspection of the drawers and crannies proved in vain. It had only been when she'd worked herself up to a second sweep of the room that she discovered Asque's drawers apparently didn't connect to the same reality as the rest of the room, and she spent the next twenty minutes closing and opening them to new content in vain before giving up.
All in all, she felt thwarted, shoved back to childhood and the days of being diverted by vague explanations and promises of someday answers, and when her parents arrived, two no-doubt illegal hours earlier than she'd thought possible, she'd felt again three feet tall within their engulfing hugs.
They took turns driving, making another straight-through trip as though if they stopped for longer than it took to fill up the gas-guzzler van and pick up drive-through burgers, something might reach out and snatch their precious child back to that unknown land of rainy winters and spells and wizards. Shin'nen wasn't entirely convinced otherwise herself, and she found herself lagging at rest stops in hopes of the like. At least her mom had thought to bring audiobooks, and Shin'nen abused them to avoid conversation, hoping her parents would take her silence for stress, relief, exhaustion, anything other than what it was, because whatever that might be, she wasn't sure she wanted to find out. Once, while both parents were asleep, Shin'nen found herself turn off the interstate, intending to ride the clover system onto the other side of the road and head back for the coast, and it was only the fear of explaining herself that set her Minnesota-bound again.
If she hadn't been so close to her parents, she felt like this all would have been so much easier. She'd always commiserated with high school friends about horrible, strict parents while feeling free and safe under the reign of her own. The last real argument she could recall having with her mom occurred in the fifth grade over the purchase of a GigaPet, and she had always prided herself in the knowledge that she could talk about anything with her parents, anything, without worrying they'd misunderstand.
Except she couldn't, not really, because it would be so much easier if they would misunderstand, because it was so much easier to feel secure in decisions when they met with someone's disapproval and she was free to ignore them in their ignorance. She felt somehow guilty in explaining her situation, as though something she'd done or was planning to do was horribly wrong, even if she knew it really wasn't, and that made it impossible to say whether it would be worse if they approved or didn't.
Once home, she felt more like a moody teenager than she ever had in the other nine of her double-digit years, and to her relief and dismay her parents didn't press her for details. “When she's ready, she'll tell us,” she knew they were thinking, damn their loving and open parenting style, and she secretly found herself wishing they'd just sit her down and demand information to save her the necessary courage. Upon unpacking her belongings, she'd discovered she must have forgotten Brave Heart Lion somewhere back on the coast, and it seemed horribly symbolic.
Back in the midst of small-town Minnesota, buried in late-arriving snow and sleeping fields, she didn't know what to do with herself. It was the time of year when, aside from the occasional snow day, students secretly wished to be in school, just to keep busy, and Shin'nen wished things could snap back to last year, senior year, surrounded by friends and smothered in homework, just too busy to worry about college and moving and the so-called real-world. But now, while all her old friends were off at school, she was back here, an apparent failure of the university system. She didn't know how to deal with the matter; everyone who knew avoided the subject, and when someone didn't and asked she wasn't sure what to say.
She spent the first few days hibernating in her room, braving the startling Minnesota cold to give grain to the chickens and goats her father felt should occupy a five-acre farmstead in country. She finished three books and two video games and finally cleaned her room before she found she couldn't stay in the house any longer. All the while, she felt the nasty gulf between herself and her parents, dropping her further and further into immaturity and degrading her ability to do anything about it.
After the first week, she dug began to sneak out to the barn to practice.
She missed the cat, she missed the bakery—heck, she even missed Asque, just a little. More, she missed her high school friends and speaking with her parents and feeling a part of her community, and in lieu of those activities she practiced. The majority of her cram session before leaving Oregon had been in learning how to properly cast a practice circle. Hers were still shaky, but gained refinement with each hidden session, and with the help of Asque's Book, which had somehow never gotten out of her backpack, she slowly expanded her knowledge.
***
A week and a half into her homely exile, Shin'nen was woken from a nap by a phone call.
“Mmellow?” she answered, attempting to clear the sleep out of her voice and largely failing. She rubbed her eyes with her free hand. Why was it that naps always seemed to make you feel more tired upon waking than when you'd first fallen asleep?
A timid voice came across the line. “Um, hello? Is . . . Shin'nen there?”
“Um, yeah. That's me.”
“Oh! Oh, I found you! I didn't think I would!”
Shin'nen tried to blink her brain back into focus. Waking up, she decided, was not her strong point. “Uh, great.”
“Oh, I'm sorry! This is Kristina Buysee! From the bakery?”
Everything snapped back on. Shin'nen clutched the handset to her ear and began a frantic pacing on the cord's length. “Oh my God! No, I'm sorry—Kristina! Wow! Um—oh, gosh—I'm so sorry I just left like that—you and Bekka must think I'm a total idiot or something.”
“No, that's okay,” Kristina reassured her quickly, “we got the basic idea from Samiel—he's really kind of a gossip, but more complainy—so we figured it would be hard for you to get in touch with us . . .”
“How . . . did you find me?” Shin'nen wondered. Probably, there was some sort of spell she could have used to look up the telephone number and saved herself all the trouble of desk drawer madness. Well, now she felt stupid.
“Oh, um . . .” There was a nervous laugh. “You're gonna think this is really stalkerish. I kind of . . . Googled your name and found a page off your high school's website, and then sorta looked through the phone books for that part of Minnesota at the library . . .”
“Oh!” Now she really felt stupid. “Oh, that's totally not stalkerish. Well, kind of, but—way to make use of modern technology! I had almost gotten the opinion that everyone over there was completely computer illiterate.”
“Brian's a computer programmer,” Kristina admitted, “so I'm required to keep up on at least half of the jargon.”
“Really? Awesome. I dated a computer geek in high school, but I never got more technical than installing my own RAM.” Shin'nen shifted the phone to her other ear and sprawled herself out on the living room couch, disturbing Toto and Pippin from their nap. Annoyed, the twin terriers whined and crawled over her, batting her hand with damp noses in search of apology petting. She obliged with her free hand, making the two fight for attention.
“I hear puppies!” Kristina exclaimed. “Do I hear puppies?”
“Uh, yeah—they're getting pretty old, though. Pippin and Toto.”
“Oh, I wish I could keep a dog in my apartment . . . and I'm still holding out for the right cat. How's your kitty?”
Shin'nen drew herself into a sitting position. “You . . . haven't seen her around over there?”
“No.” There was a pause. “You mean you didn't take her with you?”
“She wasn't around when I had to leave. I'm hoping Asque's been feeding her. I left food.”
“Yeah, me, too. Maybe . . . maybe we can ask Samiel to check.”
Eager to change the subject, Shin'nen shifted the phone again. “Um, how are things with Brian?”
“Greaaat,” came the reply, and Shin'nen could visualize the small woman melting again at the thought, entirely forgetting the previous discussion. “It's our second anniversary in two weeks, and I think he's gonna propose . . .” She gave the kind of sigh you only expect to hear on soap operas. “For Valentine's day he filled my apartment with rose petals. It was so sweet . . . Of course, we had so much trouble cleaning them all up afterwards, but ohhh.”
“That's great,” Shin'nen offered, absently wishing she had a guy who'd fill even her closet with flowers, daisies, even, who cares about the mess. “I mean, great that's it's going great. And a proposal, wow . . . Be careful or I think your life's gonna turn into a kinky romance novel.”
There was another pause where Kristina was most definitely blushing. “Well, maybe not quite. I've secretly already started planning the wedding, though. There's this beautiful little church just out of town with all these stain glass windows—of course we might have to do it at night, which would actually make it even more exciting, and then I'll have to see if there's some charm I can do to make sure it'll be clear so we can get a full moon through the windows and lots of candlelight . . .”
“Wait, he can . . . go into churches and all that?”
“Well, sure, it's a Catholic chapel, I guess, but I don't think Methodists have any problem with that, so . . . oh! You mean, like, ah . . . Oh, no.” She laughed. “That's a myth. He goes to services Wednesday evenings.”
More feeling stupid again. She made a mental note to research vampires in her next study session. “Oh!,” she remembered. “I read about a weather spell the other day, for that sort of thing,” Shin'nen offered, smothering tickle-giggles as Toto began licking her toes. “It needs a lot of preparation and stuff, but that shouldn't be a problem for something with a set date like that.”
“Reading? Oh! Do you have a library there, too?”
“Oh, um . . . not exactly. I sorta accidentally on purpose ran off with Asque's old copy of the Book.”
“Really? Those are expensive!” She lapsed into a short, embarrassed silence. “Actually, do you think you could help me out? I'm . . . still working on that spell I told you about, to reverse the turning for Brian, and I was hoping to have at least something outlined to give him for our anniversary . . .”
Before Kristina could explain the details, Shin'nen burst in, “I'd love to. I'm bored out of my skull here. I'd forgotten how useful it was to have a mandatory get-together via the school system.”
“I'd be a lot easier if you were here . . . but oh! We can work on a transport spell, too—I remember there are some pretty basic ones I think we could work up.”
“You are my savior, yes! I'm in, definitely.”
“Alright! So—so, um, here's what I was thinking of so far . . .”
***
The phone calls became a daily occurrence, and Shin'nen began to expect the ringing of the phone in mid-afternoon when Kristina took her lunch break. Slowly, the respective spells began to take shape, reformulated and reorganized with each daily conversation. Still largely lost in the universe of magic, Shin'nen offered researched information from her appropriated Book, while Kristina supplied more practical suggestions.
On her end, Shin'nen felt rather insecure; their topics of study had taken her away from books filled with Asque's scathing critiques, and without a harsh declaration of what was incorrect in the books, she felt she couldn't trust what wasn't marked. But each seemed to be making progress, and the phone calls filled with more and more descriptions of half-successes and little victories. Combining three versions of a shield spell, Kristina managed to come up with a matrix that would hide the amount of magic necessary for her spell while assuring passerby wouldn't stumble on the mess. Shin'nen worked around the excessive power requirements for her transportation spell by setting up an incremental charging algorithm.
Still, Kristina was still at a loss as to how to proceed with her project on her own limited resources. The details of the plan, too, were far too vague to be reassuring; working on the basis that it was the combination of blood and magic that sustained a vampire as such, she'd developed a method of complete instantaneous transfusion. Unfortunately, that required both large amounts of blood and magic, of which the small woman had very little to offer. Whether it would even work was doubtful; as determined as she was, there were centuries of failure behind them, failure by those far more experienced and talented than the two women. But it was a start, and as soon as her spell own spell was fully charged, Shin'nen intended to go help Kristina in person.
She had been about to add her daily dose to the spellwork in the barn, hidden beneath a small speedboat trapped indoors for the winter, when Toto and Pippin began an explosion of barking outside. Reluctantly throwing on her coat, Shin'nen tramped to the door, expecting one of the neighbor cats had strayed a little too close to the farm again. Sure enough, a cat-like figure could be seen in the front yard, hissing down at the frantic twins from a bare-branched tree.
“Pip, Toto, shut up!” Shin'nen shouted, plowing her way through the four inches of steadily-falling powder toward the dogs. To her surprise, they seemed to be calming all of their own accord, and both lay down before the tree, panting. Pippin whined at Shin'nen, then up at the tree. The cat leaped down stiffly, paws burying into the soft snow. 'There's a good boy,' said a familiar tone, and the cat's kinked tail swished as she glared at the two dogs. 'These farm dogs; no manners whatsoever.'
“Grimalkin!” Shin'nen exclaimed, scooping the cat up in a coat-encumbered hug.
'Don't hug me, feed me. I'm starved.' And so she looked; thin and scraggly, far dirtier and older-looking than when she had first appeared at Shin'nen's apartment window. For the first time, Shin'nen appreciated just how old the cat must now be, and just how far she must have had to try to travel. 'Why do you live in a climate like this? How did I ever live in a climate like this?'
Carting the cat back inside the house, Shin'nen broke into apology: “I'm so sorry I left you there! I couldn't find you anywhere, and I didn't know how I could explain to my parents I was waiting for a cat, and I didn't know when you'd be coming back, or--”
'Weren't you listening? No, you obviously weren't—that much is obvious.' Perfectly content to be carried, Grimalkin folded her paws irritably over Shin'nen's arm. 'I left before you did, which you'd know if you'd been paying attention. It would have led to too many questions for me to travel home with you--a poor decision on my part, I now see, but it seemed prudent at the time. Don't expect it to happen again.'
“I don't intend to let it happen again. You look horrible.” She had felt stupid about saving the can of salmon Friskies, but now she hurried to dig it out of the cupboard.
'How very kind of you. I am nineteen, after all—most cats are lucky to see a decade and a half. I expect you'll have to find my next life fairly soon, anyway.' The Siamese didn't wait for Shin'nen to scoop the food out of the tin, instead batting at her hand until she let her lap and gnaw directly at the meal.
“Your—your what?”
'My next life—cats do have nine lives, you know. Everyone knows that.' She gave Shin'nen a suffering look over her salmon bits. 'When I die, my soul will inhabit a new kitten, and you had better find it right away, as I have no intention of wasting two lives in a row.'
“Uh, right.” Well, there was another thing to look up. Secretly, she hoped Grimalkin's next incarnation would be a little kinder, though that was highly unlikely.
Grimalkin finished the can in what Shin'nen guessed was record time, then arranged herself on the coat Shin'nen had tossed onto the counter. 'Now go modify that spell you've been hiding to include a cat. And buy me more food. I'm taking a nap.'
Shin'nen was about to ask how she might do that, but the cat was already asleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment