Chapter Nine: Damaged Souls
Guardians of the Twilight Lands -- The Sixth Book of Unexpected Enlightenment
The next morning, Nurse Moth removed the bandage from Rachel’s arm. Fetching her flute, she played a lilting tune. Green sparkles played over the wounded area, accompanied by the scent of freshly baked bread.
The wounds closed. Rachel lifted her arm, running her hand over the newly healed skin. She kneaded her flesh where the barghest had bitten her. There was no pain and no scar. The only scar on her arm was on the side of her right wrist from the blood-brother ceremony with Siggy. Rachel was still grateful to Nurse Moth for making that cut form a scar. It was important for blood siblings to have matching scars from where they cut themselves during the ceremony. Had the nurse used magic to heal that wound perfectly, it would have ruined everything.
The nurse released her. Rachel trudged back to her dorm through the cold drizzle. The driving winds blew the wet air sideways, so that the line of large black umbrellas that hung brim-to-brim over the gravel pathways hardly protected those walking beneath them from the elements. She felt sorry for the proctors and Agents stationed outside on guard duty, watching for wayward fey. When she saw her favorite proctor, the handsome, young Mr. Fuentes standing with his collar turned up against the cold and a single, silver-rimmed umbrella floating over his head, she dashed into the dining hall and poured a mug of hot chocolate. She brought it out to where he stood near the edge of the forest near Dare Hall. He thanked her gratefully, blowing on it and warming his cold hands against the hot cup.
Arriving home more wet than not, she fed Mistletoe and took a shower. Then she set out to breakfast and onto class. The day remained dark and rainy. Lightning danced overhead in balls and forks, lighting up the otherwise dim campus with brilliant white flashes as the lightning imps expressed their displeasure at the death of their lord. In the bright moments, Agents could be seen standing guard all over the campus, their tricorne hats, Inverness cloaks, and fulgurator’s staffs singling them out from the tutors and proctors.
The next few days passed slowly. The weather remained bad. Lightning and thunder became constant companions. The huge floating umbrellas seemed to become a permanent fixture over the walkways. In Language, they learned Argos, the Glepnir Band cantrip, which Gaius had already taught Rachel. Since the class was Language, with an emphasis on early writings and some Shakespeare along with a bit of the Original Tongue, what she most wanted to know—how to improve her accuracy—was not discussed. They also learned Kefwth, the Word of Summoning, and Endro, the Word of Revealing, a cantrip that revealed hidden things, such as concealed doors. Rachel wished there were a cantrip that would reveal the answers to questions that stumped her.
Right when Music was becoming nightmarish for Rachel, who was falling behind because of her resistance to practice her fluting, Miss Cyrene began instructing them in the bedazzle hex. Hexes were short, just three notes, and Rachel was good at them. What was more, she knew this one. Hard times would come again when they moved on to summoning Asrai, but for now, Rachel felt like a condemned prisoner who had unexpectedly received a reprieve.
In Art, they began a section on how to conjure hollow objects, like boxes or simple teapots. It was exactly the skill Rachel could have used the previous day for the sandals. During free time at the end of class, she folded an origami griffin out of gold foil paper. At dinner, she gave it to Pete Komarek as a thank you for having saved her from Abraham Van Helsing. He received it graciously.
In Geometry, they were finishing Book VI of Euclid. They also learned how throwing down seeds, such as flax or peony, compelled many kinds of vampires or undead to pause and count them. Rachel, Siggy, and Zoë exchanged smiles. They had proven this one the previous fall when they used a packet of peony seeds to stall the child skeletons in Tunis.
In Science, they were still on quicksilver shoes. Siggy was running down the halls at high speeds, and Nastasia and Joy now had slippers that moved a third faster than normal, but Rachel could only get one of her shoes to work, which left her moving rapidly in a circle.
Wulfgang Starkadder normally did top-notch work in class, but instead of working on his shoes, he kept bursting into laughter, as if some cosmic joke had just been played and only he knew the punch line. Wednesday afternoon at lunch, Rachel mentioned this to Gaius.
Gaius pursed his lips. “I am not sure Starkadder took the information very well.”
Rachel sipped her juice. “Maybe Wulf’s suffering from Metaplutonian shock. Too much strangeness too quickly. Maybe he’ll end up as crazy as Sigfried.”
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