by Kyle Shultz
Gareth spread his arms wide, closed his eyes, and began murmuring something. I couldn’t make out what it was over the undead horde trying to tear me limb from limb.
“Please tell me you’re doing something useful, Gareth!” I shouted, using my tail to sweep one of the skeletons off its feet and punching another one in the teeth.
“I hope so,” he said softly, in between his mumblings.
“We haven’t got time for hope!”
Suddenly, whirlwinds sprang up all around us, taking the shape of sandstorms with vaguely humanoid forms. The creatures enveloped the skeletons, pureeing them into little piles of bone shards. The undead continued to bombard us, but their numbers began to be thinned.
“Which one of you did that?” I asked, as a sand-creature obligingly tore a skeleton off me and smashed it to bits. “Alan?”
“Don’t look at me,” he said, as Bryn changed into a hawk and landed on his arm. “I can’t make things come to life like that; I just move them around.”
“It was me,” said Gareth, “Or rather, it was the sylph I called up.”
“Sylphs?”
“Air-spirits. They live in the winds just like dryads inhabit trees, or nixies inhabit wells, or—”
“Thanks, yes, I get the idea.” I nodded at him. “Good work, Gareth.”
Unfortunately, as time wore on, the skeletons began to overwhelm us again. As a wave of scrabbling bones swept over me, I debated whether I should tell the Mythfits that we would most likely not survive this. I doubted they would take it well.
Suddenly, in the midst of the chaos, I heard the magical song fall silent, drowned out by a new melody. While the disturbing lullaby had been in a minor key, this song was more pleasant and soothing. As it filled the air, the skeletons around us suddenly went slack. I clawed my way out of the tangle of skeletons and searched for the students. Grabbing Gareth and Sylvia, I pulled them free from the morass of bones. Alan followed, carrying Bryn, who was lying unconscious in his arms in the form of a cat-eared girl.
“Is everyone all right?” I called out.
Gareth and Sylvia nodded yes as they regained their senses. Alan checked Bryn to be sure she was still breathing, then knelt down and laid her carefully in the sand.
“What was that?” I looked around, trying to find the source of the new song.
It was Molly.
She was walking across the beach toward the crowd of skeletons, a grave, determined expression on her face. I couldn’t see her lips moving, but the singing voice did sound like hers. At the same time, however, the song was doing things that the vocal chords of a single human really shouldn’t have been able to manage. Sometimes it sounded like multiple voices at once, all harmonizing.
As Molly stared into the gaping eye sockets of the skeletons, they drew back from her, staggering unsteadily back into the water. I watched them in stunned amazement as their heads slowly vanished beneath the waves.
“What in the name of…” I began. My voice trailed off. This afternoon was getting to be overwhelming.
Molly focused on the Mythfits, and her song took on a slightly different tone, lilting and hypnotic. Their eyes clouded, and they watched the departing skeletons in confusion.
“What happened?” asked Gareth. “Why did they just leave all of a sudden?”
As the Mythfits chattered amongst themselves, trying to figure out what was going on, Molly stepped closer to me and spoke in a whisper. “I’ve made them forget. A useful song, though it only works if I’m erasing memories that are a few minutes old.”
“Interesting,” I said in a hushed voice. “Why haven’t you erased mine?”
“I’m trying to gain your trust,” she said. “I know your secret—or at least, I think I do. Now you know mine.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Do I?”
“I think you’re smart enough to figure it out.” She smiled at me. “Good thing I happened to come by.”
“Yes, how very convenient.”
“My class didn’t last very long today. Introduction to Unicorns.”
“Fascinating.”
She carried on cheerily. My sarcasm was apparently failing to register. “We just did some rudimentary spell-casting with the unicorns as sources,” she confided.
“Sounds lovely.”
“You can’t push unicorns too far on the first day,” she confided, “otherwise they get over-stressed.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want that, would we?”
“Definitely not. There are very few things as dangerous as a stressed unicorn.”
“I’m sure.”
“Christopher did very well, by the way.”
“How delightful.” I folded my arms. “Could we perhaps move past the desultory prattle? I’m not an idiot. I know you’re still trying to manipulate me into letting you help with our little…problem.”
Her shock at the suggestion appeared genuine. “Not manipulate. Just convince.”
“Whatever. It’s not working. I’m not remotely convinced.”
“Not yet. I’m very patient, though.”
“Oh, I’m sure you are. Good luck.”
“Thanks. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to have a quick chat with Alan. Now that I’ve taught the students how to use the unicorns in spellcasting, he’ll need to go over how to ride them in his class. Christopher should enjoy that.”
“You’ve obviously got him won over,” I muttered. “Emotional manipulation via unicorn. That ought to be illegal.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said, in a louder voice. “I won’t detain you. Good morning.” I abandoned her and headed toward the Mythfits.
“Is the class over, Professor Barlow?” asked Gareth, limping away from the ocean. “It's just that I think I need to lie down for a while.”
Alan was casting a spell on a gash across his left front ankle. He gratefully detached himself from our little group when Molly called him over. Bryn had regained consciousness and was now sitting up, blinking in surprise. A bedraggled-looking Sylvia was pacing to and fro, fuming and muttering imprecations under her breath.
“Attacked by skeleton pirates,” I said to myself in a low voice. “Of course. Just another Wednesday in the life of ‘Nathaniel Barlow.’”
Gareth looked puzzled. “I’m sorry?”
“Forget it.”
When I got back to the classroom, there was a salamander waiting with an official-looking envelope. I gave it an angry roar instead of a penny, which turned out to be just as effective in convincing it to hand over the letter and explode out of my life. The document was a list of other things I was supposed to do that day in addition to teaching my disastrous class. A luncheon at which I was to meet the other teachers, a ceremony to bestow something called the “Basilisk Award” on some lucky student, and a meeting to discuss the recent infestation of hobgoblins in the school’s botanical gardens. I crumpled the missive and tossed it into the nearest wastebasket. At this point, I didn’t care very much about blowing my cover. I need a nap, I thought. A nice long one. Let them fire me if they want to.
Somehow, I managed to find my way through the maze of corridors up to my attic suite in the West Hall. I trudged inside, slammed the door shut, did a graceful handstand, and was soon hanging comfortably from the rafters. I closed my eyes and swung gently back and forth to lull myself to sleep, hoping I wouldn’t have to endure any unpleasant dreams this time.
The next thing I knew, I was rudely awakened by the door banging open and an abominably cheerful voice shouting my name. This time I managed to keep myself from falling on my head. I somersaulted down from the rafters and rubbed my eyes, wondering how long I’d managed to sleep. At least my nap had been free of visits from octopus women and hairy alternate selves. Through my window, I could see the sun sinking lower in the western sky, so I must have been dozing for several hours.
The unwanted guest was Crispin, of course. I stared at him through bleary eyes. He was chattering about something, but my br
ain was too sleep-fogged to figure out what. I got the impression there was someone or something standing behind him.
“Crispin,” I snarled, “what do you mean by barging in here and waking me up? I’ve had an absolutely horrible morning, and I was really hoping that I might be able to get a little rest before the next crisis came along. Granted, with you around there’s never a very long wait between crises, but—”
All of a sudden, the hazy shape behind Crispin rushed at me. Feeling something sharp poking into my chest, I sprang back against the wall. The creature pinned me there, daring me to move so that it could plunge its weapon right through my heart.
At first, still being sleep-fogged, I thought it was Alan threatening me with a sword. After what I put him and his friends through that morning, I wouldn’t have blamed him. Then I figured out that the creature definitely wasn’t a centaur. No human torso or opposable thumbs. This was a horse. A heavily-muscled, jet-black pony, by the look of it. Except…no, it wasn’t. A long obsidian horn stuck out from its forehead, prodding me in the chest. The animal eyed me balefully.
I stared at it in total bewilderment. “Is that…a unicorn?”
Crispin nodded, beaming at the creature in ecstasy. “My unicorn,” he corrected, patting the animal’s neck. It shook its mane and nickered—though the sound was more like a cat’s purr than any noise I’d ever heard a horse make.
I struggled to come to terms with this horrible new development. “Your unicorn.”
“Yes.”
Memories of what Molly had said about the creatures came back to me. I hadn’t been paying much attention, and I certainly hadn’t expected this horrible situation. “You own a unicorn. They actually gave you one.”
“Yes. It’s not typical school policy, but when Alan found out I was your brother, he said I was responsible enough to take care of this one myself.”
“Aha,” I growled. “Well played, Alan. Brilliant revenge.”
“Pardon?”
“All right,” I said, changing the subject, “so you have a unicorn. Could you explain why it’s trying to disembowel me?” I tried to edge away from the creature’s horn, but it followed me, never taking its furious gaze off me.
“He’s just being protective. He senses that you’re angry with me.”
“It’s brotherly anger!” I spluttered. “Not homicidal anger! Teach him the difference! There’s nothing for him to protect you from!”
“Come on, now, Edmund,” Crispin crooned to the monster, easing it away from me. “Don’t worry about grumpy old Nick. His bark’s a lot worse than his bite.”
“I wouldn’t put that to the test if I were him,” I warned, baring my fangs and giving “Edmund” a low growl.
The door opened again, and Cordelia breezed in. “Are you dressed?” she asked me…while looking right at me.
I gazed at her in silence for a few seconds. Then, in a dull, toneless voice, I said, “Yes. Fully dressed. Thank you so much for checking before you came in.”
“You’re welcome.” She noticed Crispin and Edmund for the first time. “Oh, you’ve got a unicorn! Lovely.” She walked up to Edmund and began petting him. “Oo’s a adowable widdle unicornsy-poo?” she inquired, kissing him on the nose. He gave another purring nicker and leaned his head against her, closing his eyes in contentment.
I cleared my throat. “Cordelia, just so you know, he tried to kill me a few seconds ago.”
She pursed her lips. “He seems to be all right now.”
“I am too, just in case you were worried.” This had gone too far. I finally snapped. “What in the name of sanity is going on here?” I thundered. “Why does Crispin have to have a pet unicorn? Weren’t the toad and the mini-dragon enough?”
“I can’t ride Reginald or Sparky,” Crispin pointed out. “Not that I don’t still like them too, of course. But Edmund fulfills a different role. Alan taught me how to saddle him and everything.”
“Unicorns are very common at Warrengate,” said Cordelia. “Many enchanters use them as sources for their spells…which tends to make the unicorns somewhat irritable.”
Crispin nodded in agreement. “Right. But the way Molly handles them is—”
“Molly,” I snarled, gnashing my teeth.
Crispin frowned. “What’s the matter with you? She’s nice!”
“Oh, she’s nice, all right. The manipulative little mermaid.”
Cordelia’s jaw fell. “The little what?”
“She’s a mermaid,” I insisted. “Somehow. She’s been trying to hide it from the rest of the school, but it’s true.”
“She doesn’t look like a mermaid,” Crispin argued.
“I don’t look like a celebrated private investigator, but that’s still what I am underneath all this fur.”
“I think you need to tell us exactly what you’re talking about,” said Cordelia, settling herself in an armchair. “Start from the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”
“Right.” I was eager to thresh something out with Cordelia. “First off, I thought you told me, a while back, that magic can’t raise the dead.”
“It can’t,” she said, without hesitation.
“Oh, really?” I raised my voice to a shout. “Then why did I spend the entire morning getting attacked by skeletons?”
Her eyes widened. “Did you really?”
“Yes! Undead, pirate skeletons! So what exactly happened to the ‘no raising the dead’ rule?”
“That’s not raising the dead. That’s puppeteering inanimate objects. Charmbloods can easily do that with anything. Watch.”
She cast a series of runes at an old, decorative candelabra sitting on top of my dresser. Instantly, all the candles burst into flame, and the candelabra started dancing around, waving its flaming arms in an energetic display.
I clapped a hand over my forehead. “Thanks, I get the point. Could you stop that now? It’s disturbing.”
Cordelia waved her hand, and the candelabra became still once more. “Tell me more,” she said.
I told her and Crispin the whole story of my trials and tribulations that morning. They listened patiently and quietly, except for one or two interruptions when Crispin burst out laughing and Edmund gave a loud snort.
“Very interesting,” said Cordelia.
Crispin pouted. “You fought pirates without me? That’s not very fair.”
“They were just skeletons, not actual pirates.” I jabbed an accusing finger at him. “And you didn’t show up for my class.”
“It’s not like I thought I’d need to! I already know all about how to survive without magic. And Molly’s class on cryptobiology was going on at the same time, so I chose that instead.”
“Teacher’s pet.”
“Anyway,” he went on, “if Molly’s an Undine who’s figured out how to become human, then doesn’t that mean our problems are solved? We don’t even have to bother with the submarine plan if she’s already got the spell we want. If we just ask her—”
“But she’s not a mermaid!” Cordelia protested. “She can’t be. She’s my cousin! I know for a fact that she was born human!”
“You did tell us you never got to know her very well,” I reminded her.
“In any event,” said Cordelia, “if she is somehow a mermaid, then involving her is out of the question.”
I threw up my hands in confusion. “Why? What’s so terrible about merfolk? Everyone here talks about them like they’re demons or something.” My mind flitted back to the bad dream I’d had the night before. Certainly, if the Undine were anything like the “mermaid” I’d seen, there was reason to fear them. But that was just a dream, I thought. Wasn’t it?
“Our whole plan in coming here was to find the Sea Witch’s magic,” Crispin argued. “So why are we turning away help from somebody who might be an Undine in the flesh?”
“Look,” said Cordelia, “when I came up with this plan in the first place, I certainly didn’t think we were actually going to meet any Undine. My s
ources said Kiran found artifacts of the merfolk. Relics of their presumably extinct civilization. I never imagined any of them might still be alive.”
I shrugged. “What’s wrong with them being alive? I mean, I know they’re supposed to be able to suppress magic, but does that automatically make them all evil?”
“Have either of you even read the story of the Little Mermaid?”
Crispin raised his hand. “I have.”
“I’ve skimmed it,” I said.
“Do you remember how it ended?”
Crispin thought for a moment. “Er…the Prince Charming defeated the Sea Witch and then he and the mermaid lived happily ever after?”
“No,” said Cordelia in exasperation. “Not even slightly.”
“It figures.” I leaned against the wall and inspected my claws. “There’s always some dark, horrible secret behind these fairy tales, it seems.”
“This isn’t a secret, you ninny,” said Cordelia. “Everyone who’s paid attention knows that the Little Mermaid didn’t get a happy ending.”
“You mean, she didn’t marry the prince?” asked Crispin, surprised. “I thought the prince always got the girl in those stories.”
“No. No wedding. Quite the contrary, in fact. She tried to stab him to death while he slept.”
We both stared at her in shock.
“Look it up!” she exclaimed. “That’s how it really ended. She tried to murder him on his wedding because he married another girl, and because she was told it would change her back into a mermaid. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it, so she threw herself into the ocean instead. Given that she didn’t have gills anymore, that didn’t end well for her.”
I cringed. “Ouch.”
“What most people don’t know about the story is what happened afterward. There’s some guff about the mermaid turning into a twinkly air spirit, but I’m fairly certain it was just tacked on so the ending wouldn’t give children nightmares.”
