“In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess,” I said as I retrieved my book from the backseat. Chris was in a state of shock and (for once) said nothing. “You two going to be all right?”
Palmer laughed. “The university legal boundary ends at the river. Even if it didn’t, in ten minutes we’ll be out of the city, and in two hours into the back of beyond. You know that sorority girls can’t stand the country.”
I eyed his decrepit van and asked again, “You’re sure you’re going to be all right?” This received a bigger laugh, and he rolled up his window and pulled away.
I took the bike trail back to campus. This had been a favorite walk of mine during the long months posing as a dweeb. Dweebs have no social life, but they are allowed a little nature.
The sun beating down on my neck reminded me that I didn’t have to pose anymore. I took off the bulky sweater and left it on a bench. The little white collared shirt beneath would pass inspection once I unbuttoned the top button. The shoes broke apart to reveal sandals that, while not quite the cutting edge of fashion, were passable, and the tight little bun came apart nicely. My hair was almost down to my waist. I’d forgotten that, wearing my hair up all the time.
There was nothing I could do about my skirt, not without a knife, but at least I now looked merely odd instead of completely cloistered.
The campus seemed almost deserted when I returned. Ultimate Frisbee players and tanners alike had adjourned to dinner, or to their dorms to prepare for post-finals partying. I was able to slip into the back stairwell of the library without being noticed. The back door was closer to the science buildings where, my reader advised me, the last of the Guild students was finishing a final.
She finally arrived, carrying a small, flat box and a roll of duct tape on her arm. I didn’t ask. Theater types are weird that way. “Maureen? What are you doing here?” I recognized her from numerous visits to the Honors house; the surprise was that she recognized me.
“I’m getting you out, Lisa,” I replied. “What took you so long?”
She frowned. “The professor’s a stick-in-the-mud. I couldn’t leave without an explanation, could I?”
“So what’s in the box?” I asked.
“It’s my grandfather’s old dissection kit. I couldn’t leave it behind.”
“Is there a scalpel in there?” There was, and a few quick slices had my skirt shortened, though a bit messily. “So here’s the deal. There shouldn’t be more than a few students in the mailroom. I’ll lead the way and deal with any elves, and you get to the elevator.” I picked up my biochem text, held it like a shield, and opened the door.
The mailroom was echoingly empty aside from an all-too-familiar figure. She gave us a close-lipped smile as she walked toward us. She was also fingering a large bronze knife at her waist.
“Crystal,” I breathed. Her gaze flicked past me, recognized Lisa behind me, and came back to my face.
“So,” she said. “I thought there was a little too much organization behind the problems we’ve been having.”
I threw caution to the wind and tried to give her a migraine. Not only did it not work, Crystal started laughing.
“Another Mystic. What fun.”
Another one? My stomach dropped to my ankles. After eight months, I’d finally fulfilled my mission, and it didn’t look as though I’d live to tell about it.
“She’s an Adept,” I said out loud, hoping Lisa would get away and be able to tell someone. “A what?” I heard from behind me. Crystal frowned.
“No need to give away secrets, saresh’ta.” She stepped forward again, and I realized she was trying to back us into a corner. “While anfala china would have been nice, you two will do just fine.”
“What’s an Adept?” Lisa hissed behind me. I threw my book off to the side so my hands would be unencumbered. Crystal drew her knife, and I knew that I was eight months out of shape as I assumed a fighting stance.
“Blood magic,” I whispered back, keeping my eye on the knife. “Whatever happens, just get out.”
When you’re in a fight, you have to stay focused. But my mind was whirling with the fact of an Adept in the upper ranks of the elven community on campus, an elf who could kill—had killed—a powerful Sibyl without a trace or trail. I managed to keep track of the knife, but not of the foot that knocked me over.
It wasn’t long before I was pinned down, my right cheek pressing into the institutional carpet, right arm underneath me and left screwed up behind me. I think Crystal was kneeling on it.
There’s ways to get out of such holds, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember any. Crystal grabbed my hair, wrapped it around her hand, and used the knife to cut it off at my neck.
“Short hair is always better at an execution,” she purred. Never let an Adept get any part of you, I recalled from training long ago. I couldn’t do anything to Crystal, but my hair…
I burned it with a thought. She made a disappointed sound (I could almost see the affected pout on her face) and carefully wiped the ash off her hand on the carpet in front of my nose.
Which meant it was impossible to miss the scalpel that came down and pinned it to the floor, sinking through her hand like a stone into water.
Crystal made a high-pitched inhaled shriek and tried to lift her hand over the top, but a probe was fixed to the top with duct tape (duct tape!) and hit the back of her hand. I managed to roll out from under her and shake the short ends of my hair out of my eyes just in time to see Lisa slam my discarded biochem book into Crystal’s head.
Crystal went limp. Lisa dropped my text on top of her and looked at the pinned hand, which was beginning to char. “Interesting,” was all she said.
I stood up, a bit shakily, and motioned to the elevator. “Come on, Lisa, let’s get out of here.” We got into the elevator and activated the portal. I looked sideways at Lisa. “How’d you know about the iron?” I asked, curious. “They try to keep that hushed up.”
She shrugged. “Any elf in biology uses obsidian scalpels. They try to act like it’s pretentious, but I noticed that they never use steel pins, either.” She looked at the wall, smiling. “And it’s a sure thing that the campus just layers the flooring. I bet there’s old linoleum under that carpet, just like there is in the theater.”
Hmmm. Good thinking on her feet, an ability to put things together… “I might just recommend you for a job.”
“Maureen?”
“No. Not anymore. Call me…” I thought of my burned hand, the abrasions on my face, my fraying skirt and simple sandals, and ran my (unburned) hand through my newly short hair as the portal opened onto forest. Ah. That was it.
“Call me Sylvia,” I said, and stepped out the door into the sunlight.
Bernadette Durbin lives in Greater Suburbia, California, a town that somehow manages to have pine trees, palm trees, and tumbleweeds. She and her husband have three kids, three cats, and a house that is not quite big enough for a large collection of musical instruments, books, and kitchen appliances. Metamorphosis:
“Metamorphosis”
Roger D. Strahan
Dr. Marcus Thompson, Professor of ancient lore at Tulane, sat at his desk, looking around at the volumes of collected stories, some dating back to the time where histories were handed down by elders telling the stories to the young as they sat around the communal fire at night. Shaking his head, he looked back down at the thin volume in front of him. Plain, with no embossed title, it recounted a fanciful story of a great battle in what is now Germany. It told of men, elves, giants, and other beings out of myth and legend coming together to stop an invasion through a portal from another world. At the end, it told of how the surviving mages came together to close all portals, to close off the energy of magic from this world. A unique story, not recounted anywhere else, Dr. Thompson had considered it just one more embellishment of a fight between Roman forces and the local tribes.
But then, his students began to recount a night when a young woman, accompanied by ot
hers, kneeled in Jackson Square and, as she kneeled, energy ripped up from the earth and lit up the sky for miles. He closed his eyes as he remembered that night; a night where unexplained lightning ripped through the air on a cloudless night.
After that night, all sorts of rumors and stories swept through New Orleans, and were even being reported from around the world. Reports were bombarding the news shows and social media about beings of myth and legend appearing out of nowhere, walking the world as they would have so many millennia before. On top of that, people were finding that they actually had the ability to use the powers of magic. And, in the heart of this massive change in the world, was that unique young woman who was now being called the Witch of New Orleans.
So, Dr. Thompson decided that, since he was here at the time that magic returned to this world, he was in a great position to record the events for future readers. His fingers began to fly across the keyboard of his computer, recording the events of the last several weeks. As the shadows of sunset began to creep in the windows, he stopped and pushed back from his computer. Nodding, he turned to the diminutive fairy setting cross-legged on his desk. “Well, Nalati, have I got it right?” The fairy just smiled and nodded.
“Metamorphosis”
Butterfly Lane, wearing a rumpled T-shirt and jeans, with a backpack holding her computer tablet and notes, sat disconsolately on the front steps of the dilapidated Central Dallas High, staring south at the downtown Dallas skyline. She absolutely hated this school. Built in the 1920s, it was a prime example of preservationists keeping a historical building instead of letting the school system raze it and build a new one. The wood flooring was uneven and stained, the walls showing multiple colors of paint, now mostly a dull, faded green. The lighting had been replaced in the '60s, but that was it. Air conditioning consisted of window AC units, with a boiler for radiator heat that had seen its better days. But that wasn’t the reason that she dreaded setting foot in the school.
The reason for her fear was simple. The school was in the middle of an area was a hot-bed of gentrification, with the older 1900s-1920s homes either being razed for new McMansions or being purchased by some young upscale owner looking to gut the interior and make it new. The result was that the low-income families which had moved into the neighborhood decades ago were now being pushed out by ‘urban pioneers’ such as the Lanes. The great majority of the kids who remained in the school, after seeing their friends and local extended family members pushed out, hated the newcomers. They had formed into gangs that effectively ruled the school. You either belonged to one or you were a target, and Butterfly, being one of the newcomers, a so-called ‘privileged’ kid, was a target.
The great majority of families with children who had moved into the area sent their children to one of the several private academies in the area, schools that catered to the children of parents who had actually had a clue as to what was taking place in the failing inner-city school. When Butterfly had told her mother what was happening and had begged to be allowed to go to a private school, or just get her GED and get out, her mother told her bluntly that she was no better than the poorest of the poor and she had to go to school where they did.
So Butterfly sat on the rough concrete steps, facing the inevitable sound of the bell calling the students to class, or what passed for classes in the inner city, decaying school building. Even as she pondered how she could avoid going in, Janie Fraley plopped down beside her. One of the very few friends that Butterfly had made at the school, Janie was one of the so-called ‘braniacs’ in the class. Short, pert, with shoulder-length raven hair, she was wearing her trademark glasses with flowers on the corners, a happy-face t-shirt and jeans. She dropped her bag between her feet and bumped shoulders with Butterfly.
“Hey. Did your mom agree to let you bail?”
Butterfly didn’t answer, just shook her head.
Janie saw that her friend was absolutely crushed, and she understood it. She’d pretty much avoided being harassed as she had pretty much grown up with the kids in the school and wasn’t an outsider. Determined to change the subject and to try to cheer Butterfly up, Janie dug her cell phone out of her bag. Forcing a smile on her face, she turned it on and opened up a video channel. “So, have you seen the latest videos about the Witch of New Orleans?”
Butterfly turned her head and looked quizzically at Janie. “The who? I’ve never heard of, what did you call her, a witch? What. Is she dressed like Elvira and carries a black cat or something?”
Janie threw her head back, laughing. “No, silly. But, seriously, you haven’t heard of the Witch of New Orleans? She’s all over the internet. It’s full of her videos.”
“I never go there. I mean, well, look. I don’t have anyone to talk to on chat sites or whatever the recent go-to place is. I’m just trying to finish my junior year at Western College online. That’s what I’m doing, not wasting my time looking at cat videos,” Butterfly finished with a snort.
Janie was frantically scrolling across video links on her phone, determined to cheer Butterfly up. “OK, so you’re not aware that people are saying that magic is both real and now all around us, either,” she exclaimed, breathlessly.
“Now you’re just trying to make fun of me. There’s no such thing as magic; it’s only misdirection and fakery.”
“And you don’t believe in elves or flying horses, either. Right?” Janie asked with a mischievous grin.
“Just myths and fairy tales,” Butterfly said sadly, looking back at the Dallas skyline. Flying horses, elves; now that would be something, she thought, morosely. The only flying horse around here is that sign on the old oil company building. At least it would be something different instead of being tortured in this school day after day.
Seeing that Butterfly was still miserable, Janie keyed a video icon. “All right, so, what do you make of this?” Janie said, hitting play and holding the phone up where Butterfly couldn’t avoid seeing it. The video was obviously of Jackson Square; the location was iconic with the statue of the general in front of the cathedral. It took a moment for Butterfly to figure out what was going on. Several black SUVs along with a pair of NOPD police cars were pulling up. Armed security men, dressed in black tacticals and armed with rifles as well as the NOPD piled of the cars out and summarily proceeded to clear the square. As Butterfly’s attention was diverted from her own misery to the video, Janie elbowed Butterfly, saying, “Now, watch this.”
Butterfly glanced over at Janie for a moment. Then, as she looked back at the screen, there was something happening, something that she didn’t know what to call it at first. The scientific side of her mind took over and her eyes widened as she realized that she was looking through a hole in the air to another location. It was a wormhole. She could clearly see what appeared to be the courtyard of a home through the hole that was blocking the view of the cathedral. Then a woman stepped through the hole. She was wearing a brown outfit, with an embroidered tunic top, split skirt, matching boots, a cape with a cowl, and holding a staff in one hand.
“What the hell?” she exclaimed.
Butterfly quickly reached out and, taking the phone from Janie, touched the pause button. She manipulated the image, expanding it on the screen until they could see the woman’s face clearly. The face was the textbook image of a young Irish woman, complete with red hair and freckled nose, until you looked closer. The eyes were a deep green but were slanted up on the edges. That could possibly be explained by an Asian background. But the ears! She could clearly see one of the woman’s ears, and it was pointed; it wasn’t a ‘Spock’ ear but a gentle but definitely distinct point.
Butterfly turned to Janie and looked questioningly at her. Janie just grinned and mouthed, “just keep watching.” Butterfly shook her head; then, clicking play, watched the scene play out. The woman walked sedately out of the hole, as if she controlled everything around her. The hole closed behind her, leaving no evidence behind. Butterfly could hear people cheering and shouting ‘it’s the witch’. Th
e point of view of the camera swung hard to the right, away from the woman, and focused on another wormhole opening up. As it opened, a winged horse, no, a winged unicorn, stepped through, again with the wormhole closing behind it. It walked daintily up to the woman, and then kneeled before her. She motioned for it to rise, and then the two stood together, apparently communicating somehow, even as the crowd noise grew even louder. Finally, at a wave from the woman, another wormhole opened, the two stepped through, and they were gone, the wormhole closing behind them.
Butterfly looked wide-eyed at Janie, astonished at the video. “What the hell did I just see?”
“She’s the Witch of New Orleans, silly,” Janie responded, grinning widely. “Haven’t you been following the news? Magic is real. There are reports of creatures from mythology popping up everywhere. And apparently it all started in New Orleans.”
“That’s impossible,” Butterfly stated flatly, her clinical mind denying what she had just seen on the video. “Magic would break all the rules of physics. You can’t just wave a hand and…” she looked back at the video, which had been backed up to where the flying unicorn was stepping out of the wormhole. “No, that’s got to be special effects, a trick of some kind.” She looked Janie square in the eyes. “You stole this from some fantasy movie, didn’t you,” she demanded. “Tell me the truth. This isn’t real…is it?”
“Apparently it is real. Remember that odd storm that came out of nowhere? The strange lightning that lit up the sky even though there wasn’t a cloud?” Janie demanded. Butterfly nodded. “Well, apparently it happened everywhere, at the same time. Even the news stations commented on that.”
Fantastic Schools: Volume One (Fantastic Schools Anthologies Book 1) Page 25
