The iPod and the cut up headphones went out the window. Bastards would probably take them from me anyway. Better to wreck them myself. We were moving too fast down the highway for me to watch them break apart on the road, but I hope it was spectacular. Promise I didn’t blow up my toys as a kid, but that one time . . . sometimes you get pushed too far, you got to wreck something.
If I ever had any doubt that the Central Valley is a shithole, the next half hour of my life cured me of the affliction. Rundown farm equipment, outlet malls, pavement and asphalt, yellow farms that had more weeds than vines in the summer, and cows, lots of cows—with the window down and my face turned away from Ceinwyn Dale I smelled every one of them.
There’s something oddly pleasant about the smell of that much cow shit being together. Go figure . . .
We eventually made our way to Fresno, which was low on the cows and heavy on the pavement and asphalt. Ceinwyn Dale pulled the car off the road and into a parking lot.
“Time for breakfast,” Ceinwyn Dale announced. I didn’t look at her, but she was probably smiling.
Even that defense deserted me once we were sitting at the table in the diner. Nowhere else to look but across that small gap at her face. Smiling lips, smiling eyes. She just ate up the whole situation. She was going to win, but how was she going to win? The question of it excited her. She had all the answers to my many questions and we both knew it.
The how excited her; the why pissed me off. Why Ceinwyn Dale? Why the Institution of Elements? Why me? Why did the how excite me too? How did I break that table or that lock? How did Ceinwyn Dale cut my headphones? How did she get through the door?
The waitress brought me a kiddy menu on account of my height. I’d never been in a sit down restaurant before. The best I ever managed was sixth grade when my oldest sister—Susanna Belle Price, Mom again—would take me to a bakery before school for pastries and doughnuts, by seventh grade Susan moved away and it was back to cereal because Dad went to work early and Mom was usually passed out on the bed or on the couch. But I still knew it was an insult.
Kiddy menu. Cruel shit.
Ceinwyn Dale started playing with the crayons they’d left for me.
She ordered some raspberry thin pancake woman-watching-her-weight French crap while I engaged the waitress enough to order the most expensive omelet they had, with chopped steak and melted cheese and even sautéed mushrooms piled higher than I could ever eat. My stomach was the biggest part of fourteen-year-old-me. Okay, second biggest part after Prince Henry.
What? Stop sniggering.
This was a Mom-and-Pop kind of diner—they did still existed back then—so the food was long in coming. Fourteen-year-old-me watched the other diners instead of talking to Ceinwyn Dale. Like I said, it was Saturday, which meant quite a few travelers. People driving to Los Angeles. People driving to San Francisco. No one drove to Fresno—it’s an in-between place. Some surfers heading to the beach or like Dad, blue collar truckers who never got a day off.
The larcenous spirit deep inside me started eyeing a girl’s iSomething hanging half out of her pocket. Couldn’t blame it. Small pocket—fat ass.
“Try stealing anything and I’ll give you a papercut on every single finger, you won’t be able to touch anything for days.” Ceinwyn Dale didn’t even glance up. She concentrated on her crayons and the paper in front of her.
“What would you do if I started screaming about how you were trying to kidnap me?” I asked to get back at her.
She wasn’t even drawing. No idea what she was doing. Using a butter knife, she shaved little piles of crayon onto the paper. Voodoo for all I knew.
“I’m used to sulking and fear and occasionally friendly obedience, defiance is such a nice change of pace, King Henry.” Blue crayon changed to yellow. “I’d leave you here.”
“You spent three days in Visalia just to leave me? Don’t believe it.”
“That’s it.” Yellow to black. “You can walk back to your charming little childhood home and never attend the Institution of Elements.” Black back to blue. “Do you think your mother would even notice you came back?” Blue to gray, like she hadn’t just ripped my heart out. “And just like her you’d be fine until your neared thirty, then the lack of control and anima saturation would start to drive you insane.”
Fat ass girl was totally forgotten. “Mom’s a . . . like me?”
“I’d guess corpusmancer, body manipulation, judging from how little she’s fallen into middle age despite the drinking, not to mention such a beautiful body shape despite how much time she spends lounging. Not an Ultra or she’d already be in a mental ward.” Gray to green. “But still talented—one of the strongest Intras I’ve seen. It’s regretful we missed her. For the both of you.”
The food came and was I glad for it. It let me ignore what Ceinwyn Dale said and concentrate on my plate. Maybe that’s how fat ass girl got a fat ass.
Go insane like Mom . . .
How do you throw that at a fourteen-year-old boy with all the problems I had? I can barely handle it now. I still get urges to put a fist through a wall, back then she’s lucky I didn’t break fat ass girl’s seat and cause an earthquake from all the jiggle hitting the floor.
When I couldn’t eat any more of my omelet I finally broke from all the ignoring and what I thought was a don’t-give-a-shit attitude. “Is this when you turn out to be an evil werewolf that wants to eat me or something? ‘Cuz that’s some mean shit.”
Out of one mind-fuck and into another. “Werewolves are rather pathetic actually. There’s very few of them and what do exist are scattered across Wyoming and Montana. Hardly a threat . . .” She smiled at me as she put a delicate piece of crepe into her mouth. I have the answers, be good and ask the questions instead of getting confrontational. “Any type of Were isn’t much of a threat when alone; it’s when their Nation gets large that they become troublesome for mancers in the area. The Coyotes are the largest in the United States but luckily for us we have a treaty of mutually ignoring each other.”
“Coyotes?” Who would want to turn into a piece of crap, cat-stealing coyote? “There’s more than one kind?”
Ceinwyn Dale nodded, pulling me into my new world, down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass, second star on the left, strings tight enough to turn me into a wooden puppet boy. “Grizzles in Alaska and Canada. Otters along the Pacific Coast. Jaguars in Mexico. Nothing on the East Coast worth speaking of, the wild life’s been too decimated of large animals, but you do find the occasional sorority that thinks it’s cute to dabble in horses or some backwoods people that like badgers or raccoons.”
Horses . . . “So . . . what else is there?”
“Vampires,” Ceinwyn Dale’s eyebrows shot up.
“You’re just fucking with me now . . .”
“Such fantasies for such a little boy.”
“Hey . . .”
“Unlike Weres, they’re dangerous . . . if you actually manage to graduate as a four year without getting expelled then stay away from them. If you’re a seven year . . . be extra careful.”
Part of me thought she was full of very stinky shit. A part of me bigger than my stomach or Prince Henry combined. “What about fairies?” I tested. Fairies real, yeah right. Tinkerbell this, asshole.
“Corporeal Anima Concentrations. Most last weeks, a few special cases have been around since Elementalism was Codified in 490 B.C. Maybe longer.” Mind be blown.
It became a competition to come up with something that was really fake. “What about dwarves, elves, that hobbit shit?”
“All extinct. Dragons as well.”
Dragons. Fuck me. Dragons? How do you just throw that out in the conversation and go on eating your breakfast? “Centaurs?” I wearily asked.
“Corpusmancer and faunamancer co-experimentation along with minotaurs, griffins, hippocampus, and chimeras. Outlawed in the 27 B.C. Augustus Reforms. You’ll learn all about it in your History of Elementalism class.”
“Aliens?
”
“Now you’re just being silly, King Henry.”
Fairies, dragons, vampires, Were . . . coyotes? Wereotters. Werehorse sororities! That put a whole new spin on reverse cowgirl.
The ideas were so big, so outrageous, that my mind kept jumping from one to the other, unable to lock on and digest anything. It made being able to break a table seem small. And it is small. For most of us, even Ultras, the Mancy is about planning ahead, small tricks and little wonders. Breaking a lock, cutting a wire, bending a lamppost. Not going to war on the frontlines. Fourteen-year-old-me would take years to accept that. There were lots of disappointments coming for him, poor little shit.
But then, sitting across from Ceinwyn Dale, maybe reading comics had damaged my poor little brain. Stomach big. Prince Henry big. Brain small. “I broke a table in half the other day. I think I broke the child-lock on your car too.”
Ceinwyn Dale finished her breakfast and sipped at some latte coffee drink—ever mancer has their kinks; Ceinwyn Dale is fond of light or whipped food. “Interesting.”
My heart—another big body part—thumped heavily in my chest. “Is that . . . good?”
Her eyes smiled again, blue flashes. “It’s interesting you asked about the Mancy. Most students from non-elemental families are scared of it and would never admit they used it for mischief. Their first question is usually about the Institution of Elements. The classes, how many children, what the teachers are like, what there is to do on off day, sports, clubs, that sort of thing.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Is it? Consider that most students also don’t have the lifestyle which forces usage like your fighting did. Or that the Mancy is elemental into thirteen disciplines.”
“So many . . .”
“I’m an aeromancer,” Ceinwyn Dale told me, as if I hadn’t figured it out. Okay, maybe not the name, but I knew what she could do. “You’re more than likely a geomancer. Earth and metal to stop the question before you ask it. You broke a table . . . a girl in your class you’ll meet tomorrow is a pyromancer, a very strong one. Do you know how she found out about the Mancy? A neighbor’s dog was barking while she tried to study for a test. She told it to shut up only it didn’t and the second time she got mad at it the dog burst into flames. More traumatizing than breaking a table.”
“So . . . I feel bad about the dog, but being selfish . . . if I annoy her, she can’t make me burst into flames, could she?”
Ceinwyn Dale gave a sharp ‘ha!’ for that one. But she didn’t bother to answer me. The conversation was over. Back to the road and moving towards the Institution of Elements, wherever it was. Maybe I should have started asking questions about the place first.
“Don’t forget your picture, King Henry.”
Ceinwyn Dale handed me the piece of paper with the crayons. Only the haphazard crayon piles were gone. Fourteen-year-old-me had no clue how she did it, but I know now. The piles were placed, charged with anima to puff out in a dust at the same time. On top of that, a sheet of air is pushed down so the dust coats the paper about as well as any laser printer and with a more aesthetic sheen. Ceinwyn Dale, impressive as always. I’ve seen other aeromancers do it, my classmate Miranda Daniels among them, but Ceinwyn Dale . . .
The picture had Mom and Dad at the kitchen table; how they’d looked the night they’d spent talking with Ceinwyn Dale about my schooling. Dad looked tired. Mom looked happy. I still have it today. It’s in a nice wooden frame that Pocket made for me.
“Elementalism as Art, Bi’s take it during second year,” Ceinwyn Dale told me as I cradled the paper more carefully than I had my broken earbuds. “Your teacher is scheduled to be Rainbow Greenbrier. Very good spectromancer . . . bit of a flower child, though.”
[CLICK]
North of Fresno is just as boring as south of Fresno. More cows, less asphalt.
Question and answer session seemed to be over. Typical Ceinwyn Dale: make me fight for something and then refuse to give it up. Testing, always testing and calculating, weighing and measuring. I’m graduated, a grown man, and she’s still doing it by having me make this stupid tape.
It’s not her fault; it’s just the Asylum way. Especially with Ultras. We might be rarer than diamonds but if one of us is going to snap and let off a suicide tsunami on the Pacific Ocean, then the Asylum needs to know, needs to be prepared. Part Gandalf—part Freud.
Back in that car, fourteen-year-old-me wasn’t as forgiving. Ceinwyn Dale had taken me out of my shithole but she was treating me like seven-day-old dog crap, even if she was treating me like adult seven-day-old dog crap.
“So where is this place?” I asked to try to ride the current.
We drove past some more cows. How many hamburgers does America need anyway? “Lake Tahoe, near enough.”
One of those ‘Ds’ was also in geography. “Where’s that?”
“California.”
“So very fucking helpful.”
“Do you want another mouthful of air or your first papercut? Your choice.”
“So very helpful, Miss Dale. You’re the best teacher ever.” I probably glared a little bit too. Might have considered flipping her off as well.
“In the mountains, close to Nevada,” she explained. “Nevada is the state to the east of California.”
“I know that.” Got a ‘C’ on that test. Helena, Montana. Montpelier, Vermont. “How long’s it going to take?”
“Few hours.”
“Like five hours or like three hours?”
“As many as it takes.”
I went back to my collection of comics I’d brought with me. Spider-man and Captain America and the rest of the Marvel Universe lasted me until we got to Sacramento. Big city. No idea if it has more people than Fresno or not, but Fresno is wide and spread out. From the highway, Sacramento has some big buildings. Bigger than any I’d ever seen up until then. It was still in the Valley, so they were probably shithole big buildings, but they were impressive in that big, phallic kind of way men and boys enjoy. Enough that I gave up on the comics. Didn’t want to reread them anyway.
“What’s the school like?”
Ceinwyn Dale gave me a smiling glance. “Why ask now?”
“You said most kids do, so I figured I should at least know what they know.” Even back then, when I wanted to know about something I devoured it. I was only bad at school because it was boring compared to fighting and stealing and five minute grunting and humping sessions. I probably read more than half the kids my age, it just wasn’t school books or literary rich-people-with-marriage-problems shit, it was comics and magazines.
“Interesting,” she said yet again but didn’t answer me.
Rolling down the window to remind her about the child-lock, I threw out the comics to flap behind us as we sped along. I figured by then—and I was right on the money—that the Institution of Elements people were going to take them from me. Maybe the way I did it, some poor homeless guy could burn them for warmth or something. Besides, I liked doing things on my terms. Might not have been broken like the iPod, but it’s the same in the end.
“Do you think if I try hard enough that I can break the axle on the car?”
“I know you could. When you’re trained at least.”
“Badass.”
“The Institution of Elements has sixteen-hundred four-year students at any given time. Plus staff, seven-year Ultra graduates, and teachers, we’ll call it an even three-thousand people . . . but it varies, usually higher.” She paused to get my thoughts.
“That’s more than I figured.”
“There are more Mancers given population numbers but that’s the extent of how many we can handle. Those we can’t include go mad eventually. This particular problem is getting worse . . .”
It cut me. “Like Mom.”
“Yes. It’s hard to lose them, but we can only take the best of what we find and even then we don’t find them all. Your mother isn’t even in the Institution records as an identified mancer, which
means she was missed completely. It happens, even with Ultras . . . which is harder still.”
“You keep saying that word.”
“I do,” she agreed.
Okay . . . “Why keep track of mancers you don’t train? You could get them help, I guess . . .”
“Think, King Henry.”
“What?”
“About your own situation.”
“Oh . . . so you check to see if they have kids that are mancers.”
“Correct. See, you can use reason.”
“Especially these Ultra assholes.”
She finally answered me. “An Ultra is a special mancer. Ultra vires. Beyond the powers. Rarer. They have abilities and affinities that a normal mancer can never hope to have.”
“Badass again . . . Am I one?”
“We’ll see.”
I was one.
“One in a quart, that’s what you meant, that’s how rare Ultras are.” I could use reason.
“Class is in session from September until the last day of July. Good students are given a week off Christmas and Easter, your mother however signed an agreement to see you stay with us all year around.” I must have scowled. “Don’t blame her; she wants you to get away, to get the training she never did—so she made a sacrifice for the both of you.”
“She knows? What she is?”
Ceinwyn Dale frowned for once, the smile dropping off her face. “Let’s say she suspects you’re special like she is. She doesn’t know the rest.”
I wiped at my face, turning my head away and changing the subject. “All year . . . for four years at least.”
“You aren’t the only one. All of the exchange students stay. As well as those from poor families. Those that leave for August are usually four-year students from families you’ll probably hate anyway.”
“But some kids have parents that went to the school, right? They know all this stuff going in.”
“Old families exist and, yes, you’ll have a number in your class. It isn’t genetic, but the Mancy likes to find itself.”
The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady Page 8
