Now (hah!) I can read the text. Something about a dog named Spot and his quick movements.
"'See. Spot. Run?'" I read out loud and the professor laughs. I give him my nasty look and he stifles his giggles.
"Sorry," he says, "it's your pronunciation. It's all wrong—what you said means something different. Don't worry, next year we'll start on spoken Fae."
The student next to me (why don't I know his name? We've been here forever) slams his book closed in disgust. "It seems like I've been studying forever and now I find out I can't read a kindergarten book. Screw it, I quit."
He's walking out leaving me and three other students in the class.
Focusing on my classmates, I realize that they have not changed at all over the years. Same haircuts, same clothes, even the same shoes and book bags. I look down and realize I'm wearing the same white blouse and checkered skirt I wore on my first day.
Only the professor has changed. No longer a mid-twenties kid, he now looks much older. Are those crow’s feet around his eyes? In a static, always-now universe, he is the only thing that changes.
The door slams on the exiting student and the professor says, "Now that the class is smaller, I think we can accelerate our pace."
I gulp at the statement. Most of the class is gone, and he wants to push harder? Then I grit my teeth and get back to work. This asshole won't force me to quit, even if reading a children's book gives me migraines.
We're on the next book. Which means it's a new semester, right? Or a new year? It's hard to pin down the time.
Never mind—we're working on spoken Fae. Of course, with my werewolf sharp hearing, I can understand all five tones, but speaking them is almost impossible. I have to fight down my English interpretation of the tones and work hard to avoid misunderstandings. Who knew that the rising tone at the end of a sentence—the one English speakers use to indicate a question—could be a deadly insult in Fae?
I push through the exercises, speaking Fae with more and more facility and learning how to avoid the traps. The classes are (always) now held in the Fae language. I have the feeling that the professor is speaking at a fifth-grade level to help us understand.
We start on the multiple ways to address others. Fae can instantly determine the status of whom they are speaking to and their own status in relation to that person, and change modes to show that relationship. The tricky part is that status is determined by magical ability. I have read that some human languages did the same and have always thought such distinctions were unnecessary. But in Fae, using the wrong modality could cause a duel.
I have studied no other language but French. French has different modalities depending on relationship, but Fae is much more complex.
Professor Muratore now looks to be a mid-forties human. Still cute, but old for me. Then why do I think of him with intimate modality? At least I never use the wrong form of address in the classroom. Only in my thoughts. And he seems to fill my thoughts.
The new textbook on my desk is thick and heavy. No more children's books for this girl. I crack the book and read the first paragraph. After a moment, I realize this is a book of poetry. The Fae language lends itself readily to rhyming couplets, to sentences that read the same backward and forward like palindromes, to allusions and alliteration. That makes it damnably hard to understand.
My final three classmates walk out at the first glimpse of those rhymes. I realize that they rarely speak, only responding to verbal drills.
"Okay," says the old professor, "now that the class is down to a manageable size, we can speed up."
I am standing at the door, ready to leave, when I feel the bite of my werewolf on my ass. She really wants me to finish this impossible task.
I'm back seated at my desk and saying in Fae, "Okay, Professor. Let's get started. I don't have a lot of time to waste."
We laugh simultaneously at my statement. ‘No time to waste’ makes little sense in Fae, but I have said it anyway, breaking a dozen grammatical rules but using the correct tense, with the correct tones and modifiers. I have broken the rules, but in such a way as to be understood.
Then I realize I have been using the intimate modality—the one used with close family members or lovers. I'm blushing, then shocked when the professor answers in the same modality.
"It's okay," he says, "some poetry can only be read in intimate modality." He looks down and shakes his head. "Let's get started."
It's one-on-one learning now. Professor Muratore and I speak strictly in Fae and he refuses to shift to English. Sometimes I think some themes could be better explained in English, but the professor is old and set in his ways.
It's another day (maybe another year?), and the professor and I have a desultory conversation about different subjects.
The professor is staring into my eyes. My werewolf side should anger at this, but is strangely silent.
"Luna," he says in intimate mode, "I don't think I can teach you any more. You've passed every test, excelled in all facets of our language. It's time."
Anxiety flashes across my mind. I'm reluctant to let this now finish. "Are you promoting me to get rid of me?" I tease. "Sure, I can speak and read pretty well, but it seems I have so much more to learn."
"You have more to learn," he says, "but I can't teach you any more."
"Are you retiring?" I look at his liver-spotted hands. Damn, he's old. Maybe he's being forced to retire.
Those liver-spotted hands are caressing my temples, sending tingles down my spine. I should reject him—he's old enough to be my grandfather—but we welcome his touch.
"Teaching you is a pleasure," he whispers. "But it's time you wake up."
"Wake up?" I say. "What do you mean?"
5
My eyes opened to a room flooded with sunlight. I was naked in bed with an old man straddling my chest with his hands on my temples. He had long white hair and a matching beard.
With a snort of anger, I pushed him away with werewolf strength, sending him flying across the room. He landed with the thump of a sack of potatoes.
I got up and stalked over to this old lecher, mentally dragging my wolf along. She seemed to resist the urge to attack this guy.
"Good morning, Luna," said the man in Mason’s voice.
"Oh my god," I said as I took a sniff. He had the scent of Mason, but age had changed it somewhat.
"Mason, is that you? Is this some kind of disguise?"
"No, Luna," he said. "Just the result of giving you ten years of language instruction in one night."
Mason groaned and forced himself to sit up, wincing at every movement like an arthritic geriatric. He waved away my offered hand, tried to rise three times, then accepted my help with a grimace.
I helped him to a chair and got him a Coke from the minifridge. He tried to open the soda can, but couldn't manage it with his arthritic hands. I popped the top and handed the soda over to him.
After he drank his fill, I sat across from him and took his withered hands in mine.
"Ten years?" I said. "But it looks like you've aged fifty years, not ten."
I looked down at my naked body. Yep, breasts still perky, stomach still flat, no trace of wrinkles. "I don't seem to have aged at all. Even the cubs are the same."
Mason laughed and said, "Yes, this technique is harder on the teacher than the student. That's why it's rarely used."
"I've seen you age prematurely from overusing your magic, but you've never gone this far before. Will you be all right?"
Instead of answering, he took another sip of his soda and asked, "What time is it?"
I mentally checked the location of the moon. "Eight forty-seven."
"When will the Fae realm be in phase for transit?"
The answer came automatically. "In seven days, starting at nine a.m. local until eight the next morning."
I realized two things: The answer was correct, and I could not have answered the same question yesterday. At least not without several hours of calculations.
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"Seven days should give me enough time to recover somewhat," he said. "I won't get to one hundred percent, but I can improve in that time. Let's get cleaned up and go down for breakfast. I feel like I haven't eaten in years."
I had to help him in the shower; he was unsteady on his feet. I scrubbed his back and helped him shampoo and rinse. He had no reaction to my touch as I bathed him, and I felt rejected. He noticed my look and said with a laugh, "It’ll take me a bit to recover, but don't worry, I'll come back to normal in no time."
While I showered, he dried off and stood in front of the mirror to examine himself. The hair on his chest was much shaggier and pure white, but still had the stylized "L" I had shaved into his chest when I had marked him as my mate.
"Not too bad," he said as he ran his fingers through his shaggy hair and beard. Suddenly his hair was only shoulder length and his beard was neatly trimmed. He was still white-haired, but at least he looked presentable.
"Seems like a waste of your magic to use it for haircuts and trims."
Mason ran a forefinger over each shaggy eyebrow leaving behind a neatly trimmed arch. He just smiled and said, "Could I have more than one reason for these grooming spells?"
I looked at the immaculate sink and replied, "Using your grooming spell means you don't leave any trace of your hair behind that could be used to create a hex against you."
Mason put on a white terrycloth robe and stood beside me at the mirror as I groomed. No haircut magic for me; those spells didn't work on werewolves. All I could do was dry and brush my hair and add a touch of lipstick.
"I look like my dad looked when I was five," he said.
"With that robe and the white hair and beard, you look like Merlin the magician," I joked.
"Yeah, like I said: I look like my dad."
I sputtered for a moment to process. "Your dad was Merlin the magician?"
"Well, he's a Merlin, and he's a magician," said Mason. "But we won't know if he's the Merlin for a long time."
I was confused. "Your dad is still alive?" I pointed at his gaunt frame. "If he looked like this when you were five…"
Mason opened his mouth, closed it abruptly, then said, "It's kind of hard to explain until you will have met him."
Mason was speaking Fae, but despite my years of study last night, that sentence made little sense.
At the confused look on my face, he asked, "Which way is north?" I pointed in the correct direction.
"Which way is west?" Once again, I pointed in the correct direction.
"Which way is downtime?"
My hand rose to point in a direction that did not exist, and I stammered, "What?"
"Which way is uptime?"
"Why, in the opposite direction from downtime—" I suddenly felt dizzy. The bathroom spun around me and I didn't know which way was up.
I woke up a few minutes later, seated in the comfy lounge chair next to our bed. Mason was panting heavily from the effort of carrying me from the bathroom to here.
"What the hell was that?" I asked. "Some kind of mental booby trap?" The thought that Mason might have stuck something in my mind while I was unconscious shook my core. My claws grew and my teeth lengthened and I growled, "Did you screw with my mind?"
Instead of backing off, Mason reached over and took my hands. He groaned as he went to his knees to bring himself down to my eye level.
"I swear I would never do anything like that," he said. At my look of disbelief, he continued, "You don't have to trust me. Ask your wolf. She guarded you the entire time."
I turned inward and checked with my wolf. She vouched for Mason—beyond those language lessons, no tampering with my mind had taken place.
I blinked back to the real world to find Mason still kneeling in front of me. His gaze was fixed on my nails. He had once commented that my claws growing and retracting was like a thermometer for my mood.
As my claws retracted back to human length, he breathed a sigh of relief.
"Some lessons need time in the normal world to be absorbed," he said. "Let's avoid talking about my dad's lifeline until you've had more time to adjust."
A memory surfaced—an offhand comment Mason had made when we first met. It had seemed like a joke at the time, but now I wasn't so sure.
"So when you said your dad wanted to name you Merlin, you weren't joking?"
"No. Dad wanted me to carry on the family name."
"But your mom objected, and they picked Mason? Why?"
"Naming a magician 'Merlin' can be a burden and a curse. If he doesn't become powerful, he can't live up to the name. If he does become powerful, it might trap him into the fate of the original Merlin."
Thinking about Mason's dad hurt like probing a sore tooth in the middle of my head, so I changed the subject.
"Okay," I said. "I will have looked forward to meeting your dad. Let's go eat."
I dressed in typical Las Vegas summer wear: a white bare-midriff top with a pattern of red roses and a matching short skirt. Werewolves don't wear jewelry, because shifting would either make us lose it or choke us, so my fingers, toes, and ears were bare. I had tried clip-on earrings, but they were too easy to lose.
Well, I had one piece of jewelry—the moonstone amulet that contained centuries of lunar light. But that didn't really count, as it was invisible to most people and it would shift with me. Despite its beauty, it was more a weapon than jewelry.
While Mason dressed, I worked on my nails, trying to force the color-shifting magical nail polish to match the design on my top. Solid colors were easy, but getting the polish to follow a mentally imposed design was tough.
Sure, I could have asked Mason for help, but he wanted me to figure out magic for myself. He had created this magical nail polish so that anyone could make the colors shift, but it took a lot of concentration to create a design.
Finally, Mason was ready. He was wearing a sky-blue button-down shirt over black slacks. Because of his rapid aging, the shirt billowed around his shriveled body, and his pants were pulled up high to keep the cuffs from dragging. Even his Italian loafers were a now a bit too large.
"How do I look?" he asked.
I bit back a joking response; his condition was a result of helping me. I knew he could recover; he had bounced back from severe injuries before. A diplomatic response was called for. I gave him the same response Mom had given Dad when he had chosen a horrendous yellow and green checked shirt to wear to the restaurant on my tenth birthday.
"You look great!"
His face brightened, and he took my hand as we walked down the hallway toward the elevators. As we walked, his gait improved from a shuffle to short steps. Magic swirled around us as he absorbed enormous amounts of magical energy to speed up his recovery. His quick improvement brought a smile to my lips, which he returned.
Our mood was ruined when we passed a pair of frat boys in the hallway. I received the up-and-down look most men gave me when I dressed up, but the sneers on their faces rankled.
About five feet behind us, I heard the taller one say, loud enough for a normal human to hear, "What the hell is a showgirl doing with an old fart like that?"
"Strictly business, I bet," said his companion.
"Ouch!" said Mason as I squeezed his hand in anger. "Ignore the idiots. We'll have a long, long life together. Those idiots will be dust while we’re playing with our great-grandchildren."
"Let's just concentrate on getting these children to safety," I said as I punched the elevator button, "before we worry about their grandkids."
Then a sudden thought came to me. "Wait a minute," I said. "Just how long will you live? Werewolves don't live much longer than normal humans. Sure, we stay young-looking longer, but time catches up with us, eventually."
The elevator door opened, revealing a full-length mirror on the back wall. For just a moment, the couple reflected there wasn't a bearded old man and a young woman. Instead, there was a slump-shouldered old woman with scraggly gray hair and a face full of wrinkles,
standing next to a vigorous young Mason.
I froze in place, unwilling to step into that future. Was this some side effect of learning the Fae time-warping language? A premonition of our future? A possible future? Or just an overactive imagination?
The door started to close and Mason stopped it with his hand. "Are you okay?"
I gritted my teeth and stepped over the threshold of the elevator. "I'm fine. Let's get to the breakfast buffet."
Several thousand calories later, Mason brought the subject up again. He poured a refill of my decaffeinated coffee and then refilled his own. I sipped my coffee and contented myself with the smell of his.
"To answer your question," he said, "magicians can live a long time. Fae can live a very long time. Human/Fae hybrids—who knows?"
"So you're not sure if you'll be still young and healthy when I'm a wrinkled old hag?" I tried to keep my tone light, but it was hard with the memory of that image in the elevator mirror.
Mason reached across the table and took my hand. "Don't forget, you're part magician yourself. I'll bet you'll be the hottest old werewolf in the country."
"‘Hot’ and ‘old’ don't go together," I said.
"Why are you so worried?" he asked.
"I had a flash of myself as an old woman," I said.
Instead of dismissing my concern, he said, "We could always ask Dad. He has a knack for remembering the future. Dad will have had a long, interesting life."
"'Remembering the future?'"
At the mention of his father, my headache doubled in intensity. Mom had warned me that giving up caffeine while pregnant would be difficult. Having the strength and stamina of a werewolf didn't help with caffeine withdrawal.
"Let's not discuss your dad; it gives me a headache," I said.
The sound of Kuga's footsteps approached and the scent of Logan and Naomi wafted our way. They joined us at our table.
Naomi and Kuga were too well-mannered to comment on Mason's appearance. Logan wasn't as polite.
Lycan Legacy - 4 - 5 - 6: Princess - Progeny - Paladin: Book 4 - 5 - 6 in the Lycan Legacy Series Page 4
