The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes (The King Henry Tapes)

by Richard Raley

  Forget Bagpipes, maybe Smith should have named her Exposition.

  “Enough talking,” I growled. Fairy, I thought, stupid name.

  Miranda scowled at me. Out of the three of us she was the easiest to make out in the moonlight. Reddish hair, glasses glinting, and that white coat.

  “You should roll in the dirt,” I told her.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Dirty up your coat.” I pointed to her. “Mud would be better . . . like Predator, but all we got is dirt.”

  Miranda sure could glare. For once the ginger helped her work the devil-possessed expression. “You’re out of your mind.”

  “You are easy to see,” Isabel seemed to realize.

  Miranda changed the subject. “What was that about ‘dying like Valentine’? That was horrible. You said she’s fine and you wanted to stay in camp; now, you’re saying she’s not fine and you’re running into the woods.”

  “Keep your voice down . . .” I whispered, glancing left and right but seeing nothing but vague trees, brush, and a whole lot of darkness, “ . . . or I leave you this time when we need to run.”

  Pouting, she sat in the dirt, making it very clear she was no longer talking to me. Fourteen-year-old-me, how did you survive seven years with all those teenage girls?

  I sat down next to her, Isabel joining us on the other side of me. If the camping spot had been the ass end of nowhere then I don’t think the human race has a term for where I was at. West: trees. East: trees. North: trees. South: trees. Might as well have been a desert island, I couldn’t have felt lonelier.

  Out of place . . . that’s the problem.

  Put me in an urban setting with a gang hunting after my pugnacious ass following a beatdown on one of their members? I got that down. Done it before actually. Seventh grade. Two of them found me at the same time as I hid in an alley.

  One had a knife and I knew I had to take him out first no matter how many punches the other landed. Kids with knives . . . those little bastards are psychotic. I trust kids with gun obsessions more than I trust the knife lovers. That’s why I pushed the knife out of the way and tackled him to the ground, wailed on him while his friend wailed on me.

  By the time Knife Kid was knocked out my back and sides were bruised and I’d earned myself a few days peeing pink. Urban . . . I can handle urban predators. But forest . . . wolves? Not my thing at all . . .

  “I wonder what’s happening out there,” Miranda eventually said . . . at least she kept her voice down.

  The screaming and yelling and even the howls had stopped.

  Trees, trees, and quiet trees.

  “Your parents are mancers, didn’t they warn you?” I asked.

  Miranda gave a snort that shook her glasses. “Tradition is taken very seriously here. You aren’t supposed to let the Singles in on it, even if it’s your child. So no, my not knowing doesn’t disqualify this being some test.”

  “Would have been nice to know we’re being hunted by werewolves . . .” I deadpanned.

  “It’s very possible for them to manage something like this,” Miranda thought, “the teachers have access to artifacts, ESLED answers to the Lady . . . they could put on a reasonable attack to see our reactions as a final test before they begin really teaching us Elementalism next month.”

  “You think that’s it?”

  Her arms crossed to hug her stomach. “I hope that’s it.”

  The ground changed. I’d been keeping an eye on it. WALK THIS WAY. There was an arrow too. “We got orders, gals.”

  [CLICK]

  We walked for at least a couple hours. Occasionally I’d make out an arrow in the dirt and we’d change direction. Generally we headed parallel to the road, which I guess would be south. Eventually, tired and scared or not, we got bored, and bored teenagers revert to type: we started talking like we were just strolling through the countryside.

  “Why is it you can commune with fairies and convince the class to vote for Pocket, but you can’t make friends or just follow the teachers’ instructions for a good grade?” Miranda asked, like I had purposely set up this situation in an attempt to turn the universe inside-out.

  I didn’t even really have to think about the answer. “I don’t want to make friends or follow the teachers. I do what I want, that’s my glorious secret.”

  Isabel giggled.

  Girl’s wrong I tell you, just wrong. Why did the ugly one have to have a psycho crush on me? Can’t say I knew how to handle it either. Sally and I had been a thing before the Asylum, we’d done some firsts and seconds and thirds with each other, but there had been no crushing.

  I wasn’t exactly the type to crush on a girl either. Not much impressed me back then. You heard what Ceinwyn had to pull just to get me interested in the Mancy. Love and lust were a lot the same. Having a crush? Girl having a crush on me? Having a best friend? New experiences all around.

  Great friend you are, man, you left Pocket back there to get ate.

  Hey, I argued with myself, I didn’t have time.

  You ran like a little bitch. What happened to throwing down? The Mancy cut your balls off?

  “I don’t understand not wanting to do well at school,” Miranda concluded.

  “I’m sure you’re good at everything,” I said.

  “What’s that mean?”

  Isabel defended me, “He means you aren’t good at everything, don’t you have sarcasm where you come from?”

  “Well . . . of course I’m not good at everything, what does that have to do with caring about grades?” Miranda asked.

  “Do you care how well you do in PE?” I asked back.

  She wouldn’t answer.

  “Right . . . thought so.”

  Isabel giggled again, making Miranda blush red enough that you could see it in the moonlight. “PE doesn’t count towards class rank though.”

  “Right,” I agreed, “Only that’s your goal. Not my goal. My goal is the Mancy. So math problems? Fucking Languages even—if Smith picks a sucky novel? I don’t care. It’s not in my goals.”

  More silence. No howls, no nothing any longer, just the three of us strolling along. The arrows kept up, leading south and south and more south. Apparently Meteyos could hear me when he wanted to. How, I had no clue . . . ground vibrations or something maybe?

  “Then why did you get Pocket elected, how is that your goal? Why care about your single friend if he isn’t the Mancy?” Miranda asked, still Miss Nosy after getting burned once. “Obviously more than just the Mancy matters to you.”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t plan for more than the Mancy to matter . . . but shit happens, I guess, when you bring other people into it.” I kicked a rock out of spite. Wonder if that offended Meteyos? “Grades . . . that’s just me, don’t affect other people none. Unless it’s group and you might have noticed I try not to screw someone over then.”

  Miranda seemed to think back on our month together. “Huh.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “So if it’s just me . . . I don’t give a shit if it’s not something to give a shit about like the Mancy or fighting or any of the other things I like.”

  Isabel giggled again. “What kind of other things?” she asked.

  I ignored her. Maybe if I push her at a werewolf next time she’ll take a hint? “But people . . . people screw me up. Like Ceinwyn Dale making me care about the Mancy in the first place.”

  “Annoying woman,” Miranda growled.

  “I like her,” Isabel put in. “She recruited me personally, you know; I wasn’t even thirteen yet. She called to check on me every month and then when the time came she had a nice Recruiter meet me at the airport and he helped me through customs.”

  “My mother was a few years older than her at school,” Miranda expounded, “and she said Dale was always a show-off. All the teachers fawned over her and she had absolutely perfect grades. She used the Mancy whenever she wanted and no teacher punished her for it. All because she’s the Last True Dale.”

  “What’s th
at mean?” I asked. I’d have smacked Miranda for disparaging Ceinwyn, but if anyone can take care of themselves it’s Ceinwyn.

  “She’s from an old family . . .”

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway,” Miranda continued, hand pushing up her glasses again. If she broke the things I was leaving her blind ass behind. “Total showoff.”

  “She’s that,” I agreed, “Still a badass though.”

  Miranda snorted. “What did she do to convince you to come to the Institution?”

  “Walked through a locked door.”

  Miranda froze for a step. “I . . . she had to trick you somehow.”

  “Can’t say I saw it, but pretty sure she didn’t.”

  “That’s . . . I don’t think that’s possible, even for Winddancers.”

  “Guess we’ll see if you can do it one day.”

  Miranda might have paled a bit.

  “You never did answer about helping Pocket,” Isabel pointed out.

  I shrugged once more. “Guy decided I’m his friend, so I helped him out. Plus . . . it made Welf look bad, that’s always a plus.”

  [CLICK]

  Isabel saw the message in the dirt first. Ugly, but good eyes. Actually sharp eyes might be a better description, cuz they were kind of bubbled and that’s not good . . . moving on . . .

  CAVE AHEAD.

  The three of us stared at the words.

  “I don’t trust it,” Miranda finally said, like the scrawled letters in the dirty might jump up and bite us.

  “You do realize we still haven’t been caught, right?”

  “It’s a fairy, Mother and Grandmother always told me never to trust fairies . . . they’re dangerous.”

  All around us the forest had never seemed darker. Clouds fought with the moon, taking what little light we had away and the moon itself arched across the sky as night kept on. Other than the little nap, I’d gotten no sleep—Miranda and Isabel not much more, but at least there’s hadn’t included visions for two days running.

  Miranda went on, “History is filled with mancers being led astray or a fairy making a false deal with them. We shouldn’t trust it.”

  DO NOT TRUST THE WORTHLESS WIND OF AIR.

  I laughed as Miranda’s expression grew outraged.

  Isabel giggled along. “It has a sense of humor; it can’t be all that bad.”

  “Oh yes, the sprite or golem or whatever made fun of me, let’s follow it into a cave where it can trap us inside,” Miranda got on with the sarcasm herself.

  I thought it over.

  Meteyos wasn’t some little fairy like Miranda thought, or like the ones at Silver Lake Ceinwyn had mentioned. Meteyos was old. Thousands, maybe millions of years old. I somehow doubted he got off on killing kids. But why help? Just cuz I’m a geomancer? Or an Artificer?

  “I don’t know . . . he seemed like he wanted to help when I talked to him and then there was all this bit about meeting him in person, so I doubt he wants to hurt me.”

  Miranda’s jaw dropped to her first layer of plumpness.

  “What?” I shrugged. “I say something?”

  “You talked to it?” she asked, jaw working its way back into a place where it could motor-mouth.

  “Twice . . . it was like this weird dream thing.”

  CAVE. SLEEP. REST.

  “Gets Pocket elected, has a fairy dream, but won’t do his homework,” Miranda murmured to herself, walking off towards the direction of the cave.

  “I think you broke her,” Isabel stage-whispered.

  “But I didn’t even touch her . . .”

  Isabel batted eyelashes that were short, three different colors of brown, and crooked. “You can touch me or break me, either one . . . any time you want, King Henry.”

  I cleared my throat. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  [CLICK]

  We reached the cave just in time. Above us those clouds let out a crack of thunder and rain began to drop through the trees. “Hurry!” I yelled, but shouldn’t have even bothered. The girls went ahead of me for once.

  For all Miranda’s complaints, choosing between getting soaking wet or fearing Meteyos, she jumped into the cave to save herself a drenching.

  There was no light, no way for us to make a fire. It was dark, filled with shadows and blackness and hopefully no grizzly bears. We didn’t go far, only a few yards, enough to get the roof over our heads and keep the water off. Plenty of space to stand if we wanted, but instead the three of us huddled inches apart on the ground, backs against the hard rock.

  “Touch any part of me and I hurt you,” Miranda reminded with a glass-covered glare.

  “I didn’t even say anything,” I complained.

  “You were thinking it.”

  “Having a friend is bad enough,” I grumbled, “I don’t need a girlfriend too. Especially not one who knows more than me and is always trying to prove it.”

  “Like you could get a girlfriend,” Miranda laughed. “There’s not a girl in class who would take you.”

  Isabel might have raised her hand; I was too busy glaring back at my nemesis to notice. “I had a girlfriend before I came here. Her name was Sally . . . her fun-bags aren’t as big as yours, but hey, at least she wasn’t a ginger, ya know?”

  Miranda burst into tears.

  “Oh . . . shit,” I muttered.

  Burying her head in her white aeromancer coat, which had gotten seriously grungy from all the dirt and the nature of the last few days despite her best attempts to keep it clean, Miranda’s whole body shook. “Why did you have to be the one who saved me? Why couldn’t it have been someone nice?” she sobbed. “There’re plenty of nice boys in class and it’s you!”

  I looked to Isabel for help.

  “Your mess . . .”

  Reaching out to pat Miranda’s shoulder or head or something, I thought better of it halfway and crumbled my fingers into a fist, which I buried under my own armpit, trying to keep warm. Shit, was it cold. Rain, thunder, cold . . . people chasing us; what’s next? Lightning? A blizzard?

  I let out a sigh. Friends, girlfriends: not exactly a champion at. But a crying girl? I had two sisters, I’d seen tears in my time . . . I could manage. JoJo’s the more emotional of the two but she’s quick at getting over things. Susan . . . that’s where my real practice came from. When big sis got hurt she hurt for days if not weeks. Crying girls . . . those I can fix.

  “You’ve never had a boyfriend, then?” I asked her.

  “What does that have to do with you being an asshole?” Miranda snapped, still not showing her face.

  “But I’m always an asshole, so I don’t think that’s the problem.”

  The sobbing stopped a little. “I went to an all-girls school.”

  “That sucks.”

  “We had dances with a local all-boys school but . . . I knew I was a mancer. So what was the point?”

  “Well, kissing is kind of awesome,” I pointed out. “Then there’s sex . . . and that’s even more awesome.”

  “You are such a pig . . .” came the muffled reply.

  “You’re not actually ugly,” I tried to be nice, “I just don’t have a thing for the fire-crotch. You got yourself a nice figure, Miranda, and when you’re not talking and listening instead . . . I’m sure some guy here will be interested in you sooner or later.”

  There was a snort from somewhere inside her coat. “That’s the worst compliment I’ve ever been given.”

  “Yeah, I’m good at those. One of my sisters used to throw the pillow at me all the time when I’d try to cheer her up,” I confessed. JoJo. Susan made me watch chick-flicks with her. Give me the pillow beatings any day.

  “I have brothers . . .”

  I chuckled. “Think you’d be used to the cursing and jokes about your bra size then.”

  Miranda’s face finally peeked out of her coat. Her glasses were frosted over and snot hung from her nose thanks to all the crying. “They’d never dare. Women run my family.”

  “Scary.�
�

  “We’re the mancers. Always aeromancers, nothing else, and none of the boys.”

  “Double scary.”

  “Aeromancers don’t like one another . . . even family; Mom, Grandmother, we always fight and bicker over every small little thing.”

  “Triple scary mixed into a malt shake.”

  “Do you think the others are okay?”

  “They’re fine . . . why you make me keep saying it?”

  Isabel finally added into the conversation and it was enough to shut us all up, “So she’ll believe it,” she whispered.

  The three of us—who didn’t say three words to each other on a normal day during that first month—huddled in the cave, waiting for the rain and night to end, begging the Mancy not to hear a single howl.

  [CLICK]

  The world was upside down again.

  I would have complained about it, but there wasn’t enough of King Henry Price in one place to form words. Instead I moved through the rocks and the soil, stretching out, driven and pulled by geo-anima. I twisted myself around the conduits, carried like a ship upon the sea of dirt.

  Above me . . . not below me as it should have been . . . I heard the patter of raindrops, the sweep of wind, and the thud of footfalls. This is starting to get so annoying, I managed to think. Through these noises I heard others, the barest of whispers, the sound of voices as they struck the earth and rebounded. So very faint . . . like through a malfunctioning cell-phone . . .

  “How many have we rounded up?” one asked but there was no answer.

  “Run! Run! They’re behind us!” a scream not unlike a lightning bolt.

  “I hate this damned test.”

  “Where is everyone?”

  “We’ve lost three of the tracking signals . . . what’s going on? This has never happened before!”

  “Come on, Naomi, we need to keep moving.”

  “Rain, it had to rain. I say we go back to the buses and just let them find their way home . . . we could do with a few less students and I could do with some Scotch.”

  My eyes snapped open.