by Cecilia Tan
He kicked off his boots and leaned back in the chair, putting his feet on Alex’s bed. “It was great food. I’d never had goose before, and after the meal Ms. Finch brought out these things called crackers. You probably know all about this, but we pulled them and they sort of exploded, and everyone got a hat to wear, a horrible pun to read, a piece of candy, and a toy. I could use your help with the toy.”
There was no answer. Kyle dug it out of his pocket. “It’s a puzzle, you see, with these little pieces that were supposed to be difficult to get apart. Well, I got it apart in just a few seconds, to which Master Lester said then of course, for me the puzzle is how to put them back together. Obviously they must go together because that’s how they were, but I’ll be damned if I can figure it out now.”
He fiddled with the pieces in silence for a while, but he didn’t get anywhere with the puzzle and eventually started talking again. “So what’s up with your family, anyway? Why aren’t any of them here visiting you? Do you really have fey blood? That makes you...part elf, does it? I’m probably getting that wrong. I got into a magical biology class for next term, so maybe I’ll know more about that kind of thing in a few months.
“I’ve been reading a lot about sirens, though. It’s confusing stuff. I mean, if there’s an actual siren-siren around, it’s one thing. Very hard to catch, I know. But if it’s a student or a person who just has a lot of sirenic bloodline, it complicates the issue, doesn’t it? Well, I’ve got a lot of time on my hands. The catch-up reading they have me doing during break...I can’t really do it more than two or three hours a day. So the rest of the time, I’m working on these two projects. One, to make this amulet that will tell if someone has mantic blood. I’m not totally sure what mantic blood is, except that it applies to sirens and to sphinxes. Supposedly it’ll make the siren answer my questions, anyway.
“The other one, of course, is Project Jess, and man, it would really be so much easier if I could conjure. Or even transmute. There’s a graduate tutor in the house who did a whole thing for her master’s degree where she made a pumpkin into a carriage, mice into footmen, the whole nine yards from Cinderella. It was like twenty things all total, something crazy like that! Then at midnight, bam, it all changed back, and she said she slept for a week afterward. But man, that sounds cool, doesn’t it? I know, it took her years to perfect all the steps, and a whole year just to muster up the energy to focus into it all at once, but...yeah. I was impressed. Unfortunately, she’s gone for the break, just like everyone else, it seems.
“Well, okay, not everyone. Monica is still around, but hardly anyone I know. They closed the dining halls except for Nummus again, because there are only like twenty of us or something. At least they’re letting us stay in our rooms. And Nummus is sort of on the way here...”
He sighed as he ran out of things to say. He stayed for a little while longer, holding Alex’s hand, but there was no reaction. “Well, when you wake up, your stocking’s on the window sill. Merry Christmas, Alex.”
January
The pristine beauty of the first snow had faded by New Year’s Eve as rain and sleet and more snow piled on, and Kyle didn’t see the sun for a week. He would be spending New Year’s Eve at Scipionis House, where a couple of the diehard graduate students had declared a party. Kyle was curious what a party run by Scips would be like, picturing a bunch of people gathered around a Scrabble board.
When he arrived, he was surprised how many people were there. He was by far the youngest, one of the only undergraduates he could see. Where had all these people come from? Then it dawned on him that there were grad students who lived off campus, who weren’t counted in the two dozen or so staying through the semester break.
Lively music played from a portable stereo set up on the mantelpiece and people were bopping near it without quite fully committing to dancing. Nearly everyone he could see had a paper cup or a mug in their hand.
He wished either Jess or Alex were there. Alex would have fit right in. No one was dressed up, most in jeans and flannel shirts. Even Master Lester was dressed down, having swapped his tweed jacket and elbow patches for a comfy-looking cardigan sweater. Well, that was someone he could talk to.
“Happy New Year, Master,” he said, approaching the old man with a smile.
“Ah, and Happy New Year to you, Kyle. I understand you’ll be in my class on Interpreting Prophecy this term?” Master Lester grinned at him, as if very pleased by this notion.
“Yes, looks like it,” Kyle said. “I just hope I can keep up.”
“Oh, I’m sure Katalethea will help you out. She thinks very highly of you, Kyle.”
He must mean Kate. “That would be nice. Everyone else seems to have a background of common knowledge and stories that I don’t.”
Master Lester’s grin dimmed for a moment while he considered this. “Ms. Finch had mentioned something about you staying on during the break for make-up work, but she didn’t say in what. Would you like a head start on some of the texts? You can’t remove them from this building or the library, but you can read them and take notes, and there are commentaries, oh, there are commentaries! Some of them quite unreadable but others are a delight. You may want to start your own.”
“My own commentary?”
“Yes. A diary, in a sense, of you writing about the prophecies you read, recording your interpretations, and having a conversation, if you will, with the author.” He beckoned Kyle to follow him to the door of his office and then bade him stand there while he rummaged in his desk drawers. “Here we are.”
Lester brought out a leather-bound book and handed it to Kyle, who reflexively flipped through the pages to find them all blank.
“A belated Christmas gift, if you like. Though once the pages are full, it’ll be your gift to your future housemates. I’m sure the Gladius House library is as full of alumni commentaries as our own is.”
Kyle ran his hands over the rich leather of the cover, textured and soft. “Oh, but...I see. Thank you. Thank you very much.”
Lester chuckled. “As usual, my timing is off, though. Now you’ll have to carry it around all night. Hmm, perhaps you’d better put your name in it.” He gestured to the desktop where there was a cup full of pens.
Kyle put the book down and lifted a pen with caution, then wrote his name with care on the front page. No blood, no sharp pain.
Master Lester watched him curiously, but said nothing about Kyle’s odd behavior.
Back at the party, Kyle found he didn’t want to let go of the book, so he carried it in one hand, a drink in the other, drifting from conversation to conversation. He had to put it down, though, when he made his way over to Marjory Ransom, the only other person there he knew somewhat. Her eyes lit up as she saw him and held up an orange in her hand. “Kyle. How lucky.”
“Lucky?” he asked, looking more closely at the thing she was holding out toward him. It was an orange, but the rind was studded with cloves.
She smiled. “It’s a clove orange.”
“I can see that. But what does it mean?”
“Well, if someone offers you a clove orange, you’re supposed to either say ‘no, thanks’ or you take a clove out with your teeth, and you kiss the person you got the orange from.” She placed the orange in his hand.
It smelled lovely, the scent of clove and orange peel seeming to evoke a memory—except he’d never smelled it before. Marjory was smiling up at him, smug and sweet. She had cat’s eye glasses, and dark brown hair pulled straight back from her face in a ponytail. “And I don’t have to do anything magical for it?” he asked.
Her eyebrow quirked upward. “Who says a kiss can’t be magical?”
He blushed, recalling she was doing graduate work in sex magic. “And Jess won’t be angry with me?”
“I’m sure if she were here, she’d play, too. The clove orange is just a very slow, ongoing party game. And everyone wins.”
“All right.” He kept his eyes on hers as he drew a clove out with his teeth.
He held it there, trying to decide what to do next. He hadn’t exactly kissed many girls, and none in a room full of people, but he put a hand on her shoulder to draw her close, thinking, a kiss can be magical...
Marjory’s lips were soft and almost tentative, and felt so different from Jess’s that Kyle almost pulled back, startled. But he applied just a bit more pressure and her lips parted, as she yielded to him in a way he had also never felt before.
When he pulled back, he was short of breath and Marjory was beaming. “Thanks, Kyle!” She grinned and walked away from him with a little wave.
He sat down on the edge of the hearth to catch his breath, and then it dawned on him he had the orange and had to find someone else to pass it on to. Could he just give it back to her? She hadn’t said there was a rule against kissing the same person twice, but—
But that really began to feel like cheating on Jess. Because now he wanted to kiss Marjory again, to see if the second time would be like the first, or if the effect would have worn off some. He took the clove out of his mouth and tossed it into the flames.
It was probably best to find someone to give the orange to sooner rather than later. He looked around for a likely candidate. There weren’t many girls standing alone. Perhaps if he wandered around some.
He took a walk out of the common room toward the dining room, hoping to find someone nice-looking browsing the bookshelves in the hall or on her way to or from the ladies’ room. He came to another room he hadn’t seen before, a smaller library. A group of five students had circled the chairs and were passing a bottle of something around the circle.
“Wadsworth, isn’t it?” said the blond woman holding the bottle.
“Um, yes,” he said, coming into the room properly from the doorway. He couldn’t quite place where he knew her from, only that she looked familiar.
“If you’d like a bit of this, I’d suggest you sit,” she said, prompting chuckles from the others. She patted the empty chair next to her.
“I, um, should probably get rid of this, then?” he said, holding up the orange.
“Ah, yes. That should make it interesting.” She patted the chair again.
As he sat he remembered her name. Kendrick. Polly? Patty? Something like that. She helped to run the Alchemy lab sometimes and graded their midterm exams.
Kyle handed her the orange. A moment later, she pulled him into a deep kiss, and her tongue tasted of something spicy beyond the clove in her mouth. When she let him go, she handed him the bottle, indicating it should go from him to the fellow on Kyle’s left, while she turned to hand the orange to the girl next to her. Kyle tried not to stare while the blond woman and the African-American woman kissed, but he’d never seen two women kiss before, other than publicity stunt kisses on TV. He turned to the man beside him.
The guy had wire-rimmed glasses and a neatly trimmed beard. “Just lift it to your nose and sniff,” he said, miming it with his hand.
Kyle nodded, then took a sniff of the potion.
A moment later he wondered why he was lying on a rolled-up newspaper. Then the world righted itself and he realized it was actually someone’s arm behind his back, and that they were helping keep him upright.
“Has quite a kick, doesn’t it?” The guy said, taking the bottle carefully from Kyle’s fingers and then sniffing it for himself before passing it on.
Kyle found his tongue had forgotten how to cooperate with his lips to form words. He nodded instead. He wanted to ask what the stuff was called, but just breathing was taking up most of his attention and focus.
Thus he was surprised when the man held up the orange. Oh. Right. It had gone around the circle the other way. Kyle swallowed hard. “Oh. Um.”
“Wow, I’ve never actually seen the deer-in-the-headlights look before,” Kendrick said with a laugh.
“You can say no...?” the man reminded him with a raised eyebrow.
But by then, Kyle’s alchemy-numbed brain had decided that if he didn’t go through with it, it’d be disgraceful somehow. He took the orange, took the clove in his teeth, and leaned in.
The beard was tickly, and the hand that slipped behind his neck felt disconcertingly strong, and he completely lost the clove in the small battle of tongues that ensued. Then he was free, breathing and blinking hard. “Um, thanks,” he said, just to prove he could speak again.
“You’re quite welcome.”
He handed the orange to Kendrick, who kissed him even harder, then got to his feet. “Um, thank you, everyone, but I just remembered I left a book in the other room and I shouldn’t lose it.” The buzzing in his brain that had started with the bottle was still going on, so he felt a bit weightless as he took a step, and like their voices saying goodbye were already far away.
It wasn’t until he was lying in bed that night, still feeling a bit like gravity had not quite returned, that he realized he’d never learned the guy’s name.
* * * *
The next week went by slowly, so slowly, with nothing to do but study commentaries on prophecies and eat and work on creating the amulet. He ended up buying a chain with an arty medallion on it to use for the spell, off the clearance rack of one of the clothing stores in the Square. He had pretty much all the ingredients he needed. There were a few preparatory steps, and he fretted over whether he really needed a wand or not—the opinions of the experts were split on that issue. Then it was back to the prophecies again.
The Avestan Prophecy, First Cycle in particular drew his attention. He remembered that poem of Eliot’s. Surely Eliot had read the prophecy himself during his time at Veritas.
What house had he been in? Kyle went to Master Lester the night before the new moon to ask.
“Eliot? I’m honestly not sure,” the Master said, sucking on his empty, unlit pipe. “I would assume yours, if I don’t find him in the Scipionis House rolls. Hm. Let me look...” He dug into a file cabinet and brought out a ledger that he pored over for several minutes. “Hmm, no, not here. Ask Master Brandish, my boy.”
And as Kyle had been turning to leave, he’d added, “Longfellow was a Glad, you know.”
Master Brandish was not in when he sought her, so he perused the books in the common room. Many of them were diaries of the house’s past residents. Could there be—?
No Eliot, but Kyle found his fingers shaking a little to pull out a slim volume, lettered on the side: “Lngflw.”
He opened it to find a book of poems, interspersed with notes. Notes! And the poems had some corrections and changes made by hand.
He opened to a passage:
I stood on the bridge at midnight,
As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose o’er the city,
Behind the dark church-tower.
I saw her bright reflection
In the waters under me,
Like a golden goblet falling
And sinking into the sea.
The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Who was she? He couldn’t help but see her as the same woman in Eliot’s poem. But where Eliot’s poem was in the evening, now it was midnight, and she was irrevocably lost?
He took the book with him up to his room, but couldn’t shake the feeling of melancholy that had come over him. He put the books and prophecy notes away and tried again to turn the penny into two pennies, or a nickel, or anything other than what it was.
Nothing. He gave up and put it back in the pile of loose change on his desk. He ended up lying in bed listening to music and staring at the ceiling, his mind blank.
He wasn’t aware of falling asleep until while he was sitting on Jess’s bed talking with her, she said, “You know this is a dream, right?”
“Damn, is it?” He sighed. “Wait, but are you really talking to me through the dream? Are you dreaming this, too?”
“Does it matter?” she answered, her eyebrow cocked so Jess-like it felt like it had to be real and not merely a dream.
He grinned. “Well, I hope neither of us dreams th
at Monica walks in.”
She laughed. “As long as she’s not dreaming, too, we’re safe.” And she pulled him down into a kiss.
Her mouth was wet and soft, and his hands searched for her skin under her clothes. It was a dream, which made him wonder if he could just wish their clothes away.
She gasped as his cock grazed her bare belly. Apparently so. He rutted against her a few times, suckling at her neck where she liked it best. Then he gasped as he took hold of his cock in her fingers, stroking him. “So if...if this is a dream...does it count?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, licking his chest and tugging on his cock with the ring of her fingers.
“I mean...can you lose your virginity in a dream? Or not?” His cock was throbbing as he imagined what he was speaking of.
“Oh.” Her eyes lit up, and his cock twitched in her hand. “No, technically until an actual penis penetrates me down there, I’m fine.”
“Jess,” he breathed. “Jess...Do you want to?”
But suddenly he was awake. Had a noise woken him? What time was it? He sat up to check his phone and hissed, his erection painful in his shorts. Nearly three in the morning. And the phone had not rang, no messages. He text-messaged her to see if she was awake, but got no answer.
He wrapped his own hand around his shaft and hissed again, as the skin felt feverishly hot. He lay back down to take care of business, trying to sink back into the dream, imagining it was her hand and not his pulling him briskly toward orgasm, but his mind would not stay on the images he tried to steer it toward, wandering through thoughts and suspicions and speculations and poems.
